Congrats: Game on for Bini; 6th in the Sprint at Tour de France Stage 5 today and 2nd in overall classification for the Green Jersey so far.
https://t.co/DwOkdbR2LX
#CongratsEritreanCycling: Stellar performance by Biniam who is 3rd at 7th Stage of Tour de France in Bordeaux today.
Biniam maintains his second place in overall Points Classification for Green Jeresey with cummulative 145 Points.
https://t.co/R1UfiS0Rps
https://t.co/UdVQYVa7dt
The College of Business and Social Sciences has conferred First Degrees & Diplomas to 1018 graduates - 47% of whom are female - in its 19th Commencement held in Asmara today.
Degree courses include: Business Management and Public Administration; Accounting; Economics and Finance; English; Geography; Law; Library and Information Science; and, Sociology and Anthropology.
The Diploma courses consist of: Accounting; Banking; Sociology and Social Work; as well as Tourism and Hotel Management.
In characteristic fashion, the Potemkin Party's erratic political pendulum is yet again swinging between two extreme positions:
i) A provocative and aggressive posturing that has been accompanied, for over two years now, by incessant saber-rattling to "acquire sovereign access to the sea", on the one hand;
ii) Simultaneous portrayal of itself as the "aggrieved party" and a "hapless victim of internal and external conspiracies", on the other.
This was indeed the gist of the PM's rambling at the House of Peoples Representatives earlier today.
Hyperbole and associated drama aside, the stubborn facts remain the same.
The sad truth is: the unnecessary and avoidable tensions in the region have and continue to be stoked by the very reckless policies of the Potemkin Party. For brief illustrations:
1. The palpable friction with the Sudan squarely emanates from the Potemkin Party's dangerous involvement in the conflict in the Sudan by hosting, under the bidding of certain extraneous forces, a secret military camp and base for the RSF in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. The evidence, which is overwhelming, is already in the public domain.
2. The Potemkin Party's stealthily signed MOU with Somaliland a couple of years ago was another illicit and reckless misstep that aroused consternation in the region as a whole. This act remains in flagrant violation of the AU and IGAD Constitutive Acts as well as fundamental tenets of international law on sovereignty and territorial integrity of States.
3. The Potemkin Party has pursued, for over two and half years now, a toxic and revisionist policy against Eritrea by openly threatening to invade/acquire by any means, its Assab port and coastal areas for what it terms as "sovereign access to the sea".
4. In the event, its frequent reference to "conspiratorial forces disappointed by, and bent on, scuttling the Pretoria Agreement" is as disingenuous as it is untenable. In as far as Eritrea is concerned, the Pretoria Agreement is a purely Ethiopian affair. Let us also recall - the beans have been spilled now by Getachew Redda's multiple confessions - that the Potemkin Party was scheming against Eritrea (Djibouti and Seychelles events) months before the negotiations and signature of the Pretoria Agreement.
In a nutshell, the quest for enduring regional peace and stability that the peoples of the Horn of Africa deeply cherish and deserve has been, and continues to be, jeopardized by the Potemkin Party's delusional policies.
https://t.co/2MuR9MZUna
#FestivalSeason: Annual Festival of the Eritrean Community in Switzerland held in Lausanne from 4-5 July this weekend.
Vibrant activities and programmes included: Pavilion showcasing cultural attributes and development progress in Eritrea's six Zobas; cultural shows; children's programmes and seminars on current issues.
Briefing by FM Osman Saleh on UNHRC Process to Foreign Diplomatic Community in #Eritrea
For the past 14 years, certain countries have cynically weaponized the UNHRC Annual Session in Geneva as a platform for politicized harassment against Eritrea. This charade has gone beyond limits and Eritrea is earnestly and firmly requesting its termination.
Excerpts from FM Osman Saleh's speech:
*"...While we welcome the opportunity to engage with international partners on issues of mutual interest, Eritrea remains committed to interactions anchored on the tenets of sovereign equality, mutual respect, non-interference, and genuine cooperation. For fourteen years, Eritrea has maintained a consistent, principled stance across the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly, and bilateral channels. Our position is settled. Continuing engagement bilaterally on the Special Rapporteur yields no constructive utility, and we will no longer expend diplomatic capital or finite institutional time debating a mechanism whose continuation has evidently become an end in itself".
*"...The mandate has evolved into a textbook case of institutional inertia and a recurring political ritual. This ongoing campaign has inflicted severe reputational damage by broadcasting a distorted, one-sided narrative through (some) official United Nations channels, manufacturing a false global perception that overshadows our domestic realities. It has acted as a clearinghouse for state-sponsored defamation, inciting external hostility and systematically polarizing international forums. Furthermore, by painting Eritrea as a volatile, high-risk state, it has artificially stifled the country’s tourism investment climate, deterring foreign direct investment and impeding economic development".
*"...Equally concerning is the profound financial burden this mandate imposes. For fourteen consecutive years, the Human Rights Council and the OHCHR have funneled substantial financial and institutional resources into a failed mandate. The millions of dollars in cumulative Programme Budget Implications represent a significant expenditure of scarce UN resources at a time of acute liquidity constraints".
*"....The pen-holders face a definitive choice: they must choose between encouraging the financing of endless, sterile political confrontation or supporting tangible, state-led capacity building that directly enhances the lives of our people".
*"...Let me dispel a persistent misconception: Eritrea does not reject engagement with the international human rights system. We remain fully committed to fulfilling our obligations through the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), treaty body mechanisms, and consensual technical cooperation, universal, cooperative instruments predicated on equal participation and consent. What we reject is the politicization and selective targeting of that system".
https://t.co/fsNsD4qHGj
On the margins of the 62nd Session of the UNHRC, Eritrea's delegation has held a series of bilateral meetings with Permanent Representatives of several countries and also addressed the Africa Group.
The delegation further participated in the meeting of the Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations.
The critical issue is of course whether the penholders (essentially the EU under the prodding of some Member States) will again persist in their unwarranted campaign of harassment against Eritrea for the defunct geopolitical motives that we all know.
Equally important is whether other members of the Council will shed diplomatic inertia, and/or, discard narrow political horse-trading to reject the obsolete draft resolution without equivocation.
Profile Q & A - “My Dream is Making Eritrea Africa’s Pharmaceutical Hub:” Pharmacist Nuru Abdu; by Kidane Shimendi
The innovative mindset and dedication to the nation of these trail-blazing youth is indeed peerless
*"...To date, I have published 17 research articles in top-ranked international peer-reviewed journals, including those published by PLOS, Springer, BMJ, and Dove Medical Press. Additionally, I serve as a reviewer for more than 20 international peer-reviewed journals and as an academic editor for prestigious journals such as PLOS ONE and Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety".
*"...During the conference, I received two inaugural honors initiated by ERIPA to recognize scientific excellence. The first was the Best Young Researcher Award, which highlights research productivity and future potential among early-career scientists aged 30 or younger. The second was the Best Conference Presenter Award, which evaluated the scientific quality and clinical rigor of the paper, alongside presentation delivery, audience engagement, and clarity of responses during the Q&A session. This presentation award was specifically for my study titled, 'Safety, Pattern, and Determinants of Prescribed Medicines Among Pregnant Women Attending Healthcare Facilities in Eritrea'. Together, these honors serve as welcome validation and strong motivation to continue contributing to local pharmaceutical research.
https://t.co/DQBWN55hGW
When integrity, patriotism, and unwavering dedication define a public servant, the sky is truly the limit. Amb Sofi has consistently defended Eritrea with honor, on the frontlines of diplomacy and in the international arena. Eritrea needs leaders with courage, principle, and an unshakable commitment to safeguarding the nation’s interests. She is the Eritrea’s next female Foreign Minister. #Eritrea
The Potemkin Party is apparently seething under extreme desperation. It must indeed be at its lowest point; at the end of its tether so to speak!
How else can one explain the monotonous, 35-minute long diatribe of lies and hollow allegations against Eritrea peddled by mercurial Getachew Reda (nominally, Adivsor to the Prime Minister) that was broadcast yesterday by the Ethiopian Broadcast Corporation (EBC) and other domestic media outlets.
If the unhinged Getachew Reda is taken as a credible political analyst and a reference point, then the numerous insolent and outrageous remarks that he had made on various Tigrayan TV outlets, as well as his X Account, about the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed during the war in the Tigray Region must be accorded due credibility too.
Indeed, some of his grotesquely disparaging statements on Abiy Ahmed and the Ethiopian army include:
- "Abiy Ahmed is a political pigmy. Had Ethiopia been a normal country, he would have long been confined to a mental institution or spiritual cites of healing for the deranged";
- "Abiy Ahmed is delusional enough to believe and openly brag that his mother had told him, when he was seven years old, that she saw him, in her dream, being crowned as a King";
-" Abiy Ahmed is the epitome and example of little men who come to power by some accident of history and who subsequently create huge catastrophes";
-"Abiy Ahmed cannot lead a nation without reverting to endless deceptions";
- "He (Abiy Ahmed) has literally no education...but you cannot ask him how he claims that he has a PhD as he does not give you time for reasonable discourse";
- "Abiy Ahmed is the textbook example of national treason. As such, he has no moral high ground to speak about sovereignty";
- "Abiy Ahmed is a toxic weed that has grown in this nation";
- " (General) Birhanu Jula and others are not leading a capable army. They have lost the little military knowledge they had and are sheepishly taking orders from this mad leader. This anti-people army, which is blindly implementing Abiy Ahmed's war agenda, is entailing massive deaths among the civilian population and the youth"...etc...
The rudderless Getachew Reda is indeed prone to making whimsical and contradictory statements on almost any issue depending on his unstable moods and ever-shifting political affiliations. Recently, as he struck an opportunistic alliance with the Federal Government and its PM on whom he was heaping endless insults, he has began to shamelessly disavow the political beliefs he had held for decades.
In a recent interview, he quipped (referring to his old comrades): "There are many people who maintain that Tigray should be an independent nation. I also mull about that concept whenever I am tipsy!"
His close associates confide that Getachew is tipsy or drunk from the late afternoon to the wee morning hours almost on a daily basis... This has in fact earned him the moniker :"Vodakchew".
On a more sober note, how can one give serious weight to the excesses and irresponsible utterances of this political vagabond.
In the event, there is no point in responding to all the vitriol that he has floated against Eritrea in his interview yesterday.
We will thus focus on one fallacy: his preposterous assertion that "Eritrea was created, by conspiratorial forces, as an independent State in order to weaken and destroy Ethiopia".
This spurious and revisionist claim is, of course, utterly false and deliberately peddled to rationalize and advance the Potemkin Party's wicked domestic agenda of agitation and mobilization for war.
History otherwise attests to these indelible facts:
1. Eritrea was denied its inalienable right of decolonization in the late 1940s and "federated" with Ethiopia only because the US and other powers gave precedence to their perceived geopolitical interests.
2. The international community kept mum, again for similar political calculus, when the Ethiopian government unilaterally abrogated the "Federal Act" and annexed Eritrea in November 1962.
3. The Eritrean people and nation had to shoulder the heavy burden of national liberation for thirty long years and pay huge and unparalleled sacrifices. Throughout this period, virtually the whole world showed unconscionable apathy by failing to recognize and extend moral and material support to Eritrea's legitimate war of national liberation. In the meantime, Ethiopia which was ruled by the Emperor and the military junta that toppled him continued to receive massive military, economic and political support from diverse countries - the US, USSR, European Countries, Israel, several Arab and Asian countries, Cuba etc..
4. The same pattern continued at various critical junctures in Eritrea's post independence period. The failure to take meaningful action against the Ethiopian regime when it reneged on its treaty obligations - essentially worked out under the facilitation of the the US, the EU, the UN and the OAU - and rejected the EEBC Arbitral Award to occupy sovereign Eritrean territories for almost two decades is a glaring illustration of the tendency of major powers, and the international community at large, to sacrifice legality and justice on the altar of narrow interests.
5. In all these decades, including in these critical times when the current regime is stoking the flames of war through its reckless agenda of "sovereign access to the sea", the "intensive care" accorded to Ethiopia has not diminished in any way. The IMF's 3 billion financial bailout that is underway; the EU's massive assistance, including recent budgetary assistance; individual bilateral support to Ethiopia from European, Asian, Middle Eastern countries...etc. corroborate this fact.
6. Indeed, by some accounts, Ethiopia has been the beneficiary of an aggregate 114 billion US dollars in the past three decades from multilateral and bilateral assistance. This pattern of huge and burgeoning assistance does not reek of, and cannot be misconstrued, by any stretch of imagination, as "some entrenched conspiracy to weaken and destroy Ethiopia".
In brief, and as noted earlier, Getachew Reda's "analysis" can hardly be taken seriously on any subject. For the Potemkin Party to stoop too low to use his deranged analysis for "popular mobilization" only accentuates its utter desperation.
AlJazeera - Ethiopia is not being ‘dragged into war';
by Mr. Ali Ibrahim Ahmed, #Eritrea's Ambassador to Qatar
*"... The recent opinion article by senior Ethiopian officials Redwan Hussein and Getachew Reda, published on Al Jazeera English’s website, attempts to portray Ethiopia as an innocent victim being reluctantly 'dragged' into conflict by external actors. In doing so, the piece seeks to absolve the ruling Prosperity Party of responsibility for Ethiopia’s mounting domestic crises".
*"...More dangerously, this narrative serves as a diplomatic smoke screen designed to normalize the unprovoked hostility, state-sponsored inflammatory rhetoric and aggressive military mobilizations that the Ethiopian government has directed towards Eritrea since late 2023".
*"...This coordinated campaign seeks to normalize the idea that colonial boundaries in the Horn of Africa are negotiable in order to attempt to challenge inviolable principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that have long underpinned regional stability".
*"...The broader pattern extends beyond Eritrea. Ethiopia’s recent foreign policy conduct has increasingly generated tensions with several neighboring states. The Memorandum of Understanding signed with Somaliland, which sought access to coastal territory without the consent of Somalia’s central government, triggered a major diplomatic crisis and raised serious questions regarding respect for established principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity".
*"...Similarly, Ethiopia has repeatedly pursued interventionist policies in neighboring conflicts in the quest for short-term geopolitical objectives. Whether in Somalia, Sudan or elsewhere, Addis Ababa’s reckless regional agenda of expansionism has contributed significantly to regional mistrust and destabilization".
https://t.co/MwqtJQeYx2 via @AJEnglish