Network of Eritreans for Constitutional Governance (NECG)

Eritrea: Perpetuating Tyranny Under Mantel of Youth Festival

25 July 2008
Berhane M Tekeste

In his absolutely ludicrous attempts to justify tyranny, Eritrea tyrant Afawarki left no stone unturned. He re-invented societal norms including utterly perverted understanding of democracy, rule of law, justice, political dissent, elections, freedom of speech, free press, religious freedom and human rights to fit tyrannical rule and imposed them on the people of Eritrea by utilizing Gestapo tactics of intimidation and fear. Equally, tyrant afawerki has, masterfully, put together an arsenal of fallacious tactics to perpetuate tyranny.

Latest one out of such arsenals that tyrant Afawerki deploys in order to draw gullible youth to his indoctrination camp (aka Sawa) is the annual pilgrimage to SAWA under the mantel of a ‘don’t worry, be happy’ party spectacle known as ‘x National Youth Festival’ this time around during the year.

Obviously, the ostensible intention of such ‘Festivals’ is to keep the youth in touch with their national culture, to exchange experiences, to party, socialize with each other and simply have fun (that what lures them to the ‘Festivals’ and no one is and can be against), but the real aim is to exploit those ostensible intentions to perpetuate tyranny by deliberately indoctrinating and hypnotizing young trusting minds into believing that anti-tyranny calls hence calls for democracy is nothing but a conspiratorial ploy to undo Eritrea’s national sovereignty and an ‘exogenous’ smoke screen to turn Eritrea into yet another Somalia or Iraq, etc. Accordingly, from the get go, tyrant Afawerki made his presence felt here, there, and all over the Fistival not to prod but to blunt youth creative thinking in service of his tyrannical stronghold on the country. To that effect he dominated the local media in his function as the tyranny perpetrator and perpetuator-in chief and showed up in youth meetings to intimidate them into synchrony with tyrannical thinking.

Of course, various seminars were conducted for Festival participants but none of it had to do with democracy, rule of law, justice or human rights. To the contrary, it was all about resisting ever-growing calls for democracy.

To that effect, tyrant Afawarki called off the Festival by clamoring “We are at an era where the hardest of wars are fought with the media”, “The Media Should Be Adequately Harnessed for All-Round United Resistance”.

United resistance against what? Against calls for democracy? Well, good luck, for tyranny is indefensible even if you turn on the entire global media in its service!

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