Yemane Abselom's Blog

Eritrea's detractors have continue to lie left and right about life in Eritrea.  Some lies are easier to disprove than others and most have been easily disproved.  Yet, it has not stopped them from telling every imaginable lie that will stick. One lie told in the summer of 2011 was that there was drought in Eritrea and the government was hiding it.  Here is a BBC article titled "Drought in Eritrea: Hunger despite government denials" .  Eritrea gets over 100,000 Eritrean's visiting their homeland every year and they travel all over the country.  Here is a youtube video disproving this one big fat lie from someone that visited that year. From description on youtube: "Outsiders may claim that Eritrea is affected by drought and insist on forcing famine on Eritrea. But the 2011 rainy seasons (ክራማት) in Eritrea saw a fair distribution of rainfall. Crops in most of parts of the country are in good condition promising another bumper harvest year. Harvest gathering fo...

April 1996 Antiquated, iron trains have stood abandoned for 20 years during Eritrea's war with Ethiopia. Now an army of veteran rail workers and their new apprentices are coaxing them back to life. The Eritrean people are determined to reconstruct their dilapidated railway without any outside help. In the hot, dusty hills, they rescue the old rails from bunkers used during the war. All 169,000 steel sleepers have to be dug up from the ground, straightened and hauled back to the original track. They aim to complete 120 km of track, snaking from the coast to the capital. Transport Minister, Giorgis Teklemikael, says Eritrea's self-reliance and 'can do' philosophy will prevail. A train operating between Massawa and its suburbs is the first sign of success. Produced by ABC Australia Distributed by Journeyman Pictures

Eritrea's enemies are leaving no stone unturned to disrupt the bond between the Eritrean government and the Eritrean diaspora.  A bond that is stronger than any other, and that has stood the test of time. Eritrea fought 30 years of long and bitter struggle for independence.  The world had ignored and refused to help Eritrea's right to self determination.  Eritreans had to rely on themselves. During the struggle for Independence an estimated one third of the 3 million population was forced to leave the country. However, Eritreans are very patriotic people.  Wherever they may be, they continued to organize to work for the liberation of their country and to defend the right of their population.  During the struggle for Independence Eritreans raised funds, wrote letters and marched to protest the world's unfair treatment of Eritrea and many went back to help in the armed struggle.  During the armed struggle the Eritrean leader...

Professor Joel Brinkley wrote an article on the San Francisco Chronicle under the title "Eritrea, the most repressive nation on Earth", on April 29, 2012.  When Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, writes on Eritrea, one hopes it would be an original piece that explores the complex issues in depth.  However, the contents of his column were nothing but a copy and paste of several reports that have misleading information on Eritrea and a complete avoidance of current and recent events that lead us to where we are today.  Professor Brinkley has chosen to ignore the elephant in the room and he expects us to do the same. It is true Eritrea won its independence in 1991, after waging a 30 years long and bitter struggle for independence.  Between 1991 and 1998, before the war with Ethiopia broke out, Eritrea under the current leadership had won many accolades, including the New York Times, ...

The following video is from 2007 -- 5 years after the Algeries Agreement.  It is astounding that nothing has changed 5 years later (10 years after the agreement was signed).  --- Youtube description of video follows --  The Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi & TPLF refuses to accept the UN sponsored Hague verdict - the FINAL and BINDING Algiers agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia. And now are in the process to invade Eritrea under a false pretext. In this video clip: After having announced full acceptance of the verdict, and for a little while danced with joy in the streets of Addis, with their Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin holding a press conference to tell the world that "the decision was fair and legal -- that sanity had won over insanity, and that the rule of law had prevailed over the rule of the jungle" they called upon the international community to obligate Eritrea to accept the decision as final and binding and further called upon the commiss...

In May 1998, Ethiopian troops fired and shot on an Eritrean platoon   on routine duty along the border town of Badme killing several of its  members. The Eritrean government's response was one of patience and a  resolute determination to resolve the matter peacefully. However, the  minority led Ethiopian government's response was a declaration of an  all out war on Eritrea under the pretext that Eritrea had invaded  undefined Ethiopian territory that later was concocted as "Badme and  its environs". The minority led Ethiopian government had hoped a war  with Eritrea would give it the legitimacy it had failed to achieve  domestically through its divisive and ethnocentric governance.  After a catastrophic bloodshed, the case went for arbitration to the  Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, the highest court of  arbitration in the world. The independent boundary commission that  was setup with the consent of the ...

The history of injustice by successive Ethiopian rulers against the people of Eritrea are too numerous to list here.  In the interest of time, allow me to focus on recent attempts by the government of Ethiopia to muzzle the people and government of Eritrea. In 1998, the government of Ethiopia lied to its people and the international community when it claimed Eritrea invaded Badme, a territory it falsely claimed as Ethiopian.  Soon after, Ethiopia declared war on Eritrea. After much blood was shed on both sides, the government of Ethiopia was forced to take the matter to an international arbitration court in The Hague.    The ruling of the court was agreed to be final and binding by both parties and was witnessed and guaranteed by the United States, the United Nations, the African Union and the European Union.   The court ruled that Badme, the flashpoint of the war, was a sovereign Eritrean territory and had been so for over 100 years. However, the gov...