When I read Ms. Sophia Tesfamariam’s article—the one where she  accuses the Awate Team and my friend Saleh Gadi (as well as other un-named individuals collectively known as Awate Flying Goats) of all sorts of vile crimes, I couldn’t find the appropriate English phrase to describe it.  For I can’t think of one that describes a phenomenon that is at once familiar and jarringly new. But in Tinglish (English as spoken by people from Thailand) there is a descriptive phrase: “same same but different.”  Alnahda will not be dealing with the jarringly new since a fleeting article and a website is not the proper vehicle for it.  There is a different place for it and, surely, those who venerate the rule of law to such an extent that they make it their tagline  will welcome the exquisite opportunity to tell those who practice law and make judgments on the law why their article is not an open and shut case of the law of the jungle.  Instead I will deal with its familiarity which, like much of what is wrong with Eritrea now, goes back to the culture that was imported from Mao and Stalin.

Same Same

Eritreans have stoically accepted suffering for long. Almost from the beginning of our revolution up to this very time there have been Eritreans who have been defamed, arrested, made to disappear, killed on the basis of some of the flimsiest or non-existing evidence.  

We endured because we accepted it as a price for nationalism. More than a century ago, the French thinker Ernest Renan explained the role of suffering in building a nation: “suffering in common unifies more than joy does. Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs--for they impose duties, and require a common effort.”  Even regrets, he continues, are unifying so long as they are shared and so long as there is consensus on the reward.

But, it turns out, we did not have consensus on the reward.  

To some, having an independent country governed by an Eritrean, even a dictator, would suffice.  And if this required indefinite suffering, and indefinite griefs, and even if it imposed more duties, well that is just the price of building a nation.

To others, the reward was an independent country presided by an elected government serving with the consent of the governed. That was not to be a conditional payoff, or subject to the desires of the provisional government but the will of the people.  

That really is the debate—except it is not a debate.  It has, as is the custom in political systems that have not fully evolved, become an existential battle. Those who wish to continue in the shared grief and shared regret resent the fact that some of us are opting out. They see this as a threat to our unity and nationalism and an abdication of duty. And the only way they know to deal with this category of people--the dissenters--is the same way the Vanguard front created the shared grief and regrets to begin with: character assassination and disinformation.

It is, like most of the ugliness in Eritrea, wholly alien to Eritrean culture—it is imported from the books of Mao, the prisons of Stalin. And it has been practiced since the dawn of our revolution. The method used has been to accuse the targetted individual or group of a crime so heinous, an act so perverted, a practice so taboo in our culture that the weight of the accusation itself will suffice to establish guilt. For who is going to defend a rapist? Or a traitor? Or a drug addict, an alcoholic or a coward?  

The accusations need not have a shred of truth, nor any rationale —as long as they appeal to somebody’s bias. The objective is the same: to wage so many ad hominem attacks that the target is permanently neutralized. The standard technique the accusers employ is a whisper campaign, behind a veil of anonymity. If it is in written form, it will be in a local language, and it will be unsigned. 

The standard venue is a closed session where the target does not have an opportunity for meaningful self-defense. Finally, the accusations are often impossible to prove false. How does one defend against so and so was planning to desert or so-and-so was plotting to disclose state secrets, etc or so and so receives payment from Weyane. What do you say to that: check my checking and saving account? They will say it is in secret Swiss account.

But in their hearts, they know it is all false—they just accept it as a necessary falsehood for some greater good. Ruth Simon, a journalist, was nursing a child when she was thrown to jail. Aster’s children were in the airport, with flowers, waiting for a mother they hadn’t seen for years when she was hauled off straight from the tarmac to jail. Bitweded is corrupt, Aba Arre is a jihadist, Derue is coward, Sherifo is regionalist, Petros is a CIA mole, Dr. Bereket is greedy, Oqbe is a traitor…the list is endless and this is only from the very inner circle of the arresters.
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This is the "same same."  What makes the article in question "but different" is that it is written in English, available publicly and in a jurisdiction (US) where the victim has the right of self-defense. As I said, I will not deal with this issue--reserved for a different venue. Since my intent is to prove how the "same same" is just layers of falsehood, I will use one example that I am familiar with. When information is monopolized, people are paralyzed--and the only way to know with 100% certainty on whether a story is true or false is if it happens to affect you or people you love. This is now very familiar to many Eritreans, as it has affected them personally. Let me share mine.

Demonstrably False Accusations

My correspondents often ask a question to the effect of:  “you are telling us not to believe the PFDJ. Fine.  But why should we believe you?”  I will give you one example and let you be the judge:

On September 1, 2001, Mr. Abdulkader Hamdan, was interviewed by TV Rahwa.  Abdulkader is an Eritrean who has dabbled in journalism, is strongly supportive of the PFDJ (at least in this decade; he wasn't in the last, who knows of the next decade) and plays a prominent role in the so-called Hzbawi Mekhete. This is part of what he said in an interview while explaining how he, a "professional" journalist, uncovered the Big Secret: 

When Saleh Younis put his hands with Saleh Gadi, they were given a budget. A big office was opened in Los Angeles.  Now these… a link was established with Walta…And when we present questions, at least they became three. Before it was one there was one called Messelna, one called Meskerem and these belong to those who are in Mekelle. And these made an alliance with them. If there is one who is able to say they didn’t form an alliance, what is presented in awate.com you find it in Meskerem and from Meskerem when you open Walta, in three minutes after it is published in awate it reaches Addis Ababa.  

The truth is that there was no budget, no money exchanged hands, no favors were done, no deals of any kind were struck. There was no office, there is no office (big or small) in Los Angeles, or anywhere for that matter. Just use your common sense: you would agree that a “big office in LA” is not an easy thing to hide—so where is it?  Awate, or any of its principals, have never received any money, or any form of renumeration, or made any deals with the Ethiopian government, or individuals representing the government. There was no alliance with Messelna and Meskerem. Messelna and Meskerem are owned by Eritreans and they never belonged to “those who are in Mekelle.” Messelna is no more but Meskerem is still around—is it still owned by “those who are in Mekelle” or did it used to be in 2001 but had a change of ownership since then?  As for articles that are cross-posted at different websites, the fact is that nobody asked for permission or approval then—and nobody does now.   

From Hamdan’s paragraph, the only four words that are correct are that there are two individuals called Saleh Younis and Saleh Gadi.  The rest is just “same same”—a complete fabrication, a tower of lies.  Remember, he said this in an interview which was broadcast. Now try to imagine what those he supports say when they are in a closed venue:  By a process of repetition, they can invent a story, elevate it to a wild rumor, then to a fact so well established that to question it is to waste people’s time. Who, in the closed set, would be there to contradict it?

Sometimes this has unintentionally comical outcomes.  Sometimes, I read people who actually believe that some individual they hate is a “Jihadist” or a “terrorist” and they can’t understand how this person is still allowed to live freely in the US!  It never occurs to these people to question the information that they were fed—that it is completely false.   

But most of the time, there is nothing humorous about it because it affects the lives of real people—our people who are denied liberty and sometimes life simply because they crossed a red line. The red line is not a penal code or a law—it is simply the person of Isaias Afwerki.  If you cross the red line, you will be declared guilty even if innocent; if you don't cross the red line, you may be declared innocent even if guilty.  That is the legal system in Eritrea. Those who say this is false can easily prove it: all they have to do is tell us which law was broken by the political prisoners of Eritrea and which court tried them, and who defended them?  And by which criteria is that considered justice? 

Faced with this question, people make choices. Some who believe that suffering builds not just character but a nation support it.  Some are indifferent. Some oppose it—but meekly. Some make resisting it their life’s calling. And that is where people like Saleh Gadi come in.  

Why Saleh Gadi

Much as now, in 1998, those who were supportive of the government of Eritrea and those opposed lived in parallel universes—including online. The opposition, a tiny fraction of what it is now, had meskerem.net; the pro-government (and those that didn’t even know there was such a thing called an opposition) had Dehai, a members-only forum. (Visafric and Asmarino were either too young or were not “into politics” then.)

When the war broke out, the opposition and the government supporters reacted differently--in their websites. There was one key difference —Saleh Gadi, then living in Kuwait, expressed his dissenting views, forcefully, in the mostly government-sympathetic website: Dehai.org. It didn’t matter to him how outnumbered he was, or what the zeitgeist of the times was: he kept pounding his views that the war was stupid and those of us who thought we were defending our country were, knowingly or unknowingly, contributing to making war inevitable. This was at a time when many who thought the government’s approach was disastrous held their counsel.

A year later the Eritrean government made him stateless. The Mao script that the PFDJ follows dictates that he submit, ask for forgiveness, get rehabilitated and join the mekhete program already in progress. That was what he was supposed to do--plenty of Eritreans, some now in the higher ranks of Eritrea's government and religious institutions, followed that formula.

But that wouldn’t be Saleh Gadi. He refused to submit.

With the help of the UNHCR, he and his family were resettled in the US. Once in the US, he was supposed to busy himself chasing money and leave politics for others.

But that wouldn’t be Saleh Gadi. He started Awate.com within months.

Once he started Awate.com, he was supposed to vent for a year or two and then fold shop.

But that wouldn’t be Saleh Gadi. He molded the website to a meeting place, a voice for the voiceless, a platform for social activism and an exclusive-news outlet dispensing (sorry awate haters) so much hidden news that its haters were confounded. When it shared news that they could dismiss, they called it a liar, and when it shared news that they could not dismiss, they called it an infiltrator.  When it published the opinion of one writer, after another, after another, they said, it is just Saleh Gadi writing under different pen names.

Every year, for seven years, the haters predicted the end of awate. They have run out of funding, their sources have been arrested, they have lost credibility, they said. And each year, and this year certainly will not be an exception (stay tuned), this website continues on its mission of saying no to the culture of shared suffering, shared guilt, and indefinite postponement of justice.

Seven years into it, Awate is still a small website with no budget, and no income. But it, and its founder, are seen as a threat to the republic by the PFDJ and its supporters. 

Why? Because it refuses to accept more shared regrets and more shared suffering, and duties without rights, as prescribed by the PFDJ. It continues to be a platform for dissenting opinion, when the PFDJ says there are no dissenters. It is an information monopoly buster, contrary to the wishes of the PFDJ who want to continue the monopoly. It challenges the PFDJ supporters, it shames the fence-sitters, and it inspires the hesitant. Simply put, Saleh Gadi has created an Eritrean institution, defying the PFDJ edict that all institutions must have its seal of approval.

Those of you who hate him would like to imagine your enemy as lonely, dour, angry and anguished man who finds no joy in life. If we can destroy him, goes the logic, we can destroy his product .  

But awate is a phenomenon. As for Saleh Gadi quitting... really, now, when death threats and a gazillion hate letters insulting him, his tribe, his ancestry, his name, his religion had not a dent, and only served to invigorate him, how is a cheap article with a plot borrowed from an Indian B-movie supposed to do it?

That wouldn’t be Saleh Gadi. He lives a life of abundance—not material, but a life of family, friends, countrymen, books, film, the arts, cigarettes and tea. Those of us who are honored to call him our friend marvel at his energy and his refusal to compromise on his single obsession: justice. Justice for all Eritreans, and, oh yes, he is an Eritrean and he too shall demand justice.  Only those who have no clue of what the law is confuse justice for vengeance.   

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