The Eritrean Dream: Growing Gray in Search of the Right to Remain Hungry

 The time was May 2010 in Shegerab Refugee Camp, when we used to share thatched huts with fellow-refugees and I had the opportunity to live with some interesting folks. One night, when were laying on our backs, watching the stars….a gentle man with grim face, albeit, with a soft heart poignantly wondered about the perennial journey of the Eritrean youth.

He described the ordeal of our journey, ‘Tahrib’, as it has been dubbed by the escapees-tahrib from Eritrea to neighboring countries for the reasons of what migration scholars refer to ‘accident of geography’, tahrib from the godforsaken [Hobbesian-like] refugee camps, located at the periphery of the host countries to the urban centers wherein the refugees find themselves in a state of limbo, uncertainty, police harassments and round-ups, tahrib from these transit countries to second transit regions such as Egypt, Libya and Israel from where they try their luck to make it North America and/or Europe.

Every step of the movement entails its own unprecedented costs, risks and worst of all missing on one’s formative years of potential education, employment and establishing one’s own family.

What Happened to our ‘Eritrean Dream’?

Is there such a thing called Eritrean Dream? On many occasions, we hear about the American dream-a dream whereby the individual lives in a democratic society with no physical and/or psychological fears of any kind. As broken and ailing as it might sound to many people, Americans still have an ‘American Dream’ wherein the individual enjoys sovereignty. When Chinese President Xi Jinping assumed presidency in November 2012, he managed to shore up his legitimacy by championing the ‘Chinese Dream’ of moderately prosperous society, national rejuvenation and individual happiness. It remains to be seen if the Chinese Dream was an expedient tool by Xi Jinping’s leadership. But for now, a Chinese can hold a dream of his own in a system that is renowned for its collectivist tendencies.

The Eritrean people dreamt of an independent and prosperous country of their own. This noble dream was utilized by Shaebia as Kibreab Gaim has wrote, “EPLF came to power on the back of popular struggle promising to relegate to the dustbin the history of the factors that previously forced Eritreans to flee their country in search of international protection.” We were promised of establishing an “African Singapore” in the country of Eritrea-a bubble of false promise that took not too many years for the people to realize the EPLF/PFDJ is in practice a clique of opportunists who gnaw the very hand that fed them. And now, we live in a regrettable state of affairs with the youth languishing in different refugee camps and the once promising Eritrea considered by many as the North Korea of Africa.

The Eritrean People entrusted Tegadelti with leading the new and war ravaged nation to prosperity. However, that enthusiasm was shattered upon realizing that the PFDJ leadership was trying to buy its leeway, not dedicated to democratic reforms as it embarked on clamping down all attempts of and calls for democratic reforms. The hope that after independence, Eritrea would become one of the most democratic and prosperous countries in Africa was nothing but a faded dream at least until this day.

The Rhetoric of Existential Threat and Clinging to Power

During our freshman years, I borrowed a complied reading material from a good friend of mine who was studying at Asmara Teachers Training Institute (TTI). Retrospectively, I am terrified to come across a theme that says, “Every Eritrean is born in war, grows up in war and dies in war!” I did not realize then, that the PFDJ would undertake whatever it takes to create a militarized society just to stay in power.

In order to accomplish that, PFDJ created a siege mentality by feeding the populace of an imminent existential threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Eritrea. Now that the old dangers of national subjugation were no more, PFDJ’s political orchestrators had to create new dangers by propagating external and internal bogymen that try to undermine national security. This helped the lunatic PFDJ leadership to legitimize the institutionalization of the ‘people under siege’ policy.

In addition to legitimizing its unbridled rein, this policy also served the leadership to ward off the potential threat that would result from the presence of a legion of unemployed mass, especially with the phenomenon of 1990s rural-urban migration wherein the formal and informal markets in the urban areas lacked the capacity to absorb the unemployed youths. PFDJ effectively offset the dangers of structural fallacies (lack of economic, political and social spaces) for absorbing the newly graduated and aspiring youth by drafting them to the military. If we lack a spongy market to absorb the youth, it is prudent to send them away from the political centers.

Indeed, President Isaias Afewerki once concurred to this by declaring that; “Asmara, in particular has become a jungle [chaka]-a hiding place for fugitives, absconders, people who run away from fulfilling their obligations, youth who commit crimes and who engage in indecent and corrupt activities.”

We had a dream-a dream to live by our toil and hardworking unlike what the conscience-less regime apologists want to portray us. We all know refugeeism debauches our dignity and integrity both as people and individuals. Never have I ever thought things would unfold this way that our youth would be marginalized and disdained by PFDJ leadership. The transmission of Gedli’s socio-political values [I for one, believe there were values that needed transmission], if they were compatible with the acquisition by the youth of new capabilities and aspirations would have been achieved by accommodating their new dreams.

Every time I try to explain the dire situation in Eritrea to people of other nationalities, I always caution them not to take us on prima facie, for welfare migrants for we are denied of our basic rights to try and succeed or fail in our country. If a farmer is not allowed to till his land, if the petty merchant is confiscated of his license, if the contractor is denied of practicing his labor, if the menial worker cannot sell his labor, if the professionals and artists are intimidated, who is said to have the negative right to remain hungry? We all grow gray in search of that right. If not for the unbearable repression in Eritrea, who do you thing chooses to sleep in the abandoned buildings of Italy?          
 

    Notes

1. Zhenghua, W. “Experts interpret the Chinese Dream”, China Daily (08-12-2013), available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-12/08/content_17159773.htm (accessed, 08-12-2013).
2.  Gaim Kibreab, “Forced Labour in Eritrea,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol., 47, Issue, 01 (March, 2009), Pp.41-72.