Writers Corner
Your eyes couldn’t protect me from their glower
Surely I should trust your eyes
I should trust your eyes…
Your eyes shouldn’t lie
Not to me, not today
But Mother: your
Compassionate
Ever watchful
Eyes lied
With their
Comfort
Rape and identity in Egypt
As heavyset Arab rapists
laid on top of her one by one,
all the little Eritrean lady felt was
the full weight
of her Habesha identity.
Under the Eritrean sky
The Night claims it has no say
on what takes place under its cover,
occupied as it is
holding off the daylight
from arriving too soon.
Deep down…he knew what scared him though…
Beauty, energy, vitality, hope and strength… these were the things that filled him with terror his whole being has lost its link to the source of these things that have become mere concepts to him… no… not concepts they were mere words completely disembodied of any meaning sensation or substance…they were less than words… they were symbols that people used to denote something that he might have known, could have known and would have known… if he weren’t here… if he wasn’t him… but he is him and he is here and now the very shadow of all these things filled him with terror… they reminded his body of all the things that it has been devoid of…he bowed to look at his own shadow… and immediately realised he made a big mistake…
As if there was more of me left to kill
They shot at me from the back in the desert
And they found what I had known all along
There really was nothing to kill
I had died long ago
When I was born with my blood in his hands
So when you hear the bullet shots in the desert
Rather when you hear of bullet shots in the desert
Don’t cry and don’t come to my funeral then
For I died long before I was shot
I died long before I was forced to flee
I died long before I shed blood at their war
that is the way it is; has always been
what tyrants do; under cover
as if the body is never their own
they always dupe the other; behind a banner
prone to commit an injustice
atrocity never seen
any act that restores that lost attention; they crave
to the grave
The one that they gathered to remember
Was my brother
The one that they killed as he tried to flee them
Was my brother
The one they have sentenced to a life of bondage
Is my bother
The one they refuse sanctuary to in their own country
Is my brother
The one they tortured to death in a cage
Because he prayed to a God they reject
Is my brother
They call one a ‘martyr’
The other an ‘absconder’
And the third a ‘nothing!’
I call them all a brother
Three generations
A mother lit three candles
for her three fallen sons.
Her toddler granddaughter tries hard
to blow them out,
as she wonders where the cake is.
Missing pages
What is most notable
about the Book of Martyrs
is not what it says
but what it doesn’t say:
what is all this sacrifice for?
Shaebia’s past
Despite doing everything wrong
if a family remains healthy and plumb
at a time of great famine,
count and recount its children:
it could have been eating its young!
You must not have any dreams whatsoever
Nor have any hope or aspirations
You will go to war on demand
Or dungeons unknown
Will denounce friends
Betray conscience
Have no faith
Principles
Or ethics
Deserted
Alone
Brevet
Into the pitch dankness she lit a lonely candle
And declared; there shall be peace
…one day…
She started humming that determined rhythm
Into her barely lit world
A low persistent voice… that didn’t ring
Or chime…
A quiet hum…
...hardly audible
That didn’t condemn
Or blame
Yet… without noise…
Without rhyme…
Without an actual song
Or a dance
She declared that there shall be peace
…one day…
And now I can’t hear excuses no more
A call has reached my shore
Of a thousand more plights
Unrecorded...untold...unheard
And I refuse to look the other way
For what good is my voice
If it doesn’t roar against injustice?
What good are my dreams
If they don’t make a difference?
And what good is a life
In this valley of death
If I refuse to hear the dejected...?
Their call has reached my shore
And woe unto me if I look the other way walk off
Page 3 of 5
Eritrea celebrates its 20th anniversary of independence on Friday with state-run media describing festivities across the country. But Amnesty International has decried the alleged human rights abuses committed by the one-party government run by President Isaias Afewerki, asserting that some 10,000 people are being held in jails.
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The rapid advancement in media technology has opened up world media, making it increasingly difficult to conceal what is going on within the borders of a totalitarian state. Eritrea remains one of the few states in the world to successfully isolate its people from global information exchange. Under the slogan “Serving the Truth,” Eritrean media are managed entirely by the Ministry of Information. The ministry simply manufactures and disseminates government propaganda, stifling alternative views while protecting the country’s leadership.
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There are calls to expel Eritrea's top diplomat in Canada because he presides over a system that's milking money from the Eritrean community in this country.
Evidence obtained by CBC News suggests Consul Semere Ghebremariam O. Micael is again soliciting taxes despite a threat by Canada eight months ago not to renew his credentials if he kept at it.
But one Eritrean in Toronto, who has asked not to be identified, tells the CBC it was business as usual just a few weeks later when he had to pay.
Yesterday, a large group of Eritrean prisoners in an Aswan prison concluded a three-day hunger strike, in desperation protesting their continued incarceration without charge or trial. They were joined by some of the young children incarcerated with their mothers in the prison. The Government of Egypt has apparently accepted that they are victims of human trafficking, brought into Egypt against their will, yet they are not being released after many months. The prisoners report poor conditions in the prison, and a lack of food and access to medicine and treatment. ...
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(Asmara 16- 05-2013) Freedom Friday Activists in Asmara have started their Independence Day 2013 Campaigned themed, From Here to Dignity, by distributing hundreds of high definition glossy posters depicting the Eritrean Tragedy and calling on all Eritreans to play their role in putting a stop to these. The flyers with the word ‘Enough!’ written in bold across the middle were distributed in the centre of Asmara as well as some of the outskirt regions.
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In this context, the renewal of Sudanese citizenship is vital if further rupture between the Sudanese peoples and, ultimately, the further physical disintegration of the state, are to be avoided.
However, and as the report contends, this renewal can only be achieved by ending the violence that is currently targeted overwhelmingly at marginalised communities; transforming practice, policy and law around the construction of a genuinely non-discriminatory and fully participatory Sudanese citizenship; and committing to the creation of an all-Sudan political and constitutional process that allows grievances and programmes for change from the margins to be heard and heeded.
Eritrea's human rights record has long faced international criticism. Located in the Horn of Africa, the country is home to five million people, but so closed to the outside world that individual stories tend to come almost exclusively from those who have fled.
Kidane Isaac was just 18 when he says Eritrean authorities arrested him for an unspecified crime. It's possible he was suspected of planning to desert military service. Thousands of Eritreans flee the country every month, many of them teenagers, to escape the
(London 17th May 2013) Release Eritrea is to extend its support to victims of trafficking through two projects in Egypt and Israel respectively. The projects which have been funded for three years starting this month will build on the work that was carried out over the last two years enabling local staff and volunteers to provide relevant services as identified by those already engaged in the field.
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EYSC (15-05-2013): The Eritrean Youth Solidarity for Change - Global Group - announced today the launch of its new television program, EYSC TV.
The television program, which will air twice a month beginning on Wednesday May 22nd at 7:33 PM Berlin time, covers over half a million households in the Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Darmstadt areas in Germany and will be accessible world-wide at the same time via YouTube or via the distribution links of the TV studio. EYSC ensures interested viewers that it will publish the programme simultaneously to the TV broadcast on EYSC Facebook and in YouTube.
Date: 24 May 2013- Time: 2:00PM – 6:00PM -Venue: in Front of 10 Downing Street
The Coordinating Committee representing the different exiled opposition political and civil society organizations in London calls on all Eritreans and the friends of Eritrea to participate in the Pro-democracy Peaceful Demonstration.
It is with deep sadness that the Coordination Committee of the Eritrean National Democratic Forces (ENDF) learned the passing away on 12 May 2013 of compatriot Amare Gebremariam at the age of 70.
The late Amare Gebremariam was one of the founding members of ENDF which he served also for one year as its active vice-chairman actively supporting the ENDF chairman, Diplomat Humad Kullu.
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