Last Monday the 13th, there was yet another photo-op protest in the Civic Center Plaza in front of San Francisco's City Hall.
It was organized by a group of Bay Area folks who are originally from the new African country of Eritrea, which is on the northeastern side of Ethiopia, along the Red Sea.
The two countries, regions, what-have-you have been waging a bitter war over sovereignty for the last 30 years, and an agreement over a permanent border was signed by "The Independent Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC)" in Algiers in 2002.
To read more about the history of the place, there's a good historical entry in Wikipedia (click here)...
...and for the official Eritrean word on the Monday the 13th Worldwide "Peace Rally," click here.
The most touching part about the flyer they were handing out was its naivete.
Their handout read, in part:
"Ethiopia continues to violate the Algiers Agreement, UN Security Council resolutions, and international law. It is militarily occupying sovereign Eritrean territory, in violation of UN Charter. Due to its rejection of the EEBC's decision and procedures, all demarcation activities have come to a halt. The EEBC has been forced to close its offices."
It continued:
"The Role of the U.S. Government: The U.S. must fulfill its legal and moral obligations to enforce the EEBC's decision without further precondition. U.S. failure to enforce demarcation will further destabilize the Horn of Africa, a region of strategic importance to U.S. security and the global war against terrorism."
In truth, the United States government could care less about the vast majority of its own citizens, let alone a bunch of obscure Africans.
Still, let's give these people credit for thinking that a public protest will make a difference.
6 comments:
"In truth, the United States government could care less about the vast majority of its own citizens, let alone a bunch of obscure Africans."
Tragic, but I believe this to be true.
Thank you for covering the event and I hope you will pressure your own local government to rectify the situation and penalize Ethiopia for its continued intrasigence.
In the last two pictures, Old Glory seems a fading dowager amid the youthful, optimistic Eritrean colors. How sad the suffering over there. How sad America's impotent materialism. What beautiful colors!
The real question is-
is it 'E-rit-tree-a' (quickly)
or
'Air-a treea'?
Good post by the way.Sad state of affairs.
Eritrea's national motto is "Never kneel down". I wonder how they came up with that.
Thanks for reminding me today that small blogs can be extremely useful. Kudos for 'Two Willies" and for the Cindy Sheehan coverage. The latter, I agree, was better than any other blog coverage I saw. See you Saturday.
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