We, the Eritrean signatories, are proud to be joined by reputable institutions and distinguished professors from different parts of the world. We particularly recognize the endorsement of the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.  In the past 20 years the Centre has immensely contributed to the enhancement of human rights in our continent. We wish also to recognize and thank individually Professor Frans Viljoen who is Professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Centre for Human Rights; and Professor Michelo Hansungule who is also Professor of Human Rights Law at the same Center for signing the letter with us. Both individuals have done notable contribution to the African Human Rights System in different capacities.

We also wish to separately thank Tricia Redeker Hepner, (Ph.D.) who is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Trhas, as she is often called as a testimony of her involvement in the human rights situation in Eritrea, is the Eritrea coordinator for Amnesty International USA. We also extend special thanks to the other Amnesty International staff. We are grateful to the support we got from the group of human rights activists in Arizona. We take it as part of the continued support extended by these groups to Aster Yohannes and other Eritreans behind bars.

We wish also to thank the support we received from human rights lawyers from different parts of Africa – from Guinea (Conakry) and the Gambia in the West to Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia in the East to South Africa and Lesotho in the South. Knowing that injustices will be done by our selectivity, we nevertheless wish to specifically thank Ibrahima Sidibe, Professor of Law at the General Lansana Conte University in Conakry, Republic of Guinea. Professor Sidibe is the 2006 Ubuntu prize winner of the Centre for Human Rights.

We would like to share you what Ubuntu, a humanist philosophy in Bantu languages, actually mean. In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Ubuntu is thus to suffer together – ‘harm to one is harm to all’. Thus, our thanks to the non-Eritrean signatories who joined us in the sprit of ubuntu.  

Around 700 of the signatories are Eritreans. Some of the signatories have helped to solicit for more signatures because of their respectable stature they built as a result of their demonstrated effort and choice to suffer together with their suffering brethren.

Thank you all. Thank you indeed for calling for a kind of the Bietgiorgis meeting among different Eritrean political forces in our capital – Asmara. Thank you for calling for immediate respect, protection, fulfillment and promotion of the fundamental rights and freedoms of Eritreans. Thank you for calling for the establishment of constitutional order in Eritrea – the rule of law we are desperately lacking. Thank you for calling the ‘Government of Eritrea’ to invite the exiled Eritrean opposition parties, civic-society organisations and individual activists to a forum in which a framework for transition to constitutional governance should be developed. 

In a democratic setting, numbers do matter a lot. A concern of even a single individual should be heeded; and the concern of two citizens should be heeded more than the concern of one; 100 more than 10; 1000 more than 100 … etc. More than 700 Eritreans have made a call to the ‘Government of Eritrea’. Perhaps the 700 will simply be labeled as ‘enemy agents’. But, what if tens of thousands of Eritreans present an Eritrean peace plan to Asmara? Would they too be labeled ‘enemy agents’? Can the state afford to treat all its citizens as enemies?

There should be a next step or a second part of the initiative. The Eritrean Democratic Alliance is not moving at a speed the profusely bleeding Eritrean public needs to be spared of; and we are up to a national conference. Aren’t we? What are we going to do at the conference? What we need to do is to come up with a national deal – call it Eritrea’s Peace Charter – that we all must bow to and abide by and coordinate our efforts under its guidelines. The patient is bleeding profusely and the pace of our coming together is simply slow. We should start thinking about short cuts – something revolutionary. How about closing one hundred Eritrean figures in a paltalk room and forcing them to come up with a peace plan after carefully studying the dynamics of our politics and problems? And we can promise them to accept it. Disagreement amongst ourselves and lack of synergy is delaying the solution we are seeking. We need to come together very quickly.

In closing, the letter will be submitted to the addressees by Monday 23 June 2008. Some of the initiators will follow it up. Please email to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it for any inquiry related to the letter.  

Thank you

The Follow up Group