Another journalist detained

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has confirmed that Simret Seyoum of the banned private weekly Setit has been in detention since early January 2002. In a statement released on 6 August, the committee said Simret - a writer and manager of the publication - was arrested on 6 January while attempting to cross the Eritrean border into Sudan in a mini-van. The van's driver and passengers were arrested after border control agents opened fire on the van and gave chase. At least one passenger, a journalist, escaped and reached the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, days later, the CPJ reported. It described Simret as a "hero of Eritrea's 30-year independence war against Ethiopia". He is reportedly being held in solitary confinement at the Hadish Maaskar detention facility near Gyrmayka, on the Sudanese border. The CPJ put the number of journalists being held "incommunicado" in Eritrea at 14, although presidential spokesman Yemane Gebremeskel recently told a CPJ delegation that the number was "about eight". Yemane would not guarantee that all of them were alive, the CPJ said. Nor would he comment on their whereabouts or condition, beyond saying that they were not being mistreated. He also defended their continued detention, citing "security concerns". He accused the private media of purchasing publication licences with funds from foreign governments hostile to Eritrea, and reiterated that parliament had created a commission to draft a new media policy and revise existing laws with the aim of curbing foreign funding of the press. "There should be limits to what can be said about government officials," Yemane said. Until 31 March, all 13 detainees were being held in "dingy cells" in a police station in the capital, Asmara, the CPJ reported. They began a hunger strike in protest, after which security forces transferred nine of them to an undisclosed place of detention. One of the hunger-strikers, Dawitt Isaac, a Swedish national, was reportedly treated for post-traumatic stress at a hospital, the CPJ said, allegedly as a result of police torture while in custody. "The continued information blackout in Eritrea is outrageous, as is the government's elimination of all private media in the country," Ann Cooper, the CPJ's executive director, said. "We strongly urge the government to release these journalists immediately and allow them to resume their work of reporting the news."