Nairobi--Eritrea on Tuesday dismissed a UN investigation detailing systematic human rights abuses as "outrageous claims" aimed at destabilising the isolationist Red Sea state.
The UN commission of inquiry on the human rights situation in Eritrea described horrific torture, including electric shock, near drowning, sexual abuse and forcing people to stare at the burning sun for hours.
Its nearly 500-page report details how the country, under Isaias Afwerki's iron-fisted regime for the past 22 years, has created a repressive system in which people are routinely arrested at whim, detained, tortured, killed or go missing.
But Eritrea's foreign ministry -- which denied UN investigators access to the country -- said they were "wild accusations" and called the report "attacks aimed at undermining our sovereignty."
The dictatorship languishes at the bottom of world freedom indices and is one of the largest contributors to the exodus of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
It is a crisis Eritrea has in the past blamed on a CIA conspiracy and human rights activists.
AFP
