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Source: Zeit

Updated September 23, 2023, 6:05 p.m 139 comments

Eritrean soldiers march during Independence Day celebrations in the capital Asmara in May. © J. Countess/​Getty Images

No violence! He repeatedly impressed upon his group this, says Amanuel Zeru. When the situation escalated, he fell to his knees, his arms spread out like a cross, and some of his fellow soldiers did the same. They wanted to demonstrate peacefully against the regime that forced them to flee their homeland of Eritrea . And against those compatriots who continue to remain loyal to the dictatorship from Germany.

On July 8, thousands of supporters of the dictator Isayas Afewerki traveled to Giessen for the “Eritrea Festival,” an annual event that pays homage to the regime of the small East African country and raises money. Zeru and other opposition members wanted to prevent the event - not all of them only by peaceful means. Zeru later told ZEIT that no one in his group was armed . But others had stones and bottles in their hands.

At the end of that day, the police in Giessen recorded several clashes in the city, over 100 arrests and 26 injured police officers. Amanuel Zeru also ended up in police custody.

In August there was violence at Eritrea festivals in Stockholm and Toronto, at the beginning of September in Tel Aviv, and a few days ago, on September 16th, there were again riots in Stuttgart on the occasion of an event close to the regime. Amanuel Zeru was not there. But again, numerous police officers were injured. “Foreign conflicts must not be fought in our country,” said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). The violent perpetrators must “feel the full severity of criminal law and immigration law,” said Baden-Württemberg’s Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU). Statements that are intended to calm a rightly outraged public. The only question is: who brought this conflict to European and German soil?Newsletter

Eritrea is a small country in the Horn of Africa, its area is approximately the same as that of East Germany. In 1993, Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia after decades of war. The leader was Isayas Afewerki. The freedom hero soon turned out to be a despot. Afewerki, now 77 years old, has been president for 30 years without ever giving his people the opportunity to vote again. He turned Eritrea into a police state and introduced a "national service". It lasts six years or half a lifetime; Men and women can be drafted again at any time to perform forced labor or go to war. The fear of being attacked by larger countries has long since turned into a policy of permanent aggression.This article comes from ZEIT No. 40/2023. You can read the entire issue here.

Around a million Eritreans now live outside their home country. That's almost one in five. In Germany there are around 80,000. And almost everywhere in the diaspora there are two groups: on the one hand, those who left the country before it became independent. For them, Afewerki remains the hero of the freedom struggle; they celebrate their homeland in clubs, for example organizing themselves in the "Central Council of Eritreans in Germany", which organizes the Eritrea Festival in Giessen and is also connected to the event in Stuttgart. Similar events take place all over the world.

On the other hand, there is the growing number of young exiles like Amanuel Zeru, who now make up the majority in the Eritrean foreign community. For them, Afewerki is the dictator who forced them out of the country along the long sub-Saharan route, first to Sudan, then to Libya, then across the Mediterranean to Europe. To avoid national service, Amanuel Zeru came to Germany via this route at the age of 14. Many die while fleeing or are kidnapped and mistreated by smugglers in order to extort more money. In Germany, most Eritreans receive subsidiary protection; the recognition rate was recently 84 percent.

The conflict between the two camps has been escalating for years. Not only, but especially around the Eritrea Festival in Giessen. The event has been taking place in the Hessenhallen since 2011, accompanied by peaceful protests from the opposing side - until these escalated for the first time in 2022. Around 100 people broke away from the counter-demonstration and attacked helpers and festival guests as well as police officers with iron bars, knives and stones. 33 people were injured, the police spoke of an "excess of violence" and the festival did not take place.

Stuttgart: Police officers surround a group of participants during riots at an Eritrea event on September 16th. © Jason Chepljakov/​pa/​dpa

In mid-May, two months before this year's riots, Amanuel Zeru sits in the train station café in a medium-sized city and tells how his cell phone rang one night at the end of April. Amanuel Zeru bounces his legs, constantly plays with his car keys, and looks at passers-by. A few weeks earlier, he had tried to prevent the concert of an Eritrean pop star who is said to be close to the regime. He wanted to persuade the operator of the concert hall to cancel. Amanuel Zeru believes that word has got around in circles loyal to the regime. Hence the late night call. On the other end: the man known in the exile community as "Bob."

Zeru documented the call, so the conversation went like this:

Bob: "Look, I know where you live. You have two kids, think about them."

Amanuel Zeru: "Don't talk about my children!"

Bob: "One bullet from an Albanian is enough. I'll make sure you end up in a wheelchair."

Since then, says Amanuel Zeru, he has avoided leaving the house in the evenings.

If you talk to opposition Eritreans in Germany, the name "Bob" is always mentioned when they report threats and gangs of thugs. Also in ZEIT 's conversation with an opposition Eritrean in exile in Kassel, who stated that men asked him on the street a few days after the 2022 Eritrea Festival whether he had been involved in the protest against the festival. They then tried to pull him into a minibus. The man filed a complaint, as did another exile who was apparently threatened by the same group shortly afterwards. He also stated that he had previously received a threatening call from “Bob”. After two months, the Kassel public prosecutor's office stopped the investigation: "A perpetrator could not be identified," she wrote.

The name "Bob" is also mentioned when exiles talk about a group that allegedly acts in the service of the regime abroad: Eri-Blood.

The organization is not registered in any association register, there is no clubhouse, no board of directors. But there are many alleged attacks on dissidents. A 2017 study, commissioned by the Dutch Foreign Ministry, mentions arson in Sweden and spying attempts in the Netherlands. Suspected Eri Blood members also drove cars into groups of people in Norway and Italy. The study describes Eri-Blood as the "militant wing" of the only authorized party in Eritrea, Afewerki's "Popular Front for Democracy and Justice."

Members of the Central Council of Eritreans in Germany, a kind of umbrella organization for pro-regime associations, referred to Eri-Blood as "our security guards" at an internal event last year, a recording of which is available to ZEIT. The association's board did not want to comment on this to ZEIT.

During the Eritrea Festival in Giessen in July 2023, the Hessian YouTuber Joachim Schaefer approached men at the gate to the exhibition center who acted like security forces but were clearly not part of the official security company. In the video, Schaefer asks the men if they belonged to Eri-Blood. On their black T-shirts there is a red "52", which could stand for the fifth and second letters in the Latin alphabet, for "E" and "B", possibly a code for Eri-Blood. The men avoided Schaefer's questions.

A man in his 50s also appears in his video, with a silvery beard, a stern look, a bright voice, and he is missing one front tooth. He appears dominant; you get the impression that the men in the black T-shirts are listening to him. “What’s the problem with celebrating a dictator?” he asks in the video. When Schaefer released his film two days later, he received a call from the man complaining. The number is the same as the threatening call to Amanuel Zeru. The man in the video is apparently "Bob". By the time of going to press, ZEIT had attempted to contact “Bob” several times at this cell phone number. Without success.

“Bob's” real name is known in the diaspora: Neamin Bereket M. ZEIT asked various Hessian security authorities about possible investigations and their level of knowledge about Eri-Blood and “Bob's” role. The tenor of the answers: Nobody knows anything about the structures of the regime in Germany. So far, there are no “specific facts known in which there were threats or physical attacks by supporters of the Eritrean regime against opposition members,” says the Hesse State Criminal Police Office.

Why does a poor country in the Horn of Africa need a thugs in Europe? Why is it so intent on controlling its diaspora? Because it's worth it. The CIA estimates that almost a third of Eritrean gross domestic product comes from diaspora remittances.

Israel: Girls play in an Eritrean community center in Eilat. Thousands of Eritreans live in Israel. There were riots in Tel Aviv in September. © Laetitia Vancon/​NYT/​Redux/​laif

The central flow of this foreign currency, which is valuable for the dictatorship, is the “diaspora tax”: two percent of the annual net income of Eritreans abroad – for life. Those loyal to the regime pay them voluntarily, while opponents of the regime have to pay them if they want to use embassy or consulate services. The diaspora tax has been officially banned in Germany since 2011.

Amanuel Zeru refuses to help finance the regime he fled. That's why he applied for German citizenship after 16 years in Germany. Because the immigration authorities required proof of Eritrean identity, he would have had to go to the consulate general or the embassy. Zeru refused, and the authority requested a written statement. He presented it in 2019. Nothing has happened since then, he says.

“Eritrea is doing a lot to control its diaspora,” says Marcel Kasprzyk. "And German authorities are doing little to counter this." The Frankfurt lawyer with a focus on migration law represents numerous refugees from Eritrea. As a rule, according to Kasprzyk, refugees arrive in Germany without papers. Some never had them, others had them taken from them while they were fleeing, others lost them or destroyed them to avoid being sent back to Eritrea. By requiring official Eritrean identity proof for naturalization, permanent residence permits, family reunification or marriage, the German authorities are forcing refugees back into the arms of the regime. And that, says Kasprzyk, requires not only money, but also penance.

"Taesa" is the name of the declaration of repentance that opposition Eritreans have to sign at the embassy or consulate general. ZEIT has the original and an English translation of the document. In it, the refugees have to reveal private data and explain in detail how they escaped. And they must sign that they regret violating their “national duties” and will accept “appropriate measures.” They will only find out what happens to them if they return to Eritrea at some point. "The Taesa hangs over them like the sword of Damocles," says Marcel Kasprzyk, the lawyer.

In October 2022, the Federal Administrative Court ruled that it was unreasonable to put those seeking protection in such a situation. An important judgment, says Kasprzyk. But the responsible authorities are slow to change their practices.

Other countries are taking more decisive action. For example, in 2018, the Netherlands expelled a high-ranking Eritrean diplomat because refugees continued to be forced to pay the diaspora tax.

Amanuel Zeru is now waiting for further news from the police. A week before the festival in Gießen, he received a “threat speech” because he was already there in 2022 when the protests against the festival escalated for the first time. The official note said he should stay away from the demonstration this time: “Avoid any further potentially criminal behavior!”

After his arrest in July 2023, he sat in a cell for 24 hours. He cried, he says, because the regime was drinking and dancing outside - and because he feared for his residence permit. He has not yet heard anything from the Giessen police, who are now investigating 125 cases on suspicion of bodily harm and breach of the peace.

In response to a request from ZEIT, the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Hesse said it was currently examining in detail "the extent to which anti-constitutional efforts are emanating from individual people and/or groups of people with a connection to Eritrea." It remains unclear whether this refers to the opposition members who network across Europe or groups close to the regime such as Eri-Blood.

Two weeks after the Eritrea Festival in Giessen, Amanuel Zeru took part in a meeting of hundreds of opponents of the Eritrean dictatorship in Hanau, some of whom came from the USA and Australia. For Zeru it was an important event; he hopes that the younger generation, the dictator's opponents, will soon set the tone in the diaspora. On the eve of the meeting in Hanau, around 20 men attacked a meeting point of the Eritrean opposition in Frankfurt. They broke windows and car windows. The police are investigating.