Red Cross sends home 835 Ethiopians from Eritrea

By Jack Kimball

ASMARA (Reuters) - More than 800 Ethiopians living in Eritrea have been repatriated across the militarised Eritrean-Ethiopian border, the Red Cross said on Monday, amid rising tensions between the two Horn of African neighbours.

Troop movements along the frontier and vitriolic rhetoric have heightened fears of renewed conflict between Addis Ababa and Asmara, seven years after a peace deal ended a bloody two-year border war killing some 70,000 people.

"On 26 October 2007, 835 civilians were repatriated from Eritrea to Ethiopia under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)," a statement said.

"In the same operation, 50 civilians were repatriated from Ethiopia to Eritrea," the ICRC added.

The Red Cross says it has been repatriating Ethiopians and Eritreans to their home country since June 2000, but does not say why the nationals want to return home.

But some repatriated Ethiopians say they have faced a nightly curfew, a fine for living in Eritrea, or even prison.

The government denies that.

"I was snatched from the workshop where I used to work by some government agents, and arrested for a whole year just because I was Ethiopian," said an electrician and recent returnee.

"I would rather refuse to tell my name because for every word I speak here with you, consequences could happen to my family, who are left behind," he said by telephone from Adwa town in northern Ethiopia.

Eritrea, however, dismissed those accusations, saying the returnees were being used by the Ethiopian government for propaganda.

"That's not true. The Ethiopians and anybody in Eritrea have unlimited freedom," Information Minister Ali Abdu told Reuters.

"I don't think these people say that. This is the Ethiopian government's agenda to sow hatred among the two peoples."

Along the border, there has been no let up in tensions.

Last week, Eritrea said intelligence services had discovered a plot by Ethiopia to invade the Red Sea state ahead of a late November deadline by an independent boundary commission to mark on maps the nations' shared border.

Reuters