No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. Thomas Jefferson

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Martin Luther King, Jr.

For 30 years,the Eritrean people struggled for their dignity, liberty and prosperity. Unfortunately, the end result produced dictatorship. Today one can not only say that Eritrea is ruled by a dictatorial party but a party that is  led by an autocratic leader. The self crowned king, Isaias Afeworki, has ruled the country without rule of law, without a national constitution and thus without any election for 17 years. The PFDJ regime has been known as one of the top human rights violators in the world. There is no freedom of press, speech, assembly or belief.  Mass arrest is a routine process of the regime. The country has been changed into a big prison camp. Many prisoners are dying behind prison bars in various parts of the country. Eritrea is divided into five military administration zones. Every general has his own prison in his administration zone. Eiraeiro prison camp is a shameful symbol of the Eritrean people who fought for their dignity and liberty.

Economically, the regime’s dream of “Singapore” is far from reality. The economic system of the country is deteriorating from time to time. In theory the economic system of Eritrea is a free market economy. But in reality the whole economic system is controlled by the PFDJ party including the small scale private sector. Even if a business goes well the owner of the business is forced to share with the party. If he or she refuses then he/she must close it and leave.  Certainly, the regime does not want a middle class society to grow in Eritrea which in the future can compete political power with the PFDJ party. The policy of the regime is to keep the people as poor as possible so that they don’t think about their rights but simply keep thinking  about their daily bread. All productive forces (young people who can contribute to the national product) are engaged in military services. The only achievement the blind supporters of the regime dear to mention is the “construction of roads and buildings”. We ask them who uses these constructions? The ordinary people? No. They are used by the generals and other officers of the party. Contrary to the so called “PFDJ self-reliance” boastful theory, 70%-80% of Eritrean economic activity depends on foreign aid. According to some sources, in 2002 Eritrea’s foreign aid reached US$217.6 million. Moreover, Isaias, who can not feed his own people properly, wants to be a political actor in the Horn of Africa. He supports “freedom fighters” in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and may do so now in Kenya.  Isaias is a known brutal dictator in the world - how can he act in favour of democracy? Another drama is the theory of corruption.

The PFDJ supporters were boasting that there was no corruption in Eritrea. What explanation do they give to the recently exploded corruption scandal? In fact this is a sort of corruption from the top. Ah! The supporters may say as usual “Isaias is innocent from that”!! What is the role of Isaias then? For positive things he gets credit. For negative things he is exempted.

The education policy of Eritrea is another serious concern . Something needs to be done before it is too late. The development of a country is based on education. There is a gap of generation in education in today’s Eritrea. This will have a serious impact on the future development of the country.

We know the regime chooses “eggs for today than chickens for tomorrow”. The only University in Eritrea, University of Asmara, is officially closed. It has been transferred to the military training camp, Sawa, which itself is actually the prison of Eritrean youth.  The parents know very well that their children are not getting proper education in Sawa. And the children know this as well. That’s why thousands of them have chosen to leave their country for exile; many of them die crossing the desert of Libya and Mediterranean sea.

This is the situation of our country. The question is: Do the supporters of the Eritrean regime see these problems objectively? Do they believe in what they see and hear? These are the questions which inspired me to write this article.

Dom Helder Camara said: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

When we tell the supporters of the PFDJ regime that what the PFDJ regime has being doing and is doing is wrong, they call us “Weyane”. When we tell them that what the regime has being doing and is doing is not for the interest of the Eritrean people, instead of refuting our argument rationally, they divert the subject and attack us personally. They choose the subversive method of character assassination. This is a typical culture of the EPLF.

Going back to the days of the armed struggle, anyone criticising the EPLF leadership faces a campaign of character assassination in the unit forces before the victim is arrested or killed. Slander and defamation is their daily routine. A good example of this is the shameless article that ‘weyzero’ Sophia Tesfamariam, the apologist of the PFDJ regime, wrote against Saleh Gadi. My intention is not to respond to the confused woman. I believe she has got enough lessons from different angles of our society if she really wants to learn from them. However, what I want to tell her briefly is that an attack on Awate.com is an attack on all of us. After all, our opposition websites are our weapons  for our democratic struggle.

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” Thomas Jefferson

In our modern times, if a government commits a crime or mistake, the head of state should take the responsibility. It is amazing to see that if the Eritrean regime commits a policy mistake, Isaias quickly passes the responsibility to the authorities under him. His supporters begin to say: ‘nsu dea zkaalo ygebr alo, hagezti se-inu mber (“He is doing his best but he does not have supporters”). Another common saying from the HIGDEFITES is “If he dies there is no one who can replace him.”

These are some of the primitive ideas that we have to fight against. Whatever Isaias says his supporters take it for truth. When he blackmailed his top ministers who are suffering behind prison bars now, as “traitors”, his supporters began to call them “traitors”   without any evidence.  They even repeat his exact same words. For example recently he called the Ethiopian regime ‘kedemti’ (servants of America). His supporters started to use the term in their daily discourse. You can see that their minds are controlled by the regime like remote controlled machines. This blind personal cult is dangerous in a society. We have to liberate the supporters of such dangerous ideas that they have in their minds if we want to liberate our prisoners and our people.

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good or evil. “ Hannah Arendt

“So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.” Roger Nash Baldwin

Another dangerous mentality of the supporters of the PFDJ regime is that they give all credit of Eritrea’s independence to Isaias. We can not deny that he struggled for Eritrean independence as a leader equally to the others. But can we say that, “if there was no Isaias there would have not been independence?” No, let us see it this way. If the Eritrean people were not conscious and dedicated enough for their national right, we wouldn’t have achieved independence. But if Isaias was not born, there would have been other Eritrean leaders. In fact they would have been better than him in pursuing national unity; and only if those types of leaders who were eliminated by Isaias were alive today.

Dear readers,  what is your observation over the so called ‘hizbawi mekete’ waged by the supporters of the regime? What does it mean? It means that all the PFDJ regime’s crime is okay. It means that the suffering of our people - imprisonment, torture and terrorizing - is okay too. The poverty our people are facing, even to the level of hunger, is okay to the PFDJ supporters. The death of our young people in the deserts of Libya and elsewhere is normal to them. The evening dances organized by the regime supporters, while our people are suffering, is intolerable. Whether we like it or not, we have to liberate the supporters of PFDJ regime from such mentalities and ideas. These ideas are the enemies of the people. Without these mental instruments, the regime can’t stand on its own foot. To meet our objectives, we have to win the minds of the blind supporters of the regime.

Victory to the Eritrean democratic struggle

Down with dictatorship

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