By Culture Trip’s article with journalist and fiction writer and PEN Eritrea executive director about the situation in Eritrea how is working to remedy it.
Fiction pales in comparison to the reality of present day Eritrea. There are over 360 prison facilities (majority underground detention centers run/owned by military commanders who extort
money for plea bargains) in this small nation of less than five-million people. One way or another an average Eritrean has served time in these detention
centers (myself in a labor camp). The degree
of dehumanization and brutality many prisoners of conscience experience is difficult to fathom. George Orwell’s 1984 and Franz Kafka’s The Trial read not as allegorical stories of a dystopian world, but as slightly embellished accounts of life in Eritrea itself. Personal stories of the prison
facilities vary—I’ve heard of people who were forced to eat with defecation-tainted utensils;
to others who served for years in the solitary confinement because of mistaken identity, with even the guards freely admitting that they were detained
the wrong person. I’ve also heard of some workers who were imprisoned under harsh conditions because the jailers want to extract information regarding
their bosses, men who would themselves never be indicted. I wrote “The Flagellates” having all such stories as a backdrop. A straight, realist narrative
story couldn’t grasp the scale of such bizarre reality so I had to be just as bizarre with my imagination; I remember even bursting into a loud laughter
while writing it in a coffee shop.Fiction pales in comparison to the reality of present day Eritrea. There are over 360 prison facilities (majority underground detention centers run/owned by military commanders who extort money for plea bargains) in this small nation of less than five-million
people. One way or another an average Eritrean has served time in these detention centers (myself in a labor camp).
The degree of dehumanization and brutality many prisoners of conscience experience is difficult to fathom. George Orwell’s 1984 and Franz
Kafka’s The Trial read not as allegorical stories of a dystopian world, but as slightly embellished accounts of life in Eritrea itself. Personal
stories of the prison facilities vary—I’ve heard of people who were forced to eat with defecation-tainted utensils;
to others who served for years in the solitary confinement because of mistaken identity, with even the guards freely admitting that they were detained
the wrong person. I’ve also heard of some workers who were imprisoned under harsh conditions because the jailers want to extract information regarding
their bosses, men who would themselves never be indicted. I wrote “The Flagellates” having all such stories as a backdrop. A straight, realist narrative
story couldn’t grasp the scale of such bizarre reality so I had to be just as bizarre with my imagination; I remember even bursting into a loud laughter
while writing it in a coffee shop.
Read Full Story Below:
How Eritrean Writer Abraham Tesfalul Zere Is Fighting His Country’s Oppressors from Abroad
