When I say “An Eritrea Without Prisons”, I don’t mean it metaphorically. I mean it literally: what if we had an Eritrea without a single prison, jail or detention center? The focus is on the hypothetical, the “what if?” So, those of you who consider discussing the theoretical as a waste of time can leave now. In fact, you should leave now. I am serious: get out; in an article questioning the necessity of prison, we can’t have imprisoned readers. Those of you who choose to stay, I have no less of an ambition that to argue that prisons in Eritrea should be banned because they are introducing a toxic culture to the people.
Now, let’s unwrap this. My premise is this: the second worst thing humanity created after war (and its attendant horrors including enslavement) is prison. (1) I believe in some not-too-distant future, humanity will see prison the way it sees slavery now and (2) I am a Hobbesian: I believe that without law and order, the life of a human would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” So you are not getting an unrealistic pacifist who thinks roses and unicorns and a sprinkling of love magically solve everything. I am not even advocating for elimination of all prisons all over the world right now (because I want to narrow my scope); but calling for the elimination of all prisons all over Eritrea beginning now and for future generations.
- Eritrean Prisons
First, there are so many of them. Eritrea’s prisoner per 100,000 is yet another secret (in a country where even the census is a State secret) but our eyewitnesses and testimonials from victims and the enforcers of the system have given us an idea. It is in the hundreds, holding thousands, some in underground prisons, some in containers, some in jails, some in prisons, some in homes converted to prisons. And because the government is both perennially poor and systematically sadistic, it has invented ever-cruel and inhumane means to punish you. In many countries, treating pets the way the Eritrean mafia regime is treating you is a crime punishable by law. But in a lawless land, these prisons and jails and containers are the indefinite housing of people like you, and like your child, and like your parents and your siblings: arbitrarily arrested, forcibly disappeared, and scooped by a system which implements policies of ክሳብ ዝጻረ (roughly: “until its all clarified”) and ኣጽንሓለይ ሓደራ (“detain him/her for me, be my trustee!”), a culture that has jumped to Abiy’s Ethiopia but that’s not my business right now. They are imprisoned indefinitely because they are forgotten by favor-asker and favor-giver for decades. In the meantime, until they die or lose their faculties, some will be in forced labor building villas of corrupt generals, some will die in prison, but all we be forgotten, denied, denied everything (speech, religion, assembly, sunlight, private space to sleep), abandoned by society. Including by your own mothers, who are powerless to do anything but pray remotely.
Those are our jails and prisons and detention centers where a “necessary” amount of torture is practiced by the tools of sadism, and thus torture will also be part of your daily ritual. Because the government does not either understand, or agree with, the civilized way of dealing with humans. If you are hospitalized, you can think about your inevitable return to prison, for an uncertain term, when you get respite from the ravages of your illness. Its apologists have explained their casual attitude towards prisons brutally to us: it is something Alamin Mohammed Said may have said, or the Charge d’affaires to the US, but I can’t be sure it was, they all run together. He, they said: life in prison is not that different from life outside prison in Eritrea. The only difference is the prison has a purpose, a correctional facility to rehabilitate them. Had the regime not been filled with sadistic people, it would know the consensus is: torture is no more effective than other means to get information from people who have no idea what information they are asked to give. But no, they have improvised ever-sadistic means to torture: Helicopter, Jesus Christ, Otto being some of the more notorious. And so, when they say prison is no different from outside prison, they are not just talking about the food portions, but also the fact that people are tortured–specially in the military that swallows up the very young–even when they are not in confinement. You are tortured inside prison, you are tortured outside prison, so why are you blaming prisons?
It is not just the volume of the prisons, and the general state of awfulness; it is that they house everybody. Because the Eritrean government is all of the following: accuser, judge, jury, executioner, the country is littered with criminals and traitors. Shocking for a government with the One People, One Heart motto not really knowing how the imprisonment of One People affects All Our Hearts. Meanwhile, you, the citizen, can transform, from undetained-going-about-my-business to the disappeared in 60 seconds flat, or less, and you will never be present when you are suspected, accused, tried and sentenced. Consequently, in jail, one of the things you will be tortured to tell is why YOU think you are in jail. The escaped pilot Dejen Andehishel said that after a series of “why do you think you are in jail” interrogations, he came to understand that unless he gave them a theory as to why he thinks he is in jail, then he was implicitly accusing the government of arresting people without cause. This is, obviously, a crime. The transition from ordinary civilian (or soldier, or colonel) to imprisoned, disappeared, እንድዒ (‘I don’t know” because asking about the imprisoned can you get you imprisoned) is fast and mysterious. How you will be treated while in prison will be inhumane. If you get out, you won’t be the same person who went in. A prison warden who knew both the Mengistu regime and the Isaias regime was being interviewed on Paltalk, I think, and he said, “during the Mengistu era, if you go to prison illiterate, you will come out with a college degree. In the Isaias regime, if you go to prison with a college degree, you will come out illiterate– if you ever come out.” Everything about PFDJ’s prison system is designed to break you down and to strip you of your shreds of dignity, what you eat, what you endure, and being frog marched to defecate outdoors, or in small cans, and with total disregard for hygiene, including women’s essential sanitation needs. Governments are not allowed to treat prisoners of war the way the Eritrean mafia regime treats its citizens, partly because it is too poor to run a prison system that large, and partly because it is sadistic and does not believe in the sanctity of life. Only the sanctity of colonial borders.
2. Eritrean Prisoners
And the variety of prisoners! The old are guilty, the young are guilty, some of the founders of the Eritrean revolution and its early benefactors are guilty (Imaro, Haji Musa), those who led its revolutionary wars are guilty (Petros, Oqbe, Tewil), and those who were in the leadership of the PFDJ itself are guilty (Derue, Abdella Jaber, Germano Nati, Beraki Gebreselasse.) Men of cloth are guilty (Patriarch Antonios, and the dozens of Muslim religious teachers), women of faith are too (and sometimes they are guilty along with the child they may be breastfeeding.) Soldiers are guilty; civilians are guilty. This unquenchable thirst to imprison more and more is the inevitable outcome of the government’s perception that it’s encountering more and more civil disobedience and defiance: inevitable, because the other alternative–self-reflection and perhaps change–are not an option. Why change when you are infallible? Change is the one constant that Isaiasists fight to exhaustion: delaying the inevitable and, in their eyes, winning!
Now how to argue against this? With a flood? Let me try it and correct me if I deviate or misinterpret. Eritrea’s prison system is dangerous to Eritrean society. And, no, by that I don’t mean just that prison imprisons more than the prisoner: the extended Eritrean family pain, whose heart is full with sadness alternating with anger. It is more, because after the hurt and the anger is the settling into despair due to the sense of helplessness about your disappeared, and your imprisoned loved ones, about whom you may never ever get any closure. But that is too obvious and, besides, it is just friendly fire: ከኣልዎ (just take it!) Because ከኣልዎ is part of what defines you as an Eritrean: ጽንዓት: ሓቦ: ኒሕ (to quietly endure, to stubbornly stand, to persevere.) To behave any other way is unEritrean and you just added one more crime to your long list of crimes.
3. The Toxic Culture It Norms
The impact of this toxic culture is significant and may last generations: nurturing a sense of hopelessness about a once hopeful people and, given the population affected (all of Eritrea), it is all-enveloping. But, you may say, you are overstating it: this is a temporary side effect that will dissipate as soon as Isaias and PFDJ disappear. But there is more: submitted for your consideration: Societies have bonds of culture and wisdom that tie them together: a flag alone won’t do. Culture outlasts flags: it is a value system that enables society to enforce law and order and a spirit of tolerance, in the absence of laws and governments. But it has its ordinances, its sacred adages, its pillars. One of them is ጽልኣኒ: ፍትሒ ኣይትኽለኣኒ! (hate me all you want; don’t deny me justice); another is ናይ ክልተ ከይሰማዕካ ኣይትፍረድ (don’t pass judgement without hearing both sides of the story.) Lest people think this is all Tigrinya-centric, I don’t claim to know every tribe or custom in Eritrea but I do know that for a significant percent (we used to say 50%; ;but we have no census) of the population, the Eritrean Muslims’ Koran teaches: وَلَقَدْ كَرَّمْنَا بَنِي آدَمَ وَحَمَلْنَاهُمْ فِي الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ وَرَزَقْنَاهُم مِّنَ الطَّيِّبَاتِ وَفَضَّلْنَاهُمْ عَلَىٰ كَثِيرٍ مِّمَّنْ خَلَقْنَا تَفْضِيلً (“And We have certainly honored the children of Adam and carried them on the land and sea and provided for them of the good things and preferred them over much of what We have created, with [definite] preference”). Notice it is not saying ” we have honored believers”, “we have honored the faithful” or a favor bestowed on a segment of a population but all “Children of Adam” have inherent honor. That is, this is not a citizen’s right– one can argue you can’t have citizenship without constitution– but a human right. And if these statements of faith, and of accumulated wisdom are being violated daily, how many more generations before they are viewed as charming but ancient customs now voided in Hadas Ertra?
There is a reason why dictators are called authoritarians: they demand strict obedience. Recently, a comedian, in an interview, said some production company has not paid him anything despite his allowing it to re-broadcast his shows. He, a comedian, is now jailed. Why? They say (because there are never court proceedings), the production company he is bad-mouthing is owned by the Royal Family: Abraham Isaias Afwerki’s brother-in-law. So they say. It could very well be disinformation to hide even more scandalous reasons. They, the authoritarians, set an impossible goal of perfection: strict obedience from everyone all the time, no exception. Since that is not humanly possible, more prisons are needed. Just like they disagree, or don’t want to know, there are studies about the ineffectiveness of torture, they also either don’t know or disagree with the fact that multiplicity of prisons is not always directly related to safety and security. Japan has one of the lowest prisoners (per 100,000 residents) rate, and Brazil has one of the highest, but one can’t argue Brazil is safer. Or the US, with more prisons than any other nation, is safer. The Isaias Regime is in “More Prison, Safer Society” maximalist approach, damn its lawlessness.
To add more psychological torture to the physical one, in one of the most brazen gaslighting you have ever heard, the Isaias Regime describes itself as an adherent to all laws: domestic but specially, specially international. But not the international treaties it is a signatory to (including against torture and power monopoly and lack of due process) that it routinely ignores; just the one about border rulings. With Ethiopia, not Yemen. The border ruling in Yemen is being violated with UAE’s help. Whenever it is hauled somewhere to explain its inhumane behavior, it always defines itself as “civilized” and “lawful.” When its representatives are asked to present the sources for their law and civilization, they mention the PFDJ Charter (not law), and the Civil/Penal Codes and Procedures (which derive their authority from a non-existent constitution) and customary laws (but oh so selectively.) The Justice Minister quotes the Civil/Penal Codes regularly. So Ok, Ms Minister, how do I go about filling the right form to ensure that I have filled out a habeas corpus: request that you bring, say, my niece, disappeared as a minor 8 years ago, to a court of law? Isn’t that the law of the land? You have no idea? So, please stop gaslighting us, if you have the power over your own mouth that exhales words. So, on top of every reason I have given you above, the prison system also relies on a culture of lying. Consistent, prolonged, stretch of lies, layered over lies, until they are all woven together. Government officials lying about laws that were written for their own self-preservation: in 2015 to avert the march of the criminals from being referred to the ICC for committing crimes against humanity against the people, they wrote the Civil/Penal Code after announcing the death of the constitution. So, it is no more than a fig leaf, magnifying, not covering, their deceit. And it is to be expected from an organization that survived only by breaking the prevailing laws it operated under (Ethiopian occupation laws.) If you are hard-wired to break laws, you assume everybody else is too, and you keep building jails but you deny the one favor that was granted to you when YOU ran afoul of the law: family visitations.
4. So Won’t All This Go Away After Isaias/PFDJ Are Gone?
I have reason to be worried about the durability of this “New Culture.” A 50-year long indoctrination that EPLF/PFDJ has overseen is almost as long as Italian occupation of Eritrea. And Italy altered Eritrea forever. Similarly, if unchecked, PFDJ will alter Eritrea forever and for worse. So we need to think about all the cultures the PFDJ has drilled in, and to peel them off. For a number of reasons I mentioned above, the existence of prisons and jails–some inherited from the Italian era (Carcielli), some inherited from Americans (Track B), some brought forth from Nakfa (underground prisons), some improvised to enhance the sadism (containers)–is a blight on Eritrea and it will never let it heal unless it is depopulated.
5. And What Exactly Is The Alternative?
There is always crime, there are always criminals, so there must always be prisons? No, there must always be punishment, to punish the criminal, to deter future criminals. Punishment does not have to be jail. Let the prisoner be housed with whichever family member wants to keep him or her in detention. Bring in security anklets: restrict movement (punishment), but without the torture, abuse and de-humanization of the Eritrean in hostile territory of jails. We have been de-humanized long enough. There are countries, which are doing away with prisons, because prisons are both inhumane and ineffective at altering behavior. After all, are we any less civilized, as a country, than countries like Iceland?
The Eritrean government is too poor, too sadistic, too authoritarian to manage prisons humanely. Its culture of sadism and cruelty and inhumanity is seeping into the mainstream culture. You may argue that all I have made is a case for prison reform and not its elimination. Yeah, well, maybe: but my opening statement is going to be “let’s close all prisons” and you have to argue why they are necessary and why they are better than the alternative presented.
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