2003. We are independent, but we are not free; we celebrate liberation, while in bondage.  We dance to our captivity, in a circle, clockwise, as the drum beats incessantly.  We are the dancing dervishes, dizzy soaked in a dew of deception.  Deem, de�gdeem� 

�By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, 'sing us one of the songs of Zion!' How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?�

Sounds familiar? Well, it is from the Bible, Psalm 137.  But if you are in my age group, you learned it through Boney M.  Boney who?  Never mind.  The point is, those who are holding us captive want us to celebrate our captivity.   The drums must be loud, the marches must be choreographed, our squadron must fly faster than the speed of sound because we are all in a mission.  We must drown out the cries of the elderly, alone, sick and forgotten.  Deem, de�gdeem. Hade, hade.   We must push down the cries of the journalists whose ink has run dry.  Deem, de�gdeem.  Derb, Derb.  We must paint our former heroes from the deep sea of sickly slander and tattoo them traitor, defeatist and spy.  Deem, de�gdeem.  Tewedeb, tewedeb. Bring on the Merlot, pour on the Chablis, pass on the menelik, kill those annoying brain cells�

And we dance, as a wound up toy does, aiming for a state of non-consciousness when the clock will go back to 1997 and all the state crimes of the last 6 years will be washed away.  Happy self-determination day, my dizzy compatriots.  We are all determined to be selfless� Drink like the Irish, eat like a monk, and sleep like a baby�

The Elias/Ghidewon Amendment to the Constitution

Remember the tape from �Mission: Impossible�?  Sure you do.   �This tape will self-destruct in 10 seconds�.�  The Eritrean Constitution destructed in less time than that.  What is its status?  Well, you have two groups of people within the PFDJ: The uninformed, and the very informed.  The uninformed, the foot soldiers, say, �well, it is a time of national emergency�extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures�unity, security is paramount now; forget the constitution!�  Yes, but this is at the junior cadre level.  Higher up, the story is different and the Informed know it.  What is the story, you ask?  Good question.  The story is: The constitution has already been implemented.  Well, no, we haven�t cut the ribbons and held a party but it has been ratified and it is implemented.  What, you ask?  Say what?  But that is because you haven�t been reading between the lines: the constitution has been amended.

If you read the Isaias-Elias interview (in shaebia.org) and listen to the Isaias-Dimtsi Hafash interview, the president mentions frequently that he (�we� is how he refers to himself) has learned a lot from things that occurred during and in the aftermath of the war with Ethiopia.   �We� have learned about the naivet� of multi-party democracies: they are dangerous. �We� have learned a lot about the naivet� of having a free press: they are chaotic.  �We� have learned a lot about the naivet� of having a free market: there are no Eritrean capitalists (except for Hagos Kisha.) �We� have even learned about the error of preferential treatment, quotas and set asides.  So, what we have is a constitution that has been amended to wipe out the language on political organizations, quotas for women and minorities, free press and free market system, as well as the deletion of the Eritrean constitution�s bill of rights (Article 17).  With all those amended, of course, the Eritrean government can say: we have implemented the constitution.  Not surprisingly, the new constitution looks exactly like the one proposed by Elias Amare Ghebrezgheir and Ghidewon Abbay Asmerom when they were asked for their input.  In fact, they argued for its amendment on the basis that the consitution was drafted by and has the sole authorship of the PFDJ.  (They also called for politicizing the military; a wish they have gotten.) Call it the Elias/Ghidewon Amendement, and it is the law of the land.

It is the Elias/Ghidewon Amendment that gives some the moral authority to claim that we are ok because we only arrest people without charge; at least we don't kill them.  This from a Presidential advisor, Weldai Futur.  Exactly: where do these people come from?

The issue of quotas is quite interesting, actually.    In the interview, Isaias talks about a new group of disloyal ingrates: the taxi-drivers.  He reminds us that the taxi-drivers got their taxis, at a discount, thanks to the PFDJ and they were given preferential treatment because they were tegadelti or family members of tegadelti.  And this is how they pay us back?  Ingrates!!  Those with long memories will remember that some of us used to rail against quotas and the destructive effects of affirmative action but that is all an old story�

Stripped Identity

When Isaias gets mad with you, he doesn�t just want to destroy you; he wants to erase your entire identity so that you are non-being, you never existed.  When referring to the opposition, it is customary to refer to them as �the so-called opposition� or �those who call themselves the opposition.�  Total stripping of identity.  This clever phrasing states that it is impossible for any Eritrean to be patriotic and not a supporter of the PFDJ.  If you call yourself �opposition,� you are just a so-called opposition.  The G-15 were �merahti nerna behalti.�  You are not an Ambassador, you are an ex-ambassador. You are not Jeberti; you are Tigrigna.  There is no Seraye, Hamasien or Akelguzai or Sahel or Senhit.  All wiped out from the map in 1995.  The conscripted army is called "yeka'alo/warsay."  The martyred may be 19,000 or 29,000: it is nobody's business but PFDJ's to know. The revolving door between war and peace is occuped by the permanent grey of "relative peace." and so on...  There may be a great deal of merit to many of the things done; but they are never discussed, never explained, they just "happen."

So now this has extended to its logical conclusion: in the interview with dimtsi hafash, while discussing the issue of corruption, Isaias says that the majority of the corruption cases were perpetrated by those �who claim to have been tegadelti [combatants.]�   Think about it: if you spend 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years of your life liberating Eritrea but then you are allegedly mired in corruption (in a secret court packed by Isaias-loyalist judges), then your entire struggle is phew! Gone.  You are no longer a veteran; you are a �so-called veteran� or �a self-professed veteran.�   And now that you are on equal footing with, say, a person whose Eritrean nationalism genes were awakened yesterday, he has every right to call you a traitor.  The only identity that has any commodity now is how loudly and loyally you cling to Isaias.  Everything else is just temporary and can be stripped arbitrarily. 

Aytbke Indiyu Zebkyeni

A decade or two ago, very late into the night, two very young (and very stupid) men were driving back home.  The driver was legally drunk and he was weaving and spinning all over the road.  A cop pulled them over.   Cop to driver, �have you been drinking, sir?�  Driver to cop, � Who, me?  I am a Muslim!!!�  And then, slurring, he adds a verse from the Quran about the evil of drinking:

�In them is a great sin, and some benefits for men, but the sin is far greater than the benefit!!  Intoxicants and gambling are an abomination and Satan�s handiwork��

Before the cop asks the driver to get out of the car to get his state-the-alphabets-backwards test, he tells him, �Good words, sir, too bad they are coming out from an inebriated mouth.�

I was reminded of this story when I read His Excellency Ambassador Girma Asmerom�s defense of his government�s practice towards religious tolerance.    We don�t discriminate because our constitution prohibits us from doing so, he said.  And then, he recited some verses from the constitution.  Yes, your Excellency, they are good words; too bad they are coming from such an anti-constitution government spokesperson.   Incidentally, the issue of religious tolerance, as stipulated in the constitution, is one of those na�ve beliefs that �we� have learned from in the wake of the war with weyane� So now we have Tewahdo, Kenisha, Catholic, Islamai (the "real Eritreans") and then we have the �Pente,� a generic term for any faith (from Buddhism to Mormon) that an Asmarino who grew up in the 1960s is unfamiliar with.  After all, the prevailing culture of PFDJ is Asmarino circa 1965 and that is the extent of Eritrea.

Speaking of His Excellency Girma Asmerom, he gave another interview where once again he began every other sentence with �to be frank with you� and then insisted on being anything but frank.  In the same program, last year, he told his interviewer that �to be frank with you, Eritrea has won on every claim it has made� on the border issue.  Some people in the �Central Zone� have a different opinion.  

When my father was arrested, I called Girma and said, �My father is an Eritrean citizen and he has a permanent residence permit in the US.  I am calling you and I am calling the US Ambassador to Eritrea to find out why my father was arrested.  Just tell me what the charges are.�  He said, �To be frank with you, you know exactly why he was arrested because family members are notified.�  �I am a family member and I haven�t been notified and that�s why I am calling you,� I responded.  �I am sure the family has been told,� he said�I protested that they had not.  Then, �To be frank with you, that is not my area of expertise��  "And who is?"  "To be frank with you, you know who..." Actually, I have no animosity towards the guy; he belongs to a system that can have him sharing a cell with my father, tomorrow morning.  And, to be frank with you, his family won�t be notified when that happens�

Language and Its Corruption

Every time I write about the wilfull corruption of the Tigrigna language by the PFDJ, I end up getting at least one letter that blows me away.  I don�t know if this is a generational thing or it is as bad as I think?  A reader wrote to remind me that one of PFDJ�s Tigrigna dilutions is how people sign off letters now.  When writing in English, it is customary to sign off by writing �yours,��  Well, the smart guys at PFDJ have taught the new generation to use its Tigrigna equivalent �natka� or �natki.�  Help!

I was talking with a friend about this and we started speculating on what the captain of Eritrean Airlines will say while announcing in-flight communication in Tigrigna.  It would probably sound like this:

          Kuburatn kuburan�n�dhri Qurub deQaiq, nai ertra ayer mesreE 30,000 chama ktbetSiH iya�iza nefarit arbaete maESo yhlwa: klete maESotat ab hSuS gzie tedelaynet sle zhlwen, dkumatn, senbedtn, tewelaweltn, temberkeKtn, tedenageSti weyane intedea quenkum, bHiji kt�eleyu btHtna nlabo:: ny lomi megbina drar tegadalai quoinu 7 Nackfa ketewefyu nlabo:: meste bdolar Tray iyu zkfel::  film ny lomi dma salsai werar weyane....

Then the whole announcement is translated into eight other languages because we don�t have official languages�

Meanwhile, I picked up another word from the Ere-TV interview with the journalist Ezra Fessehaye.  The poor guys looks the human shields Saddam use to show in his TV program in the first Gulf War, so I won�t put a lot of weight into what he said in Court Eri-TV.  What was interesting is that I learned during the interview that the unpopular word of �Gffa� (rounding up) has now been replaced by the PFDJ engineers with �mlQam� (pick, single out, as in fruits), the implication being that the PFDJ did not round up thousands of innocent people to get to the handful of �guilty� people; no, it conducted surgical strikes and got to the guilty while sparing the innocent.  The unfortunate thing for the PFDJ is that the �gffa season� was in May, June, July of last year: exactly during the time of year when thousands of Diaspora Eritreans were flocking to Eritrea and witnessed, first hand, that the government was engaged in gffa and no mlqam.  They know this, and when they came back, they told everyone about it because they themselves were part of the gffa.  

To be frank with you, that was one big net doing the mlqam�

Natkum,

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