Introducing the demon that works for me!

Introducing the demon that works for me!

Please try this at home: first find an Eritrean Activist (NB the goons that call themselves as YPFDJ or anything PFDJ don’t count as activists… I am not even sure if they count as human beings!), then strap them to one of those machines that measures, heart rate etc and then play these scenarios consecutively for them:

• Ahlam an eight year old Eritrean girl was kidnapped from Sudan, by human traffickers and after subjecting her and her family to months of inhuman treatment in an attempt to extort $41,000 and only receiving $20,000 they are now threatening to sell the girl, subject her mother to gang rape in front of her husband and God knows what they will do to her father who is already too weak from the beatings and torment of seeing his wife and daughter being tortured. There is a youtube clip of a conversation with the Ahlam talking to a journalist and the father making an appeal… that you can use..
• A certain Eritrean organisation is having an internal fight there are plenty of examples of these fights… for good effect do a bit of background search and choose one that your subject is a party to… by now everyone who has been in Eritrean activism for longer than five days is a party to one fight or another!

Observe reactions and use associated data for supportive evidence of what is so totally wrong with the Eritrean resistance!

If I know anything about my fellow activists, it is the fact that they are at their most animated, most organised and most furious…. When they are dealing with each other and their endless squabbles… articles are written then… meetings on-line…. Off-line and informal discussions on the phone take up most of the waking and not so waking hours… and leaderships are formed, deformed and misformed during these crisis moments… (it is a bit like a devastating wind that blows in the pitch-dark and you don’t know what is being uprooted, blown off and landing in the garden next door and the only certainty is nothing will look or feel the same come the morning!) 

But where it really matters, we are not angry! At least we are not angry enough…. Well not angry enough at the right entity… Last weekend when the tragedy in Sinai was coming to life in the voice of Ahlam… many were desperate to do something for her… some were anxious to do something about the whole refugee crisis but no one was angry enough to create the kind of momentum that results in change! The hurricane like vigour we so effectively use to deal with each other is never there when dealing with the real things than need changing… no urgency, no passion and certainly no abject indignation!

…The kind of indignation that transformed people like W.E.B. DuBois from a scholar, into a powerful activist for civil rights. Here is how he chronicled his transformation:

"At the very time when my studies were most successful, there cut across this plan which I had as a scientist, a red ray which could not be ignored. I remember when it first, as it were, startled me to my feet....The news met me: Sam Hose had been lynched, and they said that his knuckles were on exhibition at a grocery store....I began to turn aside from my work....One could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved."

Later, DuBois describes how anger eventually stimulated him into activity, the founding of the Niagara Movement which later developed into the NAACP:

"when Trotter went to jail, my indignation overflowed…. I sent out from Atlanta in June 1905 a call to a few selected persons "for organized determination and aggressive action...."

Bertrand Russell also explains how he was filled with rage against the statesmen of Europe for their treatment of conscientious objectors and the young men who were being slaughtered for the war effort…

We often despair at how our people are filled with fear and hence apathetic… fear has debilitated us into inaction… Those who understand the operations of the human brain, say that anger and fear are opposing forces… fear suppresses anger while anger produces courage (overcoming fear!). This phenomena was well recognised by Martin Luther King, Jr., who noticed how the long repressed feelings of resentment on the part of the Negroes had begun to stir. The fear and apathy which had for so long cast a shadow on the life of the Negro community were gradually fading before a new spirit of courage and self-respect. It was indignation against the hitherto accepted norms that set the motions in progress for civil rights back then and it is only the same level of indignation against the treatment of our brothers and sisters that will kick start a movement for real change in our communities….

IT SIMPLY IS NOT RIGHT THAT A LITTLE GIRL IS  SUBJECTED TO ALL THAT AHLAM WAS SUBJECTED TO AS A CITIZEN OF A ‘FREE ERITREA’… the government of Eritrea is obliged to protect Ahlam…

IT IS SIMPLY WRONG THAT MEAZA PETROS SOLOMON DOESN’T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT HER PARENTS LOOK LIKE…they fought to free the country that wasn’t even fit enough to allow them the rights to kiss her goodnight at the age of two and half….

IT IS NOT NORMAL THAT AWRA ERMIAS DEBESAY HAD TO HOIST A PLACARD  ASKING US WHERE HER FATHER IS 12 YEARS AFTER HIS DISAPPEARANCE; when local and international legal provisions guarantee her dad protection from arbitrary arrest…

IT IS UNJUST THAT SELAM HAD TO DIE IN THE SINAI DESERT FLEEING THE COUNTRY THAT HER FATHER WAS MARTYRED FOR…even as the government of Eritrea offers empty slogans in honour of his heroic act!

IT IS UNACCEPTABLE THAT PRECIOUS PEOPLE LIKE AB-ARRE ARE SIMPLY NOT ACCOUNTED FOR…and those that abducted and made him disappear are called government ministers….

BUT MORE POIGNANTLY IT IS NOT FAIR THAT… OUR DISCUSSION FORUMS, MEDIA OUTLETS AND GENERAL ACTIVISM IS DOMINATED BY OUR OWN SQUABBLES… when we say we are fighting for justice…

Unless we find our indignation and learn to channel it we would find ourselves in this rut where we major in the minors   where our repressed anger/indignation is overcome by our fear (of the enemy, of each other who have turned enemies… of the rest of the world as has happened to many followers of pfdj). When fear finally wins the day (as it so often seems to do in our circles), the anger may be turned inward and lead to self-destructive behaviour (the all too familiar ‘splits’ and all the recriminations and inflammations that seem to happen on an all constant cycle). And when fear wins enough of the days in enough of us our operations will actually be dominated by pessimism (now show me an Eritrean activist that is not beset by pessimism and I will show you what our fore fathers mean by ab quinat deyweAle….)

On the other hand communal indignation against pfdj can be utilised to create an affiliation and become a powerful force, the secret to our success and our battle cry for change in Eritrea. There is no other formula to change other than enough people pushing for it (in the same direction…) it worked for others and it should work for us! Failing that we will be forced to ‘rescue Eritrea’ by buying one Ahlem after another from a human traffickers.

Martin Luther King saw the importance of indignation against injustice, a critical truth for the development leaders of the civil rights: ‘’the supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force."

…To conclude please unstrap, the poor activist…

… oh yeah before I go… you know how I said I am not sure if pfdj supporters are even human anymore? Can I say it again? People who gather in their hundreds to affirm their support for a government that has imprisoned, killed and exiled their brothers and sisters, has lied and cheated them out of their hard earned cash telling them ‘development projects!’ and continues to extort money from them telling them it is their ‘duty as a citizen’ are in my books not fit to be called human…..

People who call a meeting to show their indignation against the burning of buildings when they don’t have a word to say against the burning of human beings by burning melting plastic on their skins are not fit to be called humans…

And people whose indignation burns when a picture frame containing the image of an evil dictator who has buried his own colleagues alive is broken… when they couldn’t care less about my people whose spirit and soul are being broken on a daily bases are certainly not human!

I hate pfdj with every cell in my being…and I think the dictator at its helm is the most evil Eritrean that walked this planate ever! And that anger is the demon that now works for me (please don’t all go theological on me… I don’t mean The Demon… I just mean that demon!)… many have asked me how I manage to remain an activist… it is easy: I have learnt… no actually I have taught the demon that is anger to work for me… to keep me up at night… to push me to pick up the pieces and start again… to smile and walk off when my friends are not being so friendly… and to sharpen my pencil even when my heart will bleed from what I might go on to write!

(Please spare me the lectures…yes I know I have failed to love the enemy!!)

selam

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