The Wisdom To Know The Difference

In February 2011 myself and my friends went to visit an ill friend in his house, we sat there for half an hour and then we thought of leaving, surprisingly it started raining heavily in that February day! I guess we can’t ignore global warming anymore. Anyway our sick friend insisted that we should wait until the rain stops.

Later we started discussing the Egyptian revolution, and one of our friends commented that Eritreans in Eritrea are very weak and that they should start by doing something so that we could help them from outside. An argument ensued, some of us agreed with him others didn’t. My argument was based on the fact that Eritrea became independent after 30 years of war, and the people there faced fear, hunger, and pain; every Eritrean family had lost someone during the war.

I believe that we shouldn’t be judgmental, specially since we know that Isaias is doing everything in his power to famish and oppress the Eritrean people, so all what they will be thinking about is how to feed themselves and their families. They will not have time to think about what is actually happening to them. It has reached to a point that if an Eritrean secures food for his family for a certain day he will be satisfied. Therefore, we can’t expect them to do anything from within.

About two years ago I read about an experiment which I believe could depict the Eritrean people in Eritrea.

“In 1935 the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger devised a thought experiment called Schrödinger’s Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead.”

In Schrodinger’s experiment, to verify the state of the cat, one should open the box—and there is a 50% possibility that the cat is either dead or alive. I believe the situation of Eritreans in Eritrea is even worse than the cat in the experiment because the cat has 50% chance of being alive. While looking at the options available for Eritreans in Eritrea, Mr. Saleh “Gadi” Johar mentioned the following in his article of November 5, 2011:

1. Fleeing the country through the border and be the victim of the standing shoot-to-kill order given to the border guards, if they succeed getting out .
2. They become a victim of the lucrative human smuggling.

Therefore Eritreans don’t even have the 50% chance of survival as the cat.

I am not saying that Eritreans inside Eritrea should not do anything, not at all. Everybody must do his part whether from inside or outside Eritrea.

On Friday November 11, 2011, there was a peaceful demonstration held outside the Egyptian and the Sudanese embassies in London. The demonstrations have been organized to express the alarming situation regarding the current deportation and human organ trafficking of Eritreans who try to flee Eritrea.

Unfortunately the demonstration was not up to the expectation: we were expected a large crowd of Eritreans to participate, but about 30 people participated, way below the expectation considering the fact that there are almost 40000 Eritreans in the United Kingdom (2008 estimate), most of them resides in London.

Although the number of demonstrators was small, at least we delivered an official letter to the Egyptian embassy. Unfortunately after we marched to the Sudanese embassy, it was closed since they were still celebrating Eid.

As everybody knows, the media is one of the strongest weapons with great effects, and I believe we are not taking full advantage of it. For example, if huge number of people had participated in that kind of demonstration, it would have attracted the attention of the media—be it local, national or international. At the same time, these demonstrations should have been properly recorded and then uploaded to Youtube, and all the social network like Facebook etc. And the more people watch that kind of demonstration, the more awareness it creates.

There is a saying that goes like this: “God grant me the strength to change the things I can, the courage to accept the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I wish from the bottom of my heart that we all have the wisdom to know that the Eritrean regime must go and I wish that God gives us the strength to make it go.

Finally, I would like to thank all the people who participated in the demonstration and my special gratitude goes to all the people who organized the demonstration, and specially to an old lady whose name I do not know, who was encouraging the people during the demonstration. I hope that every Eritrea all over the world would take a stand and do something to help our people in Eritrea in order to get rid of the ruling regime.