Dear Asena listeners and readers, as you probably know, Asena is being fully funded by a few Eritreans who live all over the world. The transmission fee to Eritrea has been a challenge but Asena was able to stay on the air because of few committed individuals. The extraordinary work that Asena is doing is not a secret. Asena has been getting positive feedback from inside and outside the country. And those encouraging words have been motivating us, Asena Media Foundation and the few individuals, whoa re determined to move forward and do whatever it takes to speak out for the poor and the weak, young and old.
Syracuse, Italy – At least 133 illegal immigrants from Eritrea arrived by boat in southern Italy, according to reports. Around 40 women and 15 children were among the group. Italian police stepped in to move the group to a provisional immigrant camp at the port of Portopalo immediately after they landed.
Isaias Afewerki led a guerrilla army that helped to overthrow the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 and win independence for Eritrea, which the Red Sea country secured after a referendum two years later. As Eritrea’s president, he initially pledged to introduce multiparty democracy and free markets. But a border war with Ethiopia from 1998 to 2000 led to a sharp change in course.
Strictly speaking, come the month of September, the people of Eritrea have mixed feelings for very good reasons. 18th of September is the day in the infamous year 2001(September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York City) when Democracy was officially killed and buried then and there and the reign of overt tyranny officially befell the people and country of Eritrea. The undisputed culprit: No other than the one and only, the self-styled-president-for-life Isias Afewarki.
It feels like it happened just yesterday. It was 7 a.m. on an average day in September in Asmara, Eritrea. My brain was still reshuffling the information I had gathered about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center a week earlier. I was writing an article on it for the next issue of Setit, the twice-weekly newspaper of which I was editor-in-chief.
Reporters Without Borders has meanwhile learned that, during the past three weeks, dozens of civil servants working for the ministries of information, defence, foreign affairs and national security have been forced by the authorities to surrender their email passwords.

KUWAIT CITY, Sept 13, (KUNA): The Independent Petroleum Group (IPG) said on Sunday it is resorting to the Court of Arbitration in London (governed by the Rules of Conciliation and Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce -ICC Rules), to obtain an arbitration award confirming that Eritrea and the Petroleum Corporation of Eritrea — PCE (the National Petroleum Company totally owned by the State of Eritrea) should immediately pay IPG the value of delivered petroleum products of around KD 19 million.
Officials in Costa Rica have said that a boat with 54 African migrants on board has been intercepted off the country’s Caribbean coast.