I refute NECS-E baseless accusations!

Dear colleagues of NECS Europe

I read the report of your recent annual meeting and am rather perplexed by your report of what transpired in the organisation at the close of 2009. I am particularly surprised to note that you have accused myself and Mr Noel M Joseph of the following:

(1) Failing to comply with the spirit and procedures of NECS on several issues (and I presume occasions).

(2) Failing to fulfil obligations emanating from the positions accorded to us.

A lot happened during the months leading up to December 2009, when both Noel and I thought it was impossible for us to carry on within the context that was created and as always there are two sides to the story and I have no interest in revisiting those events.

However what I do want to do is question a few things in the above assertions, with a view to giving clarity to what is contained within your public report.

You say we failed to comply with the network’s procedures; may I ask you to clearly identify the said procedures and relate when and how either of us failed to comply with them? It is true we were part of a group that organised the Brussels conference and this was not to the liking of many of you, however the network has no procedures regarding, being involved in work that is not supported by the rest of the network. Time and time again we tried to convey to you that this was a network of organisations and not one single organisation and as such individual organisations retain their autonomy to conduct activities based on their objectives and agreed work programme. I completely and utterly refute your assertions of any rules being broken in spirit or letters by either of us. To the contrary I can point to examples of many rules that have been broken by others both prior to and during the time when many individuals and organisations were busy heaping these accusations on us.

Secondly you accuse us of failing to fulfil our obligations; as you would all remember we were elected end of July 09, and had our first meeting in September(a three way meeting face to face that took the bulk of a weekend here in London). In the same month of September we developed an action plan (a nine page document that all of you were sent a copy of and I can provide copies of to anyone interested) and started a network newsletter that we produced every month in Tigrigna and English these were produced every month on schedule (again I can send copies of these to anyone interested), despite the fact that many of you had refused to acknowledge any of the work we were doing, by that point.

We also set out procedures for constituting the various subgroups properly; encouraging everyone to contribute to the work by setting out their sub group’s terms of reference and action plans and offering any support required through one of us as link people to each sub group.

It is therefore extremely unfair of ALL of you to agree to a report that accuses us of failing in our duties. An objective analysis of the work we carried out (or at least tried to carry out), and perhaps pointing out the specific duties we may have failed, would have been more befitting from seasoned activists such as yourselves.

Finally as we stated during our final communication with you, it is natural to have differences of opinions over areas of engagement and/or processes thereof, however nothing that we did constituted procedural error or failure to comply with agreements written or otherwise, we were simply demonised for involving ourselves (with the backing of our organisations) in work that we thought was appropriate, but was inevitably not to the liking of a number of you, this is a complete disregard to the principles that we all aspire to.

Indeed many organisations had at the time used the term ‘loss of confidence’, however other than repeating the above two baseless accusations no one came up with any evidence of breach on our part, and repeating this in a public report is uncalled for and further aggravates the discourses that continue to hamper our wider struggle for democratic changes in Eritrea.

It is my sincere hope that you revisit those assertions and rectify the erroneous reporting. The autonomy accorded to member organisations enshrined in NECS-E’s charter, the work programme that we produced in Sept 2009 and the news letters we produced in Sept, October and Nov 2009 are a testament to the baselessness of your accusations.

Best regards

Selam Kidane