Part II: A Response to Professor Joel Brinkley’s imprudent portrayal of the people of Eritrea
Dawit Gebremichael Habte
May 17, 2012
Through private communication, Professor Brinkley stated that I was mistaken in my response at least on the following facts:
1. that he never said Eritrea and Somalia shared an immediate border;
2. "without a dissenting voice" is accurate and that an abstention is not a dissent;
3. I had "cherry-picked" my facts to show Eritrea's positive side; and
4. I had failed to mention any of the "verified atrocities" he mentioned in his article.
Well, first and foremost, I would like to publicly extend my gratitude to Professor Brinkley for his response and interest in this obscure country that's trying to mark its place in the world map.
For the first two points Professor Brinkley raised, my response will be brief. If Eritrea and Somalia do not share an immediate border, why bother to mention Somalia when discussing Eritrea? Mentioning Ethiopia, Sudan, and Djibouti, the countries that "share immediate borders," would have been sufficient.
It is true that "abstention is not a dissent," but why fail to inform your audience of the fact that two out of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Russia and China) abstained? Why not let the readers decide whether "abstention" is "dissent" or not? Why the need to omit pertinent and readily available information? We are talking about 20% of the World body abstaining on a highly contentious sanction.
On whether I "cherry-picked" my facts to show Eritrea's positive side, I admit that my response was indeed tilted towards the positive accomplishments of the country. The reason is simple. My objective was to show the side of the coin Professor Brinkley chose to ignore. In his article, Professor Brinkley had tried to paint a distorted image of Eritrea; I had to show the reality.
With respect to what Professor Brinkley believes are "verified atrocities", I think he might have been overwhelmed by the well orchestrated negative campaign waged against Eritrea. Any serious researcher would find out that the source of most of this negative campaign is the minority regime in Ethiopia. Professor Brinkley inadvertently took this misinformation (rather disinformation) at face value. For example, Professor Brinkley stated that in Eritrea the situation is "so bad that an estimated 25 percent of the population has fled over the past 20 years, even though the government classifies emigrants as "traitors," and border guards are ordered to shoot them on sight."
I admit that Professor Brinkley is not the only one talking about the 25 percent figure. For example Argaw Ashine, an Ethiopian journalist, on an article he wrote for Africa Review, a subsidiary of Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper, had used the same figure. As hyperbolic as the figure presented by Mr. Ashine might be, his claim of 25 percent Eritrean-Diaspora included Eritreans who left the country before independence, as opposed to Professor Brinkley’s claim of "the past 20 years". This is what Mr. Ashine had to say in order to support his thesis of how "poor" Eritrea could afford to support Al-Shabaab:
"…remittances from its sizeable diaspora have been a major cash cow. There are an estimated 1.6 million Eritreans--25 per cent of the population--living abroad. Each Eritrean in the diaspora must by law pay two per cent "tax" on their earnings to the government, in addition to a raft of other voluntary contributions."
http://www.africareview.com/Analysis/How+does+poor+Eritrea+afford+to+fund+Al+Shabaab/-/979190/1269140/-/q9ftu9z/-/index.html
As any student of logic knows, if one starts with a false premise he can prove anything. Mr. Ashine started with the false premise that "Eritrea is supporting the Al-Shabaab", a claim that originated from Ethiopia. Faced with a daunting task of defending an indefensible headline of "how does 'poor' Eritrea afford to fund Al-Shabaab?" he came up with his own facts without presenting any reference to his source. In the process, he brought another predicament upon himself: he had to defend the argument that the "funding" for the Eritrean government comes from the Eritrean-Diaspora that live out of its reach. The Eritrean-Diaspora live in the free societies of Europe, Canada, the United States, and the Middle East and yet they are supporting the government that supposedly orders its border guards to "shoot them on sight". Professor Brinkley can do his own research and easily find out that the whole idea of Eritrea's support for "al Shabaab" and the "funding" coming from Eritrean-Diaspora "tax" are part and parcel of the many Ethiopian disinformation campaigns. If Professor Brinkley was to check the leaked Embassy cables, he will find out the truth. Furthermore, the Ethiopian government would always give exaggerated figures of Eritrean atrocities and refugees in its camps. It is using these large figures to beg, as usual, for some financial help while at the same time resettling tens of thousands of Ethiopians passing them as Eritreans. I am certain a serious investigative journalist can uncover the truth about this whole affair.
With respect to Human Rights Watch's report of "Eritrea's government is turning the state into a giant prison", at some point in the past the claim might have had merit. But then, isn't the Watchdog supposed to report improvements or changes in the situation of the country? I believe Human Rights Watch came up with the "giant prison" term in reference to the military check points that Eritrea was forced to institute after the Ethiopian invasion of Eritrea in 2000. The check points were subsequently removed from the various regions of the country and any Eritrean can freely move within the country. But I have yet to see Human Rights Watch report on the improvements and drop the reference of "a giant prison".
As exaggerated as I believe were most of Professor Brinkley’s assertions, I cannot deny the grim facts ailing the nation and the people of Eritrea. Thanks to Ethiopia and its superpower ally in the United States, the country is being forced to continue in a war footing. In other words the situation in Eritrea needs to be seen in the proper context and from the proper perspective. Anything less will not only give a distorted image but will also be serving a disinformation dish to our readers.
I believe Eritrea has been betrayed by the international community for the umpteenth time. Putting historical mishaps to the side, let us focus on what has been happening over the past decade. In 2000, the government and the people of Eritrea accepted a peace agreement that was drafted by Anthony Lake, President Clinton's special envoy, and the then Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and our current Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Susan Rice. With all the reservations and concerns Eritreans have on their dealings with Ethiopia, the government and people of Eritrea accepted the "final and binding" peace agreement to delimit and demarcate the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia in accordance to "pertinent colonial treaties (1900, 1902 and 1908) and applicable international law". According to the "final and binding" peace agreement signed between Eritrea and Ethiopia and witnessed and guaranteed by the United States and the UN, the Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) was explicitly forbidden from making any decisions "ex aequo et bono". Once the Commission rendered its decision, however, Ethiopia rejected the decision and retracted on both conditions: it wants to negotiate the "final and binding" decision because it wants the court to decide "ex aequo et bono". According to Ethiopia, the delimitation decision of the neutral commission was "illegal, unfair and unjust." After it ethnically cleansed the border towns and villages it is illegally occupying (and packed the villages and towns with its own illegal settlements), an act which the Commission had ruled illegal as early as summer of 2002, the Ethiopian government and its supporters like Jendayi Frazer and Susan Rice want an alternative mechanism to the border demarcation.
Now, as the "police of the world" (to use George H.W. Bush's own phrase), our government should have chosen the moral high ground and advocate for the implementation of the peace agreement our officials witnessed and guaranteed. The rule of law should have prevailed. Instead, our officials opted to meddle with the decision exposing the people of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and the Horn African into endless misery.
I believe the people of Eritrea are uniquely positioned to become one of the strongest democracies in Africa. The people of Eritrea have fully ratified National Constitution and Electoral and Party Formation laws. These documents were drafted, debated, and ratified through popular participation of Eritreans at home and abroad. However, the whole democratization process was shelved once Ethiopia attempted to invade Eritrea under the pretext of border conflict. As far as I could tell, the "no-war no-peace" situation is the only thing holding back Eritrea’s democratization process.
dawit
----[Mailing List for Eritrea Related News ]----
Received on Thu May 17 2012 - 11:33:27 EDT
