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Reverse the exodus from Eritrea

Dan Connell The Boston Globe Last week, soldiers in one of Africa’s most closed and repressive nations — Eritrea — occupied the country’s Ministry of Information and issued demands. The pattern was a familiar one. News

Dan Connell The Boston Globe
Last week, soldiers in one of Africa’s most closed and repressive nations — Eritrea — occupied the country’s Ministry of Information and issued demands. The pattern was a familiar one. News spread quickly that a coup was underway. But feisty little Eritrea, which got its independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after defeating successive US- and Soviet-backed armies in a 30-year war, has never fit the mold of postcolonial African states, and it was not doing so now.
In a country where chatting about politics at open-air cafés can get you arrested, this was the only way people with a grievance could get attention and survive: in a large group with guns. Their point was to start a national conversation where none was allowed. And they did.
The government at first admitted an “incident,” then denied anything had happened, while Eritrea’s global diaspora lit up the Internet with debates and celebrations. One group placed 10,000 robo-calls to Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, urging people on; thousands of protesters in London, Stockholm, Rome, Berlin, and Washington this week picketed or occupied Eritrea’s embassies to show support.
The soldiers who occupied the information ministry were fed up with their dictatorship and wanted everyone to know it. So they marched into the state-run TV studios — there are no private media — and broadcast a call for implementation of a constitution ratified 16 years ago but still gathering dust, and the release of political prisoners, of which there are as many as 10,000. Then they went back to their barracks. Arrests followed, but the message was out.
“Only Eritreans can bring this about, but there are things we could do to lessen the suffering of the victims of this tyranny.”
Many commentators called this a “failed coup,” but they missed the point. The protesters were not asking for power, just a crack in the wall, the payoff the entire society has been waiting for over the past half century of sacrifice and struggle, which the leader of their independence movement, Isaias Afwerki, is denying them. And they are not going to stay quiet any longer.
Tens of thousands have fled a tyrannical regime often compared to North Korea: Eritrea has one political party; no national elections, ever; no organizations not controlled by the state, including religious denominations; no independent media; no space for raising any questions about government policies. Yet when Eritreans escape, usually at great personal risk, they often find themselves treated like criminals — or just turned away.
The worst off are the victims of a human trafficking ring in which refugees are kidnapped from camps in Sudan and taken to the Egyptian Sinai, where Bedouin criminal gangs torture them during phone calls to relatives while forcing them to beg for ransoms as high as $30,000. One I spoke with in Tel Aviv recently, a 28-year-old former computer programmer, had lost all use of his badly disfigured hands after being hung from them for weeks while awaiting payments.
There is only one solution for this global human rights crisis: a change in the situation in Eritrea so the exodus can be reversed, not simply blocked or rerouted.
What is needed — and what these courageous young protesters are calling for — is a constitutional framework for a transition to democracy and the release of those detained for simply voicing their yearning for it. Only Eritreans can bring this about, but there are things we could do to lessen the suffering of the victims of this tyranny while helping them stand up to it.
The first is vigorous action to halt the trafficking of Eritreans in the Egyptian Sinai. This is complicated by treaty obligations arising from the 1978 pact with Israel that limit Egypt’s military presence, as well as by Egypt’s unsettled political environment. But the presence of a multinational force with a strong American component would give us a wedge to tackle this.
Meanwhile, borrowing a page from the anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1980s, we should pressure international mining companies now throwing a lifeline to the regime to suspend operations until basic rights are extended to the population and the government demonstrates that the mines are not worked by unpaid conscript labor, as a Human Rights Watch report alleged last month. Eritreans will take care of the rest.

Dan Connell (www.danconnell.net), the author of numerous books and articles on Eritrea, teaches journalism and African politics at Simmons College.

aseye.asena@gmail.com

Review overview
8 COMMENTS
  • Eritrea Today more Heinous than Cambodia.
    Victims of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge and Victims of Eritrea ISIAS Regime, seems to me, may have similarity. I ENCOURAGE EVERY ONE OF US TO READ ABOUT Khmer Rouge the Copy of ISIAS regime. What happening in ERITEA today more heinous than Cambodia.
    FOR many years Cambodia (or, Kampuchea) was at peace. Then, in 1970, Lieutenant General Lon Nol seized power. As a result, communists known as Khmer Rouge, or Red Khmer, rose up in revolt. Lon Nol mobilized everyone he could throughout Cambodia to fight the communists. During 1973 and 1974 the turmoil of the war increased, and people in all walks of life became more distressed by the injustices they saw.
    ISIAS, which tried to impose a certain way of his DICTATOR thinking and living on everyone, Life in Eritrea the place of my birth, seems to all of us so unnatural. Right now every Eritrean disconcert and filled with horror, I am hearing and I am reading about my people grievances, let all of us think and act what we could do about it.
    FROM ERITREAN REFGUEE

  • Hagu February 3, 2013

    Mass media play a lot and we need Dan to play a historic role of the coming Eritrea. Thank you Dan.

  • Redi Kifle (bashay) February 3, 2013

    “Only Eritreans can bring this about, but there are things we could do to lessen the suffering of the victims of this tyranny”. The experienced professor and great jornalist has said it all, while many of us in the opposition got misled by distorted ideas.

    I totally agree with Dan Connell, that we are the owners of our own belonging and I always advocated for this scientific view adamantly. We, Eritrean must pay what we owe, and dismantle the dictatorial erection once and for all by our own arms. Everything else as important as it is must be considered secondary and be delivered on request. To be clear, no foreign foot soldier is needed to lay the foundations of democracy in our country, for every transplanted democracy is abortive and gets high jacked very easily.

    All we need is, politicize our Eritrean Defense Forces and our people with a democratic philosophy appropriate to our society. That way, the doors for a home grown democracy will be wide open. If we Eritreans are unable to overhaul the dictatorial system at home, we will be totally incapacitated to trigger the process of democracy as well.

  • Warsay February 3, 2013

    Mr. Dan Connell, a former and existing friend of Isayas could have brought a great positive change in Eritrea. What he said “Only Eritreans can bring this about, but there are things we could do to lessen the suffering of the victims of this tyranny.” is not acceptable. The dictator is tyranizing the nationals only with the suport of CIA, CNN and otjer figures like Mr Dan!!!. Mr Dan and the whole West (Israel, Egypt, USA, EU, …etc) are realy enjoying the slaughter of the youth in Egyptian Sinai. The aim/target may be to awaken finaly the Diaspora, especially the intellectuals. But I doubt, whether the algorith was concepted very deeply and consistently!

    I see many hypocratic element that contradict in the realization of the process. This wanted and failed coup need no deep analysis. It was meant to make DIA still powerful and untouchable for further supression of the Eritrean people. What is behind these actions? I mean the makers behind the curtain are probably pursuing a real and lasting politics that is not visible and perceivable by every reader or national.

    The disatisfaction is always great, because the alien and secretive solution proposals and applications need to be native and transparent.

    As long as the experimantation remains a hidden agenda we are condemned to suffering far from the solutions we endeauver to atain.!

    Note tha I write this not as a provocation but it is my perception of the situation we Eritreans find our selves helpless – as allway others are doing the job for us.

  • Truly,Truly i say to you February 3, 2013

    Thanks Dan Connell for speaking up for people, who can not speak for themselves. Thanks for protecting the rights of our helpless people and for your righteous judge. That exactly is pleases Almighty Lord almighty Jesus Christ according the word. (Proverbs 31, 8.) Those how King Herod jailed the man of God “peter”, but after with the help of an angle of the Lord how was Peter rescued from the hand of Herod perched us Eritreans ( Acts 12; 1-12)since they selves are in jail it is already passed 12 years. Can you imagine these preachers what they feeling about what they preached thinking? And all the time about what they dreaming and hopping? Ofcourse God to rescue them by sending his angels like Peter released. Please Dan Conell do something, or inform to US administration for divine intervention to rescue our helpless people that dieing in Sinai, Mediterranean Sea when fleeing from Eritrean Herod,(Pharaoh) Isayas Afeworki hand.

  • ariam February 3, 2013

    Don I have one guestion for you; why you putting your nose in a matter that don’t concern you.?
    just leave our Eritrea alone and mind your own business pls.
    We already know your agenda I think you know about our government very well so pls don’t bother to
    Tell our leaders what to do with all the respect thanks.

    • PrettyRiri February 9, 2013

      any person with good common sense and has a respect for humanity can be conserned.and Dan is doing a good job compared to those (people like u) eritreans in diaspora who are so blind by selfishness who just cheer “nehna natu nesu nahna” in DIASPORA,enjoying the finer things in life,enjoying their food and drinks in DIASPORA.enjoying their freedom in DIASPORA and not allowing the eritreans in eritrea to enjoy freedom because yuO support the dictator. saying that,to all diasporians i would like to see u live in eritrea if its as good as u say.

  • Habtom February 4, 2013

    What a clear message and a historic call to the international community to work for one more justice, to reverse exodus from Eritrea by the long time fighter, and journalist. Dan the exodus will be reversed, pretty sure after the Forto2013 incidence.

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