Eritrea, Twenty-Five Years of Silence: Gianluca Costantini Joins a Press Freedom Event in Bologna

On Saturday, September 19, 2026, at 5 p.m., Bologna’s Biblioteca Salaborsa will host a public event commemorating the journalists and political figures arrested in Eritrea in 2001, drawing attention to arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, and the struggle for freedom of expression.

On September 18, 2001, while international attention was still focused on the September 11 attacks in the United States, the Eritrean government shut down all the country’s privately owned newspapers. During the same period, eleven political figures who had called for democratic reforms were arrested. In the following months, the crackdown extended to journalists and publishers working for the independent press, many of whom disappeared into the country’s prisons without ever being brought to trial. Twenty-five years later, the fate of numerous people arrested during that period remains unknown, and Eritrea continues to have no independent press.

To commemorate this anniversary and draw renewed attention to those still detained, a public event entitled “Political Figures and Journalists: Victims in Eritrea and Around the World, and Press Freedom” will take place on Saturday, September 19, 2026, at 5 p.m., at Biblioteca Salaborsa in Piazza Nettuno, Bologna.

Organized as part of the campaign “Together for Truth, Justice and Freedom,” the event will bring together activists, journalists, civil society representatives, and relatives of victims of repression. Gianluca Costantini, an artist and cartoonist whose work has long focused on human rights and freedom of expression, will be among the speakers.

The event revisits a chapter that profoundly shaped Eritrea’s contemporary history. In May 2001, fifteen senior figures from the ruling party, known as the G15, publicly called for the implementation of the Constitution, political reforms, elections, and respect for the rule of law. Eleven of them were arrested in September of that year. The Eritrean authorities accused them of activities threatening state security, but no public trials followed, and their families were never provided with verifiable information about their conditions.

Political repression and the destruction of the independent press were two aspects of the same process. Private newspapers had provided space for demands for reform and public debate; their closure deprived the population of sources of information independent of the government. Since then, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) , an entire generation of Eritreans has grown up knowing only state-controlled media.

To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary, CPJ has decided to honor a group of sixteen Eritrean journalists, known as the Eritrea 16, with its 2026 International Press Freedom Award. The group includes Dawit Isaak, Amanuel Asrat, and Seyoum Tsehaye.

The journalists who remain in detention have never been formally charged or tried and continue to be denied access to their families and lawyers. CPJ emphasizes that insufficient independent information is available to establish their health conditions or, in some cases, even whether they are still alive. The international recognition brings their names back into public view, but it does not resolve the uncertainty their families have endured for decades.

The journalists’ situation forms part of a broader pattern of human rights violations. Human Rights Watch  documents restrictions on freedom of expression, association, and religion in Eritrea, alongside arbitrary detention and a national service system that can continue indefinitely and involves forced labor and punishment. The absence of independent judicial institutions and civil society organizations able to operate freely makes it particularly difficult to obtain information about detainees and establish accountability for abuses.

The Bologna event will bring together different experiences and perspectives. Scheduled speakers include Abraham Tesfai, an Eritrean activist; Siid Negash, a city councillor; Danait Dawit Isaak, the daughter of a prisoner; Paolo Lambruschi, a journalist; Ilaria Salis, a Member of the European Parliament; Iustina Mocanu, representing Amnesty International Emilia-Romagna; and Andrea Sestante, associated with the world of graphic novels. Representatives of the Belarusian community and ANED, the Italian National Association of Former Deportees to Nazi Concentration Camps, will also participate.

Gianluca Costantini’s presence introduces drawing and comics into this conversation: visual languages through which his work has explored the stories of persecuted individuals, imprisoned journalists, and human rights defenders for many years.

The participation of detainees’ relatives gives the event a dimension that extends beyond historical reconstruction. When someone is arrested and held in isolation for decades, without any information about their place of detention, health, or even their fate, the deprivation of rights also affects those who continue to wait for them. Speaking publicly about these cases means resisting the disappearance of their names from collective memory and keeping alive the demand for verifiable information.

The organizers are calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all those arbitrarily detained, full disclosure of information about the fate of the G15 members and disappeared journalists, an end to enforced disappearances and torture, the abolition of indefinite national service, and the restoration of freedom of the press, expression, association, and religion. They are also calling for the implementation of Eritrea’s Constitution and respect for the rule of law.

The Bologna gathering seeks to transform an anniversary into an opportunity for knowledge and testimony, connecting the Eritrean experience to a question that concerns many other countries: what happens to a society when those who report, criticize, or demand reform are arrested and erased from public life?

Remembering the disappeared journalists and political figures means continuing to ask that question, without allowing the passage of time to be mistaken for an answer.

Event information

Political Figures and Journalists: Victims in Eritrea and Around the World, and Press Freedom
Saturday, September 19, 2026, at 5 p.m.
Biblioteca Salaborsa, Piazza Nettuno, Bologna, Italy.

Source: https://www.channeldraw.org/