My Sundays begin at dawn, not with reading newspapers, but with listening to one of my favorite National Public Radio (NPR) programs, This American Life. I enjoy listening because it brings stories that one wouldn’t hear anywhere in the mainstream media and one cannot find anything better than this program if one wants to stay as far away from anything Eritrean; this definitely would be the last place where one would hear of Eritrean stories. So I thought. What I heard this morning, however, blew me away; it was tigrinya interspersed with English as the translator was trying to keep up with the person who was speaking on the other end of the line. It took few seconds to realize that I was not losing it and that there was no running away from Eritrea – even in the last refuge where I hear stories that nurture my American side, my sanctuary was no more – there is no escaping Eritrea, Eritreanness, Eritreans because our dire plight and our collective tragic stories are being disseminated like a plague the world over. Eritrea does not allow any room for anyone to unbind. Normally, this one hour radio show is segmented into four episodes and each episode carries independent mini-story but each is linked with the rest of the segments through themes. This time however the entire hour was dedicated to this harrowing human tragedy as it unfolded in the Sinai desert in which 29 Eritrean hostages were being tortured and the listener is hooked for the duration of the hour to listen to this unbelievable tragedy right to one’s ear drums, especially, when the ear piece is plugged right into one’s ear. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/502/this-call-may-be-recorded-to-save-your-life
The entire Sunday I am left feeling like a zombie. I try to stick to my routines, but I just cannot bring myself into doing anything else, not even that homemade and mindless café-latte making, I just couldn’t bring myself to make; it had to wait until I finish listening to this. There is no distractions from any of my family members until around 9am, at which point my son, invariably, wakes up and asks how my morning was with a quick follow up that comes in quadruple successive and predictable variations: “can I watch Netflix? Can I do the Wii? Can I do X-Box? Can I play on your laptop? And, I am privy to remind him in how I wish he would say something like, “can I do my reading daddy?” He gives me that sly smile of his as he walks toward the living room and says, “That comes after, daddy.” And so I am left alone in my study room to deal with the disturbing story I heard on the radio this morning. This is nothing like when one goes to Eritrean websites, one is prepared, and the mindset is there to handle any bad news with the psychological defensive mechanism to absorb it. But, this one was coming at me from an unlikely source that is what makes this story quite unnerving.
My mind races back and forth – the things I read in the past come galloping to the fore, in no particular order, mind you; thusly, an impetus to write forges forward, the only refuge I know when such uniquely Eritrean maladies strike and my center is about to refuse to hold, ah, but Yeats comes to the rescue: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” Indeed, “mere anarchy” would be “loosed upon” my world if my personal gravitas, my inward is destabilized and does not comport with my emotional wellbeing, “things” indeed will “fall apart” as they seem to have done exactly that and much, much-more, to the only woman among the 29 individual Eritreans held hostage in the deserts of Sinai. Some died and some physically, emotionally, and psychologically scarred, perhaps, for life, and Semhar seems to have gotten all conceivable scars and brunt put together – she lost her mental faculties was the last piece I heard on that radio; but hoping against hope, I just hope that she will ostensibly regain it. But how does one even regain one’s mental faculties in places like Israel where refugees are treated as ‘untouchables’ of India with no health care facilities being available to them?
So, the musings and recollections continue and I try to put some semblance of order in my recollection, but they refuse, they just forge and surge forward and I comply. But there must be a way of relating all these recollections, there has to be order to this madness, a pattern, a metapattern, a theme. Something. So, I begin to muse, recollect, and relate between what I had read, as it were, to find a theme, much as my favorite radio program tries to do week-in-week-out. Something must give, and it ain’t going to be at the expense my sanity, that much I knew. What begins to emerge after contemplating what I have read in the entire summer and beyond is now finding a culminating point at the center of which rests what was supposed to bethe “city on the hill,” the beacon of hope that was supposed to serve as paradigm par excellence in the Horn of Africa.
What has unleashed instead is this unimaginably atrocious two decades that defies any imagination. Edgar Allen Poe’s Prince Prospero, at least, attempts to salvage a thousand of his subjects in the midst of a plague that has ravished the land. In desperate attempt to defy death the Prince comes up with what he thought was an ingenuous way of deflecting the plague. Edgar Allan Poe’s story grapples with the notion of how a prince struggles to slow down a plague that is ravishing his country, of which the prince is the ruler. Given the publication date of the story (1842), having no modern medical technology at his disposal, after losing half of the population, the Prince decides to save about a thousand people he deems savable subjects, by inviting them to his mansion where no plague can possibly enter. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” addresses the furtiveness of life as humans will fight for dear life by devising meticulous mechanisms to fight a plague, before it holds its sway over their existence and renders them extinct. What of Eritrean plague you say? What of our Prince of Darkness you wonder?
Indeed, what of our prince of darkness, what does he do? He makes the country so unbearable to inhabit, he hallows out the nation of its youths to only make them become preys of human predators that no one knew existed. Prince Prospero, however foolish his attempts, tries as he might to keep death at arm’s length, whereas our Prince of Darkness makes venues available for the predators to harvest organs of young Eritrean men and women to the highest bidder; to a point now in Asmara there is an area with state of the art villas known as enda kulit. The public, apparently, knows some of these owners of these villas bought these properties from illegally harvested kidneys. This is the ultimate and the height of betrayal that no one can match.
It is to these monumental obstacles that Eritreans in the opposition attempt to make sense out of. Some resort to verses in the bible, to the divine intervention, as it were, to God, to “good and evil” as they try to find some comfort and solace in it as Aklilu Zerai attempts to do in his last piece. The challenge to the Eritreans’ God is that it stays static; it is not as dynamic as that of American God. The American God begins (minus Native Indians one) with the arrival of the Puritans. The Puritans had concrete idea of God, a God that they dragged, metaphorically speaking, with them across the Atlantic Ocean from the Calvinists mold, where God is in charge of everything on earth and beyond. The inherently bad or evil mankind deserves God’s wrath because there is natural disposition toward depravity of man.Mankind’s life is predestined, hence for the doctrine of grace, where God’s forgiveness is bestowed upon humanity. Not necessarily to all humanity, for God chooses whom to rein His grace or wrath upon.
The Enlightenments ups the ante in reverse direction – i.e., they diffuse the concept of God quite a bit from that of the Puritans. Here, these enlightened Americans begin to believe and shift the focus to the world of here and now and how to solve its practical problems, therefore, soften the image of God as the benevolent one, as it were, a rational God who is commensurate with scientific laws.Therefore, the Enlightenment era brings forth concepts of shared humanity, progress oriented world view, education/self-improvement, and the advance of print technology which helps in the perpetuation and dissemination of such beliefs. The evolving of God does not end there.
Enter a new era of Transcendentalism, a world of Waldo Emerson’s Natural Man and Natural God. The seamless evolution of God seems to down-spiral (depending on one’s perspective). Transcendentalist movement in the U.S. as ushered by Emerson and Romantic Movement in Britain, nudge the idea of God from the two concepts mentioned above to one that is a personal God – God in tune with Divinity and Nature. Thusly, the revelation of God comes to mankind through Nature and that mankind must make his own mind up about God. In other words, mankind should be left alone to have personal relations with his own God and arrive at his own understanding of what God is.The following tidbits from Emerson’s “Nature” summarize the essence of his thought and about God/Nature:
The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? […] [W]hy should we grope among the dry bones of the past? […] There are new lands, new men, [and] new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship […] [N]ature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us inquire, to what end it nature? […] Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf (Emerson, 1106-7).
It is in the above spirit and the lens through which one should attempt to see new ideas, ideas that are seemingly intractable today will be spot on in the future when viewed from proceeding generations who will live to see our era as an era of tumult but an era no less of great deal of soul searching, deeply probing to find solutions to the trouble the nation was placed in by its misguided leaders who placed it in great peril. Of course, the likes of Emerson who resigned from ministry to philosophize as he greatly influenced many more Americans to think –agree or disagree- nevertheless to think of the future of their new nation that must chart a future that is uniquely their own, and indeed they have.
Seen in such spirit one can easily see what some other Eritreans who decide to write are doing. For example, other writer want to find some semblance of rationality and reason in quantitative and qualitative world as Sal tried to do recently. Quantifying emotions, trepidations, and human spirit is hard to do, but trying nevertheless Sal did. Similarly, Tewelde Estifanos attempts to lift the spirit of Eritreans can-do-attitude as he delves to the positive territories of Eritreanity he thought, but one tangential introductory note changes the dynamic of the conversation that ensued, which mangled his otherwise lucid message beyond recognition. The search for answers to Eritrean maladies must continue unabated.
To find coherent meaning to the plight that’s plaguing Eritrea’s sociopolitical landscape vis-a-vis “politico-psychology,” Amanuel Hidrat resourcefully patches myriad concepts together. I would be remiss if did not include Anderson’s notion of “the political power of nationalism vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence. In other words, unlike most other isms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers: No Hobbeses, Tocquevilles, Marxes, or Webers. This emptiness easily gives rise, among cosmopolitan and polylingual intellectuals, to a certain condescension” (Introduction). Anderson does not stop there; he quotes others who are known for their professed understanding of nationalism, by extension one can suppose its adherents, such as Tom Nairn who state the following:
“Nationalism” is the pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as “neurosis” in the individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world (the equivalent of infantilism for societies) and largely incurable” (The Break-up of Britain, p. 359).
This is an interesting challenge to those who have strong attachment to the notion of nationalism. A paradigm shift is being demanded take place here, one that would stomp-out nationalism from its ideological baggage where it does not belong to one akin of “kinship and religion” as opposed to where it now belongs: “liberalism or fascism” (Introduction). Irrespective of where nationalism belongs, issues of identity will come barreling to see to it they be addressed. And that’s where Yosief Gebrehiwot’s (YG”s) grapples seem to center in.
At the core of what makes us humans lies our identity and YG attempts to dig ever deeper into what lies beneath the names we name our kids as it can be gathered from his latest article. Personal narratives are not absolved from scrutiny as Gabriel G. elucidates using tea-pot as the proverbial story inducer. Stories do not end there. There is Zekere Lebona’s, amidst the desert disaster stories, in light of harrowing stories told in the NPR piece of this morning (well now it is yesterday morning), Zekere found an angle in our national anthem to lambast at the core of what ails us. Agree or disagree these story weavers are trying to make sense of what seems irreconcilably difficult world Eritreans inhabit today. It is all for one Imagined Community that Benedict Anderson who in the introduction states, “the end of the era of nationalism, so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight. Indeed, nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.”Anderson delves into the history and cultural artifacts that spawned and spurned “nationalism and nation-ness.” He stipulates that “to understand them [nationalism and nation-ness] we need to consider carefully how they have come into historical being, in what ways their meanings have changed over time, and why, today, they command such profound emotional legitimacy…[and] have aroused such deep attachments” (Introduction). A host of events amalgamate to create a nation, some of which that Anderson mentions are “self-consciousness, social terrains merge and be merged, political and ideological constellations” as eyed through historical lenses and they “arouse deep attachments” as eyed through “cultural artifacts”. It is at this juncture of culture and history where Awate and Asmarino approach to activism show sharp contrasts.
For an observer looking in, it would not be that difficult to see the warring factions that exist between two Eritrean virtual sites. The ideological struggle can be narrowed to two trajectories between awate.com and asmarino.com: the former is holding the status quo ante that had fed the Eritrean conscience since the inception of when Eritreans chose the struggle for Eritrea’s independence. The latter seems to bask into this revisionist notion of history of remaking, reassessing, thusly reshaping a new mindset that wants to see Eritrea’s history through a new lens. Interestingly, at the heart of both sites lie clear purposes: to contribute the end to the suffering of so many innocent Eritreans by the regime in Asmara. Now, philosophical or ideological debates as we know never end and Tsigereda and Amanuel Hidrat and some others have been advocating that all opposition camps retool and repurpose their energy into one and only one: to rid the brute regime in Asmara, thusly, alleviate the suffering of Eritreans in Eritrea. Using all arms of social sciences to disarm the current regime is one thing, but amidst existential threats that exist back home to attempt to write revisionist history as Girmay Yebio does, a shoddy one at that, is totally another. To be fair to the man herein follow some the gist of the criticism that one can level at Yebio’s piece.
Girmay Yebio’s “Part III – Independent Eritrea, a crumbling nation and a tragedy:” ‘The Architects of Destruction’” as posted in Asmarino.com on Monday, 24 June 2013 attempts to offer a nuanced sociopolitical dynamics that existed among colonial powers of Italy and England in the twentieth century Eritrea and the national identity issues that were brewing within Eritrea as it relates to Ethiopia. More specifically, the article seeks to unravel the conflation of identities, including the associations between Ethiopian national identity and that of Eritrea, essentially, being purely of Ethiopian heritage. In his effort to de-couple these linkages, Yebio argues that the meanings of ethnic identity and nationhood in the Horn as not only malleable but also contingent upon local and spatial circumstances. Through an examination of two historical periods – the 40s and the 50s (he considers the historical lynchpin) on the one hand and the 60s and 70s (he argues was the ghedli concocted propaganda history), on the other – Yebio brings as illustration as he attempts to show how local conditions informed conflicts about the meanings of nationhood in the region. The Italian and British conquest of Eritrea transformed both the geopolitical and cultural boundaries between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Yebio believes that the Union Party of Eritrea had already sealed the deal in its desire to unite with Ethiopia, but that foreign influence fanned the nationalistic flames into the Eritrean Muslims such that of Abdulkadir Kebire and Ibrahim Sultan by stoking religious sentiments that were akin to becoming swallowed by a Christian nation of Ethiopia. Therefore, such sentiments, Yebio believes did not only derail the terms for the incorporation of Eritrea into Ethiopia’s fold, but also recast Eritrean and Ethiopian conceptions of the relationship as a case of colonialism of Ethiopia on Eritrean nation.
Thus, whereas mid-twentieth-century Eritrea could have developed a relatively inclusive conception of national identity based on national heritage with its genealogical trajectories traceable to Ethiopia, but the issue was made to be one of national sovereignty that excluded Ethiopia from the menu; these competing visions of national sovereignty by Eritreans cast ominous aspersion on Eritreans ever since., according to Yebio, bringing forth a ghedli generation that Eritrean public never had a say in. Yebio’s article prompts several questions that merit answering. The questions are:
What conceivable positive outcome could revisionist history such as his serve at this junction of Eritrea’s history? Suppose all in the opposition camp, including those inside Eritrea now accept the premise as advanced by Yebio, that we all trace, in some shape or form, our historical heritage to Ethiopia, therefore, what? How do these kinds of arguments serve any useful purpose in alleviating the present despair and pain of Eritreans within Eritrea’s proper and those from without? Can anyone think of any positive contributions these historical and sociopolitical issues serve? Why the sense of urgency for such divulgence of our history – positive or negative – now? These questions are being raised not necessarily in order to proffer answers to them, but merely for us to collectively address, contemplate, introspect, and eventually find a happy medium from which to operate collaboratively in the struggle, and out of which we would ostensibly find a modicum of reconciling points to operate from.
All efforts that were advanced – be it – by Haile Selassie or Mengistu’s Dergue, to place Eritreans and Eritrea into the Ethiopian tent were met with adamant refusal by Eritreans from all walks of life irrespective of its right-headedness or wrong-headedness. Therefore, this ex post facto and retrospective ideas that dwell on what could’ve been, what might’ve been, or what it should’ve been and had to have been is too little too late. What must be done now with the existing existential threat which would invariably lead to what will need to be done, at which point Eritreans can discuss and have dialogue about the future and sociopolitical project of Eritrea?
First, thanks to all of you: my readers, friends and relatives for your continual support and encouragement. Once again, I am delighted to announce the release of my latest book Miriam Was Here.
Two weeks ago, I announced the news of the planned launch and I am truly touched by your supportive messages. Thank you for your continual support, and I will always strive to reflect your voice in everything I do.
Three years ago, you welcomed and embraced my first novel, Of Kings and Bandits, which covered the period from 1961 to 1974. At the time, I made a promise to follow it up with another book that will cover the period from 1974 to 1991. I also had plans to write a third book that would cover the period from 1991 to 2010.
As fate would have it, my second book never went past the draft stage; the overwhelming news of the suffering of the youth became so acute, causing me so much grief and emotional torment. Since I wrote my first article, This Too Shall Pass: Time For Real Outrage, I became too involved in it and began to think of the issue in a much deeper and systematic way. Based on almost two decades of writing and activism, I came to realize that online articles have a short life-span and are not conducive to comprehensively address important issues. The myriad of dark forces compounding the difficulties our youth are facing deserves a serious handling; and it is out of this recognition that Miriam Was Here was born. I decided to write a book about it; my planned second book (1991-2010) was shelved for good. And I embarked on Miriam Was Here. I started the book with a working title, My Name Is Sarah then I remembered Prophet Moses, and his wondering in Sinai and thus opted for naming the main character Miriam, after the older sister of Moses who, together with her mother, put baby Moses on a basket…the rest of biblical story is too common.
All of you who have followed my writings know that I am an activist before I am a writer or a journalist. Miriam Was Here was written to publicize the unprecedented suffering of our youth and tell their story. I am very pleased that reputable programs and media institutions have taken similar interest in the plight of our youth. Kudos to Ira Glass of NPR’s This American Life for giving an hour of his program to the suffering of our youth.
Miriam Was Here will give you the whole story and help you understand the root cause of the plight afflicting the youth.
It is with this understanding that I embarked on researching the root causes for the ordeal of Eritreans in general and the youth in particular. Simplifying the suffering of the youth to what happens in Sinai and other places does not do justice to the entire tragedy that Eritreans find themselves in. Therefore, I began to interview Eritreans who were enslaved between first round and the 24th round. I tasked others to help with verifications and questionnaires from Sudan, Egypt, Europe, Australia, and North America. I had plans to finish the book in November of last year, but then I had to interrupt my writing when I traveled for a lengthy period to Australia.
Strangely, Forto 2013 happened while I was in Australia, and again, that also changed my plans about the book and, for the last five months, I have been rewriting the story to fit the development. And here is what the book covers.
An anecdote worth mentioning: last year, someone was pestering me non-stop for not writing about Sinai. At the time it felt painful, I thought, “who is he to question my interest in the case when I am spending hours doing just that?” At that time, I was in the middle of interviewing people and writing certain parts of the book. I hesitated to tell him that I am writing a book about it, almost told him, but then I changed my mind because I didn’t want to announce something which was far from being finished… and I didn’t write small snippets to satisfy his curiosity. But his persistence proved to me how traumatized Eritreans were with the issue. It was a pressure that made me work longer hours to finish the book. Thank you my persistent friend.
From Forto 1991 To Forto 2013
Forto Baldesera has always been the symbol of power; that is where the Italian might was stationed. In 1991, the power of the Eritrean liberation forces was asserted on that same fortress. And after twenty-two years of PFDJ rule, the first daring attempt to challenge the regime was carried out in that place.
Miriam Was Here covers the story of Eritrea and Eritreans from Forto 1991 to Forto 2013.
Miriam Was Here is composed of 28 chapters and 330 pages. Crammed between its cover is the story of Zerom (representing the liberators who were betrayed); his daughter Miriam (representing those who were born after independence and representing the segment of our population that is falling prey to kidnapping, hostage situation, and human organ suffering); Senay, a neighbor of Zerom who was born a short time before Zerom joined the rebellion in the mid-eighties (and who represents the victims of forced labor, conscription and lost hopes); Sara, still a post-independence child (representing the innocence of Eritreans and at the same time the resourcefulness and their survival extinct); Eva, an old American lady who befriends Zerom when he migrated to America, and the cultural shocks the simple country boy, Zerom, undergoes trying to adjust to American life, his brutally honest Eritrean character, his courage and his love of his country and people; and, Musa, an émigré ex-rebel who returns to Eritrea to settle down, but in disappointment he embarks on a second exile.
In short, I can confidently state that every Eritrean who loves his people and country will find a resemblance of himself in one of the characters.
The story of the last 22 years need volumes to document and, God is my witness, I have striven to do my part. Like always, I encourage anyone who has a story to tell, to write it down, and I have established Negaritmedia Publishing solely for this purpose. I promise Negaritmedia Publishing will lend you a hand and take you through the process of writing your book.
As for me, I hope you will find the book satisfactory—I know it will be emotionally heavy—and I wish to get your feedback on the comment section of miriamwashere.com.
How to order:
1. Order it at any of the following: miriamwashere.com * negaritmedia.com * salehjohar.com.
2. Amazon bookstore.
3. Amazon Kindle digital bookstore.
4. You can link to order the book through Miriam was Here facebook page.
5. In a few days, Miriam Was Here will be available at all major digital bookstores around the world.
Your Help Is Needed
As in anything else, in the book world, advertising is the key to reach as many readers as possible media. Negaritmedia is not a wealthy outfit and cannot afford press, television and radio advertising or doesn’t have the ability or resources to solicit free media exposure. This book tells the story of beleaguered Eritrea and I hope all those who are able to help with publicizng it, to do that.
1. A few days ago I met a friend who drives a taxi in the San Francisco area. He asked me to prepare postcards or business cards with places where the book can be ordered. This is what he told me, “many customers ask me where I am from; I tell them I am from Eritrea. But I can’t do much beyond that in a short time. If you give the cards I suggested, when anyone asks me where I am from, I will give them a card and tell them to order the book and learn about the ordeal of Eritreans.”
2. Everyone has a circle of friends, specially the youth who have thousands of acquaintances, business associates, school mates and friends. They can help publicize the book to a wider audience.
3. Since the cost of shipping costs outside the USA is expensive, this about $22 per book to anywhere in the world, $22 for Canada) I am hoping people will order in groups of a dozen books or so to bring the cost down to $4 per book. Much of my first book was distributed this way through the help of generous and kind friends and acquaintances. I will contact the usual supporters and friends to help; anyone else who wants to help distribute the book, please contact me.
Now it is time to take a little time off the lonely task of writing a book. I do not have to deal with my editor’s brutal critique and never-ending suggestions for change to the manuscript. If you haven’t guessed, Saleh Younis was the editor of Miriam Was Here. And however I try to thank him here, it would not be enough, it wouldn’t do justice to the efforts he put behind the work. Therefore, I will skip the “Thank you Saleh Younis” part; but I am glad I had him around.
With that, I came to the end of my launch message….
I hope you “enjoy” reading Miriam Was Here.
Thank you all
Opposition at a Cross Road: The Less Traveled Path of National Self Belief and the Bologna Summit 2013
If you study the stories of some of the most successful entrepreneurs on this globe you will find that the attribute that sets them apart from the rest of us is usually one central factor: Their mindset. It entails undeterred determination and above all, the belief that the path to success lies within oneself. Many of these successful entrepreneurs never enjoyed a good education, others had hit rock bottom in their lives, and a substantial number started their global businesses at a tiny bedroom desk. Unfavorable conditions overall.Yet despite these significant disadvantages they managed to develop a can-do attitude and a self belief in their own abilities that is above average. This turned them into high achievers against all odds.
The generation of the struggle for Eritrea’s independence will be able to relate to that. Self confidence and self belief were so widely and deeply entwined in us as a nation at the time that this psycho-political factor was decisive for winning a struggle in which the opponent had a clear upper hand economically, militarily and even politically.
The critical feature that is anchored in ‘self belief’ is an internalized faith in your own abilities to reach your higher goal regardless of external circumstances. Once this positive energy is set into motion, once it spreads through a person, a group, a mass of people …or through a nation…unbelievable inner strength and resources are unlocked turning hopeless and depressing situations into stories of triumph.
The Eritrean opposition is still searching for the key to unlock such greatly admired energy. So far, it was unable to win a really strong popular momentum for democratic change: the silent majority remains silent and the vast majority of people inside Eritrea have hardly any knowledge about the several opposition groups operating in exile. Yet this does not come to anyone’s surprise, we have never really put public opinion inside Eritrea into serious consideration when making political strategy. Have we agreed to start the process of regime change without them?
Across the board, and despite several very positive accomplishments, the opposition still lacks focus, efficiency, strategy, and vision;to sum it up it lacks direction – national direction. How does the opposition engage the people and central military inside Eritrea into the process of regime change and how does it inform the nation about the strategies it deploys? How does the opposition provide tangible support to those who are ready to challenge PFDJ from within Eritrea? How does it communicate principles and policies that safeguard a better tomorrow for the nation? How do we prepare for the transitional period, is there a widely accepted plan and is the plan inclusive? What role can Eritrea’s ratified national constitution play in unifying the opposition behind the building process of democracy? What kind of Eritrea do the various opposition groups seek to build after PFDJ? To this day, Eritrean opposition groups did not tap into national self belief as a possible path or basis towards unity and highly anticipated success. Instead, questions around Awassa-participation and ‘where do you stand in regards to Ethiopia? seem to enjoy a much greater significance and popularity in Eritrea’s mainstream opposition policy and a lot of awareness and inter-group loyalties are drawn along those lines. Where is the vibrancy and hope in this for Eritrea? Where is the vision for a better Eritrea? And above all: what swallowed our national self belief that was so characteristic for Eritreans?
Compared to Mengistu Hailemariam, the current dictator Isaias Afwerki is a toothless monster. He manages a power base that is overall just politically well organized and even that within a very narrow horizon.He has (up to this day) no significant financial capacities, no powerful army to watch his back, and a disastrous track record of providing even the basics to Eritrea’s citizens. So relatively speaking there is not much that strengthens the dictator’s statuesque, but the real problem is: there is not much that weakens it either. The opposition’s internal flaws and its inability to get the dictator where it hurts prolong the tyrant’s rein, and the opposition’s incapability to share a national vision with the masses extends that even further. These weaknesses reinforce a sense of insecurity among the majority of Eritreans; the unknown puts many into a state of indifference and stagnation, and people inside Eritrea may face the added challenge to accept help coming from an opposition operating across the southern border, as both personal scars and PFDJ propaganda sit deep. In the meanwhile, Eritrea’s opposition groups continue to struggle for clear national direction. But is not that absolutely vital to lead a nation? In particular a nation that is in a vulnerable state ?
This article is not about Ethiopia’s involvement, because weighing advantages against concerns is a matter of view point. What needs to be questioned however is our attitude towards our very own abilities and capacities as Eritreans to win against PFDJ. What needs to be questioned is why we have not developed our own resources. What needs to be examined is why the many signs of pro-democratic endeavors inside Eritrea have never received consolidated opposition support, and why no serious political alternative was ever built that put its faith and focus on Eritreans inside Eritrea so those residing abroad can take the role of the political, financial and logistical engine to the struggle.
And active member wrote on EYSC Facebook last week: “..we are not defending Ethiopia. What we are tired of is this unsubstantial fear mongering and baseless Ethiopia phobic. The fact of the matter is that we have not been able to get rid of the tyrant for 20 yrs and counting. We are tired of singing the same all songs. As a result, we are exploring foreign help to supplement our meager capacity to solve our national plight. If you call this nauseating then, let it be.”
But is that not exactly the fact that worries and confuses so many ? The fact that we were exploring foreign help for all this time instead of exploring self-help to solve our national plight? And that until this day Eritrea’s opposition members overall persist (although it is slowly shifting ) to continue this path with a perseverance that has made far too many even unreceptive, suspicious and hostile towards Eritrean groups, renowned individuals, and effortswhich focus on a fully autonomous national strategy. How is that to be understood?
The decision of Eritrean opposition groups to use Ethiopia as a platform is anybody’ s right, it may indeed have valid advantages, and who knows, maybe change will in fact come through those southern borders – no one has the final answer after all. What is however worrisome is that this very question of Ethiopian cooperation literally defines major parts of Eritrea’s struggle for democracy at the expense of building up our own self belief, our own capacities, our fully independent strategies within the opposition camp.
The Bologna Summit 2013
The ‘Eritrean solutions for Eritrean problems’ mantra is widely misunderstood in our opposition community. It is no empty rhetoric nor does it imply that some are more Eritrean or nationalists than others. As ‘African solutions for African problems’ or ‘Local solutions for local problems’ it is a self-empowering stand that simply strives for increased responsibility, national/local ownership, and leadership in dealing with Eritrea’s affairs without creating dependencies. It calls upon Eritreans to self confidently take full control of their situation and their destiny. Any request for foreign assistance should be submitted as equal partners and at our own terms.
We may never fully understand why it took so long to gather and organize around the belief that democratic change in Eritrea should and will come from inside.This should be a clear focus and priority by which our struggle, but above all, our path to democracy are strictly guided. From August 30 to September 1, 2013 Eritreans from all walks of life will meet in Bologna to visibly and vividly add a new popular alternative to the struggle and Eritrea’s opposition: The path of national self belief. Yes, we have been hopeless after our liberators turned into our prison guards, yes, we have been psychologically affected by all that unfolded in front of our eyes, yes, we may have little confidence in our own abilities, our motivation, and resources, we may feel impatient, frustrated or depressed…but deep down, as people and a nation, collectively, we have what it takes, we have the will power , the faith,the insight and understanding, the technical capacities, the connections, the finances, the human capital. We need to unlock these resources as a nation, we need to synchronize, strengthen, and draw strategies. And at the center of all this vibrancy should be the visible support to those who fight for freedom and justice inside Eritrea regardless from where you chose to build those links. It is about time , that we believe and reaffirm that these comrades exist, that they are experienced, ready and capable, that thousands more will follow, and above all, that they know best to lead the way in toppling the brutal PFDJ regime once and for all, while they receive our full backing in a coordinated manner and with widespread support. Who knows how far the inspiring events of Forto would have been able to proceed, if we had gathered around the concept of national self belief years ago…
Any doubts? Well, a democratic system is built on social, economic, and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination by a country’s citizens. And many Eritreans believe that the best way to integrate and uphold ‘political self-determination’ is by taking charge of our own affairs and work fully independently. But it also means that we embrace our differences in opinion by building strong and effective multiple entities across the political spectrum and around our different views – in forms of organizations, groups, institutions, and initiatives. The most efficient and popular parties (and hopefully the most democratic) will in the end be in a position to serve the people as government when the time is ripe. This needs to be an open and inclusive effort based on cooperation of groups across the opposition spectrum not on old-style unity.
Those who believe in change coming from inside Eritrea as an Eritrean solution towards regime change and democracy are indeed many – in the opposition, among civic organizations and activists, among renowned individuals, the Eritrean academia, the silent majority, and maybe most importantly among our suffering people inside Eritrea. It is absolutely vital and long overdue that these groups and masses build their own momentum, their space to work, their platform, their representation, their faith towards a better future. It is the hope that the ‘Bologna Summit 2013 for a Brighter Tomorrow’ gathering next week in the historic city center of Bologna will be a major milestone in achieving exactly that.
Bologna first started in the 70ies as a conference initiated by a small group of Eritreans before the PFDJ turned it later into a popular festival. Bologna is back and the organizers, the Eritrean Youth Solidarity of Change (EYSC) with the help and cooperation of many committed groups and activists, decided to follow into the founders’ footsteps by holding a conference. At this point it is crucial that participants not only meet, socialize and debate, but that we work towards concrete outputs that can be further developed post-conference. Milestones that will help us to a) advance Eritrean solutions for Eritrean problems into a visible and effective political alternative for Eritrea, b) empower pro-democratic efforts inside Eritrea, and c) encourage the masses, in particular the youth and women, to actively participate in the process.
To create hope for Eritrea should never be regarded as exclusive, it should never be considered as unwelcome competition or even as a dubious undertaking by those who chose not to support the Bologna Summit because they believe in a different path. Democracy is all about making informed decisions and if we truly want to build democracy in Eritrea we should embrace the pluralism of groups, initiatives, ideas, and efforts it brings with it.
Lastly, Ethiopia’s representatives have confirmed on various occasions that they are here to support any endeavors that are lead by Eritreans themselves, and as such we should hope that they and all our comrades working inside Ethiopia will wish the gathering in Bologna and its democratic vision good luck. It would be a much welcomed progress. Hopefully one day very soon national self belief and self confidence will shine again and – through the combined and collective efforts of everyone who works for freedom in Eritrea in their own ways – we will see a peaceful, democratic, proud, and prosperous Eritrea in which our people can heal, re-build, develop, blossom, and dream. An Eritrea for which our martyrs paid the ultimate price for, a small and much loved country that leads by positive example and that builds close and mutually beneficial relations with all its neighbors and the world community at large. See you there.
Dr. Harnet Bokrezion
(aka Miriam September)
EYSC/ Bologna Organization
Suppose a patient walks into an emergency room with a big axe sticking out of his head. The medical staff is bewilderingly looking at this guy, perplexed at how on earth he is even alive. They prepare to do something about this deadly axe and ask the victim how he is feeling. He simply states that he feels just fine except for some minor stomach ache.
“You give me some anti-acid and I am all set,” he replies.
“But what about this … thing! … sticking out of your head?”
“What thing? … Oh, you mean the axe? Never mind that, it’s not a big deal”
When there is a glaringly obvious truth that no one wants to discuss or address, in English, the idiomatic expression “Elephant in the Room” is aptly used. It is supposed to help us imagine having a living, breathing elephant in the family room, in the kitchen, in the meeting room, doing whatever elephants do. It’s not an invisible elephant; it’s just that no one wants to acknowledge that it is there. Instead, everyone prefers to deal with other issues as if this huge thing is not even in the same space.
While I like the “axe in the head” metaphor better, it might be too gory for your taste, and perhaps it sounds something straight out of a Monty Python episode. Ok, let’s stick with “Elephant in the room” then, after all, an elephant is good national symbol for Ethiopia. I am thinking of the “zhon” mega lottery whose advertisement use to include an elephant carrying a jackpot prize of cash (do they still have that?). Anyway, in this analogy, the elephant is Ethiopia’s policy toward regime change in Eritrea and its direct and indirect intervention in Eritrea’s opposition politics.
Misplaced Pride
This discussion is aimed at Ethiopia’s policy toward Eritrea and Eritreans. However, I know that issues of national interest vis- à -vis relations with neighboring countries can quickly devolve into issues of prejudices and ethnic identity politics, pseudo history and even hatred. When we are talking about Ethiopia and Eritrea, we are talking about two poor African countries still at the bottom of the list of countries by per capita income. Two countries whose people have a lot to gain from peaceful co-existence and collaboration instead of purposeless posturing that is often pushed downward to the people by those in position of power.
I think it is safe to say that being from either side of the Ethio-Eritrean border does not come as a result of divine intervention; it is pure accident of fate and history. There is nothing inherently better about being or having roots from a certain dot on the map. National pride should not cloud reasoning, nor should it justify injustice and unfairness.
The nation-state is indeed not something that was conceived by a super-natural being. It is a man-made phenomenon that, and for better or worse, we are destined to use it as a source of identity and to create relations based on mutual respect and fairness. However, it can also easily be used for adversarial purposes to garner unfair advantage, create instability, use it as a bargaining chip and weaken your perceived enemy. Needless to say, the Ethio-Eritrean relationship has yet to enter the “relations based on mutual respect and fairness” period. It is till in the “adversarial” period and if we will ever move toward good neighborliness and far-sighted relationship, the architects of Ethiopia’s foreign policy toward Eritrea must keep the Eritrean people in mind. They must not mistake political emissaries and viceroys for true representation of the heartbeat of Eritreans in Eritrea and Eritreans throughout the world.
Wherever they are, be it inside Ethiopia or elsewhere, Eritreans must be allowed to decide how they will remove the regime of tyrant Isaias Afeworki, and the Eritrean people will eventually decide what kind of government to erect in its place. It would be foolish to expect Eritreans to start trusting Ethiopia’s “support” when it is actually thinly veiled interference. It is time for Ethiopia to clearly state its policy, mandate, role and scope pertaining to the democratization and/or regime change in Eritrea. Only a genuine homegrown revolt morally supported by the world community will guarantee Ethiopia a good neighbor to the north. Yes, Ethiopian authorities have the right to deal with whomever they choose to achieve whatever their ultimate goal is. The people of Eritrea also have the same right to look at the processes and maneuvers and speak-up when something awry is afoot. Hey, it’s our country, dammit!
I am confident we can stay above the fray and discuss issues of balancing state interest and creating a win-win environment. The long term good neighborly relations between the two countries rests on garnering genuine goodwill toward each other and not on hoodwinking and the political mechanizations of moving chess pieces across the board as we have witnessed for the last decade. It has been almost a taboo to criticize Ethiopia’s handling of Eritrean pro-justice movement, especially its systematic rendering of the opposition to a toothless and ineffective entity that is neither capable of bringing about regime change nor tolerant enough to alternative strategies. Yes, the Ethiopians are not entirely to blame for that, but let’s start with the axe sticking out of the head, the Elephant in the room, first and ensure Eritrea’s interest is duly considered. Naturally, when it comes to discussing the role of Ethiopia in the democratization of Eritrea, as Eritreans, our opinion may be biased toward the interest of Eritrea. No need to apologize for that. Hey, it’s our country, dammit!
In 2010, when Eritreans were gathering in Ethiopia for the first “National Conference”, many Eritreans, including myself, were hoping against hope that it could turn into a bona-fide popular movement. The vast majority (if not all) of Eritreans who went to Ethiopia then and afterwards are of course patriots; justice seeking citizens who are simply looking for a solution that will shorten the life of the dictatorship in Eritrea. This is not about questioning their motive but about the ultimate result, which can only be described as utter failure; or we can even dare say that it was designed to fail. Yes, so much passion, emotion and credibility have been invested in the “regime change with the help of Ethiopia” basket and there is nothing to stop some from wanting to continue to have faith in it. Yet, the consequence of granting Ethiopia’s policy makers a blank check in the affairs of Eritrea and shielding them left and right from the wrath of Eritrean public opinion affects us all. A change in strategy is not failure but flexibility. But of course some proud egos will be wounded at the mere suggestion that they may be failing, and may want to keep going with the musical chair game, whose rules seem to change based on whom the Ethiopians decide should win or lose.
So, where did the opposition movement go wrong when it comes to Ethiopia? Volumes can probably be said about this topic but I believe the following 4 points have been ignored by all of us though it was pretty obvious at some point they were going to grow to be, well, as big as an elephant in a room.
1) Forgetting the Masses
At the core of any movement for social change there is the notion of convincing the public. In order to stay relevant an idea must be able to move the masses; to unite them under an idea they want to rally behind. The keyword is: convincing. So, can we say that the Eritrean people are convinced that the way to replace the despicable regime of Isaias Afeworki is by using Ethiopia’s strong arm or simply by using Ethiopia to launch a military campaign? Of course not. No matter how much it is sugarcoated, it was a difficult idea to sell and very few have actually bought it. More importantly, what we have seen in the last few years can not be considered as convincing or selling an idea. It was simply the systematic and sometimes brute intimidation of Eritrean activist, as the plethora of organizations based in Ethiopia compete to impress – not the Eritrean masses – but Ethiopian officials. The result speaks for itself.
2) Looking for Exclusivity
Any organization, be it political or civic, can not appeal to the masses if its aim is “purity” or “the exclusion of others”. Instead of trying to achieve its declared mission, if all an organization does is to purge and exclude people based on sub-national or parochial sentiments, it’s bound to fail. Just like the elephant in the room, this fact has been well-known among Eritreans, and it seems to have been encouraged by the Ethiopians who use some unconvincing justifications. This is probably one of the most dangerous side-effects that should not be ignored any longer, even though these types of organizations do not have a mass appeal. By definition, exclusivity leads to narrowness and limited scope but a close study of how Somalia became Somalia should give us Eritreans a dire warning.
3) Assuming Ethiopia Wants Isaias Out
This one is a perplexing phenomenon that has confused many. Judging from the stand point of justice and fairness, and from the several signals the Ethiopians were sending, we could have been hoodwinked into thinking that the removal of Isaias Afeworki benefits Ethiopia. Unfortunately, international relations does not have the sense and sensibility of our mother’s uqub, where what you paid forward pays you back eventually. We all know it is a little more complex than that. From the standpoint of national interest – or at least the interest of those in power in Ethiopia – Isaias Afworki is actually serving his purpose. At best, he is a very weak neighbor who can only bargain from a point of weakness and at worst (God forbid), he is co-conspirator of whatever hidden agendas are brewing beneath the surface; hidden agendas that seem to require the waning of Eritrean nationalism and its viability as a state.
4) Underestimating Change from Inside
Until that fateful morning of January 21, 2013 when we saw a glimmer of hope on a hilltop in the heart of Asmara, those who believed change from inside is quite possible were ridiculed, and hope was mainly placed on some surgical military operation that is likely to have the Ethiopian army in front or behind it. Then came the coup attempt that came to be known as “Forto” or “nay Wedi Ali”. Surprisingly, the attempt was widely celebrated while the argument “change can not come from within” continues to rage on, not surprisingly, from those who have placed their hopes in the Ethiopia basket. The fact of the matter is, the few times that the Isaias’ dictatorial power was challenged, was from within the system; the G-15 and Forto incidents being prominent examples. More importantly, Eritreans are quite capable of rallying behind a genuine homegrown movement aimed at removing the dictator and swiftly transitioning to constitutional governance.
In these sensitive times, Ethiopia can still play a positive role without meddling in the internal issues of Eritreans. The first of which is to continue to treat Eritrean refugees with care, respect and dignity; something that will go a long way in building goodwill and trust for generations to come. Ethiopia can also, without a drama, settle the border ruling instead of stalling its implementation and giving our dictator the ultimate ticket for justifying his rule. However, backroom dealings that shortchange the future relations of the two downtrodden people of Eritrea and Ethiopia in general and Eritrea and Tigray in particular would be a big mistake.
The Alternative
If the “Elephant in the Room” is actually why the silent majority of Eritreans remain silent, then as Eritreans we owe it to ourselves to seek for an alternative idea of waking up the fighting spirit of our compatriots. Eritreans have a very respectable recent history of stepping up to the challenge even when the chance of winning seemed glim. Even if the strategy to seek Ethiopia’s support was paved with good intentions, it has not worked and in fact, it is one those major reasons why we have a silent majority. The quest for liberty, freedom, justice, lawful administration, equality and peace is honorable and decent; something that should appeal to the vast majority of Eritreans everywhere. There is a good reason why our Second Revolution hasn’t sparked yet. It’s time to deal with that axe sticking out of our opposition movement’s head. It’s time to deal with the Elephant in the Room and usher the era of Eritrean Solutions for Eritrean Problems!
In North America, Europe and, to some extent, Australia, the Eritrean ruling regime, PFDJ, does not wield as much power and its intimidation campaigns are not as effective as they used to be. This is because Eritreans in North America, Europe and Australia are not dependent on the PFDJ for residence and work permits. In the Middle East, however, the PFDJ remains as intimidating and as bullying as ever. What we are including below is its power of intimidation and how some brave souls are standing up to it despite the high risks associated with it.
For those who may not be aware, in the Middle east, most Eritreans hold Eritrean passports and they cannot move an inch without it. There is no room for political asylum in almost all Middle eastern countries. Therefore, Eritreans are under the full control of the PFDJ embassies and consulates, except for a few brave and daring Eritreans who risk everything and face the PFDJ injustice. In Egypt, where Eritreans have the oldest student union which has now been taken over by the PFDJ regime, many are victimized. Scholarships, travel opportunities and other consular services are denied them and there are no asylum institutions in these countries.
In the latest stint, when some Eritreans bravely demonstrated in front of the Eritrean embassy, the consul general came out to threaten them holding a baton.
In another incident, in a meeting, he threatened them that he has diplomatic immunity and carries a gun, and that anyone who comes to his consulate to demonstrate risks being shot and killed, “by my own pistol.”
Egypt has in the past years forcibly returned thousands of Eritrean asylum seekers without considering their refugee claims. This act is a breach of international laws which forbid host nations from deporting asylum seekers to countries where they could face a serious risk of persecution upon return.
According to credible sources, in the past, Egypt’s Interior Ministry officials have given Eritrean embassy officials access to detained Eritreans, including asylum seekers registered by UNHCR in other countries, to help prepare travel documents for deportation.
In another incident, four Eritreans who have refused to bow to the PFDJ have been expelled from the Union under which they have the official Egyptian recognition, and they risk their scholarships and other opportunities since they cannot get any consular help.
One of them is Hamid Adem Idris (known as Al Ajeb), a man who confronted the PFDJ injustices, and is risking his well-being. He carries an Eritrean passport which has since been revoked and he is in precarious situation.
Hamid is an activist and, together with a few of his colleagues, he has been part of the team that has challenged the PFDJ in Egypt, by emboldening and organizing the youth to hold demonstrations against the unjust practices of the Eritrean regime that wishes to oppress citizens at home and abroad.
Earlier this year, Hamid managed to secure a hearing at Mejlis Al Shaab, the Egyptian parliament, and advocated for the cause of the Eritrean people.
This triggered a letter from Sultan Saeed, Chairperson of the National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students (NUEYS) (pictured.) In the letter, he lists names of individuals from the union and warns that anyone who is against the PFDJ should be expelled as well. The translation of the document, as well as the personal testimony of one of the four individuals, follows:
To the Office of the National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students Cairo Branch, Greetings,
nuyes1We have received confirmed information that some youth who were members of the National Union of Eritreans Youth and Students in your branch have stepped outside the political line of the union and they are against its political activities and they work to agitate its members, and are against the national policies of the Eritrean Government, and the People’s Front [PFDJ], and they are involved in smearing the name of Eritrea in foreign media outlets.
Therefore, the National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students, since it is part and parcel of the Popular front for Democracy and Justice , and because it is grounded on the policies of the Eritrean Government in all its details, [has decided that] their likes should not be given membership and anyone who is against the national policies should not be protected under its wings.
Therefore, it has decided to cancel completely the membership of the youth, whose name follows, and to exclude them from everything related to its activities. And we give you full mandate to cancel the membership of anyone who is involved in such inimical activities which is against membership [rules], and to notify the central office of the National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students.
[We also bring to your attention to] be alert in the face of such enmities and to work diligently in educating the youth and make them leaders, able to lead the future of their nation without falling in the designs of the enemies.
The names of the youth whose membership is cancelled are: 1. Zaki Osman Adem 2. Aman Yassin Ahmed 3. Hamid Adem Idris 4. Mohammed Nur Shems
Name: Hamid Adam Idris (aka Al Ajeb)
nationality: Eritrean
Education: Completed High school and university at Azhar
Social Activities:
* Worked at the Eritrean Students Union as a member of the executive office from 2006 to 2007.
* Served as cultural secretary and Secretary of trips and Entertainment at the General Federations and Unions of African students in Egypt; also held the position of secretary-general of the Supreme Advisory Council for the same Union
* Worked as Secretary of external relations for the Federation of East African Students and member of student parliament at Al Azhar.
The first problem
My differences with the Eritrean embassy in Cairo started in 2006, when it prevented students from attending university. It was our duty to defend the rights of students to the extent that we declared a sit-in at the embassy in order to solve the students’ educational problems. But the embassy threw at us charges that we are dissenters and closed the Union. Then wrote about that on the opposition websites regarding the issue of the embassy that deprived students of university education. At that time, I served as Secretary of Sports and Recreation.
The second problem
In 2010, I wrote and reada statement at the International Symposium of Azhar graduates regarding the Eritreanregime’s policy that prevents students from attending Azhar; that statement was published in the Al Azhar Journal of Azhar and I was summoned at the embassy.
The third problem
In 2011, I participated in the formation of May 24 Eritrean Youth Movement after the Egyptian revolution began. I started to write messages for young Eritreans in Cairo on February 5, 2011. And on February 17, 2011, we announced the formation of the movement–the messages are still in the outgoing messages folder on Facebook. When the embassy learned about this, it started threatening me not to continue in the activities but I didn’t stop. On May 22, 2011, the May 24 movement held its first demonstration in front of the Eritrean embassy and some Egyptian newspapers, among them Masry Al-Youm, reported it.
On July 27, 2011 we organized a demonstration in front of the Eritrean Embassy to denounce the kidnapping of girls from the village Ad Ali-Bakhit where their parents were killed when they confronted the regime. Al-Ahram newspaper conducted a meeting with five members of May 24, and I was one of the five.
May 24 Youth Movement organized a seminar regarding human trafficking and it was attended by human rights activists and media and some ambassadors, including the Australian ambassador–the seminar was held on February 5, 2012.
On May 22, 2012 the youth movement held a demonstration in front of the Embassy of Eritrea in the presence of a large number of Egyptian police.
The movement organized an Eritrean cultural day at the Abdul Moneim Al Sawi center in cooperation with Al Shrouq Eritrean heritage and arts group.
The consequences of my interviews with television stations and my visits to places where young Eritrean who escape from their country are detained:
I conducted three television interviews with Al Hiwar television channel.
A. An interview on August 11, 2011; the episode was scheduled to air on May 24 (Eritrean Independence Day)
B. I was a telephone guest at Al Hiwar channel. The program was about the situation of youth in Egyptian prisons in my capacity as in charge of the Eritrean detainee affairs. That was on May 22, 2013.
C. A ninety-minute interview on September 25, 2011 with Al Mehwer television channel together with two other members of the May 24 Movement. After the interview, the Eritrean Embassy sent a fax message to the channel and stated that the guests the channel hosted is a group of people who abandoned their responsibilities, are clowns who agitate tribal sentiments.
D. On February 2, 20012, I was interviewed by Al Bagdadya channel together with a lady from May 24 movement.
E. There is a video clip shot by Al Nahar channel showing me distributing aid to detained Eritrean youth.
F. An interview with Al Jazeera on January 29, 2013, after the May 24 movement stormed the Eritrean Embassy in Cairo.
G. On March 2013, there is a video clip by Al Shaab channel where I presented the issue ofhuman trafficking in which Eritreans are victims to the committee of African Affairs at the Egyptian Parliament.
I have handed copies of all video to the UNHCR asking for its help in opening a file for me. I visited the Eritreans detained in Egyptian prisons. During 2011 and 2012, I visited the Aswan prison three-times and we presented aid to 250 youth, women and children.
I have also visited three-prisons in Sinai: Ruman, B’er AlAbd and Al Araish prisons.
I also visited Suez prison. I also visited Al Ismaelia prison five times; that is where more than 300 youth, women and children were imprisoned.
I have some pictures of the prisons but others I didn’t shoot.
As a result of these activities, a fax message was sent to the Eritrean embassy from Eritrea accusing me and three others of aggression against the nation and defaming the country’s image in foreign media. The message instructed to have our membership from the student union revoked–I have presented a copy of the fax to UNHCR office.
On television interviews I talked about human trafficking and the involvement of the Sinai Bedouins in this trade and therefore received telephone calls threatening me with revenge because, as they say, I tarnished the name of Sinai tribes. One time, they almost baited me by making excuses to help the refugees, but finally I discovered it was a trick.
In one of its meetings inside the embassy, the Eritrean embassy referred to me as a spy and accused me that I persuade Eritrean youth in Egyptian prisons not to return to Eritrea and instead go to Ethiopia.
The Issue of the Egyptian Ship Captain
An Egyptian captain was imprisoned in Eritrea when he entered the Eritrean waters with permission of Eritrean authorities due to malfunction in his ship. He was imprisoned for several months in Eritrea when Egyptian intelligence and the presidency intervened to have him released. After the captain arrived in Egypt, the press wrote about an exchange of prisoners between Eritrea and Egypt in order to release the captain. Therefore, we met at his home in Kefr AlDewar, in Al Buheira and he told us, literally, that “…an exchange of prisoners didn’t happen but the Eritrean government had asked for a group young dissidents in Cairo, specifically you who are holding demonstrations. You need to be very careful.”
His mother said that President Mursi told her that her son is needed as an exchanged for young people who want to do what the Egyptian youth did in the [Egyptian] Revolution of the 25th [of January.]
On March 17, 2013, there was a celebration of International Women’s Day at the premises of the Union of Eritrean Students and I went there. But before the opening of the ceremony, a person from the embassy staff took me to the corner and told me that I am required to leave the place. I asked why. And he told me that the Women’s Union does want me there. Thereafter, I contacted the President of the Women’s union and asked her why she didn’t want my presence. She said, “We in the Union did not object to your presence, it is the consul who objected…. “
We at the May 24 movement wrote a statement on our newsletter condemning the intervention of the Embassy in the affairs of the Women’s Union and we characterized the actions of the consul as cowardly and his interference as childish and since then I do not go to places where there are a group of Eritreans who support such actions.
Based on the above, I am now under a threat from many parties:
First, the regime in Eritrea has accused me of aggression against the nation and of distorting the reputation of the state and of arousing tribal grudges–this is a direct threat from the Eritrean regime.
Second: The Bedouins of Sinai are following me after I mentioned them in several television interviews to the extent that they tried to trick me to travel out of Cairo on top of their threatening calls.
Third: the embassy wants to harm me under any pretext and on one occasion they have threatened they will use thugs to get rid of me.
Fourth: recently the Eritrean Foreign Minister visited Cairo and later, the head of the Office of Eritrean foreign policy and in light of the Egyptian Ethiopian dispute I am now afraid of a political deal between Egypt and Eritrea due to the bad relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Fifth: In light of all these fears and threats I have not been able to report to the police stations because my presence in Egypt is illegal after my residence permit expired.
I kindly ask the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide me with protection since my life is in real danger.
Statement by the Network of Eritreans for Democracy, Justice and Equality (EDJE) on the decision of the ENCDC Council’s leadership dismissing the Secretary of the Executive Committee
The ENCDC represented a qualitative development in the Eritrean struggle and it motivated national forces to promote the national interests of the people. The decade long process to upgrade the of struggle culminated convening the National Congress for Democratic Change in 2011. In that convention, the National Council, a broader and more sophisticated coalition compared to its precursors was established and it provided the struggle with more capacity to manage and mobilize resources by embracing most of the political organizations and civil societies and independent personalities under its umbrella. It also increased the potential for more effective struggle to achieve a democratic change by removing the dictatorial regime and rectifying its catastrophic sectarian and chauvinist policies and practices.
Unfortunately, though our people pinned high hopes on the National Council, its leadership failed in achieving the objectives of the Conference and accomplishing the tasks entrusted to it. This fact has been elaborated in several assessment reports that EDJE issued with the aim of enabling all concerned to properly diagnose the problems and identify weaknesses so that we can all work to rectify the matter before it was too late. Alas, our calls were not heeded similar to many appeals expressed in Paltalk rooms and by writers in different websites.
EDJE summarizes the main reasons for the failures as follows:
1. Lack of qualified and efficient leadership,
2. Absence of institutionalism and lack of commitment to abide by the regulations and work according to the set programs,
3. Failure to separate powers within the Council; that caused interference and overlapping of assigned tasks and responsibilities,
4. Undemocratic work tradition and practice,
5. Lack of transparency and accountability and absence of collective leadership in executing daily duties.
Due to absence of institutionalized approach and practice, spontaneity and individualism prevailed in the Council’s activities. Also, the overlapping of tasks and responsibilities led to discrepancies, disputes and conflicts about the nature and limits of responsibilities. In turn, that resulted in power rivalry and the ensuing confusion stalled the work finally bringing the operations to a complete stagnation–a feature that characterized the whole work period of the Council.
The current crisis, which revolves around the legality of the decision taken by the chairman of the National Council to dismiss the Chairman of the Executive Office, and the debate raging around it, is only a reflection of the deteriorating reality and the depth of the crisis that has reigned for so long. This is in fact nothing more than a clear manifestation of the accumulated errors and failures that have slowly eroded the bases and weakened the structure of the Council. If not rescued quickly, that will inevitably damage the supporting pillars of the whole structure of the Council, eventually causing its total disintegration. Therefore, we call upon all concerned to pay attention to the imminent danger facing the ENCDC and to take responsibility in preserving what has so far been achieved. We appeal to all concerned to overcome the difficulties and safeguard the Council’s establishment and improve it further by preparing properly for the convening a successful national congress.
We reiterate our firm conviction that both chairpersons of the Council and the Executive Office have been incompetent in managing their responsibilities. Thus, we hold them responsible for their utter failure and incompetence. It was long overdue for the members of the Council and the Executive Committee to notice the defects and to have exercised their rights in relieving both the council and the Executively Chairman from their responsibilities.
With respect to the Executive Office chairman’s dismissal, we consider that the ENCDC leadership has no legitimacy to take such a decision, and we call upon them to immediately withdraw the decision and urge the Executive Committee, which has the authority to exercise its right, to reshuffle its offices as deemed necessary.
Since we do not expect any meaningful work to be accomplished during the remaining life of the Council, we call upon all stakeholders to strive to form an efficient and competent preparatory committee, with balanced and inclusive representation, where political organizations and civil societies and other stakeholder would participate in satisfactory proportions. With that we hope to attain a better outcome than the last time, in order to make up for the wasted time and effort, since the previous Congress. We urge all concerned to put the Eritrean struggle back on the right track to achieve the goal of getting rid of the dictatorial regime, including all forms of oppression and tyranny without delay so that Eritreans can establish a government based on democracy, justice and equality.
Long live the just struggle of our people for freedom and decent life
Glory and eternity for the memory of our martyrs
Shame and disgrace upon the ruling junta and its dictatorial regime.
September 1, 1961 is often described as the day Hamid Idris Awate “fired shots at Mt Adal” which makes it sound like it was some sort of spontaneous, celebratory and symbolic gunfire. In truth, September 1 (Bahti meskerem in Tigrinya or FatiH mn September in Arabic) is the day Hamid Idris Awate led a small band of Eritreans to open the next chapter of Eritrean resistance to Ethiopian occupation: armed struggle. Mt. Adal, September 1, and Awate are symbolic because they are the where, when and who in the chronicle of Eritreans fighting back against Ethiopian security forces. September 1 is celebrated by Eritreans because it is a day that emboldened and inspired generations of Eritreans to believe that saying no to a bully does not automatically result in defeat.
The Inevitability of Armed Struggle
After the end of World War II, pro-independence Eritreans had every reason to believe that their case was no different from that of Libya and Somalia–the only two other African colonies of Italy–and that, therefore, they should be treated similarly: granted independence immediately or after several years of UN trusteeship. Their dreams were dashed because (a) there was substantial Eritrean population that wanted to be unconditionally unified with Ethiopia (unionist party) and (b) post World War II/Cold War political calculations favored Ethiopia which made a strong argument for annexing Eritrea. After 10 years of “fact finding” missions, the United Nations settled on a compromise position of federating Eritrea with Ethiopia. A Federal Act was drafted guaranteeing certain civil liberties and autonomy to Eritreans, under the Ethiopian crown.
Between 1952 and 1962, the Ethiopian crown violated the terms of the Federal Act, according to Eritreans. According to Ethiopians, the Eritrean parliament, which was composed of pro-Independence and pro-Ethiopian representatives, took a series of steps to reduce its autonomy and ultimately voted to dissolve itself and incorporate Eritrea as just another province of Ethiopia. Throughout the decade, there were rallies by labor unions, students, journalists to protest the violation of the Federal Act–including the institution of Amharic as the official language and, importantly, the lowering of the Eritrean flag and its replacement by the Ethiopian flag. By 1958, Eritreans in Sudan had formed Haraka (Mahber Showate), with the specific aim of conducting urban clandestine acts of peaceful resistance. By early 1960, many notable Eritreans, including the journalist/writer/opposition leader Woldeab Woldemariam and the president of the Eritrean parliament, Idris Mohammed Adem, had been exiled to Egypt.
1960 was the year of African liberation. That was the year Benin, Burkino Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo and Zaire got their independence from the colonial masters (mostly England and France.) Crucially, it was also the year Somalia (another former Italian colony) got its independence (Libya had already secured its independence in 1951.) Closer to home, Sudan had gotten its independence in 1956; and, in Uganda and Kenya, the British Empire was unwinding and the two were on the verge of securing their independence.
None of this was lost on Eritrean university students living in Revolutionary Egypt where Gemal Abdel Nasser’s popularity was at its apex because he had checkmated the West by nationalizing the Suez Canal and then, in an even more improbable scenario, succeeded in getting the UN and the US to denounce and reverse the English, French and Israeli occupation of Sinai.
Three University of Cairo students (Idris Osman Gelawdios, Mohammed Saleh Hummed, Adem Mohammed Akte), one from Azhar University (Said Hussein), one from a law school in Italy (Taha Mohammed Nur) and, lastly, the former president of the Eritrean parliament (Idris Mohammed Adem) formed the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) with the specific aim of launching an armed resistance against Ethiopia.
This decision was, no doubt, influenced by (a) the failure of Haraka (Mahber Showate) whose “peaceful resistance” was increasingly showing to be a dead end (Haraka was itself abandoning the Sudanese Communist Party-inspired urban clandestine peaceful resistance and calling for coup d’etat and, eventually, armed resistance) and (b) the African guerrilla movements of the era. What was needed was an Eritrean Liberation Army. All that was missing was a leader with a proven military record and ability to inspire followers.
The Inevitability of Hamid Idris Awate
Hamid Idris Awate was comfortable with the gun ever since his teens: his father owned a rifle and taught his son how to use it. But Hamid was no lone ranger: he was a disciplined soldier, thanks to his military background with the Italian colonial force (conscripted in 1935) which included military intelligence training in Rome. He was a charismatic leader gifted with language fluency: he was reportedly adept in Tigre, Hdareb, Arabic and Italian. He was also not afraid to take on authority figures if he felt their demands were unjust: he had challenged the new British administration (whose presence in Eritrea after the defeat of the Italians was not guaranteed to be a short term stay.) Crucially, Hamid Idris Awate was from a region (Gash) where Ethiopia’s authority was at its most tenuous. That is: if an armed struggle was going to take root, Gash (bordering Sudan) was most favorable. And it is for this reason that, for two decades, the ELF used it as a base of its operations.
But most importantly: Hamid Idris Awate had national consciousness: he knew that the struggle would take long (despite various approaches from the ELF founders in Egypt, he wasn’t willing to start the armed struggle until he felt he was ready) and he knew that it would not succeed unless it had a broad base of support from all of Eritrea, including the Eritrean highlands. When he was elected as commander of the Eritrean Liberation Army, he told the handful (13) members who elected him “We are all Eritreans; we have to serve our country with honesty and sincerity. We are here to achieve a goal, and if there is anybody who may have personal ambitions other than the declared objective, then, he must leave now. “ This was reported by Abu Rijela, an Awate contemporary who was a legend in the Eritrean Liberation Army.
Hamid Idris Awate knew exactly what he was fighting for and instilled in his fighters the discipline to know it and practice it. Hamid Idris Awate was not fighting for his tribe, for his religion: he was fighting for Eritrean independence. When the Ethiopians sent him Eritrean intermediaries to give up the fight, he didn’t ask that they build more mosques or declare religious holidays and respect the rights of his tribe. He told them to pass this message: “If you want us to end our armed struggle, lower the Ethiopian flag, and raise the Eritrean flag.” His cause was national. And when he died, less than a year after he launched the struggle, he was considered so crucial to the new movement that his death was kept a secret for months.
Why September 1 and Mt Adal Are Significant
Even in the 1960s, Ethiopia vastly outnumbered Eritrea, and taking on Ethiopia would mean fighting the odds. The phrase “against all odds” may have been popularized by author Dan Connell but it was first tested on September 1 at Mt. Adal. This battle started at 6:00 am in the morning and would not conclude until 1 pm, ending in a stalemate. But the message that was sent was loud and clear: a relatively well-armed Ethiopian force failed to crush 13 ill-equipped fighters led by Hamid Idris Awate. The Eritreans knew that Ethiopia would come back with more re-enforcements and wisely retreated. But the news that Eritreans fought back Ethiopians and stood their own was electrifying. The Eritrean Liberation Army doubled in size (from 13 to 24); Eritreans started donating money and property–a practice that would not end until May 24, 1991.
The Ethiopians came back with a larger army to “crush the bandits once and for all”–a futile slogan they used for 30 years–and they were beat back again, but not before Eritrea would, tragically, begin yet another 30-year long tradition: giving up a martyr. The first Eritrean martyr to die in battle was Abdu Mohammed Faid. But this also resulted in another 11 Eritreans joining the Eritrean Liberation Army from the Sudanese army.
September 1 stands for belief in a just cause; refusal to give up; determination to fight injustice no matter how overwhelming the odds against us; to pay any price for a cause; and leadership that inspires followers. This is why when we celebrate the date, we also celebrate the man: Hamid Idris Awate.
Last wednesday I was in the middle of writing this speech when an excitedfriend called and urged me to listen to a discussion in a Paltalk room. “They are discussing Bologna and someone is talking about you!” I told him I was busy and he reluctantly gave me a hintabout the topic. Surely,I was not interested. Besides, I was excited about the event and the trip to Italy; I haven’t been there since we spent part of our honeymoon in Parma, one-hundred kilometers north of Bologna. But that Paltalk hint was helpful in shaping my speech…
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am elated to be here with you today…meeting so many of you, most for the first time, though some I know but never met in person …I cannot help but reflect and realize we have come a long way. It’s a long way from the days when the opposition camp to the PFDJ regime was so lonely except for a few hardened activists who were mocked, belittled and defamed by the regime and its supporters. I want you to remember this: what irritates some of you today was our daily stable for a long time. I am pleased we came this far.
Ten years ago, I was invited to New York to deliver a speech; my topic was Peaceful Struggle and it was written in Tigrinya. I will try to locate it—it might help us remember that we always allow ourselves to be preoccupied with trivial issues. Back then, the conflicting views of Peaceful Struggle versus Armed Struggle (whose opponents misnamed Violent Struggle) inflicted untold damages on the opposition camp—the debate over that is alive to this day.
In New York, I told my audience that I do not need to declare whether I support a specific mode of struggle simply because it is obvious: I don’t carry a Klashnikov in this struggle! My tool of struggle was, and still is, the same; it has nothing to do with an armed outfit. It is based on challenging the regime and its supporters intellectually and at the same time inform, inspire and embolden my fellow Eritreans. Residing in a country 25 hours flight away from Eritrea, there is no type of struggle one can wage except a peaceful struggle…I still believe discussing the topic among activists is an over indulgence, and it has remained a cause of countless squabbles and splits. The so many fissures created among the opposition camp because of that is still crippling our collective ability to be effective.
When EYSC started as a facebook movement, I had reservations, which I explained to some regarding the way many of you tried to distance yourselves from others based on age. I was worried that a horizontal fragmentation would be added to the vertical fragmentation that we were already suffering from. I believe compartmentalization weakens the struggle and damages our unity. Some phases of the struggle that started over sixty-years ago have yet to be completed. Our struggle has always been one long chain, all segments, all regions, and all age groups who, over time, naturally, cross generational stages. If that chain is divided into its constituent parts, then we no more have a chain, but disconnected, unlinked rings, that cannot achieve anything on their own.
For years, we have been struggling to get everybody on board; unfortunately, once new activists joined in, most of them preferred to create islands of their own. And some sleek politicians saw this as an opportunity and campaigned to disconnect the young more so that they can use them as a constituency, as foot-soldiers. That is why all those who worked behind the scene are anything but young—unless being 50 and 60 is considered young. And you might have seen the reaction when I wrote against the interference in Awassa and the convening of Debre Zeit meetings.
I can confidently say that those mistakes led to the widening of the political and generational gap and negatively contributed to more fragmentation of the new movements. The Debrezeit problem is a result of three factors: lack of experience of many participants, political ambitions of a few, and the zeal of some Ethiopian officials for creating more blocks. And we are still suffering from it for the last two years.
A few months ago, when the issue of maintaining the Eritrean pride was raised at awate.com, it was in recognition of the risks facing our national identity and how we can reverse the trend of what we have begun to lose as a nation. We recognized that we have become lenient in dealing with Eritrean history, our legacy, what makes us what we are, our foundation as a nation, our resistance to all sorts of un-Eritrean designs—partition, occupation, surrender, etc. We are proud that we stood tall as a people and and accomplished our first goal AGAINST ALL ODDS. Yes, we liberated our country; the fact that our independence was thwarted by a tyrant doesn’t change that. It doesn’t change the reason for which we spilled blood, our independence. It doesn’t negate the sacrifice of the thousands of maimed and killed, orphaned and widowed. It doesn’t change the pain of parents for the loss of their loved ones. Yes, we achieved our independence and, as a nation, we are determined to keep it at any cost.
Lately, we have been noticing an orchestrated attack on our independence, on our nation, and an assault on our legacy and pride. It began with what we consider our cornerstone, we were pressured to disown our glorious Gehdli legacy, the same Ghedli we invested heavily on. No. We will not disassociate ourselves from our love for our freedom simply because Isaias and his clique thwarted it! We would not be coerced into giving up the task of taking care of the affairs of our country on our own. That is really what made many of us feel the Eritrean pride was under attack when our resolve as activists was perceived as weak. But what brought us to that?
I believe we lack diplomatic skills. We lack skilled leaders who could forge clearly defined alliances. Leaders who would inspire and embolden us… visionary leaders who could articulate what we want, and lay out unambiguous Eritreans terms when dealing with anyone, anyone at all. However, it is prudent to recognize that it is our collective failure; it shouldn’t be thrown at some helpless veterans who never swayed from their principles and love for their country. Resource wise, they might be weak, but that weakness was caused by all of us. No mother would send her child to buy something empty handed! We never provided resources and assistance to the leaders we sent to achieve our goals. That collective weakness is now manifesting itself in what we observe around us.
The Ghedli-era veterans are very patriotic; they have more experiences than what many are willing to recognize. Ghedli-era veterans cannot be defined by Isaias and his minions… who are an anomaly, an exception, not the rule.
So, what is wrong with campaigning for a goal of “Eritrean Solution For Eritrean Problems”?
If that is a principle, then no one should have a problem with it. However, we have to remember that political statements are not taken at face value. In politics, not only words, but attitudes and the way the words are uttered also carry a lot of meaning. They create different perceptions in the minds of different people. And we should learn from past mistakes. When delivered to the public (as opposed to specific individual spoilers) it should not be delivered in a veiled insult. The mistakes we committed when dealing with the meaningless Peaceful Vs. Armed Struggle should not be repeated. And here are my views on how you should deal with it.
Eritrean solution remains an empty statement unless it is explained and described. We need to explain and describe the problems. I urge you to think what those problems we want to solve are.
All activists in the opposition camp declare their commitment to uphold Eritrean diversity, yet, our political groupings are anything but diverse… do not feel bad, it is not a new phenomenon, it’s been with us for a long time—let’s find an Eritrean solution for it, diligently.
No single segment of our population can bring comprehensive Eritrean solutions unless we identify all the problems and then look for solutions in tandem: aim for a lasting solution.
We can only contribute to a solution if we are able to create an effective global movement, clusters cannot achieve much…it has been tried for decades and failed…. but to do that, first we need to…
Recognize the following:
During the Ghedli era, so-many atrocities were committed against Eritreans, so many sad incidents, but the struggle media never missed its focus on defeating the enemy. All Ghedli literature was focused on an optimistic image of Eritrea. For example, everyone knew how many kilometers long our Red Sea shores are; the minerals that we have; how rich our country was, how resolute and brave our people were; how just our cause was—an optimist image that the Gehdli drew for an inspiration.The Ghedli image of Eritrea was not built on fear and revenge, but determination and hope of what Eritrea could be with a minimal administration, by tapping into the work ethic, ingenuity and learning-will of our people, our huge potential. Every Ghedli literature advertised Eritrea. It didn’t advertise a nation in crisis, it never highlighted crisis at the expense of the main goal; crisis do not inspire people… and we can learn from that when we are tempted to act like firefighters, overwhelmed by single issues that don’t bring comprehensive solution. Take the refugees issue as an example—it has been seven years (for now, leave the forty year refugees in Sudan alone) and most were and are preoccupied by focusing on the Mediterranean Sea refugees, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Sinai, etc. As important as those issues are, solving them will not solve the Eritrean root question because these are manifestations of what ails our country, not the main problem. Our activism should not be focused on those issues at the expense of the main fight. There are many ways we can address those issues instead of stopping everything and focusing on the manifestations. By the way, that is what I tried to do by writing Miriam Was Here, I tried to address the main reason for the suffering of our people. The presence of tens of thousands of refugees in Sudan didn’t hinder us from focusing on the Ethiopian occupiers, the refugees of today should not hinder us from focusing on the PFDJ—a few efficient, specialized human rights activists among us can manage the incidents.The PFDJ campaign is based on Zura nHagerka…. It encourages people to know the mountains, the valleys and of course the Sahel trenches. That is good, but our message should be better, something the PFD failed to pay attention to: know your people, “Fleto nHazbkha.” In a speech entitled “Eritrea: The Challenges Of Today And The Prospects Of Tomorrow,” that I delivered in Australia last December, I suggested eight points to improve our situation. Here I will mention suggestion number 1 only:
“…Our 2013 resolution should include: Get to know 4 Eritreans this year who are not from your tribe, ethnicity, region, or religion but are in the Eritrean resistance movement. Preferably in person, and if you can’t, have conversations with them through social media, by phone, by skype, Paltalk, by whatever. I am talking about one-on-one personal conversations where you LEARN what their grievances are. Call It Campaign 4. Then ask each one you talked to, to reach out to 4 more and so on and so on.”
If you know your people, all fears and suspicions can be eliminated. Not knowing your people makes one prone to all sorts of damaging influences. If one doesn’t know Eritreans outside his region or religion, one would be receptive of any negative connotations or messages concerning those one doesn’t know. If you don’t know your people, any message: Ezom kebessa..or Ezom Aslam…ezom Akelguzai, Ezom Hammsen, etc. would influence you. Knowing a few casual names is not enough. You have to know their culture, value system, their fears and their aspiration…maybe even their language…that makes one a good Eritrean, fully equipped Eritrean and not compartmentalized citizen.
Compartmentalization is the enemy of unity. Our major problem (something that needs an Eritrean Solution) has been our tendency to split instead of merging. We love creating small kiosks and then contently declare: “I am struggling!” Unless we build a formidable movement, unless we bring our resources together, we cannot succeed —we do not have the numbers of China, India…or even Ethiopia or Sudan…we have no choice but to stay together. Once we do that, we have to pledge allegiance to the whole of Eritrea, not to one of its constituent parts only. We should remain true to the goals that benefit the Eritrean people—peace, freedom and stability—by keeping and respecting our diversity.
The Ghedli era had promoted all of that and more; what it didn’t promote and exercise was diversity of political views. Having nominal representation of people in political positions, or cultural troupes, limited to songs and dances, is not a solution; it is a veil that hides hegemonic aspirations and exclusionary tendencies. Struggling for political pluralism was our experience, and today it is considered treason by the PFDJ which foolishly practices destructive policies, coupled with vilification of dissenting voices. If we display any of the manners that we blame the PFDJ for, we will scare the people who are already scared of our scattered nature. Many express their fear of the opposition and say, “Unless they work together, they will not inspire us; how can they be an alternative?” Sadly, the only time our opposition makes the news is when it fights. Though some of the fights are natural, and at times necessary, they give the impression that if they carried arms, the fighting would have deteriorated to become violent and wouldn’t stop unless the adversary is exterminated. And that is not an exaggerated fear.
The gist of the slogan, Eritrean Solutions for Eritrean Problems, is a confirmation that the Eritrean movement is not beholden to anyone: it is not about money and personal gain or ego, it is not about funding—the usual real corruption only exaggerated by the usual Third World paranoia! The slogan should mean a confirmation that we do not have bosses other than our people. It simply addresses those fears. In short, it means, “Negus nebsey Eye.” But there is a problem in not saying it in the right tone and attitude because unknowingly, we could be echoing Isaias’ empty slogan of self-reliance. We have to be careful not to be perceived as isolationists. Our message to the people should be “Only you are our bosses; our struggle is not a puppet show.” But if we are confrontational, we might sound like Isaias…particularly if we keep accusing others of treason, selling out, and of being unpatriotic—that produces instant enemies. Branding people that way is not wise. No one wants his patriotism to be questioned. I encourage all of you to study the tone of two articles that were lately written on awate.com by both Daniel and Miriam. No one should imply that those with different views are unpatriotic, they just have different views.
If a segment of our population imposes a solution, alone, the excluded segments will not own that solution. Instead, they will consider it as one imposed on them. In that case, they will not see the difference between a solution imposed by an internal force and one imposed by any external power.
I repeat, we should be careful not to echo the tone of Isaias when he mentions his exclusionary and isolationist self-reliance mantra. We have seen how that policy has damaged our country, our economy, and how it has hindered our development. That cruel, confrontational, arrogant, dismissive tone of Isaias and his regime has stripped us of our dignity that we preserved throughout the struggle era.
Twenty years ago, one inflated his chest and proudly said I am from Eritrea. We were proud people, self-confident when many Eritreans rushed back home to start a new life; those who remained there hoped for a bright future of no wars, no exiles and no squabbles—just a normal country and motivated people. We believed we will launch a new era and lift our country up to the sky, and develop it in no time. Eritreans carried their skills, their accumulated savings and flew home. In a short time, all hope evaporated and Isaias embarked on making Eritrea another basket case, another banana republic… not even a republic, but a banana state with little bananas.
On the same context, the Eritrean Solution for Eritrean Problems slogan might sound as if we want to be isolated from Ethiopia or the world. Let me remind you that the alliance between the EPRDF and the PFDJ in the nineties didn’t go well with many people who thought they were excluded: power and wealth sharing, commercial opportunities and the right to return to their home. But when the border war broke between the previous allies, the people who supported that alliance at the expenses of the other Eritreans became more bitter militants against Ethiopia; those who didn’t bless that exclusive two-party alliance were victimized again—this time they were called Weyane lackeys… but we have come this far, a long way….
I think we need to sober up and evaluate our performance during the last sixty years or so…I know some of you think history is a boring topic; I assure you it is not.
Three years ago when the youth movements started to pop up, most perceptions and attitudes were as if divisions and disharmony was the making of the older generation. It didn’t take us long to confirm it is a social problem. In a Paltalk session, when I said that our divisions are social and not generational in nature, that they are a result of unresolved issues and not newly manufactured, a few listeners seemed to chuckle, “We young people know nothing but Eritrea, all the divisions are not ours, it belongs to the Ghedli generation!” Well, since then, I am sure many have discovered the bitter truth: one cannot run away from unresolved Eritrean social problems. Never.
And that is when the issue of Eritrea’s relations with Ethiopia becomes interesting. How about relations with Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, EU, and other Scandinavian countries? How about the political NGO’s? Are they dictating their solutions for Eritrean problems or not?
We need a sober diplomacy.
To be at war with your neighbors for trivial issues is a foolish policy. To be against NGOs like Amnesty and HRW, and a few rare others, is insanity—the rest of the political NGO’s are a disaster and I do not apologize for despising them. In principle, giving away the driver’s seat of the Eritrean opposition’s vehicle to others is beyond insanity. And since some have erroneously equated the slogan of Eritrean Solution for Eritrean Problems with anti-Ethiopia vitriol (maybe some people state and others understand it that way, which shouldn’t be the case) I would like to say a few words about it.
No one can deny that we need normal and stable relations with Ethiopia, Sudan and other neighbors. But since the Sudanese regime has chosen to ally itself with Isaias against the Eritrean people, I consider it an enemy regime, though I would not force that view on anyone even if I had the power to do so. Present Ethiopia is not an enemy; it is a friendly country, though some activists would be tempted to see it as an aggressive friend.
Firstly, as an activist, the main problem I see is that Ethiopia deals with the Eritrean opposition through its intelligence apparatus… and we all know that intelligence people see everyone as a potential spy and treat them like one. I have aired my suggestions repeatedly for Ethiopia to transfer the Eritrean opposition portfolio to a political office, such as the ministry of Foreign affairs. Unfortunately I do not have any clout to affect that transfer; I can only advocate for it hoping someday someone listens to my advice.
Secondly, I wish the opposition closes (and Ethiopia cooperates) all the offices of the Eritrean opposition in Addis Ababa allowing a small representative office to remain behind—a single united delegation, not every kiosk that calls itself an organization leaving a diplomatic delegation, though I fear the Ethiopian officials would be tempted to leave behind forty-something diplomatic delegations representing the opposition camp in line with their formula that involves a quota system—one for every ethnic, linguistic (and accent!), and age group—something they are fond of doing.
Third, all opposition groups should relocate in North Ethiopia, close to the Eritrean border. But once they do, they should be given full access to the refugees and defectors (understandably this is Ethiopian territory but I hope they would give enough leeway. At present, the opposition has no access to intelligence—they are not satisfied with the goodwill tips and second-hand information, like the type of information a hair-braider in a refugee camp has.)
Fourth, though the Eritrean opposition has been in Addis Ababa for almost two-decades, the Ethiopians have not provided it with any diplomatic assistance worth mentioning. This is despite the fact that Addis Ababa is the diplomatic capital of Africa boasting dozens of embassies, international and regional organizations, etc.
Fifth, Ethiopia is a country with resources, though not a wealthy country—something Ethiopian officials are fond of reminding the opposition on every opportunity. But however big a country, I don’t believe Eritreans lack the necessary media skills for the Ethiopians to take full control of opposition broadcasting targeted to our country by masquerading as Eritreans.
Sixth, a message to the Eritrean opposition: unite your activities or perish! Ethiopia should stop dealing with dozens of three-person organizations (credibility issue), some of them the Ethiopian intelligence hastily formed, others with members not exceeding the fingers of two hands. Instead, they should leave the task to Eritreans and limit their role to pressuring them to improve performance and produce, not encourage fragmentation—which unfortunately is a well-documented practice. To date, no one knows what is the criteria for an organization—and this has nothing to do with freedom of association but efficiency and effective struggle—not chaos and confusion. (for today I will stop here.)
What if they cannot do the above? The worst that can happen is the EPRDF follows the Sudanese regime’s example and expels every opposition element out from Ethiopia. What would that change on the status of the opposition? What would we lose? Fine, we might risk losing what we achieved over the last two-decades. But what did we achieve over the last fifteen years by being in Ethiopia? NOTHING. There, we would lose nothing.
Unfortunately, I am sure this speech will irk some of my friends. They will mention the scholarships, the hosting of refugees, etc. My speech is focusing on the political aspect of the relations, humanitarian and charitable deeds are an obligation of a neighbor and a measure of a country’s humanity—that should not be a stumbling block that prevents us from airing our views. If that is the case, blackmailing those who criticize Ethiopia by bringing the issue of refugees and scholarships doesn’t help in creating a robust opposition to the tyranny in Eritrea. It will be empty appeasement, dishonesty that produces nothing for Ethiopia or for Eritrea. And that also applies to Sudan, and I am calling the Sudanese regime, with its fugitive president, an enemy.
My irked friends might remind me for the umpteenth time that Ethiopia pursues its national interest. My answer would be: let the Ethiopians worry about their interest, you worry about Eritrean interest. Ethiopia doesn’t need amateur Eritrean diplomats to advance its cause, it is able to do so on its own; it is upon the eighty-something million Ethiopians to advance its interests. I love Ethiopia and Ethiopians (less the chauvinists among them) and I recognize we are stuck being neighbors. Many of us wish for a relation that works… one based on respect and mutual benefits. Since I feel our alliance with the Ethiopians advances our interests, I like to deal with it in total honesty. Apart from that, we shouldn’t tolerate indignity from the Eritrean tyrant, and naturally, we shouldn’t take it from anyone else.
The last time I met the late PM Meles Zenawi, he told me the following:
“…For example we are beginning to develop the potassium resources in the Afar region of Ethiopia—that is millions of tons per year that needs to be transported. Technically, the closest port to this is not even Asseb, it is Tio. You could develop it into a big port. So under normal situation, Eritrea could regain most of these businesses and develop new businesses as well…”
Indeed, Ethiopia needs a causeway that would run approximately 40Kms to access the red Sea through Tio. We have to realize that the no-war-no-peace situation is hurting Eritrea as much as it’s hurting Ethiopia; normalcy would benefit both countries. There are many benefits that both can reap from a normal relation serving their mutual interest. We have a lot to give in our relations with Ethiopia, we shouldn’t see our hand as the lower one.
I wish to see beneficial arrangement with Ethiopia—beginning with Tio port access, where our Afferi compatriots would run the project and economically benefit from it before the rest of Eritrea. I hope that someday, Assab would be alive again feeding the Ethiopian highway arteries. I wish someday Massawa would be busy, feeding Tigrai and Western Ethiopian highway arteries. I wish someday, the Assab refinery would be rehabilitated for the benefit of the region. I wish to see a vibrant, thriving cultural and commercial relation between the two countries. I wish a large university would be established in badimme to graduate young people from the region. I wish prosperity for Ethiopia and the rest of the region so that we can all benefit from it. See! I am saying all of that from an Eritrean perspective, with no malice towards Ethiopia, driven by Eritrean interest, within the context of Eritreans living in Eritrea. To me the stakeholders are not in Bologna or Sweden, Canada or USA; they are inside Eritrea and across its immediate borders. Any egocentric bickering among Diaspora Eritreans is just laughable.
Finally, I hope that our principles would be formulated with the idea of salvaging our people and our country. If whatever we do doesn’t affect our people, we need to revise it—we have to stop spinning our wheels for nothing. The places where we reside are not Eritrean zobas—they are foreign places; whether London wins over Stockholm, or the other way around, in some purposeless rivalry, is insignificant. It doesn’t have any effect on our people; it is just a waste of time. Let’s firmly cement our views on the interest of our people and country. To reinforce that, let’s reclaim our pride and self-confidence. And let’s maintain the Eritrean resolve, that thing we call Habo, Mrwet. Importantly, if we keep forgetting who our real enemy is, I suggest we stick the picture of the tyrant to our breast pockets lest we forget. Let’s stop bickering and extinguish the fires of our petty squabbles. I am Eritrean; and I say it with pride. The way it should be said!
The Eritrean political condition has occupied the major part of the lives of four generations of Eritreans. In the processes, such political condition has consumed countless lives creating untold sufferings; putting on regression for human and technical development. This is neither my pessimistic view nor the wishful thinking of the opposition groups that do not see any good from the regime in power. It is a realistic view and an opportunity for honest reflection and inventory checklist. We can only look at the situation in the context of our time, specifically of our region from the failed State of Somalia to the recent Arab Uprisings that eclipse our views with a desert sand storm at every spark of light in search of clear vision.
The one step forward and two steps backward of democratic process emerging in the consciousness of the masses if not on the ground have become elusive and messy. What has been unfolding in Egypt is a clear example of the legacy of oppression with lasting effect in every citizen on the victor and the vanquished. Many scholarly studies have been done on “internalized oppression syndrome” that can help understand some of the behaviors exhibited though in vision of noble goal but are entangled by circumstances they are unable to explain or overcome.
Those who paid dearly for such messy process to emerge with the hope of gradual evolution of democracy and rule of law this might be disheartening. For those who believe that they offer unwavering stability against hoards of adversity staying the course of progress yet do not offer any semblance of democracy or due process of law, they live in self-delusional reality. Eritreans, especially those of us who see reality through rosy-pair of glasses; sooner or later we will be surprised by the unfolding naked reality to rude awakening.
The political mess exhibited by the opposition groups, who could not see beyond their internal conflicts and the regime in power could do no wrong should be evaluated from the point of internalized oppression. Both suffer from “victimhood syndrome,” which is clouding their vision for possibilities and any goodness that could emanate out of their collective efforts. For example, the opposition groups operate from misplaced priorities; though they profess that the enemy is the regime in Eritrea; they wage war with each other. The Eritrean regime sees itself as a victim of visible and invisible enemies. Whether these are tactics of political ploy or not, they have insidious effect on our society. They put additional layers to the complexity of “internalized oppression.” For example, during the war of liberation and even now Eritreans have gone too far in exhibiting their victimhood to successive oppressions reciting litanies of colonizers – Ottoman Turkey, Egypt, Italy, Great Britain and Ethiopia. Such unqualified recitation of history had political goal not historical objectivity. Its main purpose was to claim that Eritrea was never part of Ethiopia; therefore, it should be independent as sovereign country. The argument that Eritrea was creation of colonial boundary created by Italian occupation as a result of the Berlin Conference in 1884 would have sufficed to claim and fight for sovereignty without stretching and abusing historical facts. For example, the extent and the influence of the Ottoman domination has never been fully analyzed in comparison to the local culture, language and other spheres of influence colonizers normally do; the same analysis should have been done with other successive colonizers. Eritrean culture has never been abused by all successive colonizers as much as the current regime; the opposition groups do not have clean track-record either.
The internalized oppression or sense of victimhood in Eritrea should be compared against brainwashing that took place during the war for independence. The legacy of victimhood still plays prominent role rehashing politicized history or arousing sentimental of enmity. Therefore, as much as the legacy of external oppression the self-inflicted “internal oppression” should be taken into consideration as the problem of Eritreans at home and in the Diaspora.
In the context and movements of our time, how will Eritreans handle when the inevitable time of reckoning finally arrive; will they recoil to the shell of victimhood, to avoid facing their true image in the mirror or admit the mess they created picking up the pieces and move forward? The avoidance of reality; blaming everything on someone else, mostly the previous generations including “the heroes of the armed struggle” exonerating ourselves as do no evil generation is the real problem at hand. In this context, the fate of Eritrea is bleak unless there is a national introspection, each one of us admitting our contribution to the current mess by commission or omission. However, there is huge mountain each one of us to climb, which is a mountain of Eritrean arrogance coupled with slippery slope of ignorance. On the other hand, no one can underestimate the awakening of our collective will latent within that can be commandeered with visionary leadership and hope for possibilities.
Finally, the possibilities should not be mistaken for copy-cut democracy that defies the socio-cultural and historical reality of a people. In the case of Eritrea, once we overcome the blame game and victimhood, we will realize democratic process, consensus building and rule of law are deeply rooted in our history and culture regardless of ethnicity and language background. When the inevitable takes place are we going look for a solution that move us forward anchored in our values or look for someone to blame at every turn we face challenges. The fate of Eritrea is in our hands, those of us at home and in the Diaspora – are we going to seal it with fate of hope or the fate of doom? Let us reflect on the current situation of Eritrea and make an inventory checklist to our role and contribution.
I was recently invited to speak at a conference organised by EYSC (Eritrean Youth Solidarity for Change) in the historic Italian town of Bologna held from 30th August to 1st September 2013. My presentation focussed on the merits of non-violent struggle against the tyrants ruling Eritrea from 1991 to present day.
EYSC is a diaspora based youth movement with a potential for effective contribution to the ongoing non-violent struggle inside and outside Eritrea. The youth group employs many technical skills in pursuit of change in the homeland, including facebook with a following of about 12,000 engaged in lively debates on issues of Eritrean concerns.
The theme of the Bologna conference was: Eritrean Solutions for Eritrean Problems. There were eleven scheduled speakers who presented inspiring messages. I was particularly touched by Dr. Rebka Sebhatu’s presentation, which focused on the traditions of Eritrean oral history including the tradition of storytelling. She eloquently related the stories with our cultural values and identities that the ruling regime in Asmara has been trying to destroy.
The EYSC organisers clearly showed high organisational skills in pulling together a conference that was attended by Eritreans from around the world, including participants from as far as Melbourne, Australia and California, USA.
In my presentation, I explained that the method of struggle pursued by a people to achieve democratic change most likely determine the form of change they achieve. Experience has shown that, in general, using violent means to change a dictatorial regime into a democratic system of governance results in counter violence by the opponents. In essence, the message of democracy, justice and peace will be replaced by revenge, hate and unrest. Violence breeds violence, destroys lives and properties, silences dialogue and rationale, and eventually replaces one dictator by another or even leads to breakup of a nation into mini states ruled by several war lords who would act as local dictators.
As the ruling tyrants in Eritrea eventually grow weaker and lose support from within their rank and file, the best option is to reach out to these forces of change within the ruling party, including the army, the intelligence services, the police, civil servants and PFDJ (“ruling party” in Eritrea) members to play a decisive role in removing the tyrant and initiating the process of democratization. The best strategy is always to seek change to come from inside Eritrea and has to be fully operated by Eritreans from beginning to end. External support is greatly appreciated but should not compromise Eritrean sovereignty, unity, and strategic interests.
Non-violent resistance is a strategy that is more engaging and allows the people to participate in their cause and determine its outcome to be consistent with their dreams and hopes for change. Non-violent resistance requires a great deal of courage, sacrifice and dedication to a cause. Its principles are rooted on political defiance based on the power of the masses thereby requiring tremendous amount of patience and endurance of pain. In the Eritrean case, state institutions currently serving the ruling tyrants can be called upon to side with the people, to defend the people, and to help the people remove the tyrant and his cronies from power, and to help stabilize the country during the transition period to democracy and beyond. Targeted violence practiced by the current state institutions against the tyrant may therefore be justifiable provided it is limited in scope and purpose to achieve the end result called for by the masses. What is not justified and dangerous is for opposition groups based outside Eritrea to have violence as a strategic means of struggle, and hence have their own partisan “armed cadres/wings/militia/liberation army” to remove the tyrannical regime and to promote their own partisan politics and programs. In fact having different groups with their own armies is a recipe for failure and chaos.
It can be argued that the Eritrean opposition taken individually or combined does not have the necessary political public support or the means and capacity to wage a successful armed struggle against the current regime for various reasons. Nevertheless, one can observe the early symptoms of individualism and intolerance in their political rhetoric and outright condemnation and criminalization of independent Eritrean opposition activists who promote non-violent struggle. This suggests, if the culture of intolerance is maintained, the opposition camp may impose dictatorial rules by violent means in the future. It is for this reason that the pro-democracy non-violent movement should not shy away from peacefully challenging all adversaries including some leaders in the opposition camp. After all democratic change is not just about removing one party or leader and replacing them by another, but about spreading the culture of democracy both vertically and horizontally.
Non-violent struggle is deep rooted in the Eritrean contemporary political history. In 1940s the Muslim-League led Independence Bloc (an umbrella for pro-independence Eritrean parties) was a non-violent movement. The Bloc succeeded in rallying Eritreans from all walks of life for the cause of independence and in sowing the seeds for liberation from foreign colonialism. In 1958, when the Ethiopian monarch began consolidating its violation of the UN-imposed federal union between Eritrea and Ethiopia (1952-1962), and decided to lower the Eritrean legitimate flag (blue ground with green olive branch emblem, which, ironically, is still detested by the current tyrants), Eritreans resolved to fight back through a non-violent trade union and political movement. It was at this time that the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM – commonly known as cell of 7 ማሕበርሸውዓተin Southern Highlands and as حركةmovement in the lowlands) was launched as a non-violent pro-independence democratic patriotic movement. In post 1991, soon after Eritrea’s full liberation from Ethiopian occupation, the ELF-RC, and later G13, G15, EPDP and other parties and groups have consciously took the decision to pursue non-violent strategies to challenge and expose the Eritrean regime. In addition to its numerous benefits, the non-violent strategy is therefore well rooted in the Eritrean struggle for justice and independent democratic state.
The following can be listed as summarized advantages of non-violent means of struggle:-
•It deprives violent tyrants of legitimacy and justifications to rule against their people’s will
•It gives space for people to own the struggle as well as the outcome of the struggle, whereas in violence scenarios ownership of the means of struggle as well as the outcome often falls in the hands of the conflicting parties. Somalia, CDR (former Zaire) and Libya can be cited as examples of how violence between conflicting parties may lead to state failures
•It draws local and international public sympathy when the conflict is between tyrants and unarmed civilians, instead of tyrants and armed opposition groups
•It paves the way for smooth transition towards democratisation. In the absence of violence people and their legitimate representatives would be able to discuss and agree to manage transition towards democratisation without fear of repercussions from armed groups and war-lords
•It minimises bloodshed, hate and endless conflicts based on people’s cultural, regional or religious identities (e.g. Lebanon/Somalia/Syria)
•It promotes mature political discourse, rule of law and justice mobilisation
Non-violence tools available to Diaspora Eritreans:-
1. Diaspora public mobilisation can effectively help deprive the pfdj tyrannical regime of the 2% income tax and other financial resources that they generate from Eritreans. Public awareness raising events such as holding rallies and demonstrations, seminars and conferences such as the Bologna conference to discuss and promote ideas and solutions for our country’s problems contribute a great deal to the democratisation efforts. In recent years Eritrean activists have been using creative non-violent means to reach out to our people inside Eritrea through telephone calling campaign known as “Freedom Friday” ( ዓርቢሓርነትجمعة الحرية) where random calls are made to thousands in Eritrea encouraging them to express their rejection of tyranny by staying at home on Friday evenings.
2. Media – the role of media is crucial in informing the public and raising awareness as well as exposing and challenging tyrants. Media tools include Radio, TV, CDs, DVDs, Internet, Arts (including drama, poem, music, paintings etc.). Dictators in general and the Eritrean tyrant in particular fear independent media more than any other opposition movement, e.g. PFDJ media avoidance of Arab-Spring news, banning of Aljazeera TV broadcasting in public places after the Forto 21 January 2013 movement can be mentioned as some examples of the regime’s paranoia and fear of truth . Also the effective role played by cyber media outlets such as awate.com can not be underestimated in breaking the fear barrier as well as in promoting open political discussions among Eritreans.
The focus should therefore be on building media institutions that can effectively contribute to the struggle for change towards democratisation.
3. Diplomacy:This tool can be used based on two approaches:-
a. Institutional Diplomacy (e.g. lobbying governments, human rights organisations, parties through inter-party friendships etc.)
b. People’s Diplomacy (e.g. lobbying local parliamentarians, including use of voting and other civic rights) to promote our people’s cause.
Any Potential Role for PFDJ Members?
It is difficult to describe the PFDJ as a political party. That is because it does not function like one. Since its creation in 1994, the “party” held no congress or central committee/leadership meetings. Its tyrant leader is the only authority with unlimited power to dismiss, imprison and eliminate any party member, including those who are members of the leadership. e.g. G15, Abdallah Jaber, Mostafa Nour-Hussein etc. The party’s situation and absence of basic party functions was eloquently confirmed by Dr. Assefaw Tekheste, ex-EPLF and PFDJ member, during the Bologna conference.
All indicators in the last few years show that there is a growing pro-democracy movement inside Eritrea and within the PFDJ camp. The existence and role of pro-democracy movements inside Eritrea can be seen in the fast increasing loss of public support for the tyrannical regime. This movement may not be adequately visible with organisational and leadership structures, but their work can be seen in the dwindling numbers of those participating in pfdj festivals in the Diaspora, challenging questions they raise during meetings with pfdj leaders, and the continuous imprisonments of hundreds of pfdj members inside Eritrea.
Unlike violent movements where the resolve would be to wipe out one another, the non-violent movement’s strategy is inherently to “convert” and win over the “enemy”. This means, PFDJ members, institutions and supporters are potential pro-democracy forces that we should work hard to win over and deprive the tyrant of their support. This guarantees victory and also helps the transition towards democratisation process.
A Word of Thanks to EYSC and few points for our collective consideration
EYSC deserve special thanks for pulling together a conference that was “fruitful, flexible and fun” as they planned.
It is good that such conferences will be held annually. I reiterate the suggestion I made during the final moments of the conference that future events should not be exclusive to all opposition groups and individuals only, but should also be open to PFDJ members and supporters, if willing to participate in. Engagement and communication is half way towards building mutual understanding and cooperation for common good. The annual Bologna Forum may further be used to raise awareness of challenges facing our country such as the economy of a mal-administered and war-torn country, youth unemployment, transitional justice, foreign policy etc.
It is crucial for members of the non-violent pro-democracy movement to come together under one umbrella platform to coordinate their efforts and strengthen their networks based on common guiding principles.
The non-violent movement should seek to constructively engage those who opted for armed struggle or who entertain and promote such views. They are not enemies, and their views may be based on anger and frustration, rather than on well studied strategies.
I hope we are all able to use the next Bologna Forum event to report on tangible progress made between now and then.
Last week began with what appeared to be a curious finding by some pro-regime of the Eritrean diaspora, in the form of a letter dated September 17, 1945 and addressed to the then US secretary of state James F. Byrnes from the then President of a USA based Sinclair Oil Corporation (a company now known as Sinclair Oil Refinery Corporation), that attempted to sway US policy on the issue of Eritrean independence. The week ended with a six hour long interview by President Isaias Afwerki with the nation’s media, aired live from the President’s office.
The President’s interview has apparently not been reported, at the time of writing this article, by its diaspora based pro-regime news outlets as well as its dedicated cadres that normally clutter social media spaces with snippets of the regime’s propaganda materials. In addition, the interview, the final part of which was aired today (Sunday September 8, 2013), has sent a wave of speculations, as regards the possible normalization of relations between Ethiopia /Eritrea, among discussants of awate.com’s discussion forum.
IA’s latest interview, lengthy as it may, might be considered to fall under two broad categories: a declared re-structuring of the regime’s party owned business enterprises and an implied change of policy towards a long time regional arch-rival Ethiopia. The full political impact of what has been delivered, by way of an atypically scheduled interview, is yet to unfold. Many assertions that were being drummed up by the regime’s own emissaries in the diaspora, i.e. with intent to camouflage the worsening economic situation in Eritrea, were shuttered one after another during that interview. For example, the Eritrean Ambassador to the UK, Tesfamichael Gerahtu has recently been on record, speaking to VOA, claiming that the power shortages in Eritrea were natural manifestation due to his alleged expansion of the economy; as well as basic maintenance issues that were claimed to be common everywhere else in the world. Other pro-regime activists were also writing similar themed papers to explain away the situation that the country continues to experience. During his interview, IA described the situation as “crisis” and his regime’s current handling of the problem was likened to “a crisis management”.
On agriculture, IA pulled the rug from under the pro-regime activist’s main talking point, which is that Eritrea has attained food self-sufficiency. In fact, to the contrary, he stated that even with all the capacity combined, including those that have been accumulated over the years, Eritrea is nowhere near attaining food self-sufficiency. The interview paints a grim picture of the current reality of the state of the country’s economy in almost all of the vital sectors. Fishing and related sectors were described by IA to be underdeveloped to the point of having no such thing as fishing capacity to speak of. The ports were said to be dilapidated and incapable of meeting local demands, let alone regional or international demands. Asmara airport was said to be useless and described as nothing more than a financial liability. In fact, according to IA’s own ranking, he rated Asmara airport below that of Tesseney airport, one that is not even in service. IA also stated that everything, from basic lighting to major manufacturing activities in the country are paralyzed due to chronic power shortages.
In relation to the private sector of the economy, the President who ruled the nation with an iron-grip for over two decades, menacingly asserted that many of those citizens who aspired to engage in businesses were in fact engaging in an illegal and crooked undertakings. He blamed that his decision to shut off the private sector was largely due to what he believed to be of untrustworthy practices of those who invested on what he considered useless ventures, such as retail and hospitality sectors and lacked the required capital to invest in the manufacturing sector. The regime of IA is known to be notorious in the expropriation of private businesses. Investor guides that are published by external agencies often cite the case of the Asmara Intercontinental Hotel saga where the regime revoked the business contract of the management to later re-open the hotel as a party owned establishment. IA also blamed corrupt officials of his administration for expanding illegal business activities in the country.
In relation to the health sector, the President defended his actions to ban private health provision on grounds that those receiving services in the public sector were not being looked after as well as those opting for private treatment. He accused Eritrean health professionals of being in lacking of basic “ethical” and “moral” values in the way they carry out their practice within the private sector setting. He expressed his admiration of medical professionals in the Sudan and other countries whom he considered to have far higher moral and ethical standards than their Eritrean counterparts. The president also cast doubts as to the competence of Eritrean doctors to provide private sector health provision. It is to be remembered that even during the Ethiopian occupation, and many years thereafter, there were so many well-known Eritrean health professionals that have also provided outstanding services in the private sector. Nowadays, just like any other citizen, Eritrean doctors are required to patrol streets at night carrying AK-47 Kalashnikovs.
In connection to the construction sector, the President lamented the corrupt and greedy nature of those who sell or rent premises as well as those who intend to invest in the construction sector. He accused land owners of illegal activities as well as being backward and not knowing the true value of the land. This is presumably the reasons that the dictator had to intervene to ban all construction activities. Such a ban also included those people who purchased construction rights from the regime in good faith but were later cheated out of the deal.
Regarding water shortages in the capital and environs, the president contended that it is the people who needed to go to where the water is and not the other way around. He criticized the residents, who are going without water supply for months on end, for being inconsiderate of other fellow citizens who live in remote parts of the country, who are even far worse off than themselves. The president did not have any foreseeable plans to present at the interview; rather he condemned the greed and inconsiderate nature of those complaining about the water shortages.
The president was upbeat about the prospect of fiber technology that is claimed to being introduced in the telecommunications sector. He did not, however, illustrate how the project was being financed or what made it a priority in the face of the dire realities of a nation going for broke.
In relation to the forceful arming of civilians and the economic losses being suffered by those who have to attend daily training as well as duties of guarding regime buildings, IA denied that such cases were widespread occurrences. It is a well-known fact that the regime threatens to shut business premises, if owners fail to send their employees to receive fire arms. Many services in Asmara and other cities are often held off during en-mass rounding of citizens or other activities related to the civilian arming, trainings and guard duties.
Reacting to a question relating to the mining revenuesgenerated so far, IA was initially seemed to be confused and unable to understand the term “mining revenue disclosure”, and soon launched into what appeared to be tirades of verbal abuse which alleged that the people forget to factor in the fact that the mining company’s declared revenues don’t actually translate into final payouts and that the government has been underpaid to the extent of potentially having to reconsider existing mining agreements. IA, also lamented the lack of sense by those asking for the revenues to be declared, in that they fail to appreciate the fact that his regime actually spends billions of dollars a year in subsidy and development projects. He dismissed whatever revenue was being asked to be accounted for, as something that wouldn’t even meet the nation’s six months energy expenditure. He dismissed the question as immature.
The president has also answered questions regarding the human trafficking ordeals of the Eritrean youth. His responses to such questions are omitted here. The reason for the omission is to do with the fact that the IA regime is currently under investigation by multiple UN empowered monitoring bodies that are tasked to ascertain the extent of the regime’s complicity in those acts.
All in all, it was clear that IA had no intention of dealing with the above mentioned questions, i.e. other than to degrade, humiliate and threaten the populace with the regime’s well established acts of severe violations in human rights.
On Ethiopia
Perhaps, his sudden shift of tone towards Ethiopia, the references that IA made concerning some signed “contract” to develop the port of Assab, the complete silence regarding the border demarcation, the reference to Ethiopian government as “goblel” roughly meaning big guy, as opposed to what he used to call them, “kedemti” meaning housemaids, and many other cues have led to wild speculations that the regime is [or has] already taken steps to mend relations. IA has spoken of Ethiopia’s right to use the Nile for the millennium dam and belittled some of the technical concerns raised by Egypt and the Sudan. Throughout his interview, IA argued the seriousness of the power shortages that Eritrea is faced with, and spoke positively regarding the prospects of Ethiopia’s proposal to generate electricity to meet its own needs and export to regional countries.
Gone are the “mekhete” mantra and in comes “Complementary and Durable peace”.
Gone are “resolute rebuff” and in comes mutually beneficial regional projects.
Gone are the last 12 years “Woyane conspiracy” and in comes the post-cold war uni-polar hegemony over the last 20 years.
Gone are “Weyane invaded Somalia” and in comes “regional countries might have intervened for national security considerations”
Gone are “national defense” and in comes “nation building” over generations to come.
Bad stories have been always told not to be repeated again. An author of a political science fiction or theoretical political ideas usually can be characterized as a highly intellectual personality or an idiot master of confusion. Nowadays in the Eritrean political arena and media outlets, we are the eyewitnesses of both cases. Unfortunately, there are many of the latter.
I heard the exceptionally gifted founder of Awate.com Mr. Saleh “Gadi” Johar explaining to his audience the reason, why he publishes his articles and books in English, but not in Tigrinya. He said” because the problems comes from the elite of our society”. Hmmm…. well, if this is the solely reason, although I am a German native speaker, but rather not fluent in English in comparison to the crème a la crème writers, we have around us, I will continue to write in English to reach out the pseudo intellectualsand the genuine with a beautiful mind outside there. To distinguish myself from both leagues mentioned above, my article figures out the natural and vital instrumental ideas, in order to yield a basic change in a political, cultural and socio-economical disoriented society, as ours. You are requested to consider my objectives rather as brainstorming and intellectual approach of guidelines, but not as an ultimate solution of the substantial devastating acute problems, we have. Therefore, please don’t regard the outlined objectives as the four J. C. Maxwell’s main equations of electrodynamics in physics. I am not a historian to summarize for you the state of art of the Eritrean political history of our struggle for independence and democracy, which might help to understand the core idea of my thesis. My intellectual approach has come up extempore. To get the best suggestions for improvement that have been made about the status quo of the Eritrean opposition parties and the analysis of the problems in the Eritrean society, you are recommended to hear and read the work of Mr. Amanuel Eyasu (Eritrean, no government & no opposition) at Assenna.com and the manifesto of the “Eritrean Civic Democratic Movement” by Mr. Merid Zeru, Kidane Hagos, Dawit Geberemesekel et al. Nevertheless, I made my choice to disclose my visions of goodwill, hope and deliverance for a better tomorrow of the Eritrean people. In addition, as the Germans use to say “Glueck ist, wenn Vorbereitungauf Gelegenheittrifft” (Luck is when preparation meets opportunity). Therefore, it is reasonable to draft a future road-map, which depends on complimentary globally thinking and a conceptual locally acting philosophy, to transform the nation from the present state to a developed nation of peace and prosperity.
Here are my four main objectives:
1.Gender equity by occupying political key positions by women to end up the paternalistic and patriarchal orientation of our society.
2.Abrogation of the Military as at constitutional ratification in democratic Eritrea.
3.Creating sustainable national assets of Eritrea by cultivating its human resources.
4.The Eritrean National Council for Democratic Change (ENCDC) should be restructured and amended to an action oriented one. A parallel vote system should be launched to form its executive body too.
Objective No.1
Recently gender equity is worldwide subject of controversial discussion. In India a mass protest of women has come about due to repeatedly sexual harassment of underage girls in public places. The shocking and insupportable facet of the situation is the acceptance of the misdeeds by the majority of the India population and their casualness for the destiny of the victims. Additionally, there is the defensive attitude of the sexual offenders. They justify their evil deeds by assuming themselves as the victims of the young girls’ seduction. The policemen watch idly, when a female begs them to help her. Sometimes, they tried even to discredit and unmask the complainer to protect the honor of the accused man. Damn! What is next to come?
India is recognized by the western world as world’s biggest democratic nation. Surely gender equity is a topic in the Indian national constitution. Nevertheless, here we have observed disobeying of law by the tributaries as well as by the police. To find the reason of the contempt of law, we don’t need to dig deeper in general psycho of the Indian population or the structure of the Indian society. It is obvious in paternalistic and patriarchal orientated underdeveloped society; males are favored and protected in comparison to the weak sex by unwritten law.
Well in Eritrea, as a war torn country, we have to assume sexual harassment as a daily business. Although Eritrean women have fought bravely beside their brothers against the occupation of Ethiopian soldiers, the regime in Eritrea failed to realize gender equity in its real sense. We just observe some fistful female puppets shaped to serve the dictator at high official positions. If gender equity was ratified and verified during the revolution in Eritrea by ELF/EPLF and to my imagination at the wildest times and places of the nation, then I would like to ask, what is the reason, why Eritrean women are disrespected and their human rights have been violated by their male colleagues aftermath to our independence? I assume a profound domination of the unwritten law of a paternalistic and patriarchal orientated society in Eritrea, which still exists in our brains, is the answer. One of my suggestions to overthrow the paternalistic and patriarchal thoughts and practices from our society, in order to avoid their side effects, is by launching a 50% of Women’s quota at any of the upcoming national elections in the future. This percentage should not have to be compromised in ratifying it in our national constitution by carrying it immediately afterwards to the issue of human dignity. Disregarding the ambitions of men to own political power to satisfy their chauvinism, their genetically disposition towards aggression, matters. A sustainable peaceful coexistence with our neighbor countries could only be based on a diplomatic mutual support and respect. We have to create an environment to maintain this by involving many of the weak sex in every national decision to be conducted in the future.The last but not least, the first democratic Eritrean president should be a female. From practical point of view; we Eritreans admire beauty, eloquence, strength in taking decision. These are some of the properties that every Eritrean woman owns. After all Eritrean men appreciate the love, respect, security feeling and the devotion of our mothers. We are seeking for a political mother figure, which is able to bring the quarreled brothers together anticipating national reconciliation by creating a sense of equality and justice in the Eritrean population. Such personality with good sense for governance will make visible differences in comparison to the atrocity and ugliness of the tyrant. I am calling for more audacity and civil-courage for matriarchal and less paternalistic and patriarchal forms of policies in Eritrea. I am aware of the principles of western direct and indirect democracy of the political philosophersJean-Jacques Rousseauand C. de S. Baron de Montesquieu are based on the nature of human beings but not on gender. They use to argument whether human beings are naturally good or evil that they have to be free or monitored, respectively. Thomas Hobbes had more radical attitude towards human beings in natural state (homo homini lupus). I like to remind you that these political philosophers did not consider the ability and capability of women when they have written their theoretical masterpiece. At that time women were not allowed to vote. I could give you a lot of examples to convince you. One short example should be enough not to overflow the scope of this topic. There is a female president of a civil war torn country Liberia, Mrs. Dr. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Look how this woman managed to bring the quarreling parties, warlords, bandits and war veterans together at a round table. She is sometimes annoyed and roars of rage due to misdeeds of the warlords in her country. The men always try to calm her down and they bring their concerns respectfully by calling her with a mellow voice” Ma” for Mother.
Objective No. 2
The abrogation of the Eritrean military force as a constitutional ratification in democratic Eritrea will be a hazard. In this case audacity of hope is the slogan. I am aware of the achievement of our independence through a hard bitter prolonged armed struggle. We paid high dues of martyrdom with lives of thousands innocent young people. No question that was the right decision made by suppressed people longing for freedom against the archaic invaders. Few years after our independence we continued to solve emerged conflicts with our neighbors with guns. A disposition for peaceful conflict management using international laws or diplomatic tools has never existed. This comes to state due to our learned mechanism to solve conflicts with elbow and guns. The territorial sovereignty of our country is accredited since 1993 by the United Nations. The regime in Eritrea abused the idea of self protection from pretending foes to launch a lifetime military service. We know that, first the regime wants to extend its lifetime by starting war against pretending foes. Second, the regime wants to keep the youth out of the cities to prevent agitations initiated by students. Third, the regime wanted to keep the education level of the country very low. Because high education level of population provides a fertile soil for implementation of democratization process. Thus, lifetime military service has resulted into a slavery of the conscripts, decomposition of the social interacts, decay of the education level, damage of the economic and health sectors of the country, etc. The consequences are mass refugees (displacement), degradation of our good reputation and loss of our national identity.
The cure-all for these problems:
ØReduction and limitation of quantity and time of military service to the lowest level.
ØRatification of abrogation of the military as at constitution in democratic Eritrea.
Well, I am sure, you are asking yourself, from where the hell and why after all this mad idea comes to state. In 2012 there was a scientific survey in many different parts of the world; about whether people are happy and satisfied with their lives in their countries? The answer depends on many factors, like health, freedom, social relationship, security and prosperity after all.
According to the survey, the people of Scandinavian countries were the happiest and most satisfied with their lives, followed by Costa Rica. What? Excuse me; Costa Rica the poorest country of the world has the second happiest and most satisfied population of the World: before Germany and Switzerland.
Now open the page of Wikipedia and inform yourself about Costa Rica.
To your information since 1949 Costa Rica has no military force. President José F. Ferrer of Costa Rica ratified the abrogation of the military as at constitution to joining the TIAR-treaty with USA. Since 2010 Costa Rica has a female President. Costa Rica has a population with a high education level compared to the most Latin American countries. Costa Rica has a peaceful and democratic presidential system, where the elections of the president take place once every four years without repetition.
Objective No. 3
Today education is the key to an adequate life as ever before. It is important to have a society with strong knowledge and volition of permanent learning to stay competitive in a world and time of globalization.
My suggestion: we have to create a sustainable society by cultivating and educating our human resources as the solely national asset of Eritrea. Do you think I am coming up with a bad idea at a time of bonanza of the natural resources in Eritrea? I think it is time to confront ourselves with reality, before things go wrong / bad. Natural resources can be used temporarily to generate hard currency to run a country. Disregarding thereof to provoke a devastating environmental pollution, corruption, exploitation of men power, civil wars and border strike due to jealousy, natural resources are simply limited and not forever. The populations of third world countries, who are dependent of their natural resources, are amongst the poorest and war torn in the world. Natural resources can be regarded as curse. For example the natural resources of Democratic Republic of Congo are estimated to ca. 24 Trillion USD. Yet Congo is the country where poverty of the population flourishes and civil wars rage. Hereby you can assume an international intervention due to the vital mineral Coltan (Columbit-Tantalit) in Congo provoked by mobile phones producer multinational companies. The estimated natural resources of democratic republic of Congo are much higher compared to that of our country. Since 2010 the Eritrean national income from Becha gold mines was more than one billion USD. If we regard the economic development index in Eritrea, life is becoming harsh and no improvement of life style and infrastructure or civil constructions can be depicted, despite gold production and sellout. This happens in Eritrea for the same reasons, I mentioned above. Second example is Ghana. It is the second largest gold producer in the world after South Africa. Ghana is to a certain degree democratic and peaceful, but not rich. You will assume for guaranteed other national assets in Eritrea like crude oil, fishery, tourism and seaports’ or marine’s business too. But such businesses and natural resources have also many African countries, e.g. Kenya, Angola Sierra-Leone, etc. Let us focus on the future sustainable energy technique, the sun technology or photovoltaic in Eritrea. About two decades ago western engineers found out the rate of yield of photovoltaic electric energy at the Denkalia regions in Eritrea was the highest of the world. This has to do with the period and quantity of sun radiation as well as the angle of incidence of sun radiation (Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane). This will enable us to produce more than enough electric energy for us and the region. To develop such sustainable energy technique requires a high level of interdisciplinary knowledge of mathematics, physics and chemistry, electrotechnology, geology, meteorology, metreology, mechanical engineering, Informatics and so on of our nationals. Do you understand now why we have to regard and take our human resources as the only national assets of our country? Here are some of the successful countries, which regard and developed their human resources as the only national assets: Japan, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, Malaysia etc.
Do you have any knowledge, why the regime in Eritrea invests a lot of USD to cultivate and indoctrinate the Diaspora Young-PFDJ members, while wasting and abandoning the young people in Eritrea? Herewith I am requesting from you to persuade and to assist our young new refugees to get higher education, in case one day the country becomes free of the totalitarian regime and we do not have to start from the nil. It is a crime to dissipate such Eritrean future intellectual potential, by letting them work in hotel rooms and pedestrians of the western countries.
Objective No. 4
The Eritrean National Council for Democratic Change should be restructured amended to an action oriented one immediately. A parallel vote system should be launched to form its executive body too. I said these words on a Smerr-Paltalk presentation, when I came there to gave a speech to address the Eritrean Diaspora (Deleyti-Fetihi) regarding the Hizbawi-Festival 2013 in Kassel/Germany on the 4th of January 2013.The ENCDC delegations have failed to manage the tasks and objectives, which have been given by the Eritrean People to them. I believe this comes to state beside, not confidential voting system, lack of checks and balances, lack of its judicative institution, mainly due to the personal incompetence of the leadership and generally the members of the assembly too. The ENCDC leadership is not exceptionally gifted by nature with soft skills to lead the nation and solve its problems with diplomatic tools of conflict management. Eritreans were not good head hunters during the formation of ENCDC in Awasa/Ethiopia, I’m afraid. We have to form an action oriented National Council, that means to bring the right man or woman in to the right position. It is very important in this case to ignore involving all kind of political parties, ethnical groups and civic societies in to the leadership for the sake of democratization. We have to make our choice to take the best of the best into the leadership position. What we need is a knight fencing against backwardness and injustice to save our souls from the totalitarian regime in Eritrea as soon as possible. I still believe in restructured and amended ENCDC will be able to get rid of the dictator and be an umbrella organization of all of the opposition camp as an alternative until the democratic transformation of the nation is done. Participation of the people should be guaranteed by making a parallel vote of the leadership of the executive body of the Council. By now I do not see any reason to dissolve the ENCDC to create another umbrella organization. As I have explained on the date above, you don’t destroy and rebuild your palace, when your palace’s leaser damaged it..…You have to dismiss the leaser and amend the palace. And before given your palace to another leaser, you have to ensure the next leaser is the best of his category. In case the ENCDC leadership repeated the violation of law as we have observed twice in their legislation, the Eritrean People should be bold enough to impose resolution of no confidence against ENCDC leadership to dissolve them.
Last week, Eritrean journalist Mohammed Taha Tewekel was in Djibouti to press Djiboutian authorities to improve the living conditions of Eritrean detainees, prisoners of war (POWs) and refugees.
Djiboutian authorities declared that they have dealt with more than 500 Eritreans who were members of the Eritrean military. Out of those, 235 have already been settled in third countries such as Canada, USA and Europe; Djibouti is working on the files of the remaining persons to have them settled in third countries. Djibouti also calls on the international community to pressure Eritrea to disclose the whereabouts of Djiboutian detainees, POWs of the border battle between Eritrea and Djibouti in April 2008.
According to Tewekel, there are 265 POWs and detainees who escaped from the military service in Eritrea and are now housed in the Police Academy detention center. According to him, the Eritreans are held in three centers.
The first group is composed of 19 Eritrean POWs captured during the border conflict with Eritrea. One of them is suffering from mental sickness. The POWs have asked for a special room for him; Colonel Abdellah promised to arrange that.
The second group is composed of 90 detainees who are housed on the same location but separated from the POWs by a wall, while the third group is composed of 156 detainees who are housed in a camp about 1.5 kms away from the rest.
The living conditions in the camps is difficult in temperature that reaches 40 centigrade.
In his visit to the detention centers, Tewekel accompanied the chief of the Djiboutian police Colonel Abdellah; the detainees said he was the first high ranking official visiting them to see their conditions and listen to their complaints.
The POWs are concerned about their fate and they do not know for how long they will remain in detention or where they will go. They complained from lack of air conditioning, medication, and doctor’s visits. They also complained for not being allowed to sleep in the open to avoid the heat inside the rooms.
Colonel Abdellah gave them the choice to return to Eritrea through the International Red Cross (IRC) if they so wished or wait to be settled in third countries. He said that Djibouti was talking to concerned parties such as the IRC which is responsible for the POWs. He also informed them that he will see to it that the rooms are air-conditioned and they are allowed to sleep in the open. As for medication, he said that it is the responsibility of the IRC.
The third group is in better condition but they wanted to know whether they were considered refugees or prisoners and why they are not housed together with the refugees because some of them are separated from their wives.
Colonel Abdella said they were refugees and soldiers but not POWs, and that they were separated from the rest of the refugees for extraordinary reasons due to the conflict with Eritrea, “but we deal with you as brethren.” Tewekel stated that in Eritrea, the entire population is militarized and the only civilian is Isaias Afwerki.
Colonel Abdellah promised to transfer the five civilians to the civilian camp.
According to Colonel Abdellah, Djibouti pays the accommodation expenses for the refugees and the detained.
Tewekel appeals to the Eritrean Diaspora to support the Eritreans detainees and refugees in Djibouti.
We are faced with the Liars Riddle. Two doors, one guarded by a compulsive liar, one guarded by a compulsive truth-teller. One door leads to heaven, one to hell. The guards are identical twins. Your objective is to go to heaven. If you could ask one, and only one question, who would you ask it to and what would it be? Answer at the end: unless you are impatient and Google it.
Let’s wait for the impatient to google it. Meanwhile, here is Abulhalim Hafez and his song Qariat al finjal (fortune teller) which is appropriate for our subject:
Your eyes are not deceiving you: the song is 1 hour and 20 minutes long.
Why, of course, Eyob, I know how much you love Egypt, I shall share a stanza:
Your fate is to forever walk
In love, over the blade of a dagger
And to stay lonely, like a shell,
And to stay sad, like a willow tree
We have our own riddle, which is why the clues from Isaias Afwerki’s latest interview have wide interpretations. This is the riddle: a man’s hold to absolute power is based to a large extent on being unpredictable. If people can guess your next move, they can checkmate you. To maintain your unpredictability, you must sometimes say things that you will do, and sometimes the exact opposite of what you will do. So, the options:
1. You give categorical statements that there will never, ever (not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow) be normalization with Ethiopia until it withdraws from Eritrean territories. Then you do it. Mission Accomplished: you are unpredictable.
2. You give clues, hints and direct statements that you are embracing interdependence over self-dependence. That change is coming. Then you don’t do it. Mission accomplished: you are unpredictable.
So, this is the fortune-telling that has been going on since last weekend. Our very able Haile, who summarized the interview for awate readers, seems to be persuaded that something is in the offing and he has been throwing us dots to connect them. The tone was different; Ethiopian leaders are no longer described as kedemti but goblel; there is focus on the importance of regional cooperation for nation-building; there has not been a denial and/or per-conditionality from Ethiopia: quite the opposite, the outgoing Ethiopian president told Voice of America that he intends to visit Asmara (as a private citizen, of course) and, the evidence suggests that the “self-reliance” policy has hit a dead-end (as it has in every country it was tried: North Korea, Tanzania, etc.)
This sounds all logical. But that is exactly the problem: logical, by definition, means rational, sequential, predictable. And that violates the first rule of Isaias Afwerki: do not be predicable. These are Isaias’s Rules:
1. Never do anything until you are absolutely, positively, completely cornered.
2. Never tell anybody in advance–never hint, never suggest, never imply–what your next move is going to be. Life is war and the element of surprise must always be maintained.
3. Whatever you do, do it in a way that humiliates Eritreans.
1. The “Is He Cornered?” Test
With respect to item 1 above, there is enough evidence that suggests he has hit a dead-end. Eritrea is essentially joining the Heavily Indebted countries club; every economic sector is in tatters and, most important to him, he has no leverage in the region: there are no Western countries courting him because they want him to protect their interest. The Ethiopian opposition is not kidnapping foreigners; the Somali pirates are not holding people for ransom; the Islamic fundamentalists have been de-clawed; Sudan and Somalia are RELATIVELY stabilized (because of, and despite, his efforts.)
The only card he’s got left is the Red Sea and whatever threats he had planned by threatening to bring Iran just didn’t work out because all Iran needed was to make token investments in Africa (including Eritrea) so it can get observer status membership in the African Union. Turkey knocked at the door–but Turkey will not do anything that puts the interests of the West at stake…so the Red Sea (and specially its ports, Massawa and Assab remain what they have been for the last 15 years: ghost towns.) The human trafficking route will likely trickle if the Egyptian government continues to assert itself in Sinai; we know how much money mining is generating (not much) and the Diaspora Tax (2%) seems to face hurdles. So, all in all, it appears like the walls are closing in.
2. The “Never Telegraph Your Next Move” Test
This is the riddle. I say part of what makes him unpredictable is that he never hints at his next move. But then, say Awatistas like Sabri and Haile, if he is always expected not tell us what to do, that in itself is predictable so, to be totally unpredictable, sometimes he must telegraph his next moves. Just because he has done things a certain way does not mean he will always do things a certain way: that is the very definition of predictability.
When I say “never telegraph your next move”, I mean it mostly in foreign policy. He does telegraph his next move very strongly when it comes to taking decisions he considers would be potentially unpopular. For example: the arrest of the G-15 twelve years ago this month. That one required an intense 9-month campaign of defamation–but that was NOT done in mass media (no television interview with the head of state.) It was done the Wahyo Way: “political seminars” of PFDJ cadres, civil servants and soldiers. Defame, isolate, disappear.
But for foreign policy? Nobody knew Eritrea would reconcile with Sudan. Nobody knew Eritrea would go to war with Ethiopia. Nobody knew that Eritrea had withdrawn from IGAD until it did. And nobody knew Eritrea had returned to IGAD until it did. Whatever conditions existed when Eritrea withdrew to protest something IGAD did (failure to condemn Ethiopia for his forray in Somalia), remained when Eritrea returned. Nobody was given a signal that Eritrea would recognize the government of Somalia–after repeated and categorical statement that it was “mengisti Mogadishu“, that we recognize only one Somalia (including Puntland and Somaliland.)
3. The “Humiliation Test”
This takes me to my last test: whatever reversals he does, Isaias always does them in a way that inflicts maximum humiliation on Eritreans and the reputation of the State of Eritrea. I know there are people who believe that this is by design, that he hates the Eritrean people and they give heritage stories, but I am not into that. It is simply the inevitable outcome of a man who believes that you can always defer decisions until the very last second, and that you must not consult with ANYONE about your decision. (And I do mean ANYONE: those of you who believe people like Yemane Gebreab are insiders who know everything just need to revisit the story of what happened when Naizghi Kflu died: Yemane Gebreab assured Naizghi’s wife that her husband would be buried in Eritrea, then he was reminded that he is a nobody and not authorized to give such assurances.)
Now, do I need to go through the entire list of humiliating reversals? I think not because they will just poke the wounds of Eritreans, specially war veterans. But I will give a few that are not designed to hurt, but shake our heads in amazement:
I. Eritrea- US Relations
a. In 2001, Eritrea accused US envoy Anthony Lake of colluding with the G-15 in an attempt to assassinate Isaias Afwerki.
b. In 2002-2003, Eritrea spent 600,000 (USD) on an American lobby firm to convince the US to establish a military base in Eritrea. Isaias told an American journalist (who was telling his readers that the US is choosing between Yemen and Eritrea, that Eritrea would be a better choice) that he, Isaias, believes the presence of America is necessary in the Horn of Africa. He told a visiting US Defense Minister that “the sky is the limit” as to the help Eritrea would extend the US. The US ended up choosing Djibouti.
c. Because the US didn’t live up to its perceived role in guaranteeing the implementation of the EEBC, Isaias went on a rampage and he started telling a new version of history. He criticized the Iraq War (despite the fact that he had said the only mistake the US made was in seeking UN approval before attacking Iraq and that Eritrea was one of the few African countries which joined the “coalition of the willing”); he criticized the hegemonic role of the US (a hegemonic role he had actively courted).
d. He rejected repeated offers by Secretary Clinton to engage.
e. Thus, the only country which could have vetoed the sanction (the US) was behind it after his repeated attempts to frustrate it and its goals in Somalia.
II. Eritrea-Djibouti Relations
a. He repeatedly denied to the UN that he had a war with Djibouti and he repeatedly rejected its call that he engage Djibouti.
b. Eritrea was sanctioned partly as a result of its refusal to deal with the Djibouti skirmish.
c. He accepted Qatar’s mediation agreement to resolve Eritrea’s dispute with Djibouti– an agreement that addresses border delimitation and exchange of prisoners of war. How can you have prisoners of war if there is no war?
d. To this day, his media refuses to acknowledge the war, the prisoners of war, or even the mediation agreement.
III. Eritrea-Somalia relations
a. The government of Isaias Afwerki repeatedly said that it would never recognize the government of Somalia.
b. It was supporting, hosting all kinds of “stakeholders” in Asmara and Isaias went out on a limb saying that “Al Shabab” are not terrorists–even after they had pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden
c. Now he recognizes the government of Somalia. There was no interview about this, no policy change: simply a letter from Eritrea’s ambassador to the UN, Araya Desta, addressed as a rebuttal to the monitoring group’s report.
So, the real question now is: is Isaias Afwerki stalling, lying when he is hinting about complementarity, and given the context–energy–that can only mean Ethiopia?
That’s the riddle and, as the pundits like to say when they are stumped, “time will tell.” (Duh.) Personally, I do not think anything will come out of it because it doesn’t meet Test 2 and Test 3 above. What is more likely to happen, if it happens, is a sudden and abrupt change. And, when it does, the interview will not be with Eri-TV but Ethiopian state television. (Must pass test 3 above.)
Now, the answer to the Liar’s riddle (for those of you who were patient): you ask one of the twin guards (it doesn’t matter who), “hey, if I ask the other guard which door leads to heaven, what would his answer be?” And then you pick the opposite of what he says. Too bad, Eritrea doesn’t have, yet, the anti-thesis to Isaias’s thesis.
Over labor day weekend, while most of the City of Davis was out of town vacationing for the holiday, UC Davis became the site for a large youth conference organized by the government of what is often referred to in the media as “Africa’s North Korea.”[1]
Davis is a small college town nestled in the Sacramento Valley of northern California. It is home to about 65,000 residents, approximately half of whom are students enrolled at the University of California Davis (UC Davis). Davis is known for being progressive, liberal, eco-conscious, and bike-friendly. Most recently, UC Davis drew international attention when student protestors were pepper-sprayed by campus police. A photo taken during the protest of an officer spraying a line of students seated on the pavement nearly reached iconic status as a representation of modern day peaceful protest and police brutality. But, for the most part, Davis doesn’t draw too much attention to itself. Its residents often compare Davis (affectionately) to an insulated bubble.
Over the course of the long weekend, the Eritrean ruling party, which is to say the government, hosted its ninth annual conference for the Young People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (YPFDJ), which is a youth organization that aims to “build a strong, conscious and patriotic Eritrean youth movement.”
As an Eritrean descendent living in North America, I decided to attend one evening of the conference at the invitation of conference organizers. A presentation entitled “Human Rights and Eritrea’s Image” was scheduled for that evening. Having studied, researched and worked with international human rights law, it was quite serendipitous that I happened to sit in on the human rights presentation.
What I hoped would be a conversation about charges of serious human rights violations in Eritrea turned out to be little more than an hour of indoctrination and rhetorical sidestepping on critical issues. Not only were known big-ticket items not even mentioned (such as indefinite military conscription;[2] severe restriction of freedom of speech, press, association and religion; [3] frequent disappearances;[4] forced labor;[5] the detention of political prisoners;[6] and the shoot-to-kill policy for people attempting to leave Eritrea without authorization[7]), but panelists denied outright the occurrence of human rights events of significant proportions including ongoing human trafficking in the Sinai desert,[8] an attempted military coup by 100 armed personnel that took place in January 2013,[9] and the UN’s allegation that 10,000 political prisoners are held in Eritrea.[10]
As I sat there in Freeborn Hall witnessing what I realized was a foreign government actively brainwashing several hundred young people, it occurred to me that no one else probably knew this was happening. Unlike the first eight annual conferences that were all held in major metropolitan areas with substantial dissenting diaspora communities, this year’s conference was in Davis, California. There were very few people in Davis – particularly over the long weekend – to protest, witness or even notice what Eritrea was doing in Freeborn Hall. With this report, I hope to bring to light the significant events of that evening so that they do not fade away into the forgotten history of a small college town in northern California.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the embassy’s human rights presentation was its delivery. The presenters mainly spoke about Eritrea’s image, the peoples’ collective right to self-determination, and the state’s freedom from interference by the international community. The presenters set the stage by signaling that the audience ought to be thankful for Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia and colonization. The evening opened up with a skit honoring the freedom fighters (or “martyrs”) that died during Eritrea’s 30-year war of independence. One young performer thanked the martyrs “for giving us the freedom that we have today.” Before the words “human rights” had even been uttered, the audience was already primed to experience a sense of gratitude for not living during the time of colonization and occupation, thereby drawing attention away from the severe human rights violations that are taking place today in Eritrea.
Rhetorically, human rights were not discussed as the freedoms and rights of individuals living in Eritrea. Instead, human rights were referred to as a “political ploy” of the international community and the United States “to destabilize nations” such as Eritrea. The panelists were asked what words came to mind when they thought about human rights. They answered: “self-determination”, “dignity”, “right to associate” and “justice.” This selection of words is more closely associated with collective and national rights than the rights of individuals. They did not include more individualized human rights concepts such as freedom of speech, freedom of movement, or freedom of civil and political participation.
Very early on in the presentation, the embassy made it clear that the human rights discussion would be about the state’s rights against other states, and the peoples’ right to be free of foreign occupation or control. Nothing suggested that a conversation would ensue about Eritrea’s mandatory program of indefinite military conscription, the government’s prohibition of practicing any religion other than the four that are registered with the state, or the fact that in 2001 the government “destroyed Eritrea’s private press…and arrested its journalists.”[11]
The panelists then took a long irrelevant detour in which they presented a history of the development of human rights law. They criticized the UN’s Human Rights Council as being corrupt and too politically motivated. The panelists ended this tangent by criticizing the United States for not joining significant human rights instruments (i.e., conventions for the rights of women and children). Confusingly, the audience was then asked to determine whether Eritrea is in compliance with international human rights law by tallying up those countries that are not. Illogically, they suggested that Eritrea’s compliance is evidenced by the noncompliance of other nations.
Satisfied by its presentation of Eritrea’s compliance with human rights law, the panelists then turned to their second topic of little consequence to the issue of current human rights violations in Eritrea: the nation’s history of colonization and occupation by foreign states. They cited documented human rights violations against Eritreans by the Italians, Ethiopians and others, including the deportation and expropriation of the bodies and property of over 76,000 Eritreans by Ethiopian authorities. Here, the strategy of persuasion was 1) to discredit those states that accuse Eritrea of dire human rights violations by emphasizing their participation in past persecution against Eritreans, and 2) to derail the conversation from the most pressing human rights issues in Eritrea – those of modern times.
Perhaps the most troubling point in the presentation was when panelists, particularly a young medical student and self-proclaimed activist named Simon Tesfamariam, blatantly denied the occurrence of human trafficking in the Sinai desert or attempted military coup of January 2013. It was at this moment that the conference evolved rhetorically from avoidance and defensive language to outright conspiracy theories of re-occupation and neo-imperialism. That evening, I witnessed the active production of widespread fear and paranoia through a “them-versus-us” rhetoric of radicalism.
The international community’s concern about human trafficking of Eritreans in the Sinai desert was condemned as a political attempt to justify a reoccupation of Eritrea by Ethiopia or the United States. Simon Tesfamariam explicitly compared this to global campaigns used to justify colonization during the Scramble for Africa. He questioned the credibility of human trafficking claims and demanded the release of victims’ names and addresses as evidence, despite ample documentation and reporting on the issue.[12] The message was surprisingly clear: human trafficking of Eritreans is not happening in the Sinai desert, and a global campaign against human trafficking is merely a pretext to justify continued sanctions against Eritrea as well as its final eradication or occupation by foreign states.
Another panelist, Sophia Tesfamariam, criticized the recent UN Special Rapporteur’s report on human rights violations in Eritrea. She challenged the credibility of the report on the grounds that the appointed Rapporteur, Sheila B. Keetharuth, was biased due to her long employment with Amnesty International, where she worked extensively on human rights violations in Eritrea. Although, it seemed to me, that there would probably be few qualified candidates for the position than one who has extensively studied human rights in Eritrea.
The presentation ended with a message about the role of the young Eritrean diaspora in protecting Eritrea’s image. They were encouraged to participate in the global discussion of human rights through social media by responding to human rights allegations. The young audience was urged not to be silent when Eritrea is accused of human rights violations. Young members of the diaspora – who will undoubtedly play a significant part in shaping Eritrea’s future – attended that conference, and they were instructed to dismiss all accusations against Eritrea, even when such accusations are supported by insurmountable evidence. Fittingly, the presentation ended without any time allocated for direct questions from the audience.
[1]See, e.g., Nathaniel Myers, Africa’s North Korea, Foreign Policy(July/Aug. 2010), available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/21/africas_north_korea.
[2] Amnesty International, Eritrea,in Annual International Report 2012, 142, 143-144 (2012), available at http://files.amnesty.org/air12/air_2012_full_en.pdf.
[3] Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2013: Eritrea, http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/eritrea (“Eritrea continued to rank among the worst media environments in the world in 2012”); Human Rights Watch, World Report 2012: Eritrea, available at http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/eritrea_2012.pdf (“…the Eritrean government banned religious activities, except those organized by four registered religious organizations…it deposed the Orthodox patriarch…[and] appointed the current Sunny mufti”).
[4] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2011: Eritrea, available at http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2011/eritrea (“Many detainees simply ‘disappear’”).
[5] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2013: Eritrea, available at http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/eritrea (government uses conscripts for forced labor; conscripts do not complain because “we were afraid for our lives”).
[6]Eritrea: ’10,000 political prisoners in awful conditions’, British Broadcasting Company, May 9, 2013.
[7] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2013: Eritrea, available at http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/eritrea; Amnesty International, Eritrea,in Annual International Report 2012, 142, 144 (2012), available at http://files.amnesty.org/air12/air_2012_full_en.pdf.
[8]See U.S. Dept. of State, 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report – Eritrea, June 19, 2012, available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/4fe30ccc3c.html (“During the past three years, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Eritreans have escaped to refugee camps in eastern Sudan each month; traffickers seek out vulnerable Eritreans in the camps, some of whom were extorted and tortured as they were transported through the Sinai Peninsula”).
[9]See Jeffrey Gettleman, Coup Attempt by Rebel Soldiers Is Said to Fail in Eritrea, Jan. 21, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/world/africa/coup-attempt-fails-in-eritrea.html?_r=0 (“mutinous soldiers stormed the Ministry of Information and took over the state-run television service”).
[10]See Eritrea: ’10,000 political prisoners in awful conditions’, British Broadcasting Company, May 9, 2013.
[11] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2012: Eritrea, available at http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/eritrea_2012.pdf.
[12]See, e.g., Katie Nguyen, Number of Eritrean migrants seized, held for ranson on the rise, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Aug. 21, 2013, http://www.trust.org/item/20130821153659-f8ojr/; Katy Migiro, Traffickers attacking Eritrean refugees in Sudan – rights groups, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Jan. 31, 2013, http://www.trust.org/item/20130131110800-2ovgu/?source=hptop; Ashish Kumar Sen, Egypt: ‘In Sinai, I saw hell’; refugees are easy prey for brutal human traffickers, Washington Times, July, 21, 2013, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/21/in-sinai-i-saw-hell-refugees-are-easy-prey-for-bru/?page=all; Phoebe Greenwood, Eritrean regime cashes in on arms and human trafficking, says UN report, The Guardian, July 17, 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/17/eritrean-regime-arms-human-trafficking; Phoebe Greenwood, Egyptian authorities look the other way as Bedouin kidnap refugees, The Guradian, Feb. 14, 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/14/egypt-bedouin-kidnap-refugees-israel.
As the last glint of hope vanished, they whimpered, fully aware that death was closing on all of them. They have never been so sure of the inevitable. There was neither a sudden surge of fear rippling through them nor a riot of doubts crashing on them; they just were sure and clear of what was to happen. They have travelled the helluva desert with those who shamelessly profit from human lives, and now they have to face their final fate without the slightest trace of pride or sense of accomplishment.
No one can accuse them of not fighting for life; it was the reason of their predicament, and what drove their odyssey across national borders in the first place. They started their journey on the wings of hope, but fate had decided to jettison the non-essential cargoes. Make no mistake, they did not throw in the towel; they just resigned, and as the ultimate verbal representation of their resignation they had to scribble on the walls the immortal words: THIS TOO SHALL PASS. It is a way to refute their dehumanization.
It is poetic, philosophical and profoundly human. The quest for immortality has been with us since time immemorial, but it has proven to be unattainable, and the closest we have come to it is through memory: no one wants to be forgotten. In our tradition, we bitterly mourn those who die without bearing children for they are more likely to be forgotten: smom nqedmiom. It is for this that many of our brothers and sisters in the deserts of Egypt and Libya have written their names on cave walls—they want us to remember them.
Miriam was Here is Saleh Gadi Johar’s rendition of “Brooks was here and so was Red,” in the famous Hollywood movie, Shawshank Redemption, my all-time favorite one. It is a moving and poignant scene, and so is Saleh Gadi Johar’s latest novel.
If any of you have wondered over the years why Saleh Gadi Johar belabors the issue of reconciliation, then look no further, Miriam Was Here is your answer. It is an Eritrean story which will resonate with every Eritrean regardless of persuasion and background. For those of us who have the privilege of knowing this rare Eritrean up close and personal, the book is a reflection of his political thinking. It is an honest expose of his inner personal thoughts of how things are and how they ought to be in Eritrea. It is a serious book beautifully told by one of Eritrea’s best story-tellers. True to his Kerenite root, Saleh Gadi Johar can tell a story with the raw integrity of the truth.
In Miriam Was Here, one finds the common themes which have become the stable of his writing and activism. The book acknowledges the many multi-faceted factors that have compounded the problem; nevertheless, it argues that the problem is inherently political that needs a political solution. One is constantly reminded that an understanding of the origin of the problems is the best way to ensure the prevention of anything similar from happening again. Oftentimes, and in the words of Josh Billings, the 19th century American humorist, “It ain’t ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It’s the things people know that ain’t so.” Saleh, through awate.com, has made it his life’s mission to “Inform, Inspire and Embolden.” In Miriam Was Here, he has succeeded.
Saleh Gadi Johar has become a crusader for freedom and justice for Eritrea. The twin ideas are deeply rooted in the belief of human dignity and the sanctity of life. Nowhere is the violation of this principle more visible and extreme than in the practice of human and organ trafficking. It has shocked our conscience and incited our moral outrage for it undercuts at the core of our humanity. It is, in the words of President Barack Obama, “a crime that amounts to modern-day slavery.”
For those who seriously seek understanding, Saleh Gadi Johar’s latest book is a feast of intellect that will keep you on the edge of your seats.
Miriam Was Here goes beyond the usual headlines that rightfully stir our emotions, but oftentimes make the obvious obscure. It delves into the root causes that have led to our sorry state of affairs. It compels us to come face-to-face with our ugly and shameful realities of why a bonafide hero like Zerom would leave a country he helped liberate and emigrate to America; and why the daughter of a legendary Tegadalay, Miriam, would become a mahyo, a courtesan, serving the new class of rulers in Eritrea, Zerom’s former comrades.
Miriam Was Here is engaging and profoundly insightful book that will be read long after all of us are gone. It has done justice to those who have written their names on cave-walls: they will not be forgotten. With this book, Saleh Gadi Johar has assured himself a place in Eritrean history. Future generation of Eritreans will say Saleh Gadi Johar was Here.
Semere T Habtemariam is the author of Hearts Like Birds and the forthcoming book on the History and Faith of the Orthodox Tewahdo Church of Eritrea and Ethiopia. He can be reached: weriz@yahoo.com
Ours is not a tragedy; tragedy has some ingredients of chivalry and integrity. Ours is a farce directed by us on us; a cheap drama aimed for prurient, sensory gratification, blithely forgetful of a sense of history and destiny. Willfully employing cynical manipulation of facts, devoid of central moral core, devoid of the organic nature of cause, we ended up becoming masters of self-sabotage and self-deception.
In the summer of 2001, public unrest and vocal opposition to the rule of Isaias Afwerki reached at its peak. The private papers opened their forum to the public for the first time in post-independence Eritrea. It was a brief renaissance. In September 18, 2001, (just 7 days after 9/11), while the world’s eyes were fixed on New York, Eritrea’s tyrant made his move. He closed the papers, jailed political dissidents and activists. After that, the constitution was never mentioned. Eritrea’s leader announced indefinite period of conscription for everybody above the age of 18. All calls and petitions from international human rights organizations fell on deaf ears.September 18, thus, marked the turning point in Eritrean contemporary history– for the worse.For those of us who want to be on the right side of history, who chose to struggle on the side of justice, that day tells us how long the struggle has been; how hard it is..and how important it is. “Arc of history is long but it bends towards justice,” said M.L. King.
Remembering Amanuel Asrat and private press
“I fear the newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets,” Bonaparte said.In my feeble attempt at activism, I have participated in letter-writing in (with the) local Amnesty International chapter. We write letters to political prisoners and their families. It is a cathartic and meaningful exercise. I tell myselfwithout discounting the courage of the prisoners and activists, at least these are visited by Red Cross and their whereabouts are known. Then I remember my friends, like Amanuel Asrat. What about when no one knows of those who are incarcerated?
Amanuel Asrat was one of the finest poets of our generation. He was the chief editor of Zemen newspaper where I worked at. I had the honor of knowing him and his family. He was a gentle, intelligent soul and a creative force. He, along with other journalists, was made to disappear in Era-iro gulags in September 2001.
Amanuel means “God is with us.” I don’t know about that. But I believe so. I want to believe so. I am sure Amanuel, the person, is not with us. Asrat, his last name, means “tithing”– the one-tenth contribution given to Higher Being. Is Amanuel, the person, a tithe given to Higher Cause, to Justice, to Eritrea, to Liberty? I don’t know. I deeply hope he will survive. I deeply hope his suffering and the suffering of others is not without honor, without future.
The dour, sad facts are unrelenting, uncompromising. Today, Eritrea suffers, among other myriad ailments, from a total news blackout. Only government media is allowed to operate under strict monitoring and supervision. More than 90% of the exiled journalists worked in government media or, rather, couldn’t work in government media. In the past 12 years, the only way Eritreans could learn about what is going inside the country is to sneak into the slow and heavily monitored internet cafés and read what is written about their nation from foreign-based media. How many persecutions, wrong policy decisions, disappearances, corruptions, happened but were never known to the public? In the one-party, no elected body, no constitution regime; in a land where absolute dictatorship reigned, I will leave it up to your imagination, (if we can imagine it) the multitudes of transgressions and the sheer weight of the sufferings that remain untold, unheralded, unaddressed because there is no free journalist to report and no free press to publish the stories.
For me, the worst part of PFDJ is its nasty habit of imprisoning citizens and disappearing them without trace. That extra-cruelty, when a less invasive action could sufficiently do the job, is something that I will never, ever, never understand. If I were ever to ask Isaias Afwerki a question, I would ask him simply ‘why?’ Why jail people and make them disappear for simply being at the wrong time or place, for just believing in what you told them to believe–for example, the Eritrean constitution? (It’s not like the Bretton-Woods, SAP; after all ‘it is made by PFDJ.’ ) The Private Papers case of 2001 could have been handled by just revoking their license. The journalists would report back to their ‘ahadu’, their units. All of them were in the national service. What would be the worst that could happen? Leave the nation? There are more journalists in exile than in Ella-Iro. What did we do? Practically, we joined the ranks and file of Eritrean refugees, with occasional commemoration to palliate the guilt. But jailing and disappearing 10 of them only exposed the cruelty, the irrationality of the regime, bringing unending pain and trauma for their families. Yosief Ghebrehiwet (YG) had expertly put this extra-mile act of cruelty as the hallmark of PFDJ. What about the G-15? People who made history with the leader as close friends for 35 years? Do they deserve to rot and die in hell? Why not release them in their twilight years for old-times-sake? If you are afraid that they will leave the nation and start opposition in Diaspora, do that by all means: read Mesfin Hagos, Ali Abdu, Adhanom G. Mariam, Abdella Adem, Paulos Tesfagiorgis, Haile Menkorios…etc.
I digressed.
Xibukat ZenaB’l, Kolkeyna..!
I hate jails and disappearances. I hate jails. If childhood trauma has correlation or even causality, allow me to tell you what happened to my family in 1980s. I never mentioned it before.In mid 80s, I was ten years old and my mother was put in jail. My mother, at that time a mother of 6 (including an infant of 18 months old who was taken with her), was snatched from home, Edagahamus neighborhood of Asmara and was taken first to Gibbi and then to Hazhaz. It was found out that she was a member of a cell that was collecting and sending money to the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF.) One arrest led to another; then my mother. Suddenly, we were motherless. It was bleak times. I remember relatives tending to us; my father (may he rest in peace) tirelessly juggling roles. The most distinct memory I retain is him dressing us in ‘Saryans’, wearing ‘nay chipolini koyo’ looking presentable in the presence of Dergue officials, like Tefera Wendie, in the hope of evoking their sympathies and releasing our mother. That was the first time I have ever been to the infamous ‘Teklay Gizat’, later the seat of the current Eritrean leader. I wonder: do families dress their kids to plead with the Eritrean leaders? What would it be? I think ‘Saryan’ is out; so are the fancier suit, with fancier shoes. What kind of shoes? These days, sneakers are quite common; kids now in weddings, dress up well, contrasted well with their bored and somebody-please-get-me-outta-this look. They also wear a tie; white-shirt, black bow ties, or rather, are put on them. Maybe we should send money for families with incarcerated loved ones to buy these clothes, or send them these outfits en masse; suits, sneakers, and clip-on bow-tie, necktie. Should we form an organization, a civic group to collect clothing? I suggest Europe could be ideal center for this campaign.
Did Tefera Wendie notice us? Did anyone who has a seat in that building from Martini to Isayas ever notice Eritreans pleading?
When my mother was sentenced to some years jail time, which she didn’t finish, she was transferred to Hazhaz, women’s prison center. It was close to home and I usually passed by, to check if I can spot her somewhere from the backyard, either from Adi Sihel side or from the hospital side. We were allowed to see her every Thursday; and we never missed it. Usually we cried; she cried most. We consoled each other; we prayed. Once while waiting to see her, I couldn’t help my temptation to follow a little bird, that deceptively appeared unable to fly, but gave me a run for my money. The bird eclipsed towards the huge ‘Meqabr Aslam’, and I followed it all the way towards ‘Mehrem Chira.’ That day, I returned in vain without catching the bird; nor seeing my mother. My mother always recounts that story, “Yizekeka d’o…?” I still feel embarrassed by the story. Maybe that day, more than seeing my mother, I wanted the bird to sing ‘every little thing is gonna be alright.’
Everything turned out all right. My mother was released; the family was reunited. We were and still are one of the luckiest in every sense, as Eritreans go. Whenever I hear stories of arrests without cause, separation of families, I think back to what happened in the mid 80s and shudder. I just hate it.
Eritrea currently boasts more than 300 detention centers. Sometimes villas, residences are rearranged to be jails and torture rooms. We all have friends who are never heard from. We all have friends who were arrested for flimsy reasons and spent years in detention camps. We have veterans who left Asmara in the 1970s and 1980s who came back as prisoners to Asmara after independence. Most of them are, we are told, incarcerated in Karsheli, 2nd Police Station. When I heard this story, I cried…And we, as youngsters, have drunk, laughed, partied in the vicinities of Karsheli, in Aba-Shawel without knowing, or ‘caring’ who is wailing there. Think of that; there are veteran fighters who left to ‘Medda’ to liberate Eritrea but came back in chains without even knowing Eritrea was liberated.
Have you heard of such a tragedy, such atrocity?
There’s not enough rain in Oklahoma
To wash the sins out of that house
There’s not enough wind in Oklahoma
To rip the nails out of the past…
Don’t you feel singing this tune, with Carrie Underwood? One day, I hope to see, with my own eyes, the closing down, the blowing it away, the ‘honoring’ of the Eritrean detention centers to museums. That is my heart-felt yearning.
Eritreans have deep and long history with incarceration of their loved ones. From the Nakura/Asem days, (‘Atum seb Aseme/atfaenakum gize m’s teleme/ delnakuk gizie mis haseme’ lamented Dej. Bahta Hagos, in a dirge) till now, many have perished after being taken by the powers to be.
I met a former schoolmate once. He told me he was incarcerated in Aderser, another gulag, past Sawa, near the Sudanese border. He almost lost his eyesight because the underground detention center is pitch-dark. Many others did lose their eyesight. In their own nation, they were made deliberately blind so they can’t see what independence brought forth. Another who was posted there told me of colonels of ‘Miktital Dobat’,(border patrol) simply wasting the lives of poor Eritrean internees, shooting them point-blank, simply because the girl failed to sleep with one of them; the other was being lazy. A ‘merah mesree’ (squad leader) was shot in his knee because he was slow to ‘punish’ the internee. It reminds one of Amon Goeth, the Nazi Commandant, shooting the camp prisoners from his balcony for entertainment. Ralph Fiennes depicted the Nazi rascal in the movie, Shindler’s List.
Ask anyone about detention centers in Eritrea. You will be horrified. We forget to ask; we don’t know. We don’t want to know. We will never know. But we must know; we must ask; we must remember because for now that is one of the things we can do. Narration of our stories are the beginning of our healing. We have to hear them, tell them, tend to them.
More than 10,000 of them, Amnesty International reported. I have once asked a person who worked in Beleza, Central Command Office of the Eritrean Defence Forces.’ He told me of files of people, ‘sugmti zetewesedelom’, (“steps taken against”): those who perished in jail, and those who are in jail. He said there were tens of thousands, kindey emo kinblom, uncountable. He left Eritrea in mid 2000s almost 8 years ago. Since then, how many added? This person gave up on Eritrea. He said he didn’t want to think about Eritrea anymore. He said he didn’t care if it existed or lost, as far as he was concerned, it didn’t exist; only his families matter to him. Another loss, the lucky ones who lacked conviction and hope in Eritrea, dropping out on us, on the cause. The number of people dropping out is staggering. They say “I don’t care about it. I don’t care what happens to it.I don’t.”
And others who sang immortal songs ‘such as xibukat zenabil kolkyena/dkam wedienayom sidrbietna” are relegated crooning inconsequential songs instead of singing truth to power. Betrayal begets betrayal.
In the face of such reckless barbarity, we may appear powerless. Let us see what we can do; light a candle; contemplate; pray for them (if you are a believer); console family members; pay a tribute; commemorate them on screens, forums, t-shirts. Write their story. Tell their story. In this regard, I would like to thank our compatriots at EYSC-NA and EYSNS for producing a calendar that commemorates the G-11 and Bitweded (in Arabic, English and Tigrigna) and let us show our cooperation by promoting and buying the calendars.
Let us go back to the basic of all basics: Human Rights
Please allow me to make the following observation. So far, we have failed to do justice or right by our heroes, by our history. Taking honest appraisal of our shifting and unfocused exercise, of the mangled panorama drafted and redrafted in the past ten years, that we call struggle against PFDJ tyranny is timely for their sakes, for our sakes. Ours is not a tragedy; tragedy has some ingredients of chivalry and integrity. Ours is a farce directed by us on us; a cheap drama aimed for prurient, sensory gratification, blithely forgetful of a sense of history and destiny. Willfully employing cynical manipulation of facts, devoid of its central moral core, devoid of the organic nature of cause, we ended up becoming masters of self-sabotage and self-deception.
Please, let us go back to the basics: let us trace back what brought us here. Our cause first and foremost is the cause of human rights. It is predicated on the simple assertion that we deserve to live as free citizens in our endeared nation, Eritrea. It is a deeply moral cause that puts the well-being of individuals (Eritrean citizens) at the center.
If anything, September 18 should remind us to revisit and amend our ways: let us consciously try to put the incarcerated and suffering Eritreans back in the center.
Telling stories of the unjustly incarcerated helps us recalibrate our message because they remind us of our fate and the grim realities of our citizens and the courage of the folks in those stories.
Let me end up with this brief excerpt from the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
Sam: “..Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam? Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.
Is Eritrea worth fighting for? September 18 resoundingly testifies that the journalists, G-15, elders held on to that belief. The question is: “Do we believe Eritrea is worth fighting for?” I hope we solemnly agree it is worth fighting for and that the lives of thousands of Eritreans meant something for each of us. The lives and possibly deaths of 10, 000 of Eritreans. More than 10, 000 of them.
On December 5, 2002, the Awate Team published an article entitled “The Chronology of The Reform Movement”, which we introduced with the words “The following is a chronicle of the reform movement…” It covers the period of August 2000–the beginning of the reform movement–to December 2001. Of course, Eritreans call for reform is as old as our politics, so why is September 18, 2001 significant? And it hasn’t stopped after September 18, 2001: thousands continue to call for reform and then get arrested, are made to disappear or are exiled. So why is September 18, 2001 significant?
Prior to September 18, 2001, all the horrendous crimes of the Revolution and the Government could be dismissed with: what is your evidence? What evidence is there that this crime you are alleging happened? In this particular case, September 18, 2001, that convenient dismissal is not available to the criminals: (a) those arrested and the causes they espoused were given wide publicity in Eritrean and international media; (b) those arrested and made to disappear are well-known individuals (including former cabinet members); (c) the criminals have persisted in their crime: they have not brought the arrested to a court of law, they have not passed a sentence, they have not allowed family members to visit them, they have not confirmed to their families if they are alive or dead. In short, September 18, 2001 is significant because anybody who knows the difference between good and evil has no choice but to conclude that what “the government” has perpetrated is wrong. And if it can be this cruel to its own colleagues, then, anybody who can use facts and reason must conclude that it is just as likely, if not more likely, to commit the same abuse of power–arrest without charge, disappearance, failure to account for citizens, denying families visitation rights–to thousands of anonymous Eritreans.
It has been twelve years since September 18, 2001. Cruel regimes like the one in Eritrea depend on the human capacity to forget, to mis-remember, to be overwhelmed by life. They actually expect–and, unfortunately, succeed in their expectations–that new headlines, new gruesome details, new meaningless maneuvers (rotating ministers and party officials, for example) will distract us from our primary goal: justice. Cruel regimes even try to confuse people about the meaning of “justice” by focusing on its layers–social justice, economic justice–or using standards that are alien to the people’s values. In Eritrea’s traditional society–its faith and culture–justice is based on morality and ethics. The Eritrean regime has repeatedly said that “we have our own culture” of dealing with prisoners: the culture they are referring to is one incubated during the Revolution: it is a form of “justice” more concerned with preventing future “crimes” (by setting a scary example) that actually dealing with the present alleged transgression. This ends up achieving two things: creating a frightened society and an abusive government. An open air prison where the people are too afraid to think, to innovate, to produce: they are just serving. Serving an undeclared sentence, serving a government, until such time that it becomes unbearable and they will take any risk, pay any price to leave their own country. The abusive government which is more concerned about future crimes than past crimes–it has defined justice to mean creating an obedient citizenery–continues to be incrementally more abusive until there is a time when the people are on the verge of rebellion. Then, the boss of the mafia regime rotates people in an attempt–one more time–to convince the people that there is nothing wrong with his vision, or his policies; there is failure in execution. And each game of musical chairs has a diminishing return because some chairs are permanent–no matter the rotation–and because people know in their hearts that the problem is not the people executing the policies but the policies themselves.
It is this culture–the culture of secrecy, the culture of political nepotism, the culture of the permanent ruling oligarchy, the culture of power abuse, the culture of lack of institutionalism, the culture of punishment/reward based not on merit but the moods of a moody dictator–that the victims of September 18, 2001 were trying to change. They were trying to reform and unjust system. And this is why you should know their story.
The following is a chronicle of the reform movement that emerged from within the PFDJ as well as academic and scholars sympathetic to the PFDJ. We think, in this day and age where facts and truth are in short supply, we owe it to our readers to give them a factual representations of the events that began on August 2000.)August and September 2000: the Central Office of the PFDJ and the National Assembly of Eritrea hold two sessions. The PFDJ Central Office prepares an “assessment” of the Eritrea-Ethiopia war and presents it to members of the Central Committee. The assessment states, “We should not deny that some senior cadres and leaders of the front had exhibited spirit of despair and defeatism…we should identify its origins and the appropriate solutions.” Members of the Central Committee argue that the Central Office does not have the authority to level accusations against the members of the Central Committee. A decision is made to make a more comprehensive assessment for submission to the next session of the Central Committee. The National Assembly decides on Eritrea’s first election: December 2001 and appoints a committee, headed by Mahmoud Sherifo, Vice-President, to draft the electoral and party formation laws.
October 1, 2000: Having met in Germany in the last week of September, thirteen Eritrean scholars and professionals, later known as “G-13”, who reside in Europe, the United States, Eritrea and South Africa, write a letter to President Isaias Afwerki. The letter, which was leaked and came to be as the “Berlin Manifesto” spoke of a nation whose government is beset by “serious contradiction and a major rift among the leadership” and called for a sober appraisal of post-war Eritrea. It called for national reconciliation, collective leadership, implementation of the ratified constitution, abolishing the “Special Court”, divesting the ruling party from the economic life of Eritrea and called on the President to seize the moment to turn a crisis into an opportunity to “re-claim your hard-earned reputation.” The letter was signed by Araya Debessay (USA); Assefaw Tekeste (USA); Bereket Habte Selassie (USA), Dawit Mesfin (UK), Haile Debas (USA); Kassahun Checole (USA); Khaled Beshir (USA), Miriam M. Omar (UK); Mohammed Kheir Omar (Norway); Mussie Misghina (Sweden); Paulos Tesfagiorgis (Eritrea); Reesom Haile (Brussels) and Lula Ghebreyesus(South Africa.) The latter withdrew her association shortly after signing the document.
October 14, 2000: Seven journalists employed with the private Eritrean press were arrested. They include Milkias Mehretab, Yousef Mohammed Ali, Dawit Habtemichael, Yebio Gebremedhin, Selam Menghis, Mathewos and Semret Asmelash. The government denied that their arrest was due to the fact that their papers publicized the “Berlin Manifesto.”
November 8, 2000: Saleh Kekya, who had served as the Chief Administrator of the president’s office and later as Eritrea’s Ambassador to the Sudan before taking the transportation and communication portfolio, was transferred to the mayorship of the port city of Assab. The Minister refused the assignment.
January 1, 2001: Dawit Mesfin, a participant in the meeting held in Germany that resulted in the “Berlin Manifesto”, is interviewed by Awate.com shortly after his return from Asmara. Mr. Dawit Mesfin, along with ten signatories of the Berlin Manifesto, had traveled to Asmara, at the invitation of President Isaias Afwerki, to discuss the issues they raised in their letter. Dawit Mesfin describes the meeting the group had with President Isaias Afwerki on November 25, 2000 as a “gate crashing experience”from the standpoint that it actually took place. However, in terms of content, about an hour of the time was spent discussing the leaking of the private letter.
January 2001: the Government of Eritrea circulates a “discussion paper” to select senior cadres and leaders of the ruling party. Entitled “Woyane’s Third Offensive And the Political Campaign That Followed It,” the paper, which was leaked to several Eritreans and Eritrean media outlets, described its purpose as an attempt to “assess the political climate that followed the Third Offensive and to expose the campaign of confusion and to challenge the budding negative commentary.” The paper, whose source later turned out to be the PFDJ’s Central Office, claims that the problem is not that the President exercises too much control, but that there was insufficient control of the ministries. The paper assessed (1) The War and Its Origins; (2) Eritrea’s Diplomatic State of Affairs; (3) Eritrea’s Economic & Social Development; (4) Implementation of Eritrea’s Constitution & Democracy; (5) The Front & Its Role. The paper’s conclusion included the following assessment:
In this destructive campaign, it is expected that the Woyane would be vanguard. It is a campaign that it has embarked on, and an effort it has accelerated, since the day after the conflict and for the last two and half years. We can skip over the role of the traitors who collaborated with Woyane by saying it is no different from Woyane. As for those who, in the midst of trying and challenging times, were jockeying and hustling about to exploit the situation by selling national and people’s interest for self-interest, we have seen many of these opportunists in our long struggle. What demands attention, although very few in number, is the [presence of] cadres and leaders of the Front who, for various reasons (panic, hopelessness, absconding responsibility, to create political opportunities by complaining about lack of position and authority) participated in the campaign.
January 19, 2001: Major-General Berhane Gebrezgabhier is fired from his duties as Chief of the Eritrean National Reserve.
February 7, 2001: Mr Mahmoud Sherifo, the Vice President of Eritrea, the Minister of Local Governments and the National Assembly-appointed Chair of the Committee to Draft Electoral Laws, was fired by the President and his subordinates (the Regional Governors) ordered to report directly to the President’s Office.
March 8, 2001: Mr. Haile Menkorios, Eritrea’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, accepts a position with United Nation as the Secretary General’s envoy to Afghanistan.
April 6, 2001: tSigenai, a private Eritrean newspaper, interviews Mr. Mahmoud Sherifo. States that his removal from office on February 5, 2001 was on the eve of the date that the committee he chaired, the Committee on Drafting Political Parties & Organizations, had a scheduled meeting to discuss the obstacles it had faced from the President’s office in carrying out its duties. The former minister explained that the committee was authorized by and accountable to the National Assembly, which had authorized its work at its 13th Regular Session (9/00). The committee had concluded its first draft on January 23, 2001, had disseminated copies of the draft to members of National Assembly members and had, via a request to the Ministry of Information, scheduled interviews with the government media for January 30, 2001. Said Sherifo: “Suddenly, on January 29, 2001, we were told by the President to refrain from disseminating any information. While we kept our counsel to be patient and go on preparing to inquire about these developments, we received a message from the President. And the message informed us that the President has major observations on the draft laws and that he would set the schedule on when to disseminate the information to the public.” Sherifo added that the “responsibility we were given by the National Assembly was snatched.” Asked why he thought the president would do that, Sherifo replied: “I think it is because the President has no desire to see the formation of political parties before the elections scheduled for the end of the year.”
April 12, 2001: The First Comprehensive Manifesto for Reform, penned by “Tesfay-Sherif”, a pseudonym for “one or more” PFDJ Reformers surfaces. This manual, written shortly after the end of the Eritrea-Ethiopia war, it the first detailed glimpse at the issues raised by the Dissenters. It goes through an extensive assessment of the ruling party’s practices and their impact on the Eritrea-Ethiopia war.
On Obstacles to Institutionalism: “The most important problem hampering the establishment of institutionalization lies in freezing the constitution. It is evident that revolutionary traditions and mentality dominated the thinking of our leadership.”
On Why the national assembly is a “mere puppet”: “The National Assembly does not even have an office and does not hold regular sessions. It is presided by the President of the state who calls for sessions to convene whenever he wishes to do so. The purposes of most of the meetings are for enlightenment about developments or for hearing the reports of the cabinet of ministers and for approving them. The meetings have never come out with resolutions with the exception of pointing out, in the concluding communiqué’, to the importance of the issues that were discussed. There hasn’t been any voting system and the national assembly has never asked executive personnel or taken disciplinary steps to correct him as a legislative body controlling the executive body would be expected to do. It is only the President that is mandated with the first and last say on the concluding statements of the assembly. I think the basic reason for all these lies in the Marxists traditions of the organization and the negligence of those in charge towards the magnitude of their responsibilities. Moreover, the strength of the personality of the President and his inclination towards contempt of institutionalization and towards dwarfing the capabilities of his companions as well as his interest in having a say on everything, has greatly contributed to rendering the institution a mere puppet.”
On our relationships with: (1) Saudi Arabia: “We started our first homework as an independent state with a fierce attack upon Saudi Arabia in our mass media,” (2) OAU “ followed by an attack upon the OAU at its regular summit held in Cairo in 1993.” (3) Arab League: “We also attacked, through statements made by our highest government officials, the Arab League of Nations expressing contempt on its role and effectiveness. (4) Sudan: “We severed our diplomatic relations with the Sudan abruptly and threatened to overthrow the regime in a few months inconsiderate of our interests in this neighboring state where a third of our population still live as refugees, employees and traders in different towns and villages within its borders. The reason that we claimed was the support given by the Sudanese government to the Eritrean Jihad group which is essentially superficial since this group does not possess the popularity that may enable it to threaten the stability of our nation and society. (5) Others: “Moreover, our language of describing the international system of relations was so blunt that it roused the anger of the great powers. We described the international system by saying; ‘the collapse of the Eastern block and the domination of the world by one country has resulted into a relationship of subjugation among states’. Such statements were said by high-ranking government officials although everybody may read that such statements did not coincide with the reality of our tiny developing country. However, such statements may reflect the stuffed grudges of the poor countries, which necessarily alerts the rich western countries that view the new world order as the culmination of a perfect social system. (6) NGO’s: “The expulsion of NGOs and their description as immoral and inhuman was the peak of our challenging encounter with the western powers that view them as the most important means of materializing the new world order. (7) Ethiopia: the only country that we trusted was Ethiopia in spite of the knowledge of every cadre in the organization and its leadership that the TPLF hadevil plans which it demonstrated in the eighties in an undisputed manner…” When the president said, “we are thinking beyond what is called the border” and Ctwe are ready to found a confederation with Ethiopia” he did “not represent the thinking of the organization’s cadres or the feelings of the Eritrean people who could not forget the wounds of the past just because an ethnic minority which congratulated Eritrean independence, not because it could change the developments on the ground but because it would have been the first loser of opposing Eritrea’s independence, has come to power in Ethiopia.”
On Ignoring The Warning Signs from Ethiopia:
Issues such as claiming the ownership of “Badime” and “Bada” are nothing new. These claims started in the eighties although there was an intentional negligence from our side, for which we do not know the reasons. Moreover, the Ethiopians were unilaterally demarcating the places and creeping gradually towards the Gash River, probably to materialize the ancient map of old Tigray known as “Mereb- Milash”. Since 1994, the administrations of the Gash Barka region as well as our consulate in Mekele were sending reports notifying of developments concerning this issue. These reports were, however, neglected with contempt by the concerned government authorities in Eritrea and were viewed as the result of unjustified emotions. The activities of changing the marks across the border by the Tigrayan militias were described as being the deeds of some fanatics in the Zonal Administration and were not adopted by the TPLF, which was taken as a strategic friend, as an organization. In 1997 there came a new development as all the Eritrean inhabitants were deported from Badime in an organized manner. This incident was pictured by the Eritrean Television which also conducted some interviews with the deportees but the program was prohibited from being broadcast. The village of Adi-Murug in the Bada area was also occupied in about the same time.
On the Role of The “Council of Ministers”:The Council of Ministers is totally ineffective. Any member in the council of ministers is appointed and expelled to and from the council by a letter from the President for reasons that are exclusively known only to the President. The Council does not have regular meetings and its sessions are limited to each Minister presenting the report of his Ministry and to listening to a briefing by the President on the current situation of the country. Major national issues such as foreign, security and economic policies are not discussed seriously.
On the Role of one-party state: “…the non‑existence of political forces that compete with the PFDJ has caused a stagnation in the operational development of the efficiency of the organization and the government which became the main reason for administrative procrastination, nepotism, corruption and bureaucratic retard ness as well as the negligence towards the crucial issues of the development of the nation and the society.”
May 2, 2001: Mr. Beraki Gebreslassie, the Eritrean Ambassador is called back to Eritrea. Mr. Beraki Gebreslassie was the Minister of Information prior to his to assignment to Germany. No assignments were given to him when he returned to Eritrea.
May 21, 2001: tSigenai: Interview With Mesfun Hagos. On meetings: What is stipulated in the transitional constitution of the PFDJ is that the Executive Committee should schedule and attend a monthly meeting. In reality, it has never met monthly. Everyone knows this.” On checks and balances: “… it is always the case that the Legislature controls the Executive institution. In our experience, all the transitional constitutions that were adopted at the congresses of the Popular Front mention this process. As for its practical execution, that is a different matter.” On bequeathing power to the people: “It is not acceptable to itemize unacceptable reasons for delaying giving power to the people.” On his view of the intra-leadership dispute: “To exaggerate the differences above what is appropriate is not proper. Although the official press presents the problem as non-existent, in the streets, the threats by some of those who are pointing these out [the differences] is not good for the country. Internal disputes are solved by discussion and understanding not by threats and intimidation.”
May 24, 2001: In its inaugural issue, Shaebia org writes a conciliatory comment regarding the intra-PFDJ dispute.]
May 27, 2001: Fifteen members of the Central Committee of PFDJ [Eritrea’s ruling party] as well as Eritrea’s National Assembly signed an Open Letter to all PFDJ members. In the Open Letter, the authors, all prominent members of Eritrea’s liberation movement, accused the President of the Republic of Eritrea, Mr. Isaias Afwerki, of “conducting himself in an illegal and unconstitutional manner.” The group, which later came to be known as “G-15”, or Reformers, called on the President to convene a meeting of Central Committee and the National Assembly so that the two bodies may conduct open discussion and extensive assessment of the Eritrea-Ethiopia war. The 15 signatories are: (1) Mahmud Ahmed Sheriffo (2) Haile Woldensae (3) Mesfin Hagos (4) General Ogbe Abrha (5) Hamid Hmd (6) Saleh Kekya (7) Brigadier General Estifanos Seyoum; (8) Berhane GhebreEghzabiher; (9) Astier Feshatsion; (10) Mohammed Berhan Blata; (11) Petros Solomon; (12) Germano Nati; (13) Beraki Ghebreslassie; (14) Adhanom Ghebremariam and (15) Haile Menkerios.
May 31, 2001: Meqaleh, a private Eritrean newspaper, conducts an interview with Major General Berhane Gerezgheir. The general says that on January 11, he was informed, verbally, by the Ministry of Defense that he was demoted and his rank taken. On Janauary 12, he wrote a letter to President Isaias Afwerki, demanding a written explanation for the demotion because he believes that the honor he had was not a gift but a result of 30 years of struggle. On January 20, the President’s office informed the General that the President was not willing to receive the letter and that it should be directed to the Ministry of Defense. On February 6, he wrote a letter to the Ministry of Defense and as of the date of the interview, he had not received a response. He says that in the past 7-8 years, he knows of fighters who have been “frozen” –paid but unemployed–“for a year, for two years, for five years and more.”
June 2, 2001: MeQaleh reports about an address by Yemane Gebreab, PFDJ Political Director and Presidential Advisor, given to a session of the youth and students held at the Junior Club, regarding the open dispute within the PFDJ leadership. The paper reports that he said, “Over the last ten years, we have been solving our internal disputes. This, too, we shall solve and move on.” Asked repeated questions on the subjects by attendants, particularly from Eritreans who arrived from foreign countries, Mr. Yemane Gebreab said, “ please forgive me as I am unable to say more on the subject.”
June 7, 2001: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) writes Eritrea’s Justice Minister, Fozia Hashim, inquiring of the whereabouts of 15 journalists. The Justice Minister reports that they are either currently participating in national service or working for the government media or ministries.
June 8, 2001: President Isaias Afwerki fires the Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Haile Weldense (Drue) and the Minister of Marine Resources, Mr. Petros Solomon. Mr. Haile Weldense was the Foreign Minister during the two-year war with Ethiopia. Both were signatories to the Open Letter, which was critical of President Isaias Afwerki.
June 10, 2001: MeQaleh publishes an “Open Letter to the Eritrean People” written by Major General Berhane Gebrezgheir.] In this follow-up to his interview of May 31, 2001, the General explains that his complaint is not about his demotion but wants to clarify that the measures taken against him were as a direct result of his speaking up at the sessions of the Central Committee and National Assembly meetings of August and September 2000 respectively. He says, “The Eritrean people have the right and the capability to know the truth and to propose solutions.”
June 11, 2001: Tsigenai: Interview with Petros Solomon. Excerpts: “ When confronted with criticism, it is not useful to think only in terms of digging up trenches and launching counter-offensives….criticism should be accepted with an open heart and an environment of tolerance….institutionalism is the best approach to decision-making…nobody or no institution has a monopoly on wisdom and foresight….The mandate of the Special Court has lapsed and it should cease because, at this time, it is incompatible with the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.”
June 11, 2001: Keste Debena, a private Eritrean newspaper, publishes General Uqbe Abraha’s Open Letter. The letter was in response to an article that appeared in the June 9, 2001 issue of Hadas Ertra, the government newspaper, reporting the findings of the Special Court, in the case of Mr. Tekeste Tesfatsion, who was an employee of the Red Sea Trading Corporation, or 09, the ruling party’s business conglomerate. The General states that he had requested the right of rebuttal in the government newspaper and that he had been denied the opportunity, which forced him to use the private press. The Special court claimed that the accused was “given illegal access to trade on the basis of commission by the then-senior managers of 09, Mr. Oqbe Abraha and Desu TesfatSion.” In the open letter, General Uqbe proclaims his innocence and adds: “I have the right to defend myself, relying on truth and the law, in an independent court of law so I won’t be condemned for wrongs I did not commit.” General Uqbe states that when he complained to the last session of the Central Committee (8/2000) about the government’s decision to deny him from exercising “the right and the duty to serve my government and my people” and that “the act of ‘freezing’ has induced mental stress which is a violation of my human rights,” the Central Committee had agreed to investigate the matter. He believes the act of the Special Court is illegal as it undermines the work of the Central Committee and that this “goes to show, in my opinion, the preparatory work that is being undertaken for future steps against me.”
June 14, 2001: Eritrean journalists Alazar Kelit and Amanuel Zerzghi (New York) interview Ambassador Haile Menkorios. Ambassador Haile calls for tolerance. He says: “One may oppose an opinion; but it is not constructive to accuse someone of sub-nationalism and anti-national for refusing to march in step lock.” Later on, he cancels a scheduled interview because he believes it is not constructive to polarize Eritreans into supporters and critics of the Reform movement and that he has come to believe that the interview would do just that. He concludes his explanation by saying that he will neither nominate himself nor accept other’s nomination of him for any political office.
June 17, 2001: AFP reports that Petros Solomoncalls for “new generation of leaders” in Eritrea. He says Eritrea needs “more flexible leadership that will be more tolerant of opinions from different political organisations, which will be more responsive to the demands of the people.” He describes the PFDJ as “a fighting, secretive, and rigid organization.”
June 22, 2001: Al-Hayat interviews President Isaias Afwerki. The President says he cannot comment on whether there is any validity to the claims of the Reformers as outlined in their Open Letter and that the judgment is up to the Eritrean people and that it is best that he exercise patience until then. He added that there was nothing new to the issues raised by the Reformers and that he considers their open letter an empty barrel that makes a loud noise and that he has warned them of the dangers to the national security. With respect to distribution of authority, he said that the problem is not that he exercises too much authority but that, in the past, there wasn’t sufficient monitoring of others. He also said that the firing of Ministers Haile Weldensaie and Petros Solomon had nothing to do with the prevailing environment. He also defended the Special Court and dismissed its critics as irrelevant.
June 20, 2001: BBC reports that at a ceremony to mark the annual Eritrea Martyr’s Day, President Isaias Afwerki announces the number killed in the Eritrea-Ethiopia war that concluded a year earlier to be 19,000. No number of wounded or POW was given.
June 20, 2001: Asmarino.com www.asmarino.com posts a May 10, 2001 interview President Isaias Afwerki conducted with Eritrea’s free press. Dubbed as “48 Questions in 6 Hours”, the interviewers report that the President said: “There is no such thing as freezing. I have never heard of anything called freezing.” I know nothing of the claim that “there is a great deal of difference amongst the leadership of the PFDJ.” “I am amazed by what Mahmoud Sherifo said in the interview with Tsigenay.” And that, “if there are people in authority or leaders of the Front who abdicated their responsibilities, they must have forgotten their duties. If there are those who did not do their job well, or those who did wrong, or made mistakes, they should be asked to account for it.
June 20, 2001: Asmarino.com<www.asmarino.com> posts a lengthy interview Mr. Haile Woldensaie (DeruE) conducted with Eritrea’s free press . In this highly controversial interview, DeruE said the following –
On petitioning, DeruE says: “There is no law against petitioning, collectively, for a meeting. If, by refusing to hold a session, the intent is to avoid discomfort at being criticized, then there should still be a meeting as a means to educate those who are incapable of accepting or giving criticism. If the intent is to silence the dissenters, obviously one in power can do anything including muting dissent. But he still can’t kill the ideas. So, in the end, it is a futile exercise.”
On The Discussion Paper distributed by the Central Officein January 2001: The Discussion Paper that the Central Office initiate in January is illegal because it was not approved by the Central Committee and the Executive Council. I, as a minister, was excluded from the circulation. To enable readers to reach a conclusion, I handed a copy to the private newspaper, Admas.
On the allegations of colluding with the enemy: “In addition to being a means of escaping the truth and covering up weaknesses, to present corrective measures and assessments that were presented at the end of the war, as if they are harmonious with the enemy’s agenda and the critics as supporters of the enemy is not proper and a chilling hijacking and killing of freedom of expression.”
On the allegation that the Reformers called on the President to resign: “After our experience in Badme, and after the initiation of confidence-building campaigns, to see the sudden developments of the Third Offensive, was only un-anticipated by the people, even senior cadres and authorities who did not have sufficient information were saddened and distressed. Given the developments, if, at the time, someone were to say: “just like Gemal Abdel Nasser offered his people to resign at the conclusion of the 1967 war when Egypt was having military problems, the President and the Government ought to submit its resignation to the people.” Is there anything wrong in saying this? Does this necessarily mean it is execution of the Woyane goals? Given the information at one’s disposal, isn’t one allowed to make recommendations on what the best military option is? To recommend withdrawal on one’s assessment that its capability is lesser or the enemy’s is greater; to recommend attack based on one’s assessment that one’s capability is greater and the enemy’s is less and then to learn that one’s assessment and thus one’s analysis may be wrong…does that mean one should be accused with defeatism or, conversely, puffery?
On those accusing the Reformers of Defeatism: Although one can’t say that those who now are at the Central Office have never fired a gun, for them to accuse those who have successfully led many battles during the liberation war of “defeatism” is wrong and indication that they have ulterior motives which, at the very least, is to cover up blunders; or at its worst, to defame people before the PFDJ Congress.
On How To Solve the Crisis: The president should not try to settle this dispute forcefully and should not try to solve this extra-legally or try to smash it using some pretext. It can only be solved via discussion and debate. If he wants to solve it legally, I’d like to clarify that he cannot be the prosecutor and the judge.
On the Role of the Eritrean People: The people cannot be simple observers. Just like they tried to mediate during the ELF-EPLF disputes, they have the same responsibilities now, as well.
June 2001: Nearly 2200 individuals sign a petition for dialogue between the Reformers and the government. Written “in the name of our heroic martyrs”, the petition asks (1) President Isaias Afwerki, to exert maximum effort, leadership, care in resolving the dispute peacefully, constitutionally and legally; (2) the Signatories of the “Open Letter”, to continue seeking a peaceful, constitutional and legal resolution of the dispute; (3) Eritrea’s Religious Leaders and Elders, to do their level best to bring about understanding between the President and the Signatories of the Open Letter; (4) the heroic Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF), to maintain neutrality and allow the political process to find legal, constitutional and peaceful solution; and all Eritreans, to reject and condemn any form of violence in resolving all political differences, and to show tolerance to the divergent points of view within the leadership as well as among the general public
June 25, 2001: The Government of Eritrea reverses its decision to expel four Americans who work for various NGOs including USAid under pressure from the United States. The Americans were allegedly participating in behavior incompatible with their responsibilities.
June 27, 2000:Admas, a private Eritrean newspaper interviews Saleh Kekia . In a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Saleh Kekia talks about constitutionalism, elections, Special Court, future of PFDJ and conflict resolution. On the matter of whether raising their issues now is ill-timed, he responds: “We believed in and fought for the principles of PFDJ. PFDJ is neither too distant to us, nor too close to others. It is our front. What we are saying is we have problems in the implementation, so let’s correct them. We are saying let’s execute the goals we believe in. To say this is not the right time is to deny reality.” On whether there is a danger that the crisis could lead to confrontation, Kekia responds: I don’t believe that the situation will escalate to confrontation. Because solving problems through debate and discussion is a sign of civilized tradition, I hope we will resolve it that way.” Asked why after so many years of comraderie the situation has deteriorated, he quotes Lee Kuan Yew, “the leader who transformed Singapore from the Third World to the First World”, as having once described the secret to Singapore’s success as “confidence.” Saleh Kekia goes on to say that this absolute trust in the leadership and each other was accounted for EPLF’s success and states that this ingredient is now missing.
June 27, 2000 :Kestedebena, a private Eritrean newspaper, gives an opportunity to General Uqbe Abraha to disclose his communication with President Isaias Afwerki. The General had sent a letter to the President on 11/27/99. In his letter, the General shares with the President what the image of the President is amongst his former colleagues: (1) Comrade Isaias has changed: he no longer consults with his colleagues; he thinks that only he works for the nation; he believes in making unilateral decisions; the Cabinet is there in name only; (2) there is no institutionalism: they are there in name only; there is much interference in their work; an air of apathy and lack of accountability rules; (3) Ambiguous Policies: not based on constitution; distances friends and allies; discourages those with capital; duplication of efforts and lack of clarity; (4) No constitutionalism: national security and people’s integrity not seen within perspective of constitution; work not governed by law. In an undated letter, the president responds by asking: who is saying that I have changed? Since when? “Not consulting” with whom? About what? When? How does one express by evidence the emotional claim that the president thinks there is no other than him? Who are those saying this?
June 2001:Voice of America (VOA) interviews Petros Solomon. Mr. Petros Solomon explains that one of the reasons the Reformers were forced to write an Open Letter was because the PFDJ Central Office had conducted exclusive seminars with senior cadres using the “Discussion Paper” developed in January 2001. He went on to explain that although the nation could benefit from experienced leadership, a group whose background is working in secretive organization may not culturally adopt to an environment that requires openness and transparency. He stated that holding power for long has negative consequences and new leadership that reflects the wishes of the people should emerge. He said he wished to reassure the people that he has no doubt that the government, after conducting discussions, would solve the problem and prepare them for a constitutional government.
July 1, 2001:Qestedebena interviews General Uqbe Abraha . The General was responding to a recent finding of the “Special Court” that implicated him in the alleged crimes of Papayo, a Central Committee member who was sentenced for embezzlement. The General stated that if the issue is about embezzlement, he (General Uqbe) is innocent. But if the question deals with trusting people, then “all of us, beginning with the president, should be held accountable.”
July 3, 2001: Al Hayat, an Arab daily, reports that government officials interrogated elder Eritreans who attempted to mediate the crisis.
July 9, 2001: Mr. Hamed Hmed is detained and interrogated for allegedly informing an Arab daily correspondent in Asmara (Al Hayat) about the petition for dialogue that was facilitated by an Eritrean website, Asmarino.com. He was released after enduring “a lot of humiliation and disrespect.”
July 15, 2001: Fifty Eritrean senior citizens who had attempted to mediate the dispute between government officials were summoned by the Police Commissioner and asked to account for their motivations. The government wanted to know if they were attempting the mediation through their own initiative or because they were asked to by the Reformers. The government informed the elder citizens that, per the Penal Code, more than seven Eritreans couldn’t congregate without the prior consent of the government.
July 17, 2001: The Eritrean Ambassador to Scandinavian countries, Ms. Hebret Berhe, resigns her position and moves to the United States of America. She discloses her reasons for doing so in a letter she sent Awate.com www.awate.com. She wrote: “The PFDJ led by President Isaias, is today characterized by its strong opposition to reform and democracy. When people are eagerly waiting for a democratic transition, PFDJ is postponing it indefinitely. When people are aspiring for the rule of law, it’s being stifled and Kangaroo courts (Special Court) are firmly in place doing a great disservice to justice. Malpractice of law is at its worst in the history of our nation. People are subjected to intimidation for their political beliefs. Institutions have been deliberately made not to function. A one-man rule has been firmly installed rendering the slightest democratic practice impossible. During my assignment as Ambassador of Eritrea to Sweden, Norway, and Finland since September 1999, my democratic convictions came in constant confrontation with the malpractices of the PFDJ led government.”
July 23, 2001: In an address to scholars and professionals a seminar organized by the Eritrean Studies Association in Asmara, Justice Teame Beyene accuses the executive office of interfering in the affairs of the judiciary branch.
July 25, 2001: Mr. Mathewos Habteab, the Editor-in-chief of MeQaleh, a private bi-weekly, which had interviewed many of the Reformers, was abducted by security officers from his home.
July 31, 2001: Mr. Semere Kesete, the president of student union of University of Asmara, was arrested at 7:45 AM from his home . At a graduation ceremony address, Mr. Semere Kesete had delivered a speech that included criticism of the government and the university administrators. Also, the student union and the administrators of the University of Asmara had been in negotiations about the terms of their summer campaign. The sticking points were later reported to be whether the amount of living allowances (Nkfa 800) was net of cost of meals or not.
August 1, 2001: Representatives of the Students Union of University of Asmara post an open letter at Eritrean websites. With respect to their president, they demand that: “The concerned authorities give an official statement of his present condition and whereabouts to the students Union. Should he be accused of any crime, his constitutional right be respected and his case be presented to the court. Should not he be accused of any crime, he should be immediately released and the reason for his arrest should be officially stated.”
August 3, 2001:Hadas Ertra posts an announcement by the administration of the University of Asmara. The bulletin summons students to report for duty on August 9, at 7:00 AM for a three-day orientation. They are told that the obstacle–Semere Kesete—is now in the hands of the Courts. They are told to go to the University for details of their assignment and that they are to pack their clothing, bedding and grooming stuff. As they leave, they are promised 800 Nakfa, dry food, medicine and mosquito nets.
August 3, 2001: The Reformers issue an “Open Letter to the Eritrean People”, where, for the first time, propose a detailed reform aagenda. The paper addresses the following issues: (1) War, Peace & National Security which recommends the steps that need to be taken to safeguard Eritrea’s peace and security in relationship with 1.1 Ethiopia: confidence building measures including mutual reduction of armed forces; 1.2 Sudan: disengage from each other’s internal affairs; remove each nation’s army from the common border; allow the free flow of commerce between the people of the two nations; enhance co-operation and relationship at the government level; with the approval of all parties involved, work for the peaceful resolution of Sudan’s conflict 1.3 Yemen: continue with the current policies, looking forward not back; and 1.4 General: take tangible steps to bring peace to the Horn of Africa by not supporting one another’s opposition groups; (2) Economic & Social Issues: restructuring governmental institutions, strengthening civil society, GO’s and NGOs; encouraging free enterprise; reforming land proclamation; instituting social security/retirement benefits; respecting Eritreans right of free movement; expanding vocational/trade education; ending winter student campaigns; present to court Eritreans languishing in jail without charge and notify the family members of those against whom “steps had been taken”; build subsidized housing; divorce PFDJ from economic enterprise and surrender its finances (after an audit) to a trusteeship for the benefit of the orphaned and the disabled and the demobilized; abandoning the policy of “mother tongue” in education and implementing official languages for Eritrea: “it is our view that they should be Tigrigna and Arabic but that should the subject of debate amongst Eritreans.”
August 4, 2001: Brigadier General Estifanos Seyoum was fired from his position as department director of the Inland Revenue Department, the government’s tax collection office. The General is alleged to have had arguments with the ruling party on why PFDJ is exempted from paying taxes and was reportedly in the process of suing the party. The government spokesperson, Mr. Yemane Gebremeskel,informed AFP on August 7 that the move was a “routine reshuffling of department heads.”
August 6, 2001: CPJ writes a letter to the Eritrean government inquiring on the whereabouts of Mr. Mateos Habteab, the editor-in-chief of Meqaleh newspaper.
August 7, 2001: Uniformed and plainclothes security officers surround the University of Asmara in an effort to discourage student congregations around the campus. Soldiers stationed at entry points to Asmara ask for identification cards to ensure that students do not leave the city.
August 7 – 10 2001: The Eritrean High Court orders the government to present Mr. Semere Kesete, who had been in detention since July 31, to the Court for arraignment. At the arraignment of August 10, the judge ordered the Government to release Mr. Semere Kesete. The Government requested for more time to prepare its case and keep the prisoner in remand. Immediately thereafter, the police began rounding up students and taking them for detention at Asmara’s football stadium. Police with batons dispersed parents of the students who congregated outside the stadium. Some of the mothers were detained and released after their husbands posted bail and promised to “control their wives.”
August 8, 2001: The Eritrean Embassy in the United States responds to CPJ claim of 8/6/01. “First, Mr. Mateos Habteab was not kidnapped nor is he missing. He is doing his national service. Second, there are no journalists missing.”
August 10, 2001: Justice Teame Beyene was fired. His immediate supervisor, Justice Minister Fozia Hashim, delivered the communication verbally. Subsequently, the government, through PFDJ’s Political Director, Mr. Yemane Gebreab, explained at the Eritrean Festival in Washington, D.C. that the reason for the termination was due to Mr. Teame Beyene’s involvement with politics, which endangers the impartiality of the Court. Echoing these sentiments, the Justice Minister, in an interview posted by the ruling party’s website stated that at the conference of the Eritrean Studies Association “he presented accusations, in lieu of academic papers. All those who were present at the seminar noticed that by stating ‘The Courts are unable to maintain their independence because the President [Isaias Afwerki] keeps violating their independence and had conducted campaigns against the courts’, Mr. Teame [Beyene] tried to use the stage as a political launching pad. To engage in this kind of activity is inconsistent with his responsibilities. Secondly, to spread such kind of false information is done with deliberate intent to diminish the people’s trust in the independence of the Courts and is an act of political bias which precludes his continued service as the President of the Court.”
August 10, 2001:Hadas Ertra (No 11), the government newspaper publishes an interview it conducted with Alamin Mohammed Seid, PFDJ’s Secretary, on August 8. In the first extensive explanation of the government’s standpoint, Mr. Alamin M. Seid states that the campaign of the Reformers is destructive for many reasons, the three major ones being: “First, what has enabled this country to foil the Offensives of Woyane is our people’s volunteerism, our people’s self-confidence and its unified challenge is a huge contribution. By blending self-doubt and discontent, this new environment distances trust, volunteerism and defiance. Second, it encourages and abates the Woyane and all those who harbor bad will towards us to continue with their efforts. That, the Woyane, after failing to achieve our surrender that they sought at the military front are now agitating to bring that about via social and economic crisis is a reflection of this. Third, the worries being creates are negatively impacting our international relations and partnership.
“Although just before the Third Offensive, some of them may have been saying things, what brought things to the surface was after the Third Offensive. This was not a happenstance. During these trying times, while the Eritrean people and its army were heroically defending the nation using all their resources and sacrificing themselves in the thousands, they took a wrong and defeatist stand. Beginning from the day we withdrew from Barentu, they started saying, ‘We cannot stop the challenge and the onslaught of the Woyane Offensive. The Woyane won’t leave us alone unless the President resigns; so he should resign. If the Woyane occupy to the entire country, they will destroy our people so we should call on the UN and the US to take over and save us.’ For senior leaders of the Front to take this kind of stand requires accountability.”
The Secretary went on to state that the Party had shared this assessment in its sessions of August and September and, after requiring self-criticism from the group, had every intention of moving forward. However, the Reformers, knowing that this issue will surface, decided to engage in a campaign of pre-emptive strike. He goes on to state that the Reformers were behind the movement of the G-13.
August 11, 2001: In a paper entitled “In Lieu of Defamation, Better to Argue with Facts” the Reformers respond to the government’s allegation as articulated by Mr. Alamin Mohammed Seid. The reformers argue that they were forced to go public after the saw the government’s defamation campaign initiated in January 2001 and after their repeated efforts to call for a meeting between February and May 2001 were rebuffed. They say that “Of the 15 individuals, there is no one who tried to absolve the enemy and place all the blame on the nation. On the issue of the Peace Process and the War with Woyane, two meetings were held at the Central Committee and National Assembly level on July and September 2000. If there is an allegation that an attempt was made to absolve Woyane and place all the blame on the nation, bring the evidence and let the notes [minutes] of the meetings be disclosed to the public. If the answer is, this has never been done and it shouldn’t be disclosed to the public, we call for the formation of a National Committee of Elders who can be trusted with the information and the evidence.” With respect to Mr. Alamin Mohammed Seid’s claim that some Reformers called for the President’s resignation, they respond, “Not a single individual from the 15 accused said anything like the above. If there is anyone who has evidence that states otherwise, we call on them to present their evidence. As for the attitude expressed after the withdrawal from Barentu, the Reformers say, “ Because most of the people were led to believe that after the first shot of the Third Offensive we were going to show miracles, the concern they had developed during the first days of the war turned into extreme anger and questioning the leadership of the war once we withdrew from Barentu.And because the war was being led by the president himself, it was natural that a great deal of the talk dealt about him.” They go on to ask: Concurrent with the withdrawal from Barentu, wasn’t there another extremely dangerous decision made and that a great deal of loss was averted due to lack of its execution?
They conclude by warning: “If anyone, including the president, is culpable, his crime and his accuser should be presented openly; he should have access to a lawyer, his rights should be respected and the case made in an independent court. Any step taken outside this context is illegal and will have repercussions.”
August 11 – August 12, 2001: Nearly 2000 Asmara University students are bussed to WiA, a desert camp 30 k.m. south of Massawa. The students had refused to report to the University, as instructed by the University administrators, pending the outcome of the student union president, Semere Kesete, who had been detained since July 31.
August 14, 2001:Yirga Yosef, a University of Asmara student, died while in government detention. His death was attributed to heatstroke he suffered while in WiA, a desert detention camp, 30 km from Massawa.
August 15 – August 18, 2001: Trgta, a pro-government newspaper of National Union of Eritrean Youth & Students (NUEYS) writes an article entitled:” The Truth is surfacing its head: Accountability May shift from 15 to 3!” and “No Wise Men Within G-3?” The Reformers allege that the writers at the newspaper are actually members of the Central Office writing articles using pen names.
August 15, 2001: Traffic police stopped Mahmud Sherifo’s car and ordered his driver out of his seat and drove the car away. At 11 AM, guards from the President’s office informed him that they have orders to get him out of the office. Asked about the incident by a reporter, Sherifo said “the car and the office is [are] government property; but they could have done it in a proper legal manner instead.”
August 19, 2001: Yemane Tekie, a university of Asmara student, died while undergoing treatment for heatstroke at Halibet Hospital. He was part of the 2000 University students who were forcibly bussed to Wia by the government for refusing to report for summer duty. Through its ministry of foreign affairs, its official spokesperson and the website of the ruling party, www.shaebia.org, the government expressed “deep regret” for the deaths and blamed the student union and the Reformers for agitating the students into refusing to perform their duty. It says that the government had to send the students to WiA after having exhausted all means to negotiate with the students to convince them to perform their agreed-upon assignment of conducting AIDS awareness campaigns and statistical compilation of the war-displaced population.
August 20, 2001Tsigenai: Editorial: “The Private Press Respect the Law: The Government Has Responsibility for their existence.” The private press is governed by the press law and is, thus, operating legally. The government has responsibility for their existence. In addition, they have expectations of the government. To ensure that fulfill their national responsibility, not only should the government co-operate with them, it should defend them as well. In the event, to look at them with an eye of suspicion because they are critical of the government is not only counterproductive but it is the equivalent of the government working against the Press Laws it passed.
August 23, 2001: self-identified only as “University Of Asmara Students, Alumni, And Concerned Eritreans”, Eritreans sponsor a petition calling for the “immediate release of detained university students.” The appeal is directed to the Eritrean government and “particularly to the Eritrean National Assembly” to release students held at WiA and the student union president, Semere Kesete. Over 2700 Eritreans sign the petition.
August 24, 2001:MeQaleh: Major General Berhane Gerezgheir writes an article entitled: National Guard, National Defense, National Human Resource & Its Efficient Use
August 31, 2001: Ambassador Hebret Berhe calls for “Democratic Alternative to Current PFDJ Leadership.”
August 2001: ELF-RC Held its 5th National Congress in Gonder, Ethiopia. The congress, which was attended by a number of other opposition groups who are members of the Alliance Of Eritrean Opposition Forces, became a major propaganda weapon by the PFDJ, which accuses all Eritrean opposition groups and elements alike of treason.
September 1, 2001: Journalist Mathewos Habteab, editor-in-chief of Meqaleh who had been in detention since July 25, is released. It is reported that his release and the directives he received to report to the Ministry of Information are in anticipation of a visit by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), scheduled for early October.
September 1 – 3, 2001: The Eritrean Independent Democratic Movement (EIDM), an opposition entity founded in October 2000, held its second convention in Washington DC.
September 7, 2001: In a move to reconcile university students with University administrators, Asmara University’s president, Dr. Weldeab Isaac paid a visit to university students at WiA. Nearly 2000 students refused to see him. As a result, the student’s release, which had been scheduled for the following Monday, was postponed.
September 18 – 19, 2001:In dawn raids, the Government of Eritrea arrested eleven of fifteen Reformers at their homes. The eleven National Assembly members arrested are (1)Mahmud Ahmed Sheriffo (2) Haile Woldensae (3) General Ogbe Abrha (4) Hamid Hmd (5) Saleh Kekya (6) Brigadier General Estifanos Seyoum; (7) Berhane GhebreEghzabiher; (8) Astier Feshatsion; (10) Petros Solomon; (9) Petros Solomon; (10) Germano Nati; (11) Beraki Ghebreslassie. Of the remaining four, three, namely Mesfun Hagos; Adhanom Ghebremariam and Haile Menkerios were in the United States. One of the 15, Mohammed Berhan Blata, had disassociated himself from the group weeks prior to the clampdown. The government alleged that the group had committed crimes against the sovereignty and national security of the state.
September 19, 2001: Shaebia.orgwww.shaebia.org, (website of the ruling party) In an article entitled: “Secret New York Meeting Discusses G-15 Plans,” the website reports that members of the Reform movement (“G-15”) held a meeting on August 18, 2001, in New York. The meeting is reported to have included some members of the “G-13”, Eritrean scholars and professionals who had a meeting in Germany in September 2000 and wrote a private letter to President Eritrea, recommending reform. The website reports that “members of G-15 told participants that organization of secret cells (wahios), inside and outside the country, including in units of the Eritrean Defence Forces, was the most crucial task at hand. Second priority was given to the cooperation that has been established with “all Eritrean Opposition Groups”, organized under the umbrella of the Alliance of Eritrean National Forces (AENF). The Mekelle, Ethiopia, based AENF is a coalition of 11 groups, including the remnants of the ELF-RC, Saghem and the Eritrean Islamic Jihad.” Further, the article stated that the group reported, “secret contacts had been established with regional countries” and that efforts were underway to internationally isolate Eritrea.
September 19, 2001: Two reporters verify that they had fled to Sudan. The two reporters are Milikias Mehretab and Semere Teazaz, who are, respectively, the editor-in-chief and reporter for Keste Debena, a private Eritrean weekly, they had anticipated the crackdown and had been looking for an escape route for weeks.
September 19, 2001: The Eritrean Government shuts down the eight private newspapers and begins the arrest of nine journalists. The reason for closing the newspapers was, according to government officials, incompliance with the governing Press Proclamation. The newspapers are alleged to have failed to file annual financial statements. Subsequent allegations include working against the unity of the country. The government did not acknowledge that there were any reporters arrested. The missing reporters are Medhane Haile (Keste Debena), Amanuel Asrat (Zemen), Fitzum Wedi Ade (Zemen) Aaron Berhane (Setit), Selayinghes Beyene (Meqaleh), Mattewos Habteab (Meqaleh) and Dawit Habtemichael (Meqaleh), Yusuf Mohamed (Tsigenay) and Seyoum Fsehaye (Photographer.)
September 19, 2001: Two agencies, ] RSF – Reporters Without Borders and CPJ – Committee to Protect Journalist protest the closure of the 8 private newspapers. RSF asks the President to lift the suspension and to publication of newspapers. CPJ’s Ann Cooper states that it “believes that the newspapers were suspended in an effort to stifle public criticism of the Eritrean government. The licensing issue is clearly a pretext to justify this action and only confirms our view that licensing print media obstructs the exercise of press freedom.”
September 20, 2001: Amnesty International expresses concern on the arrest of the 11 Reformers and expresses fear that around 60 of their supporters may have been arrested as well. The human rights group urged: “All those who have been arrested should be brought to court promptly, charged with a recognizably criminal offence or released. Any trial should be held in accordance with international human rights standards and without recourse to the death penalty.” In a statement it issued it said, “The organization would be concerned if the detainees were charged and brought to trial before the Special Court, which fails to meet international standards for fair trial. The Court conducts trials behind closed doors and allows no right to defence counsel or of appeal to a higher or independent court.”
September 21, 2001: HRW – Human Rights Watch called on President Isaias Afwerki to “ immediately free recently detained political dissidents, allow the return of university students to their classes, and lift the ban it decreed as of Wednesday on privately owned newspapers. HRW’s quoted Mr. Suliman Baldo, a Senior Researcher of its Africa Division as saying “The government is trying to stamp out all criticism of its disastrous war policies. The situation is growing sharply worse.”
September 21, 2001: The EU diplomatic mission in Eritrea communicate their protest against the Eritrean government’s crackdown on the Reformers and call on their government to take commensurate steps against the Eritrean government.
September 21, 2001: BBC World monitoring service reports that the University students who had been at WiA camp have returned to Eritrea. The ruling party’s website, Shaebia.org reported that the new school year would start on October 8, 2001. On the failure of the original summer program, the party accused the reformers, whom it described as a “group of politicians who were working to foment instability in the country” of “working behind the scenes” urging “the students to refuse to participate in the summer work program” and “to push them into violent confrontation with police.”
September 24, 2001: The Government of Eritrea revokes the diplomatic passports of the three PFDJ Reformers who were not arrested on September 18 and September 19. The three reformers—Mesfun Hagos, Haile Menkorios and Adhanom Gebremariam. At least one, Mr. Mesfun Hagos, had flown out of Washington, DC, with his diplomatic passport on September 18 and the revocation took effect while he was in Europe. The government explained that this action is a routine exercise that is applied on any national who is no longer serving in a diplomatic capacity and that the Reformers can apply and receive an ordinary passport. Others dispute this assertion on the basis that the three “diplomats”, such as Haile Menkorius, had not been serving in an Eritrean diplomatic capacity for months and that receiving an Eritrean passport is not as simple as filling out the necessary application at an Embassy.
September 26, 2001: Along with Hebret Berhe, Eritrea’s former Ambassador to Scandinavian countries, two of the 15 Reformers, Haile Menkorios and Adhanom Gebremariam, convene a meeting at the Double Tree Hotel in Arlington, VA. The meeting was organized by “Concerned Eritreans” and managed to attract 500-600 people, according to some reports. The session was aborted within half an hour after its commencement by the Arlington police who could not control disruptive elements.
September 28, 2001: Mr. Antonio Bandini, Italy’s Ambassador to Eritrea, as well as EU’s Ambassador to Eritrea, was given a 72-hour deadline to leave the country. Mr. Bandini had presented the Eritrean government with EU’s “demarche”—a document expressing grave expression at Eritrea’s political direction. The Eritrean government stated that the reason for the expulsion is Mr. Bandini’s engagement in activities that “were not compatible” with his diplomatic duties. Analysts quoted in the media said, “The letter the EU criticized Eritrea for human rights violations, following the arrest of 11 dissidents, the closure of the private press and the detention of at least eight journalist…The Italian ambassador, like several other western ambassadors, had contact with the dissidents whilst they were still in office…Since their dismissal, all the ambassadors held one joint meeting to hear the dissidents position. It is possible that these contacts were considered provocative and displeased the government. “
September 30, 2001: Ambassador Tesfay Ghirmazion, Eritrea’s representative to the EU, submits his resignation. Asmarino.com quotes the reason he gave for his decision as follows: “I have chosen to disassociate myself from a system that has increasingly become intolerant to divergent views and resorts to illegal ways of silencing its people.” After his resignation, the Eritrean government accused him of attending the August 18 meeting in New York and of leaving “his job without prior notification to the government or giving any reason as regards his action.” The same report states that “he wrote a short note on 29 September 2001, informing the government of Eritrea about his resignation.”
September 30, 2001: Between 1200 to 2000 Eritreans are reported to have attended a meeting chaired by Ambassador Girma Asmerom to discuss the draft laws on elections. A resolution was passed—“unanimously and with a standing ovation”–to (1) in light of the Woyane threat, to show solidarity with the Eritrean Government and the Eritrean Defense Forces; (2) to work hard and hand-in-hand with the government in the efforts of demobilization, repatriation of refugees and reconstruction; (3) after observing, in depth, the campaign conducted by a few leaders and their supporters while we were engaged in safeguarding our sovereignty and reconstruction efforts, we conclude that the movement–which is not timely, diverts us from our national focus to other undesirable venues, endangers our unity and mutual trust, creates fissures that could be exploited and dilutes our energies from focusing on important matters—is destructive. This [issue] has been extended more than it should have. While we express our support for the legal remedies [used by the government] to address this matter that endangers our national unity, security and sovereignty, we recommit ourselves to foiling efforts that undermine our national unity, national security and sovereignty.” As a sign of commitment, the assembled group pledged 100,000 to the Eritrean government. Some residents of Washington, D.C. who did not attend the meeting reported to Awate.com that in an effort to ensure that the meeting would have one of the highest turnouts, the Eritrean Ambassador’s office had spared no effort calling Eritreans consecutively for nearly two weeks.
October 2, 2001:Mr. Tseggai Mogos, Eritrea’s ambassador to Italy, is given a 72-hour deadline to leave the country. The move was explained as retaliation for Eritrea’s expulsion of Italy’s ambassador to Eritrea, Mr. Antonio Bandini.
October 2, 2001: In a taped address broadcast by Asmarino.com’s “Delina” audio service, Mr. Mesfun Hagos, vows that Although he is innocent and fears that his civil liberties will be violated by the government as soon as he returns, he will, nonetheless, return to Eritrea “as a nationalist and citizen.” He further stated that although he and his 14 colleagues are guilty of nothing more than challenging the “dictatorial, unpredictable and arrogant behavior” of President Isaias Afwerki; that he and his colleagues are “ready to face any charges against us in an open court with all our rights protected.” He advised his listeners to be on alert for any pretext by President Isaias Afwerki to plunge Eritrea into war and to be aware that they may be told that some of the jailed reformers had committed suicide, died accidentally or were shot while trying to escape.
October 2, 2001: Eritrea’s government radio, dimtSi Hafash, announced that ““Eritrea has said that it will not attend the meeting of the UN Military Coordination Committee overseeing the cessation of hostilities on the border with Ethiopia scheduled for 3 October. The head of the Eritrean side, Brig-Gen Abrahaley Kifle, said Eritrea does not accept the UN proposal that the meeting should be held in the Temporary Security Zone, rather than on the common border as proposed by Eritrea.”
October 2001 :In an article published by Asmarino.com, formerConstitutional Commission Members, Gebre Hiwet Tesfagiorgis, Semret Asfaha and Tekie Fessehatzion express their “deepest concern on the recent developments on the Eritrean political scene, in particular the closure of the private press (plus detention of nine independent journalists) as well as the arrest of 11 senior members of the government. Our concern emanates from their implications on cardinal principles on rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of Eritrea (article 19), without the observance of which it is impossible to build a tolerant and politically pluralist society.” They also stated that their intent “is not to take side in the ongoing political division within the PFDJ (Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice) leadership. Nor is it to join the chorus of condemnatory or self-serving declaratory statements that seem to characterize the Internet postings nowadays. It is rather to express our concerns about the increasingly deteriorating political situation in Eritrea, which if not handled with care can throw the country and its people into a serious political crisis.” Regarding the detention of the 11 PFDJ reformers, they stated “We have no way of ascertaining the veracity of the charge or knowing what constitutes a threat to national sovereignty, as no detailed information has been made public. Still we worry because, the detention, coming as it does following several political pronouncements by the dissident group, we are not certain whether the detention is, as the dissidents allege, due to their public statements critical of the Head of State governing style, or as the government contends, due to real and credible evidence that the dissidents, through their conduct, have threatened the nation’s security and sovereignty.”
October 1 – October 15, 2001:
** Mr. Mesfun Hagos, a leading figure from the PFDJ reformers (G-15) vows to return to Eritrea. He made the vow in Germany where he was stranded after leaving the USA after a medical stay on his way to Eritrea, carrying a diplomatic passport. On his depart from the USA, he was seen off by the Eritrean Ambassador to the USA, Mr. Girma Asmerom. Mesfun discovered that his passport was nullified when he was in transit in Germany. Critics of the Eritrean Government believe that nullifying Mesfin’s passport was a step to prevent Mesfin from returning to Eritrea where he enjoys a popular support after 11 of his colleagues who signed an Open Letter to the President of Eritrea were earlier jailed.
** TheBelgian Chapter European Network for the Defense of Democracy and Peace in Eritrea, sent a letter to The European Union and the People of Eritrea. The letter was addressed toMrs. Nicole Fontaine, President of the European Parliament; Mr. Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission; Mr. Javier Solana, Secretary General of the Council of EU and Mr. Paul Nielson, Member of the Commission Development and Humanitarian Aid. Written to protest the expulsion of Italy’s and EU’s Ambassador to Eritrea, Mr Bandini, the authors describe him as a person whose “humanity, his commitment, his efficiency and his burning desire to help out the fledgling nation was common knowledge” was admired by the Belgian Chapter. The letter also stated that “The people of Eritrea have nothing against Ambassador Bandini. On the contrary, they are struck with stupor to witness his unjustified, utterly unjustifiable departure from the country. The measure taken by the power circle against him is nothing else but a wanton act against the fundamental interests of the people of Eritrea.”
** As reported by Shaebia.org, a pro-government meeting of Eritreans in Germany passed a resolution calling for the postponement of elections in Eritrea scheduled for December 2001.
** Asmara University Students announce the formation of an underground opposition group known as Bana Harenet.
** An organization of Eritreans in Australia, known as Eritrean Action Group, sent a letter of appeal to United Nation Human Rights Commissioner, Australian Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Amnesty International and Australian Red Cross. The letter of appeal pointed to the “alarming and blatant violations of human rights in our homeland” and accused the Eritrean government of unleashing “state sponsored terror against veteran leaders (G15 or reformers which include ministers, high ranking military officials), journalists and students and “suspended” the free press in Eritrea.” The letter called for the release “unconditionally all political prisoners; Abolish the Special Court (conducts trials behind closed doors and allows no right to defence counsel or appeal to higher court); Implement the 1997 ratified National Constitution without delay; Defer national elections scheduled for December 2001 and establish an independent Election Commission. Invite UN and other independent international observers during elections;Abolish PFDJ’s monopoly on the economy; Respect of the democratic and human rights of all citizens.
** An Eritrean website, Eritrea1.org, reports of a military clash between government forces and the opposition around the western town of Guluj
October 16 – October 31, 2001:
** Two Eritreans, Ali Alamin and Kiflom Gebre Michael who worked for the political and economic affairs office at the American Embassy in Asmara, Eritrea were detained by security personnel. The arrest came on the same day that the USA released a statement criticizing the Eritrean Government for detaining of the “reformers” and its clampdown on free-press.
October 22, 2001: The Guardian reports: “European Union ambassadors pulled out of Eritrea last week in protest at a crackdown on political dissent and a free press in a country that was seen as one of the great new hopes in Africa.” Noting that Italy had expelled the Eritrean Ambassador in retaliation for Eritrea’s expulsion of Italy’s ambassador, the paper quoted diplomats as saying “that the crackdown began a few days after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US” and that they “believe that the Eritrean government thought the world’s attention would be distracted from events in the Horn of Africa.” Still, “… the US issued a statement condemning the crackdown” and a “ couple of days later the police arrested two Eritreans working at the US embassy in Asmara, in what appeared to be retaliation for the US criticism.”
** The Eritrean Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a Press Release protesting to “a number of western countries, including the United States, [that] have issued negative statements on Eritrea in what appears to be a concerted effort.” The release stated, “The Government had publicly announced that the reasons that underlie the temporary closure of the print media were their gross violation of the country’s press law. It has likewise announced the detention of certain individuals engaged in unlawful acts against the sovereignty and national security of the country. It has stated categorically that their detention has nothing to do with any political views they may hold and express.”
** In an interview with a Swedish radio station, Mr. Yemane Gebreab, political advisor to president Isaias Afwerki and political director of the ruling party said that elections in Eritrea scheduled for December 2001 had been postponed. Mr. Yemane Gebreab said, “we struggled 30 years for democracy. We have full support from the population and we will surprise the world.” [15] In response, the Eritrean website, Asmarino.com, interviewed a spokesperson for Eritrean Embassy in the US, who said, “the elections have not been postponed and will take place as scheduled in December 2001.”
** UNMEE repots that hundreds of unclaimed bodies from the Eritrean-Ethiopian border war still rot in the divide area between the armies of the two countries and asked both parties to bury their dead.
** An Eritrean advocacy group called the “Eritrean Action Committee for Peace and Democracy in the Netherlands (EACPDN)” is founded. [18]. In their press release, the founders describe themselves as “former active and longtime members of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), and Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and other independent minded individuals.” The release describes the motivation for the formation as being “in response to the acute crisis which is confronting Eritrea today.”
** A London meeting organized by Eritreans was violently disrupted when some attendants began to heckle and throw punches and chairs at the guest speaker, Mr. Mesfin Hagos, a member of the PFDJ Reformers (G-15) who had escaped arrest because he was outside the country on Septmber 18, the day his colleagues were detained. Suspicions that the disruption was co-coordinated by pro-government activists were buttressed when the government radio, dimtSi Hafash, praised the disruptive elements.
** Adhanom Gebremarian, Eritrea’s former ambassador to Nigeria and one of the three members of the Reformers who escaped arrest, held a meeting with Eritreans in New Jersey, USA. Following two previous foiled meetings organized for the Reformers, this meeting was noteworthy for the absence of violence and disruption.
** Amnesty International issues a statement expressing concern for the health of members of the “PFDJ Reformisers who had been arrested namely, Petros Solomon, Ogbe Abraha, Haile Woldetensae, Mahmud Ahmed Sheriffo, Berhane Ghebre Eghzabiher, Saleh Kekiya, Aster Fishatsion, Hamid Himid, German Nati, Estifanos Seyoum and Beraki Ghebre Selassie (m). Amnesty International stated that it “fears for their safety and is particularly concerned for the health of Ogbe Abraha who suffers from asthma and Haile Woldetensae who is diabetic.’ Amnesty International also wrote a letter of appealed on behalf of “nine journalists…[who] have been…detained incommunicado at a police station in the capital, Asmara, for over a month.” The nine journalists are Yousef Mohamed Ali, Medhanie Haile, Dawit Habtemichael, Amanuel Asrat, Dawit Isaac, Temesken Ghebreyesus, Mattewos Habteab, Aron Berhane, and Seyoum Fsehaye.
** Eritreans opposed to the government of Eritrea held a meeting in Seattle.
** The People’s Democratic Front For The Liberation Of Eritrea (SAGEM) held its meeting in Ethiopia.] In a press release, SAGEM said that it had, “successfully reached at resolving important resolutions and it charted a new working program.”
** The Secretariat of the Alliance of Eritrean National Forces held its 10th regular meeting. The alliance’s statement reported that one “ofthe main issues the AENF deliberated upon was therefore the eminent danger posed by the political uncertainty in Asmara and the dire consequences this may entail not only to the unity and security of our people but also to the stability of our region as a whole. “
November 1 – November 15 2001
November 4, 2001: Kessela [Sudan] Region Governor, Adam Hamid Mussa and Gash-Barka [Eritrea] Region Governor, Mustafa al-Nour Hussein, signed an agreement for bilateral cooperation between their two regions. Kessela region in the Sudan borders the Gash-Barka region in Eritrea. The agreement signed provides for the creation of joint committees on economic, political-security and cultural-social cooperation. They also agreed to exchange intelligence information, as well as cooperate in fighting infiltrations and smuggling across their common border. The Sudanese and the Eritrean opposition forces are stationed in the Gash-Barka/Kessela regions.
November 5, 2001: In a release issued to Awate.com, Endrias Habtegerghis, Eritrea’s Charge d’affairs in the Netherlands, indicates of his resignation as a protest of the government’s arrest of the PFDJ Reformers and his belief that the ruling party is not committed to surrendering power to the people.
November 7, 2001:] A group of students who were held in Wi’a and other detention camps after they had protested against the policies of the government and the university of Asmara administration were released. Students had protested against summer work program compensation and fairness as well as other policy issues of the university. The leaders of the student union remained in detention.
November 16 – November 30, 2001:
** A recently-formed Eritrean advocacy group known as “Concerned Eritreans for Democracy and Reconciliation, Metro-Atlanta “ held its first seminar in Atlanta, GA. Adhanom G/Mariam, a member of the PFDJ Reformers, was the group’s guest speaker who, according to published reports, presented a well-received speech of the political crisis in Eritrea.
** The French organization Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) included Eritrea’s president Isaias Afwerki in its list of “predators of Free Press.” RSF reported: “Since the 18 September 2001, Eritrea is the only African country where private press no longer exists.”
** Four ambassadors of EU member states (Germany, Holland, France and Denmark) return to Eritrea, a month after they were recalled to Europe for consultations. The Ambassadors were recalled for consultations by their government in protest against the expulsion of Ambassador Antonio Bandini of Italy who also represented the European Union. Mr. Bandini did not return to Eritrea: neither Italy nor the EU has representation in Eritrea.
** Two weeks after his meeting had been disrupted by pro-government Eritreans, Mesfun Hagos, a leading member of the PFDJ reform movement, met Eritreans in London . There was strong police presence in the meeting, which was convened at a church and it was concluded without any disruptions.
** Eritreans in The Hague (The Netherlands) organized a rally in “demonstration against the repressive Eritrean regime.”
** Eritreans residing in Sweden organize a meeting for Mr. Mesfin Hagos]. Though the meeting was concluded peacefully, a clear sign of opposing the tones of Mr. Mesfin started to emerge from Eritreans who are supporters of the traditional opposition and the Independents. The main complaints was that Mr. Mesfin Hagos and, by extension, the Reformers, were despite being victims of unsubstantiated allegations, only too eager to accuse others of unsubstantiated allegations and to engage in exclusionary tactics.
** A Dallas/Fort Worth based Eritrean advocacy group, the “Committee of the Dallas and Fort Worth Metropolis,” organizes a meeting and invites Adhanom G/Mariam as a guest speaker. The Committee which describes itself as “neither pro or against the so-called “G15″ reports that it had “extended similar invitation to the Eritrean Ambassador to the US, Mr. Girma Asmerom.”
** Two Eritrean journalists Milkias Mehreteab and Semere Tazaz held their first public event in Washington D.C. The reporters presented a chilling report of the political crisis in Eritrea and presented detailed description of the scores of Eritreans languishing in jails without charge and appealed to Eritreans in Diaspora to desist from uncritical support of the government. The two reporters had fled to the United States and escaped detention in Eritrea when all editors and reporters of the private press were jailed during the September clampdown on the private press.
** Eritrea’s Director of America Division within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Derei Mohammed Debas, resigned from his post. In his resignation letter, Mr. Derei stated that the “ current sad situation in Eritrea has killed” his hope and the hope “among the whole population and in particular among the youth.” He described the activities of his agency as being “locked up in defending the indefensible acts by our government.” He described the work of an Eritrean diplomat as one whose “daily bilateral meetings have wholly been dominated by futile attempts from outside to explain to experienced diplomats the laughable justifications for the arrest of the former ministers and members of the National Assembly, the arrest of the elders, the university students, the US Embassy staff, the journalists, the firing of the Chief Justice, the closure of the free press, the continuation of the special court etc.”
** Mussie Ephrem, a young Eritrean residing in Sweden filed a Habeas Corpus, a first of its kind by an Eritrea citizen against the government of Eritrea. The petition was filed by his lawyer to protest the arrest of the “PFDJ reformers.” The petition appeals to language in the unimplemented Eritrean Constitution as well as “the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights”, all of which Eritrea is a signatory to.
December 2001
** An Eritrean advocacy group known as “Eritrean Public Forum” is formed in the USA. In its press release, the Forum describes its goals as working for the “Implementation of the 1997 National constitution of Eritrea, Creation of a sustainable political atmosphere where all elements of democracy can grow through appropriate lobbying activities, and, Promotion of dialogue and open discussion among all.”
** Eritrea and Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministers present their cases to the International Court at The Hague. Both sides have presented their cases to the commission, which is expected to give its ruling in February.
** Eritrea’s “Cabinet of Ministers” holds a meeting. According to the Shaebia.org, the government website, “The Cabinet heard and thoroughly discussed reports of achievements and challenges of ministries and administrative regions,” The purpose of the sessions was to “ discuss, refine and prioritize sectoral objectives for the coming three years. The three-year framework is chosen in order to provide a broader planning perspective as well as to highlight the coherence and continuity of sectoral programmes. The focus is otherwise on government budget for the next fiscal year which starts on 1 January 2002 and ends on 31st December 2002.”
** An Eritrean website, Eritrea1.org, publishes a directive which it believes is written by PFDJ’s political director, Mr. Yemane Gebreab. The unsigned “directive,” which is dated October 2nd 2001 and is addressed to all offices of PFDJ in Europe and USA, says in part “…it is now known that a few who have escaped arrest have finished preparation to conduct continuous meetings in European and North American cities. Since this is a continuation of their destructive activities, you are directed to use what ever possible methods to disrupt these meetings.”
** The government website, Shaebia.org, publishes a commentary accusing Eritrea1.org of what it called “Cheap Fabrication from Eritrea1.org” The commentary stated: “ A cursory glance at the forged Tigrigna letter reveals that it is shoddy at best, lacking in proper use of grammar (pathetically misspelling Tigrigna words!), style, slogan and seal….If past experience of the remnants of the so-called G-15 and G-13 is anything to go by, however, it is that these people are fast becoming experts at shooting themselves in the foot with their transparent lies and fabricated stories, and they don’t need the help of the PFDJ in exposing their nakedness. “
** The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) issues a statement denying Ethiopian reports of Eritrean military escalation along the common border. This information followed accusation and counter accusation by both Eritrea and Ethiopia each claiming the other is preparing for or looking for pretext for war.
** Eritreans in Toronoto, Canada held a demonstration against the government of Eritrea to protest the visit of Eritrea’s Ambassador to North America, Mr. Girma Asmerom. The group lodged a complaint to the Oakwood Collegiate of Toronto District School “for allowing such meeting to take place in an educational institution; while the dictatorial regime jails its students in the hottest desert concentration camps.”
** The Eritrean president, Isaias Afwerki, met with the president of Sudan’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Mowlana Mohammed Osman Al Mirghani, and the Chairman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Doctor John Garang. The two leaders were in Asmara for a meeting of the NDA’s policy-making body, the Leadership Council. In the meeting, President Isaias is reported to have “…stressed that the experience of the past decades has conclusively proved that there can be no military solution to Sudan’s problems”. He then urged the NDA to “vigorously pursue the only viable option for Sudan, a just and comprehensive peace settlement”. He further added, ” the government and the opposition owe it to the people of Sudan to bring the war to an end as soon as possible”. Members of the Eritrea’s opposition groups wondered why President Isaias doesn’t apply in his own country what he preaches to the Sudanese.
** Ann K. Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) writes a letter addressed to President Isaias Afwerki, stating that the CPJ “is deeply troubled by your government’s ongoing crackdown on the independent press in Eritrea.” CPJ goes on to state, “According to our research, all the country’s independent newspapers have now been shut down. Eleven journalists are currently jailed without charges, while the whereabouts of three others are unknown.”
** The border commission charged by the United Nations to resolve the border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia began hearing the cases of the two countries in The Hague. The commission was established by the authority of the Ceasefire Agreement signed by Eritrea and Ethiopia in December 2000. The terms of the agreement state that the findings of the commission are final and binding, a condition that both nations accepted upon signing the peace agreement.
** UN Secretary General Koffi Anan submits a report on the progress of UNMEE’s efforts in maintaining the peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia. While the report is generally complementary of both nation’s government’s commitment to complying with the terms of the agreement they signed, the Secretary General points out the difficulties the UN Mission is facing in the areas of transportation (by air and on road), demining, determining size and scope of militia, access to airwaves, etc. Judging by the tone and volume of the specifics, the Secretary General’s report seems to indicate that UNMEE has faced more difficulties from the government of Eritrea than the government of Ethiopia.
** Ambassador Hebret Berhe accused the government of Eritrea of “contempt for the Eritrean people” for failing to officially inform the citizenry of the postponement or cancellation of the elections scheduled for December 2001. The Eritrean National Assembly, which authorized the timetable for the election in September 2000, did not convene for a single session in 2001. The Ambassador argued that the Assembly’s failure to protect its members (the PFDJ Reformers/G-15 who have been detained without charge since September) is an indication that its powers have been completely absorbed by the President.
When I first met ato Kidane Alemayehu, I thought we were auditioning for a rendition of the movie, Odd Couple. He was an Ethiopian and an Amara with a propensity of repeating the all-too-familiar “sameness mantra” I’ve heard all my life; but one that was unequivocally rejected by my own father and over twenty immediate family members who have proudly paid the ultimate price for Eritrea.
I too was a product of my upbringing who did not feign any qualms of expressing hatred towards the Amara. Like my generation, I hated everything Amara, and took pride in not being able to speak their language. I still don’t speak Amharic, but as I got older and hopefully wiser, I am neither proud nor ashamed of it— just neutral.
The first thing that struck me about ato Kidane Alemayehu was that he is a gentleman through and through. His nobility of character, decency, and integrity was evident; but, most of all, he was very open and honest on all issues. I liked him immediately; and knew instinctively I could work with him. As the founder of the Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center, he was looking for a few good men and women from Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.
On our first encounter, and with a purpose of laying everything on the table, I told him blatantly how I grew up singing, “ab ruba ruba Tseg’I gobo amHaray adgi intezrekbo breney gere k’imbbo.” The song encapsulates our burning desire to avenge the wrongs committed against our people by the Amara. In all honesty, I didn’t even know the Amara look like us till I came to Khartoum, Sudan; I thought they all looked like Menghistu Hailemariam.
The Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center is the brain-child of ato Kidane Alemayehu. The center is established to foster peace and development in the region. For the last seven years, I have worked with ato Kidane Alemayehu and many other wonderful people from the region and came to know him well. His passion for peace and justice for the region is real; he is a tireless advocate of regional integration.
Ato Kidane Alemayehu and I have become good friends and, to my pleasant surprise, I feel reconnected to a lost uncle. Aya Kidane was one of the first to come and express his condolences when I lost my older brother, Dawit (May his soul rest in peace.) Whenever I call him, he would immediately say in his endearing Tigrinya accent, “Hi, Semere, Kemey aleka?” It is a friendship based on mutual respect—the same noble idea aya Kidane hopes to be the basis of a brighter future of the Horn of Africa.
The following petition is part of his larger plan to right what was wrong; heal what was wounded, and unite what was broken apart. It is a big project, but he has a heart that is even bigger.
Please sign the petition below and show solidarity for a just cause initiated by my friend and lost uncle, ato Kidane Alemayehu.
Semere T Habtemariam is the current chairman of the Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center, and the author of “Hearts Like Birds” and the forthcoming book on the History and Faith of the Orthodox Tewahdo Church of Eritrea and Ethiopia. He can be reached: weriz@yahoo.com
Will Italy and the Vatican Emulate Britain and The Netherlands?* By Kidane Alemayehu
Apologies and Compensations by Britain and The Netherlands
Two European nations, Britain and The Netherlands, have finally come to terms with the demand for justice by apologizing to and compensating the people of Kenya and Indonesia, respectively, for the crimes committed by the former colonial powers over half a century ago.
Status of the Fascist Crimes Against Ethiopia with the Complicit Support of the Vatican
The Vatican is still being awaited to express its apology to the Ethiopian people for its complicity with the Fascists. The Italian government needs to pay adequate reparations to the Ethiopian people for the huge war crimes perpetrated by the Fascists in Ethiopia where one million people were massacred and huge quantities of properties were also destroyed. Looted Ethiopian properties still remain in the hands of the Vatican, and the Italian government.
Britain’s Apology and Compensation to Kenya
It has been reported that 90,000 Kenyans were killed and 160,000 were “forced into concentration camps” during the 1950’s. For more details please check the following link at Al Jazeera (by James Reinl, June 7, 2013):
In a news item entitled: “Kenyans celebrate Mau Mau compensation win”, James Reinl stated:
“Making a landmark apology before Britain’s parliament, Foreign Secretary William Hague expressed regret over “abhorrent violations of human dignity” that took place more thanhalf a century ago.”
In addition to the formal and public apology, Britain agreed to an out-of-court settlement for the payment of $30.5 million at the rate of $4,100.00 compensation per claimant to a total of 5,200 victims. Thus, although the compensation is obviously low compared with the number of victims, nevertheless, the fact that Britain owned up to its past crimes against the Kenyan people deserves appreciation and, hopefully, leads the way for a more just settlement.
The Netherlands Government’s Apology and Compensation to Indonesia
In a news item entitled: “Netherlands apologises for Indonesian colonial killings” dated September 12, 2013, AFP (Agence France-Presse) reported the historic action by the Government of the Netherlands that offered its formal and open apology at Jakarta to the Indonesian people for the “mass killings” undertaken by the Dutch military during 1945-49. It is also reported that the Dutch government has offered Euros 20,000 to each widow of those massacred (40,000) during the colonial days. For more details, the following link may be checked: http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1308843/netherlands-apologises-indonesian-colonial-killings
What Do the Actions by the British and Dutch Governments Exemplify?
The compensations offered and the formal apologies expressed by the two governments to the Kenyan and Indonesian peoples, respectively, reflect important principles of humanity and justice. Among other things, it clearly indicates the British, and Dutch governments’ admirable capacity to own up for their past war crimes. The actions clearly emphasize the fact that such crimes have no stay of execution. Therefore, even though the British and Dutch massacres and atrocities in Kenya, and Indonesia, respectively, took place over sixty years ago, the Governments finally faced their obligations squarely and apologized to the Kenyan and Indonesian people.
The British and Dutch apologies and compensations also reflect their respect for the Governments and people of Kenya and Indonesia who had suffered a massacre at the hands of an invading, colonial army. By their honorable action, the British and Dutch governments have set an excellent example for the international community, especially the Vatican, and Italy, in the war crimes committed in Ethiopia.
Therefore, the governments and peoples of Britain and the Netherlands as well as those of Kenya and Indonesia deserve the fullest accolade for facilitating a closure for the atrocities committed during the colonial days.
Fascist Italy’s War Crimes Committed in Ethiopia with the Vatican’s Complicity
The following war crimes and devastation was committed in Ethiopia by Fascist Italy with the complicit support by the Vatican during 1935-41:
(a) One million Ethiopians were massacred of whom 30,000 were killed within only three days in Addis Ababa; and at least 15,000 people were killed as a result of the poison gas sprayed by numerous Fascist airplanes in many parts of Ethiopia;
(b) 2,000 churches, 525,000 homes, and 14 million animals were destroyed;
(c) Vast quantities of Ethiopian properties looted from Ethiopia.
Fascist Atrocity in Ethiopia : Justice Owed to the Ethiopian People
The Global Alliance for Justice – The Ethiopian Cause (www.globalallianceforethiopia.org) is in the process of conducting an international campaign to achieve the following objectives:
1. A Vatican apology to the Ethiopian people for its complicity with the Fascists;
2. Adequate compensation by the Italian Government to the Ethiopian people for the huge loss in lives and property they sustained as a result of the Fascist war crimes;
3. Restitution of Ethiopian properties by Italy, and the Vatican which, for example, has over 500 Ethiopian documents in its custody;
4. The dismantlement of the monument established by Italy for the Fascist “Butcher of Ethiopia”, Rodolfo Graziani, at Affile, a town southeast of Rome; and
5. The inclusion of the Fascist war crimes in Ethiopia in the records of the United Nations.
International Appeal
The international community, including the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, the Vatican, and the Italian government should take a leaf from the excellent example set by Britain and the Netherlands which have demonstrated their respect for human rights and justice by apologizing to and compensating the Kenyan and Indonesian victims of their colonial massacres. It is time that the Ethiopian people who have been awaiting the justice that has been due to them for over 75 years are duly compensated in terms of a formal apology, reparations, restitution of properties, and recognition as stated above so that, finally, a closure will be achieved.
*Although the content of this article is the responsibility of the author, the helpful suggestions by Dr. Girma Abebe, Dr. Mikael Wossen, and Mr. Deneke Hailemariam are greatly appreciated.Kidane Alemayehu is a retired United Nations expert.
This article is systematically produced to entertain with different perspectives about Bologna Conference based on content analysis and empirical data done with the intention to develop a ground for healthy political discussion and debate among Eritreans regardless their political thoughts. We should view this article keeping in mind that there are difficulties of analyzing the available information largely brought on the basis of assumptions, political motivated interpretations or vague descriptions over “ulterior motives” of the conference, if there is, because this topic needs deeper research to be assessed from all the parameters in order to reach in rational conclusion. Thus, I attempt to avoid certain unsubstantiated rhetoric intended to focus on tangible and well evidenced information though it is still subject to further investigation. So far the article formulates a thoughtful analysis largely treating the “national interest” as the focal point of my scrutiny that may direct to the collective action for well being of our nation. And your constructive comment is definitely significant for constructive discussion.
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For the last ten years the people of Eritrea have been described as hot tempered, aggressive, dissected, intolerant, amateur democrats etc. Some eloquent people stated “We, Eritreans, have agreed not to agree with each other”, but I do believe that our forefathers had partly different experiences, and succeeded to develop a strong customary or traditional laws what we called it “Higi InDaba” that enabled them to govern and regulate their daily activities to live in harmony though they experienced all sorts of conflicts- land issues, lootings, power struggle, and other confrontation, but they had strong values, norms and traditional rules to manage their conflicts sitting under big trees, “Daro” so as to resolve their disparities. The system was virtually more advanced and civilized than the Machiavellian tactics of governance or absolute authoritarian system that the ruling party, PFDJ, use to govern and maintain Eritrea, a modern state, in 21st Century. In these old times, at least we had a parliament at village or community level, “Bayto”, to address our problems instead of indulging in the law of jungle.
This traditional institutions were partly damaged by the introduction of Italian colonial system; and the values of native courts, political pluralism and freedom of speech, though they had positive and negative effects, got relative ground during British occupation which became a benchmark for the foundation of semi-democratic state under the Ethiopian crown in 1950’s. The internal constitutional rights of Eritreans were systematically demolished; and paved way for final annexation in 1962. Eritreans involved in army confrontation in which the nationalists lost the art and skills of negotiation; and became very violent and intolerant among themselves to achieve their objectives. The negative side of the armed struggle still polarizes the political system of “independent” Eritrea. The mismanagement of justice and socio-economic crisis have resulted a lot of political grievances and the formation of many political parties which has to be intended to develop a practical democracy in Eritrea with a notion of tolerance, integrity, openness and transparency.
Nonetheless, the opposition parties have least tolerance and skills to manage and resolve their conflicts; they may be the other face of the same coin of PFDJ. What it makes them different: they do not have the real power to exert of their wish. We can objectively define and test them when we put them in actual power. In fact the Bologna conference has partly tested the lenience and the spirit of developing “collective struggle” against regime change in Eritrea. Seyom Tesfaye underlined, “The underlining principle that every Eritrean group has the right to organize its own meeting without asking permission or approval from any other organization has to be firmly stated. This democratic principle makes the Bologna Summit a legitimate meeting. Those who are working hard to abort or subvert this meeting have deficiency in understanding democratic rights”. The event significantly questioned the level of maturity, capacity and optimization of democratic values and principles among opposition parties.
