10,000 phone messages of support for the movement for democratic changes.

10,000 phone messages of support for the movement for democratic changes.

Following a momentous move for democratic changes in Eritrea, on Monday 21st of Jan 2013, the Diaspora based youth initiative ArbiHarnet (Freedom Friday) sent nearly 10,000 automated phone messages to members of the public in Eritrea.

The messages that were translated and posted on Eritrean Face Book Pages outlined the positiveness of the movement and encouraged the public to support it as a natural continuation of their struggle for democracy and justice.

The unexpected action taken by a 200 strong group of young army recruits took the entire country by surprise, when the group forced themselves into the buildings of the Ministry of Information (based in an old forte from the Italian Colonial era) and made the director of the National TV Broadcast to read out their demands. The demands were lengthy but started with the implementation of the 1997 constitution and the release of all prisoners of conscience. After reading the top two demands transmission was cut off and both National TV and Radio were off air for a period of four hours, during which time some other key locations like the air force base and the airport as well as the central bank were said to be under the control of the mountaineering soldiers.

Realising that the Eritrean public was in the dark about all this, Project ArbiHarnet mounted a quick operation to send 10,000 automated messages on the evening of Monday the 21st and of the 10,766 numbers dialled 9,419 received the message successfully.

Organisers of the initiative stated: ‘for a whole year we have been phoning members of the public and encouraging people to organise themselves for such a communal action and we are certain that this is a beginning of something much bigger, we will continue to pursue this strategy of reaching out to the public and piercing the government’s iron curtains’.

Initial feedback from Eritrea is positive; those who were engaged in a follow up call say that the calls generated hope and some excitement as well as a bit more information about the movement for change inside the country.

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Notes:

1. Having gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1991, today Eritrea is daubed Africa’s North Korea owing to the appalling human rights records there. In June the UN Human Rights Council agreed to appoint a Special Rapporteur to look into the human rights violations perpetrated by the regime.
2. ArbiHarnet (Freedom Friday) is an initiative coordinated by Eritrean youth in the Diaspora with the aim of narrowing the gulf between the resistance to the government of Eritrea in the Diaspora and inside the country.
3. One of the objectives of the initiative is to encourage Eritreans inside the country to indentify communal responses to the dictatorship that has caused thousands of Eritreans to become refugees and prisoners.
4. ArbiHanet is inspired by the Arab Spring Revolutions, and works to inspire the Eritrean public to rise up in a similar act of defiance against injustice in Eritrea.
5. Please contact ArbiHarnet on: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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