Amanuel Asrat, a poet and journalist, as arrested on September 23, 2001. He was among about 13 journalists taken into custody in September and October 2001 in a government crackdown on the independent press. Like most of those arrested, Amanuel’s whereabouts, health, and legal status remain unknown as the Eritrean government has repeatedly failed to provide answers to questions about imprisoned journalists or to allow visits from family or lawyers.
At the time of his arrest, Amanuel was editor-in-chief of Zemen newspaper, according to the free speech organization PEN Eritrea. He was also an art critic and a renowned poet, whose work was critical of conflict and he was credited with establishing clubs for writers in the country.
Amanuel’s paper was one of several that reported on divisions between reformers and conservatives within the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice and advocated for full implementation of the country’s democratic constitution. A dozen top reformist officials, whose pro-democracy statements had been relayed by the independent newspapers, were also arrested.
Following the banning of the private press, Amanuel was one of a group of journalists who wrote to the Ministry of Information demanding clarification on the decision, according to a 2009 CPJ blog by Aaron Behrane, former editor of Eritrea’s Setit newspaper, who died in exile in 2021. Aaron reported that the last time he saw Amanuel before his September 23 arrest was when they handed the letter to the ministry on September 21.
Authorities initially detained the journalists at a police station in the capital, Asmara, where they began a hunger strike on March 31, 2002, and smuggled a message out of jail demanding due process, according to CPJ research. The government responded by transferring them to secret locations without bringing them before a court or publicly registering charges. Several people familiar with the situation told CPJ that the journalists were confined at the northeastern Eiraeiro prison camp or Adi Abeito military prison near Asmara.
In 2010, a purported former Eritrean prison guard, Eyob Bahta Habtemariam, told the international press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders that Amanuel was one of at least four journalists being held in Eiraeiro prison. Over the years, Eritrean officials have offered vague and inconsistent explanations for the arrests — accusing journalists of involvement in anti-state conspiracies in connection with foreign intelligence, skirting military service, and violating press regulations. Officials, at times, even denied that the journalists existed.
Meanwhile, shreds of often unverifiable, second- or third-hand information smuggled out by people fleeing into exile suggested that seven of the journalists arrested in 2001 have died in custody. CPJ confirmed in 2007 that one of the journalists, Fesshaye “Joshua” Yohannes, died in secret detention.
In a 2016 interview about the journalists and politicians arrested in 2001, Eritrean Foreign Affairs Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed said "all of them are alive" and "in good hands" and would face trial "when the government decides” since some were "political prisoners."
In 2018, Paulos Netabay, director of the state-owned Eritrean News Agency, told CPJ that the journalists’ arrest in 2001 was connected to “acts of subversion and treason by some former politicians” and that the cases had been “submitted and decided by the National Assembly.”
In a May 2024 report, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, expressed concern about prolonged, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances and said that the Eritreans arrested in 2001 were the “longest-detained journalists in the world,” imprisoned for almost 23 years without charges or trial.
In a 2023 campaign by the Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, relatives of Amanuel and three other journalists called for information about the detained, who were believed to be held in inhumane conditions, without trial.
As of late 2024, CPJ had yet to receive any replies to emails requesting comment from information minister Yemane Ghebremeskel, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Justice.