Asmara Regime Condemned at Eritrea's Silver Jubilee Conference in Geneva

2016-05-21 16:47:32 Written by  EPDP Information Office Published in EPDP News Read 2373 times

Speaking at a two-day conference in Geneva that evaluated Eritrea's experiences in the past 25 years, a Swiss parliamentarian strongly condemned the perpetrators of those awful crimes against the Eritrean people and regretted that European progressives sympathized in the past with present-day dictators in Eritrea,  Zimbabwe and other places.

 

In his opening address of the conference on 19 May, the Honorable Manuel Tornare, former mayor of Geneva and current member of the Swiss parliament (National Council) and the committee for foreign relations, expressed his deep anguish over the fact that 30% of Eritreans are now out of home and living in distress. He appreciated the full exposures made by the 483-page report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea and hoped that those crimes will be fully accounted for.  Mr. Tornare also noted that it was 80 years ago that a similar violation of people's rights in the Horn of Africa  were debated in Geneva when Emperor Haile Selassie appealed for support of the League of Nations against the crimes committed by fascists of the day.

 

The Swiss parliamentarian from the social democratic party also told the conference that most of the mainstream parties in Switzerland are agreed by consensus to table a robust resolution on Eritrea aiming to put more pressure on the repressive regime in Asmara and to provide concrete support to Eritrean refugees in refugee camps in East Sudan and Northern Ethiopia. 

 

 

Organized by interested academicians, the conference was entitled "Eritrea at Silver Jubilee: Stocktaking on the Nation-Building Experience of a 'Newly' Independent African Country"  and convened at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva. The opening ceremony on Thursday afternoon was followed by a panel discussion which focused on the "achievements" and failures of the regime in Eritrea during the past 25 years.

 

On 20 May, the conference, received nine presentations by Eritrean and non-Eritrean scholars and activists who approached the subject-matter purely through academic approach.   The convener of the conference, Dr. Daniel R. Mekonnen  stated in his concluding remarks that the nine presentations and a few more others sent by academicians who could not make it to the conference due to last minute inconveniences will be compiled and published in a book form this year or by early next year. 

Last modified on Saturday, 21 May 2016 18:52