Resistance and Conscience
The February 2022 death of Patriarch Abune Antonios of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, one of the world’s longest serving political prisoners, makes it difficult for to take seriously the claims of the terrorists and insurrectionist who invaded the Capitol of the United States in an attempt to overthrow results of the 2020 presidential election that they are “political prisoners” and “non-violent trespassers” who engaged in “legitimate political discourse.”
The history of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, one of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, traces to Phillip (Chapter 8 of the Acts of the Apostles) and the apostle and evangelist St. Mark of the mid-First Century CE and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. A declaration of autocephaly – self-governing - of the EOTC was issued by the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria in 1992 and Abune Antonios was named the third patriarch in 2004.
The son of a priest, Antonio was born in 1927 and became a monk at age twelve; he was ordained in 1942 and elected abbot in 1955. Antonio was chosen patriarch in 2003 in a popular election that was ratified by the Holy Synod of Alexandria and – to guaranteed the validity of his position - was ordained and enthroned by Coptic and Eritrean metropolitans and bishops.
The three-decades-long Ethiopian-Eritrean civil war ended with the United Nation’s 1994 recognition of Eritrea as an independent state. For the patriarch, however, there was significant cause for concern in the government’s interference in religious affairs, especially instructions emanating from the government office responsible for church matters. Eritrea recognizes only the Coptic Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, Sunni Islam, and the Lutheran Church-affiliated Evangelical Church of Eritrea. Some religious leaders from the Orthodox, Full Gospel and Jehovah’s Witnesses Churches have been imprisoned for more than fifteen years, according to human rights groups.
From the beginning of his patriarchy, Abune Antonios resisted government attempts to interfere with his Church, including the demand that he excommunicate 3,000 members and when the government arrested some priests. On January 2006, authorities announced that he would be removed as Patriarch and placed him under arrest, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). In January 2007, authorities confiscated the Patriarch’s personal pontifical insignia and five months later the government replaced him as Patriarch, forcefully removing him from his home and detaining him in an undisclosed location. Since that time, he has made one public appearance - in St. Mary’s Cathedral in Asmara, but he was prohibited from preaching, and was then moved to an undisclosed location.
In 2019, the bishops of the Holy Synod of the EOTC announced Antonio’s excommunication – a moved condemned by the Standing Conference of Oriental Orthodox Churches.
Today, Eritrea’s authoritarian regime is considered one of the most repressive in the world, characterized by arbitrary arrests and the imprisonment of its people because of their faith. The U.S. State Department “2020 Report on International Religious Freedom: Eritrea” noted:
In December, the government released 28 members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who had served prison sentences of between five and 26 years, in some cases for refusing compulsory military service… In April, the government reportedly arrested 15 Christians engaged in a worship service at a private home, and in June, another 30 persons were arrested at a Christian wedding. There was no information on the whereabouts of the detainees, the conditions under which they were being held, the charges against them, if any, or if they remained in detention… International NGOs reported the government continued to detain 345 church leaders and officials without charge or trial, while estimates of detained laity ranged from 800 to more than 1,000. Authorities reportedly continued to detain 24 Jehovah’s Witnesses for conscientious objection and for refusing to participate in military service or renounce their faith. An unknown number of Muslim protesters remained in detention following protests in Asmara in October, 2017 and March, 2018… The government continued to deny citizenship to Jehovah’s Witnesses after stripping them of citizenship in 1994 for refusing to participate in the referendum that created the independent state of Eritrea.
In mid-August 2021, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, reported:
“In response to the protests of 11 July, the Cuban authorities have applied the same machinery of control that they have used to target alternative thinkers for decades, but now amped up to a scale we haven’t seen in almost 20 years, and with new tactics including the use of internet interruptions and online censorship to control and cover up the grave human rights violations they have committed… The pattern of human rights violations we’ve documented in recent weeks points to a heightened policy of repression designed to claw-back control and re-establish a culture of fear that was punctured on 11 July… [when thousands took to the streets across the island] to peacefully protest over the economy, shortages of medicine, the government’s response to COVID-19, and harsh restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and how this has historically left many Cubans feeling that they have little choice but to leave the country.”
The Cuban authorities arbitrarily detained hundreds of people for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and largely peaceful assembly in the context of the July 11, 2021 protests, according to a list developed by the NGO Cubalex and testimonies given to Amnesty International. Most appear to be charged either with crimes historically used to silence dissent, such as “public disorder” and the authorities’ default approach has been to criminalize nearly all those who participated in the protests, including some children.
Amnesty International’s report specifically cited six examples of Cuban “prisoners of conscience:
Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, named a prisoner of conscience on three previous occasions
Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, activist and leader of the unofficial political opposition group “Patriotic Union of Cuba”
Independent journalist Esteban Rodriguez, accused of “resistance” and “public disorder”
Thais Mailen Franco Benitez, charged with “resistance” and “public disorder.”
Musician and human rights activist Maykel Castillo Perez, one of the authors of the resistance song “Patria y Vida.”
Hamlet Lavastida, charged with “instigating to commit a crime,” allegedly for proposing an artistic performance in a private messaging conversation; the performance never took place.
In February 2022, the Jehovah’s Witnesses Web site JW.org reported a total of 122 members of the faith imprisoned in Crimea, Eritrea, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Tajikistan for “religious activity,” “undisclosed reasons” or “conscientious objection.” An additional “over 30” were reported in “other lands. Russia led the list with seventy-six imprisoned for “religious activity.”
In a July 11, 2021 report – “Saudi Arabia: New Details of Alleged Torture Leaked” – Human Rights Watch presented a series of anonymous text messages sent in January 2021 from an individual identifying themself as a Saudi prison guard that provide descriptions of the torture and ill-treatment they and other prison guards witnessed Saudi interrogators commit against high-profile detainees in mid-to-late-2018. The person declined to reveal their name for fear of reprisal but described in text messages what they saw and forwarded text messages from other prison guards.
“New evidence alleging Saudi Arabia’s brutal torture of women’s rights advocates and other high-profile detainees further exposes Saudi Arabia’s utter contempt for the rule of law and failure to credibly investigate these allegations,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Letting abusers off the hook sends the message that they can torture with impunity and never face accountability for such crimes.”
In one forwarded message, a prison guard described the suffering of a male human rights activist detained in 2018. “They did not have mercy on [name withheld]… I would go to him and I would find him a lifeless corpse and expect that he died until the doctor comes and helps him with painkillers and other medicine to revive him. Then they would again torture him.”
Given Saudi Arabia’s unwillingness to conduct a credible, independent investigation into the torture allegations, the country’s image will remain tarnished until authorities allow independent, international monitors to enter the country and investigate the torture claims, Human Rights Watch said.
A November 2021 report by the Pew Research Center lists Saudi Arabia as one of the leading countries with a “Very High” score for “government restrictions on religion as of the end of 2019” – the latest year for which a score is available.
Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought new attention to the plight of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. On April 24, 2020, La Prensa Latina cited Karapatan, a national network of human rights groups in the Philippines, that reported 609 Filipino political prisoners – 362 of whom had been arrested during the regime of strongman president Rodrigo Duterte, 100 women and 63 prisoners suffering from various ailments.
At that time, “According to official data, Philippine prisons [held] 500 percent more inmates than their capacity, which makes social distancing impossible… More than 75 percent of the Philippines’ 215,000 prisoners are in preventive detention awaiting trial, a situation which can stretch out for many years in a slow and inefficient justice system.”
In January 2022, seventeen Jehovah’s Witnesses were in prison in Singapore – a United Nations member since 1965 - because of their faith-based conscientious objections to military service. In an April 24, 2002 letter to the UN Commission on Human Rights, a Singaporean government official stated that “where individual beliefs or actions run counter [to the right of national defense], the right of a state to preserve national security must prevail… We do not recognize the universal applicability of conscientious objection to military service.” The United Nations has long appealed to member states to “recognize that conscientious objection to military service should be considered a legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Almost fourteen months after a violent mob attack on the Capitol of the United States, 772 people have been arrested and charged with crimes and 212 have entered guilty pleas. Others cry that they are being “persecuted” and are self-described “prisoners of conscience.”
The January 6 “violent terrorist attack” [Thank you, Senator Ted Cruz for this description] insurrectionists might learn from the world’s genuine prisoners of conscience. They might, if they are honest, emulate the constancy of Abude Antonio without crying about phony “non-violent trespassers” and “legitimate political discourse.” They might reflect on the words of the Confiteor: “I confess to Almighty … that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…”
They did nothing while one of their number died of a heart attack and another of a stroke; and they were responsible for the death of another because they initiated the assault on the Capitol and smashed the windows of the House chamber through which an insurrectionist was shot to death by a police officer protecting the integrity of our nation’s government. One Capitol Police officer died from the effects of two strokes only hours after being pepper sprayed by the insurrectionists and four committed suicide in the days and months after the riot.
They are insurrectionists, terrorists and rioters. Not peaceful protesters. Not prisoners of conscience.
It is time for them to pray
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You,
and I detest all my sins… because I have offended You, my God,
who art all good and deserving of all my love.
I firmly resolve, with the help of Your grace,
to confess my sins, to do penance,
and to amend my life. Amen