Social life in Asmara was pulsating just like that of any other European town. Out of them, had already set up industrial facilities, whilst the remainder had.
Table of contents
- Life in Eritrea’s News Desert
- Top Stories
- UG Kati - Eritrea - where ATMs are unknown and Sim cards are like gold dust
- Eritrea: Hail storm dumps metre of ice on capital
Afewerki's administration intermittently blocked foreign-based private radio stations that sought to send their signals into the country. Anti-Western sentiments often accompanied acts of repression. Spokesman Ghebremeskel claimed Eritrea's once-thriving free press was largely funded by Western countries, and was easily manipulated "to serve ulterior purposes. They provided themselves to serve something contrary to the national interest of this country.
They are degenerates.
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I don't take [the jailings as] a serious matter. Yohannes was among 10 independent journalists rounded up in a massive government crackdown that shuttered the nation's private press. Several sources said Yohannes died on January 11, , after a long illness in an undisclosed prison outside Asmara; one source said the journalist may have died much earlier in a prison in Embatkala, 21 miles 35 kilometers northeast of Asmara.
I have nothing to say. Yohannes went by the name of "Joshua" among family and friends.
Formerly a member of the guerrilla movement fighting for Eritrean independence from neighboring Ethiopia, he turned to journalism when Eritrea became a state in He became a popular writer, and Setit grew into the nation's largest-circulation newspaper. Setit 's staff tackled tough issues in the young nation, including poverty, prostitution, and Eritrea's lack of infrastructure for handicapped veterans of the year independence struggle.
The weekly's criticism angered the government, and by May , Yohannes asked CPJ to help him create a journalists' union to improve press freedom conditions. He and other journalists never got the chance. President Isaias Afewerki's government launched a crackdown on all critical voices, including those in the press, just one week after the September 11, , attacks on the United States had diverted the world's attention.
Under the pretext of combating terrorism, the government shut down every independent media outlet and arrested independent journalists on sight. At the time, he and other imprisoned journalists still had contact with the outside world. In May , Yohannes and several other colleagues staged a hunger strike in hopes of spurring their release.
Instead, government officials transferred the journalists to undisclosed locations. Online news reports, which have not been confirmed, suggest that as many as three other journalists also may have died in government custody. The other jailed journalists continued to be held incommunicado in secret jails throughout , according to CPJ research. Kidane, a presenter with the Amharic service of state broadcaster Eri-TV and state Radio Dimtsi Hafash Voice of the Broad Masses , died in unknown circumstances after setting out on foot to cross into Sudan with a group of seven asylum-seekers, according to several CPJ sources.
Kidane sought to leave Eritrea because of years of professional repression, according to family, colleagues, and personal notes he sent out of the country that were reviewed by CPJ. Kidane's companions were forced to leave him in the care of residents of a village in northwest Eritrea after the journalist collapsed from seven days of walking in temperatures of more than degrees, according to a woman who traveled with him and who spoke with CPJ through an interpreter. Cactus flowers sprout from the twisted metal carcass, and a pyramid of teff is being harvested for injera flatbread , the dietary staple.
There is a rudimentary bedroom arranged behind the gearbox and a little library of books on the dashboard — a human touch that poignantly undercuts the symbolic brutality of the place. A litter of pups play with a flap of old goatskin, and the homeowner, the proud caretaker of the ponies cantering across the wasteland beyond, hopes, he says, that we will return next year, when he will be in better shape to offer us coffee. We leave the city on a chilly morning, huffing slowly down through groves of eucalyptus, rattling around mist-filled gorges on an elaborate system of winding tracks, viaducts and tunnels.
A girl roasts coffee beans over embers in the carriage on her recycled olive-oil-drum-turned-stove. Children wave from the terraced escarpment, where they coax a harvest of sorghum out of the rubble in green swatches. Built by the Italians in the s, the train was resurrected lately by former rail workers coming out of retirement for free. They repurposed the tracks that were used to strengthen bunkers and trenches during the war. At Embatcala, where the track currently ends, we disembark to find our car, and the British ambassador, out on his weekend constitutional, waving us off cheerily as he hikes back to the capital in the wake of the train.
The tarmac runs out and the hot breath of the Red Sea sends ripples over the desert dunes and rivulets of sweat down our necks. If Asmara feels like a hybrid of Africa and Europe, Massawa, the ancient trading hub and main deep-sea port of the Red Sea coast, is the imagined treasure trove of Arabia — here the promise of pearls, ivory and ostrich feathers bartered for precious salt, there the waft of scented spices, frankincense and myrrh traded on the sagging decks of the dhows and houris, since the time of the Queen of Sheba and the Axumite empire of the second century AD.
It was always a melting pot of people: traders, slaves and slavers, fishermen and invaders from successive Persian, Roman, Turk, Egyptian and Italian incursions. They stamped their individual styles on the pediments, arcades, staircases and porticoes of the once-grand palaces, bazaar and warehouses. After paying a visit to the covered market for supplies, we leave the city in the direction of Wadilo, travelling north along the coast towards the Red Sea Hills of Sudan.
We are driving off the map, bumping over gravel and sand, following the slow-swaying caravan of camels driven by the turbaned Rashaida. One of the nine tribes of Eritrea, they migrated here from Saudi Arabia years ago in the last famine and move up and down the Red Sea coast with their herds of goats and camels, following the rains. We spend the next few days with them, at the oasis where they herd their flocks and in their makeshift camps along the dunes.
At the first encampment, we follow willingly as the Rashaida beckon us inside. Cardamom coffee is being brewed in an open-sided shelter made of woven goat hair, strung between poles over a pile of carpets that are laid out between the salt flats and a metallic sea. Nearby, our camp cook Michele works his magic on a two-ring stove, transforming a goat that we bartered long and hard for into supper. We share the slow-baked, spice-scented knuckles with Ahmed, the Rashaida head honcho, his four wives and his 23 children.
Life in Eritrea’s News Desert
The babies, who have never eaten meat before, clutch the juicy chunks between their fists like rattles, unsure of what to do. Then, in honour of the feast, our hosts spontaneously perform a traditional dance with swords and sticks on the beach, which shimmers, mirage-like, into the distance as far as Sudan, km away. Egrets and herons stalk the shallows, where stingrays try to bury themselves in the sand. An airborne pelican patrols the shoreline like a comedy-sketch policeman skimming over a tideline electrified with hermit crabs on the move.
Or exodus and refugees. Intermission for those with common sense to leave now. Leaving this space for the rest of us who have a high threshold for pain. To deaden the pain we will add some editorial in brackets. Question 1: How about the raise for government employees who did not receive a raise back when university graduates and other civil servants got a raise?
Well, not answer it: Isaias never presents a solution to a problem, he just describes the problem you brought up in great detail and technicolor.
And an announcement that some employees would see a raise of their income from Nakfa per month to 1,! Let the people suffer and they will blame the water salespersons, not me. Now, two years ago, I broke down the price of milk and I told you what it should sell for but you were not listening! And these Middle Men selling sheep for 3, Nakfa, same sheep they bought from a poor shepherd for Nakfa.
What kind of profit margin is this?
Top Stories
Government salaries: we have set five levels here, with entry level salaries for college graduates at 1, Nakfa and, 5 levels later, the entry wage being 4, They mean nothing because it all depends on the purchasing power of Nakfa which keeps declining with hundreds of millions of it in circulation? But why focus on the government employees, huh, asked the government boss.
How about the villagers? What about their purchasing power. We have no statistics really. Let me turn this over to our Finance Minister, Mr. Isaias Afwerki. Thank you, Mr, President.
UG Kati - Eritrea - where ATMs are unknown and Sim cards are like gold dust
So it is not just about wages, it is about the State of the Economy. It is a huge issue. We are studying it, and we will resolve it by There is always next year! Thank you Mr. Finance Minister.
Eritrea: Hail storm dumps metre of ice on capital
So, we will accelerate this: and the raise will be retroactive to This is a matter of meeting a promise [and you know how strongly I feel about promises as you will see in video below! Question 2: So, how about housing? How is the government doing in that regard? So this is one area where we have failed catastrophically. President, that would be the half-finished homes of NNNN, which is a great way to hold them hostage indefinitely. That is so clever of you, Mr. Yes, I would. So, what is our capacity? We have done the assessment. It is an administrative issue and human resources issue.