G13 ’Berlin
Manifesto’: 10 years after* (Part I)
Posted at
awate.com
Mohamed Kheir October
2, 2011
A colleague whom I have never heard from, for almost 20 years
called me one November evening in 2000 from Dubai. After quickly exchanging
greetings he strongly warned me not to travel to Eritrea. He said he was
extremely worried that the President is going to execute me and my colleagues,
just like Saddam Hussein did to his son-in-law who had defected to Jordan
together with Saddam’s daughter and had returned to the country based on an
amnesty that was granted to him. He was executed upon arrival. I was in
Norway that time and my colleague was referring to my preparations to leave to
Eritrea with my G13 colleagues to meet the President who invited the group for
a discussion. I appreciated his concern, though I did not like the sad analogy,
and stated that I knew the risks when I signed the G-13 letter and could not
back off at such a crucial moment. For me it was not just going back to meet
the President, but it was going back to Eritrea and living there after a short
stay in Norway.
I
may have made many mistakes and wrong judgments in my life but my participation
in the G13 is something that I will never regret. I also feel honored to have
participated in the Addis meeting last month. I may have had many joyous
moments in my life, but the most memorable were those minutes in the evening
of 25 November 2000, I spent with my colleagues, face to face with
President Isaias, in his own den, telling him emphatically that he is leading
the country to disaster. I remember our colleague, Meriem Omer getting
furious at him and many times she looked like she wanted to take him by the sleeve
of his shirt. I cannot talk on the behalf of my colleagues, but what I can say
is that what I did, as a participant in the group, was not because I was a hero
or more courageous than others, but just because circumstances then, allowed
this event to take place. During that period there was a rift in the leadership
of the PFDJ and the president was cornered and weak. He was just playing with
time and his survival skills to strike back at the right moment. As usual with
all Eritrean meetings there are many conspiracy theories on the G-13, the most
ridiculous I heard was that it was a theatrical show arranged by the President
himself, undermining the risk the participants took. Ten years is not a long
time, but those who were 10-15 years old then are now in their twenties and our
memories fade away with time. Many things has changed since then and I
would like to reflect back at the event, circumstances that led to it, where we
stand today and what we can learn from it.
Background
to the G13 meeting
Facts
on the ground: Just one month before the third Ethiopian offensive, Alamin
Mohamed Seid, held seminars inside Eritrean and abroad indicating that the
Government of Eritrea (GOE) was well prepared for the war with Ethiopia. He
indicated Eritrea will not be the first one to start the war, but it hopes the
Weyane will do so because this time he said, ‘we are going to take Mekele’. He
emphasized that they had the capacity to do so. Before the second offensive, he
had said, “Weyane is now history. It is over”. The President himself had made
many funny arrogant remarks before that like ‘leaving Badme means that the Sun
would not set’ and ‘the Weyane are just looking at catalogs and shopping planes
‘ to the applause of the same ‘Nihna Nsu, Esu Nihna’ crowds we saw in New
York recently.
During
the third Ethiopian offensive which the Ethiopians dubbed as ‘Operation
Sun Set’ thousands of Eritreans died, large parts of Eritrea were taken and
lots of property was destroyed. If it had not been for the gallant Eritrean
fighters and peoples determination, the whole of Eritrea was at stake. Had it
not been for the determination of the Eritrean Defence Forces at Assab,
Panicking President Isaias had ordered its evacuation. The humiliating
‘Agreement of Cessation of hostilities between Eritrea and Ethiopia ‘ was
signed in June 2000. The President agreed that – ‘the
Eritrean forces shall remain at a distance of 25 km (artillery range) from
positions to which Ethiopian forces shall redeploy in accordance with paragraph
9 of the agreement. This zone of separation shall be referred to in this
document as the “temporary security zone.”
As
The Tigrinya saying goes ‘Bi kebero Abiikha bi Himbitata’. He had refused
previously all peace initiatives asking him to withdraw from Badme, but now he was
forced to lose sovereignty over large junks of Eritrean territory, again
claiming to have won, to the applause of his koboro supporters.
The
8th Central
Committee Session of the PFDJ was held between 31/8 -02/09/2000. At that
meeting the President was confronted with harsh criticism the way he handled
the war. Some of the decisions taken and that were made public later were: to
form a committee that would review in detail the conduct of war with the Weyane
as well as the peace process; to immediately commence the preparation necessary
for the implementation of the constitution; to form a committee to study
policies, decision making process, method of work, distribution of authority,
accountability & control in the PFDJ and the GOE. It was also decided that
the next PFDJ Congress be held within 6 months by 02.03.2001. The 13th session of
the ‘National Assembly’ meeting convened 29/09/ – 02/10/2000. During that
meeting it was decided to: to hold elections on the basis of the constitution
not later than the end of 2001; to form a committee charged with drafting laws
governing political parties, to form a committee to review the 10 years
performance of the GOE as well as specifically the third Ethiopian offensive.
The reformers then seemed to be too many and had the upper hand. Since the
arrest of the G15, the PFDJ has never conducted any meetings and the President
is running the country single handedly. Who is then the traitor? The G15 or the
President? Who is non-Eritrean? The G15 or the President? Who is the defeatist?
The G15 or the President?
The
Eritrean opposition composed mainly of the former ELF, has been crying foul
since independence but their messages were overtaken by the euphorbia of the
independence. Some them including some leaders agreed to drop their arms and
join the GOE as individuals, but others refused and continued to oppose the
regime despite all odds. To them we owe them credit that they kept the
opposition alive. They stood with Ethiopia in accusing Eritrea in beginning the
aggression in 1998. They were vindicated when the Eritrea/Ethiopia Claims
Commission declared that Eritrea had violated the law on the use of force in
starting the 1998 war between the two states.
Role of the media
The
young Eritrean press had been very critical the way the war was handled. Again,
I stand by my previous assertion that
we had a relatively democratic space in 2000, despite all injustice committed.
This was not a grant from the President but was forced on him by some PFDJ
leaders at that time that pushed for reforms. To negate this is to negate a
historical junction in our history, to undermine the role of the G15. I come
from the ELF political school myself, but we need to be objective in our
assessments and evaluations and to give everyone his due. The launching of the
then independent business oriented Asmarino.com was a major breakthrough. It
broke the monopoly of the apparently neutral but essentially pro-government Dehai.
After the signing of the agreement, articles highly critical of the GOE
started to appear like Saleh Younis’s “Tewgah’mo”, and other articles by
Yohannes Ogbazghi, Tbreh O.E etc. There are several important articles
published at Asmarino then, but are not archived unfortunately, to be able to
access them today. The critical articles at the cyber space had accelerated
with the launch of Awate.com in September 1, 2000. The simple reason I prefer
to write at awate.com is that they have a very good archive system, unmatched
by any other Eritrean website so far. Asmarino has been on and off and so many
old articles are lost. I hope they would make all old articles available. These
articles are a national treasure and we need to preserve them for the coming generations.
The G13 Meeting
I
was invited to the meeting, like I was invited to the last meeting of Eritrean
intellectuals and professionals that took place in September in Addis Ababa.
The credit goes to the organizers of the meeting. There was no specific agenda,
I was told we will discuss the situation in Eritrea and that was enough to me.
Several persons were invited but only 13 of us could make it. We met at
Potsdam in Berlin. Like the recent meeting I did not know many of the
participants in advance. The same issues and concerns that are raised
about the Addis meeting were also raised, then. Alamin Mohamed Seid was
interviewed by Haddas Eretra, issue nr. 211 dated 10 August 2001 on the G13
meeting and this was what he said:
“Yes,
it is true. Before going into details, it is pertinent to pose a number of
questions: Who were behind the convening of the meeting? How come that
participants who did not share, as they themselves put it, a common political
view came to attend the meeting? And other related questions. Coming back to
the main topic, the manifesto issued in the name of the 13 educated Eritreans
and what the Central Committee members are talking about are the same in
content. It is to be recalled that the G13 individuals claimed last October that
unless the rift within the nation’s leadership is quickly resolved, it may
result in dire consequences. They asserted this at a time when no one from
amongst of the public had the slightest idea about what these persons were
propagating….”
Most of the criticism centered about the timing, venue, why it was a closed
meeting, who funded it, etc. The meeting was funded by the ‘Heinrich Boll
Foundation’, a German non-governmental organization that promotes democracy and
good governance. The meeting was held 10 years ago, 23 -26 September 2000 where
the participants discussed in detail the situation in the country and decided
to write a private letter to
the President. They put their names and addresses on it and signed it. In brief
they stated the following: Now was the time to speak and further silence could
endanger the interest of the country and compromise their historic
responsibility; expressed unreserved support for the GOE in its defense of the
country; admired the Eritrean Defense Forces and the people for foiling the
Ethiopian aggression; expressed concern for the tragic conditions of the
victims of war; indicated that Eritrea’s image has hit rock bottom; recognized
notable achievements but indicated GOE lagged behind in the development of
democratic institutions; called for reconciliation and national unity;
emphasized the importance of collective leadership; indicated there was a rift
in the leadership that needed to be carefully handled; requested the immediate
implementation of the constitution; requested that the special courts be
abolished; appealed that people languishing in prisons for years without trial
be released or be brought to a court of law; and criticized the dominant role
of the PFDJ in the economy. In brief they said loudly and clearly NO to one-man
rule. They also criticized the other members of the PFDJ leadership for being
silent and for allowing such a rule to flourish. A criticism that the G15
seemed to had taken seriously. They had also broken the repressive culture of
the PFDJ, something the President was scared of.
Post-meeting developments
The
letter was dispatched to the President and to the Eritrean Ambassador in the
USA on October 3, 2000. By October 7, gstefanos@yahoo.fr (possibly
a GOE security agent) posted the letter at Dehai.org . He dubbed it as the
‘Berlin Manifesto’. It seems it was purposely leaked. Isaias who was at an
IGAAD meeting in Sudan, was back by then. The GOE probably thought the leakage
of letter, would descript the group as Weyane agents, as emotions against
Ethiopia were high. It back fired and generated heated discussion inside
Eritrea and abroad. By October 10 the President wrote to the group indicating
that he was ready to meet them and discuss with them at any place they choose.
Internally
the private press widely wrote about it. The positive reply by the President
that he would meet the group gave hope that something could come out of it. The
invitation paralyzed the group’s intention to hold a larger meeting. The
dictator, an experienced survivalist politician had his own agenda and
strategy. He had to conduct secret campaigns before publically criticizing and undermining
the content of the letter. The GOE press started a smear campaign against the
group. Attempts to publish the whole letter in the private press ended in the
imprisonment of 8 journalists (reported by www.misna.org 17th October
but link missing). Some were later released and others were sent to national
service. Though the G13 letter could not be published, things later changed and
the G15 open letter (unfortunately, a link could not be found) to the president
was published in the private press.
The
G13 letter gave a big momentum to the spark by the critical cyber space
articles. The letter was locally translated, photocopied in large numbers and
widely circulated. It accelerated the need for changes that were raised by the
private press.
The international news media, echoed the
message of the letter worldwide. The ION in its 21, October 2000, described it
as the ‘Rebel of the intelligentsia’.
The BBC in its news item entitled ‘Eritrea confronts the
future’ stated that the most famous criticism appeared in the
‘Berlin Declaration’. After 8 months from the Berlin letter, the G15 historic
document ‘Open letter to all PFDJ members’ was published in May 27, 2001
accusing the president of conducting himself in ‘an illegal and
unconstitutional manner’ as quoted in The chronology of the reform movement by Awate.com that
documents events around this period. The website deserves credit for this.
Though
the President invited the group for a discussion, the GOE media continued its
smear campaign against the group. It seemed the President did not expect the
group to show up in Asmara. In defiance to the spirit of the letter, just
before the arrival of the G13 in Asmara, the President fired the then Minister
of Transportation and Communications, Saleh Kekia (member of the G15 later) who
had been critical of the President at the PFDJ and ‘National Assembly’
meetings. The meeting with the President was brief and was just a public
relations show by him. It was arranged on the last day most of the members were
to leave Eritrea. He refused to discuss the issues. He first tried to
intimidate the group by claiming that they did a great harm to their country
and gave comfort to the Weyne by writing the letter and that they need to
apologize for that and compensate for their mistakes by serving their country
better. He claimed also the allegations were not based on facts and they ought
to have consulted with him before writing an open letter. When the members
stood by their claims, he withdrew his intimidation and said he was ready to
work with the group and that his office was open to them at any time. The group
asked him that they wanted to hold a larger meeting in Asmara to which he
responded that he will look into the matter.
The
public’s high expectations of the meeting were quickly shattered. In a couple
of weeks after the meeting, the President started to denounce the letter
publically. In an interview with the private press, he stated that the
allegations in the letter were baseless and the public was to judge its
contents. He tried to portray the letter as a defeatist stand. It was the same
words and tactics used against the G15. Gradually the President intensified his
attacks on the group. In an interview with the VOA aired on 13 April 2001, the
President said. “They know it and I know it that these are completely detached
people from reality who have never been there. They came up with their
opinions. I respect anyone’s opinion. I do not see any substantive issue on the
paper outside the publicity given to it:”
The
letter was a collective consciousness by some of the ‘intelligentsia’ breaking
the silence. Together with the struggle by the private press inside and the
cyber space articles and the Eritrean political opposition the letter added
momentum to the struggle for democratic changes in Eritrea which continue
unabated. If the President had listened to the G13 and later to the G15, he
could have saved the country from sliding into a failed state. 10 years later
there are those in the opposition who still have hope that he can reform. I pass
my tribute to the late Dr. Reesom Haile, the poet and political activist who
was a member of the G13. I express my respect to the other 10 members who
stood by what they wrote in the letter and are actively involved in the
opposition.
*This
article is based on an account I wrote at awate.com in 2001, one year after the
letter was written.
To
be continued: on where we stand and lessons learned
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted at awate.com on October 28, 2011
Written by: Dr. Mohammed Kheir
In Part I,
I dealt with the circumstances that led to the writing of the letter and the
reactions then. President Isaias, neither listened to the G13 nor the G15. He
has been systematically eliminating all his potential opponents or competitors
since the early 1970s. It was not in his nature to listen, the fact that the
G15 should have known better. It could have spared them their lives and
spared the country 10 years of not only lost opportunity, but it could have
saved many lives and spared us much suffering. He has since then got more
brutal, more aggressive and more isolated. Ten years later, it shows us
that he is good at and cares only about one thing: surviving and maintaining
his rule by all means. When and if he dies then it goes like the Tigrinya
saying about the donkey ‘Dihrey Saari Aytibgola’ (I do not care if the grass
does grow after I die). Gazzafi claimed that he created Libya and he will be
the one to destroy it. He did not create the country, yet he succeeded in destroying
his home town, Sirte, to the ground. He brought so much misery to his own
tribe. Not sure, how much damage and suffering, Isaias will cause in Eritrea
and the region before he is ousted. He has not only lied to us all those years
but he has abused us all along.
In 1997, there were few dozen Eritrean refugees living in fear (from the
notorious PFDJ security apparatus) in Ethiopia, today there are more than 60,
000 of them, just there. In 2001, almost no one in Eritrea had good
knowledge about Sinai, human trafficking or trafficking of human organs,
drowning in the Mediterranean Sea; today there are thousands that have become
victims. Thanks to the Egyptian uprising, some local private media and
activists have started exposing the gruesome reality facing Africans in Sinai
and the apparent silence of the authorities. Many families do not even know
what happened to their loved ones who simply disappeared there. Some of them
may live with this burden forever. This is a regime, contrary to our culture
that beats women severely until they become crippled. Helen Berhane, the Gospel
singer, who refused to give up her faith, was one such victim. It was both
gratifying and a privilege to attend her wedding in Copenhagen last year and
see her moving normally, thanks to the treatment she got there. Our country has
become poorer, more isolated from its surroundings and the rest of the world.
Worse still 10 years later there are those of us in the opposition who have not
lost hope on the President that he can reform.
The psychological damage to which parents and their children are
subjected to, every time the loved ones are taken from their homes to do summer
campaigns or do national service or when they are on their way to escape the
country, can not be easily measured. For the young students it starts when they
are hoarded like goods into trucks and driven for many hours without even the
right to exercise their normal biological functions such as going to the toilet
when they need it, let alone the young females who have special needs.
Imagine the first night of a young 12th grade student in a big dormitory in Sawa. Worse still are the cases of
those young females that are systematically raped by military officials, the
shame that goes with it and which obviously its scope is little reported. We
simply do not have the luxury to leave this regime live one more day than it
deserves.
Some of us still dream of landing softly on power, and still have hope
that they can negotiate with the President not to deliver power to the people
but to share it. There are those who actually negotiated confidentially with
the regime but to no avail. There are still some of us who would offer amnesty
to his major criminal collaborators (as if mandated by the people) to
facilitate regime change. There are those who claim to be in the opposition, yet
spent 90 % of their time attacking the opposition they disagree with, rather
than the regime. There are also those journalists who are quick in prescribing
death certificates and diagnosis of untreatable diseases to the opposition they
disagree with, whenever an apparent opportunity arises. Forget about the people
who adore the President and consider him close to a saint, like many of the
ultra-nationalist Serbians who adored leaders and generals who were accused of
ethnic cleansing (who brutally killed thousands of women and children), because
they were also ‘Nisu Nessom’. We were told in June this year that a million people
marched in Tripoli in support of Gazzafi. Where are all those now? The ‘Nihna
Nissu’ crowds will also evaporate similarly, tomorrow. There are
those of us who would deny victims of the violence of the regime inside Eritrea
to use force to defend themselves. Despite all these distractions, we need to
move forward and focus on fighting the regime, our biggest enemy. Both the ELF
and the EPLF had previously told us that liberating the country comes first; no
other issue should be raised before we attain independence. Twenty years later
after independence, there are some in the opposition who tell us now we should
just focus on toppling the regime, every thing else will be considered after
the regime falls. We will not be cheated again. We need to agree on a national
charter. I think, among the main weaknesses in the 1952 and 1997 constitutions
are that they both fail to recognize our diversity and fail to state how we
should mange it. We should struggle to topple the regime and at the same time
we must lay clear grounds for the phase that follows regime change. We can
afford to do both.
As to the G13, although it accomplished its mission, there was a
tendency to begin with to maintain the group as an independent entity where it
can be a rallying focal point for those who had similar views, but some its members
became founding members of the Eritrean Democratic Party and thus the group
ceased to exist. In hind sight, I think the group could have rallied many
intellectuals and others around it if it had continued as an independent entity
and could have played a big role in breaking the intellectual silence and in
bridging the gaps between the different opposition organisations. It was
an opportunity lost. Few years later, Professor Bereket Habtesellasie took a
wise decision by abandoning the party and becoming a neutral opposition figure.
I think men of his caliber contribute more to the opposition this way, rather
than following narrow organizational political stands. This is not meant to say
that ‘intellectuals’ should not be members of political organisations. I
think the youth Facebook groups need to learn from this. They need to agree on
a common platform that rallies all opposition groups and refrain from taking
sides as a group, though the individual members will exercise their right to
belong to political parties and civic organizations they believe in. I think
the EYSC is on the right track, so far.
The G13 had broken the culture of collective silence. The culture of
systematically silencing ‘intellectuals’, began with the establishment of the halewa sawra
in the EPLF in the early 1970s. It was established after the crushing of the
so-called ‘Menkae’ movement. Any criticism of the leadership was not tolerated
then. Educated individuals who joined the organization were seen with suspicion
as petty bourgeois opportunists and were targeted for criticism or had to
criticize themselves for no reason so as to get milder punishment. Some were
even eliminated. The culture of mistrust and suspicion was promoted and
became the order of the day. This culture was then exported to the EPLF mass
organisations abroad. Even after liberation the President, continued to show
his contempt to educated Eritreans. As a chancellor of the University of Asmara
(UoA), he has never presided over a graduation ceremony, to date. But all
of our ailments are not caused by the regime, it is partly cultural. There is
so much mistrust and suspicion of each other. Many times, one is challenged to
quit working on politics and take refuge in some thing else. Particularly at
times you find your good intentions are negatively interpreted and blown out of
proportions. During such periods, you get frustrated and disappointed. During
such moments, my best refuge has been and remains to be, literature.
All Eritrean intellectuals were neither silent, nor do they remain so.
There are many of them who formed the Eritrean Liberation Movement, the ELF and
the EPLF. There are many who left their studies and positions and joined
the armed struggle. There are those who criticized the early excesses of
the EPLF and who paid their lives for that. There are those who kept
criticizing the regime in the cyberspace after independence, though they were
regarded as insane by the supporters of the regime.
There are a number of academic articles that deal with the culture of
silencing Eritrean intellectuals. To cite a few examples, a recent one ‘Postcolonial
silencing , intellectuals and the state: Views from Eritrea’
that was authored by Peter Schmidt (a Professor of Anthropology and
Archeology at the University of Asmara between 1998 – 2003). He states in the
article that ‘the struggle between the National Museum and the University
provides penetrating insights into state hostility towards intellectuals and
containment of public education using the media of archeology and heritage
studies, a conflict that prefigured state/university conflicts leading to the
dismantling of the UoA’. He describes in the article how the centrist
state in Eritrea acted both against the young intellectuals and the public with
its purposeful diminishment of the Sembel on-site museum and how the state
tries to exercise the tight control over the production of knowledge. He refers
to the ‘ethnographic exhibit situated in a former jail where ‘the ethnic groups
represented in the museum displays, each with its own cell, ironically captured
the relationship of each vis-â-vis the Eritrean state – wrapped into
artificial unity within a common jailhouse’. He further states, “The current
political slogan, ‘unity in diversity’ papers over continued deep divisions in
the Eritrean society that was expressed in a very bloody civil war between the
ELF and EPLF during the liberation era. Only after the EPLF prevailed through
force, there was a ‘united profile’.”
Richard Reid (a lecturer at the Department of History at UoA 2000-2001)
wrote an article in 2005 that was highly critical of the GOE. In that article ‘Caught in the
headlights of history: Eritrea, the EPLF and the post-war nation state’,
Reid states that the PFDJ has become obsessed with its own history, and that a
gulf had opened between the liberation struggle generation and the youth,
particularly after 2001. He describes how political and social repression,
rooted in a militaristic tradition and a profound fear of disunity had
intensified since the border war with Ethiopia. He states that while the youth
feel cut off from the rest of the world and its opportunities, the older generation
feel a deep sense of separation from their past. He was slashed for that
article by Sofia Tesfamariam.
Another article by Richard Reid in 2009 on the ‘Politics of silence’ examines the
stand-off between the Eritrean government and the population. He states
in the article that “the Government talks of ‘revolutionary values’ and the
ongoing ‘national struggle’ and worries about what the ‘people’ (especially the
young people) are thinking…ordinary people meanwhile despair at the lack of
socio-political development, but also fear the alternatives…the young people
flee the country accepting enormous risks in doing so; and thus the sovereignty
and legitimacy hemorrhaging.” From his limited interviews in Asmara, he
would like us to believe that the opposition is in disarray and that from the
opposition leaders it is only Mesfin Hagos, who commands respect, there. He
seems to believe also that the GOE is starting to listen and change and reform
may be coming. Despite these flows, the article presents a deep objective
analysis of the situation in the country.
An article by Bettina Conrad, ‘out of the memory hole: alternative narratives of the
Eritrean revolution in the diaspora’ reflects on how the EPLF
national myth was created, how it became powerful especially among the diaspora
communities and how it is being challenged by the Eritrean opposition websites.
It attempts to describe how the Eritrean memory of the revolution was produced
and reproduced by the EPLF and how the individual memory was gradually
subordinated and over written by a collective memory. It also reflects also on
how these memories became more institutionalized and ritualized after
independence.
There are also many other articles that deal with this issue, but to go
into details on this matter is beyond the scope of this article.
On the way forward:
In my humble opinion, I think we need to recognize the following:
· - The President can not and
will not reform,
· - He will not deliver power
to the people willingly,
· - Like all dictators he will
hold to power to the last,
· - The regime is not only an
individual called Isaias Afworki, but a regime of beneficiaries, a system that
has also a social base, the ‘Nhna Nissu, Nsu Nihna’ and we need to work
to separate him from his social base,
· - For me the regime has lost
all legitimacy to rule us, represent us and speak on our behalf.
As an opposition to the regime:
· .- We have to accept
unequivocally that the Eritrean people are the ultimate owners of their destiny
and the current opposition role is to topple the regime and handover power to
the people.
· - Whatever we produce: a road
map, a charter, a transitional structure, mechanisms of managing our diversity
need to be approved by the Eritrean people after the regime falls.
· - We have to practice
democracy, uphold the rule of law and hold a higher moral ground than the
regime in our own organisations, be it civil or political.
· - We need to listen to and
engage the youth and lay ground for them to be masters of their own future.
· - The youth need to engage
with the older generation, learn from their mistakes and build on their
strengths. The future is theirs and they have to own it. They need to engage
more in politics than just social media and demonstrations.
· - We have to recognize and
appreciate our diversity and agree on basic principles on how to manage
our - diversity in a democratic country.
· - We must have a clear
strategy on how to engage positively with our neighbors particularly with
Ethiopia without comprising our independence. The policy of antagonism and
insults practiced by some corners will not take us anywhere and only serves the
regime.
· - Irrespective of the
structures we use and disagreements within the opposition, we need to agree on
a common strategy to struggle against the regime.
· - We need strong unified
media and a common diplomatic action plan to counter the regime’s huge
propaganda machine.
· - We need to use all means
available to bring regime change: peaceful – economic, diplomatic and surgical
and targeted military options.
· - Until we expose regionally
and internationally the trafficking on human organs in Sinai whose victims are
mainly Africans, and force the authorities to stop it, we need to create
awareness among Eritrean asylum seekers to avoid risky countries.
· - For those of us attending
the ENCDC conference in Addis we can not claim we represent Eritrea, but we can
claim we reflect Eritrean diversity in terms of ethnicity, religion, politics,
aspirations, frustrations, hopes, difficulties and challenges. The fact that
there are so many organisations attending reflects this reality. Such will be
the norm in the first few years after the fall of the dictatorial regime as was
in many countries that had to pass through this rough road on the way to
democracy. The problems the ENCDC experienced with regard to change of the date
of the Conference and the problems that arose in some areas regarding selection
of candidates ought to have been avoided but still reflects this reality and is
nothing abnormal. Yet the ENCDC is far from perfect and should never be immune
of criticism.
·
For those who do not
believe the ENCDC will bring any positive change, refrain from attacking us and
instead challenge us by producing the best alternative that can attract us.
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