Eritrea sits on the Red Sea in the Horn of Africa. Italy made it a colony in the late eighteen-hundreds, and Britain administered it during and after the Second World War. In the early nineteen-fifties it was joined to Ethiopia in a federation, and over the next decade Ethiopia steadily reduced Eritrea's self-government and then annexed it. A war for independence followed and lasted about thirty years. Eritrea became independent in the early nineteen-nineties after a referendum in which nearly every voter chose independence.
Peace did not last. In the late nineteen-nineties a border dispute with Ethiopia became a full war that killed tens of thousands of soldiers. Since then, the government has kept the country on a war footing. National service is compulsory for men and women from eighteen to forty and is officially limited to eighteen months, but Human Rights Watch and others report that it has often been indefinite since the border war. Families of people who avoid service can be punished. Elections have been postponed, and only four religious bodies are allowed to operate. As a result, Eritreans, many of them young, have left in large numbers.
The routes out are long and dangerous. The Migration Policy Institute describes Eritreans crossing into Ethiopia and Sudan, where many lived for years in camps or cities, and some moving on through Libya and across the Mediterranean, or through Egypt and toward Israel and the Middle East. Trafficking, detention and extortion along these routes are well documented. Recent wars in Sudan and in northern Ethiopia have made those first countries of refuge less safe.
In Minnesota, the Department of Health's cumulative table counts nearly six hundred primary refugee arrivals from Eritrea over the past four decades, with 117 in the most recent year, one of the larger groups after the top four origin countries. The real community is larger. Many Eritreans came to Minnesota from other states, through family, or through asylum, and some children were born here. The Eritrean Community Center of Minnesota in St. Paul connects Eritrean Americans to services and culture.
