Silence of the Lame

Last Saturday there was an Eritrean prayer event in London, where I live. Many people I know and grew up with (including my husband) were present because the day was declared as a day of repentance and national reconciliation. If there was repentance and national reconciliation was its fruit then I must have been looking at either wrong event or the wrong nation! The event was in fact a celebratory event…as I come from a nation that has little to celebrate and I ask for forgiveness if I come across as a killjoy!

Watching the event live online… here is how I felt…and this here is my response to the organisers… (Pastor Mehari Debesay, Pastor Daniel Belay and Pastor Abrehaley Seyoum…)

They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace.

Jeremiah 6:14

…While you were celebrating the dawn of your new era of abundance in all respects in Eritrea countless people were suffering in all sorts of prisons, detention centers and torture camps across the Sinai desert. Many more were stuck between government soldiers and Libyan rebels against the government. In Sudan many live in constant fear of being abducted and sold to traffickers and smugglers or being handed back to the government of Eritrea. In Ethiopia across several camps many underage children and extremely vulnerable young women live under constant danger that arises from such vulnerability. All of these people need us to be their advocates both before God and before people, they are accessible to all of you, indeed you are all in touch with many from these situations (as is every Eritrean) but you have never been in a position to conduct yourselves as though they were one with you (your fellow prisoners!). There was little to attest to the fact that you partake in their suffering at your event last Saturday. At best you dressed up their wounds with empty words and spoke of peace and abundance where there is none…at worst you completely ignored their plight and turned a blind eye to their suffering.

At the very moment you were gathered, clad in your sharp suits and flowery words, a young man in a torture camp was held hostage after he and several others were abducted from Sudan and were held under slave like conditions until they were eventually sold to traffickers who told him he will be killed the following day if someone didn’t come forth to pay the ransom… he made the appeal, but no one was there to appeal on his behalf to the government that orchestrated the series of events that led to his leaving his country… or indeed to the abductors who held him for ransom… the following day he was killed. His name was Daniel, may he find peace and the abundance you promised us all, in the after life…
 
It actually hurt to note that there was no mention of the people who are languishing in jails in Eritrea on the count of their faith… the people whose shoes you simply slipped into and simply forgot about… they, like you and I deserve to see their children grow, it has been nearly nine years since they were incarcerated for preaching the same gospel that you say you preach and yet their very names are not even uttered in your sermons and your prayers let alone your dialogues and literature. How can Dr Kiflu and pastor Kidane not feature in your events? I am sure you all have their pictures in your photo albums from the times you invited them as guest speakers to conferences at a time when they too were able to don on the sharp suits and adorn the podiums you now occupy. How do you even live with yourselves without mentioning Dr Fetsum at prayer services here in London? Didn’t he live and eat with us here when he was a young student? Are you ashamed of their chain? Or is your gospel different to theirs?        

For a long time now it has been clear to me that you have decided to treat the state of our people including the situation of religious persecution with total silence. You have used so many complicated arguments to explain your position, I do not have that level of complexity to unpack much of what you say in that respect, all I know is, rather than spiritual maturity, your silence comes across as apathy, from where I stand, especially as I read the testimonies of many people who could have done with your solidarity, and particularly when I have lived through so many of your loud and bold sermons on every other issue under the sun. In fact your silence is no different to the prophet Jonah’s initial choice of in/action when he was told that Nineveh was to perish… God challenged this… doing nothing was not an option, the fact is you will be hard pressed to find any other examples of such choices in the Bible… in the Bible God commands people to do a set of things or refrain from doing a set of things but NEVER tells people to do nothing.

Do you realize that at the close of last year the administrator of the Southern regions of Eritrea, Mr mustafa Nur Hussein, vowed to obliterate every preacher in his region and arrested them all including heavily pregnant women and mothers of really young children; many children have been left parentless or in the care of elderly relatives as a result of that, one boy fell ill in the absence of his parents and was given up for dead…I am sure you are in contact or could easily be in contact with these children if you so wished (we all know somebody who knows somebody…)… your specific prayers would amount to a lot… your generous giving would make the difference between life and death to these children… and your advocacy on their behalf might make a difference or at the very least show them your solidarity… your silence is a loud echo of your indifference to this injustice… your ‘prophetic declarations of abundance’ an empty offer of extremely cold comfort!

What makes your decree even colder is the fact that every year you proclaim abundance, has become a year our people have succumbed to a new level of neediness. I recall a similar meeting, around 2005, where believers came keenly in tears, to repent on their behalf and that of their people… you our leaders told us that the time for tears is now over and that we should thank God and vow not to say any negative things about what is happening in Eritrea (even in our prayers)… since then many believers died in the hands of their torturers who were persecuting them for their faith… and you remained silent  in the face of all this… worse still you crippled the churches into inaction … you made us lame in your silence… similarly an event was held in 2007 (or thereabouts) I declined that invitation, but also declined the urge to challenge your  declarations of ‘peace and prosperity soon’… nine years after the closure of churches in Eritrea… eight years after the imprisonment of our church leaders and six years into your declarations of ‘the year of the Lord’… faced by the death of many Eritrean young people… faced by the continued flagrant violations by the government of Eritrea and repulsed by your conspiracy of silence…I say God is tired of our injustice, it's even already in the Bible, Habakkuk 1:3. "Why do You make me look at injustice? Why do You tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds."

I appeal for you to stop appeasing evil in your indulgent silence… stop crippling the church through your lame but complicated excuses for doing nothing… but more importantly stop making meaningless declarations in the name of God.

This is what the LORD says:

“As for the prophets
   who lead my people astray,
they proclaim ‘peace’
   if they have something to eat,
but prepare to wage war against anyone
   who refuses to feed them.
Therefore night will come over you, without visions,
   and darkness, without divination.
The sun will set for the prophets,
   and the day will go dark for them.
The seers will be ashamed
   and the diviners disgraced.
They will all cover their faces
   because there is no answer from God.”

Micah 3:5-12

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I am sorry that I have had to do this publicly, but you will, I am sure, recall that I have appealed to you in person on several occasions to no avail…as ever I am happy to be challenged on any of this… but please do it in simple straight forward words…

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selam