Yemane left behind family, career, and fame in Eritrea to come to Britain where his prominence at the top of his profession as a news journalist and broadcaster, unafraid to witness to the truth, made him a natural target for government repression and violence.
By Andy Kemp
Yemane often meets Eritreans here in London who ask him if he is here working on government business. Presenting TV and radio programmes for the state broadcaster, part of the Ministry of Information, his face was well-known to the nation. Starting in 1996, when many of his colleagues were enlisted and sent to the front in Eritrea’s war with its neighbour Ethiopia, Yemane became a kind of journalistic all-rounder, involved in the editing and preparation of news and sport as well as in presenting, even becoming a dab hand with a camera, “So many journalists were sent to the front that those of us left behind had to do a bit of everything”, he says. On Sundays he presented a live news programme based on reports from Reuters, and he was also the face of the Eritrean version of Reuters’ Africa Journal, chronicling economic, social and political developments in the continent. He also had many assignments around the world, covering sports tournaments as well as news stories. It was in many ways a privileged position as the government increasingly cut the Eritrean people off from the rest of the world.
The national liberation movement that had fought for the country’s independence from Ethiopia had swiftly degenerated into a military dictatorship and a police state where every aspect of peoples’ lives was controlled. Dissent was not tolerated, and nobody knew then whether they or their family would be the next to be carted off to prison. “If you go to prison in Eritrea”, Yemane says, “That is the end of you. You are not allowed any visitors, any contact with your family, or with the outside world”. The threat of conscription also hung over every man’s life. “Originally when conscription started it was for eighteen months. But I have friends who went into the army in 1994 and have never been allowed back”.
In 2006, the increasingly paranoid government decided to crack down on its journalists, suspicious of their contacts with the outside world and their annoying habit of telling the truth as they saw it. ID cards were seized, e-mail accounts infiltrated, and there was a mass exodus of many of the remaining journalists into neighbouring countries –a sign of desperation when it is considered that troops in Sudan and Ethiopia had been told to ‘shoot-to-kill’ Eritreans.
In 2007, Yemane presented a programme about African economic migrants and their dangerous, sometimes deadly, route through Mauritius to the Canaries and then Spain. While aware of the dangers, Yemane decided the best thing to do was to flee Eritrea later that year.
At home, Eritreans are constantly reminded of the power of the state. This ‘apparatus of fear’ as Yemane calls it, impinges on the psyche of Eritreans wherever they are, making it difficult to speak out. There are often repercussions for family members of vocal opponents of the regime –Yemane himself made the incredibly painful decision to leave behind his wife and children when his own situation in the country became intolerable.
Even the tough UK authorities recognised the validity of Yemane’s claim for asylum straight away, and within a month he was awarded refugee status, giving him the right of family reunion, but, he laments, “…The Eritrean government doesn’t recognise this right of family reunion; they will never allow my family to join me”.
Eritrean organisations here in the UK, he says, “serve the government not the people. They spy for the government back home”. Even though many Eritrean refugees tend to be among the better-educated and more confident of their people, they are traumatised –“…the spies even infiltrate families over here. It is difficult to know who you can trust”. Nonetheless, Yemane’s familiar face has enabled other Eritreans to approach him, and he has started to create networks with former colleagues and other dissidents he has met here. Originally ‘dispersed’ to NASS accommodation in Cardiff then Plymouth, Yemane decided to move to London where he feels he can best contribute to the rehabilitation of his community.
“I live in a hostel with young Eritreans whom I help to look for work, to improve their English, and generally to keep their spirits up. They are damaged young people, and easy prey to the many dangers that might befall them living in a big city like London. I encourage their self-development. I tell them, don’t fall into the black economy, take an ESOL course instead.’ Although grateful for the asylum granted him by Britain, he is disappointed by the lack of support for him to utilise his many skills here, and also by the lack of media coverage of the situation in Eritrea –‘…there is nothing that explains to the British people the misery and desperation of Eritrea.’
Yemane admits that he sometimes feels terribly depressed and misses his family and friends at home, but he has thrown himself into community activism and volunteering. As well as occasional teaching for the Refugees-In-Schools programme, he has positions giving housing advice with one organisation and doing administration for another. He is taking creative writing courses and learning Italian at London’s Migrant Resource Centre, and has recently come back from the Netherlands where he took a Press Now course in ‘Radio Training for Eritrean Journalists’. He explains, “Despite all my 12 years of experience as a journalist, there is always more to learn in a new country. Eritrea was very backward and I have to learn about new equipment and resources all the time”.
Yemane is a rare voice speaking out for his own people –‘Eritreans have learnt not to be outspoken, even in our own language. I want to improve my English and let the world know what is going on in my country.’
Asked about the danger to his family at home, he says, ‘What can I do? The government knows who I am, I cannot hide here. We have a Tigrean proverb: something like “the patient who doesn’t discuss his symptoms will not receive his medication.” This means I have to speak out…what kind of journalist would I be if I do not speak the truth? Only by speaking the truth will the situation in Eritrea ever change.’
