Eritrea’s Day of Infamy:

The Day Liberty Died

Some days do not merely pass into history—they haunt it. September 18, 2001, is one such day: a wound unhealed, a silence unbroken, a betrayal unforgotten. It is Eritrea’s Day of Infamy—the day memory itself was criminalized.

It is the day the regime drained the oxygen of liberty from Eritrea, leaving the future shrouded in suffocating uncertainty. It plowed through civic space, not cultivating liberty but harvesting silence. Instead of restoring the nutrients and moisture of freedom, it dried them out, leaving the soil, once nourished by the blood of our fallen tegadelti heroes, cracked and lifeless. Thus, every Eritrean was reduced from ze’ga to maekelay alet—a presence without a voice, a body without rights.

The Courage of the G-15

On that day, the Eritrean regime unleashed a sweeping crackdown on dissent. Eleven senior officials—members of the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), collectively known as the G-15—were arrested and forcibly disappeared. Their only “crime” was speaking truth to power.

They embodied patriotism not as blind obedience, but as moral courage—lucid, principled, and unafraid. These were leaders who, after deep soul-searching, recognized that the moment no longer called for roaring like lions, as they had done all their adult lives, but for cooing like doves. And for choosing quiet defiance, they became sacrificial lambs.

They could have seized power. They had the stature, the means, and the moment—just as so many coups have erupted in the fragile aftermath of liberation. They could have toppled the man at the helm and claimed the machinery of government for themselves. The path was open. The precedent, familiar. It might have stood as a defining narrative of post-colonial Africa.

But they chose otherwise.

True, they did not achieve victory in the conventional sense. Yet they did not fail. They planted the seeds of democratic transformation, and in time, the fruits of their sacrifice will emerge. Their ambition was not simply to replace one regime with another, as was often the pattern in the so-called Third World. Instead, they sought to inaugurate a new ethic of governance—one where means and ends are reconciled, and legitimacy is earned through principle, not power.

To judge them by the absence of immediate success is to misread the nature of their struggle. They were right—morally, historically, and civically. But in a country stripped of institutional scaffolding, where the architecture of accountability had long been dismantled, their call for change was easily crushed by those who wielded force without restraint.

Even in defeat, they bequeathed a legacy of possibility.

Their courage laid bare the hollowness of tyranny and reminded us that the arc of justice—though bent, bloodied, and obscured—still awaits the steady hands of those who remember. As the Prophet Isaiah declared, “The crooked places shall be made straight.”

Yes, they chose the harder path. The patient path. The principled, democratic path. With deliberate restraint, they kept the military at arm’s length—even as some commanders voiced support. They understood, with sobering clarity, that any military intervention would ignite civil war and shatter the very ideals they sought to uphold. It would be a betrayal of their vision, not a fulfillment of it.

So they stood firm. Guided not by ambition, but by conviction. They placed their faith in dialogue over domination, in reform over revolt. In a moment when force could have delivered power, they chose to build legitimacy instead.

Yes, they helped create the system; in fact, they were the system. As enablers, they made the phenomenon of Isaias Afwerki possible. Yet over time, they underwent a transformation as dramatic as Saul’s on the road to Damascus, embodying the old adage: no saint without a past, no sinner without a future. This mixed group of individuals had, for the most part, never stood together in the history of the EPLF. Some had actively worked to undermine one another amid the power struggles inherent in any political movement. But the national stakes were so high that they managed to overcome their divisions and historical resentments for the sake of Eritrea. Their story is one of hope, redemption, and enlightened compromise—an effort to place the greater good of the nation above personal ambition and deeply held personal and historical grievances.

They put the nation first—above the front and above themselves. They dared to reimagine a future in which the founding principles of our armed struggle—self-rule, justice, and dignity—might finally be fulfilled. Unlike Isaias and his loyalists, they refused to betray the essence of the struggle: that sovereignty belongs not to a man, but to the people. That the true reservoir of power is the Eritrean citizen—the ze’gatat.

They refused to let the ze’gatat be reduced to Maekelay Aleit: stripped of voice, denied agency, and made subordinate in the affairs that shape their own destiny. One of the noblest aims of our liberation was to ensure equality among ze’gatat, the citizens themselves. By that logic, the Maekelay Aleit was meant to become an equal ze’ga, not the other way around. Yet, like many revolutionary movements that promised manna and heaven on earth but lacked moral, philosophical, institutional, and traditional foundations, they ultimately delivered an equal share of poverty and deprivation. Equality was not achieved by uplifting the downtrodden, but by debasing the noble.

Eritrea under Isaias Afwerki has become a nation of Maekelay Aleit. The original vision has been inverted. The ze’ga has been hollowed out, reduced to a passive subject rather than a sovereign actor. The promise of liberation has been betrayed by the very men who once vowed to uphold it. Resti—land once held by communities and individual citizens—has been transformed into gulti, the domain of a ruler. Eritrea has been rendered, for all intents and purposes, the personal fiefdom of an uncouth, brutish, and philistine man—a king without a trace of regal virtue.

The G-15’s stand was right, necessary, and honorable. They upheld the principles of accountability and constitutionalism when silence would have been safer. But their mistake was believing the tiger would spare vegetarians—imagining that moral restraint might shield them from a regime built on fear, not reason. They misjudged the nature of the beast: it devours not because it’s threatened, but because it can.

The Regime’s Betrayal

In a bold open letter to President Isaias Afwerki, the G-15 accused him of acting illegally and unconstitutionally. They called for the immediate implementation of the ratified 1997 Constitution, the holding of democratic elections, the establishment of political parties, comprehensive judicial reform, internal accountability within the ruling party, and a peaceful national dialogue to confront what they termed the “crisis of Eritrea.”

Their appeal was not without precedent. Two years earlier, a group of Eritrean academics and professionals—known as the G-13—had issued a similarly courageous letter. Troubled by the deteriorating conditions in the country, they expressed their desire “to make a sober appraisal” and “suggest appropriate solutions.”

Together, these letters marked a rare moment of civic clarity—an attempt to rescue the promise of liberation from the grip of authoritarian drift. They were not acts of rebellion, but of responsibility.

The G-15 were not fringe voices. They were the architects of Eritrea’s independence—ministers, generals, and diplomats who had risked everything for the nation’s liberation. Their demands were not reckless or rebellious; they were principled, lawful, and profoundly patriotic. Yet the regime’s response was not dialogue, but disappearance.

The G-13, too, comprised some of Eritrea’s finest minds—distinguished academics and professionals whose reputations reached far beyond national borders. Among them was at least one fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a distinction that speaks to the intellectual depth and civic integrity behind their appeal.

Yet these were the very individuals whom Isaias Afwerki belittled as “completely detached people from reality”—a contemptuous dismissal that revealed more about the regime’s fear of sober reflection than about the character of those who dared to speak. Their call was not born of detachment, but of deep concern—for a nation drifting from its founding promise.

The G-15 were not agitators. They were stewards of the nation’s promise, calling for reform not to dismantle Eritrea, but to redeem it.

The government brazenly leveled charges of defeatism, collusion with the enemy, divisiveness, and destabilization against the G-15—a group whose legacy is inseparable from Eritrea’s liberation. These were not peripheral figures. Most had served at the highest levels of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) and its clandestine political arm, the Eritrean People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP).

Of the thirteen members who composed the EPLF’s Political Bureau—the executive leadership that guided the movement through the crucible of the late 1970s and 1980s to victory in 1991—six were among the accused: Ogabe Abraha, Haile Woldetinsae (Durue), Petros Solomon, Mesfin Hagos, Berhane Gherezgiher, and Mahmoud Ahmed Sherifo.

That’s 46% of the movement’s top leadership. Let that sink in: nearly half of the very architects of liberation were later branded enemies of the state—accused of defeatism and betrayal by the regime they helped bring to power.

It was not just a purge. It was a historical inversion—where the liberators were cast as traitors, and the principles they fought for were buried beneath the weight of authoritarian paranoia.

Of the original thirteen, only Isaias, Mesfin, and Sebhat remain alive. The rest—whether silenced, disappeared, or departed—have left behind a legacy both luminous and contested. It is, unmistakably, the end of an era. And with that ending comes a moral imperative: to think seriously about succession and transition—not merely of leadership, but of vision, of values, of civic renewal.

The generation that once embodied the promise of liberation is fading. What remains is a solemn responsibility: to ensure that the next chapter in Eritrea’s story is not written in the language of repression, but in the grammar of justice, dignity, accountability, and national reconciliation and healing.

Eritrea needs all her children: those serving in the trenches, working in cities and villages, languishing in dungeons, and living in exile. The time has come to rise above division and despair, and to focus on what truly matters—reclaiming a nation that has been reduced to the fiefdom of one man and his loyal circle. The G-15 have shown the way. It is now our turn to follow their example, to converge, and to place Eritrea’s national interest above our differences and the grievances we hold against one another.

This is not a call for vengeance, but for restoration. It is a call to re-center the citizen—the ze’ga—as the rightful sovereign. It is a call to honor the sacrifices of the past by refusing to let their promise be buried beneath silence and fear. The appeal for unity among Eritrean groups must not be misconstrued, as in the proverb of the foolish woman who, when advised to reconcile with her husband, mistook it for begging: ዓሻ ሰበይቲ ምስ ሰብኣይኪ ተዓረቒ እንተበልዋስ ዝለመንዋ ይመስላ. Unity is an existential strategy everywhere—but nowhere is it more urgent than under Eritrea’s prevailing conditions. (The proverb equally applies to the foolish man too.)

An Assault on Our National Pride

To accuse nearly half of your revolutionary vanguard of treason is not merely a political maneuver—it is a direct assault on the nation’s pride and memory. Even if the allegations held merit, no responsible government would resort to such reckless vilification. It betrays a profound lack of judgment and a dangerous disregard for national cohesion.

This episode reveals a deeper truth: Eritrea has become a stage for Isaias Afwerki’s ego. His leadership has been marked not by love for the people, but by a persistent inability to honor their sacrifices and aspirations.

Isaias Afwerki’s detachment from the Eritrean people is not just political—it is personal. His habitual reference to our people in the third person reveals a striking absence of attachment, loyalty, and love. Language, after all, is a mirror of the heart. As the saying goes, “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” And in this case, the heart seems void of empathy.

The “narcissistic” Isaias Afwerki, is according to Dr. Bereket Habte Selassie, “part of a rogue’s gallery…that should have no place in leadership positions.”

[i] Maya Angelou’s timeless wisdom captures it best: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Isaias has shown us—repeatedly—that his rule is not rooted in service, but in control. His words betray a cold distance from the very people whose sacrifices built the nation he governs. This isn’t just a failure of rhetoric—it’s a failure of moral imagination.

No leader who truly loves his people would vilify the architects of their liberation. No leader bound to his nation would speak of it as if it were foreign. The tragedy lies not merely in the accusations—but in the revelation of a man who never learned to cherish those he was entrusted to lead. Isaias behaves less like a statesman than a truculent adolescent, wielding a hammer as his only tool, and mistaking every challenge for a nail.

Africa has witnessed its share of liberators who became tormentors—men who once stood for the dignity of their people, only to become their worst nightmare. From Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe to José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola, and from Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia to Idi Amin in Uganda, the continent has endured leaders who clung to power at all costs, long after they ceased to function not only as statesmen but as human beings. Isaias Afwerki is following that same tragic script. But we are not bound to repeat it. We do not have to join him.

Silencing the Press

Alongside the G-15, independent journalists were rounded up. The private press, once a relatively vibrant forum for civic engagement and truth-telling, was shuttered overnight. What should have marked a turning point toward democracy became the moment Eritrea’s descent into authoritarianism hardened into permanence. The promise of liberation was betrayed. The future was stolen.

Overnight, fear became law. Silence became currency. Rule by terror took root like a weed in the garden of liberation. Normalcy vanished.

Twenty-four years later, the silence still suffocates us.

Cruelty Without Closure

On August 31, 2025, I watched 60 Minutes revisit the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Two decades later, the U.S. government and independent institutions are still identifying the remains of victims. Most families never stopped searching. The project—still active after 24 years—has offered closure, connection, and the dignity of mourning.

That relentless pursuit of truth stands in stark contrast to the Eritrean reality. In Eritrea, the state does not merely deny closure—it cultivates cruelty. Even the Derg, brutal as it was, allowed visitation, a name, a body, a grave. The PFDJ offers none. It has institutionalized erasure as policy. The cruelty is not incidental; it is systemic. It defies every moral, cultural, and religious value Eritreans hold dear.

Often, I find myself at a loss—struggling to comprehend the full depth of our national degradation. I think of the countless families whose loved ones have vanished, most presumably dead. Twenty-four years have passed, and still, no word. Not even the dignity of acknowledgment. It is the bare minimum any decent government owes its people.

I’m often struck by the ineffable insouciance that hovers around EPLF/PFDJ loyalists—seemingly impervious to the weight of our collective memory, and blind to the dimming of midday, where our sun was once destined to blaze. ጸሓይና መሊኣ በሪቓ. No sunshine. No rainbow. No covenant. Only betrayal.

In Eritrea, even the most basic cultural, religious, and moral obligations are not neglected—they are weaponized. Denied not by accident, but by design. This deprivation is a calculated tool of fear—a strategy to atomize the populace, sever the bonds of solidarity, and silence any collective demand for justice.

Those Eritreans—whether through willful complicity or naïve indulgence—who lend the regime a mask to conceal its grotesque deformities become direct accomplices in its cruelty. They are not easing the burden of their people; they are prolonging it.

I believe this is one of the reasons our brother Dawit Mesfin—himself a member of the G-13—is deeply disappointed and dismayed by Alemseged Tesfai’s recent public appearances among the diaspora. Alemseged is a bona fide intellectual, a man of letters who ought to have known better than to dress up a broken system in borrowed dignity. To make matters worse, he reopened the old wounds of the ELF–EPLF divide in the epilogue to his otherwise commendable book—an act that undermines the very reconciliation our nation so desperately needs.

In moments like these, the stakes are not literary—they are moral. And silence, or beautification, in the face of suffering is not neutrality. It is betrayal.

We still do not know the fate of those prisoners. Eyewitness accounts and credible reports suggest many have perished in secret dungeons. Their families were never told where or when. Children of national heroes have grown up in a fog of uncertainty, never knowing whether their parents are alive or buried in unmarked graves. Wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, are denied even a single visitation.

In Eritrea, silence is not absence—it is cruelty weaponized.

And yet, we remember. We must remember—because forgetting would be betrayal.

Say Their Name

In defiance of Eritrea’s manufactured abnormalities—and in pursuit of what is just, what is human, what is normal—let us say their names. Let us remember the G-15 reformers and journalists arrested in September 2001 for daring to speak truth in a time of silence:[ii] Let us say their names, for to speak them is to resist erasure.

The Imprisoned Reformers: Aster, Beraki, Berhane, Estifanos, Haile, Hamid, Mahmoud, Oqbe, Petros, and Saleh

The Exiled: Adhanom, Haile, and Mesfin

The Imprisoned Journalists: Dawit, Dawit Isaak, Amanuel, Fessahaye, Matthias, Medhanie, Sahle, Said, Temesgen, and Yohannes

The Journalists Who Escaped Imprisonment: Aaron, Milikias, and Semere.

For those already outside the country—or those who managed to slip past the jaws of the beast—escape was no reprieve. It was merely the next chapter in a lifelong resistance. In exile, they bore the weight of memory, the burden of advocacy, and the unrelenting ache of longing.

Adhanom, Aaron, and Milikias died far from the homeland they had served with distinction—denied the dignity of return, the honor of recognition, and the right to rest in the soil they helped defend. In Adhanom’s case, not only defend, but liberate. Their absence remains a wound unacknowledged by history.

Mesfin and Haile endure, bearing the quiet burden of legacy. They are entrusted not only with remembrance, but with the unfinished work of their fallen comrades. In writing his memoir, Mesfin has offered a profound gift—preserving truth as he lived it, restoring dignity to those erased, and refusing to let memory be buried beneath silence. One can only hope that Haile, too, will lend his voice to history before silence claims what only he can tell.

I had the privilege of knowing the late Ambassador Adhanom personally. His character, wisdom, integrity, and quiet strength left an enduring imprint on me. Not a day passes without his memory stirring something deep within.

Through him—and through the honor of knowing Mesfin, Haile, Andebrhan, Shengeb, Dr. Assefaw, Dr. Bereket, Paulos, Hebret, Semere, Lingo, Tsegu, and many other EPLF veterans from afar—I came to grasp the true greatness of the EPLF, despite its flaws and contradictions. These were not merely revolutionaries; they were principled nation-builders. Visionary in purpose, unwavering in conviction, and human in their imperfections. Their legacy is not just one of struggle, but of vision, sacrifice, and moral conviction. They were great men and women, yes—but flawed, as all men and women are. Their greatness lay not in perfection, but in their refusal to abandon principle in the face of power.

The Betrayal of the Liberation Struggle

And in that contrast, the truth became painfully clear: the EPLF, with all its shortcomings, stood for sacrifice, vision, and unity. The PFDJ regime, by comparison, has betrayed those ideals. It governs not through service, but through suppression. The difference is not just political—it is moral.

The regime calculated that by silencing these voices—ministers, intellectuals, poets, journalists—it could erase their memory. But naming them restores their humanity. It tells their families: you are not alone. It reminds Eritreans and the world that these individuals embodied the democratic aspirations of a generation—aspirations stolen in the dark of September 18, 2001.

The question we must ask is not rhetorical—it is existential: What has happened to us, as a people, that we have endured this silence for so long? Why have we tolerated a system that criminalizes memory, desecrates family, and extinguishes hope?

And to the veterans of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF)—those who sacrificed everything for the dignity of their people—another question must be asked: How can you remain silent about the fate of your own comrades?

The names of Durue, Sherifo, Mesfin Hagos, and Petros Solomon are not just associated with the EPLF—they are synonymous with it. They are the EPLF. To abandon them is to abandon the very soul of the liberation struggle.

It is never too late to do the right thing. This should be your final call of duty: do not let your legacy remain tarnished and unfinished. It was courage that sustained you through the long years of armed struggle—and it is courage that can yet redeem you. ትክን ተባዕን መዋጽኢ ነይስእን—smoke and a person of courage will always find a way out.

Because your courage endures—weathered but unbroken—I hold fast to hope. My faith in Eritrea’s future is not merely optimism; it is conviction. I am deeply sanguine.

A Call to Remember and Resist

September 18 was not just the day leaders were imprisoned. It was the day Eritrea’s hope was imprisoned, too.

Today, 24 years later, Eritrea remains a nation adrift—where fear has replaced trust, and silence has replaced truth. But remembering September 18 is not an act of despair. It is an act of defiance. To recall those who vanished is to refuse their erasure. To demand answers is to insist that Eritrea can still be more than the prison it has become.

And let us be clear: twenty-four years later, the regime is still ensuring that our wounds remain open. It has perfected the art of cruelty through silence. It has turned absence into policy, grief into punishment, and memory into subversion. Families of the disappeared are denied not only justice—they are denied even the dignity of mourning. No graves. No answers. No closure.

This is not neglect.

It is calculated cruelty—an architecture of silence built to erase, to punish, and to control. This culture of repression is not our inheritance; it is alien to the spirit of our people. It distorts who we are and what we’ve stood for across generations.

We must reclaim our time-tested, time-honored traditions—not by preserving the ashes of the past, but by tending the fire that still burns within them. Our task is not nostalgia; it is renewal. To remember is not merely to mourn—it is to ignite.

We must keep the torch of liberty—lit on May 24, 1991—burning undiminished. To let it fade is to betray those who kindled it with their lives.

The Final Word

To the children of our heroes, to the families who carry their names and their pain: do not despair. The future of a just, peaceful, and democratic Eritrea will rise upon the foundation they laid. Their courage will not be squandered. Their memory will not be erased. It is upon their sacrifice that our nation must be reborn.

With their sacrifices, they paid the downpayment on our nation’s democratic promise. It is now our solemn obligation to redeem that promissory note—not with words, but with action. Not with nostalgia, but with renewal. Their legacy is not a relic of the past—it is the scaffolding of our future.

We owe it to them to keep fighting—and fight we shall.
With memory as our shield, justice as our compass, and truth as our enduring flame.
Eritrea will remember—and Eritrea will rise.
____
If these words speak to your convictions, I invite you to reach out at weriz@yahoo.com.
[i] Thanks Amanuel Hidrat for reminding me of this quote with one of your comments
[ii] The Imprisoned G-15 Reformers (September 2001)

• Aster Fissehatsion — former official, reform advocate
• Beraki Gebreselassie — former minister/ambassador
• Berhane Gherezgiher (Gebregziabher) — former EPLF/PFDJ leader
• Estifanos Seyoum — former minister
• Haile Woldetinsae (“Durue”) — former foreign minister
• Hamid Himid — former deputy minister
• Mahmoud Ahmed Sherifo — former vice president/minister
• Ogbe (Oqbe) Abraha — general; former chief of staff
• Petros Solomon — former minister (defense/foreign)
• Saleh Kekiya — former minister/deputy minister

The G-15 in Exile (Escaped Arrest)

• Adhanom Gebremariam — former governor/official
• Haile Menkerios — former diplomat/UN official
• Mesfin Hagos — former defense minister

The Imprisoned Journalists (September 2001)

• Dawit Habtemichael (Meqaleh)
• Dawit Isaak (Setit)
• Emanuel Asrat (Zemen)
• Fessahaye “Joshua” Yohannes (Setit)
• Matthias Habteab (Meqaleh)
• Medhanie Haile (Keste Debena)
• Sahle “Wedi Itay” Tsegazab (Setit)
• Said Abdulkadir (Admas)
• Temesgen Gebreyesus (Keste Debena)
• Yohannes Tesfamariam (Keste Debena)

The Journalists Who Escaped

• Aaron Berhane (Setit)
• Milikias Mehreteab (Zemen)
• Semere Taazaz (Admas)