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JERUSALEM – More than 150 Eritrean asylum seekers and dozens of police officers were injured in Tel Aviv on Saturday after demonstrations outside an event sponsored by the Eritrean embassy turned violent, Israeli officials said.
The scuffle was the latest outbreak of violence at global celebrations celebrating Eritrea’s 30th anniversary of independence, but has sparked anger among opponents of longtime Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, one of the world’s most repressive leaders. Israeli police in riot gear and on horseback struggled to disperse the crowd as rioters smashed store windows, fought with officers and smashed vehicle windshields.
According to Israeli media, at least 16 of the demonstrators suffered serious injuries in the brawl. One hospital said it was treating 11 gunshot victims. Police used rubber bullets and stun grenades to contain the violence, and officials advised residents to avoid the area in central Tel Aviv. The Israeli Ambulance Service said it was holding a special blood drive at two hospitals in the city to treat the wounded.
Eritrean asylum seekers live in the Israeli Hadar community in Haifa
According to his office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was informed of the situation and ordered police to deploy the forces necessary to restore order. Late in the afternoon, police said they had bused most of the demonstrators out of the area and declared the crime scene under control.
Most Eritreans were refugees and asylum seekers who had fled forced conscription and repression in the East African country that Afwerki has led since gaining independence from Ethiopia in 1993. Some Afwerki supporters were reportedly on site fighting with government opponents.
According to the police, demonstrators broke into the public hall, smashed chairs and destroyed exhibits. Police were able to clear the area after the morning clashes, but protesters returned in large numbers in the afternoon and the uprising spread.
Similar clashes occurred across Europe and North America in recent events in Eritrea. Government critics wanted to use the celebrations to draw attention to the human rights violations committed under Afwerki.
In Canada, at least two state-sponsored Eritrean festivals in Toronto and Edmonton were canceled last month after violence erupted among protesters and government supporters. In Stockholm, over 50 people were injured in a brawl outside a similar event.
Previously, in July, clashes broke out between protesters and police outside an Eritrean festival in the German city of Giessen. According to German media, at least 26 police officers were injured by stones, bottles and smoke bombs that protesters used to try to gain entry to the venue.
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Activists criticized the events as propaganda for the government, which human rights groups describe as a “one-man dictatorship.” Eritrea has “no legislature, no independent civil society organizations or media, and no independent judiciary,” Human Rights Watch wrote in its annual report this year.
In February, the group warned that the Eritrean government was targeting the families of suspected conscientious objectors as part of an intensive conscription campaign linked to the war next door in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Eritrea and Ethiopia ended a decades-long cold war in 2018, and Eritrean forces sided with the Ethiopian military in its brutal war against Tigray rebels that began in 2020.
Since then, Eritrean soldiers have been accused of carrying out mass killings in Tigray, including the massacre of over 300 villagers in November, just days before a peace deal was reached to end the war, witnesses and relatives said. As Eritrea struggled to replenish its fighting ranks, authorities harassed and detained relatives of those they accused of fleeing conscription, according to Human Rights Watch.
Increasing repression has led to increased resistance to the government and the events it sponsors among the Eritrean diaspora, particularly among young people. “The emotions are really, really fragile at this point,” said Semhar Ghebreslassie of Stockholm, 35, a member of the global Eritrean activist group Yiakl.
“And then the regime and its supporters want to dance in front of us and glorify the war in which our sisters and brothers had to die,” she said, referring to the festivals the government has organized. “They are far from peaceful,” she said, adding: “They are being used as a propaganda platform for the regime.”
Last month, Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel described those who disrupted the festivals as “asylum scum.” In Israel, Eritrean activists said they had warned police there could be violence on Saturday and called for the event to be canceled. “We said there would be violence,” an Eritrean resident told Haaretz newspaper. “They didn’t listen to us.”
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According to government figures, about 18,000 Eritreans live in Israel. They are among tens of thousands who have fled Eritrea in recent years to escape repression, which includes forced labor and the possibility of lifelong military conscription.
Human rights groups said Eritreans typically fled to Israel via Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where they were often caught up in human trafficking networks and forced to pay ransoms for their release. Israel built a fence along its border with Egypt in 2010, effectively cutting off the flow of African refugees and asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan.
Once in Israel, Eritreans and other Africans no longer have a path to asylum. Instead, the state classifies those who enter illegally as “trespassers” and subjects them to restrictions that limit where they can live and work. The Israeli government has also offered to pay African migrants money if they leave the country or face prison if caught.
Berger reported from Washington.