It started long time ago before we could even imagine. The opposition against oppression and violation of basic human rights has come and gone. We see things perpetuate from time to time; again and again and again! Things has been said, terminologies used again and again generating new terminologies without producing the desired result.

However, that is not surprising! We (most human beings) are conditioned to repeat and perform in patterns. Wake up, go to work or school, come back home and sleep. The situation in Eritrea, in fact, seems to differ. Wake up, sit in trenches, come back to sleep and then back to guard the boarder and that is excluding the prisoners of consciousness. Sometimes, the ‘tegadelties’ are smart enough and try to disturb the pattern by introducing new tasks. The pattern then evolves to wake up, dig up a trench, demolish the trench, guard the boarder, get back to sleep…..

In fact it is not only humans who are conditioned to routine mind set. Ants, too! They travel in one line in two opposite directions and make miles of trips before they realize there could have been a better short cut. It is analogous to the way governments in Africa are over thrown and replaced by a similar but different military government. A self acclaimed representative comes to power and become a dictator. Concerned citizens become guerrilla fighters to overthrow the dictator for which they become dictators themselves. My question is why do we follow the same path to change or over throw a dictator?
 
Nature is amazing! Everything is tied by the term science. Social science, natural science, political science etc… Science. Science….It is true though that all things, living and non-living things, are governed by the law of nature. A magnet always points to the magnetic north. Is it because of the nature of law that in Africa guerrilla fighters topple a government? That is really scary! There is a similarity between the bacterium that cause tuberculosis (TB) and the change of governments in Africa. The first drug for TB was discovered in the 1940s and numerous drugs were then introduced to combat TB.
 
However, the bacterium learned from its experiences and has become resistant to the first line drugs making TB the number one killing disease in the world next to HIV/AIDS. The drug resistant bacteria are used to be called MDR. But with emergence of even more resistant bacteria, the term currently used is XDR (Extreme Drug Resistant). TB will keep on killing millions of people till someone comes with a new drug in same way what is happening to the Eritrean people under the administration of Issias. The world is waiting for the critical thinker to discover a drug against the bacteria.
 
Similarly, the government of Eritrea is used to the tricks and systems of the opposition parties and individuals. We can’t bring any change unless we start thinking differently. For each obvious action we make or impose, the government of Eritrea can easily react and become immune to the situation. Isn’t that one of the reasons why the Eritrean opposition parties have not been successful to bring change in Eritrea? Issias has gone through the same experience we are trying to employ in order to make changes in Eritrea. Wouldn’t be nice if we start to stimulate our minds for new ideas and inventions? It might be so simple to establish democracy and human rights in Eritrea perhaps if we discover another slightly different but nobel mechanism. For instance, wouldn’t it be appropriate to convince Issias to come to a round table so as to bring a healthy change to Eritrea?
 
From my point of view, before Issias changes from MDR to XDR, we Eritreans need to look into new ideas, which haven’t been tried instead of just following the foot steps of the past guerillas.
 
[Dr. Henok Hadgu is a founding member of an independent civic movement, EMDHR, with members around the world. Presently, he is a senior researcher at CSIR. He can be reached via email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ]