Source: The Christian Post, September 11, 2021
Two elderly pastors are being held in Eritrea’s maximum-security interrogation center as one of the world’s most repressive and closed countries continues to persecute Christians.
“Pastor Girmay Araya, 75, and Pastor Samuel Okbamichael, 74, were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and brought to an unknown location,” the news agency Church in Chains reported, according to the US-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern [though it later emerged that they were taken to the maximum-security Wengel Mermera Central Criminal Investigation interrogation center].
When arrested, Eritrea’s persecuted Christians often disappear without a trace, leaving their loved ones with no information on their whereabouts or safety. Prison conditions are some of the harshest in the world, with inmates kept in shipping containers and believers often tortured in an attempt to get them to renounce their faith.
Eritrea’s President Isaias Afewerki is a member of the Eritrean Orthodox Church in Asmara—belonging to the largest among the only three Christian denominations allowed to function in the country. Afewerki [also] has a reputation of being an alcoholic and a ruthless autocrat. Afewerki’s policy of restrictions is more about his fear that religion will mobilize people as a political force than religion itself.
Read the full story. Note: Evidently these arrests happened in late July but the men have yet to be released.
Church in Chains details other recent arrests in the country.