GENEVA (18 August 2021) – UN experts today called for the release of journalist and human rights defender Dawit Isaak, who has been detained without trial in Eritrea since 2001, although it is unclear whether he is still alive.
„To date, Dawit Isaak has never been charged with a crime, has never spent a day in court or spoken to his lawyer,“ said Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. „The extent to which the Eritrean government is ignoring Mr Isaak’s basic human rights is appalling. He must be released immediately.“
In the early years of his detention, „we received information that Mr Isaak was often taken to hospital, which was worrying in itself,“ Lawlor said. „Now we’re not getting any news, and that’s even worse. We fear for his life. As an absolute minimum, Eritrea must immediately provide proof that he is alive and well.“
Dawit Isaak, 56, a Swedish-Eritrean national with dual citizenship, founded one of Eritrea’s first independent media organisations, the Setit newspaper, in the 1990s. In May 2001, it published open letters from a group of politicians known as the G15, calling on the government to hold open elections and implement a newly drafted constitution. When the world public was distracted by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, Mr Isaak was arrested on 23 September 2001.
According to a credible source, Mr Isaak was alive in September 2020, the first sign of life in seven years. He is reportedly being held in Eiraeiro Prison, a detention centre notorious for its conditions, where torture is allegedly commonplace and where many inmates are said to have died in custody.
„The enforced disappearance of Mr Isaak for almost two decades is extremely worrying,“ said Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, Special Rapporteur on Eritrea. „In all these years, the Eritrean government has neither confirmed his whereabouts nor provided solid evidence of his health. It has denied allegations of torture but has not allowed anyone to visit Mr Isaak.“
Lawlor said she has rarely witnessed such disregard for human life since she began documenting cases of human rights defenders in long-term detention around the world.
„Locking up human rights defenders for long periods of time may feel like a guarantee against internal investigations,“ Lawlor said. „But we haven’t forgotten that.“
Mr Isaak’s work has been recognised by a number of prestigious awards, including the UNESCO Press Freedom Prize and the Sakharov Prize.
The Special Procedures mandate holders are in contact with the Eritrean authorities on the matter.
The experts‘ appeal is supported by: Ms Tlaleng Mofokeng, Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health ; the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances : Mr Tae-Ung Baik (Chair), Mr Henrikas Mickevičius (Vice-Chair), Ms Aua Balde, Ms Gabriella Citroni and Mr Luciano Hazan; and Mr Morris Tidball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions .
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Ms Mary Lawlor (Ireland) is the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders . She is currently Associate Professor of Business and Human Rights at Trinity College Dublin. She was the founder of Front Line Defenders – the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. As Executive Director from 2001-2016, she represented Front Line Defenders and played a key role in its development. Prior to this, Mrs Lawlor was Director of the Irish Office of Amnesty International from 1988 to 2000, having joined the Board of Directors in 1975 and being elected President from 1983 to 1987.
Dr Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker (Sudan) was appointed Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea by the UN Human Rights Council in September 2020. Dr Babiker is an Associate Professor of International Law, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Khartoum and Founding Director of the Human Rights Centre there. He is also a practising lawyer and has conducted human rights and international humanitarian law investigations in many countries in the Horn of Africa. He has extensive experience working with international human rights organisations and institutions, including the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU). In December 2017, he was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as Humanitarian Expert to the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea. In December 2018, he was also appointed as a humanitarian expert to the Group of Experts on Somalia.
In his annual report presented at the 47th session of the Human Rights Council in June 2021, the Special Rapporteur expressed concern about the situation of journalists and political prisoners in Eritrea, including the situation of Dawit Isaak. Read the full report: https://undocs.org/A/HRC/47/21.
The Special Rapporteurs are part of the so-called Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN human rights system, is the general name for the Council’s independent investigative and monitoring mechanisms that deal with either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. The Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN employees and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent of any government or organisation and work in their own capacity.
For further information and media enquiries, please contact Orsolya Toth (+41 22 917 9913 / ototh@ohchr.org) or write to defenders@ohchr.org.
For media enquiries about other independent UN experts, please contact Jeremy Laurence (+ 41 22 917 7578 / jlaurence@ohchr.org) .
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Susanne Berger has documented Dawit Isaac’s story in detail in the Fritz Bauer Library.
