Sanction Watch – The Ground Work for the Third Sanction

The monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea issued its anticipated report focusing on Eritrea on July 13, 2012. It is a must read, preferably more than once, so that the full weight and implication of the Report can be thoroughly understood and grasped by Eritrean activists who go beyond merely reading the report.

The monitoring committee experts have done an outstanding job. The professionalism of the report can only be subjected to innuendo and second guessing by the leadership of the criminal regime and its top leadership and its overseas agents who somehow are facilitators of its evil deeds. The report resounding affirms what the ongoing conversation within our Diaspora has been alluding for a long time. The evilness of the regime has now become an ordinary global conversation backed by expert’s research and at the highest level of the international organizations.

To us, Eritrean Diaspora activists, the mere cataloguing and recognition of the despicability of the regime and its evil deeds against its own people and the region of the Horn Africa is not enough.  An ounce of decisive and firm action as an evidence of demonstration of the UNSC resolution by the key nations in the Security Council will have more impact than massive data that reinforces what the Eritrean people have felt and known for a long time.

This report does one thing that previous ones have not done. It elucidates in a vivid way the role played by the Eritrean regime in the manufacturing and commercializing the Eritrean refugee crisis. Power and money have been the motive of the regime no matter what it takes to retain and attain both. The so-called 2% extraterritorial tax has been documented and exposed to the point that the regime cannot even find a loophole to spin the report.

The “declining” role of the regime in the internal problems of Somalia is not so much out of a change in heart, a momentary clarity or spiritual insight it is simply the facts on the ground have been turning against the machination of the regime. This does not donate a clean bill of health but a shift into a more draconian internal policy as exhibited in the regime’s unquenchable vampirism.

Now what we must ask - The committee has done its job and has structurally set up the foundation for strengthening all relevant resolution (more importantly Resolution 2023) with a stronger and deeper sanction. The likely hood of the regime is Asmara changing its color is zero.  It is too deeply committed to its ways. It will exasperate all differences and blame the rest of the world and further isolate itself. It will even welcome a third sanction with the usual nonsensical declaration.

The issue is what will America do and what will those of us who have the privilege of taking American citizenship do to break the back of the Eritrean regime activities in North America. According to Norton Rose May 2012 report on the “Sanction regime agents Eritrea” EU, UK, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore have sanctions in place. This report adds Germany to the list. The missing giant is the USA. The recent addition of two senior officers of the Eritrea regime on the list is a good beginning but still too anemic.

This monitoring report imposes upon us a heavy duty. While all political activities in Diaspora have their place and role in the struggle against the regime our key responsibility is to cripple the illegal activities of the Eritrean regime in Europe and America. We have the first hand documents it we use it correctly and wisely to help us make progress in actualizing this huge task.

In previous posting I have used the slogan “Not a penny for the Eritrean regime”. I still think it is a worthy goal. Unless we can financially suffocate the Eritrean regime by kindly asking the Saudi government to give Eritreans a blanket amnesty to stay in Saudi Arabia   and take away the $40 million ransom money away from the regime, Unless we can expose all agents who collect money for the regime in our community and force our brothers and sisters to sign a confession form what good is our hair splitting and pontificating in thousand websites.

The dire condition that is expressed so clearly in this new report must deny us sleep and boil our blood. Not just the seasoned politicians but also the civic activists, individuals who, deep in their heart, know the people of Eritrea and the Horn region do not deserve this kind of a regime. You owe it to the people to digest this report and come face to face with the brutality of the regime and be outraged. Decide to do something in the country you live in – clear out PFDJ poisonous influence.  I wish you sleepless days and nights.

Disclaimer; opinion expressed in this posting is mine and mine only.

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Letter dated 11 July 2012 from the Chair of the Security Council; Committee pursuant to resolutions 751 (1992) and 1907 (2009) concerning Somalia and Eritrea addressed to the President of the Security Council