Eritrea: In a Pyrrhic Victory, PFDJ Group Elected to Community Board in Boston Part I 

The story of Boston's Eritrean-American Civic Center is a sordid tale of a rogue government and its cohorts arrayed in a scorched-earth war by proxy against a peaceful yet determined local members in the City.

For the longest time, the PFDJ leadership attempted to maintain a firm grim in diaspora communities, such as Boston, a prized local branch with sterling credentials in supporting the struggle. During the liberation war, Bostonians maintained a strong relationship with their peers in the field. They took pride in the fact that many of the current and previous leaders hailed from the City.

It is that attachment and identification with the same cause that had them contribute more than $1.9 million during the border crisis with Ethiopia in 1998. The nation’s safety was on the line and Boston’s Eritreans were not about to stand idly by. It was as simple as that.

This was one tightknit community of Eritreans who also wanted to purchase a place to call their own, where PFDJ members and non-members could attend to local needs. Everyone was asked to cough up $1000 per family, $500 for singles. They were easily able to collect almost half the funds needed for down payment to acquire a building at a cost of $375,000. Tragically enough, and much to their sorrow, however, whatever had going for them soon degenerated into rancor and division from which the community has yet to recover.

Amid much good will and commitment to community, deep cracks had appeared in the new government they supported back home, cracks that were perhaps more obvious in Boston than elsewhere in the diaspora.

The PFDJ local office was alarmed over the tensions between the Eritrean leader, Isias Afwerki, and senior government members. In unprecedented move, Bostonians sent a letter to party headquarters expressing grave concerns and urging both sides to resolve the crisis peacefully. It was the only PFDJ group to do so.

Neither the DC Embassy nor Asmara replied. Within a few months, what was a clear case of political and procedural disagreement took an ominous turn. As the nation watched in bewilderment, the so-called members of the G15 were placed under arrest, never to be heard from again.

For several PFDJ members in Boston, the arrest of some of the highest members of government was beyond the pale. Having received nothing by way of reply from the regime, and unable to accept the sudden imprisonment of its iconic leaders, several members resigned from the party, prompting an urgent call from Girma Asmerom, Eritrea’s envoy to the US.

“You’re asking me to call these heroes traitors,” the recipient of the call, a local leader, confronted the ambassador. “I am just not going to do that.”

The leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Girma attempted to convince him during a heated hour-long conversation not to quit his membership with the PFDJ, indicating that the arrested will receive trial. “That was fourteen years ago,” the local leader angrily pointed out in a recent interview.

In what has since become reminiscent of diaspora communities, there appeared a new divide within the Center whose members included supporters and non-supporters of the regime.

With the resignation of several PFDJ members from the branch office and their visible presence in the Community Center, the government’s supporters decided to recruit new members to help elect a user-friendly board to do the regime’s bidding. In so doing, they embarked in an invigorated campaign across town, asking any real or potential supporters to join in.

When new candidates hedged, reluctant to pay $10 enrollment fees, PFDJ supporters were on hand to foot the bill. At least one paid for as many as six new members. The relentless drive paid off, as the PFDJ side won handily, inviting in its first order of business the architect of the campaign, Ambassador Girma Asmerom.