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A “Bullet Away” Scenario: The Moment Has Arrived
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” Albert Einstein. First off a simple personal question: you are a Diaspora Eritrean living somewhere in the free world; What would you do if a notorious psychopath – one who has a…
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NATO Navy Captures Armament-Filled Ship, Bound For Eritrea
A small ship, originating from North Korea and carrying rockets and other armaments destined for Eritrea, was intercepted in the international waters of the Indian Ocean by international navy enforcing sanctions against Eritrea. There are 15 tons of rockets, surface to air missiles and explosives worth USD $15 million on the ship which had sailed…
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Making A Case For Political Immunity And Nonviolent Regime Change
There is no nice way of saying it. You can’t put positive-spin to it. Advocating regime change using violence is advocating civil war and everything that comes with it – bloody war, mass internal displacement, destruction of the Nation that could put it decades back, flow of refugees to neighbouring countries and beyond…followed by decades…
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نظرة تاريخية عامة على الإسلام في إرتريا*
نظرة تاريخية عامة على الإسلام في إرتريا* بقلم:جوناثان ميران (استاذ التاريخ الافريقي والإسلامي في جامعة ويسترن واشنطن بالولايات المتحدة الامريكية) Jonathan.Miran@wwu.edu ترجمة: محمد عثمان علي داينا إن دراسة الإسلام في إرتريا – بإعتباره دين لنصف سكان البلاد تقريباً- لا تزال في مراحلها الأولى. وإن إجراء بحث في تاريخ الإسلام في المنطقة وكغيره من مجالات البحوث…
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IFJ Joins FAJ Press Freedom Day Call for Release of Journalists in Eritrea
“They are being held in undisclosed locations without charges, despite the fact that Eritrean law forbids detention of a prisoner without charges for more than 30 days,” said a joint letter signed by IFJ Jim Boumelha and FAJ President, Omar Faruk Osman. “Prolonged detention without trial is also a violation of international treaties you are…
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Opposition Chairman: “International Community Must Support Eritreans Just Cause”
In an interview with Walta, Ethiopia’s state media, Tewelde Gebreselasse, the Chairman of the Eritrean Democratic Alliance (EDA), called upon the international community to support the just cause of the Eritrean people. Contrasting the situation in Eritrea with that of Egypt and Tunisia, and answering the interviewer’s question as to why the North African uprising…
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Political And Fundamentalist Religion
Whenever I hear the word culture I reach for my gun. That’s Goebbels, of course. I don’t know why he said that, but it seems that nowadays the word religion is charged with so much negative particles as to arouse the same sinister reaction among many otherwise well-meaning citizens of the world. And then one…
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Uprising Realigns Qatar, Egypt Relations With Eritrea, Ethiopia
The North African uprising is having a dramatic impact on Egyptian and Qatari relationships with bitter rivals Eritrea and Ethiopia, with the latter benefiting from the new developments and Eritrea finding itself, once again, on the wrong side of the popular wave. Prior to the uprising, Ethiopia regularly complained about Qatar and Egypt. In 2008, Ethiopia…
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Isaias Afwerki Interview: On North African Uprisings And The Horn
In part 2 of his interview with state-owned Eri-TV, Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki explained that the North African and Middle Eastern uprisings are the result of popular displeasure with vertical polarization and power/financial concentration in the hands of the elite coupled with external intervention by the practioners of “creative chaos”, who were caught by surprise…
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Awate Archives: Interview With Abdella Idris
Abdella Idris, perhaps one of the most well-known leaders of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), passed away this week after a long bout of illness. As we have done with many controversial veteran combatants of our armed struggle, even those with whom we vehemently disagreed–as was the case with the late Ali Said Abdella–we attempt…
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Isaias Afwerki Interview: On British Nationals, Sanctions, Civil Society
In a wide-ranging interview broadcast on state media on Friday, Eritrea’s president Isaias Afwerki commented on the four British ex-Marines who have been detained in Eritrea since December 2010; the sanctions imposed by United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in December 2009, and the absence of civil society in Eritrea President Isaias dismissed the British government’s…
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State Vs. Regime Security: History & Structure Of The Eritrean Security Services (Part II)
The security services and the military institution are the two main organs that we need to focus on in our struggle for regime change; they are the main pillars on which the Eritrean dictatorial regime depends for its survival; and we should be very clear on how to deal with them in future democratic Eritrea.…
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Eritrea 20th Birthday: Time For Reflection!
“Those languishing in prison, those just out of prison, and the relatively free…” -A ‘’deranged’’ lady’s demographic classification of the Eritrean population into three groups. (Adi-Keih, 2005) A profoundly dismayed, sad, outraged, and silently suffering society with in Eritrea is in a state of what might be called ‘’cerebral cortex shut down’’, a trance-like self-preserving…
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Eritrean People: 20 Years of Indignity – A Series
The unelected regime of Isaias Afwerki has been in power since 1991. Over the years, Isaias Afwerki may have changed his title from Secretary General to President; the ruling party may have changed its name from Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) to People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ); the government may have changed its…
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The Eritrean Scream
This was going to be the second installment of the Eritrean Spring, of events from ten years ago, but comes now a horrific story in the here and now, an Eritrean Scream. We Eritreans have the capacity to be shocked still, which was a shock to me: Over 200, nearly 400 Eritreans died as their…
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Requiem for the Victim
“The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own and is termed as the collective or common consciousness.”(Emil Durkheim) All I hear is death, rape, drowning, imprisonment, all bad news day in day out, and are certainly all mind and…
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Precision, Symmetry and The Analytical Mind
In Eritrea, highland women use a spindle and cotton wad to spin yarn in order to clothe their husbands with gabi (four-ply cotton shawl) for winter. They twirl and throw the spindle, topped with a wooden disc, in the air and catch it with their nimble fingers to give it yet another twirl to spin…
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Prime Minister Meles Zenawi: No Longer Playing Defense
In a wide ranging interview with awate.com on April 13th, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi discussed the economic progress in Ethiopia, as well as developments in the region particularly Eritrea, Libya, Egypt and South Sudan, and how that has, in some cases, brought about changes to Ethiopia’s policy. Referencing his government’s recently announced change of…
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Eritreans’ “Picnic” To Death
“They will come back. They are going for a picnic. They will come back one day.” – Isaias Afwerki, interview with Reuters, October 21, 2009 As I try to write this article, my heart feels heavy; my hands numb, my blood curdle and my brain oscillate faster than a Hadron collider. I do not know…
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Outlaw Eritrean Regime Kidnaps Akito From Yemen
Sheikh Mohammed Omar Akito, one of the lions of Eritrea’s patriotic movements of the 1950s, has been kidnapped by the PFDJ from Yemen and is now languishing in an Eritrean prison. Akito, believed to be in his late 80s, was living in Djibouti when he was taken ill, and went to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for…
