The Regime’s Development Hashewiye

Every generation lives its own life and if life on earth were stagnant, Adam and Eve’s home, furniture and utensils would have been archeologically unearthed. Adam’s spoon, trousers and bed would have been inherited and utilized by Isaias. Unfortunately, life is full of vigor and it is in a continual rejuvenation. The law that governs existence on earth is preservation through renovation. In short, the fundamental feature of life is modernization. This law makes it impossible to inherit and enjoy the belongings of the first man.

Freedom for the first man on earth and the newly born child is the same. It is invariable factor worth the sacrifice to claim and preserve it. On the other hand, the style of life is a variable factor; any generation possesses its own distinct set of rules for life which is renewable and capable of development, the reason to recognize advancement in the style of life on a daily bases.

This piece attempts to shed light on the allegations that the infrastructure the regime constructs aims at ensuring material abundance to the contemporary and future generations of Eritrea. That is the justifications the regime had been drumming up to hold the youth of Eritrea hostages for the past two decades. If only one generation is needed to do the whole job of development for generations to come, and if this is the reality that governs the world, why is the developed West mired in an economical crisis at present?

Any facility has a finite life span. There are utilities whose life span might be longer than others; that depends on the strength of the facility. The service of any utility diminishes with time until it becomes totally out of service. This substantiates the limitation of the serviceable period of any facility and confutes the allegations of the regime.

Micro Dams

The locations of the micro-dams constructed are not far from the sources of the seasonal rivers. It was enforced by the geographical landscape of Eritrean. The closeness of the dams to the sources makes them filled with sediments within a few years and the quantity of water that could be collected decreases every year and within a short period of time the reservoirs end up full of mud instead of water. Clearing the mud and repairing the micro-dam is more expensive than building a new one. The Ela-ber’ed plantation is a good example; the regime failed to run that plantation for the past twenty years. It is costly to repair and it is better build a new one with the free manpower of the Eritrean youth. The regime follows a policy, just jump to the easiest and make a show.

The regime lacks enough modern tools to irrigate vast agricultural areas. Unquestionably, they will fail to achieve maximum benefit from the facilities they have built by donations from international organizations and the free workforce of the Eritrean youth. Currently, the regime faces a big problem, that is: accustoming of our children to pumps, pipes and drip instruments of irrigation system to irrigate vast agricultural areas around the micro-dams. It appears the micro-dams will only avail to deceive insensitive and crude vacationers.

Experts in the field of dams indicate:

Reservoirs cause health problems to people and animals specially because they are associated with diseases like schistosomiasis (bilharzias) and malaria. Reservoirs and the irrigation networks are also ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes, snails, and flies, the vectors that carry malaria, schistosomiasis, and river blindness. Incidence of schistosomiasis, the long-term consequences of which can include pulmonary lesions, liver failure, and bladder cancer, has nearly doubled since the 1940s.

Reservoirs in drought-ridden areas evaporate huge quantities of water, and often result in increased environmental problems and human health risks. Worldwide, a common problem with reservoirs is that they trap nutrient –laden sediments behind the dam. This reduces reservoirs volumes and accelerates a cycle of oxygen depletion that results in increased plant and alga growth, bacterial decomposition that consumes oxygen and releases of phosphorus that nourishes further alga growth.

There is a massive buildup of organic matter in the  sediment,” says Clifford W. Randall, the C.P. Lunsford, professor of environmental engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blackburg. “This can happen in any impoundment. You can have high levels of dissolved oxygen at the top from the algal growth. What’s more, when they decay, algae release organic compounds that are precursors for potentially carcinogenic trihalomethanes (cancer causing electronegative chemical compound) when the water is chlorinated for drinking.”

Governments in developing countries, which are generally weak in healthcare infrastructure, cannot respond effectively to reservoir-related epidemics. Of course, this will be worse in countries that suffer from hegemony of illegal governments where corruption knocks all sectors of the government. Corruption and mishandling are the source of deterioration in the sectors of economy, education, stability and health.

After the construction of the new reservoirs and primitive kind of water closet system, Malaria and mosquitoes which were seasonal diseases and insects in Eritrea, , have shifted to be year round problems with buzzing insects and mind jerking diseases. A regime that failed to fight seasonal malaria will fall short of coping with all through the year mosquitoes and malaria.

The regime jumbles with all Eritrean capacities. Particularly, they play a ruinous role in the field of education. The education policy they adopt encumbers the enrolment  of children to schools. The basic impediment to join schools is education by mother languages. Languages that lack the fundamentals of education to be the medium for learning. Secondly, the outcome of the education system has come to be serfdom and Sawa, the center of abuses, where children are denied the right to pray, a clear act of violation to the freedom of worship. This has made parents refrain from sending their children to schools. Such a policy does not only enforce ignorance on the majority of the Eritrean children, but establishes social instability for generations to come. It is an education system that is based on marginalization or empowerment.

The Zagre Award

regime practices an open discrimination among the Eritrean children. For example in the Zagre Award, the final secondary school exam academic excellence award, for the academic year 2009 and 2010, which was celebrated on the 14^th of September, many Eritreans have recognized that more than 95% out of the 319 students who have scored full marks are from the Tigrinia ethnic group. The same percentage is observed in the 725 students who have achieved more than 3 and less than 4 marks.

The Zagre award raises so many questions: Are the children of the other ethnic groups mentally retarded and it is impossible for them to score full marks? Of course, not. The Zagre award portrays the existence of a devastating educational problem in Eritrea; it is not just a prize, but a stage where discrimination clearly unveils. The favored students who have been granted Zagre excellence award will join colleges and pursue higher education. The privileged students are nurtured with money mostly collected from the tax and contributions of Eritreans who live in the Gulf Arab States—the largest Eritrean community that supply the treasury of the regime with large amounts of hard currency. In return their children bath in ignorance either in refugee camps or inside Eritrea. And the nastiest of all, the regime has paid them back with the closure of the scholarships they were obtaining from the Arab countries during the struggle period.

The majority of the students who didn’t score more than three are the machine with which the regime gambles. The ill-starred students have no alternative except to surrender to a few months of vocational training so as to turn into masons, carpenters, plumbers and drivers. When they finish a quick training, they are appointed to serve the regime in building villas to the favored and toil in the plantations of the military generals.

These dreadful practices have made tens of thousands of children to recoil from education, thus being subjected to ignorance, specially females who either discontinue their education early or at eleventh grade for fear of being imperiled to rape and ruthless abuses by the military men at Sawa military camp.

Human Trafficking

The ethnocratic regime’s is apparently engaged in human trafficking. They send students to Qatar to serve as drivers and their whole salary is handed to the regime in Asmara. Here, I would like to draw the attention of our brothers in Qatar to grasp the predicament of the Eritrean youth and block the inhumane practices of the regime. National responsibilty obliges us to call the government of Qatar to free our youth from the clutches of the regime in Eritrea and assist them to hold UN refugee passports, until Eritrea disentangles from the its ordeal.

Not only the educational policies that are uninviting, but the educational environment drives out students from education. The new schools the regime built in some parts of Eritrea are old-fashioned and do not satisfy the aspiration of Eritreans. They are temporary buildings which fall short of meeting the requirements of modern system of education.

The schools and colleges are constructed from zinc roofed classes and hangars. The temperature of the classrooms becomes like toasting ovens in the lowlands and into freezers in the highlands of Eritrea. Schools and colleges should be in places that offers an attractive and adequate educational atmosphere. No sane Eritrean aspires to confine our new generations in such primitive schools and colleges that do not deliver the primary requirements of modern buildings. Tomorrow’s generations will recognize the scope of cognition of the entities that approved and instructed the construction of these schools and colleges. Certainly, they will mock the allegations “for future generations.”

The educational environment is miserable, and it is the worst at Sawa, where students, above and beyond the baking temperature and slum like accommodations, are exposed to all kinds of suppression and humiliation. The regime has divided Eritrean children into a privileged and loathed ethnic groups. Precisely, they intend to leave them a legacy of hatred by exercising an organized discrimination among them. A policy that will certainly create a shocking crisis in the future.

The regime exhausted our people in the construction of seasonal roads. This has hampered the pursuance of normal life in Eritrea. Every rainy season, roads are repaired to accelerate the activities of the security forces. Comparing the efforts exerted to build and repair seasonal roads with revenues to the region and the nation, we find the end result negative. The regime has added nothing to the century-old asphalted roads except some adjustments and amendments. Contemporary and future Eritrea requires roads that absorb the rash of development for the present and future. Nothing of this has happened in the past twenty years. In an interview with the propaganda TV of the regime, an engineer who participated in the construction of the only road the regime constructed, expressed, that the maximum life-span of what they have constructed do not exceed ten-years.

Water Pollution And Power

The wreck perpetrated on Eritrea is far and wide. The regime has established a dangerous system of sanitation. They instructed citizens to build a primitive kind of water closet by just digging the ground without concrete that prevents leakage of sewage to the underground water. They banned contamination of surface water to pollute it underground. Pollution of underground water is not less dangerous than contamination of the surface water. They have just changed the face of pollution to the worst to mislead people, or reveal their stark ignorance.

Likewise, power supply system is more primitive than the sanitation system—it is rudimentary; distribution of cables are risky to towns, villages and homes. Our people already started to complain about the poor supply of power and its severe effects on their electrical and electronic equipments. Moreover, the capacity of power supply that the regime produces could not cover the current requirements; it is impossible to sustain the growth of power supply demands in the near future. In the past twenty years, the regime failed to meet the requirements of power supply; it is ridiculous that they claim to have executed an infrastructure for generations to come. Future generations should prepare themselves to inherit scraps which the regime’s fanatics collected from gumama (garbage) of the West.

Corruption

Corruption thrives in all sectors of the regime. Eritrea is administered without a clear economic vision. Policies are drawn by entities who lack elementary knowledge of economics. Eritreans are in their worst economic situation; a deterioration that was never witnessed even during the struggle period. No Eritrean knows the budget of his country; this could be enough to indicate that the country is moving to the worst. History never registered on its pages that shefatu, a group of bandits, ever developed a nation. We can deduce that a system founded on deception can only bear disaster.

A regime Destabilizing The Region

The regime in Eritrea has established an ethnocratic system which antagonizes all that do not resemble it. It pushes Eritrea to wars with neighboring countries and have become a source of destabilization in the region. In the eyes of the international community, Eritrea has become the number one country that expels its citizens. It has caused great damages to the social, economical and political relations of Eritrean with its neighbors and the international community which has recognized the dangers of the regime and imposed sanctions against it. To rectify the damage that regime inflicted upon Eritrea, a great labor is required from our people.

Conclusion

The examples illustrated above refute the claim of the regime that it executes comprehensive development programs to make Eritrea a paradise for generations to come. All the projects it executed, besides their eing primitive in comparison with modern technology,  have a very short life -span.

The youth of Eritrea have witnessed the shanty-like schools, colleges, hospitals, micro-dams, roads, etc. that the regime constructed; these slum projects are intend to deviate Eritreans and elongate the life of the regime. By now, many of the youth are past their forties in the service of the regime without any hope to lead a proper life – they are the lost Eritrean generation. This awful condition has forced them to run a risk their life crossing borders, deserts and high-seas. The basic values we should leave for our future generations should be freedom, knowledge, justice, and brotherhood—principles that empower them to face life with open minds and help them to outshine.

Every generation has its own distinct way of life. For instance, the grandfather of Isaias had lived in hidmo, his father in a zinc-roofed rooms and Isaias occupies an old Italian villa. For sure, his children, Abraha and Elsa, dream to dwell in modern villas with pools and rooms furnished with the latest technological appliances. It is incredible for Elsa and Abraha to dream to go back to the hidmo of their grandmother and utilize decades old furniture and utensils.

By this time, the ploys of the regime are wholly exposed, more than the scenes aired by the smokeless mogogo (congratulations for the new name) of the regime that considers Eritrean females as a disposable commodity; this could be clear from the regime treatment of aged mothers whom they have made laborers in the municipalities of Eritrea. They are forced to sweep streets with brooms and push carts of trash, for the dictator to swagger in front of his guests. The message of the regime has reached to our people; when Eritrean females are young, they are a means of enjoyment for the security forces and military generals. And when they are old, the become the sweepers of the streets. It is time for the youth of Eritrea to march back home from the fields of serfdom and shoulder their responsibilities towards their aged mothers.

The despot shouted that he is number one in the continent. It appears, he misunderstands the rule of comparison. His allegations fail on the first test of assessment. The countries he mentioned with contempt do not enslave youth and imprison the parents. They attempt to develop their countries with paid manpower while the dictator constructs the shanty town schools, colleges, hospitals and micro-dams with free labor of the Eritrean people; but the tyrant compares himself with leaders who run their nations without locking their peoples in detention and strangling them to death. The first condition for Isaias to be an eligible contestant and qualify for the challenge is to release our youth lead their normal life. Period. It is time to leave the stage for the fools to sing and dance.

Addna Paris koyna, hashewiye
Addna Madrid koyna, hashewiye
Kebero, kebero,
Taki’et, taki’et
Lemlem koyna, Hashewiye
gennet koyna, Hashewiye
N’Hashewiye, Hashewshew’wiye 

N.B. Translation:

Our county has become Paris, Madrid,
Green  and like heaven
Bring your drums and clap!