Asmara Eritrea - May 16 2008

 

Preparations to enthusiastically celebrate the 17th Independence Day Anniversary are now clearly visible all over Asmara. Professional painters are decorating the shop windows. Flags, banners and light strings are mounted on facades and lamp-posts. Both private and public institutions are decorating their buildings, propagating this years theme ‘Our United Resistance: The Guarantee of our Freedom and Progress.’

Walking through Asmara, to visit institutions to update our Eritrean information pages, and to visit the family of me and  my Eritrean wife, also is a nice opportunity to watch this unique devotion of the Eritrean people, adorning their city to celebrate the 1991 victory, after 30 years solitary and bitter struggle for independence.

May 24 Independence Day is the most significant National Holiday in Eritrea, with all respect to June 20 Martyr's Day, when the Eritreans both honor and mourn those who gave their lives to achieve and safeguard Eritrea as a sovereign nation.

All but one African nation were being handed their freedom on a golden platter in the mid 1950's and early 1960's. Eritrea and its people were not experiencing that luck at the time. Due to the strategic importance of Eritrea, and United States involvement, the country and its people were handed over to Ethiopia in 1952. Independence was won in a thirty year struggle at an unfathomable price. The word 'independence' therefore has a very special meaning when used in the Eritrean context.

It is an ongoing struggle, because of the still prevailing 'no war no peace' situation *) and the (US backed) Ethiopian attempts to literally starve out the Eritrean dream of sovereignty. Eritrea's economy has been negatively affected by this ongoing US - Ethiopian conspiracy, worsened by fluctuations in the world marked and rising food and oil prices.

Eritrea is committed to self-development with dignity, relying first and foremost on its own people for economic and social development, as well as political independence. This policy is conflicting with US dreams to rule the world and acquiring military US hotspots in the Horn of Africa.

 

Decorated shop window - Harnet Avenue Asmara Eritrea.

Yordanos and Fethawit - Sembel Asmara Eritrea.

Main street - Sembel Asmara Eritrea.

Lion Hotel - Tiravolo Asmara Eritrea.

Decorated apartments - Denden Street Asmara Eritrea.

Decorated gold smith's shop window - Nakfa Avenue Asmara Eritrea.

Decorated Pasticceria Moderna - Harnet Avenue Asmara Eritrea.

Sweet Asmara Caffe - Harnet Avenue Asmara Eritrea.

Illuminated streets of Asmara - Semaetat Avenue Asmara Eritrea.

Illuminated shop window - Semaetat Avenue Asmara Eritrea.

 

---

 *) December 12, 2000 Eritrea and Ethiopia signed a peace agreement in Algiers, after a 2 1/2-year border war.

Article 4, sub article 15 reads as follows: “The parties agree that the delimitation and demarcation of the Commission shall be final and binding. Each party shall respect the border so determined as well as territorial integrity and sovereignty of the other party”.

On April 13th 2002 the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague published the conclusions of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission.

In September 2003 Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, formally informed the Security Council that Ethiopia rejected the decisions of the International Boundary Commission (arbitration of the International Court in the Hague). He declared the proposed 1 000 km international border drafted by the commission as "null and void".

This disrespect of Ethiopia for the decisions of the Court of Justice in The Hague has practically halted the peace process.