In a flat country a hillock thinks itself a mountain

… but anyway there was a perfect opportunity for us all to roll our eyes and grunt ‘sew tira bilut rasu meta…!’ last week ( when I first started writing this)… over the days that followed International press Freedom Day the world has been learning the dire situation of freedom of press in Eritrea through the various editorials and items filed by freedom loving journalists across the globe… needless to say the engine behind all this are our friends at CPJ… (Committee to Protect Journalists)…their evidence is the fact that millions of Eritreans in Eritrea are denied information independently sourced ... Meanwhile Eritrea kept sinking progressively to the bottom of the Press Freedom Index and when it finally hit rock bottom CPJ alerted the world… and to our utter amazement Thomas Mountain came in huffing and puffing… claiming to be the Messiah of Eritrea’s press freedom… (excuse me while I go roll my eyes and exclaim… Sew Tira Bilut Erasu meTa!!)…

Eritrea: Fathers and Sons and the Grammar of Independence

In the usual relay race of life, fathers hand over the legacy baton to their sons, and those sons carry it over with all the care it demands with the intention of passing it over to their sons, and so on down to the next generation. In that “baton” are to be found all the heritage that the sons need to know to continue the life journey of their people: history, culture, customs, rule of law, language, religion, myths, stories, collective wisdom and other multi-layered legacies that would sustain their people for generations to come. Any abrupt and total break in passing it over would usher a disaster of epic proportion, for one loses the whole survival kit in the process. ...

Now, if you will, reverse the above mentioned process and imagine the sons contemptuously handing back the baton to their fathers, believing that there is nothing they could learn from it ...

Power Vacuum Seems to Be Eminent in Eritrean Politics, Are We Ready?

Eritrean organizations in the Diaspora and in the heart land, to be innovative, responsive and responsible require focusing on a number of leadership, power and influence issues. In a country where democracy prevails the leadership tries its best to inform, influence, and satisfy the peoples’ demands and needs. It is this attitude and practice that is absent in the Eritrean politics. The Eritrean opposition in general seems to lack the vision and management of change and the panic and helplessness observed in the Eritrean power politics in general with the rumor of death of dictator Isaias whether manipulated or not is vivid and clear.  Below are some ideas that I think will help to develop sound strategy, management and assessment of political situation and the need to re-organize.

Mea Culpa, not Defensive Rationalization, is the Right Thing to Do

In highly contentious political joking and tussling environment rumors, misinformation and counter misinformation have found their own niche with devastating long range impact to the nurturing of a healthy political process. The use of “unconfirmed” and “unsubstantiated” information in a journalistic narrative will downgrade the reputation of the news outlet that generated the news, no matter the heroic effort to temper the blow when the “unconfirmed news” is discredited by iron clad evidence to the contrary.

The motivation of the reportage or the reporting organ is not an issue for reporting “unconfirmed news” is one of the tools of modern journalism but the spin and exaggerated extrapolation that explodes out of control due to the trigger “unconfirmed information” and the ensuing collapse of all scenarios built on the original unconfirmed reporting imposes a moral responsibility to genuinely reassess the process of how we deploy and utilize “unconfirmed information” in our new digital media.

Correction: Ruling with Minimal Physical and Mental Effort

The task that the Ministry of Information faces is a tough one: it had to show the Eritrean public that the president is as energetic and fully engaged as he had been in the past with a sparse material in its hand. It had no other recourse than to make up the deficit in reality by superimposing images and concocting stories: the Tv montage and the udet story are examples of these two respectively, with many others to follow in the future. What these images and stories are meant to do is to portray Isaias as a strong, energetic and busy leader without taxing him much physically and mentally – something that he cannot do given his serious and recalcitrant illness.

(Photo: the Ministerial Cabinet meeting as shown in Shabait.com)

Eritrea: President Isaias Afwerki’s Reign in Absentia

With this good opportunity to dispel the rumors of his death (an easy task), the message that the president wanted to convey to his followers was one and one thing only: that if he disappears for a lengthy time in the near future, as he anticipates he would, not to believe the rumors of his severe illness. ...

The president knows but too well that, in the event of these rumors of his terminal illness persisting for too long, his die-hard followers who cannot imagine a world without him would panic, many opportunistic followers would start jumping off the sinking ship, his juniors in the administration would be emboldened to seek an alternative to him, the opposition would be emboldened to put its house in order (for whatever it is worth); and Ethiopia might put him to test ...

(Photo: Isaias in his son's wedding on Fberuary, 2012; although deceptively dated later in the picture)

Is he alive then?

When he bounced back to life explaining his disappearance as a mental ill health condition of many many, many people it reminded me of the story that an elderly gentleman once told me… here is a bit on how it goes…. Two friends grew old together and as many of their friends passed away one by one and they both became increasingly, aware that their turn was coming sooner than later the only questions were which one would go first and how the other one would react to that… so when one day one of them got ill he asked his life long friend to do his melqes for him and show him how he is going to grieve for him when he actually dies… and the dutiful friend decided to grant him that and here is his melqes (sorry this only works in Tigrigna and I don’t Tigrigna that well so this will need to be a joint effort of filling any blanks!)…

Mao’s ‘Hundred Flowers Policy’ in its ‘Isaias is dead’ version after 55 years

In 1956-1957, Mao Zedong desired to root out opposition from his country.  He officially began a policy, named, ‘Hundred Flowers Policy’- to encourage all those who had opposing ideas to his brand of socialism.  His proclamation began, "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend."  Millions of intellectuals and educators started writing and publishing their protests against his heavy-handed governing policies. These Chinese leftists actually thought they could trust Mao, so they took him up on his proposal and began to offer him their criticisms and ideas on how to run China better   (Dr. Sanders, 2009). This version of terrible history has been carbon copied this last week by the ever applicant of Mao’s policies, Dictator Isaias Afwerki. He just managed to spread rumours, in consultation with his puppet Ali Abdu, that he was dead and then insanely appeared on his TV to tell the world that he is not dead ...

Post Isaias Eritrea’s likely four scenarios

However, one thing is for certain, something fishy is going on behind the scene. Eritrea is a country which doesn’t have a succession plan, without a constitution implemented, no bureaucratic institutions in place; when the president is dead or unfit to rule the country, it is a big dilemma as who should succeed him. If perhaps the president magically comes back to power, this should be the first question his diehard supporters should put forward to him if they love their countrymen more than him. In my opinion, Eritrea could be the only country in the world without a vice president; even terror organizations like Al’Qaeda have got a succession plan.

Is he dead?

So is he dead?… well if he isn’t he is doing a really bad job of showing he is alive!… if he were a horse and I were a betting woman I wouldn’t ask for proof of his death but a proof of his life before I placed my bet on him being alive… and in the three separate occasions the MOI talked about him over less than two days they have told us CIA are praying for him to die (using incense and myrrh) that is a lie! They told us he has the health of a 16 year old youth (fit as a fiddle too!) that is a lie and they told us his health is 300% and that is an outright lie… and so one can perhaps quote other sources and tell us he is alive but I wouldn’t use the Ministry of Information as the source to establish whether we have one or two bodies looking for a state funeral…! The question is which one will they bury first and where?

Mend the Gap Arbi Harnet Style!

This for me is the essence of what has gone wrong for our nation... PFDJ go to the youth call them YPFDJ teach them few meaningless slogans and tell them they are a cut above the rest of the world and make them live in an endless merry go round of gwaila and make monkeys of them and now people in the opposition are doing the same... getting a bunch of desperate youth who have crossed an unforgiving desert and ransomed their very lives having borrowed every last penny that their friends and relatives could afford them... and gotten their lives away from the life of a gun totting slave... that the only way forward is to trek back across that desert and offer to tote another gun for another master!  We all know that none of that is going to happen ... but what is happening is that similar to YPFDJ’s rhetoric of bxifrina... the resistance is breeding a bunch of young men who retort bqilximna... both shout it from a distance safe enough that no one would take them too seriously... but with the devastating impact of dispelling the gathering clouds of change for Eritrea.

Field Report: Tel Aviv Visit

This short report is an account of Release Eritrea’s visit to Tel Aviv, to do a scoping of the challenges faced by Eritrean Refugee Women who were victims of Sexual and gender based harassment at the hands of people’s traffickers and smugglers in The Sinai. 

The visit took place between Thursday 29th March and Sunday 1st of April. During the visit consultations with several refugee support organisations were held. Groups and individual refugees were also involved in a series of discussions, including newly arrived refugees who were sleeping rough in a public park.

(Photo: Selam with Eritrean women refugees in Israel)