RSF charges Eritrea to provide clue on journalist detained since 16 years

The fate of journalists detained by Eritrea government since 16 years has continued to generate global attention, as voices continue to rise on the where about of the detained journalist.

Media rights advocacy group, Reporters without Borders (RSF), has raised its voice with issue of a statement tasking the Eritrean government to make known the whereabouts of the journalist who has been held for sixteen years.

A journalist with Swedish and Eritrean nationality, Dawit Isaak, was arrested in 2001 during a political crackdown in Eritrean nation.

RSF’s call coincided with this years’ commemoration of the ‘International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.’ The group listed Eritrea and Algeria as some of the African countries that make journalists disappear.

The journalist helped found the Eritrean newspaper Setit, he was awarded UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2017.

The United Nations earlier in May 2017, reiterated a similar call to the Eritrean government to provide information on the 52-year-old.

Since his arrest, Dawit along with ten other journalists on terrorism charges, he has been held incommunicado, without access to his family or lawyers. The detained journalists are being held over demands for democratic reforms.

“Information obtained by RSF suggests that seven of these 11 journalists have already died in detention. According to the account of a former prison guard in 2010, the last time Isaak was seen alive, the journalists had been kept in inhuman conditions – handcuffed, isolated, and exposed to terrible heat,” a statement by the group said.

RSF said despite its information requests to Asmara having received zero response, it was committed to continued efforts to ensure he was not forgotten like hundreds of journalists made to disappear by governments around the world.