This is a story inspired by September 18.  

9-1 heralded the loud advocacy for Eritrean Independence, and almost all Eritreans know that it had something to do with Awate, Mt. Adal, and confrontation with injustice.  It was also a day that was ignored by the advocates of dependence and injustice. In much the same way, 9-18 commemorates the date of the stand against injustice and almost all Eritreans know that it has to do with the arrest of legislators, the elderly and the journalists.  And, in a similar way, it is a date ignored by those who support injustice, tyranny and dependence.

 

Many so-called historic events are not historic to those who live them.  They happen in the midst of the mundane, of running chores and errands, paying bills, going to school, going to work.  It is only in retrospect that their significance is known.    But some are historic contemporaneously.  Everyone in America knew that life would be different after 9-11.   In Eritrea, those who knew they were going to be arrested knew they were going to be arrested and warned the government that taking the action would be disastrous to the nation.  But the government went ahead and did it anyway�plunging the nation into a full-fledged police state, virtually identical to those of previous occupation powers.  In the process, the PFDJ has revealed itself for what it is: a military junta whose primary and secondary objective is to retain power at all cost.

 

If you want to see the fate of this Eritrean military junta, it is instructive to see the actions of previous military junta, the Derg, and the feudal empire that preceded it, the Haile Selasse regime.   The similarities in the lives of the citizens then and the citizens now are remarkable. 

 

Today, I will narrate the story about some elderly Eritreans who were arrested by the Haile Selasse regime for the "crimes" of their children and how this historic event happened in the midst of the mundane�as life unfolded in the town of Keren.   It is a story of how a citizen's fear of his "government" is surpassed by his disgust; how defiance is born...

 

Anderiotti, the Italian director of the Keren hospital lived on half a lung, so we believed.  His other half was cut and thrown away due to cancer. He rode around town in an old and noisy gray motorcycle. Everyone in town knew Anderiotti was coming, long before he came close, by the noise of his motorbike. Anderiotti coughed a lot, and his cough sometimes blended with the noise of his motorbike and made a thunderous noise. But he was a good doctor and those who would afford it would have him visit them at home for a check-up.  

 

Actually, there was no check up in Keren: if you got sick, you just sent a child to call a doctor (or someone who was convinced he was a doctor). Most of the time, the sick would buy over-the-counter medicine (all drugs were over the counter) from Brunno�s or Hamid Heyabu�s pharmacy. If that didn�t work, you called for Anderiotti.  If you couldn�t afford his fees, then you settled for one of three other bicycle �doctors� who would ask for fire and boiling water before they even see the sick. Then they would put their non-disposable syringes in the boiling water and prepare an injection because they knew the right medicine for any patient: Chloroqine for any ailment that seems similar to malaria; Penicillin for wounds or mothers who recently gave birth and Vitamin for any other complaint, including old-age.

 

This was the healthcare in my hometown, which by the way offered better care back in the days compared to what it has now.

 

It was a one-ambulance town; an old dull beige colored VW van with an egg-like red light on its roof � and a deafening sharp siren.  The ambulance was locally known as Aferkbu- a few referred to it as Ambulanca. Like a train on a fixed track, our ambulance traveled only from the Keren hospital to Asmara hospital and back. It only carried emergency cases; and emergency meant a few hours to death. I never saw it on any street apart from the Keren-Asmara road because mothers about to deliver a baby, an open head due to an injury and a broken limb were not considered emergency cases.   The society was supposed to be tough and not a sissy complaining about your average trauma.

 

The ambulance driver - when he was not having fun in town - was the outgoing Saeed Balambaras. The poor guy was on duty almost 24 hours a day. Whenever there was a patient who could not be helped in the town, the hospital doctor sent someone to fetch Saeed.  Usually a nurse in a gown still carrying a syringe and gauze was sent to get Saeed, URGENTE. The nurse, rather the messenger, would roam the streets looking for Saeed: �Have you seen Saeed?� In no time, directions would be given to the location where Saeed was last seen.  Nearly out of breath and pounding, the messenger would finally find Saeed and, instantly, Saeed would know that he had to drive the Godforsaken ambulance to Asmara. He would drop whatever he was doing and start off. The nurse would brief him on the way to the hospital, a twenty-minute walk from almost anywhere.

 

At the hospital compound, Saeed would hop into the ambulance cursing whoever was the cause for interrupting his fun-time. Sometimes, it was the old patient who should have gone long time ago and other times it was the lousy doctor who doesn�t know how to cure a sick person: �Ezzi Dmma Hakim Tebahiluley!� he would exclaim almost in a whisper questioning the effectiveness of the doctor. He would then crank the engine of the VW while the rest of the hospital staff would busy themselves putting the patient inside the ambulance.  Only one nurse was authorized to accompany the patient. Usually, a relative of the patient would insist on accompanying the patient and the doctor would always give an emphatic �No!� answer to the request.   If he approved of the relative, Saeed would give a wink message and the relative would leave his dust behind and run towards the town center and wait by the Catedrale � because Saeed�s wink meant �wait for me on the road and I will pick you up without the hospital staff�s knowledge�. With the ambulance engine sufficiently warmed up,  Saeed would blast the siren and drive through the single asphalted road. He would stop by the Catedrale to pick the relative, and drive in front of the Municipality building, make the half-circle drive through Gira-Fiori and head east towards Asmara. People sitting lazily under the tree shades in Ajak�s teashop would see the ambulance and pray the patient makes it to Asmara- they already know who the patient is because the nurse had told everybody he met while looking for Saeed who today�s aferkebu patient was. The town knew the names of all the hospital staff including the names of the whole patient population at any given time. The ambulance swooshed fast; Saeed had enough fuel to drive safely to Asmara.

 

One fine afternoon, over thirty years ago, Saeed was called to drive a patient to Asmara immediately. The patient, Mussa Haj, was a prisoner: a seventy-something year old paralyzed old man. When the ambulance reached Elaber'ed, the patient�s heart stopped beating (or so thought Saeed and the accompanying nurse) and he seemed dead. The nurse and Saeed decided to turn back to keren- they though there was no point in driving a dead person to Asmara. Upon arrival to the Keren hospital one hour after the ambulance left, Mussa Haj  started to breath again. The nurse and Saeed swore that his heart had stopped totally in Elaber�ed, �this is not possible unless this old man has seven lives,� Saeed exclaimed.

 

A well-known businessman, Mussa Haj was a stubborn and brave old man. He refused to die in an ambulance yet at the same time he refused to be rescued. He simply was not afraid of death.

His defiance inspired many Eritrean youth--including this writer.

 

The seventy-something year old Mussa Haj and other fathers were jailed by the Haile Sellassie regime because their sons, the ELF �shifta�, were fighting the government. The government wanted all parents who had sons in the ELF to bring their children from the field or face jailing. Mussa Haj told his jailers with contempt: �they [ELF] have guns and you [Ethiopian government] have guns, go bring them yourselves because we cannot face armed men; they ceased to be our little boys a long time go�.

 

Among those elders who were jailed at the time were Aboy Telug (martyr Debrom�s father), Enginieri Osman Lejaj (martyr Ismael�s father), Spettore Ibrahimo (martyr Mahmoud�s father), Sheikh Mohammed Abdulkadir (martyr Saleh�s father), Sheik Osman Neberai (Alamin�s father, also the father of Beshir who was martyred in 77), Sheikh Saleh (martyr Saeed Saleh�s father); Martyr Bashmel�s father and many other elders I can�t remember. In total, there were about fifty parents arrested because they had sons in the ELF. Meanwhile, the government was preparing to annihilate whole villages around the town. It was a prelude to the burning of Ona and Besegdira when their helpless inhabitants were mass-murdered because they �sympathized with the Shifta� according to Colonel Wellana the commander of the Keren garrison which committed the atrocities. But that is a story for another day.

 

When the Haile Sellasie regime�s soldiers came to arrest Musa Haj, he was already bedridden and semi-paralyzed.  You would think an old man in that situation would be left alone. No, they carried him in his bed and loaded him in an army truck and took him to jail. His health deteriorated in a few days time. You would think they would release him. No, they didn�t. They took him to hospital and appointed a guard to his door. Does this story have any relevance to the terror that the PFDJ launched in September 18? You bet it does.

 

Two years ago, the PFDJ launched its accelerated campaign of terror � and that is when Sulemen Mussa Haj became one of its victims. Who is Suleiman Mussa Haj?  He is the son of Mussa Haj, whose story I narrated above. It is because Suleiman Mussa Haj was with the ELF that the father was jailed.  Now, it is the son�s turn: Ustaz Suleiman was jailed by the PFDJ two years ago and remains in jail without charge and without visitation rights. He will survive because he is the son of the same stubborn old man who refused to die inside an ambulance.

 

In 1994, Suleiman Mussa Haj went back to Eritrea after years of absence wholly spent in the struggle to liberate Eritrea. His crime? A short time before his arrest, Suleimen commented in a meeting and said that people should not be kept in jail without trial. In the culture of the outlaw PFDJ, that was considered a crime and he had to be punished. He was put in jail and nothing has been heard of him ever since. He is suffering with others in one of the many prisons the PFDJ set-up to horde anyone it considers a threat to its power. What an irony!

 

To many of us, there is no difference between the Haile Sellasie regime that jailed the late Mussa Haj unjustly and the PFDJ regime that jailed his son unjustly. Nor is this story an exception: it has become a commonplace event, an inheritance to Eritreans to witness a family member arrested by successive occupation forces and tyrants.  There were people arrested by the British Administration who were also arrested by Haile Selasse regime.  There were people arrested by Haile Selasse who were subsequently arrested by the Derg; there were people who were arrested by the Derg because they were �terrorists� who are now arrested by PFDJ because they have been accused of being �traitors,� �collaborators,� �spies,� �defeatist� and whatever crime-of-the-day the PFDJ invents. 

 

We have hundreds of prisoners arbitrarily arrested and are unjustly kept in the PFDJ dungeons for over a decade now. Countless numbers of Eritreans have been kidnapped by the regime�s security apparatus and are being kept in detention. The PFDJ has now made Track 4, part of the old Kagnew Station, a prisoner distribution center. The flow of prisoners is so huge that they need a distribution center!

 

The PFDJ has been called the �Eritrean Derg� and for good reason: it maintains legitimacy to rule by sheer force.  Like the Derg, the PFDJ�s hold to power is maintained by terrorizing citizens, blackmailing supporters and lying to everybody else.  You can see and hear the fear in the frightened eyes of the citizens and the hushed whispers and coded language of their talks; you can feel it in the choreographed and rehearsed displays of �support� that the PFDJ feels compelled to show in every event and the blatant bartering of �shut your mouth, pay your dues, and you will be allowed to visit your family and �invest�� it has entered with its collaborating cheerleaders; you can see it in its desperate �enemy-of-the-month� inventions meant to create a perpetual state of emergency; you can see it in its desperate attempts to change public opinion by engaging in endless lies; you can see it in the drying up coffers; you can see it everywhere. 

 

You can see it unless you choose not to see it.   Maybe you have a financial stake in not seeing it.  Maybe the cost of seeing it and speaking out against it is too high: loss of liberty, loss of life, loss of the right to return home.  Maybe you have rationalized that the alternative is worse.   Maybe you have even rationalized that the Eritrean people are no better than any Third World citizen and deserve no better because they �can�t handle it.�  Maybe you believe the accusations of the government; maybe you don�t even know what you believe.  

 

But if you fail to speak out, you should be honest enough to your own self to admit that you are effectively saying:

 

-          The PFDJ should arrest whomever it wants and hold them in jail for however long it deems necessary; 

-          The PFDJ should give no visitation rights to families of those arrested;

-          The decision on when to bring the accused to trial should be solely dictated by the timetable of the PFDJ, even as you know that there are individuals who have been in jail now for over a decade without a day in court;

-          The PFDJ alone should have the right to decide what kind of �court� to bring the arrested, even as you know that this may include a �special court� without due process, representation or appeal;

 

Like its predecessors, the PFDJ will implode and fall apart.  Someday, freedom and justice will prevail.  When it does, Eritreans will take stock and make judgments not only of those who inflicted so much pain on them but also on those who were loudly cheering them, apologizing for them and those who were silent or indifferent to their screams.

 

Some will be on the right side of history and some will not.  All of those who chose to be silent because of their �financial interest� will find that their investment, like all �get-rich-quick-schemes� was based on wrong assumptions: it is all for naught because land and property will return to its rightful owners.  Donations and taxes that were paid to the PFDJ will disappear in the hands of scheming cadres and Swiss bank accounts.  And little children�none of whom will be named Isaias, for the same reason that no Eritrean children are named Mengistu�will point at the PFDJ officials and its collaborators, as well as the vocal and silent cheerleaders, and turn their head away in disgust.

 

When?  It will happen when people�s disgust and loathing of the PFDJ is more than their fear and dread.  But it will happen.  Someday, freedom will prevail and the sun will shine bright over our country.

 

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