There was no immediate response from the Horn of Africa country, but
it has routinely dismissed reports by U.N. bodies and campaign groups
of rights violations in the past.
Kidane Mihret church is seen in Eritrea's capital Asmara, February 19, 2016.
U.N. rights investigators accused Eritrean
leaders of crimes against humanity including torture, rape and murder
on Wednesday and called on the Security Council to impose sanctions and
refer the case to the International Criminal Court.
Atrocities
- including an indefinite military national service programme that
amounted to mass enslavement - had been committed since the country's
independence in 1991 and were ongoing, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry
said.
There was no immediate response from the Horn of Africa country, but it has routinely dismissed reports by U.N. bodies and campaign groups of rights violations in the past.
"Particular
individuals, including officials at the highest levels of State, the
ruling party - the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice - and
commanding officers bear responsibility for crimes against humanity and
other gross human rights violations,” the inquiry's report said.
The
inquiry said there had been no improvement since a year ago when it
published a 484-page dossier describing extrajudicial killings,
widespread torture, sexual slavery and enforced labour.
Visitors to the country should not be fooled by the "general sense of calm and order" in the capital Asmara, because abuses were carried out in military training camps and detention centres, the report said.
"The
facade of calm and normality that is apparent to the occasional visitor
to the country, and others confined to sections of the capital, belies
the consistent patterns of serious human rights violations," it added.
Eritrea's
government did not allow the inquiry team to visit the country,
although its diplomats met the investigators at the U.N. headquarters in
New York.
Last year the three-strong inquiry
team, led by Australian diplomat and counter-terrorism expert Mike
Smith, did not have a mandate to look into "international crimes", so
the previous report said only that crimes against humanity may have been
committed, without apportioning blame.
In the
past year, the inquiry has received almost 45,000 written submissions,
almost all group letters and petitions criticising the first report, the
direct result of a government campaign to discredit the inquiry, the
report said.
Some signatories contacted by the
inquiry said they had been coerced or their signatures had been forged
and they were unaware of the letters, the report added.
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