Blinken appeases Africa’s most totalitarian state

Eritrea is, alongside North Korea, the world’s most totalitarian state. President Isaias Afwerki brokers no dissent. Fearing popular will, he allows no election but rather subjects his population to indefinite conscription to make them slaves of the state. The country hosts the continent’s worst gulags. Its transnational repression extends to the United States. Here, Eritrean diplomats extort a tax on emigres by holding relatives in Eritrea hostage under threat of torture and imprisonment. In all but formal designation, Eritrea is a state sponsor of terrorism, sowing instability across the region.

For decades, there...