Eritrea: A Sovereign Nation Without Sovereignty

Commentary

This month, Eritrea celebrates 17^th Independence Anniversary. Congratulations and Happy Independence Day Eritrea. Yes, it was exactly 17 years ago this month that, after being denied of it for 5 decades, the Country and People of Eritrea emerged as a self-governing and politically independent State and a sovereign nation respectively. Yet, the people of Eritrea remain denied of their inalienable sovereignty, sovereignty over their sovereign territory, national government, and all other national matters including matters of war & peace, pertinent international affairs, and beyond. As such, undeservedly and unfortunately, the nation of Eritrea epitomizes one archetypal of a sovereign nation without sovereignty.

Considering how much the people of Eritrea have paid in life and limb in their 30 years of armed struggle to re-claim national independence and for liberation from any sort of occupation and subjugation by whomsoever, this all might sound odd and even bizarre, but it is the cruel reality that Eritrea finds itself today.

Modestly expressed, Eritrea is under the brutal grip of a Liberation Front-turned-Oppression Front. For a Liberation Front (EPLF- Eritrean People’s Liberation Front) to turn into an outright oppression front (PFDJ- People’s Front For Democracy and Justice) is odd in every sense of the word. And bluntly expressed, what has befallen Eritrea today is a Liberation Front-Turned-Occupation Front: Foreign occupation literally replaced by homegrown occupation. Bizarre, nonetheless, that is, sadly, the inconvenient truth and the undeniable reality of what hit Eritrea since Independence.

Tyrant Afewerki turned Eritrea into his private Estate of Eritrea, degraded the people from being sovereign citizens to subjects and turned the national defense force into his private army. Afewerki single-handedly stripped the nation of its sovereign right to governance by the constitution and subjected it to the evil rule by the barrel of the gun.

In Eritrea, the national constitution has been dismissed as only piece of paper, democracy declared luxury item, dissent pronounced treasonous, rule of law tabooed, justice is imaginary, press freedom outlawed, and parliament is but wishful thinking.

Today, the people of Eritrea have been so terrorized by Afewerki’s tyrannical regime to the extent of believing that even the loaf of bread they get to eat is at Afewerki’s mercy.

This is not a cavalier’s delict (peccadillo) but a brazen act of blatant disregard for and utter negation of the will and wishes of the sovereign nation of Eritrea as expressed unambiguously, loud, and clear by Article 2 of the banned national constitution, which tyrant Afewerki conveniently nipped in the bud soon after it was ratified 11 years ago, especially Art. 2(1).

After establishing the entire land of Eritrea as his private Estate with him as the Landlord and after demoting the people of Eritrea into mere tenants on their own property, Afewerki set out to manage it accordingly lege artis: He put in place Property Management Team consisting of property attendants, security chiefs, and lessee affairs executives that he conveniently calls zonal administrators, zonal commanders, and ministers respectively, all selected and appointed by the tyrant only the tyrant to serve at his pleasure.

To the outside world, tyrant Afewerki presents Eritrea in the guise of a sovereign nation by mimicking governmental institutions typical of such states: He presents himself as president although we never had presidential elections ever, appoints pertinent Ministers, diplomatic core, UN, AU membership, etc.

Tyrant Afewerki is not accountable to any one. He is the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary of the land all in one. Yet, in order to feign accountability, tyrant afewerki frequently summons a gathering of zonal administrators, commanders, and cabinet Ministers, all of which have been appointed by him to serve at his pleasure and subject to shuffling/re-shuffling and dismissal at his will and pretends to deliver kind of progress report on the state of his private Estate of Eritrea. Tyrant Afewerki’s report is then hailed and adopted as expected. How about parliament? One might ask? What parliament? There is no parliament in Eritrea. Eritrea is a private Estate. The people must want what they get. Whatever tyrant Afewerki does, decides or offers is what the people want, period.

There you have it, the quintessence of the sad story of the metamorphosis of the sovereign state of Eritrea into tyrant Afewerki’s private Estate of Eritrea.

Now to the issue at hand. On the occasion of Eritrea’s Independence month of May, may the record reflect in eternity that:

Eritrea’s national independence is neither a charitable act of EPLF/PFDJ to the ‘destitute’ people of Eritrea as they would like us to believe, nor that of article 39 of the Ethiopian constitution (“Right of Nations to Self-determination”) as those Ethiopians insanely afflicted by the hallucinogenic 2000-year-old Abyssinia-Myth (clearly manifested by their relentless claims over sovereign Eritrean territory, like the Eritrean port of Assabt) would like to assert, or the result of the bogus “referendum” of 1993 as some deluded Eritreans and the international media would like to pretend.

Eritrea gained national Independence the hardest way. Eritrea wrested its national independence by the blood, sweat, and tears of all Eritreans with the ultimate sacrifice of life and limb of the valiant combatants of the EPLF (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front) and ELF (Eritrean Liberation Front) against all possible odds posed by all major power houses of the world and after paying dearly with the lives of no less than 70,000 people and comparable number of disabled veterans, which is a lot for a nation of barely 4 million.

Congratulations and Happy 17^th Independence Anniversary ERITREA