Ironic as it may sound, such fraudulent individuals� philosophy towards getting hold of anything to satisfy their unappeasable egoistic ambitions of wealth is, �ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you.� They cannot be troubled to fulfill a single obligation and yet will avail themselves in anticipation of an endless list of rights, arrogantly resorting to the use of extreme rhetoric on personal rights�.The consequences of failure to meet obligations are the annulment of one�s rights. One needs to be aware that granting rights can be a privilege that can be revoked rather than resorting to the enforcement of punitive measures against the culprits. It is high time that such a susceptible management of the situation, which is giving in to the prevalence of unfair treatment, comes to a halt. All nationals with the expectations to exercise their rights must be in a position to respond to a very decisive question, �what obligations have you fulfilled?� � Ministry of Information Editorial, Rights and Duties: A citizen�s inseparable responsibilities, July 1, 2003

Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions. And yet in the words of the African proverb, no fist is big enough to hide the sky. All of the generations oppression under the laws of man could not crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God. Down through the years, African-Americans have upheld the ideals of America by exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals. The rights of African-Americans were not the gift of those in authority. Those rights were granted by the Author of Life, and regained by the persistence and courage of African Americans, themselves. � President Bush at Goree Island, Senegal, July 7, 2003

Here, you have two conflicting views of rights. According to the PFDJ, rights are conditional on meeting obligations.  In short, no duties, no rights. To make its case that this is so, Eritrea�s Ministry of Information, whose staff authored the editorial, quotes a line attributed to John F Kennedy (�ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country�) and tells us that those [adjectives deleted] who insist on individual rights are proponents of �ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you.�)

According to President George W Bush, who happens to be the president of a nation with the longest unbroken history of self-government, rights are not privileges given by those in authority but by God, the Author of Life, Himself and that when we struggle, all we are doing is to affirm our God-given right.  To make his case that this is so, President Bush quotes an African proverb about how the oppressors, no matter how powerful, can never exceed the power of God.

[The reference to the �Author of Life,� a Bush favorite reference to God, also used in his passionate defense against cloning, is probably a last minute add-in because it appears in some versions of the speech but not in others.]

The question is, which approach to �rights� is the one that Eritreans have come to expect?  Is it one that, as the Ministry of Information tells us, treats rights as government privileges that are conditional on meeting ever-increasing list of duties? Or, are there some rights that are so basic and fundamental they cannot be denied regardless of whether someone has fulfilled his/her obligations or not?  Moreover, even assuming fulfilling obligations is a pre-requisite to gaining rights, what rights do Eritreans who have fulfilled their obligations enjoy in PFDJ�s Eritrea?

Universal & Fundamental Rights

Even the Ministry of Information (MoI) would agree that an Eritrean citizen has a right (1) not to be tortured and (2) not to be enslaved or sold off in an auction, even if he or she has not fulfilled a single obligation.  Given that this is the case, it would seem that, even in Eritrea, certain rights are not privileges and they cannot be taken away by authorities.  

These rights are so fundamental, they are considered universally applicable to all human beings just by virtue of being a human being.  In fact, they are only two of 29 rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the Eritrean Government is allegedly a signatory to.  If the MoI wants to know why Eritrea is considered a pariah state and why the Eritrean Government is universally disdained, it may consider taking a break from compiling a long enemy list and take a look at the other universal rights that it agreed to observe for its citizens and which it violates daily.  They include:

�         Right to Life, Liberty and Security;

�         Protection from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile;

�         Right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal;

�         Right to presumption of innocence until PROVEN guilty;

�         Right to innocence for violating laws that were not in place at the time of the alleged violation;

�         Protection from violation of privacy;

�         Right to freedom of movement including the right to leave and return to one�s country;

�         Protection from being deprived one�s nationality;

�         Right to own property alone or in conjunction with others;

�         Right to freedom of thought, conscience or religion;

�         Right to freedom of opinion and expression;

�         Right to free and peaceful assembly;

�         Right to the governance of one�s own country; and to select one�s own government in periodic, free and fair elections;

�         Right to form and join trade unions

These are rights Eritreans have by virtue of birthright, by virtue of asserting themselves in a long bitter war of self-determination, and by virtue of being part of the community of mankind.   They are not, like a driver�s license, a privilege that can be withheld or handed out at the government�s discretion.  They are ours.   Just because the veterans of the PFDJ never experienced them because they allowed one man to make life-and-death, liberty-and-enslavement decisions for them, it does not mean that the entire Eritrean population is willing to make that mistake, again.

Duties In The Eritrean Context

Every nation has a right to place limitations on some rights based on the uniqueness of its history and culture and to enshrine these rights and duties in a commonly agreed and negotiated document known as the constitution, which is the supreme law of the land.

We often hear about �Government Proclamation� and �awaj� and Derg-era criminal and civil codes that restrict one right or another based on some mysteriously defined and arbitrarily applied criteria.  For example, when the Eritrean elders initiated their mediation efforts or when the small, �new� Christian denominations sought to gather, they were dispersed and informed that they were in violation of a law the prohibits assembly of more than 7 people.  If the same groups of people had assembled to chant slogans in support of Wedi Afom, we are certain that the law would have been ignored.   That is the definition of corruption: application of the rule of law arbitrarily.

The Eritrean constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, tells us that the duties on Eritreans are as follows:

�         Owe allegiance to Eritrea, strive for its development and promote its prosperity;

�         Be ready to defend the country;

�         Complete one's duty in the National Service;

�         Advance national unity and the well-being of the people;

�         Know, respect and defend the Constitution;

�         Respect the rights and freedoms of others;

�         Respect the rule of law and comply with the requirements of the law.

In this regard, what is obvious is that at the forefront of violating many of these duties is the government itself.  If we had a representative government that was accountable to the people, one could find plenty of evidence that would bring about an impeachment process.  The government of Isaias Afwerki was not ready to defend the country; after dismantling the nation�s security apparatus and allowing the Eritrean Defense Forces to be outgunned by the Weyane, it had made preparation to abandon the people to the mercy of the Ethiopian government and run to Nakfa.  It has whispered the worst kinds of regional and religious hate-mongering speech that endangered the unity of Eritrea; far from respecting and defending the constitution, it has arrested those who attempted to; it does not respect the rights and freedom of its citizens, mocking their pleadings for fair, timely and open trials and it has exempted itself from the rule of law.

All Duties; No Rights

Even citizens who have dedicated their entire life and all they possess to the cause of Eritrea; citizens who have gone way beyond the enumerated duties, do not have a single right in PFDJ�s Eritrea.  As countless of human rights agencies have documented, Eritreans�even the ones who have fulfilled every single one of their �duty� and many more�find themselves without a single right of citizenship.  They are denied the right to freely express themselves, the right to assemble, the right to practice their religion, the right to hire and fire their government, the right to due process.   In this context, �duty� becomes entirely meaningless, a form of taxation meant only to demonstrate submission to the PFDJ.  Since fulfilling PFDJ duties are no more than proving submission, it is the obligation of all patriotic Eritreans to rise against them and, in a form of civil disobedience, refuse to submit to tyranny.

Thus, the rights we seek are not a �favor� or a �privilege� from the PFDJ; they are ours and we shall fight for them to the end of time.   Because the PFDJ�s fist is not big enough to cover the sky, a creation of God, the Giver of Rights.

There Was A Spy; There Are Spies

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has an important case in his hands. According to news outlets, the FBI has arrested Khaled Dumeisi, a sixty-year old man accused of spying and gathering intelligence on Iraqi opposition members in the USA, for the fallen Saddam regime. Dumeisi�s secret activities were uncovered when a dossier was found in Iraq by members of the Iraqi opposition on whom Dumeisi was spying when Saddam was still in power. In the USA, the law requires non-diplomat agents of foreign governments to register with the Justice Department; Dumeisi, whose code name was �Sirhan� [the name of the individual who assassinated Robert Kennedy, a typically sick joke] did not register as a foreign agent.

Dumeisi was in contact with Saddam�s intelligence officers operating from the Iraqi mission in New York and received about $3000 a month for his services. Using hidden camera and microphones, Dumeisi collected information on Saddam�s critics in the USA and monitored their activities. If convicted, Dumeisi faces a long jail sentence.  

Eritreans opposing the un-elected and undemocratic regime in their country sympathize with the victims of Dumeisi who used Sirhan as a code name because there are many faceless Eritreans who use code-names and pen-names to wreak havoc in their social and political lives.  As a result of their spying, many Diaspora Eritreans have been arrested at the airport by PFDJ security officers.   One day, another dossier will be found in Eritrea. It will have names of those who are perpetuating the sufferings of Eritreans. There will be Eritrea�s own Attorney, a Fitzgerald who would have to sift through the papers and prepare a list. The enduring know that sooner or later, Justice will have to be served.

In the meantime, Eritreans in the USA, particularly Eritrean Americans, should not hesitate to report the PFDJ hooligans and spies who are endangering the life and liberty of Eritrean Americans.  If there are similar laws in Europe, Candada and Australia, we invite Eritreans to apply all the laws within their host nations to have the PFDJ hooligans get a taste of something that is entirely alien to them: the rule of law.