On the 2,000th day since Eritrea's "Black Tuesday" crackdown on media in 2001, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) urged Eritreans abroad to demand explanations for the imprisonment of at least 14 journalists, four of whom are feared dead.

Reporters Without Borders reports that three Eritrean state media journalists were recently released after being held for several weeks at police station No. 5 in the capital, Asmara, but a fourth is still being held.

The Eritrean government and civil society have expressed optimism that efforts to combat female genital mutilation (FGM) were bearing fruit, saying the campaign against the practice was gaining support in rural villages where excision was most common.

Credible Eritrean sources in Asmara and abroad have told Reporters Without Borders that poet and playwright Fessehaye “Joshua” Yohannes, who was a journalist with the now-banned weekly Setit, died in detention on 11 January. “The death of Fessehaye Yohannes would be an appalling tragedy, one made all the more unbearable by the accommodating attitude of European governments towards Eritrea,” Reporters Without Borders said.

Reporters Without Borders has called on the Eritrean government to urgently produce evidence that three journalists illegally held since September 2001 are still alive, as information from credible sources indicates they died in the course of the past 20 months in a detention centre at a place called Eiraeiro, in a remote northeastern desert.

Women in Eritrea have joined a nationwide campaign to try to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM) by lobbying for a law to ban the practice and raise mass awareness among the population, an official at the National Union of Eritrean Women (NUEW) said on Wednesday.

After five years, Eritrean journalists still jailed in secret prisons without due process. Five years after Eritrea's brutal crackdown on the independent press, the Committee to Protect Journalists called for the release of 13 journalists held incommunicado in secret jails and two other journalists forced into extended military service. Basic information about the jailed journalists - most of whom were swept up in a September 18, 2001, crackdown - has become nearly impossible to obtain from official sources in Africa's most repressive country.

On the eve of the 13th anniversary of Eritrea's independence, on 24 May 2006, Reporters Without Borders appealed to President Issaias Afeworki to release all of his government's prisoners of conscience, including 13 journalists being held incommunicado whose newspapers were shut down in a September 2001 crackdown. "Eritrea's independence day is once again going to be ruined by the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the political prisoners," the press freedom organisation said.

Good news about media freedom in Eritrea is rare, so it's understandable that delight and relief greeted the announcement last November that Isaac Dawit, an Eritrean journalist with Swedish nationality, had been released after four years in prison. But days after the news broke, Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told the Agence France-Presse news agency that Dawit had merely been released for hospital tests, and was going directly back to prison. Described by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as one of the world's worst jailers of journalists, Eritrea has at least 13 reporters in prison.

The Eritrean government has rejected a proposal by the United Nations Security Council to hold talks with an independent commission to resolve its ongoing border dispute with Ethiopia. "The final and binding decision of the Boundary Commission marks the legal conclusion of the Eritrea-Ethiopia issue once and for all," said a statement issued by the Eritrean foreign ministry on Monday. Eritrea was referring to the original ruling of the commission, which was handed down in April 2002, according to Alertnet.

Colin Bruce, the World Bank country director for Eritrea, told Reuters that the decision to pursue the border issue meant that the Horn of Africa country was spending a lot on defence at the expense of other areas. The unresolved border issue with Ethiopia is weighing on Eritrea's economy and casting doubt on its ability to pay its debts, a senior World bank official said on Wednesday. Eritrea blames the international community, and the United Nations, in particular, for not forcing Ethiopia to demarcate the Ethiopian-Eritrean border under the terms of a peace deal to end their 1998-2000 border war which killed 70,000 people.

UNESCO is supporting an innovative teacher training initiative that is expected to improve the quality of instruction and learning in schools across Eritrea by training teachers on learner-centred interactive pedagogy. Teachers will learn new methodologies and how to apply them in classroom settings, even where class sizes are large.

Eritrea will accept an international ruling that blamed it for starting a 1998-2000 border war with Ethiopia, despite dismissing the decision as a mistake, a senior legal adviser said on Monday (January 2). The commission at the Permanent Court of Arbitration said last month Eritrea violated international law with an attack on Ethiopia in 1998 that sparked the war in which 70,000 people were killed.

The UN Security Council has decided to pull US, Canadian and European staff serving in the peacekeeping mission in Eritrea out of the country. Some 180 personnel, who are military observers and civilians, will be temporarily relocated to Ethiopia. The move follows Eritrea's demand that the UN staff should leave by Friday. Tensions along the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea have risen with reports of troop movements on both sides in recent months.

On 9 December, the day before International Human Rights Day, CIVICUS and the Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights issued a letter of appeal, signed by 21 other civil society organisations, urging the member states of the African Union to acknowledge and take action on the Government of Eritrea’s ongoing human rights violations. Since 2001, the Eritrean government has systematically clamped down on the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association, and denied prisoners of conscience the rights to fair trial and due process of law. There are currently no independent political parties, media, human rights or other critical civil society organisations operating in Eritrea.

"You will receive no visitors and you will rot here until you sign this paper." The reported words of an Eritrean military commander to Helen Berhane, a well known gospel singer of the Rema Church who has been detained incommunicado in Mai Serwa military camp since 13 May 2004. She is currently held in a metal shipping container. Helen Berhane is just one of many people in Eritrea who are locked up because they do not belong to an officially recognised faith. In the last 3 years, at least 26 pastors and priests, some 1750 evangelical church members, and dozens of Muslims have been detained by the government.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says it is outraged by news that Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaac was returned to jail just two days after being released in mid-November. Isaac is one of 15 Eritrean journalists who have been jailed incommunicado and without charge or forced into extended military service following a September 2001 clampdown that shut down the country's private press. CPJ sources confirmed that Isaac, who has dual Swedish and Eritrean nationality, has been returned to jail. During his brief release, he was able to phone his wife in Sweden as well as Leif Öbrink, a close friend who heads a campaign in Sweden for his release.

The International Federation of Journalists has called on the Eritrean Government to end uncertainty over the release of Dawit Isaac, reporter from the former weekly Setit, who had been locked away without trial and without access to his family and colleagues since the crackdown on the private media by Eritrean authorities in September 2001. Dawit Isaac was released from Karcheli Prison in the Eritrean capital of Asmara last weekend after more than four years in prison. However, he has not yet received permission to leave the country.

More African countries are moving up into the top half of the Reporters Without Borders annual press freedom index each year thanks to their progress in the fight against impunity and the abolition of prison terms for press offences such as libel and slander and the printing of inaccurate news, says the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2005 published by Reporters without Borders. While those that usually respect press freedom – Cape Verde (29th), South Africa (31st), Mauritius (34th) and Mali (37th) – kept their positions in 2005, Mozambique jumped from 64th to 49th place.

CIVICUS is deeply concerned about the effects of a new law in Eritrea which severely restricts the existence and operation of local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Introduced in May, the NGO Administration Proclamation No145/2005 imposes taxes on aid, restricts NGOs to relief and rehabilitation work, increases reporting requirements for foreign and local organisations, and limits international agencies from directly funding local NGOs.