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EPDP Editorial

October 3, 2014 marked one year of the loss of 368 Eritreans in the island of Lampedusa. Diaspora Eritreans held memorial on the loss with profound grief and mourning. They lit vigil candles, conducted prayers, and placed grief flowers on the area where the 368 Eritreans drowned. Others who couldn’t travel to Lampedusa remembered the loss in their respective countries and regions with the same zeal of love and respect, the way we Eritreans treat and honor our dead whether it is back home or in the Diaspora. The memorial was also notably public: it was attended by many European government officials, Eritrean humanitarian rights advocates, EPDP, including the representative of his Holiness Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church who addressed Eritreans on the tragedy, giving his consolation to the grieving families and close relatives and friends.   

The memorial was a somber expression on Eritrea’s picture in general, and on the larger social, political, and economic dictatorship that is gripping the country and its people under the PFDJ regime in particular. In a point, what the Lampedusa memorial reminds us is that the unending death of hundreds of Eritrean youth, women, and children in high seas and in the Sinai desert stems from the total absence of fundamental freedom and justice in our country being caused by the PFDJ regime whose policies are designed to cause the maximum affliction possible on our people to the degree of annihilating the entire population like an uncontrollable plague.

Whether those who died in the island of Lampedusa or in other places, we must hold them as victims of the PFDJ dictatorship and injustice: they were jailed, tortured, harassed, and persecuted before they left their country - because they opposed the PFDJ’s tyrannical political order and demanded justice and rule of law in their country, like the thousands of our citizens who are either languishing in the PFDJ dungeons or already gave their lives for freedom and change. Hence, their sacrifice for justice and freedom is a national hallmark, meaning resistance and refusal to be governed by a repressive state.

Among other things, we must continue to challenge the narrative and depiction of the PFDJ that those hundreds of Eritreans fleeing their country and dying all over the world are victims of foreign forces who work to undermine Eritrea’s independence and sovereignty. Although the facts we know is that there is no entity other than the PFDJ regime so determined to subvert and undermine Eritrea’s sovereignty and independence, and its national unity, simply in pursuit of its ruthless power and tyranny in our country. If we do not tackle such a false narrative of PFDJ, it would continue to create a false sense of insecurity and fear among Eritrean citizens rather than fuelling a collective opposition against the PFDJ.  

EPDP strongly believes that the memorial of Lampedusa victims should not be about wailing and weeping, or outcry over their death as the tragedy stems from the dictatorial system we have in our country. Although it is our revered tradition and culture to honor and remember them, we should not view them as tragic victims as this will disenable us from focusing and addressing the root cause facing our country and our people, removing the PFDJ tyranny, which is solely responsible for the plight of the entire country by producing an endless state sanctioned violence, terror, and fear that is paralyzing the lives and future of Eritrean people.

The point is the Lampedusa memorial should be seen as a political one, i.e. as a fight for the principles of freedom and democracy for which successive Eritrean generations paid enormous treasures, bled, and died for it for over half a century. It should be a memorial as a reminder of the total absence of fundamental human rights and the perpetual misery in Eritrea, which resulted and continues to result not only in the death of 368 Eritreans in the island of Lampedusa on October 2013, which we are observing, but also a tribute for all those who died in Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, as well as those who perished in places of no man’s land at the hands of gangs and human traffickers and never gotten the proper burial as the areas they died are beyond the reach of governments or human rights organizations.

Last, the memorial observance of Lampedusa must translate into action. As we pay tribute to those who perished in the island of Lampedusa and in other places, we must look to what is happening in our country and what should we do as an opposition. The country is paying a high price. The tyranny being perpetuated by the PFDJ regime is fundamentally shredding the social fabric of our society, our values, our morals, our ideas, our cultures, our politics, and atomizing the public good so as to perpetuate its corrupted political power. And this is a moment in which we must change the dynamics essential to developing a broad-based political opposition that provides a real alternative to the PFDJ regime. But for this to happen, it is crucial that the opposition develops a strategy that captures the aspiration and dreams of the Eritrean public so that Eritrean people can invest in the struggle against the PFDJ regime. So, Lampedusa memorial must be used to remind us our patriotism, our pride, and our historical resolve as Eritreans. Lampedusa victims and others died for us; they died for the sake of justice and we must not settle for anything short of launching a radical transformative struggle that should establish a democratic Eritrea by establishing a collective struggle and strong opposition leadership that is capable of destroying and shattering the power of PFDJ that is currently wielded by Issaias and his elite. This is the time for Eritrean forces opposed to the PFDJ regime to face the tough road ahead; it is-make-it-or-break-it time. Again, we can either roll our sleeve and crush the wall of PFDJ tyranny, or fold our cards and give up. And the latter is not an option.