Senior protests sanctions put on Eritrea

March 11, 2010 • written by Amber Taylor  
Filed under National/World, News

She’s passionate, and she felt wronged. So she crammed into a van with 15 other people and traveled to Washington D.C. She held flags. She marched. She rallied. And, along with 20,000 other Eritreans, Mezan Ogbe flocked to the streets of D.C. to try to make a difference—to prompt change to a sanction she believes to be wrong.

Change that Ogbe, senior, believes is necessary in order to protect Eritrea from the sanctions the United Nations implemented earlier this year. Eritrea, a self-reliant nation in the horn of Africa, became a country in 1993 after a 30-year civil war against Ethiopia. In January the United Nations and the United States placed a sanction on Eritrea due to the belief that the Eritrean government was providing military, political and financial assistance to terrorist groups bent on using Somalia as a base to export terrorism abroad, according to The Washington Times. The sanction places a ban on weapons sales both into and out of Eritrea, freezes the funds of the Eritrean political and military leadership and restricts Eritrean foreign travel.

Ogbe and other Eritreans from all over the world gathered to protest against the sanction Feb. 22, believing the United Nations and United States lacked concrete, absolute evidence against the Eritrean government. The protest included a 1.7 mile march through the blocked off streets of Washington D.C. and presentations by numerous people, including an 8-year-old boy who spoke of how the sanction was effecting him personally.

KHS senior Mezan Ogbe, front right, was among the 20,000 people who gathered from across the country Feb. 22 to rally against imposed sanctions on Eritrea.

“We weren’t saying we hate America; that isn’t the case at all. We love America. I am American,” Ogbe said. “But how can you put a sanction on a country you don’t really know anything about without evidence?”

Besides believing the sanction to be unjust, Ogbe has family members living in Eritrea, whom Ogbe has visited six times, and still feels strong ties to the country, despite being born in the United

States.

“Both of my parents [Mekonnen Ogbe and Biri Haile] were born and grew up in Eritrea, but back before it was Eritrea,” Ogbe said. “They fled to a refugee camp in Sudan where my brother and sister were born because of the war going on between Eritrea and Ethiopia. After about four years they moved to the United States where [my brother and I] were born.”

Ogbe and her parents felt compelled to travel to Washington and participate in the protest to show their passion and support for Eritrea.

“It was amazing, the feeling of unity. All of these people united by a background getting together for really important cause. I’ve never felt like that before,” Ogbe said. “What was so amazing about it was that people were there from every generation; it wasn’t just adults protesting. There were 8-year-olds, and there were 80-year-olds.”

Despite 20,000 people being present and numerous moving speeches, Ogbe believes the protest lacked one thing: media coverage.

According to David Sands, deputy politics editor of The Washington Times, part of the reason the  protest was not covered was due to the lack of resources.

“Every day we make choices on what to cover, and that wasn’t one of them. Part of the reason we didn’t cover it is because it is a matter of resources; we made other choices,” Sands said. “If we had unlimited space and unlimited staff then we might have sent someone to cover it, but that wasn’t the case.”

The other part of the reason, according to Sands, was because The Washington Times felt there were more important topics to cover.

“Is 20,000 a big number or a little number? Compared to what? The conflict with Eritrea isn’t one of the hot topics that the press covers. There are many other national issues that need our coverage and this wasn’t one of them,” Sands said. “If 20,000 Afghanis protested, then [The Washington Times] would cover that. We don’t mean to offend any Eritreans, but the Afghanistan war is more of a hot topic than the conflict with Eritrea.”

Unlike Sands, Ogbe believes the conflict is very important and participated in the protest, in part, to help show that belief.

“I got to reunite with friends from all over the   country that I hadn’t seen in a while. We got to stand together; to stand united and protest what we know is right,” Ogbe said. “Eritrea is one of the only African countries that refuses to take help from the United Nations and is completely self-reliant. If one country in Africa shows that we

can be self-reliant, then the other countries will start to follow in our footsteps and make it impossible to be exploited.”

Protests, like the one Ogbe attended, were held in San Francisco, Switzerland and Australia and were started by the Young People Front for Democracy and Justice and the group E-SMART: Eritrean Sanctions Must be Annulled and Repealed Today.