Merry Chrismas & A Happy New Year to All Eritreans where ever they may be.

Some time ago many Ex-ELF fighters, in the Diasphora have been gathering in North America, in areas of Florida and other cities,including Canada. I would say it is good news, because these fighters have a lot to talk about Jebha Abay and Ghedli, with each other on their past experience.

A while ago ex-PLF/EPLF have started gathering in public,not typical to those who have been involved ages in the Central Committee or Politbureau of the 1978-1989 EPLF.Those who spent time in exile during post independence must have thought why do we not show our existence in the Diaphora,while others are gathering in public and doing what they wanted to publicize their group-opinions on the current situation.

What I missed in this showdown is the gathering of those who started the ELM(Mahber Shoate).This can be due to their age and dwindling number still alive. It was this group who had a good plan of waging a democratic movement within Eritrea and beyond.

How can you bring back the good old movement to life? Not an easy task to do, it is like  comparing with the science of Clonning of a lost Dynasore back to life.

What I am trying to question here in this article, is that, what was all the silence for 20 years of those good old commarades in arms, while the Lunatic has caused a colossal damage to our Eritrea. Is it an emotional or a realistic gathering that can Salvage the Nation and its citzens. Here in this article, I refrain from being pessimistic and I preffer to think positive as much as I can, bucause even a kerosine lamp can give enough light to a hallow darkness of the country.

Lampedusa might be called the Titanic Eritrean ship, but for those parents who lost more than 366 children can it be a console to their untold grief and tears? Two boats that reportedly set out from Libya on 22 and 25 Marchin 2011, one carrying 335 Eritreans and the other 68 Eritreans and Ethiopians, have disappeared.,

Tragedy of such magnitude should end before we are all looking a ghost country where no human remains to be seen.  The country has paid enough blood & tears in its recent history, including the boarder conflict in 1998 and 2000 which took the lives of more than 20,000 Eritrean civilians and soldiers.

Who knows if things change course and save the country from the evil dictator. Nostalgia as it is, there were many Eritrean student movements in the diaphora, like Gues Bagdad,

Gues Cairo,Gues Poland etc on the ELF supporters side and ENE and ENASA later who financed the PLF and EPLF. With both supporters; there were a lot of Womens’ organizations and workers associations, very nostalgic to me,by remembering them in 2014.

Had these groups simply faded away from the scene or was there an ubrupt stoppage by an external force. Could it be the misterious word called “Inependence of Eritrea”, The Referendum in 1993 or the Nation Building that killed them? My guess is none. May be the long and bitter Ghedli and Diasphora life without a settled life, always on the move towards the struggle for independence or even may be that could be the fatigue.

What is to be done?

Online Articles on desperados and human trafficking have been written without an end, but our people have no access to the luxury of media and instant information online, but only to flee from the tyranny in their country to where their feet can step. The ordeal does not end in Kessela in the Sudan or Shimelba in Northern Ethiopia. The Sahara desert and the Sinai peninsula are made the grave yards of many refugees from Eritrea, Somali, Ethiopia and Sudan some of them kidnapped by Arab Bedouins from the boarder with Sudan or along the Red Sea coast and some forced by human trafficking in Egypt or Libya to end in a sea bed of the Mediterranean coast.

The human rights situation in Eritrea is horrendous at best, and non-existent at worst. The country is administered by a cabal of military personnel reducing it to a real police state. There is no due process of law and, it is in fact, a prison camp where innocent people are jailed and disappear so no one knows of their whereabouts. People have to be lucky to receive any information about those who have been taken from their homes by the security guards before dawn. Mysterious deaths of critics, is very common and the number has reached a very alarming level.  Religious institutions into government agencies, just like the police, security, prison, army and courts that prolong the life of the dictatorship.

Many Eritreans will do almost anything to leave. Most adults are conscripted into the army or forced to perform compulsory labour of some kind. Today, one Eritrean in every 20 serves in a bloated army with 320,000 soldiers.

On October 3, 2013 news media signaled  alarm bells in Italy that have witnessed the Human Disaster when hundreds of migrants sunk near the Island of Lampedusa(Italia).The majority of them are Eritrean migrants fleeing their country the compulsory military service without end, but almost every day newspapers report the tragedy that repeatedly takes place in the middle of the blue border: the Mediterranean Sea.

Others head westwards, over the border into Sudan and then north across the Sahara into Egypt. Here, they have two options, both fraught with peril. Some turn east and try to cross the Sinai Peninsula with the aim of reaching Israel. Along the way, they run the risk of being kidnapped by Bedouin gunmen, who often try to extract ransoms by torturing their captives.

With the meager financial and capital at hand some are even gathering in neighbouring countries to find a solution to the acute problem in our country.As long as the gatherings are meant for a solution ever gathering has a potential for the future reconcilation with a good intention to have a government of the people and abiding the rule of law and people’s voice for electing the future leaders of the State where every citzen can live in peace and harmony with each other. Our diversity should be taken as a capital and not a Curse, as we struggle for the good of the Nation.

God bless Eritrea and its people!

T.Titbarek