Religious liberty in Érythrée according to the State Department of the United States

The opinion of State-Plain of America

According to the annual report 2006 carried out by the the United States on the freedom of religion in the world:

The situation as regards freedom of religion did not improve and it even worsened in certain fields. The Eritrean government imposes strong restrictions on the freedom of religion of the groups which are not recorded and he violates the independence of certain recorded groups. Following a decree of 2002 laying out that the religious groups were to be made record, the government closed all the places of worship of the groups not belonging to one of the four great religious institutions: the orthodoxe Church of Érythrée, the Catholic church, the evangelic Church Lutheran of Érythrée and Islam.

It continues to badger, arrest and imprison the members of the independent groups evangelic (of which pentecotists), of the witnesses of Jéhovah, and the movement reformist of the Eritrean orthodoxe church. He also intervened in the litigious and administrative decisions of the Eritrean orthodoxe church when he replaced his patriarch by his own candidate. He also refused to record any of the four confessions having made a request of recording in 2002, continued to limit the religious meetings and to stop people during religious ceremonies and circles of prayer. Certain reports/ratios give also a report on forced disavowals. Certain religious prisoners were held under very hard conditions, in particular of the extreme variations of temperature and an access limited - even no one - to their families.

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