|TOP|An urgent appeal has been launched by Release International to help Christians in Eritrea who are currently being rounded up and imprisoned for their faith.

According to Release International, some Eritrean Christians have been locked up in metal shipping containers in scorching desert temperatures and without any sanitation.

Release International said that around 1800 Christians have been locked up in Eritrea because the country’s military regime mistakenly associates Evangelical Christianity with political dissent.

A fact-finding team was sent by Release International to interview Christians who had fled the small African country across the border to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

The team found that Evangelical Christians in Eritrea have been sentenced to hard labour or held underground in total darkness for days, some being tortured, with others possibly being beaten.

A crackdown by the military government has seen Evangelical churches across the country closed and its members scattered into secret cell groups. Meanwhile, known Christians have been put under close surveillance.

|AD|According to Release International, many of the Evangelical Christians in Eritrea fled across the border after being ordered to sign a letter recanting their faith. The threat of refusal to sign the letter would mean indefinite detention.

Some refugees fear reprisals may be taken out against their wives and children who they were forced to leave behind.

Release International reported, however, that the refugees continue to share their faith in the crowded refugee camp, with more than half of the members of one church visited by Release International becoming Christians in the camp as a result of the witness of these refugees.

Release International is already assembling its aid response, including clothes, blankets, medicines and Bible for believers in the refugee camp. The charity is also helping to equip a temporary camp church.

A Release International spokesman said: “Individuals and families are in great need. We are all one body in Christ and to feel such suffering compels us to act. Just £50 will provide blankets for ten Christians who have been driven from their country. £20 will give them each a Bible. We must stand together.”

It is estimated that around 1,800 Christians have been locked up in Eritrea out a population of just 4 million. The single party state has clamped down on any form of dissent, with the private media already shut down.