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I had been planning a different topic for Negarit; but another sad news dictated the topic. The winds carry news from home. It has been a while since they carried good news. The guys running the country are busy outdoing themselves by frequently breaking the previous weeks record in producing bad news. It is sad. Yesterday was an extraordinary day. One more time, I discovered the true meaning of the word IRONY. My column today is dedicated to a victim. I write this to defend yet another victim of the regime: my previous friend Ahmed Ali Burhan, the ex-ambassador of Eritrea to the State of Kuwait. I cant explain my reaction when I received the Gedab news alert. It was a mixed reaction: my human emotions torn apart. My human instinct struggling against my principles. My feelings against my feelings - one invoking tears in my eyes and another pushing them in. I remembered my childhood. I remembered crying many times after seeing my father led by Ethiopian armed security personnel not to be seen for months. I remembered my mother crying not knowing how to raise her kids alone. Many memories of sad incidents flashed inside my mind. I dont wish for any kid to suffer the way I did. I dont wish to see any mother to be left the way my mother was. To me, jail is very personal. It is not a mere theme of struggle. It is not something endorsed because it is a fashionable appeal to the civilized world. I relate to it with sadness. No one, whoever it is, should be thrown in jail without a court order. If Isaias himself, whom I hold responsible for all the miseries befalling our nation will find himself in a jail, I will not hesitate to ask his jailers to bring him to justice. My voice, lacking authority, might not be effective, but defend him, I will. Some words are so commonly used that we dont even think when we utter them. We express our views with almost arrogant certainty because most of the times we are not in a real situation similar to the one we talk about we just imagine and try to simulate the situation in our mind. Yet one more time I discovered the real meaning of Irony: Ahmed Burhan was the person I despised and hated most for the trouble he caused to me and to my family. An injury I will never forget. He disrupted my life and my familys life and made my children cry. Fortunately, if my kids were not Americans by birth, the way he stranded me in a foreign land after losing my job and livelihood by his cowardly actions, my children would have been condemned to a life of destitution and ignorance. They cried when they were not able to go to school, because their father, myself, was condemned to be stateless. Ahmed Burhan - and the Eritrean government for which he worked - on one hand, and the Ethiopian Government that seemed to have suddenly discovered I was Eritrean and nullified my passport, on the other. They both waged a war against me, the common CITIZEN; they lost the war against a citizen - justice never fails. I prevailed. I beat the Eritrean and the Ethiopian governments thanks to the UN and the USA who understand what human dignity is. And I swore in public, Someone is going to pay for the tears of my children. I meant it. The nation is crying. The perpetrators of this state of sadness will pay for it. I despised Ahmed Burhan for heeding the advice of the Jewasis weaklings and targeting me. I despised him because he didnt show courage to stand up and face the Wahio idiots who were giving him orders. It was no solace to me when later on, he commented to someone who knew the story in Asmara that he had nothing to do with denying Saleh the passport; it was the security person in the Embassy who held it in his drawer and refused to release it. The wheel of time turn around and now, the birds told me that the security person, who was reportedly blamed by Ahmed Burhan, is clearing his way to escape and live in Holland; another accomplice was rewarded with a diplomatic position (until he is jailed like Ahmed) and the rest have become a laughing stock in the Internet -- and I am doing what fate threw my way. Ahmed Burhan was so proud to serve Isaias. His office was adorned with three pictures of Isaias and a map of Eritrea. A huge flag shadows over the picture of a smiling Isaias on the coffee table. The otherwise soft spoken Ahmed Burhan reminded everyone that PFDJ rules and the views of the rest doesnt matter. Nefer Neferen was his preferred remark when talking about the opposition. His political views were typical of a PFDJ monster; but he was a gentleman, albeit one with a weak personality. For a few things I did, I had four official thank you letters from him. When I staunchly opposed the border war with Ethiopia and subsequently blamed the PFDJ for refusing to accept the US-Rwanda document, influenced by some cowards, he heralded a war against me. Political correctness aside, should I even air my protest in defense for the rights of Ahmed Burhan? Or, should I rejoice and say, he got what he deserves? The Eritrean case is bigger than that of Ahmed or Saleh and his problems. The nation is sinking into bigger and bigger crisis by the day because of the injustices being committed by the regime. The whole nation is in jeopardy. At this moment, I consider Ahmed Burhan just another victim of the regime. He should be freed. I cant say he should be brought to court because there is no court in the PFDJ land and they dont know how to spell justice-- in any language. Simply, he should be freed. Alongside my compatriots who stand for Justice and rule of law, I will struggle to defend Ahmed Burhan; the elders who are in jail since 2001; the political prisoners known as G-15; Tekhleberhan Gebresadik and many others; and the hundreds of prisoners who were made to disappear by the authoritarian regime. The ex-Ambassador, Ahmed Burhan, is now in my list of victims and he deserves the defense of all those who respect justice, human dignity and human right. He should be let free immediately. And to those who are still clinging to the tentacles of the PFDJ, I repeat: the PFDJ is like a bad cat that eats its kitten. Beware! Comments:
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