THROUGH RADIO, BUSINESSES, AND EVEN PRISON, CHRISTIANITY CONTINUES TO SPREAD IN “THE NORTH KOREA OF AFRICA”
Eritrean underground Christians have a new daily radio broadcast. They also operate an impressive program for helping Christian ex-prisoners start businesses. Eritreans imprisoned for their faith are winning converts by sharing the aid they receive with their non-Christian fellow prisoners. Even among members of the government-sanctioned Orthodox Church, state security officers grumble that as many as 80% may actually be connected to Eritrean underground church congregations.
It is hardly what notorious Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki must have had in mind when he ordered the closure of all non-Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran churches in the country which is often called “The North Korea of Africa” because of its fierce persecution of Christians—and because of Afwerki’s public admiration for North Korea’s model of leader-worship.
“Not many Christians around the world have even heard of the small country of Eritrea, but in fact Christians could learn a lot by studying the methods of the Eritrean underground church,” says Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr. Hyun Sook Foley. Her organization has partnered with Eritrean underground Christians for almost twenty years, supporting their funding requests and traveling to nearby countries each year to provide persecution-related training to church leaders. Representative Foley says that the growth of the Eritrean underground church illustrates the truth of the saying attributed to the early Chrisitan leader Tertullian, who wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
“Christians wrongly fear persecution, worrying that they will be unable to live their Christian lives or see the gospel spread,” says Representative Foley. “The Eritrean government has been one of the fiercest persecutors of Christians worldwide, for twenty-five years. Christians from banned churches have been arrested and imprisoned with open-ended sentences, without being formally charged or tried. Most of the leaders of the evangelical churches have spent more than two decades in ‘shipping container prisons’ and are still there to this day. But no matter how hard the government cracks down, the Eritrean church continues to thrive.”
VOM Korea Representative Dr. Hyun Sook Foley talks to an underground Eritrean believer who spent time in prison.
Representative Foley says that several new initiatives Voice of the Martyrs Korea is helping to fund are strengthening Eritrea’s underground Christian community.
“Eritrea is often called ‘the fastest-emptying country’ because so many of its citizens escape,” says Representative Foley. She says the Christians who escape are not forgetting their homeland but are instead undertaking projects like a new daily radio broadcast to provide the Christians remaining in Eritrea with news, discipleship training, and a biblical understanding of the persecution they are experiencing and how to respond to it. Another initiative provides funds to Christian ex-prisoners who are often unable to get jobs after their release because employers and even their family members fear the government will punish them for aiding known Christians. The program also aids family members of prisoners and Christian martyrs in starting businesses. “It only takes small funds to help them start a taxi business or a laundry service or a sewing shop, but it gives them the means of supporting themselves and their family,” says Representative Foley.
VOM Korea CEO Pastor Eric Foley talks to an underground Eritrean believer who spent time in prison.
But according to Representative Foley, the most impressive growth of the Eritrean church has been inside the prisons themselves.
“We provide monthly support to families of martyrs and prisoners, and they use that support to send food and other needed items to their loved ones in prison,” says Representative Foley. “But their loved ones share everything they receive with non-Christian prisoners. Not only does this bring the other prisoners to Christ, but we even receive stories of the guards who see the Christians sharing, and they are so moved by this that they decide to follow Christ also.”
Representative Foley says that another large group of new converts comes from the state-approved churches themselves. “An Eritrean state security agent told Orthodox priests, ‘Do you know 80% of your members have a connection to the evangelical/Pentecostal churches?’” says Representative Foley.
Still, despite the spread of the underground church in Eritrea, Representative Foley emphasizes that conditions have not become easier for Christians in the country.
Shipping containers in a desert in Eritrea. Christian leaders have been imprisoned in such containers for more than two decades.
“Families of Christian prisoners are still not allowed to visit them or officially permitted to bring food or other supplies to them—all that has to happen with the cooperation of prison guards,” says Representative Foley. “If a prisoner becomes sick, they are not given any medical care, and their families are not notified.”
Representative Foley says that underground church gatherings continue to be raided, and even though some Christians have been released from prison, more than 600 continue to be held, in some of the harshest known conditions for prisoners worldwide. “Often when Christian prisoners are released, it is only because they are so sick that prison officials don’t want to have to care for them, and they don’t want the bad publicity of a Christian dying in prison. So they release them, but this doesn’t indicate any change in policy or improvement of the situation for Christians.”
Representative Foley says Voice of the Martyrs Korea is continuing its campaign of encouraging Christians around the world to write Christians in prison for their faith in Eritrea. She says that currently five Eritrean Christians are in prisons where letters can reach them. The prisoners all entered prison between 2004 and 2007. The names and addresses of these prisoners, as well as what to write and how to send the letters, can be found at https://vomkorea.com/en/prisoner-profiles.
“We should study and learn from Eritrean Christians because the church is doing amazingly well even in the midst of severe persecution,” says Representative Foley. “But we should also write to and pray regularly for the Eritrean Christian leaders who are paying the price for their faith in Eritrean prisons and shipping containers.”