YPFDJ v EYSC : reflections on the PFDJ festival and EYSC demonstration in London

word association: (Psychoanalysis) an early method of psychoanalysis in which the patient thinks of the first word that comes into consciousness on hearing a given word. In this way it was claimed that aspects of the unconscious could be revealed before defence mechanisms intervene (Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged)


I love word association exercises, I do it with my children and any willing adults all the time… but I mostly do my own word association tests to check my own thinking (and to entertain myself at boring meetings!). Please try this at home…. Please jot down the first five words that come to your mind when the word YPFDJ is mentioned… (please be honest to yourself to make this as objective as possible… this isn’t a popularity contest) NB if you consider yourself a PFDJ or a YPFDJ please do it too but do a secondary analysis to check and make sure that what you wrote are not words of the slogans that Bitsay Monkey and co drummed into the space between the ears.

For some reason once I got over my urge to write the very immediate words (Monkey, goon and gnome), but really search through, for what I really really think about YPFDJ (in my more kind moments I have thought of them as well meaning but misguided young people… recently I can only often see them as monkeys dressed in telly tubby outfits…blame this on the monkey chasers and the former on my pente sensibilities!)… but after going a bit deeper than the two usual reactions I arrived at a familiar metaphor as old as the Bible! To all intents and purposes (I am sure including the intents and purposes of Bitsay monkey himself) the Young People’s Front for Democracy and Justice is nothing but new wine in a really old and tattered wine skin… if anyone needs elaboration just ask any YPFDJ member about anything they have changed in Eritrea for the positive since their arrival… any issues that they had (every young generation has an issue of concern…it is natural… it is the inter-generational life cycle tension that keeps societies buoyant…and a passage through to accomplished adulthood for the young person….

“The job of every generation is to discover the flaws of the one that came before it. That's part of growing up, figuring out all the ways your parents and their friends are broken.”
Justine Larbalestier, Zombies Vs. Unicorns

And this is why I find the whole Ethos of YPFDJ not questioning anything PFDJ and particularly just accepting the gaffe the IA comes up with rather disturbing… it is like watching an adaptation of The Stepford Wives (we could call it the Stepford children)…no young person should be this submissive and docile and especially against a regime that so flagrantly violates the rights of ordinary people including their peers. The grand parents of these young people rebelled against  an entire generation of politicians (world wide) who in their ‘wisdom’ decided to delete Eritrea…. Their parents won an independence struggle that every military strategy book would have deemed impossible and the grandchildren are nodding the subjugation of their people like docile donkeys, straight from the set of Stepford? What zombies!! What a let down to the determined fore fathers!

… but that is only half the story (and thank God for that!)…the last few months have seen the emergence of Eritrea’s unicorn… the young people who are the remnants of the Eritreans of yesteryear… those who were raised by parents who were fighting obliteration and have become pride of the diaspora communities… those that were spared from the mother of all wars senseless… those that escaped the clutch of the ruthless menace that continues to throttle our young nation… those that have slipped through impossible nets of horror clutching nothing but their dear life and an unlikely hope for a better tomorrow… the young people who are hungry for nothing but change in Eritrean (witsae meAt!)… the survivors!! And unlike the modern day  Stepford Wives of young people in bright t-shirts… they look and act like the young people that they are… they call for unity (simerrr is their slogan!), they are relentless in their call, unidirectional in their stride and refreshingly innocent in their approach (despite their horrendous experiences) and they dream a better tomorrow…. No they hunger and thirst a better tomorrow, what they lack in sophistication of diaspora activism they make up for in zeal and determination…and their mesmerizing sense of identification with each other… their barbaric experiences at the hands of PFDJ jelled them together and their harrowing flight cemented that bond…thus were the young people I spent last Saturday with!

People who jumped on busses and trains from right across the country with a single objective… to echo the call for the need for change… did they come with slogans written? NO! did they organise their provision (water refreshments etc) hell NO!! did they have a spokes person and a speech NOT THIS LOT!! They were simply driven by their desire and determination to have and use their voice to demand change for those they left behind… this is the stuff that revolutions are made of! This is the material that history is made of and it is people like my friends at the EYSC who look like our tegadelti and not those who were lapping it inside the luxury banqueting halls paying lip service to all the trouble that Eritrea is facing… asking questions about the brick and mortar for their pie in the sky of a house in the country that the young people they walked past on their way to their ‘festival’ paid the ultimate sacrifice for!

I so bless the day I cast my lot with the people who are going to live each day yearning for the freedom that continues to elude my people and identify with the dream of our forefathers and not with the short sighted, dictator worshiping , people who think that all their country requires off them is their silence against injustice…I mean when did turning a blind eye against injustice become ‘Patriotic Zeal?’, in my books all the patriotic zeal to be had amongst Eritreans in the UK was on the resistance corner where the young people were clearly and unequivocally sloganeering for  Eritrea to come  First and Foremost! That for me is patriotism… and the answer of the old wine skin (AKA Zemihret Yohaness) was… they clearly are here for economic reasons! Economic reasons would mean that they would be working in the supermarkets and factories earning time and half in overtime… it would also probably mean saving the money they spent on transport, to fulfil that objective…. But they were out there saying NO to his and his elk’s bizarre politics of alienating as many of them as possible and then expecting them to be silent for the rest of their lives… well these young people have said ENOUGH! … and the rest is now an Eritrean reality whose tremor has been felt in every household… reverberating all the way back to the very homes they left gambling against every imaginable odd.

No longer would the reality of the Eritrean diaspora and particularly the youth be measured by the phony zeal of people who think sawa is their dance floor away from their regular dance floors here in the diaspora! The people who have lived and breathed sawa and fled for their dear lives have arrived and they are telling it as it is! No longer will PFDJ’s ‘achievements’ be evaluated by the people whose only stake in the country is a ‘ground plus one’ on a stolen land! The people who buried their childhood friends fighting for that land have arrived and they will not take this lying down!   No longer will the Monkeys of this world come and dance the night away carefree… slowly but surely my young compatriots are cleansing community after community off PFDJ and their pathocratic venom… and on Saturday I was able to catch a glimpse of a PFDJ free world…where young people are able to ask their questions without inhibition…. Where any one was able to put a mic in front of you and ask you your views and instantly broadcast it to hundreds of compatriots…where YPFDJ was corralled and confined cooped inside a compound (in the old wine skin!)… EYSC is dynamic, growing and freely echoing the heart beat of its generation… whilst YPFDJ is spluttering all over echoing the slogans of its pupet masters… I know which one I would rather my children grow up to emulate!  Simerrrrrrrrr need I say more?

selam       

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