Fighting Oppression from Abroad
How one Eritrean activist and writer is raising awareness of his country’s plight.
In June of this year, a coalition of human rights lawyers, activists and institution submitted a joint letter to the UN urging them to reinstate an investigator to its member nation of Eritrea. Officially termed a Mandate of Special Rapporteur, this investigator, along with the UN’s Commission of Human Rights had found that during its two-year monitorship June 2014 — July 2016, the Eritrean government, under the despotic rule of president Isaias Afwerki, had actively and repeatedly violated many fundamental rights of its citizens.
The country’s political turmoil is so bad that it has earned the nickname “The North Korea of Africa” the Asian country being the only country to rank below Eritrea in the World Press Freedom Index. “In view of the ongoing crimes under international law, including torture, enslavement and enforced disappearances, and violations of fundamental freedoms committed in Eritrea,” wrote the coalition, “the Special Rapporteur’s mandate…has been instrumental in monitoring the dire situation on the ground, highlighting on-going violations and the failure to implement the recommendations of the CoI and in providing a crucial platform to help amplify the voices and concerns of victims.”
Among the signees was the Eritrean office of the literary and free speech advocacy institution PEN. It’s executive director, the journalist and writer Abraham Tesfalul Zere, has been a key figure in promoting awareness of the atrocities under Afwerki, who has been in power since Eritrea declared independence from Ethiopia in 1993.
PEN Eritrea is comprised of different exiled writers and journalists widely scattered throughout the world; among which three of its active members are based in Ohio, where Zere came after escaping the country, and where he is able to safely document the regime’s ongoing crimes for a number of English-language periodicals, including the Guardian, the New Yorker, the Independent, Al-Jazeera, and the Index on Censorship magazine.
Other Eritrean journalists are not so lucky. According to Amnesty International, also a signee of the letter, more than 10,000 people have been imprisoned for political crimes alone, a sizeable number of them journalists like Zere.
As a fiction writer, Zere’s expatriation has also allowed him to fine-tune a particularly poignant style of satire, and his story “The Flagellates,” which Culture Trip have published exclusively as part of our Global Anthology, is exemplary. Set in one of Eritrea’s infamous underground prison where torture and cruelty are commonplace, “The Flagellates” concerns a new “benevolent” prison commander who attempts to have a civil discussion with the inmates on how they should be issued their requisite lashes.
“While it is not within my power to outright abolish the standard sentence of fifteen corrective lashes,” says the new commander, “I can adjust how they are distributed. Instead of administering the lashes all at once, although this may be your preference, I think we can issue the floggings throughout the day: five in the morning, five in the afternoon and five in the evening. How do you see this? Any comments?”
We spoke with Zere about his work with PEN Eritrea, how certain of his countrymen are keeping Eritrean literature alive abroad, and his own personal story of leaving his homeland. Read the full interview over at Culture Trip.
