By Gebre Fessehazion,
No nation deserves a secondhand Love. In this case, Eritrea doesn’t need a secondhand love or emotion. No one loves his own mother with secondhand emotion. The same applies to your own country. Right or wrong the love and the support to your own country should be first above everything. Loving or supporting to your own country doesn’t make you a criminal or spy for that matter. Eritrea wants to be sure its defenses lying in our hands but not to rest in the palm of another “outsider”.
When the war broke out between Eritrea and Ethiopia 18 years ago, more than 75,000 of Eritreans and Ethiopians origin of Eritrea have been deported illegally from Ethiopia. And the Ethiopian government’s main reason was: “because we don’t like the color of your eyes”. But I never thought such similar version of action would happen in the Netherlands.
A typical example is the case of Meseret Bahlbi who have been deliberately accused and without any a shred of evidence as an Eritrean government spy by Prof. Mirjam van Reisen simply because he loves and supports his own country as every Eritrean living in the Netherlands do.
According to Prof. Mirjam van Reisen, all more than 7,000 Eritreans living in the Netherlands are spies or in her own meaning the “pivot of the intelligence service in Eritrea.” This is a preposterous tale of the modern day.
As we recall, a similar event happened in 2012. The Eritrean-Dutch citizens were deprived from their basic rights of holding their annual Festival.
Every year Eritreans living in the Netherlands have been holding annual Festivals for last 13 years. The annual Eritrean Festival offers wonderful and unique opportunity to introduce Eritrean cultures and traditions, and meet and share with Eritreans from all over the Netherlands.
The participants would have been provided with a fun and creative environment for networking and discovery. The audience also would have get a glimpse into the Eritrean culture through different colorful cultural performances, music and dance, arts and crafts, exhibitions, educational seminars, discussion forums, as well as fun activities for the children and youth.
Unfortunately, that year’s festival, which was planned for August of 2012, was cancelled due to distorted information fed to some Dutch officials by a couple of Eritrean opposition members that we call them -“traitors”.
Besides that, the Dutch’s main news paper Volkskrant recently gone wild by reporting unsubstantiated stories about Eritrea and Eritreans living in Holland. The members of Eritrean communities across the Netherlands were outraged by the false accusations, which was reported in the newspaper for last two or three months.
According to the Dutch daily News paper Volkskrant, of December 2015, the COA (Centraal Organ opvang asielzoekers) officials, without having any concrete evidence, has accused Eritrean Church in Rotterdam for alleged sex abuse of under age girls. This is a ridiculous and utterly absurd even to think of that.
Every precious human being deserves a chance to gather, to meet, pray together in church or have a festival as far as the public’s peace is not disturbed. There is a saying that goes like “innocent until proven guilty“. This is a principle that requires the government to prove the guilt of a person and relieves the defendant of any burden to prove his or her innocence. Therefore, the COA officials should have studied their case before jumping to a quick decision.
It is important the Dutch journalists to have a first-hand knowledge about Eritreans and verify the false accusations, which was reported on the main news papers, but they need to visit the Eritrean community centers that are located throughout the Netherlands.
When you fulfill the request of a few disgruntled individuals against the majority of Eritreans who love overwhelmingly their country and support the Eritrean government by denying their basic rights, or as what is happening here in the Netherlands recently … that is what makes it so pretended for Dutch officials to rejoice in their decisions.
As far as the Eritreans are concerned, every false accusation are either politically motivated or originated from some evil-minded, disgruntled individuals.
Watch out the so-called “opposition” groups or individuals. Eritrea doesn’t want your secondhand love.
