"African migrants must be jailed, convinced to leave" Yishai

In a speech on Monday Israel's  Interior Minister Eli Yishai succinctly explained his policy toward African migrants: They should all be jailed, so that they will want to leave Israel.
"After we've put them in the detention facilities they'll prefer to leave," Yishai told a conference at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies. "There will be a detention facility and they will be returned to their own countries and to other countries, if we are determined and we recognize that the State of Israel is in existential danger because of this problem. Then everything will be different. With God's help, it will be possible to continue this national mission and return every last infiltrator and migrant worker to their own countries," Yishai said.
While Yishai advocates rounding up and detaining all Sudanese migrants in Israel he is losing a legal battle over this plan: The Justice Ministry recently declared in court that the government never adopted such a policy and will not permit its implementation.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai visits the Saharonim prison facility.

"They've painted us as if, heaven forbid, [we were creating] refugee camps," Yishai said yesterday. "The facilities are almost finished and now I'm in a battle with the human rights organizations and the prosecution. I don't agree that it's impossible to return [people] to Eritrea and northern Sudan, and if I did accept this there would be hundreds of thousands more."
Yishai assailed the state's policy of extending blanket protection to all migrants from Eritrea and Sudan, who constitute over 80 percent of all migrants entering the country.
"Just as it's possible to deport to South Sudan, it's possible to deport to northern Sudan," he said. "If there's a war there [in South Sudan], there's also one there [in Sudan], and if there isn't [a war in South Sudan], then there isn't [in Sudan]. Why is Eritrea out, but South Sudan is okay?"
"It would be easier for me if I somehow went with the flow and did what was possible," rather than battling against the concept of group protection, he added. "But Israel's welfare was and still is at the forefront of my mind."
Yishai also attacked his fellow cabinet ministers, who "want to pose as bleeding hearts to look good for the media. I had to choose between [that and] being good for the State of Israel, so I came out bad in the media."
Former Military Advocate General Avishai Mendelblit, who addressed the conference earlier, attacked Israel's policy from a different direction. Because Israel grants group protection to migrants from Eritrea and Sudan, he said, it never examines their individual asylum requests - and that's a problem. "If you don't check the status of these people and just tell them all 'no' in advance, then of course they'll come to you with complaints, and rightly, because you have to check first," he said.
Some of these migrants, he added, almost certainly should be granted individual asylum, and Israel is violating its commitments under international conventions by not doing so.

Ethiopia and Eritrea: An elusive peace on the cards?

Ethiopia and Eritrea are still at each others’ throats. The two neighbours fought hammer and tongs in sun-baked trenches during a two-year war over a decade ago, before a peace deal ended their World War I-style conflict in 2000. Furious veRed Sea, UNrbal battles, however, have continued to this day.
Yet, amid the blistering rhetoric and scares over a return to war, analysts say the feuding rivals are reluctant to lock horns once again. Neighbouring South Sudan and some Ethiopian politicians are working on plans to bring both sides to the negotiating table.

Asmara has been named, shamed and then slapped with two sets of U.N. sanctions over charges that it was aiding and abetting al Qaeda-linked rebels in lawless Somalia in its proxy war with Ethiopia. However, a panel tasked with monitoring violations of an arms embargo on Somalia said it had no proof of Eritrean support to the Islamist militants in the last year.
Nevertheless, Eritrea’s foreign ministry wasted little time in pointing a finger of accusation at its perennial rival. “The events over the past year have clearly shown that it is in fact Ethiopia that is actively engaged in destabilising Eritrea in addition to its continued occupation of sovereign Eritrean territory in violation of the U.N. Charter,” the ministry said in a statement last month.
The Red Sea state was referring to Addis Ababa’s open declaration in 2011 in which its late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his country would no longer take a “passive stance” towards its rival following Eritrea’s alleged plot to bomb targets in the Ethiopian capital during an African Union gathering of heads of state.
Then foreign minister (and now premier) Hailemariam Desalegn followed up on the rhetoric soon afterwards by disclosing his government’s support to Eritrean rebels. Meles and Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki were once comrades-in-arms, even rumoured to be distant relatives. Ethiopia’s late leader rubber-stamped a 1993 referendum that granted independence to the former province after their rebel groups jointly toppled Communist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam’s military junta two years earlier.
The love affair did not last long. The pair fell out spectacularly after Eritrea introduced its own currency in 1997 and Ethiopia responded by insisting on trading in dollars. Their economic spat aggravated already simmering border tensions, which culminated in Eritrea deploying its tanks months later and occupying hotly disputed territory that was under Addis Ababa’s administration.
Ethiopian troops breached Eritrea’s trenches nearly a year later and retook contested ground – namely the flashpoint town of Badme – before a peace deal was signed. What then followed is the sticking point that remains today. An independent boundary commission awarded Badme to Eritrea in 2002 but the ruling is yet to take effect. Ethiopia wants to negotiate its implementation and warns that delimitation of the border as per the finding would unreasonably split towns and other geographical locations into two.
Asmara on the other hand insists on an immediate hand-over. The bickering has evolved into a proxy war and diplomatic skulduggery as both sides attempt to bring about regime change in the other. But despite the harsh words, mediation efforts are in the pipeline. Deng Alor, neighbouring South Sudan’s Minister for Cabinet Affairs, told Reuters on Wednesday his newly-independent country is about to embark on rounds of shuttle diplomacy between the capitals of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Both countries, he said, have given their blessing.
A handful of Ethiopian members of parliament are also devising a similar initiative, local sources say. Addis Ababa has never ruled out mediation. But even though Eritrea publicly dismisses any idea of a thaw in strained relations before the Badme spat is resolved, recent developments might change its mind, some believe.
Ethiopian analysts think Asmara now realises that its neighbour may easily adopt a more belligerent stance following the sudden death of Meles, who they say stood firm against a potential slide towards full-scale conflict. And of course not all Ethiopians express enthusiasm about an independent Eritrea, the creation of which left their country without access to the Red Sea.
Some diplomats say the chances of both sides making drastic concessions from their current positions remain slim. So will the mediation efforts finally yield a deal?

Eritrea asked to embrace peace prior to joining IGAD

Kenya on Monday asked Eritrea to support regional peace initiatives before it rejoins Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
While receiving a special message from Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki that was delivered by the Eritrean Ambassador to Kenya Beyene Russom, President Mwai Kibaki said Kenya was willing to work with all pro-peace neighbouring states in the region.

Eritrea has sought Kenya's support in an effort to rejoin IGAD.
"In his response, President Kibaki welcomed Eritrea's decision to rejoin IGAD subject to the Government of Eritrea's support for regional peace initiatives," said a PPS statement to the newsroom.
During the meeting, Kibaki and Ambassador Russom discussed the issue of visas for Eritrean nationals visiting Kenya.
After the lapse of the agreement for the abolition of visas between the two states, Kenya reinstated a referral visa regime with respect to Eritrean nationals.
However, Kibaki assured the envoy that the issue of visas for Eritreans was being addressed by the relevant government agencies.
In the message, President Afewerki said his country viewed Kenya as bastion of peace in the region.
The Eritrean President, therefore, requested for Kenya's intervention to have Eritrea rejoin IGAD.
In his response, President Kibaki welcomed Eritrea's decision to rejoin IGAD subject to the Government of Eritrea's support for regional peace initiatives.
During the meeting, the President and the envoy also discussed the issue of visas for Eritrean nationals visiting Kenya.
After the lapse of the agreement for the abolition of visas between Kenya and the State of Eritrea, Kenya reinstated a referral visa regime with respect to Eritrean nationals.
In this regard, President Kibaki assured the envoy that the issue of visas for Eritreans was being addressed by the relevant Government agencies.
Present during the meeting were Foreign Affairs Assistant Minister Richard Onyonka, acting Head of Public Service and Secretary to the Cabinet Mr. Francis Kimemia, Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Mr. Thuita Mwangi and acting Internal Security Permanent Secretary Mr. Mutea Iringo among others.

Asylum Seekers Blocked At Border - Eritreans Pushed Back to Egypt, Despite Risk of Abuse

The Israeli military has since June 2012 prevented dozens of asylum seekers, most of them Eritreans, from crossing Israel's newly constructed fence on its border with Egypt, Human Rights Watch, the Hotline for Migrant Workers, and Physicians for Human Rights - Israel said today. Israel has also unlawfully deported dozens more back to Egypt, the three groups said. Israel should stop rejecting asylum seekers at the fence unless its officials determine in a fair procedure that they do not face threats to their lives or freedom or inhuman and degrading treatment because of that rejection.

For decades, Israel had been hoping for more democracy and political openness in the Middle East. But now that the region is changing, fear has replaced hope. Here, a part of the newly built border fence between Israel and Egypt.

In forcing asylum seekers and refugees to remain in Egypt and in deporting others, Israel is putting them at risk of prolonged detention in Egyptian prisons and police stations, where they cannot claim asylum, of forcible return to Eritrea, and of serious abuse by traffickers in the Sinai region. Israeli officials' claims that Israel may seal its borders to anyone are wrong under refugee and human rights law.
"Building a border fence does not give Israel a right to push back asylum seekers," said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. "International law is crystal clear: no summary rejection of asylum seekers at the frontier and no forcible return unless and until it is established that their refugee claims are not valid."
At least seven times since June, Israeli forces patrolling Israel's newly constructed 240-kilometer border fence with Egypt's Sinai region have denied entry to dozens of Africans, mostly Eritreans, thousands of whom continue to flee persecution in their country every year. In July, Israeli forces also detained about 40 Eritreans just inside the Israeli border and then forcibly transferred them to Egyptian custody.

 The 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Israel is a state party, customary international refugee law, and international human rights law require all countries to respect the principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits the return of anyone to a place where their life or freedom would be threatened or where they would face the threat of torture or inhuman and degrading treatment. This means anyone seeking asylum may not be summarily rejected at the border and may not be deported unless their claim has been fairly determined.

Based on Israeli government figures, about two-thirds of those trying to cross the border are from Eritrea, where Human Rights Watch has documented widespread and severe abuses against people seeking to avoid mandatory and indefinitely prolonged national service on wages barely sufficient to survive, and against adherents of "unrecognized" religions and government critics.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that more than 80 percent of Eritreans who claim asylum worldwide are recognized as refugees.
Recent interviews with Eritreans arriving in Israel confirm that many passing through Sinai to reach Israel are facing serious abuses, including torture and rape, by traffickers in Sinai who hold the Eritreans for ransom. Those who pay are allowed to travel onward to reach the Israeli border.
The three human rights organizations recently documented cases in which Israeli border guards blocked Eritreans and others at the fence, firing warning shots in the air, throwing stun grenades and teargas, and using long metal poles to push them back from the border fence. On some occasions, witnesses contended that Israeli soldiers had entered Egyptian territory and detained them until Egyptian forces arrived, although Israeli and Egyptian authorities have denied those accusations.
In one case a group of Eritreans alleged that Israeli soldiers allowed them to enter Israel but then beat them with fists and guns to force them back into Egypt.
"Not only are there credible reports that Israeli soldiers are blocking asylum seekers at the border, but also that they are using violence to do so," Simpson said. "Israeli authorities should immediately instruct its border patrols to stop abusing people who try to enter Israel."
Israeli aid groups also say that in recent months Israeli soldiers prevented them from assisting Eritreans who had been waiting for days at the fence. Israeli media reports also said Israeli soldiers had received orders to deny food and water to people trying to enter Israel, whom one soldier described to a reporter as "skinny like skeletons."

Police keeping open mind in Cabbagetown murder

Toronto Police don’t yet have a known motive in the brutal stabbing slaying of former Eritrean refugee Nighisti Semret.
Could that motive have stemmed from a scam from her former country where refugees are shaken down and threatened to pay a special tax back to their homeland or face retribution?
Many Eritrean refugees have complained of such things happening to them.
And the RCMP has said in many media reports that money raised here is paying for military operations back home.
“As recently as September of this year Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird threatened to close down the consulate here in Canada and expel the ambassador for what is considered to border on criminal activity in collecting this tax,” said Toronto crime specialist Ross McLean, a former Toronto Police officer and security expert. “The tax reportedly is 2% of all wages earned worldwide by fleeing citizens and they have to pay it.”
On his rossmcleansecurity.com webpage McLean writes, “Could her vicious murder be in essence a message sent to all Eritreans abroad to not complain and to continue to pay the tax?”
There was no one to answer this Friday at the Eritrean consulate which is located at 120 Carlton St., just blocks from the murder scene.

Toronto police: News conference to update reporters about the case.

Toronto homicide’s Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux was not tipping his hand Friday into his avenues of investigation other than to say with this information about the tax from Eritrea is something that would fall under the category of police “keeping an open mind.”
Police are also trying to work leads stemming from an unclear video showing the disguised killer stalking his victim just steps before murdering her.
The more you look at this horrific slaying, the more it looks like an organized ambush.

Of course the police are weighing all scenarios but if you stroll down the pedestrian walkway murder scene, you will see for yourself that the spot where she was stabbed five times was the most secluded possible spot for a murder.
They call it the Cabbagetown murder but in reality it’s really a murder closer to Allan Gardens. The alley is just north of Gerrard St., not too far from the Phoenix Concert Theatre.

Investigation into the murder of Nighisti Semret

Certainly robbery would be a normal motive in this area or even sexual assault but so far police do not have good evidence to indicate it was either.
So what was it?
Why would someone go to this trouble, this amount of rage and violence, this amount of planning, to kill a 55-year-old refugee who worked as supervisor/cleaning person at a local hotel?
Police are running down every lead and although this killer thinks he was slick with his strange face mask and having the wherewithal to leave with the murder weapon, if he made a mistake somewhere he will be caught.
Meanwhile, a shrine is building in the spot where she was slain. Flowers, candles, messages and poems.
Sooner or later there has to be a clue that will help solve this disturbing murder.

Brandywine alumnus: from refugee to U.S. naval officer

Gedion T. Teklegiorgis, a 1998 Penn State graduate, has come a long way--literally and figuratively--in his 38 years. Born in Eritrea, a tiny African country bordering Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Sudan and the Red Sea, Teklegiorgis witnessed much political strife during his early childhood. To avoid the bloody civil war conflicts his family moved frequently. They eventually walked for 14 days--mostly at night--to reach the safe haven of the Sudan, where they lived for eight years before immigrating to the United States in 1988. In a recent interview he described his ordeal, his Penn State pride and his brilliant military career.

Teklegiorgis receiving Prince Sultan Bin Abdul-Aziz Bronze Medal from General Hernandez, chief of U.S. military training mission to Saudi Arabia

During the 1970s when Teklegiorgis was just a young boy, Eritrea was in the midst of a 30-year war of independence--fighting with Ethiopia as well as warring factions of nationalists. His family lived in constant fear that their father would be taken away.
“This is when the family started moving around to stay away from all the conflicts. The communist government was targeting educated Eritreans; my father was a missionary and teacher and that put him on the (hit) list,” reminisced Teklegiorgis. “I can remember when my mother would hide us under the bed or take us out to the farms during daytime and at evening time coming back to the house … My father used to hide outside in the mountains during daytime. Sometimes he would come see us at nighttime. But then things got really bad and he had to totally separate from us.”
With the political situation continuing to deteriorate throughout the 1970s, the Teklegiorgis family had no choice but to leave Eritrea for good. They walked for two weeks until they reached The Sudan with little more than food, water, baby pictures and the family bible. When political unrest began to arise in their host country, they moved again, this time to the United States. In 1988, the family of seven landed in Philadelphia with only 50 dollars in their father’s pocket.
Teklegiorgis recalled how tough it was to attend school in America without speaking English. “That was a tough year … no English … a lot of sleepless nights. All I could do was sit in the back of the class and smile at the teacher because I didn’t want to be rude because I didn’t understand him. I remember the teacher complained to my father, ‘Why does your son always laugh and smile at me when I look at him?’ And my father tried to make an excuse and said, ‘Maybe it’s because his teeth are too big for his lips to close,’” Teklegiorgis laughed out loud. Decades later, Teklegiorgis is still smiling--a habit now, he claims--and is well-known for his bright and contagious grin.
Teklegiorgis began his college career at Penn State Brandywine in 1993. Still needing help with English as a third language, Teklegiorgis took full advantage of the Learning Center on campus. He spoke highly of the people at Brandywine and he credits much of his success today to the caring learning environment of the suburban Philadelphia campus.
“At Brandywine, you felt like you were at home--the teachers, the staff--you felt like you were among your family,” said Teklegiorgis. “It was a very comfortable place. You could really spend time with them. It gave us (his sister Eden also attended Penn State Brandywine at the same time) comfort; it took away the nervousness that we had. We were afraid to start (college) because we didn’t feel comfortable with our English; our confidence level was not that great. They understood where we were coming from and they did everything in their power to give us the boost that we needed at the time. I think if there had been even a little bit of a hiccup when we started out we would not have continued because we were already scared. We really needed the right people to give us that boost to continue on. That’s something I will always  treasure.”
Continue on he did, earning his bachelor’s degree in secondary education with a minor in history. Although he finished his degree at University Park, it was “home” at the Brandywine campus, where he walked during the 1998 commencement ceremony.

Teklegiorgis at sea onboard the USS Ponce with Pakistani naval officer.

Wanting to assimilate into American culture as quickly and easily as possible, Teklegiorgis followed the advice of an uncle and enlisted in the Navy in 1999. Ironically, he was shipped-off to Iceland right after boot camp. He quickly moved up in rank and entered officer candidate school. With much pride and motivation, doors were opening for Teklegiorgis due to his college degree, knowledge of five languages (native tongue, Arabic, English, Spanish and French) and his military training. “For a foreign born child … as people say ‘live the American dream’ I was really living it,” enthused Teklegiorgis.
 He continued his education and earned a master’s degree in international affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. He currently lives in Bahrain with his wife and three young children. Still with the Navy, Teklegiorgis works as a staff officer and department head at Mine Counter Measure Squadron Five NAVCENT and utilizes his foreign language knowledge. He recently participated in the International Mine Countermeasures Exercise 2012 (IMCMEX 12). This at-sea mission involved militaries from approximately 30 nations--spanning four continents--in a defensive exercise designed to preserve freedom of navigation in the international waterways of the Middle East and to promote regional stability. In September he was selected for the Foreign Area Officer program. Beginning in 2013, Teklegiorgis will be working as an attaché (foreign military adviser) in the Middle East.
Teklegiorgis has come a long way from that young refugee who could only smile at his school teachers because he didn’t understand a word of English. He credits Brandywine with helping him get to where he is today.
 “At Brandywine you start to say, ‘I can be somebody here in this country,’” he said. “Now I am not just surviving, but thriving.”

Eritrean mother stabbed to death in Cabbagetown

Nighisti Semret arrived in Canada two years ago, an Eritrean refugee determined to raise enough money to eventually reunite with her four children still in Africa.

Nighisti Mehari Semret, 55, was stabbed to death

On the overnight shift at the downtown Delta Chelsea hotel, she worked tirelessly cleaning floors and kitchens, and eventually asking and being tapped for a supervisor position. Semret was private, but feisty and ambitious. And always the first to get to work and the last to leave, shaken colleagues said Wednesday.
“She was like a lot of our workers, she came to start a life,” said Frida De Paz, who worked with Semret at Andorra Building Maintenance, the company that contracts out to the hotel.
After staying past her 6:30 a.m. shift Tuesday to clean up the storeroom, then leaving after one worker encouraged her to go home and rest, Semret, 55, headed north up Yonge St. in the rain to her nearby Cabbagetown rooming house. She was just 100 metres shy of home when she was stabbed to death in an alleyway — a popular neighbourhood shortcut near Ontario and Winchester Sts.
Disturbing security camera footage released by police Tuesday shows Semret passing through the laneway holding an umbrella, trailed by a man with his right hand tucked into a dark coat, clutching what police believe to be the kitchen knife that killed her.
Witnesses, alerted by Semret’s screams at about 7 a.m. Tuesday, rushed to her aid and saw her attacker stab her no less than 10 times. One eventually intervened, using an umbrella to knock the knife out of the man’s hand, causing him to flee.
Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux said Wednesday the fatal blows had been delivered by then. Semret was the 43rd homicide victim of 2012 in Toronto.
Semret, who went by the nickname Nicki, lived alone at the socially-assisted women’s home, in a cramped room big enough to fit a few belongings. She shared a kitchen and bathroom with another tenant.
While she kept to herself, she would occasionally joke with the other women and fill the kitchen with fragrant smells from traditional African dishes.
“Nicki would give you the shirt off her back if she could,” said longtime tenant Joan Bell, 59. “She didn’t deserve this.”
Friend Saba Belay, 35, said Wednesday that Semret, a proud woman, often avoided inviting visitors to her rooming house. She didn’t have an easy life, said Belay. Her parents died when she was young. While it’s unclear why she fled Eritrea, the small country in the horn of Africa is ruled by one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
While members of Toronto’s close-knit Eritrean community said Semret was not well-known because she hadn’t been in Canada long, a local Eritrean church offered to pay for her funeral with funds from the community.
“It’s really sad, especially an innocent woman who was just working so hard to bring her family here,” said Berhane Kidane, a youth mentor at St. Michael’s Eritrean Orthodox Church. On Wednesday night he was making posters to put up in local restaurants, urging people who knew Semret to offer information.

A memorial continued to grow Wednesday night in the alleyway where Nighisti Semret was stabbed dead the day before.

A former co-worker at Andorra said he believed Semret had lived in Uganda for several years before coming to Canada, and local Eritreans said Wednesday they thought at least one teenage child remained in the country and were working to contact family. Belay, however, said that Semret, who didn’t talk much about her husband, didn’t know where her kids were.
Police made the rare move Wednesday morning of identifying Semret, after fruitless attempts to find her next of kin, despite having contacted her employer and immigration officials.
Giroux said police believe Semret’s killer “lives, frequents and is known to the Cabbagetown and Regent Park area.” He said the same person may have panhandled or snatched purses in the area because it is unlikely the suspect would escalate to stabbing without prior incidents.
“Someone in that particular area knows who this person is,” said Giroux, who added that police are talking to local homeless shelters like Seaton House.
Giroux said it was possible the attack was random and there wasn’t any evidence to suggest the suspect and victim knew each other.
The suspect is described as a white male, between 5-foot-10 and 6-foot-2, 150 to 200 pounds with a medium build.
He was wearing a dark, long coat with buttons and a white scarf or garment around his neck, along with a dark hat, pants and shoes.
Officers at 51 Division set up a community vehicle near the scene of the crime, where anyone with information could speak with investigators. And police beefed up their presence in the area while the suspect remained at-large.
“Everybody feels very disconcerted,” said Sonja Scharf, 51, who has lived in Cabbagetown for a decade and walks her dog through the alleyway where Semret was killed everyday. “I’m trying to stay out in the open.”
Wednesday night, a group of Eritrean women, who didn’t know Semret personally, gathered at the site of the stabbing, weeping as they prayed for her.

Above the vigil, written in chalk on the brick wall, a message read: “Justice for who are victims of violence.”

The African-American Case Against Obama

Over the last little while, a few individuals, claiming to be Eritrean-Americans, have come on the popular Eritrean website, Dehai, and tried to influence their fellow Eritrean-Americans to vote for Barack Obama. I see this as akin to asking Eritreans to reward Obama for his abominable treatment of Eritrea. Given the current US Administration’s unprecedented level of hostility towards Eritrea — arguably, unmatched by any other administration before it — the overwhelming majority of Eritrean-Americans see Obama as the most hostile US president, ever, that Eritrea has had to deal with. Most Eritrean-Americans think Obama is utterly unworthy of their votes and deeply regret that they stood with him during the last election. Nevertheless, there are a few who do not seem to have opened their eyes fully to Obama’s dark side. It is regrettable that these people cannot see the extraordinary level of bellicosity and villainy of the Obama Administration, particularly, in the way it has dealt with Eritrea.

The individuals who are attempting to advance Obama’s interests by trying to convince Eritrean-Americans to vote for him have presented one central, lame and unconvincing, argument to advance their case. To paraphrase their favorite line, it almost always goes like this: ‘Our votes are too few to affect the outcome of the election, so might as well vote for Obama and make sure that our own interests are looked after’. The fact is, close to fifty thousand Eritrean-American votes, used collectively for a common purpose, are anything but few. Then, there is that, rather absurd, aspect of their argument which claims that their ‘personal interests’ can be better served by voting for Obama. As any reasonable person will see, this position is mired in contradiction and confusion and is hard to make any sense of. One might rightly ask: What is the magic trick that will transform votes that are ‘too few to impact the election results’ into a potent element that will ‘ensure Eritrean-American interests’ if given to Obama? Those who advance this argument need to scour their minds to see if they can come up with a more sensible ‘rationale’ than this dubious excuse for wanting to vote for Obama. Regardless, if we simply boiled down the argument advanced by the pro-Obama individuals to ‘Our votes are too few to matter, so let’s just gift them to Obama’, how much credibility would they carry? Well, first of all, there is no factual truth to the claim that Eritrean-American votes are too few to matter in the election. Secondly, no matter how many times they repeat this illogical ‘reasoning’ it will still remain unconvincing.
In a recent post, one of these pro-Obama individuals decided to change his pitch from ‘Obama is better than Romney’ to the desperate-sounding “Please, please go out and exercise your right … Vote! Vote! Vote!” Why has it suddenly become so crucial for this individual to urge Eritrean-Americans to go out and vote at any cost? Why would he at least not give those people who are not keen on voting for Romney the option of not voting at all, rather than going out and giving their vote to Obama, who is the least person to deserve their votes? What this shows is that there are individuals who may be trying to con Eritrean-Americans into inadvertently doing something that will ultimately benefit Obama. They may be banking on the assumption that most Eritrean-Americans do not like the idea of voting for Mitt Romney, and if they can be convinced to vote, as a principle of right and duty, they might just see Obama as the better evil and vote for him. This is a very disingenuous tactic, because the overwhelming majority of the people it is aimed at are not dumb and are able to see the big picture. The main villain in the big picture is Barack Obama! He is the one who deserves to be rejected, no matter who his potential replacement is. If it is Romney who is at the head of the line to replace him, then so be it!
Granted that the handful of Eritrean-Americans who are cheering for Obama likely believe that he is better than Mitt Romney. However this position, in itself, is untenable, because it is based on pure speculation and not on any hard facts. After all, despite the negative perceptions that may be dogging Romney, he is still an untried entity as a president and, if given a chance, he may well turn out to be a better leader than most people now perceive him to be. And there is, certainly, a very good chance that he may prove to be a better president than Obama. More importantly, even if he does not make the mark as a good president, the chance of him being worse than Obama is almost non-existent. Therefore, there really is no significant loss to be sustained if Romney bumped Obama from the presidency!
There is an excellent article on Eastafro.com, by Amanuel Biedemariam, titled ‘Horn of Africa Activism and US Presidential Election Politics’, which is a must read. In it the writer tells how an Obama Campaign manager tried to sell him ‘fear’ by asking him ‘Do you think Romney is going to do any better?’ (meaning better than Obama, of course!) This is as weak and dumb an argument in defense of Obama’s supposed superiority, as it can ever get! As an Eritrean, I would answer the man’s question by asking back ‘Do you think Romney is going to be any worse than Obama?’
It is true that there are many in the Obama Camp who are trying to sell ‘fear of the unknown’ as a legitimate campaign fare to potential voters. A few days ago, I clicked on a link posted by a participant on the Dehai discussion board, which led me to an article titled ‘A Rotten Fusion of Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism – Which Africans Will Obama Whack Next?’ The piece appeared on ‘Counter Punch’ and was written by a certain Patrick Bond from Durban, South Africa. This guy nailed all of Obama’s deadly sins in the right places and I was fully expecting his final verdict to be: ‘Guilty on all counts! To be banished from office!’ However, to my utter shock and surprise, he changed gears in the last seconds and closed his piece with the words ‘Obama’s administration is a rotten fusion of the worst forces within neoliberalism and neoconservatism. I sincerely hope that next month, he soundly defeats Mitt Romney, who is worse on all counts – except the ability to confuse people in Africa, who might still think Washington acts in their interests’ (emphasis is mine). Other than to make the uncorroborated blanket statement that Mitt Romeny was ‘worse on all counts’ than Obama, nowhere in his lengthy article did this writer offer any explanation as to why he thought so. ‘What a muddled ending to such a brilliant and incisive piece!’, was all I could think.
Now, a rational question to ask this writer is: how can he confidently declare Romney to be ‘worse on all counts’ than Obama, when he has not had a chance to observe his performance in the only ‘work place’ that matters for passing such a judgment, the White House? I would not expect a truthful or sensible answer to this question, other than to say that the whole point of writing the article, in the first place, probably was to first win the reader’s trust by enumerating as many as possible of Obama’s difficult-to-conceal failings, then ending with a sweeping denunciation of Romney that would leave most readers with a decidedly bad taste in their mouth and a feeling of ‘Oh my God, Romney will make the worst ever president if elected!’ It is likely that there are quite a few writers who are prepared to sell Obama to unsuspecting voters by employing less-than-honest tactics, in the same way that I very much suspect Mr. Bond is trying to do. One would hope that the majority of readers are smart enough not to fall for their tricks.

Eritrean-Americans demo against  USA policy in Africa

The truth of the matter is that unlike the untried Romney, Obama has been thoroughly tested in office and his foreign policy, which is the main focus of this article, has been nothing short of catastrophic for both his country and the world. He has nothing much to admire in his domestic policies, either, but his most disastrous failing, without question, is in his external policy. His aggressive foreign policies and heavy-handed meddling in various places have caused chaos and mayhem around the world. Fomenting conflicts, orchestrating proxy wars, perpetrating officially-sanctioned violence against innocent citizens of Third World countries, pushing the unlimited use of threats, blackmail, coercion, sabotage, and other subversive means against various innocent nations, have stood out as the unmistakable hallmarks of his foreign policy throughout his tenure in office. Our own country, Eritrea, which has been the target of the Obama Administration’s relentless and immoral destabilizing efforts throughout the last four years, has seen it all. The experience of the last four years has shown Obama to be reckless, unscrupulous, hawkish, duplicitous and highly irresponsible, not to mention opportunistic and untruthful. This is a rap sheet that no potential replacement to him, including Romney, would find easy to match!
We all were way off the mark with our original, rosy assessment of Barack Obama, back in 2008, when he first came on the stage and impressed the whole world with his seemingly honest desire to inject a little bit of sanity into the crazy world of American foreign policy. We all hoped that he would take at least a few steps in the direction of curbing the US’s insatiable thirst for reckless conflict-chasing and adventurism. Through a mixture of his fresh young looks and an extraordinary gift to make people accept his word at face-value, Obama managed to hoodwink billions around the globe, including this writer, into believing that he had come to save the world. However, it wasn’t long before his true colors started to come through. For many people around the world, it was a big let-down to see the veneer come off Obama’s carefully constructed deceptive image of a conflict-shunning and peace-seeking presidential candidate – an impression he so skillfully milked throughout his campaign.
It wasn’t long before it became clear that Obama, after all, was not about ‘change’ — his prized campaign slogan — or a fresh beginning in America’s relations with the outside world. Nor was he about seeking peace that was based on diplomacy and the respect of the sovereignty and rights of other nations. As if with a swipe of a magician’s wand, all the marvelous things Obama promised about making the world a safer place to live in evaporated into thin air. Nearly four years into his presidency, all that we see around us now is the US’s bloody hand feverishly orchestrating conflicts in various places and causing death and misery by the bucketload. The number of the innocent citizens of Third World countries that the US has murdered, either by direct involvement or through proxies, is too high to count. One has only to look at what has happened and is happening in places such as: Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Myanmar, Pakistan and Afghanistan to appreciate the scale of the atrocities that the Obama Administration has perpetrated on the populations of many Third World countries.
The immoral ‘drone-war’ that Obama officially sanctioned and legitimized as a way of extra-judicial  killing of suspected so-called ‘terrorists’ on sovereign territories of other nations, and is indiscriminately killing innocent citizens of Third World countries, is another indictment of this president’s bloody excesses. This is a prime example of the Obama Administration’s callous disregard for human lives as long as they are not First World lives. To expect anything that spells a safer, better world from Obama’s continued presence in power, after witnessing all the violence and strife caused by his administration in various parts of the world, is pretty much like expecting rain to fall from cloudless skies. The ingredients that make for a safer, better world just do not exist in this president’s sphere of thoughts or plans.  
There is no sensible or sane rationale to the US’s approach when it deals with independent and self-assertive small nations of the world. It almost always seems to start off from the immoral premise that ‘might is right’ and America should be able to impose its will on all nations, particularly small nations of the Third Wold. In the eyes of the US any Third World nation that does not subordinate its independence and national interests to those of the US and its Western partners, is seen as an unfriendly entity, and thus marked for destabilization. And, of course, at the forefront of America’s military interventions and destabilization campaigns is always the deceitful claim that it is acting to bring ‘democracy’ to the people. Yet, most people, nowadays, know who and what the much-ballyhooed American ‘democracy’ represents, and what it stands for. These days, most people do not need to be reminded that the real reason behind America’s foreign policy of aggressive interventionism is the ‘agenda of domination’, which has always been the over-riding agenda in American foreign policy. In the pursuit of this agenda, Obama has tried to outperform most other presidents before him, as his administration’s wide-ranging bloody forays into Africa, the Middle East and Asia have proven.
One need not go further than Eritrea and Iran, to see the ‘off-the-scale’ madness, with which the Obama Administration has pursued nations that the US sees as ‘recalcitrant’ or non-compliant with its sterile and unworkable ‘New World Order’ mantra, which aims to bring the world under one umbrella of domination with it sitting comfortably at the top of the pile. Barack  Obama seems to have taken this unachievable US agenda to heart as his military adventures in various parts of the world clearly show.
As an example of the US’s intolerance with nations that do not do its bidding, nothing can surpass the morbid hostility that it has directed against the innocent and peaceful state of Eritrea. Eritrea which holds the distinction of having never bowed to US authority, or served as a tool of US and Western interests, has faced the full wrath of America’s ferocious all-out destabilization campaign, which the Obama Administration has taken to new, unprecedented heights. This campaign to destroy Eritrea has been spearheaded by Obama’s uncommonly hawkish and vengeful Ambassador-to-the-UN, Susan Rice, who happens to hold a major personal grudge against the country, from having miserably failed to impose US will on its government some fourteen years ago, when she was Bill Clintons’ Assistant-Secretary-of-State for Africa. In her current position as Obama’s Ambassador-to-the-UN, she has spared no effort to try and bring about Eritrea’s demise. She has done everything, from disseminating mountains of lies to tarnish Eritrea’s reputation, to plotting and orchestrating anti-Eritrean conspiracies with African ‘puppet’ regimes, to engineering and pushing through two illegal and unjust UN sanctions against Eritrea. In fact, Susan Rice, who is a perfect model of deceptive and overbearing diplomacy, has left no stone unturned in her frenzied efforts to bring Eritrea down. Yet, thanks entirely to the unique sense of awareness and patriotism of Eritreans, and their unrivaled unity and resolve to defend their country, all the immoral campaigns waged against Eritrea by the Obama Administration have met with utter failure.
As it has become crystal clear to most people, the US, under Obama, has steered a dangerous course of war-mongering and aggression that relies primarily on the use of raw power, blackmail, threats, intimidation and various means of destabilization to deal with countries that reject its self-appointed role as the world’s policeman. The US has always seemed to see itself as the supreme authority on our planet, to which all countries and peoples must answer. Thus, nations such as Eritrea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Myanmar, etc., which are definitely not part of the complying herd of followers that do the US’s bidding (such as its European partners-in-crime, or the large contingent of lowly vassal states, such as the late Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia), have always been marked for hostile treatment. The Obama Administration has taken the US’s sense of superiority and inherently predatory tendency a step further, taking the world on an even more dangerous path than before. Although there may be some lingering perception that the Bush Administration may have been worse in this respect, an objective and sober analysis of the Obama Administration’s overall conduct on the world stage during the last four years will prove that assessment wrong.
On the whole, one can say that Obama’s legacy, so far, has been the unquantifiable amount of misery and pain that his foreign policy has inflicted on millions of people across Africa, the Middle East and South West Asia. Through the inciting of and direct involvement in various deadly conflicts in various parts of the Third World, Obama’s policies of domination have cost the lives of countless innocent citizens and brought dislocation and destitution to countless others.
There is another aspect of Barack  Obama that this writer finds deeply disturbing. This concerns the foreign policy he has pursued in regard to Africa. Barack  Obama, as everybody knows, is not only an ‘African American’, but by virtue of his father being a Kenyan, he is also an authentic ‘half-African’. Back in July of 2009, in that patronizing and self-gratifying speech (actually, lecture!) he gave in Accra, Ghana, he declared ‘I have African blood within me!’ The sad thing is that all the actions Obama has taken with regard to Africa, since that public declaration of his African roots, have been the kind that would not be expected of a leader claiming to have genuine African blood coursing through him. For the most part, his actions have been a living testament to the low regard he has for Africa and the disrespect he is prepared to show it. In fact, one can say that Obama sees Africa as nothing more than a fruit tree that is ripe for picking!
As an authentic half-African, one would have expected Obama to be troubled by Africa’s bitter history of exploitation and subjugation at the hands of European colonisers. One would have thought that he would resent the on-going, terrible economic exploitation of Africa by Western countries, including his own. One would rightly have expected this half-Kenyan US president to want to redress this unjust relationship by supporting full African emancipation from the economic slavery that has kept African countries stuck in perpetual poverty and dependency — not to want to carry the injustices forward with renewed vigor. One would have also expected Obama to oppose and work against the well-known US and European practice of fomenting conflict and chaos among African countries, as a vehicle of weakening and exploiting them. Yet, as evidenced by his administration’s actions throughout his four years in office, Obama has chosen to carry the age-old injustices perpetrated by First World counties on Africa forward with renewed vigor.
As a black US president with roots in the heart of Africa, Obama should have tried to champion vigorous efforts to rid Africa of the residual effects of its past colonial history. He should have taken it upon himself to assist Africa’s present struggles against unfair exploitation and domination by the neo-colonialists of the First World, of which his own country is a prime component. It should have saddened him to see Africa being robbed and dispossessed of its natural resources and dignity in broad daylight, and to see it supply unquantifiable amounts of wealth to the developed world outside of it, while remaining backward, dirt-poor and hardly able to feed itself. Despite all this and contrary to all logical expectations, Obama does not seem to concern himself with the fundamental issue of restoring to Africa, his own father’s continent, the justice and dignity that was denied it in the past, and continues to be denied it today. That is why, instead of trying to curb his country’s illegitimate, force-based attempts to control Africa’s oil and mineral wealth, his administration has traveled the extra mile to bring the continent under US military and economic domination.
In fact, this president has worked harder than any other American president, to bring the African continent under US colonialism. What we have here is the strange phenomenon of a black American president – who is of Kenyan parentage, to boot – working harder than all the white presidents before him to place the African continent under the perpetual yoke of American slavery. Anyone who has observed Obama’s hectic four-years-long foray into Africa, which has seen the infestation of most of the continent with US military outposts, personnel and intelligence operatives, will attest to the validity of this assertion. There is little doubt that Obama, the ‘president-of-choice’ of America’s white ruling elites, at whose pleasure he stays in the White House, is trying to prove that he can do a better job than all the white presidents before him put together, in keeping Africa in its customary, humble place!
From an Eritrean’s perspective, Obama has proved to be an absolutely unelectable candidate on the following three major counts of his foreign policy: 1) His unequivocally anti-Eritrean stance, which has focused on inflicting the maximum harm on Eritrea; 2) His  determined efforts to bring Africa under US ‘colonialism’ and 3) The criminal atrocities his administration has commited, and continues to commit, against innocent citizens of the Third World, as well as the real dangers his uncompromising and aggressive foreign policy have exposed the world to. If there is any US presidential candidate who does not deserve Eritrean-American votes, it is definitely Barack  Obama. Eritrean-Americans should not listen to those who are trying to belittle and disparage their votes as being insignificant. No one should lose sight of the fact that public offices can be won or lost over the slimmest margins of a few thousand votes. If Eritrean-Americans can use their votes collectively against Obama, and those votes happen to coalesce with certain other conditions that are unfavourable to him, then, there is a very good chance that those votes might turn out to be just the critical element needed to tip the balance against this most undesirable and undeserving president.
Even if voting against Obama, collectively, may not guarantee his defeat this time around, the action will still serve a very useful purpose: it will convey a strong message to US politicians that the Eritrean-American community must not be taken for granted. It is important that America’s political parties and their presidential candidates get that message. It is very likely that Eritrean-American numbers and influence will grow, not diminish, with time. Therefore, no matter what the outcome of this election is going to be, a strong, collective ‘No’ to Obama, at this time, will be an important first step in the necessary journey Eritrean-Americans must travel, in order to become a strong voice that American politicians will notice and want to court.
But, above all else, it is the duty of all responsible and self-respecting Eritrean-Americans to deny their vote to a US president who has waged a relentless campaign to destroy their innocent country. There just cannot be any acceptable argument against that! How can anyone convincingly argue in favour of voting for a president who has, knowingly and willingly, turned himself into Eritrea’s #1 enemy? It is time for those Eritreans who may have given Obama some benefit of the doubt in the beginning to reassess their position about him. Just look at his recent ignorant and reprehensible verbal assault on Eritrea, where he shamelessly lied through the teeth and accused the country of engaging in ‘human trafficking’. As if there is a scarcity of countries that can legitimately be accused of engaging in such activities, he deliberately chose Eritrea, the least likely candidate for such an outrageous accusation. He knows very well that Eritrea is an honorable and upright nation that does not engage in such deplorable practices, yet, he chose to deliberately smear it by telling a bare-faced lie that cannot hold up to even the most casual scrutiny. This deplorable performance attests to Obama’s uncontained hostility towards Eritrea, as much as it speaks to his propensity for being untruthful. For any Eritrean-American who may have taken a little longer than others to see Obama’s true nature, I hope this latest outrageous conduct of his has proved to be an eye-opener and ‘The straw that broke the camel’s back’!
If, on the other hand, Obama was merely parroting information that Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton fed him that is not good either! Wallowing in sheer ignorance and mercilessly beating on an innocent nation simply because his truth-challenged UN Ambassador, Susan Rice — a known Eritrea-hater with a big axe to grind — claimed that Eritrea did this, or did that, does not say much for his judgment or leadership. Moreover, Obama would have looked better if he had let Susan Rice, or his Secretary-of-State, Hillary Clinton, do the job of dispensing his untruths for him, instead of going up on the stage and jostling and competing with them to get the lies out!
Recently, someone argued that Eritrean-Americans ‘… should vote as citizens of U.S. based on our personal interest …. ‘. Others, before him and after him have also advanced the same self-serving idea. Clearly, there is a selfish element in their argument, in that by claiming that voting for Obama would serve their own interests better than voting against him, these individuals are putting their own personal interests ahead of Eritrea’s larger interests. Eritrea’s legitimate causes would be served better if all Eritrean-Americans worked together in a common drive to unseat this unequivocally anti-Eritrean president, who seems determined to stay on Eritrea’s case for the duration.
I think most Eritrean-Americans would agree that Obama does not deserve a single Eritrean vote and should be rejected outright. The gross injustices his administration has perpetrated against Eritrea (not to mention other countries and peoples of the world) are too obvious for anyone to miss. It is worth asking the individuals who seem oblivious to Obama’s serious transgressions what it is that makes them want to give him another four years in the White House – the place from which he has wrought so much injustice and grief on Eritrea and the rest of the world. Why are they so determined to dissuade Eritrean-Americans from rejecting Obama? It would be nice to know the answer to this intriguing question. One thing is undeniably clear, though: If Eritrean-American votes can be utilized effectively to protest the Obama Administration’s atrocious treatment of Eritrea, I personally cannot see a more worthwhile use for them than this.
As an Eritrean who has seen Barack  Obama and his appointed State Department minions subject our innocent country to an unprecedented level of hostilities and hardships, and mindful of the possible continuation, or even worsening, of this situation under a re-elected Obama, I strongly urge all Eritrean-Americans to reject this president outright, and to do everything possible to facilitate his opponent’s victory. In this connection, it is also very important to remember that an Obama re-election may produce the undesirable outcome of Eritrea’s sworn enemy, Susan Rice’s, climb to the post of US Secretary-of-State. This is an absolutely unpalatable scenario for any Eritrean to envision!
Afeworki Mekonnen writes for Natna, where this article originally appeared.

South Sudan plans mediation between Ethiopia and Eritrea

Newly independent South Sudan plans to help resolve the long-running border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a senior official said on Wednesday.
South Sudan’s minister for cabinet affairs, Deng Alor, said Addis Ababa and Asmara had given the green light for mediation talks on the border, which could start as early as November.

South Sudan’s minister for cabinet affairs, Deng Alor

“We have close ties with both countries so we are planning to mediate and solve the problems that they have between them,” Deng Alor, South Sudan’s minister for cabinet affairs, told Reuters.
Ethiopian and Eritrean officials were not available to comment. Ethiopia has said its conflict with Asmara over the demarcation of their shared border following a 1998-2000 war would be solved only through a negotiated settlement.
South Sudan is still embroiled in its own frontier argument with its northern neighbour, Sudan. The two countries broke apart last year under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war.
Alor said South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and other senior officials were set to name a delegation “very soon” that would travel to both capitals.
“We will embark on rounds of shuttle diplomacy between the two countries. We are hoping to start in November,” Alor said.
A Hague-based boundary commission awarded the flashpoint frontier village of Badme to Eritrea in 2002. But Ethiopia has yet to conform with the ruling, insisting on further negotiations on its implementation.
Asmara wants Ethiopia to pull its troops out before normalising relations.
The two countries nearly returned to war in March when Addis Ababa launched cross-border attacks in Eritrea on what it said were rebel targets.
Both countries routinely accuse each other of backing dissidents to destabilise and topple the other’s government. Ethiopian strongman Meles Zenawi died in August.

Eritreans still tapped for tax, refugee says

Eritrea promised Ottawa it would stop, but Winnipeggers say they're still being shaken down to pay a two per cent tax to a regime they fled.
Last month, the Canadian government threatened to expel Eritrea's consul if the country continued to collect a two per cent tax on Eritreans living in Canada. Canada adopted United Nations sanctions to stop the flow of money to Eritrean defence forces linked to terrorist groups. Eritrea agreed to stop collecting the diaspora tax from Canadians.
But members of the Eritrean community in Winnipeg say they were told at a closed meeting recently they still have to pay it, just not through local channels.
One man said he attended the Sept. 23 meeting at the Ellice Cafe because he thought it was "to discuss Eritrean issues." When he got there, he realized the event hosted by the Eritrean Community in Winnipeg Inc. wasn't an open community gathering.
People had to sign in and write down their phone numbers, he said. Some who showed up were not allowed entry.
"Before me, two people were kicked out," said the man who arrived in Canada a few years ago and was afraid to have his name published.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, left, and Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki.

"They said, 'You're not Eritrean -- you have to go!' "
The two per cent tax is still required but won't be collected by local agents or the consulate in Toronto, the crowd of about 50 people was told.
Newcomers are struggling to get settled in a new country and don't want to give money to the government they fled, said the refugee at the meeting.
"I don't believe in this two per cent tax," the man said.
He said Lambros Kyriakakos, the president of the Eritrean Community in Winnipeg Inc., spoke at the meeting. He is the president of the organization that sponsors Eritreans who fled the regime. He told the group he'd just visited Eritrea, the attendee said. He said the money Canadian Eritreans are sending to the regime is helping orphans and rebuilding the country. The man in the audience said they were told not to believe United Nations or media reports that their donations are funding military operations or terrorist groups.
He said Kyriakakos told them the Free Press and the Vancouver Province were directed by the National Post to fabricate such stories. The newspapers, they were told, are "mercenaries" funded by Eritrea's enemy, the government of Ethiopia, the man said.
The Free Press is neither owned nor operated by the National Post. Nor is it on Ethiopia's payroll.
Kyriakakos refused to comment.
The newcomers from Eritrea are being manipulated by the Eritrean Community in Winnipeg Inc., and coerced to keep sending money, says a Winnipeg human rights group.
"They incite hatred against Canadians so people will cling with them and feel safe," said Bereket Mebrahtu, with the Eritrean-Canadian Human Rights Group of Manitoba. The newcomers are receiving misinformation about the Free Press that makes them feel under attack as Eritrean community members, Mebrahtu said.
"This is how they deflect the substance of the issue and instigate fear of the people -- that the community is the only sanctuary."
If they don't pay the tax, they'll never get a visitor's visa to go there or their relatives in Eritrea will suffer as a result, say community members and a report to the UN.

Egypt Trades Four Eritreans For One Egyptian Captain

A ship captain, Mohammed Esmat Al Hlaisi, who had been detained in Eritrea since February and accused of being a CIA agent, was returned to his home country after Egypt agreed to Eritrea’s request to deport back four Eritrean asylum-seekers, according to Al Wafd newspaper.

What follows below is largely sourced from Al Wafd: 

 

Mohammed Al Hlaisi,  26, captained a commercial ship owned by Alaska, an English company. In February, he made an emergency stop in Massawa to repair his ship’s faulty tank.

February is the month that “Operation Fenkel”, the military campaign that liberated the port city from Ethiopia in 1990,  is celebrated in Massawa every year.

The captain was strolling the streets of Massawa when Eritrean intelligence officials picked him up and escorted him to his ship, which they searched. He, and his crew of 12 (Cubans and Filipinos), were told to remain in the ship which they did–for four months, until the captain was taken to Ghindae, a town between Massawa and the capital, for detention.

Eritrean authorities interrogated him for four months and demanded that he admit that he was CIA operative laying mines in the Red Sea which had killed Eritrean soldiers. He was required to confess to this crime in writing and on camera. Captain Al Hlaisi says, “I requested the presence of the Egyptian Ambassador and told them I will not sign such an admission even if you cut me to pieces.”  He was informed that he had been sentenced to twenty years in jail.

Captain Al Hlaisi went on a hunger strike and was rushed to “INAIL” hospital in Asmara where authorities denied the Egyptian ambassador to Eritrea access to visit him. But he was visited by Eritrea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs who informed him that he should give up his hunger strike since negotiations are underway with the Egyptian government for his release.

He was returned to Ghindae, where he remained until October 10, 2012 when he was released. Back in Egypt, government officials showed him the paperwork which indicated that he had been traded for Eritreans who had asked for asylum and had now been deported. Reportedly, the involvement of Egyptian president Mursi was required for this exchange.The names of the four Eritreans who were traded for the Egyptian captain has not been disclosed. Nor have any of the international or Eritrean human rights organizations, who have repeatedly warned Egypt against deporting Eritrean asylum-seekers to Eritrea, reported the deportation of the Eritreans.

On December 24, 2010, four Britons employed by Protection Vessels International (PVI) were arrested in Massawa and subsequently accused of espionage, terrorism and using the island of Romia as an arms depot. In a TV documentary outlining the charges, the government showed laser guided peripherals as “poison tipped arrows.” Unofficially, the Eritrean regime informed Thomas Mountain,  the only Western “journalist” allowed to work in Eritrea, that the Brits were in Eritrea to assassinate Eritrean officials on Operation Fenkel celebrations of February. The Brits were “pardoned” and released after six months.

The Eritrean Government has many such crisis and it has detained many Yemeni and Egyptian boats and ships starting from the first weeks after independence when it detained over a dozen Egyptian fishermen and refused to give information about them or allow their relatives to visit them.

Such arrests finally led to a clash with Yemen over the Hanish Archipelago in 1995.

Chalice Gold Mines Limited : Quarterly Report - 30 September 2012

ASX Announcement September 2012 Quarterly Report Highlights:
? Chalice completes the sale of the Zara Gold Project in Eritrea to China SFECO Group and ENAMCO for combined proceeds of US$114M.
? Chalice has a net cash of $80 million after tax following completion of the Zara transaction, with a focus on acquiring new projects.
? A capital reduction and return of 10 cents per share is proposed, subject to shareholder approval.
? Drilling of VTEM targets has recommenced at the Mogoraib North Project in Eritrea,
located immediately north of the world-class Bisha Mine.
? A new gold target has been defined at the Area C Prospect, Mogoraib North.


 
1. Sale of the Zara Project to China SFECO Group
During the Quarter, Chalice Gold Mines Limited ("Chalice") completed the sale of the Zara Gold Project in Eritrea to China SFECO Group for US$78 million plus a deferred payment of US$2 million upon commencement of commercial production at the Koka Gold Mine.
In addition, the Eritrean National Mining Corporation ("ENAMCO") settled the remaining balance of US$29 million for its acquisition of a 30 per cent interest in the Zara Project (in addition to its 10 per cent free carried interest).
Together with the interim payments received from ENAMCO of US$3 million in January 2012 and US$2 million in July 2012, this amounts to total sale proceeds of US$114 million.
Chalice has paid all applicable taxes due in Eritrea for both the SFECO transaction and the ENAMCO transaction. Chalice's net cash balance at the end of September was $80 million, which equates to approximately 32 cents per share, putting the Company in an exceptionally strong position to embark on its next chapter of growth.
Chalice has retained suitable independent expertise to assist its experienced management and Board of Directors in the assessment and identification of potential opportunities.
2. Capital Management Following completion of the sale of the Company's interest in the Zara Project, Chalice has approximately $80 million cash on hand. The Board has undertaken a review of its capital management options and determined that these funds exceed its current capital requirements, providing justification to return some of this capital to shareholders.

Chalice has announced that its Board will seek shareholder approval under section 256B and 256C of the Corporations Act (2001) for an equal capital reduction and return of $25 million (10 cents cash per share) to those persons or entities that are shareholders at the appropriate record date

Chalice has received a draft Class Ruling from the Australian Taxation Office ('ATO') indicating that the proposed distribution will not be taxed as a dividend. The draft Class Ruling may not be relied on by Chalice shareholders until it is issued in final form by the ATO. The final version of the Class Ruling will be published and notice will be included in The Gazette. Chalice will also display the final version on the Class Ruling on its website as soon as it becomes available.
Full details of the proposed capital return are set out in the 2012 AGM Notice of Meeting and Explanatory Statement. The AGM will be held on 30 November 2012 and it is expected that the Record Date for the capital return will be on or around 10 December 2012.
3. Mogoraib North Exploration

Diamond drilling of VTEM conductor targets at Mogoraib North was suspended in late June due to the onset of the Eritrean wet season. Drilling up to that point comprised 11 holes for 2,358 metres and tested 10 VTEM targets (see Figure 2). Most of the conductors were confirmed to be carbonaceous shales containing variable amounts of sulphides (primarily pyrite and pyrrhotite).
Although no significant base metal sulphides were encountered, assaying of pyrite-rich sections in one hole, MOGD-007, returned highly anomalous levels of silver and barium. The 17m section below 183 metres in hole MOGD-007 (see Figure 3) averaged 2.21g/t silver and just under
1,000ppm barium. These levels of silver and barium are regarded as potentially indicative of distal portions of a volcanic-hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) system.
Based on the results of the drilling to date, geophysical consultants Southern Geoscience Consultants (SGC) have reviewed the VTEM targets and re-ranked the priority of targets for testing. Field checking of these targets is in progress together with further soil sampling where practicable.
Drilling of the highest priority targets recommenced on the 12th October. The current campaign will see an initial 15 diamond drill holes completed for 2,650m, with additional drilling contingent on the results of ongoing soil sampling and mapping programs.
Soil sampling conducted over the Area C gold anomaly, located in the north-central part of the tenement, returned encouraging results, revealing coincident gold, bismuth, tellurium and molybdenum anomalism centred on a quartz vein system being exploited by artisanal miners (see Figure 4). This suite of anomalous elements is also associated with the Koka gold deposit and is characteristic of Intrusive-Related Gold Systems (IRGS). The soil sampling grid is currently being extended to determine the limits of anomalism and define targets for drilling.
4. Gnaweeda Project In early June, Chalice agreed to sell its remaining 13.5% interest in the Gnaweeda Gold Project in Western Australia to Archean Star Resources Inc. (Archean). Archean is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX?V). The consideration for the sale was 5 million common shares in Archean. Chalice has subsequently advised that it has terminated the agreement because of non-performance by Archean.
Chalice has now reverted to its 13.5% interest in the Project with all commensurate rights.

Eritrean comedian gets his own TV show

Teddy’s Show: TV Comedy Show ZDF – Eritrean-born German Tedros Teclebrhan

Eritrean-born German Tedros Teclebrhan has been awarded his own TV-show only a year after he landed a youtube video hit with a satirical comedy about integration and immigration in Germany.

Mainz based broadcaster ZDF, one of Germany’s largest TV networks, has signed the comedian to run his own TV series called Teddy’s Show.

Tedros Teclebrhan, better known as Teddy saw his career skyrocket after his video on youtube went viral reaching over 17 Million views. The 28-year-old comedian migrated to Germany with his mother and two older brothers when he was just seven months old.

The family fled from the unrest of a 30 Years long war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, on the Horn of Africa, to eventually finding their second home in South Germany.Tedros himself was not that far from becoming the classic example of failed integration in the education system.

 The comedian once said: “School was quite a turbulent time. I changed schools often. But eventually I came to my completion of secondary school education and completed my further training in Stuttgart.”

MERHAWI KUDUS WINS SECOND LEG OF ENGEN DYNAMIC CYCLE CHALLENGE

Eritrean, Merhawi Kudus (World Cycling Centre Africa) won the Engen Dynamic Cycle Challenge in Port Elizabeth today. This week it was revealed that Kudus will be riding for the MTN-Qhubeka World Cycling Centre Africa Team next year and he proved today why he deserves his spot on the team.
Bradley Potgieter was the top finisher for Team MTN-Qhubeka in fourth place.

The race was the second in the series and changed its venue from the Altona Primary school to the Aldo Scribante race track dew to excessive rain in the area and took on a circuit format of 2.2km’s for 60 laps.

The professionals welcomed the increase in distance, as the race was aggressive from the start. Team MTN-Qhubeka’s Arran Brown and Martin Wesemann were involved in a dangerous move early on until the peloton brought them back.

Kudus made the final selection in the race during the closing kilometres before attacking his breakaway companions with two laps to go in an impressive display of power to win solo.

A delighted Director of the World Cycling Centre in Africa, JP van Zyl said, “It just shows our training program is working. After the race Merhawi said to me ‘coach, I can now see why you give us those hard 20 minutes sessions’, but I told them wins like this will happen because the team is dedicated.”

After two rounds, the World Cycling Centre now leads the team competition in the Engen Dynamic Cycle Challenge with Team MTN-Qhubeka in second place.

“This is a good sign for the two teams to be leading the competition as next year when we will ride as MTN-Qhubeka World Cycling Centre Africa Team. I think MTN-Qhubeka boss Douglas Ryder has done the right thing in bringing this team together,” concluded van Zyl.

MTN-Qhubeka World Cycling Centre Africa Team will act as a feeder team to the MTN-Qhubeka Pro Continental team.

The final leg of the Engen Dynamic Cycle Challenge takes place in Durban on 11 November.

Engen Dynamic Cycle Challenge – Port Elizabeth Results

1. Merhawi Kudus (World Cycling Centre Africa)
2. Dylan Girdlestone (Westvaal-BMC)
3.  Theuns van der Bank (Nu Water)
4. Brad Potgieter (MTN-Qhubeka)
5. Meron Emmanuel  (World Cycling Centre Africa)

Eritrean Afars outcry over forced displacement

An Eritrean opposition group alleged Saturday that the government in Asmara is forcibly displacing members of the Afar ethnic minority from their ancestral lands.

Eritrea (in green)

The Ethiopia-based Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization (RSADO) said that the Eritrean regime is carrying out targeted displacement in Galalo, a city in northern part of Dankalia. The aim, the opposition group say, is to change the population of the area by settling Tigrigna speakers, who are the dominant group in Eritrea.
RSADO said that government agents are currently grabbing Afar-owned land with promises of large amounts of money if they sell their property. Those who refuse to sell are forced to do so by the government and army, the exiled group say.
This is not the first time for the regime to carry out public displacement against the Afars who also are known as Dankils, according to the group.
“We urgently appeal to international community and human rights organizations to stop the dictatorial regime in Asmara from displacing and cleansing Afar people putting up on him a possible pressure” RSADO said in a statement.

RSADO Logo.

“We urge the United Nations Security Council to implement its 2010 (1970) sanctions to save the life of innocent Eritrean civilians ahead of them more suffering Red Sea Afar” it added.

RSADO Flag

 The Red Sea nation is one of the most repressive countries in the world. In protest to extreme political repression, tens and thousands of Eritreans have fled to neighbouring countries.
Eritreans who have fled the country are considered traitors by the regime. When refugees are deported back to Eritrea they face prosecution, lengthy jail terms in harsh prison facilities or a possible punishment of death.
Earlier this month RSADO said Eritrea and Yemen had signed a “security arrangement” aimed to deport thousands of Eritrean refugees, mostly ethnic Afar fishermen who sought asylum in the Gulf state.