Tag: human trafficking
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Power, Image, and Machiavellian Survival: Emperor Haile Selassie and President Isaias Afwerki
Two Towering Figures–Giants and Lilliputians (Part 1) Across the sorrowful and entangled histories of Ethiopia and Eritrea, two figures loom with spectral intensity: Emperor Haile Selassie I and President Isaias Afwerki. Their shadows stretch across generations, ideologies, and geopolitical fault lines—each a master of power, each a paradox incarnate. At the outset of their reigns,
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Sudan: Detention of Fifth-Generation Eritrean Refugees
Until the 19th century, the Horn of Africa was one vast region where communities knew their farming, grazing, and dwelling lands. But towards the end of the century nation states with boundaries appeared. Before that, Kings, warlords, and colonizers knew where to collect taxes from, but the people cared less on who the lord was,
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David Copperfield, Isaias, and Dahlan
For more than two weeks, Eritrean activists guessed and speculated about the whereabouts of Isaias Afwerki. The unelected ruler of Eritrea was not seen in public for a long time. But a few days ago, curiosity seemed to have come to an end when Isaias made a four-minute appearance in a recorded video. In the early
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Asmara to Geneva: A 25-Years Journey
Clarance Darrow, the famous civil libertarian wrote, “No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.” He also said, “True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.” Eritrean patriots would attest to that; they have been facing injustice in their own land for
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Zerom The Liberator
Now that the endless “silver jubilee celebrations in Eritrea are over, and the epic trip of the torch that remained the only featured star on PFDJ’s media for about five months is over, I felt of sharing the following chapter, “The Liberator”, from my latest book “Miriam Was Here”. Consider it my way of expressing the human and
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Pirates Of The PFDJ
In 1976, when the Derg announced the change of King Haile Selassie’s birr in Ethiopia, the general public was reluctant to surrender the currency to the bank. People perceived the birr as a currency “guaranteed with gold” though by then the world had long dropped the system of defining the value of currency with gold.
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The Ordeal Of Human Trafficking and Organ Harvesting
(This is a speech I delivered on Wednesday, Dec 12, 2013 at the Hinckley Institute of Politics, University of Utah.) Thank you for coming. Thanks to Rebecca Heal who made this gathering possible and thanks to the Hinckley Institute of Politics, University of Utah, for giving me this opportunity. Many years ago I was in