May 24, 2025, marks the 34th year since our country attained its sovereignty. Thousands of patriotic Eritreans wished to see this precious day but were not fortunate enough to witness it. Hundreds of thousands sacrificed their precious lives for the independence and freedom of our people. Thanks to their noble sacrifice, our country Eritrea has had its sovereignty recognized and has become a member of the United Nations. On this occasion, I extend congratulations to all our people, both at home and abroad.

However, because our country has fallen under a dictatorial regime, our people's rights have been violated, their freedoms stripped, and through indefinite, unpaid national service, their youth's potential has been extinguished, and it has become their fate to live a life of servitude. With one radio, one TV, one newspaper, and "Network 03," the dictatorial regime has been spreading confusing false information, numbing the minds of the people, and has been and continues to exploit our country's resources, and primarily our people, at its whim. The question that needs an answer is: How did we fall into this situation? And how can we overthrow the dictatorship and become free?

The Eritrean People's Liberation Front (later the People's Front for Democracy and Justice - PFDJ), which took control of Eritrea promising to establish constitutional governance allowing a multi-party system in a free Eritrea and to establish social justice, betrayed its promises. By terrorizing the people and imprisoning leaders and members of the EPLF (and its own ranks) whom it considered opponents, it spread the tentacles of dictatorship. And because the people took this abnormal situation as normal, stopped saying "enough" despite witnessing blatant oppression, and, whether out of fear or for personal gain, became complicit in the spread of an unjust culture; and because the opposition camp has been unable to be represented by one body and one voice, the life of the dictatorship has been prolonged, and the daily life of our people is going from bad to worse.

Because the dictatorial regime's hands are washed in blood, it is unthinkable that it will reform itself. As the saying goes, "The stick is in your hand, the snake is at your feet" – the solution, our people, is in your hands. There is no power that can rule you without your consent. The answer is: No to dictatorship! Yes to freedom!

Stand up for your rights! The martyrs did not sacrifice themselves for you to live cowering and hiding on Independence Day, fearing being snatched away, but for you to walk with your head held high in your country. Yes, they gave their precious lives for you to believe, think, express, organize, move, learn, farm, herd, and work as you wish; in short, for your general freedoms to be respected and for you to be governed by law and a constitution. Your duty is to protect the sovereign country they handed over to you through noble sacrifice and to reclaim your stripped rights.

On this occasion, I also call upon the opposition camp to make the necessary compromises to achieve, without delay, the unity that this current stage demands. There is no doubt that this is a step that will give hope to our people and accelerate the downfall of the dictatorship.

Gerezgiher Tewolde
Chairman of the Political Forces of Eritrea (EPF)

Victory to the just struggle of our people!!
Downfall to the dictatorial regime!!
Eternal memory to our martyrs!
Through Unity to Freedom!!

A week ago, a friend in North America shared with me a death announcement of another Eritrean. The name of the deceased is Mulugeta Giorgis who passed away recently at the age of 87 in Maryland, USA. His burial ceremony was scheduled to take place on 25 February 2025. I am not sure what his close friends in the Eritrean regime, like Hagos Kisha, will include in his life history, but what is sure is that what they will say about Mulugeta will be totally different from what I am going to tell you here.  

Mulugeta Giorgis was the person who organized the arrest on 30.08.1965 of Seyoum Ogbamichael (Harestai), Woldedawit Temesghen, Ahmed Siraj, and my middle school class teacher, Memhir Seyoum Negassi. Ghirmai Yosief was also one of his victims at a different setting.

For the sake of those who know little about our past, Seyoum and Woldedawit were among the Asmara students who joined the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) in those early years. Ahmed Siraj was a tailor and urban ELF cell member in Asmara in whose house the arrest organized by Mulugeta Giorgis took place. The three languished in prison for 10 years until they were liberated by the ELF in 1975. Memhir Seyoum Negassi, who was in discussion with the two ELF envoys at the time of the arrest, was one of the active nationalist teachers of his time who influenced the Eritrean student movement.

Among victims of Mulugeta Giorgis: Seyoum ‘Harestai,’ Woldedawit Temesghen and Ahmed Siraj, the martry of Barentu/1978 whose photo could not be obtained.

Mulugeta in Kassala, 1964-65

Mulugeta Giorgis appears to be among the early recruits in the ELF. After a huge student demonstration in Asmara in March 1965, Seyoum Harestai and his close friend Woldedawit went to Kassala and were received by Mulugeta, Omar Jaber and others who were in the ELF Kassala office. When the Kassala leadership, that included Mulugeta, decided that Seyoum and Woldedawit should go back to Asmara and organize ELF cells in the city, Mulugeta was the one who arranged their trip and their potential supporters in Asmara. But soon, Mulugeta surrendered to the Ethiopian consulate in Kassala and flew to Asmara to organize their arrest.

A few months before the arrival of Seyoum and Woldedawit in Kassala, another Asmara student from the vocational school of Point IV, Ghirmai Yosief, was sent back to Asmara in a similar mission of organizing ELF cells. Mulugeta knew that Ghirmai Yosief was frequenting at the Asmara YMCA to do his ELF job. Therefore, Mulugeta could easily lead the Ethiopian security to arrest not only Ghirmai Yosief but although through him to Seyoum Harestai and Wodedawit.

The other day, I asked Ghirmai Yosief, who is the only person still alive from among those victims mentioned above, as to why Mulugeta betrayed them all. Ghirmai could not know why but said Mulugeta was a commercial school graduate and former worker at the Dutch Wonji Sugar Factory in Ethiopia.

Memhir Seyoum Negassi, Ghirmai Yosief, and the victimizer Mulugeta Giorgis.

Mulugeta in Addis Ababa, early 1970s

In the early years of the 1970s, one issue of the Ethiopian police newspaper (ፖሊስና እርምጃው) reported that Mulugeta Giorgis and a few accomplices were facing the law for a crime/arson that could have put Addis Ababa in flames.

The persons accused for the arson, including Mulugeta, were relatives of the owner of the Bowling Centre that was located near Harambee Hotel. The owner and his relatives conspired to put fire on the Bowling Centre so that the Bowling Centre owner could claim hundreds of thousands of insurance money for the damage. That owner also asked Mulugeta and other relatives to beat him, injure him with knives and leave him near his car in the outskirts of Addis on the way to Gondar.

According the police newspaper I read, the case was to be brought to the High Court in the Lideta zone of Addis. At that time, I was working as a journalist for the Ethiopian Herald. I decided to report every detail of the case as a revenge to what Mulugeta has done to my former schoolmates and school teacher whom I brought to the meeting with Seyoum and Woldedawit. The reports on the Ethiopian Herald sometimes appeared on the front page as banner headlines. I recall Baalu Ghirma, the then editor-in-chief of the Amharic Addis Zemen and author of ‘Oromai’, assigning Yohannes Disasa, a top Addis Zemen reporter, to go with me every day and cover the Bowling Centre story. Other Addis Ababa newspapers and the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) also joined us in reporting the arson case of Mulugeta and his accomplices.

According to the final opinion of the presiding judge of the Lideta High Court, the sentences on Mulugeta and others were aggravated by several years due to the intensive press coverage, on top of them the Ethiopian Herald, that expressed the danger to public safety that the fire at the Bowling Centre could have caused if it were not put down on time.

This is part of Mulugeta’s story that will not appear in his obituary drafted by his regime friends. This could also indicate what kind of people are STILL standing on the side of the cold-hearted regime in Asmara.   

Many Eritreans are for sure not well aware of how much poor the Eritrean library still is. Records of the colonial period were themselves scanty on top of being mostly distorted or written by less informed authors. But nothing can be done about that except regretting that it was so. Eritreans of the first two to three decades of the post-Italian period cannot also be blamed for the failure to adequately put in record what was going around them because they were denied the educational background for such an endeavor. We also know what happened to us in the past 6-7 decades for not contributing enough in order to enrich the Eritrean library. One can of course mention the 30-year national liberation struggle and what followed it since 1991 as causes for the failure to write. (A few compatriots, on top of them Alemseged Tesfai and Mufti Ibrahim Mukhtar, could be spared the blame – i.e. until we see what awaits for us in Asmara’s ‘Ye Tiravolo Washa’, as the late Tesfaye Ghebreab hinted).

Anyway, to make a quick jump to today’s point: it is my gut feeling that a vast majority of  Eritreans, including many of our educated ones, lack a fair knowledge of the story of what we used to call the Eritrean Liberation Front/ELF or ‘Jebha.’ This is mainly because there has not been sufficient and fair documentation about it, at least in English. And most of the few that exist were penned down by writers with some bias or utter ignorance of all the necessary facts. To my judgment, the prevailing lack of sufficient documentation and knowledge about the ELF is a good example of the poverty of the Eritrean library.

Recently, I came across a new book entitled ‘Eritrea’s Liberation Journey: 1969-1981’ by Mohammed Kheir Omar (PhD), a writer who may not be new to those used to read his ongoing Eritrea-related articles on the social media or his Hedgait blog, not forgetting his earlier book that ambitiously tried to cover Eritrean history from ancient times to 1968. These are commendable efforts by an Eritrean intellectual who deserves a warm thank you by us readers. Let us also hope and pray that others will follow his path in order to help fill at least some of the blind spots in our recent past.

Dr.MK Omar’s new book focuses on the period 1969 to 1981 that he rightly considers “a pivotal decade” in Eritrea’s prolonged struggle for national independence. I can say he fully understands how much little some Eritreans know about their own people’s contribution in the struggle. In fact he says his main aim in writing the book was to give “an accurate account of ELF’s role in the liberation struggle—often overshadowed or distorted” by the winner organization and its partisan chroniclers. Also in the outset, the writer reassured readers that he tried to cover the period “objectively.” Well, it is easy to say that because the final judgment rests with readers who can definitely include those who usually base their judgment on “base” things – like name of the writer and his/her birthplace.  Here, the author is Mohammed and his hometown is Agordat. 

On my part, I found the book to be fairly well balanced, as the author promised. And equally importantly, it is full of new facts, new even for those who lived throughout the liberation struggle days.  

Fully matching with my knowledge and understanding, Mohammed Kheir’s book rightly informs that, although the armed struggle was started by the ELF, it in fact was a “spontaneous popular uprising against the Ethiopian repression” throughout Eritrea, with many acts of resistance occurring, spearheaded mainly by the younger generation.   

The book pertinently refutes the distorted Ethiopian claim that the formation of the Eritrean liberation movement was initiated by Egypt. He exposes the utter lack of substantiation to this argument because “the Eritrean independence movement was well-established by the 1940s, predating Egypt’s 1952 revolution.”

The author at one point wished to question as to why the EPLF regarded Patriot Woldeab Woldeab as “the Godfather of the Eritrean Revolution” while he was known for controversial comments not officially acceptable to both fronts. This indeed is a point still to be scrutinized by future historians who would have to compare roles and contributions of all our patriotic fathers, on top of them, I would say, Ibrahim Sultan Ali, the leader of the biggest party that called for independence as of mid-1940s and was instrumental in obtaining the Eritrean symbolisms that helped in strengthening Eritrean nationalism. 

In writing the book, Dr. Mohammed Kheir used primary sources by interviewing people who took part in those events mentioned in addition to using references not only to English and Tigrigna books but also to rare sources in Arabic and Amharic which are not accessible to everybody. For instance, the author’s use of Arabic books written by key actors in the struggle like the then ELF army chief Abdalla Idris, army commander Idris Hangala, ELF/PLF’s Osman Denden, the Syrian Ahmed Abu Saada, testimonies by the Sudanese intelligence person Al Fatih Urwa and others add huge value in balancing and analyzing facts in the book. Viewpoints on Eritrea and the ELF in Amharic books by former Ethiopian fighters like Ghebru Asrat and Ghidey Zeratzion are also fairly well covered in the book.   

Among other things, the book delves deep into the causes of internal Eritrean divisions and conflicts that bedeviled the struggle for a long time. On top of the list are region, religion and ethnicity followed by leadership rivalries and ideological differences.

The book affirms that the main culprits for splits in the Eritrean liberation struggle were Osman Saleh Sabbe, Isaias Afeworki and Abdalla Idris. 

The author also quotes many sources charging Abdalla Idris to be the main, although not the sole, cause for the military defeat of the ELF whose army was led till its end by persons close to Abdalla Idris, and all of them Muslims except one Christian (Tesfai Tekle), who was also from the western lowlands. The author did not mention that over 80% of the ELF army till its defeat was from the Eritrean highlands.

On his part, the Ethiopian Gebru Asrat is quoted to have admitted that “the ELF had a more considerable, well-trained force” and wouldn’t have been defeated if it were not to the participation of the Ethiopian TPLF in the Eritrean civil war and ELF’s internal tag-of-war within the leadership. 

Whatever the cause of ELF’s defeat, the writer asserts that its defeat led to Isaias Afeworki’s consolidation of power within his front that ended with the establishment of dictatorship in independent Eritrea. The author also blames the “uncritical acceptance” of the front’s followers of the “hegemonic narrative” of the EPLF.

The book argues that the characterization of the ELF and Muslim elements in general as reactionary was not only harmful but also untrue. He tells the stories of the secret parties in both fronts and lists of their founders who were mostly Muslims. The founders of the Labour Party of the ELF in 1968 included names like Ahmed Mohamed Ali Isa, its first chairman, Azien Yassin, Ibrahim Mohammed Ali, Mahmoud Mohamed Saleh, Saleh Eyay and others. The book notes that Kidane Kiflu was around in the Sudan when the party was formed but was excluded from being party member, probably, the author adds, because of the mistrust that prevailed in the field at that particular time. 

When EPLF’s secret party, the EPRP/Eritrean People’s Revolutionary Party was established at Mount Gedem in 1971, its founders were mostly Muslims: Ramadan Mohamed Nur, Ibrahim Affa, Mohamed Ali Umaro, Abubakr Mohamed Hassen Gadi, Mahmoud Ahmed Sherifo, Mesfin Hagos, Isaias Afeworki, Ali Seid Abdella, Maasho Embaye, Ahmed Mohamed Nur Hilal, Ahmed Saleh al Gaisi, and Ahmed Tahir Baduri.

Dr. Mohammed Kheir concludes the book by referring to old divisions that left “lasting scars” on Eritrea’s political and social fabric and that continued to shape “the   liberation struggle and resonate in Eritrea’s post-independence governance.”

In a word, I dare say it is a book that can help readers fill gaps in their knowledge of our modern political history which has not yet taken a good shape.

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1 https://www.amazon.com/ERITREAs-LIBERATION-JOURNEY-1969-BEYOND/dp/B0DTGDJY84/ref=sr_1_1
2 www.geeska.com
3 https://books.google.ch/books?id=Eg_PDwAAQBAJ&printsec=copyright&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Dear Comrades, dear Friends,

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The Progressive Alliance reaffirms its unwavering commitment to combating all forms of gender-based violence. This year, we spotlight the unique struggles faced by women in politics and activism, who are disproportionately targeted by violence aimed at silencing their voices and excluding them from public life.

We uphold this day as a day of both resistance to gender-based violence and support for fellow activists and politicians. Here is the statement initiated by our Gender Equality Working Group:

X: https://x.com/PA_Solidarity/status/1860999850323574815
Website: https://bit.ly/IDEVAW2024WomenInPolitics

We thank the Gender Equality Working Group members for this initiative and to all of you for sharing this call.


In solidarity,


Machris