Written by: Mejlis Ibrahim Mukhtar

Reviving the Eritrean covenant: We, the authors of this statement,

are a diverse group of civic-minded Eritreans who come from all walks of life, from inside Eritrea and the Diaspora and from different ethnic, regional, and political background and persuasions. Individually, like many ordinary Eritreans, we have been involved in varying degrees in Eritrea’s struggle for independence.

Since 1991, we have been speaking out on behalf of all Eritreans against the injustices perpetuated by the PFDJ ethnocratic regime(2), We invariably have done so while advocating the urgent need for constructive dialog, national reconciliation, and the principle of unity through diversity as the cornerstones of peace, stability and justice in Eritrea, but unfortunately with little prospect for a meaningful change. After years of wrestling with the decision of how best to broach these difficult issues, we have reached a consensus to speak out as a group following the long tradition of Eritrean Muslims of resisting oppression and domination that started in the 1940’s and decidedly gave rise to the development of many patriotic movements and eventual independence.

However, seventy years later, the very just demand for fairness and equality that spurred the independence movement remains elusive for Eritrean Muslims.

The need for us to consider speaking out collectively has become ever more important and urgent especially in this post 911 era where politics of fear is opportunistically peddled by the ruling clique in Asmara and some politicians in the opposition.

In this statement, we examine these issues in the context of the overall deteriorating situation in Eritrea that prompted us to speak out, and the attendant threats of the PFDJ’s ethnocratic policies to the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between Eritrean Christians and Muslims.

We speak out so as to heighten public awareness of these critical issues and their wider implications of these conflicts to the future of our country’s security and prosperity.

We hereby attempt to re-ignite the spirit of initiative-taking and fighting injustice, hoping to eradicate the state of indifference, opportunism, and narrow self-interest now rampant among many. Most importantly, we urge all fair minded Eritreans to be creative and resourceful in coming up with practical solutions to these decades-old conflicts-conflicts that without a doubt remain as impediments to our efforts to make up for the lost seven decades of missed opportunities for social and economic developments and for the chance to compete in regional, if not in global, markets. These issues are far too important and complex to be left to politicians alone.

Thus, from this new and fresh perspective and in a constructive spirit that seeks to promote a win-win solution for all Eritreans, we have decided to voice our concerns and views on the challenges we face and on the possible ways forward towards a new, democratic, and more inclusive common future.

We firmly believe that these challenges, though seemingly insurmountable, could be resolved if we apply radically different and transformative approaches.

Throughout our historical struggle, there have been many challenges and setbacks, but there were also opportunities that were missed that could have pointed the way forward to a more just society.

In these challenging times, we have a narrow window of opportunity that we all must seize if we are to build a prosperous, peaceful, and stable country that we all can collectively call home.

I. Objectives:

1. To assert our rights and to restate our core values, aspirations, and guiding principles with regard to Eritrea and Eritreans, we have authored this document as a position statement hoping it would serve as:

a) A cautionary narration of the deteriorating situation in Eritrea and its implications for Eritrea’s national unity and the peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians.

b) An educational tool for those who may not be fully aware of the legal, social, and economic status of Eritrean Muslims.

c) A unified and fairly representative position statement and a platform for dialogue among Eritreans in an attempt to create a healthy environment.

d) A discussion paper to stimulate discussions for possible solutions and a way forward towards resolving our society’s most precarious conflicts.

2. What follows is an articulation of some of the pressing issues that Muslims deeply care about and which inspired this initiative. It is only meant to be one starting point with recommendations that advance the scales of justice in the right direction.

Understandably, some of the conflicts are easy to address and resolve; others will be more difficult and cannot be addressed in the absence of a legitimate, representative government.

Eritrean Muslims understand this and will be patient as long as they see genuine efforts being made to resolve these conflicts. These issues should not and cannot be postponed till some future post-PFDJ Eritrea. They need to be part of the ongoing national dialog for democratic change in Eritrea.

3. Eritrea’s Moment: At this historical juncture, we seize this moment to speak out now because we have become increasingly concerned by the following recent developments which have exacerbated the already troubling situation:

a) The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on the Eritrean regime on Dec 2009 for its destructive role in destabilizing Somalia and refusing to negotiate with Djibouti to resolve the border issue.

The UN resolutions text epitomizes the frustrations felt by international and regional organizations, in dealing with the Isaias regime’s military adventure in Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, and now Djibouti. Undoubtedly, the arms embargo puts Eritrea in a precarious position to defend itself as it has become a pariah state in the eye of the international community.

The resolution had the support of the African Union, and this is the only time in the history of this continental organization that it has called for sanctions against a member state. In 1974, the OAU had called for sanctions against the racist white minority regime in South Africa, but the Apartheid regime was not a member state of the organization. The sanctions are therefore unprecedented and indicative of the gravity of the situation.

b) The outcry and denunciations of the recent state-sponsored land grabbing and resettlement campaigns in the Lowlands. Facing current and pending food shortage as a result of its outdated policies and failed practices, the regime has formally announced in its Dec 2009 cabinet meeting that resettlement of farmers from the Highlands to Lowlands will be among its top priority.

c) Since the year 2000, army conscripts’ desertion to neighbouring countries and with women no longer being forcibly conscripted, has radically changed the composition of the Eritrean Defence Force (4).

Still, Tigrinya-speaking Christians, although according to reliable sources make up less than 50% in the army, continue to constitute more than 90 percentile of the upper echelon of the state apparatus, including the military (5), an imbalance that has been a source of political tensions in the society at large and insubordination and declining morale in the army.

The tension is also partly due to the fact that Muslims deeply resented the use of national conscription as a principal means for promoting the Tigrignization of the Eritrean society.

d) Moreover, the border war stalemate has taken its toll on Eritrean society over the last ten years and with no end in sight. The daily ongoing desertion did not escape the Ethiopian regime’s attention which seeks to weaken Eritrea through a war of attrition. Lack of information on the Eritrean army’s compositions, cohesion, and morale has and will likely constrain EU and US policy-makers from taking tougher positions against the regime for fear of introducing more uncertainties to the region. Some politicians, who for sectarian reasons wish to keep the ethnocratic regime intact after removing the dictator or by making a deal with him, use this inherent uncertainty and play the ’Somali chaos’ fear card.

e) More visibly, whenever there is a roundup of draft dodgers, some residents of the Eritrean Highlands misdirect their resentments towards those who conduct them, who often are disproportionately Muslims from the Lowlands. We are alarmed by this and several other reported incidents of ethnic and religious tensions between the army and civilians.

f) Anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of the youth fleeing conscription are Christian Tigrigna speakers from the Highlands. This evokes painful memories in our history when one segment of our society is perceived to be less committed to national causes. The regime’s controversial policy of shoot to kill at the border is often not enforced by those who ethnically relate to the deserters and thus view it as an act of fratricide, which in turn puts them at odds with those who resent being left behind to defend the country.

g) The June 2009 ethnic unrest in the east of Akel Guzay drew wide support and solidarity from the local Eritrean Muslim community spurred by anger at the arrest of family members of the insurrectionist conscripts and the confiscations of their properties. The unrest started when a Muslim captain attempted to stop his commander from coercing a young Muslim conscripted girl as to become his concubine, a dreadful common practice of the ruling clique and its military leaders.

h) After the 2000 border war, and after realizing the devastating effects of a failed policy of drafting women to the army, the regime stopped rounding them up while still punishing them by denying them access to education, jobs, and exit visas. Many Eritrean Muslim women in the rural areas have been denied access to education because their parents would not allow them to be drafted and perhaps used as concubines for the regime’s corrupt officers. An IMF report states that the gender gap in education is much wider than it was before Eritrea’s indpendence (6).

i) Since 1991, the PFDJ regime has continuously created obstacles for the half a million Eritrean Muslim refugees to return to their homeland and continues to treat Eritrean Muslims as second class citizens.

j) The PFDJ regime failed to create a political and economic space under which all segments of the Eritrean society can live in peace and harmony.

k) The often condescending and sometimes hostile attitudes towards Eritrean Muslims by some groups in the opposition, as evidenced by their deliberate and exclusionary practices, have also added urgency to the need to voice our concerns over their indifference and insensitivity towards the plight of Eritrean Muslims, especially to the question of the refugees’ right of return, and the most recent land grabbing and resettlement campaigns.

l) Eritrean Muslims do not have Western lobbyists and interest groups who advocate their cause and fight for their interest.

4. The formal, state-sanctioned land grab policy became the tipping point that gave the majority of Eritrean Muslims sufficient reason to conclude that a long suspected ethnic cleansing policy of depopulating the Lowlands and subsequently resettling them with people from the Highlands was finally being consummated.

The misguided policies, reckless actions, and ethnocratic attitudes of the PFDJ regime have undermined our national unity and exacerbated the political, historical, socio-economic disparities between the two segments of Eritrean society.

5. On the one hand, we are encouraged to see the regime is being abandoned daily by its rank and files who are rejecting its divisive policies of pitting Eritreans against each other along regional, ethnic, and religious lines; we are also encouraged that the struggle for justice has now created a strong force of diverse Eritreans who represent the true Eritrean mosaic and carry the banner of justice and fairness.

II. Eritrean Peoples Diversity:

1. Rather than allowing Eritreans to be characterized by Nehnan Ealamanan7 (We and our Goals, hereafter NE) manifesto that divides the people along arbitrary linguistic lines, we hereby exercise our unalienable rights to express and assert who we are and how we wish to be characterized. All Eritreans, without exception, have the right to be what they choose to be and their overlapping identities should be recognized and respected. This is the only way that all Eritreans regardless of their cultural, regional, or religious background can coexist peacefully and with equality, sharing power and resources for mutual benefit and in accordance with fundamental principles of justice.

2. Islam and Christianity are genuinely indigenous to Eritrea and were well established ahead of many parts of the world. Christianity entered the region in less than 300 years after the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, while Islam entered our region when the Prophet Mohammed was still being chased by his own tribe in the city of Mecca, the holiest place for Muslims. As such, the faiths of Eritreans are deeply rooted in their history and would accept neither over-bidding on their faith nor belittling their historical claim to their faith.

3. We recognise that Eritreans are a product of centuries of migration and interaction between different peoples and civilizations in the Horn of Africa, and Eritrea is home to all its citizens regardless of their faith or ethnic affiliation.

4. Muslims and Christians lived side by side for centuries, for the most part in peace and mutual respect, and for decades they fought side by side to rid themselves of Ethiopian occupation. Today, Eritrean Muslims are struggling alongside their fellow Eritreans from all faiths to bring about freedom and justice to Eritrea.

5. Eritrea is a country of mainly dual heritage: Islamic and Christian traditions and kinships; the religious impulse runs deep and is tightly woven into the fabric of the society.

6. No reliable official census has been taken but estimates (including those of the Government of Eritrea) put the proportion of Muslims and Christians in Eritrea as more or less equal.

7. Eritrean Muslims recognize that Eritrea’s cultural communities have cross-border extensions as well: while the Christians of the Highlands find their religious and cultural kin inside Ethiopia similar to the Jeberti and the Saho speaking tribes; Muslims of the Western regions find it across the border in Sudan; and some Eritrean Muslims who inhabit the coastal regions of the Red Sea find their extensions across the Red Sea, while Afar Eritreans have their kin inside Ethiopia and Djibouti; and the Kunama have their kin in Ethiopia.

8. The social structure of Eritrean Muslims has always been greatly influenced by Islam; and the Muslim society is an evolving structured society partly influenced by sedentary, pastoralist and agro-pastoralist lifestyles and partly by urban experiences and characteristics that can only prosper in an environment of justice and equality.

9. Arabic is the store of Muslim civilization. To Eritrean Muslims, it is an important part of their heritage and their medium of education since time immemorial. Furthermore, Arabic has been a matter of agreement among Eritreans in all their protocols, including the 1952 constitution. The current ruling regime has made it its task to weaken and destroy Eritrea’s Arabic heritage both as a medium and as a culture.

10. Eritrean Muslims do not appreciate the fact that their multi-layered identities and their choice of Arabic language as a medium is considered identity crisis by the ruling regime and those who subscribe to its values. Eritrean Muslims are aware that they are a product of many ethnic roots and use diverse languages and dialects that they want to preserve; but they do not accept their many dialects and languages to be tools for their disunity.

11. Taking into consideration the exception of the weighty major presence of Muslims in the Highlands, and of the counter-presence of Christians and adherents of indigenous belief systems in the Lowlands, the religious factor is primarily the major factor that defines the Eritrean person’s psyche together with ethnic or clan affiliations and geographic locations.

12. In order to create an ethnic based political clientele, the ruling clique characterizes Eritrean Christians by a vaguely defined ‘Tigrigna’ as an identity name. Using language as the only attribute to classify the Eritrean people was first enunciated in the NE manifesto as advancing rights of all nationalities, though in reality it was a political objective to camouflage the clique’s sectarian nature. Though many Eritrean Christians seem to have accepted the adaptation of the “Tigrigna” name as a category of identification for themselves, we believe this should not be imposed on the Jeberti who do not accept that classification; as well as other groups who do not accept the PFDJ’s classifications.

III. Background:

1. Eritrean Muslims reject the revision of history that has been taking place since the inception of the Isaias-led organization and policies which are being pursued persistently ever since the independence of Eritrea. We thus strive to offer a national narration of Eritrea’s collective memory from our perspective. We hope that one of the outcomes of the truth and reconciliation process we are calling for would give an accurate account and reconcile the different national narratives of what has transpired in the last 70 years.

2. Eritrean Muslims are aware that the first crack in the anti-colonial struggle appeared in Bet Giorgis8 in 1947 when Ethiopia used its funds, terror, and influence over the Orthodox Church to gain supporters in its attempt to incorporate Eritrea. Eritrean Muslims found themselves at a crossroads when they were aggressively pressured to support partitioning Eritrea so that they can join their Muslim brethren in Sudan. But through the steadfast struggle of their representative party, Rabita Al-Islamiya9, they rejected partition and fought to stay with their Christian brothers in the only country they knew, Eritrea. This wish was realized when a minority Christian party joined them and the Independence Bloc was formed. Eritrean Muslims grudgingly settled for federation with Ethiopia, fighting within the federal framework to ensure equality for all Eritreans until that arrangement was also violated by Ethiopia and its Unionist supporters.

3. It was in response to the continued violation of the federal arrangement and Eritrea’s autonomous constitution that Muslim exiles in Sudan first launched the Eritrean Liberation Movement10 (Haraka), and subsequently the Eritrean Liberation Front, which fought to regain the violated rights of liberty and freedom.

4. After forcibly annexing Eritrea, Ethiopia continued to use the Christian Orthodox Church to lure Eritrean Christians into supporting its occupation designs. Unfortunately, many took the bait and aided Ethiopian aggression for some time. But by the early 1970s, increasingly larger numbers of Christians joined the independence movement and steadfastly stood alongside Muslims in the call for independence; their historic and heroic joint struggle is a solid record securely placed in history.

5. The era of the armed struggle witnessed a welcome event as Eritrean Christians swelled the ranks of fighters, injected a fresh zeal into the movement and brought it much closer towards becoming more representative of the population at large.

6. But it was not long before the movement faced some serious challenges and was forced early in its history to grapple with internal conflicts of a religious nature (for which it was ill prepared)—a small group of Christians under the leadership of Isaias accused the predominantly Muslim leadership of the time of discrimination, killings, and persecution of Christians. We believe that the accusations of the claimed killings, including that of Srryet Addis11, which became a rallying cry, must be properly investigated along with the killings that were a result of those who defected to Ethiopia or spied on their fellow citizens.

7. Isaias Afwerki, the current dictator of Eritrea, gathered around him like-minded people mostly composed of Christian Highlanders. He quietly hatched a movement that was bent on monopolizing power in Eritrea through a small chauvinistic sectarian clique of the Highlands that never slept until it took control of the Eritrean struggle and monopolized the resistance. This eventually resulted in a joint assault on the ELF12 in collaboration with the TPLF13, thus pushing the ELF outside the country.

8. The venomous NE Manifesto penned in those days became the rallying cry for all sorts of enmity and prejudice against Eritrean Muslims. The anti Muslim sentiments that we see rampant today did not just suddenly sprout out of nothing, they are deep rooted. The current prejudice that continues unabated in one form or another to this day is the direct outgrowth of the seed that was planted in the past by Isaias Afwerki and his clique who later nurtured and perfected these sentiments and raised them to new heights.

9. Despite the lengthy religious polemics the NE Manifesto spouts, the amelioration of Christian suffering was not Isaias’ concern; far more Christian fighters were labelled Menka’a14 and other labels and killed by Isaias’ death squad than those Isaias claimed to have been killed by the ELF leadership—Muslim victims of the ELF outnumber those of Christians.

10. As his illustrious career amply proved later, Isaias was consumed by two enduring passions; a) deep hatred of Muslims (as was evident by the anti-Muslim rancour discernible throughout the document as well as by his subsequent speeches and crackdown on Muslims), and, b) an insatiable lust for power which became the hallmark of the style of his leadership, which is the driving force behind his ongoing tyrannical grip over our nation.

11. Historical truthfulness requires us to note that Muslim leaders played a destructive role in igniting the fratricidal battles that wasted the lives of many Eritrean combatants; the manifestations of these wars have exasperated the disunity of Eritrean Muslims that still carries unhealed wounds that show up in the form of regional and ethnic schisms; we call upon all Eritreans to leave historical political differences and other destructive experience to the annals of history and move on recognizing that the civil war of the early seventies was mainly an intra-Muslim conflict that Isaias exploited to consolidate his power. We should also note that he has embraced many ex-operatives of the Ethiopian occupational regimes, while Muslims remain prisoners to their differences of the past.

12. Historical truthfulness also requires us to note that it was Eritrean Muslims who flocked en masse to embrace the independence movement in its formative years and it was upon them that the full arsenal of Ethiopia’s wrathful vengeance was unleashed when Ethiopia embarked on a horrible mission of mass massacres and uprooting of Muslims as a punishment. Historical records show, and living eyewitness recount the gruesome, merciless reign of terror that swept across Muslim villages and towns destroying lives, property, and everything else in its path.

13. Entire villages were razed to the ground; men, women, and infants were indiscriminately slaughtered; pillaging, armed aggression, rape, and massacre in the Muslim regions became a favourite pastime of the Ethiopian military (with some help, we are sad to note, from Eritrean Christian Commandos who collaborated with them) before atrocities engulfed the whole country.

14. The after-effects of this historical nightmare are truly incalculable in terms of its human cost: displacement, family disruption, educational deprivation, starvation, and marginalization that contributed greatly to Eritrean Muslims’ current underprivileged status.

15. Eritrean Muslims are still suffering from the repercussions of those injustices and are determined to fight back relentlessly; they adamantly refuse to surrender or to abandon their cause and will continue to struggle for the general wellbeing of their country alongside their Eritrean compatriots.

16. Like all Eritreans, Muslims were jubilant when Eritrea became independent with the defeat of Ethiopian forces in 1991. Like the majority of Eritreans, they enthusiastically and overwhelmingly voted in mass for independence in the 1993 referendum, believing their suffering and marginalization will finally come to an end.

17. The hopes of Eritrean Muslims were quickly dashed when the course of events conspired to bring about Isaias at the helm of power. His post-independence actions clearly showed that he never let go of his old hatred for Eritrean Muslims. Soon after independence, the worst fears of Eritrean Muslims came true when his regime unveiled a series of draconian measures against them. Eritrean Muslims have been singled out more and suffered more (comparatively speaking) both under Ethiopian occupation and under the Isaias’ dictatorship, which left them weaker, poorer, and more disadvantaged.

18. Throughout the era of the liberation struggle, the image that Isaias and his regime cultivated with the help of Western journalists and academics as being ‘different from the rest of Africans’ has been shattered following the crackdown of 2001. Disguised as reporters or human right activists, a handful of Westerners have done more to damage Christian–Muslim relations than any of the enemy’s propaganda could have; some never seem to have left their destructive roles.

IV. Current Situation & Background:

1. Having lived and suffered the brunt of successive meddling and repression by Ethiopia, Eritrean Muslims are deeply concerned about the current border stalemate. Even though Ethiopia has accepted the arbitral court ruling, we urge Ethiopia to allow demarcation process to start immediately.

2. Eritrean Muslims are committed to good neighbourliness with all neighbouring peoples in their cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, and insist on policies that foster peaceful coexistence in the region and beyond.

3. For the entire period of the struggle, most Muslims and Christians shared common dreams and aspirations that didn’t materialize due to the coming to power of an oppressive regime.

4. We understand that in politics there are two essential tendencies, 1) an inclusive one that desires to extend resources as widely as possible, consistent with principles of equality and 2) an exclusive one that desires to control, limit the distribution of resources or gives greater control to particular groups. The latter is the prevalent tendency in today’s Eritrea.

5. We understand that the ultimate aim of power is the control of resources. Sometimes these resources are intangible, such as freedom, empowerment, access to decision-making and education, and at other times they are tangible, such as food, water and shelter. In Isaias’ Eritrea, a small ethno-centric minority has a grip on the state apparatus allowing itself a monopoly of power and public resources. It has used such monopoly to prolong its stay in power.

6. We do not have any doubt that the entire Eritrean society is suffering from dictatorial repression of a devastating kind. Muslims are working closely with all peace loving groups inside and outside Eritrea in the general struggle to rid their country from the yoke of oppression. But, Muslims, like other particular cultural or religious communities have their own unique and specific concerns that must be addressed separately.

7. Essentially, the pattern in Eritrea is the familiar one: a regime that refuses to give up or share power, and in defence of that power develops a pattern of worsening human rights abuses that in turn lead to greater reluctance to share power for fear of being held accountable for its abuses.

8. We believe that Eritrea is no different than any other African country, and if the PFDJ oppressive regime stays in power any longer, Eritrea might follow the path of other African countries in which one group dominates the political, social and economic life of the country to the exclusion of other groups, thus, ushering in prolonged conflicts and violence.

9. As Eritreans struggle for a peaceful coexistence, a sound understanding of the challenges that face them, in terms of who is their real enemy, is of paramount importance. We firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of Eritreans, both Muslims and Christians, want to coexist and live peacefully. The source of disharmony in the society is primarily the ruling clique that is responsible for the worsening of historical imbalances and inequalities in the country.

10. The privileged clique is a small minority that is mostly made up of Tigrinya-speaking men, Christian Highlanders who now are in their 60’s and whose number is estimated to be a maximum of several hundreds. They ascended to power by forming a clandestine sectarian wing within the EPLF15 and took the NE manifesto as a blue print to hijack the national liberation movement.

11. Colonial Legacy: As in any anti-colonial struggle in Africa, a privileged group is created by colonizers and left behind to continue colonial practices; it divides and rules perceiving itself as distinct from the rest of the population, and attributes its privileged status and claim to power in some kind of ethnic superiority—neither Eritrea’s ruling regime nor its offshoot from the intra clique squabble is in this regard an exception. The clique’s sense of entitlement to rule and to impose unapologetically its language on others stems from its supremacist belief of having superior and distinct traits that has enabled it to amass power and dominance. In reality, the ruling ethnocratic clique itself owes its existence to Ethiopian colonial rule. It is a by-product and a once beneficiary of the Ethiopian occupation during which it had enjoyed power, privilege, jobs, education and access to state resources to be empowered. It is regrettable that this privileged clique is following the same sectarian policies that were once used by the Ethiopian occupation.

12. Some Eritreans are using the PFDJ constitution, which was crafted without the consent and against the wishes of the majority of Eritrean Muslims, as yet another blue print to institutionalize their power and privileges. We believe this group neither represents the majority of Christians, who are suffering severe economic hardship while their human and civil rights are being violated, nor identifies with the vast majority of Eritrean Muslims who are suffering persecution, de facto exclusion, institutionalized discrimination, and systematic disfranchisement.

13. Unfortunately, there is a small group of opportunist Christians who attach themselves to the regime’s autocratic patronage systems for economic benefits. Sadly, there is also a small but vocal group of Eritrean Christians, mostly in Western countries, who, out of parochial loyalty, are trying to prop up the predatory regime whose very survival hinges on the chances of one single man at its helm staying alive. The latter group, with its bigotry and hate mongering campaigns, has done incalculable damage to our national unity, damages that may have surpassed that of the Unionist Party campaign of terror in the 1940’s.

14. Vast Disparities: Since the end of WW2 when the Italian colonization ended and the British Military Administration took over the country, followed by a compromise settlement that federated Eritrea with Imperial Ethiopia, Eritrean Muslims have gone through a religious, political, social and economic upheaval that has destroyed their communal structures. Their capacity for self-sustenance is being further undermined by the regime’s policies.

15. The socio-economic disparity today is a direct result of Ethiopia’s scorched earth policy that left the Lowlands’ social economic structure destroyed following the burning of hundreds of villages in the Lowlands in the late 1960s that resulted in a half a million Eritreans to take refuge in Sudan.

16. The impact of the virtually destroyed Lowlands is still felt today. The disparity is a remnant of a colonial vestige, scars from the Ethiopian colonial wounds that the PFDJ regime did not want to heal. In the past eighteen years, the PFDJ regime has not done anything meaningful to rebuild the Lowland’s economic and social life or allow refugees to return to rebuild their ancestral home.

17. All fair-minded Eritreans recognize, and the data shows that, though equal stakeholders in the country, Eritrean Muslims are treated as second-class citizens by the ruling clique in their own country. And since the abrogation of the federal arrangement by the Ethiopian occupiers, Eritrean Muslims have been denied their fair share of power and suffered gross injustices under ruthless successive governments, resulting in the deterioration of their economic, social and educational lives. This has not improved since 1991 and the policies of the PFDJ regime have made the situation of Eritrean Muslims worse.

18. Only two Islamic civil societies (Qur’an Recitation Group that teaches children the Qur’an and Awqaf (Endowments) Committee that provides funeral services) that have been in existence since the Italian rule have been allowed to operate in Eritrea while there are dozens of international and domestic Christian civil societies in Eritrea. Muslim Awqaf, administering real estate properties, has been long nationalized by the state under the pretext of inability to pay taxes. Christian institutions were able to claim their properties because they were able to raise funds from overseas while Muslims are banned from funding any kind of social or development projects in Eritrea.

19. There is enough evidence for the apartheid like socio economic system that the PFDJ regime has established in Eritrea since 1991 through a network of ethnocratic patronage system.

20. Christians from the highlands make up the overwhelming majority, often in the high 90 percentile, of Eritreans awarded access to post elementary education, scholarship to study and train abroad, admission to local colleges, government employment15, political assignment, governorship, assignment in diplomatic missions, management of state owned enterprises, military and civilian leadership, national and local administration. Basically, the whole state apparatus is exclusively ethnic based, it neither reflects a national characteristic nor the diversity of the Eritrean people.

21. The list of grievances of Eritrean Muslims are too long to enumerate here but they include religious discrimination, marginalization, torture, murder by death squads, abduction, closing of traditional Muslim Schools; harassment; persecution of religious leaders and scholars; imposition of government appointed religious leaders; systematic uprooting and forceful settlements in Muslims’ lands; cultural and moral domination among other things.

22. Eritrean Muslims lived wholeheartedly by the credo, “give me liberty or give me death,” abandoning their livelihood, their social status, their villages, their wealth, and their very dear lives in the pursuit of freedom and independence; they received no liberty but suffered a lot of death; and those who survived find themselves excessively disadvantaged by the policies of the PFDJ regime in their own country and in the Diaspora.

23. Muslims never had-for as long as they could remember-equal participatory power in the affairs of the nation and always ended up holding, as it were, the short end of the stick in all affairs. In terms of opportunity, access to resources, and political power, they had been, and continue to be, an underprivileged group.

24. Eritrean Muslims as a whole were the first to call for an independent and free Eritrea and they were among the first to identify and oppose the tyrannical regime of Isaias.

25. Naturally, Eritrean Muslims cannot hope for their status to change (it may even get worse) under the Isaias regime. They are pinning their hope instead on the post-PFDJ era which hopefully will herald a period of peace, justice, and democracy.

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