Eritrea: The New Normal - Too Many Deaths; What Does it Take to Reverse it?

2015-04-28 12:35:07 Written by  EPDP Information Office Published in EPDP Editorial Read 4440 times

EPDP Editorial

How many Eritrean women and children should drown and die in the Mediterranean Sea in order for the Eritrean opposition to wake up and do the right thing? How many Eritrean women and young girls should be victims of sex slavery before the opposition begins to focus on the bigger picture?

On April 18, 2015, a boat carrying as many as 850 refugees sank in the Mediterranean Sea, drowning all the refugees aboard, of whom 350 are reported to be Eritreans, according to the UN Refugee Agency in Geneva. The drowning is the latest story of refugees fleeing from repression and war, and it is believed to be the worst human tragedy ever happened in the high seas. “This is the deadliest incident in the Mediterranean we have ever recorded,” said the UNHCR. The boat that set out its journey from Libya to Europe by human traffickers sank south of the Island of Lampedusa. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), of those 850 aboard only 28 survived and rescued by the Italian Coast Guard. The survivors are believed to be from Eritrea, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia and other sub-Saharan countries, according to the IOM.

For us Eritreans, the latest tragedy is not the first time. Eritreans have been perishing in thousands over the last ten years. One of the high profile tragedies is the death of 360 Eritreans in October 2013 off the Italian island of Lampedusa after the boat they were on capsized in the sea. Whether it is in the Sinai, Libya, Yemen, in the Sahara Desert, or in the Mediterranean Sea, it has been a nonstop death and woe for the Eritrean people.

We grieve; we mourn; we wail. We have to because Eritrea is losing its younger generation by thousands, a generation that is supposed to secure the continuity of the nation for generations to come. This is a nation that took tenths of thousands of Eritrean lives to secure its independence, but also a country that soon after its independence set its trajectory to failure and doom under the PFDJ regime.

Yes, there is anger; yes, we are appalled at the human barbarism and savagery being committed by the PFDJ regime. Yes, there is protest against this human disaster that our country is facing every day. But we need to ask one question, and that is – are we doing something fundamental to reverse this unspeakable, heart wrenching and unparalleled pain befalling our people?

PFDJ

The root cause of all this unending cycle of brutality and inhumanity is the PFDJ regime, which is pushing hundreds and thousands of Eritrean men, women, and children to flee the country. And it is inconceivable to stop the flood of Eritrean refugees without removing the PFDJ from power. The big picture is this: the PFDJ is not only pushing out our young and our old from the country, but also the regime is essentially unmaking the basis of our nationalism, belief, history, values and cultures, and everything that our country is made up of or known for, or what it represents. The scale of such a danger to our core existence as a nation, and which is becoming more and more worse by the day, is one that we need to worry about deeply both as a society and as a country. We know past colonial powers committed horrendous violence against Eritrean people as a means to stifle the latter’s quest for their independence. But the cruelty of the current regime in our country has no parallels and has surpassed all the cruelest colonial powers that ruled Eritrea in the past century. This is a known quantity and is becoming the “new normal” in Eritrea. The PFDJ regime has betrayed Eritrea. What is unknown and more troubling, however, is what the rest of us – “the opposition” and the people - are doing about it. Like the PFDJ regime, has the Eritrean opposition betrayed Eritrea?

Opposition

For the opposition, the hard question is how many young Eritrean deaths does it take for the Eritrean opposition to work together? How many Eritrean women and children should drown and die in the Mediterranean Sea in order for the Eritrean opposition to wake up and do the right thing? How many Eritreans should be smuggled and sold for organ harvesting before the opposition takes its national obligations seriously and comes to its senses? How many Eritrean women and young girls should be victims of sex slavery before the opposition begins to focus on the bigger picture? How much destruction to our country do we need before we say enough is enough?

One, the crisis of the opposition is its own making, and it can change it. The opposition has existed for two decades. Its purpose was and is to change the undemocratic regime of the PFDJ. But so far it proved to be incapable of achieving it. Instead, it devolved into fractured groups and entities, preventing Eritrean people from converting into supporting it or considering it as an alternative to the Isaias regime. The truth is, in the eyes and minds of the majority of Eritrean people, the opposition does not have legitimacy as we have learned it repeatedly over the last two decades. This left unfettered political field for the dictatorial regime to reign freely and continue its destruction of our country. The opposition needs to reverse this.

Two, the opposition needs to pull out from the current political morass it is in by facing its own weaknesses and shortcomings. Two decades after, the opposition must acknowledge that it is time to reverse the status quo, redefine its very existence; reforms itself and begins to refocus on the bigger picture. Only then will the opposition be able to play its national role in removing the PFDJ regime and stopping the mayhem and the cycle of inhumanity and death our people are facing.

Undoubtedly, there have been numerous critical junctures in the past few years, where the Eritrean opposition could have come to its senses and evaluated itself and started working together. In other words, the history of the nearly two decades of tragedies and injustices being meted out on the Eritrean people should have served as the basis for the Eritrean opposition forces to unlock their differences and resistance to change, as well as to design a collective formula to empower Eritreans in the struggle against the PFDJ regime. It did not happen. In reality, putting first what matters most for the democratic struggle has been lost in the midst of all the self-serving differences that exist among the various groups. This seemingly inherent differences embedded within the various groups has become an obstacle to capture the dynamics that drive Eritrean people for a better alternative more than ever before – that is, for change, peace, security, and better future. EPDP says the current critical juncture – the national tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea – should not be a missed opportunity. Let’s use it to build a common massage as well as to set up our core priorities. We encourage the creation of a National Task Force to deal with the Eritrean Refugees issues. Again, EPDP calls upon all Eritrean nationals to make “saving Eritrea” as their number one priority. How much destruction is how much?

Last modified on Tuesday, 28 April 2015 14:37