Seyoum Tsehaye, who founded Eritrea’s state broadcaster Eri-TV and later worked independently, was arrested on September 21, 2001. He was among about 13 journalists taken into custody in September and October 2001 in a government crackdown on the independent press.
Like most of those arrested, Seyoum’s whereabouts, health, and legal status remain unknown as the Eritrean government has repeatedly failed to provide answers to questions about imprisoned journalists or to allow visits from family or lawyers. His family have called on Eritrea to prove that the journalists are still alive.
At the time of his arrest, Seyoum was working as a freelance photojournalist and contributor to the privately-owned newspaper Setit, according to One Day Seyoum, an online campaign for Eritrean prisoners of conscience run by his niece, Vanessa Tsehaye.
Seyoum wrote critically of the Eritrean regime and the country’s challenges after independence. Local journalists said they suspected authorities arrested Seyoum for an interview he gave Setit in which he said the government was stifling press freedom.
Authorities initially detained the journalists at a police station in the capital, Asmara, where they began a hunger strike on March 31, 2002, and smuggled a message out of jail demanding due process. The government responded by transferring them to secret locations without bringing them before a court or publicly registering charges. Several people familiar with the situation told CPJ that the journalists were confined at the northeastern Eiraeiro prison camp or Adi Abeito military prison near Asmara.
In 2010, a purported former Eritrean prison guard, Eyob Bahta Habtemariam, told the international press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders that Seyoum was one of at least four journalists being held in Eiraeiro prison. In 2016, Voice of America cited an exiled former prison guard as saying that Seyoum’s hands were bound 24 hours a day.
Over the years, Eritrean officials have offered vague and inconsistent explanations for the arrests — accusing journalists of involvement in anti-state conspiracies in connection with foreign intelligence, skirting military service, and violating press regulations. Officials, at times, even denied that the journalists existed.
Meanwhile, shreds of often unverifiable, second- or third-hand information smuggled out by people fleeing into exile suggested that seven of the journalists arrested in 2001 have died in custody. CPJ confirmed in 2007 that one of the journalists, Fesshaye “Joshua” Yohannes, died in secret detention.
In a 2016 interview about the journalists and politicians arrested in 2001, Eritrean Foreign Affairs Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed said "all of them are alive" and "in good hands" and would face trial "when the government decides” since some were "political prisoners."
In 2018, Paulos Netabay, director of the state-owned Eritrean News Agency, told CPJ that the journalists’ arrest in 2001 was connected to “acts of subversion and treason by some former politicians” and that the cases had been “submitted and decided by the National Assembly.”
In a May 2024 report, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, expressed concern about prolonged, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances and said that the Eritreans arrested in 2001 were the “longest-detained journalists in the world,” imprisoned for almost 23 years without charges or trial.
In a 2023 campaign by the Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, relatives of Seyoum and three other journalists called for information about the detained, who were believed to be held in inhumane conditions, without trial.
In a 2023 video published on X by One Day Seyoum, the journalist’s daughter Beilula said that the family had not received information about Seyoum’s whereabouts and wellbeing since his arrest.
As of late 2024, CPJ had yet to receive any replies to emails requesting comment from information minister Yemane Ghebremeskel, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Justice.