ASMARA, Eritrea — Eritrean military authorities jailed 75 Protestant Christians Feb. 1 at the Sawa Military Training Camp for “reading Bibles and praying during their free time,” local sources in the small east Africa nation confirmed. Most of the newly arrested evangelicals, 37 of them women, are student youths doing their compulsory national military service at Sawa, a remote center near Eritrea’s mountainous western border with Sudan.
The 75 young conscripts put under “military detention and punishment” had not attempted to conduct any Christian meeting at Sawa or committed any other transgression of military law. “In Sawa, to possess your own Bible and keep your personal devotion and loyalty to Christ is not allowed,” an Eritrean Christian told Compass Direct news service. “This is considered an act of Christian extremism.”
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