Category: Opinion
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Living with Trauma: Eritrea’s Youngest Generation
Born and raised after the independence of Eritrea in 1991, the youngest Eritrean generation (“nay Hmamey”, which literally means “of my illness/sickness” that’s apparently what they call each other, which I recently heard for the first time), is perhaps the most traumatized generation of all the generations before it. By giving each other the epithet…
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Weird: Man Who Abuses Eritrean Elders Is Hosted By Ethiopian Elders
From September 15 to 17, a conflict, right outside of Addis Ababa, in a small town of Burayu shocked the city and the country. 50 people were killed, many more were injured. Almost all, who lost their lives were injured are citizens, young people, who came to Addis across 450 Kilometers from the Southern Ethiopian…
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Happy September 1, Eritrea
The reason Eritreans stood up for themselves on September 1, 1961 is not because they hated Ethiopians. It is because the Ethiopian ruling regime (the government of Emperor Haile Selasse) took away their right to choose their own official language, the right to govern themselves, the right to freely assemble, the right to write their…
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The Eritrean Atlanta & Denver Festivals of 2018
That both festivals – the first of their kind – had taken place in 2018 was no small feat. For these festivals to take place in the heels of the major peace event between Eritrea and Ethiopia, however, is a stroke of luck for the public to push both the opposition political blocks and the…
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Top 10 New Year Resolutions (We Will Ignore In June)
This website was hacked. We believe it was Russian intelligence but we can’t be sure until our investigation is complete. Rest assured, if it is the Russians, there will be proportionate response. Anyway, we are back and we intend to resume our publication with maximum effort. Our new year resolutions 10. Resist hacking from Russia…
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The Grand Dam, National Sovereignty and Hydro-politics
The building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile by a major Italian construction company, in a contract with Ethiopia, remains a source of great tension between Ethiopia and Egypt. Began in 2011, the grand dam is due for completion in the middle of this year. The dam will hold a…
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This Year’s Winter Olympics Are A Bit Different
Alpine skiing. Biathlon. Bobsleigh. Cross-country skiing. Curling. Figure skating. Freestyle skiing. Ice hockey. Luge. Nordic combined. Short track speed skating. Skeleton. Ski jumping. Snowboarding. Speed skating… These games are, um, well, let’s have comedian Alonzo Bodden tell us what they are: “…the only time we as a nation come together to watch sports we know…
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Melancholy (Wo)Men
[spider_facebook id=”4″] In sorrow, Eritrea’s aging revolutionaries stood on the stands, accepting the salute of a once-glorious army they helped degrade, by allowing a mad man in their midst to demean them. In some ways, they are like the Soviet Union’s aging custodians of the Bolshevik revolution who held fearsome May Day parades, as they…
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Government of Eritrea and the Commission of Inquiry
[spider_facebook id=”4″] The mouthpiece of the Government of Eritrea, shabait.com, has published a Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release to complain about the timing of the release of the report by the Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea (CoIE.) The statement goes on to describe such a release, whose timing it considers “credible information” as an…
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Eritrea: Too Independent To Be Free?
[spider_facebook id=”4″] On May 24, 1991, Eritreans, for the first time in their history, earned an opportunity to govern themselves free from any foreign power. This was a hard-fought outcome which came about as a result of People Power: 1890 – 1941: Eritreans chafed under the rule of colonial Italy. 1941 – 1951: Eritreans, then administered by the…