29 October 2007
Addis Abeba — 835 Ethiopians living in Eritrea have been repatriated across the militarized Eritrean-Ethiopian border, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday, amid rising tensions between the two Horn of African neighbors.
"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 said it has been repatriating Ethiopians and Eritreans to their home country since June 2000, based on the consent of each individual and with the cooperation of the authorities but does not say why the nationals want to return home.
But some repatriated Ethiopians, cited by Reuters, said 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,", Reuters quoted an electrician and recent returnee as saying.
"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 told the news agency 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, the report added.
"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.
Troop movements along the frontier and vitriolic rhetoric have heightened fears of renewed conflict between the two nations, seven years after a peace deal ended a bloody two-year border war killing some 70,000 people.
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