Date=6/27/98
Type=Correspondent Report
Number=2-234655
Title=Ethiopia / Eritrea refugees (l only)
Byline=Scott Stearns
Dateline=Shogolle, Ethiopia

Intro: Eritrea and Ethiopia are expelling each other's citizens as the stand-off in their border war continues. VOA's scott Stearns met some Ethiopians who have just been forced to leave the Eritrean port of Asab.

Text: Businesswoman Tshineshe Abera lived in Asab for 20 years. Starting with a small grocery store, she opened a bar, and eventually built a three-bedroom house. Now she has been forced to leave all that behind, driven from Eritrea because of the border war with Ethiopia.

Ms. Tshineshe says Eritrean soldiers and policemen came to her house last week and said she and her four children had to leave for Ethiopia because their government is at war with Eritrea.

Sitting on a hill of wet grass, Ms. Tshineshe braids the hair of her nine-year-old daughter, Zewde. They are among more than 70 people living in abandoned military barracks here in the Shogolle district outside the Ethiopian capital.

In all, Ethiopia says more than four-thousand people have been deported from Eritrea. Fewer than one-thousand Eritreans have been expelled from Ethiopia. Another one-thousand are in detention, mostly young men with military training.

The two countries are fighting over their border, with heavy artillery and thousands of troops. A two-week lull was broken Wednesday with early morning shelling, but it has generally been quiet following a ceasefire in the air war.

When fighting began last month, Ethiopian accountant Yusuf Alli says Eritrean police in Asab began harassing Ethiopians. He says he was beaten and jailed for two days before being driven to the border where Eritreans took his identity card, his college diplomas, and more than one-thousand dollars cash.

"After the war, the Eritreans, they don't like the Ethiopians. They said to me, go out. It's not your country. Your country is there. Please, please go out. They beat me in prison. "

The war has begun to have an economic impact on both countries.

Ethiopian imports now come through Djibouti instead of the Eritrean ports of Masawa and Asab. That has led to a drop in port business. Ethiopian dock worker Alebacho Guksa lost his job, then the Eritreans said he had to leave.

Mr. Alebacho says when there was no work, the Eritreans said the Ethiopians had to go home. He says they went to the border where they were turned back by soldiers who tore up their identity cards. Mr. Alebacho crossed the border farther south on a footpath where there is no checkpoint.

There are still hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans living across the rocky border. Both governments say their citizens are being seriously mistreated.

International mediators have so far failed to resolve the conflict despite repeated efforts by US and Rwandan diplomats, officials of the Organization of African Unity, and a private visit Friday by Congolese President Laurent Kabila, (signed)

Neb/sks/jwh 27-jun-98 9:26 am edt (1326 utc) Source: voice of america