[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 93 (Monday, July 18, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                     CIVIC PRIDE BLOOMS IN ERITREA

                                 ______


                            HON. DAN BURTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 18, 1994

  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I rise to salute the government 
and people of Eritrea on the occasion of the first anniversary of their 
independence. In only 1 year of freedom, Eritrea has become an island 
of stability and a beacon of hope for Africa. Under the wise and humane 
leadership of President Issaias Afwerki and the Government of Eritrea, 
the Eritrean people are providing a shining example of what can be 
accomplished through hard work, dedication, self-reliance, and the 
pursuit of wise policies. Eritrea's freedom was hard-earned and hard-
fought. This milestone in the history of its people is truly a cause 
for celebration.
  I would also like to pay my respects to the departing Ambassador of 
Eritrea, Hagos Ghebrehiwet. During his tenure in Washington, Hagos made 
many friends and won the respect, admiration, and affection of all who 
worked with him. He will be missed, but we wish him well in his new 
assignment in Asmara along with Abebech, his wife, and their son, 
Petros.
  I commend to the attention of my colleagues an excellent article that 
appeared recently in the Los Angeles Times about the miracle of 
Eritrea, and an article from the Indianapolis Star about the 
independence celebration of Indianapolis' Eritrean community.

              [From the Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1994]

                     Civic Pride Blooms in Eritrea

                            (By David Lamb)

       Asmara, Eritrea.--``Kefela,'' the American said as he left 
     the U.S. library on Alula Street for the last time, ``take 
     care of the books.'' With that the man was gone, joining the 
     exodus of Americans expelled by Ethiopia's Marxist government 
     from the northern province of Eritrea nearly 20 years ago.
       No one would have dared imagine how seriously Kefela Kokobu 
     would take those words. For single-handedly, and at 
     considerable personal risk, Kefela ensured that an entire 
     generation of young Eritreans would be raised on Hemingway 
     instead of Mao, would have better access to Jefferson than to 
     Lenin.
       Ethiopian officials raged at Kokobu upon finding shelves 
     devoted to O'Hara and Fitzgerald and a record cabinet 
     featuring music by the Boston Pops and the Harvard Glee Club; 
     they sent him the collected works of Communist authors by the 
     box load. Kokobu put three or four of the books on display to 
     appease the authorities and packed the rest away in storage.
       Traces of the American presence in Eritrea disappeared fast 
     under the Marxist regime that overthrew Emperor Harle 
     Selassie: The U.S. Consulate was taken over by the Ethiopian 
     navy, and Kagnew Station, a U.S. army communications 
     facility, became a base for the murderous Ethiopian army. But 
     Kokobu's beloved American Library remained just a library--
     indeed, Asmara's only public library--though operated under 
     the auspices of the local municipality, not the U.S. 
     Information Service.
       ``I wanted my people to be educated, and I did not believe 
     Mao and Lenin could provide that learning,'' said Kokobu, 55, 
     who dumbfounded the returning Americans last year by 
     escorting them through a spotless library where every volume 
     had been kept safe and even the list of overdue borrowed 
     books was up to date.
       But if the Americans found Kokobu's diligence stunning, 
     they would soon learn that in Eritrea--which just celebrated 
     its first anniversary as Africa's newest country--the 
     extraordinary is commonplace. As one American diplomat put it 
     recently; ``Eritrea reminds me of what Israel must have felt 
     like in the '50s. There is an obsession with a single goal--
     to make it work.''
       The 3.5 million Eritreans, about evenly divided between 
     Muslims and Christians, are keenly aware after winning a 30-
     year guerrilla war for independence that many people are 
     echoing the diplomat's sentiments. They smile and give a 
     knowing nod when told that what is happening here doesn't 
     seem very, well, African.
       Across a continent where concern for shared well-being 
     often plays little role in national life, cities are 
     decaying, social services crumbling, political foundations 
     wobbling. But here in Eritrea's 7,000-foot-high capital, a 
     kind of new African model is emerging, and common people like 
     Habte Freizghy are helping create it.
       ``If I do not do my job right, if I do not show up for work 
     on time,'' he said, ``then Eritrea is worse off because of 
     me.'' Freizghy is a street sweeper and, together with a 
     legion of other elderly men who wield their brooms with 
     unusual energy, he has helped make Asmars an immaculate city. 
     His salary is $30 a month plus a daily ration of food.
       No beggars are allowed in Asmara; they are sent to a 
     training and schooling center outside the city. Western 
     business people are stunned to learn that government 
     officials are punctual and do not accept bribes.
       Out by the airport, where minefields have been cleared, men 
     and women work side by side tending rows of wheat--a rare 
     sight in Africa where farm labor is usually left to women. A 
     U.S. Embassy briefing packet for visitors contains this 
     notation under the heading Security Awareness: ``None.'' 
     There is no fear of physical harm or crime anywhere in the 
     country, it says.
       Eritrea's guerrilla army--30% of whose combat troops were 
     women--captured Asmara from Ethiopia and its Soviet advisers 
     in May, 1991. But even before the celebration died down, 
     Issaias Afewerki, then rebel leader and now president, had 
     one last request to make of the Eritrean People's Liberation 
     Front (EPLF): Return to the countryside as unpaid volunteers 
     for two years and build schools, repair roads, staff clinics, 
     terrace the hills for farming.
       Though not without grumbling that they already had 
     sacrificed enough and been gone from their families too long, 
     the 95,000 soldiers obeyed.
       ``The odds were stacked against us during the war, and very 
     few thought we could succeed,'' said former combatant Yemane 
     Ghebreab, now a senior party official. ``But the EDLF united 
     the people because our leaders stayed inside the country. 
     They lived the same as the rest. They suffered like the rest. 
     And therefore they were sensitive to the sacrifice of the 
     people.''
       During the colonial era, the ruling Italians built one of 
     Africa's most industrialized colonies in this outpost that 
     resembles the Badlands of South Dakota. There were factories, 
     railroads, citrus plantations. Eritrea became an important 
     export partner for the Middle East and southern Europe.
       Britain took control of Eritrea in 1941. By 1952, Eritreans 
     expected to be granted independence, like other European 
     colonies. Instead, they were swallowed up by Ethiopia. 
     Regardless of ``the point of view of justice,'' U.S. 
     Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told the United Nations 
     at the time, America's strategic interests dictated that 
     Eritrea ``be linked with out ally, Ethiopia.''
       Treated by the Ethiopians as colonial subjects, denied 
     equal education and jobs, the Eritreans went to war in 1961, 
     first against the emperor, then against a cabal of violent 
     Communists. Never before had Africa seen such a resourceful, 
     self-reliant band of guerrillas take to the bush.
       With virtually no outside backing, the EPLF and two other 
     rebel groups carved factories, schools and offices out of 
     rock caves. Solar panels cooled their bloodbank 
     refrigerators. Disposable hypodermic syringes were turned 
     into light switches, shards of shrapnel into scythes.
       Soldiers moved at night and carried blackboards into the 
     trenches, to study by candlelight. But even when Ethiopia 
     adopted communism and the Soviet Union joined the war against 
     Eritrea, in the late 1970s, Western governments kept their 
     distance. The EPLF's rhetoric sounded like it had been 
     written in Albania.
       ``It's true that in the '60s and '70s we, as young 
     fighters, embraced the school of Marxism,'' said Kidane 
     Woldeyesus, head of the Americas section of the Ministry of 
     Foreign Affairs. ``But I think Africa in that era called for 
     that kind of radical thinking.
       ``Then came the Soviet intervention in '78. This MIGs tried 
     to wipe us out. I mean, really wipe us out! It gave us the 
     opportunity to rethink things. Since the '80s, we've clearly 
     stated that we were going to a multi-party, democratic 
     system.''
       This year, having defeated black Africa's largest army and 
     won Ethiopia's blessing to secede, Eritrea observes its first 
     anniversary of independence--formally proclaimed on May 24, 
     1993--with a palpable self-esteem that brings thousands of 
     neatly dressed residents onto Liberation Boulevard each 
     evening to stroll under palm trees and sip espresso in cafes.
       The Peace Corps is coming back, and U.S. firms are 
     exploring for oil and natural gas. The Ethiopian Airlines 
     office now houses Eritrea Airlines, though no such company 
     yet exists.
       Daunting tasks remain, however. ``Observation alone will 
     tell you that 30 years of war brought devastating 
     suffering,'' said Saba Issays of the National Union of 
     Eritrean Women. Agriculture was crippled by the war, the 
     industrial sector destroyed. Per capita income is only $130 a 
     year.
       But Eritreans have only to look across their borders at the 
     economic ruin, widespread wars, tribal animosity and official 
     corruption that torment Africa to know what the alternative 
     is. In few African countries could anyone say, as the Foreign 
     Ministry's Kidane did the other day, ``Being newcomers, we 
     have had the opportunity to learn from history.''
                                  ____


               [From the Indianapolis Star, May 29, 1994]

             Local Eritreans Mark Freedom of Their Homeland

                      (By James L. Patterson, Jr.)

       Yonas Mengsteab knows a thing or two about courage.
       Now 25, he fought for his country's independence from age 
     11 to 22. That was after he lost 14 members of his family to 
     the conflict at age 7.
       Although he was shot in the abdomen and foot during 
     Eritrea's long bloody war to free itself from Ethiopian 
     dominance, Mengsteab's worries are mostly behind him now.
       He's just happy that it's over and his country, Eritrea, 
     finally has its independence.
       Mengsteab joined about 100 of his countrymen at Lawrence 
     Park on Saturday to celebrate Eritrean Independence Day, 
     which was Tuesday.
       ``I'm really happy that the war is over,'' he said. ``Now 
     we are free.''
       Eritrea is a northeast African nation of 3.5 million, 
     bordered by the Red Sea, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. It was 
     colonized by Italy in 1890 and federated with Ethiopia in 
     1952.
       In 1961, Eritrea, outnumbered 4-1, began its armed 
     struggle, which culminated in victory against the Ethiopian 
     army 30 years later.
       The war cost 70,000 Eritrean lives and wounded hundreds of 
     thousands on both sides, said Tesfa Tesfaslase.
       The 40-year-old native of Eritrea came to the United States 
     in 1987 as a political refugee, as did most who attended 
     Saturday's picnic.
       A resident of Indianapolis the past five years, Tesfaslase 
     praised U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Indianapolis, for trying to 
     persuade the U.S. government to back his nation's struggle 
     for independence.
       Many of the women at Saturday's gathering wore braids and 
     zuria, their native dress. After the Eritreans greeted each 
     other with kisses on each cheek, they enjoyed both native and 
     U.S. foods.
       One offering from the Eritrean homeland was enjera, a spicy 
     staple made of chicken, hot chili, butter, onions, tomatoes 
     and eggs.
       Later, with Eritrean music playing in the background, the 
     women served bread and freshly ground coffee.
       It was a time not only for remembering about how far 
     Eritrea has come but also to be hopeful about its people's 
     future.
       After the meal, the chairman of the Eritrean American 
     Community Association, Yemane Teklezghi, spoke in Tigrigna, 
     their native language, about the need to help rebuild his 
     war-torn country.
       Teklezghi, a bilingual teacher for Indianapolis Public 
     Schools, will return to Eritrea this summer to gauge the 
     condition of its infrastructure.
       The Rev. Rustom G. Michael, an Eritrean and pastor of the 
     Church of the Nazarene, 3101 E. 38th St., pleaded for people 
     to make donations to Eritrea because the war has destroyed so 
     many schools, churches and hospitals.
       With a red, green and blue Eritrean flag flapping between 
     two posts under a park shelter, Menghistab G. Christos said 
     he was happy not only about his country's independence but 
     also about the educational achievements of Eritrean children 
     in the United States. Several others offered prayers of 
     thanksgiving.
       ``The opportunities for educating our children, that's the 
     most important thing,'' Christos said. And that is happening.
       Christos' daughter, Eritrea Christos, and two others at the 
     celebration, Aklilu Tedla and Alem Seyoumare, are among 
     several young Eritreans who have attended or graduated from 
     Indiana colleges.

                          ____________________