Photo/Somali Times
The Presidents of Somalia and Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki and Mohammed Abdullahi Farmajo, held extensive talks at the State House. The leaders focused on strengthening the framework for Eritrea-Somalia cooperation and strengthening a strong and independent Somalia.
The two leaders agreed to renew the Asmara Agreement in 2018 which highlighted the importance of territorial, political and unity of Somalia. The two leaders also agreed to redouble ongoing efforts for regional integration based on the Tripartite Agreement signed by Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.
Talks between the two sides will continue until this afternoon, and the president is expected to leave the country this afternoon.
Why is the world ignoring Isaias Afwerki?
Isaias Afwerki is an obscure dictator living in diplomatically isolated country. Until recently, he dodged the watchful eyes of the international community. Once considered a hero and a charismatic leader, his psychopathic qualities were exposed soon after he formed the transitional government of the state of Eritrea. But his close associates knew of his character since 1966 when he joined the armed struggle. From the onset he rejected political pluralism and the exiled political forces.
With the limited information available to the outside world it is hard to put Isaias in his proper position; there is limited opportunity to know Isaias Afwerki’s real personality.
A president who rules a country that has over 10,000 political and religious prisoners, and its people fleeing at a rate of 5000 per month for more than a decade, and which has more than 300 prison camps but with no university, a country that shuts all free press, detains a patriarch, that has no constitution, and that has imposed compulsory and indefinite military service, and is ruled by a leader who is accused of atrocities should be on the top of the list.
According to New Internationalist reports Production with nervous bureaucrats stamping out anything remotely controversial or just for the joy of exercising arbitrary censorship. In a particularly Orwellian touch, the ministry also runs semi-military prison centres. The overall prison regime is ubiquitous with some 360 ‘correctional facilities’ run mostly by military commanders. Political prisoners (some of them former freedom fighters) are left to rot in a secret prison called Eiraeiro, enduring food shortages and temperatures over 50°C, with no medical treatment.
A signpost of Eritrea’s decline is Black Tuesday (18 September 2001) when Afwerki stamped out a lively journalistic scene by banning seven independent newspapers and imprisoning 11 senior government officials. His hatchet man Naizghi Kiflu (minister of information at the time) proclaimed that journalists were ‘a bunch of rodents’. There are currently 16 journalists behind bars and Eritrea ranks at the bottom of the press freedom index maintained by Reporters Without Borders. Civil society, any political opposition and even mild criticism are virtually extinct.