Eritrea

cc UK-based lawyer Mihret Goitom tells how his sister–in-law’s attempt to escape Eritrea and join her husband ended in tragedy, after she and her children were incarcerated in a refugee camp in Sudan en-route.

cc Since winning its de facto independence in May 1991, Eritrea has come to represent a tragedy, laments Selam Kidane. Having fought and suffered alongside one another during the country's liberation struggle, Eritreans have seen their country embroiled in conflicts with every one of its neighbours under the leadership of Isaias Afewerki. With President Isaias increasingly viewing power...read more

"Remember 'We Are the World'?" asked Mahmoud Abdalla, a leader of the Hidareb ethnic community in Eritrea's arid Anseba region along the northwestern border with Sudan, referring to the 1985 hit song by more than 40 top artists. "Remember the 1984 famine in Ethiopia? This region was right in the middle of it." In 1984 Eritrea was part of Ethiopia, where some of the song’s proceeds were spent.

Eritrea has avoided international attention in recent years in ways that may have protected the Red Sea country's rulers from proper scrutiny but benefit no one else. Even those who recall that the continent's youngest state gained its unlikely independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a bloody thirty-year struggle may be shocked to hear that the optimistic nationalism of the 1990s has been dissolved under President Isaias Afewerki into a despairing void, causing thousands of Eritreans to flee...read more

The title of this article is borrowed from what President Isaias Afwerki said in an interview with China Business Weekly Magazine in 2007, talking about Chinese and Eritrean relations and with particular reference to what Chinese investors see when they look at Eritrea. Indeed, Sino-Eritrean relationship goes far beyond what appears on the surface. Eritrea and China's friendly relationship dates back to 1993. China was in fact the first country to establish diplomatic relations with sovereign...read more

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