My reflection on the recent united for eritrea youth conference

By Yoel Lino

Last week­end, I went to Frank­furt, Ger­many to Par­tic­i­pate in a 3 days Con­fer­ence which was organ­ised by United 4 Eritrea (U4E). I have no words to describe how I feel about them. It was my first time at a con­fer­ence which was organ­ised by Eritre­ans who were born and raised in Dias­pora. They are very dif­fer­ent than those of us who came from Eritrea recently. They are well organ­ised, dis­ci­plined, and have great team spirit and team work. They love and respect each other. They are all lead­ers. I was sur­prised by that.

You see some­one lead­ing a dis­cus­sion and later on another one leads a panel dis­cus­sion and later on some­one else leads another dis­cus­sion. The num­ber of Women in United 4 Eri is just amaz­ing. They could be in the major­ity actu­ally. I don’t think I’ve came across any move­ments or oppo­si­tion par­ties with these kind of young Women mem­bers. And they are not only mem­bers, but also lead­ers. You don’t miss qual­ity in United 4 Eri. It’s all about qual­ity.

The con­fer­ence was mainly focused on ”the issues of refugees”. There were dis­cus­sions on what we can do to help refugees. And some Ger­mans were invited to give advise and infor­ma­tion about that par­tic­u­lar topic. And some Eritre­ans too shared their expe­ri­ences and how to help the asy­lum seek­ers. There were many prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions. United 4 Eri have already been help­ing refugees in a num­ber of ways. And now they will try to have an office or a place where they can help refugees. Of course, their lat­est ini­tia­tive needs the sup­port of all of us. There was also dis­cus­sion on how to chal­lenge PFDJ in Dias­pora and reach out to those who are still sup­port­ing the regime. Not easy, but we agreed to find mech­a­nisms to com­mu­ni­cate with them.

I am per­son­ally inspired by these group of young Men and Women. I went there just to show my sup­port and encour­age them. I had the chance to talk with many of them and exchanged ideas.

Now I would like to switch atten­tion to the deleyti fithi and their Medias. Prior to the con­fer­ence, United 4 Eritrea sent out many invi­ta­tions to indi­vid­u­als as well as oppos­tion groups. But few of them cared to par­tic­i­pate. And there was no Media atten­tion before and after the event.

Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion I have received, they asked some of the oppo­si­tion medias to adver­tise the event but there was vir­tu­ally no response. I know for sure about Assena. It was sent to them twice but it was never posted. And we’re all deleyti fithi? How many of you shared this event on social media or talked about it? Or is it a case of if it’s organ­ised in Ger­many, it should only be adver­tised and encour­aged by peo­ple liv­ing Ger­many? Well, even those who live in Ger­many didn’t show up or sup­port the event. I don’t get it.

Every sin­gle event should be con­sid­ered as ours. We have to sup­port and encour­age those who try to do some­thing for Eritrea, even more so when it’s hosted by those who are born in the Dias­pora. They are bravely com­ing out against the dic­ta­to­r­ial regime and we should encour­age them. If we don’t talk about and pro­mote these kind of events then who will? Shabait? Tes­fanews? . When events are organ­ised in the name of jus­tice and/​or pro­vid­ing sup­port and relief for our Eritrean breath­erns, we should try our level best to attend and par­tic­i­pate, if not the least we should do is help to pro­mote these events. I have to also add that the orga­niz­ers were sat­is­fied with the out­comes of the con­fer­ence and num­bers of participants.

Thank you United 4 Eri for inspir­ing us and Ajokum