WHY HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERN - ERITREA (HRCE) REJECTS NAZ YEMANE’S CALL TO ALL ERITREANS IN DIASPORA

Naz Yemane has posted an article, ‘Call to all Eritreans in The Diaspora’, http://www.notosanction.bahtimeskerem.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105:call-to-all-eritreans-in-the-diaspora&catid=34:demo-category urging Eritreans worldwide to rally and demonstrate against the UN Security Council Sanction against Eritrea. He writes ‘…the UN has put sanctions and embargos in place against our country and our people.’ HRCE would like to point out, as Eritreans in diaspora ourselves, that there is no ’country’ without ’people’, and that the people who are suffering are those in Eritrea, and they are not suffering because of any sanctions or embargos imposed by the UN Security Council; rather, they are suffering because of the hideous living conditions imposed on them by their own leader, Isaias Afewerki - conditions so bad that many Eritreans choose to live outside, even though their leader, the despot of their own country, has made it illegal for them to attempt to do so, and those who do attempt departure are often shot or drowned in the attempt. Nevertheless, Eritreans continue to try leaving because there is no life worth living in their own country.

Naz Yemane uses many important-sounding words in his article, words that have no basis in reality. He raises the issue of ‘independence’ when what Eritrea has is isolation: Eritrea is isolated from countries that would help it ensure human rights because a despotic leader will not allow independent investigators and human rights organisations to visit and see how Eritreans live: ‘independently’ forced to join the army to fight a largely imaginary enemy; ‘independently’ starving because corrupt government officials have ‘confiscated’, i.e. stolen, any money made by independent businesses; ‘independently’ unable to report its own situation within its own ‘independent’ newspapers because there aren’t any - those journalists who haven’t been jailed or executed for printing the truth can only print government propaganda.

The article by Naz Yemane tries to cloud the real issues with empty rhetoric, phrases such as ’will of our people’ when so many of ’our’ people are dying of hunger, languishing in Eritrean prisons without trial for crimes they never committed, unless wanting a decent life in your own country is a crime; unless seeking a better life elsewhere is a crime. It’s easy to sit comfortably in Canada while ’our people’ are sitting on cold concrete, hungry and sick, in torture cells and detention centres, in and out of Eritrea, for not wanting to live in hunger and fear in their own country. Whatever wrongs the UN may be guilty of, and it certainly isn’t perfect, two wrongs don’t make a right, and the complete absence of human rights in Eritrea, an absence caused by Isaias Afewerki and his government, and which is the worst wrong of all, has gone too long unpunished. It is not the Eritrean people who suffer from the arms embargo, travel ban and assets freeze, it is only the coffers of those corrupt officials whose assets might be frozen - better the freezing of some ne’er-do-wells’ assets, comprised of money stolen from the honest Eritreans’ slave-labour, than to allow men, women and children to freeze to death and die of hunger in their own country without registering some complaint.

But the empty rhetoric continues, with cries from Naz Yemane of ‘unity’. Who is the real oppressor here? Isaias Afewerki. Who is really suffering? Eritreans who are still in Eritrea, or in detention centres in other countries such as Libya. If there is to be ‘unity’ then these are the people we need to unite with. We can’t unite with them by holding a rally pretending that embargos are a bad thing for the people. Things could not possibly get any worse for Eritreans in Eritrea; the embargos are a way forward. A worldwide demonstration is an excellent idea, of course - a demonstration against Isaias Afewerki. ‘Anti-Afewerki is pro-Eritrean’ some banners could read. ‘Stop this madman’s endless torture’ could read another.

The people of Iran are waking up to the lawlessness of their leaders and demonstrating in London every day of every week - Eritreans who do the same against their own corrupt leaders in this country are often attacked, verbally and physically and in false reports on the internet, often by ‘Eritreans in diaspora’ who are doing nothing more than protecting their own financial interests. Is this ‘unity’?

Isaias Afewerki constantly plays the Ethiopia card, making an imaginary ogre out of the bordering country, when anyone who survived the brutalities of his regime knows that the enemy is within.

What about the brothers and sisters, the sons and daughters, the fathers and mothers of the martyrs who are currently in prison? Is that how we honor them?

What about the intellectuals and scholars who left the country in droves because they could not speak their mind? Left, that is, before it became almost impossible to do so without bribing somebody who would ultimately let you die anyway. Left a country that no longer has a real university.

How can Naz Yemane even mention ‘courts of law’ to defend a government that imprisons its innocent citizens, brutalises and murders them daily, without even a pretence of judicial procedure?

The world has not confined Eritrea – Isaias Afewerki has confined Eritrea, has confined his people, making the entire country a prison even for those (and there are increasingly few) who are not already behind bars.

We do agree with Naz Yemane in one important aspect, though. He writes that ‘all man made laws can be challenged and overcome because man made them and man can change them’. That’s right. Isaias Afewerki and his cronies are only men and women who became a law unto themselves, and they spread evil and terror while they can, but other men, and women, and children will come - men, women and children who have not been taken it any longer. Unfortunately, Isaias is trying to keep them all prisoner, so it is down to their brothers and sisters outside to speak for them, to demonstrate for them, and to print the truth, not lies.

What is the use of ‘sovereignty’ without dignity? An army hardly strong enough to stand up, taking bribes from prisoners it guards because it lacks a conscience, and because it, too, is hungry? What is the point of an unimplemented Constitution?

Since when is enough food to get through the day, some honest work, some decent living conditions, perhaps a newspaper to read or a radio to listen to that doesn’t only print propaganda, or being allowed to travel freely, to name just a few basic human rights, a ‘luxury’?

Rallying and encouraging our people to challenge the UN Security Council’s Sanctions would be not only a luxury but an absolute waste of human resources, an irrelevance bordering, no pun intended, on the criminal. A wake-up call is needed to unite all Eritreans in diaspora against Isaias Afewerki's government, against the real dictator.　

Human Rights Concern – Eritrea (HRCE)

London, U.K.

3 February 2010

http://www.hrc-eritrea.org/