What is there for
Eritrean women to celebrate March 8, the international Women’s day? Every year
women in the world and Eritrean women celebrate March 8. This day is
universally celebrated to commemorate women’s struggle for justice and their
achievements towards women’s rights. As the results of their struggles for
justice and demands for their rights, much progress has been made to in terms
women rights and gender equality. Overall, the situation of women in the world
has so much improved. But the situation for Eritrean women is quite the
opposite. The Eritrean women are the primary victims of the Eritrean
government’s repressive and oppressive rule. The current situation
is disastrous and unbearable for the Eritrean women. Eritrean women have been
deprived of all their rights. They have been reduced to slaves.
Below is a brief outline of the problems women face in Eritrea
National slavery (National service):
As it is the
case with all Eritrean nationals, it is obligatory for women to serve in the
national service. Under this scheme women have been subjected to countless
violations and suffering.
Women as
children producing machines:
Eritrean women
have been denied their rights for love, care and emotional support of their
children. Women are treated by the regime as children producing, caring and
nurturing machines for the slavery scheme of the regime. To understand the
situation of the Eritrean women, we can draw an analogy between chickens and
the Eritrean women. When chickens produce eggs, people wait for the eggs to be
laid and grab and collect them. The chickens are there to produce eggs for
humans. The same is happening with the Eritrean women. The women produce rear,
take care of, and nurture the children and the government grabs and collect
them like any objects. Even chickens are better treated because in order to
produce for them, humans feed them, shelter them, protect them and medicate
them. In the case of Eritrean women, the women have to provide for themselves
and their family because the bread winner and the productive members of the
family have been locked up in the national slavery scheme or they are
languishing in secret prisons or they have been killed or disabled by the
Eritrean regime. The government’s cadres and media boast that the Eritrean
women, who lost five to six sons and daughters in wars, celebrated their deaths
with jubilation. How could that be? This false claim is maintained by the
regime because women are viewed as emotionless, children producing
machines. In the Eritrean case, a barren womb is better than a fertile
womb.
Women as sex
slaves:
They are used as
sex objects by the military officers and work as house maids or women slaves
that provide services to the officers such as preparing and serving food,
alcohol and coffee to the military officers; washing officers’ clothes; and bed
dressing. In several instances many women are being assigned to serve one
officer with continuous replacement of old servants (concubines) with new round
and young women recruits. The selection of beautiful recruits who are required
to provide domestic services and sex for the military officers starts during
the military training and subsequently continues down the command chain up to
the lowest command.
Furthermore, as
the result of the national slavery scheme and the government’s view of women as
sex objects only worth to satisfy the sexual lust of its army, women’s
vulnerability to rape and sexual exploitation has increased. Those army
officers who rape women are rewarded rather than punished.
A typical
example is Wedi Ande, the commander of 6th brigade prison in
Sawa. Wedi Ande raped a widow of a fighter who died in the battlefield. The
widow was involved petty trade between Forto Sawa and Asmara and attracted the
evil eyes of Wedi Ande. To satisfy sexual lust he arrested her from Forto Sawa
and drove her to his command office and raped. It happened that this woman has
relatives who are high ranking military officers. Her relatives took the matter
to the president and the president passed his sever verdict on Wedi Ande. The
verdict was that Wedi Ande was moved from Sawa to Asmara (Mai-Nefhi). Actually
he was rewarded promoted for the crime he committed. By taking such an action,
the president is giving clear messages to his army officers: you are
free to rape and enslave Eritrean women. Thus such is the fate of Eritrean
women; they are subjected to different abuses and sexual harassment by
different officers both in the training/concentration camps, prisons and the
army. Refusal to meeting the demands of the officers usually results in
torture, harassment and reassigning to places or conditions which are extremely
hostile to live and work.
Eritrean women
go to jail and concentration camps even with their children on allegation of
attempting to escape from the country or for failures of their husbands,
sons/daughters to report to their units or on allegations of escaping of
husbands, sons/daughters from the country- they work on forced labour program
or otherwise pay 10,000 – 50,000 Nakfa (USD 1 = 60 Nakfa in the black market
and 15 Nakfa in the Banks).
Lost
opportunities for marriage and establishing families:
In most of the
Eritrean ethnic groups, recruitment in the military and other related
activities for women is culturally and traditionally not accepted. By
recruiting the women in the national service disregarding our cultures and
traditions, their chances of getting married and establishing families have
diminished or lost. Eritrean women waste their golden age being recruited in
the endless national slavery scheme which results to loss of their fertile age
thus denying them the God given rights to establish families.
Victims of
unwanted and unplanned pregnancy and births:
A Considerable
number of women resort to and undesired and harmful copying strategies to
escape national slavery and the associated tortures and suffering. They produce
children for the mere purpose of being released from the national slavery
scheme. But this in turn comes with grave negative economic and social
consequence for the women and the societies as a whole. It comes with
responsibilities of providing for and nurturing of the children. The burden
fall solely on women. Many also get pregnant and give birth as the result of rape
and sexual exploitation.
Early
marriage to avoid being recruited in the national slavery scheme:
Many families
resort to marrying their daughters at early age to avoid recruitments in the
national slavery scheme. These girls take family responsibility in the
situation where their husbands are absent being locked up in the national
slavery scheme. Thus they carry unbearable burden to provide for their
families.
Victims of
HIV/AIDS, SST and metal problems:
As consequences
of the above mentioned problems many women have become the victims of HIV/AIDS,
other sexually transmitted diseases and mental problems. Usually the stress and
anxiety Eritrean women are suffering ignored or overlooked.
Loss of
livelihoods opportunities:
Wasting their
golden and most productive ages in the endless national slavery scheme, Eritrea
women have been denied from livelihoods opportunities and education. At the
end, when they become of no value to the national slavery scheme, they are
released and abandoned. But these have no any profession, skills or work
experience. The militarization of the education system has closed the door for
education. Those who complete their secondary level education or above just
count years without access to quality education. Others drop out not to go to
Sawa military training camp where the final year of schooling for secondary
school is provided.
Slavery in
exile:
Eritrean women
have been subjected to tortures, detentions, rape and killings in the hands of
the Eritrean security forces. Sadly their suffering death not end there. They
become the target of rape; sexual abuse and exploitation; hostage takings,
detention and kidnapping at the hands of Sudanese security forces, Rashaida,
Bedouin, criminal groups and human traffickers. Those who migrate to
the Arab countries for work are subjected to multiple suffering and abuse at
the hands of their Arab masters. Eritrean housemaid in the Arab countries are
being forced to change their religion; take Muslim names, abandon their culture
and wear like the Arabs.
The impacts
of such violations on women are huge:
The women are
suffering from extremely huge socio-economic difficulties that are unbearable.
Eritrean women take the responsibilities of nurturing and caring of family
members in addition to the heavy and time consuming work of collecting fire
wood, water and provision of other basic necessities and securing and providing
food for the family. Below are some of the socio economic problems women are
facing:
- The poverty that is prevalent in
the country due to the lack of income mainly due to the absence of the
productive section of the population has caused women/mothers to shoulder
the multiple responsibilities of ensuring the security, economic needs and
social needs of family. In this case they play multiple roles as mothers
and breadwinners, engaging in activities such as getting employed as daily
labourers, collecting firewood, engaging in petty trade either in their
towns/villages including their surrounding or even going as far
as Tesseney and Assab. However, most of the time their efforts, time and
resources have been wasted/lost being exploited by the government
officials as they confiscate their goods. In many instances demand from
the women sex and money if they are to win their cooperation in their
trade activities. The government also exploits the prevalent poverty to
its advantage. The government sends some women to work in the Arab
countries at cheap labour prices with big portion of their income going to
the government coffers.
- After exhausting all the
possibilities many women resort to begging activities with its social
humiliating and degrading impacts on them. Some women trek hundreds of
kilometers from one village to another begging while at the same time take
care of, and nurture their families. Yet they suffer imprisonment and
torture at the hands of the government security agencies for being
beggars.
- Further they are forced by the
government to participate in what are called the ‘development campaigns’
such soil and water conservation activities, they and their children are
made to work in the fields of the army which are grabbed by the
military/government from the people; they are forced to participate
numerous meetings of the government, PDFJ, National union of Eritrean women
(NUEW) and National Union of Eritrean youth (NUEYS) and
Students with obligatory financial monthly subscription to these
organizations. These meetings and financial obligations that are paid to
these institutions compete for time and resources with other activities
and family needs. They are also required to contribute money required for
the celebration of March 8 and the so called ‘Independence Day’.
The consequences
of all these factors are that women suffer not only from poverty but from poor
health, stress and anxiety resulting from the frustrations, physical and sexual
abuse by the military/security forces, from bleak future and poverty with huge
psychological impacts. Apart from being vulnerable and infected by HIV/AIDS as
direct result of the sexual abuse and exploitations, they also suffer as
malnourished pregnant and lactating mothers, which affect their health and
lives. The other social impact is disintegration of families as the result of
long separation as well as the result of poverty. The separation also has other
social and health negative consequences as some men and women practice sex
outside their marriage which becomes the cause for mistrust and separation as
well as a means of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases contraction
and spread in the societies with far reaching social consequences such as
orphanage, change of social customs, values, traditions and institutions as
well as social disorder.
Thus, if March
8, is the symbol of hope and freedom for the women of the world, what has it
brought to Eritrean women? For Eritrean women is it worth celebrating March 8?
Mussie Hadgu
Email: mussiehadgu1@gmail.com
Email: mussiehadgu1@gmail.com
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