By Amanuel Biedemariam

For Eritreans, the very existence of the nation as recognized by the UN is a testament to how victorious, hard working, independent, resilient and self reliant people that they are. The reason being, Eritrea was a condemned nation by the British, US, Italy and others from existence. These nations collectively decided that it would serve their interest if they make Eritrea a part of Ethiopia and imposed unnatural annexation of Eritrea by Ethiopia. As a result Eritreans were forced to endure untold hardships, immeasurable lose of life and years of instability. Millions became refugees and scattered. Eritrea’s chance of becoming a viable independent nation was severely degraded to below zero. Eritrea became a barren-dry-land due to successive brutal puppet Ethiopian regimes that wanted the land and not the people. As a result, after independence, Eritrea was forced to dig-out from the deep dark-whole into what it is today; an oasis in the middle of desert and thorny bushes.

Hence, the true measure of Eritrea’s successes needs to be looked back to the start of Eritrean revolution in 1961. The seed of independent Eritrea was sown then. At that time the wise leaders and the people of Eritrea decided to organize, arm and embark on a political awareness program unseen anywhere. That became the basis and a trajectory to the success that is Eritrea today. If one says Eritrea is the only independent nation in Africa today, it is a fact without exaggeration.

Eritreans are pragmatic and hard working people that faced the devil that is the West and won handedly without bowing to any one-nation or entity. Eritreans are smart people that know true freedom can only be attained with grit, determination, commitment and perseverance. They know what winning and victories meant from the inception of the revolution. They know what it entailed to ensure perpetuity. Hence, the liberation fighters-then sacrificed in ways that are impossible for the average person to imagine. They travelled in the harshest of climates, and the most difficult of terrains almost barefoot. They embarked on a national health and education programs in caves and under bushes. They build factories for products that they desperately needed in areas that are not ideal. They became masters of their destiny by doing many things creatively.

They embraced the public and in return the public embraced them-tenfold creating a harmonious partnership that is the foundation for the unity amongst Eritreans that exists nowhere-else in the world to date. They supported each other while building institutions that can stand the test of time. They worked hand-and-glove with villagers and farmers to create a farming partnership that expanded Eritrea’s agricultural capacity to ensure food security and expand the agro-industry for export. They developed indigenous mechanisms to build infrastructures in ways unseen anywhere in Africa. Eritrea turned every challenge imaginable into opportunities. Above all, Eritreans were able to accomplish all these miracles with joy and unparalleled generosity. All around the world Eritreans were supporting the war for liberation efforts while lifting one another from dire situations and dangerous places around the world. They were sending monies in everyway possible. Even the strictest of Ethiopian rulers were never able to control Eritreans from supporting their families.

This is proof that Eritreans are determined to leave poverty behind once and for all. There is also one undeniable fact here. If Eritreans waited to be saved by anyone, their hands will still be raised in prayer like a statue without a country or even history. With that knowledge in mind, Eritreans have done all they can to rely on Eritreans entirely to save and sustain them in good or bad. Eritrea has seen it all. For Eritreans drought, hardship and war is not new, in fact, it is has been a way of life thus-far. However, above all Eritreans have a very high hope, determination and confidence that their hard work and sacrifices will payoff for certain. And it is paying off big time.

The combination of principled approach to life and determination to-set their own destiny is bearing fruit. Their grateful and humble nature is making life easier because they are able to be thankful to the small victories that they have been able to amass into a gargantuan. Eritreans have learned that there is no small victory because they know when one kid plants a tree it is the cumulative effect that greens the country. They know one micro dam can change the life of a village in many ways and it is that knowledge that propelled them to build one of the largest dams in Africa in Gerset. This is taking place throughout Eritrea greening a nation that was once a desert due to neglect. Mountains are being terraced to reforest and protect the soil from erosion.

All these happen because there is harmony, understanding and cohesion amongst all the people. There is a great understanding amongst all Eritreans that the greatest resource Eritrea has is her people. Therefore, the focus has been-and-remains to be health, the successful nurturing of her pupils and education without exception and no matter where. To achieve that, Eritrea in her short existence has built schools and clinics in every village. There exists all types of social services in every part of Eritrea. The success Eritreans achieved in a short time is miraculous considering the hostilities that has been mounted against Eritrea. Consequently Eritrea is rich with all types of resources. And relative to the rest of Africa, Eritrea’s achievement is a standard that may never be reached!

This is a brief narrative of what Eritrea is about. Eritreans are not and will no be measured by the standards that the bigoted Westerners have set for Africans. They will not be cornered into the stereotypes of Africa that is hungry and dependent on handouts from the West. That is what Eritrea fought against in-principle and won independence. Self Reliance is a motto Eritrea breathes, eat and live by. Self reliance is not a proclamation for show or dogma; it is assurance to the very existence of Eritrea.

That is why it was perplexing to see a white South African Martin Plaut report about Eritrea based on fabrications, innuendo’s and assertions in order to create a new narrative of what Eritrea is or isn’t. Martin Plaut went to Ethiopia, a country at war with Eritrea, and reported stories about Eritrea based on the direction of Ethiopian authorities and proclaimed there is famine in Eritrea. Due to the sensitivities of naming the draught situation it took countless of reports for the UN to declare famine in Ethiopia and Somalia. Yet, Plaut took it upon himself to declare famine on Eritrea. How deceitful is that? The UN uses five categories to determine famine and the UN did not even place Eritrea in the list of countries affected yet, Martin Plaut took it upon himself to declare it.

To buttress his claim, Plaut sited, “satellite imagery from a weather monitoring group,” as if satellites can look inside a village or a home; noted personal accounts from people he spoke to in the Ethiopian side; sited Susan Rice’s insinuation that there may be famine that Eritrean authorities are hiding and flew with that.

This clearly shows Martin Plaut of the BBC and ilk are not journalists. They are agents of government-media organizations that are determined to create wars, instability, and hatred-based killings amongst people of a nation. They are agents of destruction, mayhem and genocide. They are experts at creating falsehood and misinformation in countries and governments of interest. They are brutal media mercenaries unconcerned about the people and issues they are reporting about. It is about the agendas they try to further. In this case, it is to make a long standing case against the government of Eritrea. To show pattern of civilian abuses so they can take actions as they have in Libya and other places.

It is not necessary or a standard for the BBC and other Western media organizations to send reporters in order to do due diligence and provide facts for the reports they give anymore. Instead they are relying on second and third hand information and report, as if it is factual information. And unfortunately, there is no scrutiny or penalty for gross misrepresentations these agents of evil spew regularly.

Martin Plaut is a South African-byproduct of the apartheid-era that thinks nothing about the suffering of the African people. If he did, he would have dared to look into his own homeland and cry for the suffering of his people that are facing starvation, the highest HIV infection rates and deaths due to AIDS related diseases. He would have gone to the shanty towns and face the inequalities his predecessors are subjecting South Africans into. Or he could have talked about his current residence UK that was mired by riots stemming from economic hardships. Instead Plaut-BOY found it convenient to talk about the only African country that found proven answers to poverty. How sad!

Let this be known to Plaut; Eritrea has reached a platform that no African country has reached strictly by relying on her self. There is also nothing Plaut or ilk can do about the riches of Eritrea poses. In addition, there is nothing Plaut can do to change the path of success Eritreans have created. And nothing he can do about the impenetrable unity amongst Eritreans. There is also another fact Plaut-BOY needs to know. Eritreans never abandon their own like he abandoned his African “brethren.”

All Eritreans need to expose the agents of evil BBC, Plaut and their hired Eritrean agents like Amaniel Iyasu!

refugee camp

A joint undercover investigation by BBC Newsnight and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has uncovered evidence that the Ethiopian government is using billions of dollars of development aid as a tool for political oppression.

Posing as tourists the team of journalists travelled to the southern region of Ethiopia.

There they found villages where whole communities are starving, having allegedly been denied basic food, seed and fertiliser for failing to support Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

The investigation has also gathered evidence of mass detentions, the widespread use of torture and extra-judicial killings by Ethiopian government forces.

Yet Western donors including Britain - which is the third largest donor to Ethiopia - stand accused of turning a blind eye by continuing to provide aid money despite being warned about the abuses. The aid in question is long-term development aid, not the emergency aid provided in response to the current drought in Ethiopia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa.

Government response

Ambassador Abdirashid Dulane, the Deputy Head of Ethiopia’s UK Mission, has rejected the allegations saying that the Newsnight/Bureau report “lacked objectivity, even-handedness”.

“The sole source of the story was opponents of Ethiopia who have been rejected by the electorate, and time and again it has been shown that their allegations are unfounded”. Our reporters visited one village in southern Ethiopia with a population of about 1,700 adults. Despite being surrounded by other communities which are well fed and prosperous, this village, which cannot be named for fear of reprisals, is starving. We were told that in the two weeks prior to our team’s arrival five adults and 10 children had died.

Lying on the floor, too exhausted to stand, and flanked by her three-year-old son whose stomach is bloated by malnutrition, one woman described how her family had not eaten for four days.

“We are living day to day on the grace of God,” she said.

Another three-year-old boy lay in his grandmother’s lap, listless and barely moving as he stared into space. ”We are just waiting on the crop, if we have one meal a day we will survive until the harvest, beyond that there is no hope for us,” the grandmother said.

‘Abandoned’

In another village 30 km (19 miles) away it was a similar story. There our team met Yenee, a widow who along with her seven children is surviving by begging, eating leaves and scavenging scraps from the bins in the nearest town. ”The situation is desperate,” she said. “We have been abandoned… It is a matter of chance if we live or die.” The two villages sit just 15km (9 miles) either side of a major town, surrounded by other communities where the populations are well fed and healthy. They are in desperate need, but no-one is helping.

According to local opposition members they are being punished for failing to vote for the ruling party, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which Mr Meles leads. Further north a group of farmers alienated by Mr Meles’ government met the BBC/Bureau team at a secret location on the edge of a remote village. One farmer described how he had been ostracised for failing to support EPRDF: “Because of our political views we face great intimidation. We are denied the right to fertiliser and seeds because of political ideology,” he said.

‘Buying support’

The Ethiopian federal and regional governments control the distribution of aid in Ethiopia. Professor Beyene Petros, the current vice-chairman of the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Forum, an alliance of eight opposition parties known as Medrek, told our reporters that aid is not distributed according to need, but according to support for the EPRDF:

“Almost all of the aid goes through the government channels… in terms of relief food supply and some of the safety net provisions, they simply don’t get to the needy of an equitably basis. ”There is a great deal of political differentiation. People who support the ruling party, the EPRDF, and our members are treated differently. The motivation is buying support, that is how they recruit support, holding the population hostage,” he said.

Mr Beyene said that the international community, including the British government, is well aware of the problem and that he has personally presented them with evidence: ”The position of the donor communities is dismissive… they always want to dismiss it as an isolated incident when we present them with some proof. And we challenge them to go down and check it out for themselves, but they don’t do it.”

Accountability

The UK International Development Minister Stephen O’Brien issued a statement in response to the allegations raised by the investigation, saying: ”We take all allegations of human rights abuses extremely seriously and raise them immediately with the relevant authorities including the Ethiopian Government, with whom we have a candid relationship. Where there is evidence, we take firm and decisive action.

“The British aid programme helps the people of Ethiopia, 30 million of whom live in extreme poverty. We demand full accountability and maximum impact on the ground for support from the British taxpayer.”

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Newsnight also gathered evidence of a crackdown and human rights abuses in Ethiopia’s Somali region, the area bordering Somalia and Kenya, also know as the Ogaden region. Ethnic Somali rebels from the outlawed Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and Ethiopian government forces have been fighting for control of Ogaden since the 1970s. The media and most aid agencies are banned from the region.

Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries of the world, is currently suffering from horrific drought.

Many of those fleeing the ensuing humanitarian crisis have headed to Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya. It is the largest refugee camp in the world, and the vast majority of the 400,000 people there are from Somalia, but among them are an increasing number of Ethiopians from the Ogaden.

‘Revenge killings’

Abdifatah Arab Olad, an Ogaden community leader, told our reporters that up to 100 refugees are arriving every month with tales of killings and the burning of villages by government troops. ”Whenever fighting has taken place between the rebels and the army, for each army member that is killed, the military go to the nearest town and they start killing people,” he said. “For each army member killed it equals to 10 civilians losses.”

In the corner of a makeshift shack in the camp, an old woman who had arrived from Ogaden three weeks earlier described being arrested along with 100 others in her village. She said they were taken to a jail where they were locked up in a shipping container, and picked out on a nightly basis to be tortured: ”They beat me then started to rape me; I screamed and fought with them… I tried to bite them… they tied me this way,” she said, gesturing to her legs.

“They raped me in a room, one of them was standing on my mouth, and one tied my hand, they were taking turns, I fainted during this… I can’t say how many, but they were many in the army,” she said.

‘Assaulted when pregnant’

Other women in the camp also said they had been arrested and accused of being members of the OLNF. They included one who said that she was eight months pregnant when she was detained and raped by eight soldiers: ”They were beating me while I was being raped, I was bleeding,” she said, describing how one soldier stamped on her stomach and beat her with the stock of his rifle:

“I fell unconscious when I saw my baby… a man jumping on your stomach, you can imagine what happened to the child, very big kicks blows with the back of a gun. As a consequence of that the child died.” We cannot substantiate these individual allegations. But other credible sources have reported similar stories of the widespread use of rape by Ethiopian security forces against women in the Ogaden.

Speaking on Newsnight, Ethiopia’s Ambassador Abdirashid Dulane said that the claims of rape and torture were a “rehash” of old allegations that the Ethiopian government had answered time and again. ”The Ethiopian government is governed by the rule of law, and human rights and democratic rights are enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution,” he said.

BBC