3 - Rule of Law(lessness): The Special Court and the Judiciary

Summary

Rights are not things that are given or denied at will. We all should understand that rights are earned through struggle.

Ms. Fawzia Hashim Minister of Justice, Eritrean Government

You have no right to ask!

EPLF security officer, responding to a group of mothers asking about the unlawful detention of their children (AI 2004)

INTRODUCTION

The young Eritrean nation was established in 1991 with one great drawback: its freedom was secured from a dictatorship by a Marxist-Leninist-inspired liberation movement which was devoid of democratic experience and which abhorred dissent and divergent opinions. The political culture in the country at the time of independence was thus moulded by decades of war and driven by a government whose policies were anchored in ideological doctrines which lacked any regard for human rights. Consequently, as is illuminatingly described by an exiled Eritrean academic:

Eritreans became prisoners of the warrior culture that brought them independence. By the end of the first decade of independence, values such as dialogue, compromise and consensus needed to build a democratic society came to be regarded as symbols of weakness, even treason. (Hedru 2003: 436)

In order to understand how the contemporary rule of law(lessness) in Eritrea developed, one needs to understand how the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) handled such matters during their long struggle to liberate Eritrea from Ethiopian rule.