Eritrea- The Untold Story
So its odd, I have only been here in Russia a short time and already it seems as though Eritrea is so far away in some distant place unreachable. Its been hard to articulate what exactly I want to say about Eritrea that which I left out in my earlier blog entries. So I will apologize now as this entry may not be too organized, but rather a bunch of random thoughts and comments about Eritrea and its current political situation.
Some compare Eritrea to other countries and call Eritrea the Cuba of Africa, due to its socialist economy and one-party state, with its reluctance to hold multiparty elections or even attempt to remove the president from power, by holding a presidential election. The President of Eritrea, his Excellency Isaias Afewerki, has held his position since Eritrea gained its independence in 1993 –now 12 years ago. He has banned all private media and there is only one channel and one newspaper available for Eritreans to gain access to the NEWS. And interestingly, I learned that Eritrea imprisons more journalists than any other nation in the world.
As Eritrea follows a socialist model, most Eritreans are employed by the state and earn a small meager salary. Their salaries are never enough to make ends meet; for instance, most of my colleagues earn around 1500Nakfa/month = 100US/month. However, the situation worsens when one examines the large number of Eritreans who are underemployed in the system, there are a large number of Eritreans who are working pretty much as volunteers for the state while they complete their mandatory “National Service” for an indefinite amount of time. Most of the men who I was working with at NUEW, were not there due to their own individual interest in fighting for the feministic cause, but due to mandatory national obligations. We used to call those doing their national service “volunteers” as they were paid very low salaries, which do not allow Eritreans to do much on- 500Nakfa( approximately $33US/month).
In efforts to ensure all Eritreans complete their National Service the government would frequently organize “round-ups” where many young Eritrean men would be taken from their homes and rounded up as new military recruits for the Eritrean army. At night after 9pm the streets were always empty with only military men on patrol, standing in the dark shadows of the streets, dressed in uniform holding Kalashnikovs to maintain order and peace. Moreover, every time you left the city you had to travel through several different military check-points, where if you were in bus it would take some time, as they would search the entire bus for anyone without documents, or who hadn’t completed their national service, as they would be selected as new recruits.
For the most part, apart from all I have stated above, I would say that Eritrea has a lot of potential, as a socialist minded individual, I believe this system can and should work, but I feel the biggest obstacle holding it back from becoming a more free and developed state, is its current situation with Ethiopia, the constant threat of war and the difficulty the two countries have had in finding peace. It is a crazy on-going conflict that which I will try to hopefully shead some light on in my next entry.
Some compare Eritrea to other countries and call Eritrea the Cuba of Africa, due to its socialist economy and one-party state, with its reluctance to hold multiparty elections or even attempt to remove the president from power, by holding a presidential election. The President of Eritrea, his Excellency Isaias Afewerki, has held his position since Eritrea gained its independence in 1993 –now 12 years ago. He has banned all private media and there is only one channel and one newspaper available for Eritreans to gain access to the NEWS. And interestingly, I learned that Eritrea imprisons more journalists than any other nation in the world.
As Eritrea follows a socialist model, most Eritreans are employed by the state and earn a small meager salary. Their salaries are never enough to make ends meet; for instance, most of my colleagues earn around 1500Nakfa/month = 100US/month. However, the situation worsens when one examines the large number of Eritreans who are underemployed in the system, there are a large number of Eritreans who are working pretty much as volunteers for the state while they complete their mandatory “National Service” for an indefinite amount of time. Most of the men who I was working with at NUEW, were not there due to their own individual interest in fighting for the feministic cause, but due to mandatory national obligations. We used to call those doing their national service “volunteers” as they were paid very low salaries, which do not allow Eritreans to do much on- 500Nakfa( approximately $33US/month).
In efforts to ensure all Eritreans complete their National Service the government would frequently organize “round-ups” where many young Eritrean men would be taken from their homes and rounded up as new military recruits for the Eritrean army. At night after 9pm the streets were always empty with only military men on patrol, standing in the dark shadows of the streets, dressed in uniform holding Kalashnikovs to maintain order and peace. Moreover, every time you left the city you had to travel through several different military check-points, where if you were in bus it would take some time, as they would search the entire bus for anyone without documents, or who hadn’t completed their national service, as they would be selected as new recruits.
For the most part, apart from all I have stated above, I would say that Eritrea has a lot of potential, as a socialist minded individual, I believe this system can and should work, but I feel the biggest obstacle holding it back from becoming a more free and developed state, is its current situation with Ethiopia, the constant threat of war and the difficulty the two countries have had in finding peace. It is a crazy on-going conflict that which I will try to hopefully shead some light on in my next entry.
posted by Laura | 5:06 AM
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