Category: saay on:
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“It’ll Be Revealed In Due Course”
Independence Day addresses follow this formula: (1) This is why this day is important [insert brief history of what it took for us to be independent.] (2) This is what we have accomplished so far since independence [insert list of achievements.] (3) These are some of the challenges which remain [insert list of challenges.] (4)…
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Damages: What Eritreans and Ethiopians Did To Each Other
Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up, argued Ronald Wright, rightfully. Take Eritrea and Ethiopia, for example. After the 1998-2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia border war, the two countries produced many expert cartographers who can tell you which hamlet falls on which side of the new officiated border as ruled by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission (EEBC.)…
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Friends, Fiends & Foes of UN Charter
You know how you are reading an email or a message from someone claiming to be from America and then you realize there is something off about their English and it’s probably some hacker from Russia (Boris or Sergei) writing you? Whenever I hear of “Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the…
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PLO Lumumba in Asmara, Eritrea
On April 29-30, Eritrea’s Ministry of Justice hosted a conference at Hotel Asmara Palace entitled “Values & Justice” purportedly to integrate “Eritrean values” to its legal framework. We will save why this is “purportedly” and not real for later, but for now we will address the address given by one of the invited guests: Professor…
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Decolonize Our Justice System
I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I attend graduation ceremonies, something I have done twice a year, for thirty years now. They are warmer and fuzzier when they are of Eritreans. And Ethiopians, for that matter, with their stoles and stashes declaring their political statements: this year’s special is the green-yellow-red tricolor: arengwadie…
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Clarifying Shabait’s Clarification RE Commission Ruling
In an article entitled “To Clarify Our Understanding,”the Eritrean “Editorial Board of Newspapers” adds further confusion to people’s understanding on the origins of the Eritrea-Ethiopia border conflict of 1998-2000; questions whether it was a “border conflict” to begin with; is mum on the policies and practices of the Eritrean government in inflaming and sustaining the…
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The Horseshoeing of Eritrean Politics
Politics is a line, a continuum, where the far right and far left are far apart on every issue. No, politics resembles more like a horseshoe than a line, argued a French artist, where the far right and far left are closest to, and bend towards to, each other. By that, he meant that both…
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Testifying for Tes: A Life Well-Lived
There is a traditional Tigrina blues song, repackaged in the 1970s, which narrates the story of Neguse, wedi degiat Geretsadek, from Areza, from the 1800s. It has many memorable lines, such as: “እቶም ዘለው ዘይሞቱ ይመስሉ: እቶም ዝሞቱ ዘይነበሩ ይመስሉ (Those who are alive act as if they will never die, and those who died…
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Assab: Whose Port Is It, Anyway?
Since 1889, Ethiopia has signed 8 treaties forfeiting its claims on Eritrea. With prompts from the host, Reyot Media’s Tewodros Tsegaye, the guest, Dr Yacob Hailemariam, tells us in an interview why none are binding & why Eritrean port Assab belongs to Ethiopia. Let’s look at all his arguments, with a brief intro to the…
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Season of the Undead
How Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy came to power is worthy of a short book by an author like John Lee Anderson, who already got him to tell us a lot, including his contempt for his predecessor Hailemariam Desalegn and his love for America, so much so, he would die for her. His version of The…
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What Eritrea Must Do Now To Close All Venues To War
There are reasons to believe that Prime Minister Abiy’s address to the Ethiopian parliamentarians on the Red Sea is a rationale for war. The address went above and beyond the concerns of a land-locked nation demanding its rights guaranteed by United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS); it insisted on re-litigating an issue considered…
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How 9/18 Changed Eritrea Forever
On September 18 & 19, 2001, the Government of Eritrea enforced the disappearance of a group of Eritreans who had called for reform, and the reporters who reported on them. This article is not about them as individuals or their suffering families, but about how the country’s trajectory changed dramatically for the worse as a…