hotel employees expelled for 'immorality'

October 8, 2004: According to AFP, three Western employees working at a luxury hotel in Asmara were expelled from Eritrea last week over "a question of immorality," Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu Ahmed said Friday.

The three employees were expelled and left the country last week because "they exercised immoral activities, which invade our tradition and culture," Ahmed told AFP by telephone in Asmara.

"There is no issue, these people are still employed by us, just elsewhere in the business," Jennie Eaves, spokeswoman for the Intercontinental hotel chain, told AFP from London.

An unnamed source close to the three employees said "one of them at least was homosexual and did not try to hide it."

A diplomat in Asmara, who asked not to be named, said: "It is the first time such a reason is put forward, homosexuality is not forbidden by the law, but it is not accepted by tradition."