Eritrea: When Does the Agony End?

Eritrea:  When Does the Agony End?

A Simmons College Warburg Panel Presentation

(Photo: Sinai torture victim)

Eritrea was Africa’s newest independent nation in 1991.  In only a few years the ruggedly beautiful Red Sea state slid from hopefulness to conflict and then to despair.  Three decades of disputes and clashes with its neighbors turned Eritrea into a regional outcast.  Worse, political repression under the one-man rule of President Isaias Afwerki killed most hopes of democracy or respect for human rights.  Eritrea today is an impoverished police state.

Fleeing Eritreans face new tragedies at the hands of human traffickers and criminal gangs operating in the Sinai and elsewhere.  This wide-scale suffering is one of the underreported disasters of continuing authoritarian rule in Eritrea.

Despite these hardships, Eritreans remain resilient and increasingly confident that fundamental change cannot be indefinitely delayed.

Join us for a panel presentation and discussion of the situation in Eritrea today, the tragedy of human trafficking from Eritrea, and prospects for positive political change.

WHEN AND WHERE:

March 5, 2013, 5 – 6:30 p.m. | MCB Room C-101

Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA

Free & open to the public

Speakers include:

Ambassador (ret) William M. Bellamy, Warburg Professor of International Relations, Simmons College

Professor Dan Connell, Senior Lecturer, Professor of Practice, Simmons College

Yebio Woldemariam, Adjunct Professor, City University of New York; director of the International Commission for Eritrean Refugees

Excerpts from a ground-breaking Israeli documentary film will be screened.