Category: Spotlight
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Zereba Abeyti (Words of Wisdom)
Soon after my last article Halaf’Mengedi was published brothers B.Y. and SY (I have no permission to mention B.Y.’s name – so the initials) wrote me e-mails to draw my attention to a few sentences that they thought were culturally and ethically insensitive to the late Dr. Russom Haile (May God bless his soul!). The
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Halaf’Mengedi (Passerby)
I don’t know how to start or where to start or whether I should start at all. I probably should begin by saying “yigermal yesew neger!” to those who noticed my absence and were kind enough to ask including my good friend SG – who essentially counted me among the ‘dead of the year’ in
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Saving Icons For Pride
On an unrelated sidenote or headnote: With all due respect to Brother Woldeyesus Ammar for his beautifully written emotional “Draft Obituary-cum-Eulogy” (the one where he rephrases “Haile Deru’e’s biggest worry after liberation was how to contain “Tigrigna chauvinism in the EPLF” to mean “it is not the fault of any membership”), I would like to take
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Amtelom Vs Derguhalom
There are things that we wish we would never know about because knowing can sometimes be the worst enemy of hope. How would a sailor in the middle of the ocean feel if he found out that, that tiny piece of ice heading towards his ship in a head-on collision is actually the tip of
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The Triangle Of Pricks: Eritrea – Sudan & Ethiopia
le’teakejl alebna higya lwT wo’Hrit … eb atmashash let’thayeb it’trekeb eb tmnit dib le’amr lel’ake meglel mibel m’qwet (Selected lines from an old Tigre song “Anseba may zere”) ‘Not Too Bad!’ is what anyone familiar with the frustratingly slow pace of developments (towards a better day) in Eritrea during the last 20 years would describe
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The Language Of Land Grabbers!
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the newly initiated Eritrean Law Society (ELS) for managing to call into the arena the much needed sector of our politics: “lawyers, professionals and academicians”. The validity of the information, seriousness of the initiative and sincerity of the intentions remains to be seen. My first impression
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Midwifing A Mouse: The Politics Of Hasewsew
The New Year might be a good occasion for each one of us to wonder why magic always seems to single out and evade our Eritrea and why our best efforts never seem to payoff. We need to challenge ourselves with one logical question: How was it that a semi-illiterate Somali cleric heading a militia
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National Unity Is No Substitute For Our Dignity
(Reminders for Semere Tesfai) I am not one who believes in the Carrot-plus-Stick theory as the only explanation for effectively manipulating stimulus and response in politics because there are situations where the stick alone is more than enough to get people going and there are situations where the carrot should never be mixed with the
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Double Standards: One For Us, One For Muzungu
I apologize for delays in continuing the “Road Map” series that I started earlier. I have decided to wait and see if Abune Aregawi reaches into the celebrations of the “Uniting Group” and proves us wrong by inciting a spell against the Land Grabbing Settlers once their marathon merger actually takes place, now that they
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The Honest Eritrean’s Road Map – Part I
Those who like to conclude matters before they even begin, those who like to have the final say before most have even spoken have declared dead the debates surrounding the Lowland-Highland or Muslim-Christian dichotomy. I must admit that we have yet to initiate or provoke real communication on the issues that matter most between “Us”
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Idaga Derhu: Chicken Market
On October 29, 2009, Awate’s Gedab broke the news about a US-EU conference (organized by a European External Policy Advisory (EEPA), a Belgian NGO) on Eritrea to be attended by a number of honorable Eritrean (Tigrigna or Tigrigna-satellite) politicians and civil society activists with an esteemed spokesperson, Mr. Abdulrahman Alsaid. Mr. Spokesman in turn confirmed
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“Common Country” And Not “Common Enemy”
I have taken a break for the last few weeks just to watch the debate from a distance and see what it looks like to a bystander. Most of those who appeared to comment on the issues focused on the semantics of how the subject should have been framed and what kind of etiquette contributors
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Eritrea’s Bermuda Triangle: Land, Settlements & Refugees
Nearly all those who have been following our debate on Awate (the ones who genuinely recognized the problems of Land Grabbers and the Exclusionists of the PFDJ as real and serious) are wondering what possible solutions would come out of the debate that has lasted for months and at least on the surface seems to
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National Unity Requires More Than Mouthing Slogans
RAMADAN KAREEM & HAPPY ALFATIH MIN SEPTEMBER ANNIVERSARY! I will start by clarifying a few things (that I explained repeatedly before) to set the record straight regarding any misunderstanding that might have resulted for lack of better words on my side. Just to make sure that whoever reads this article is on the same
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ELF-RC: Poised for Another Round of Persecution?
By Menhot Woldemariam Nov 6, 2002, 11:27 PST During the past 20 years, the ELF-RC has been subjected to a number of persecutions in the hands of the Sudanese and Ethiopian authorities, always with the support of Eritrean political actors ganging up against that organization. Nowadays, the same ELF-RC appears to be on the brink