Asmara — The 2008 Festival Eritrea Holland was officially opened on July 5 2008 by His Excellency Abdellah Jabir, Head of Organisational Affairs of the Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). This three-day festival is being held at the usual venue of the Maresca Party and Congres Centrum in the city of Utrecht. The occasion was witnessed by His Excellency Mohamed Suleiman, Eritrea's Ambassador in Netherlands, and His Excellency Girma Asmerom, Eritrea's Ambassador in Brussels and European Union.
In keeping with its now firmly established tradition, the three-day festival is packed with program activities to meet for every taste and interest.
Earlier Mr. Solomon Mehari, Consulate general of the Eritrean Embassy in the Netherlands welcomed all those who came to partake. In his speech Mr. Solomon stated that the 7th Festival Eritrea Holland is being held at a time during which we can take stock with satisfaction of the positive and commendable progress made during the past 17 years of the country's history. In this regard he highlighted the underpinning and everlasting significance of this national event in respect of the strengthening of our community's unity and its role in the socioeconomic transformation efforts and the motherland. He further took the occasion to thank all those who have worked hard to make this occasion a success and urged community members to contribute to the Warsay Yekealo development campaign as they have usually have been doing. Finally he expressed his best wishes to every partaker to have a good time and enjoy the three-day festival packed with activities program activities made to meet for every taste and interest.
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I, too, wonder how a European country that is peaceful, liberal, and free allows messengers of dictatorial regime in Eritrea to play their game and extort money from Eritreans living in Europe. This is just strange.
Any PFDJ or whatever official who dares to talk about prosperity in Eritrea deserves to be challenged by asking what prosperity he/she is talking about having put under tight grip virtually all its people young and old, men and women, urban and rural....
What makes things even worse is why Eritreans in diaspora allow such things to happen. If the festival is all about Eritrean community in Holland, then that is fine. As community it is fine to have festival in the name of your country, culture and more. However allowing such a dictatorship (thanks to whom thousands of our brothers and sisters are facing all the hardship to run away to Sudan, Libya and then take the all danger of Mediterranean waters to reach Europe) to come and shamelessly talk about prosperity and try to extort money from Eritreans is shameful, disgraceful and betrayal to our martyrs who gave their life in order to defend Eritrea and give its people real freedom and prosperity where one won't need menkesakesi wereket within his/her city.
Eritreans in diaspora when are you going to open your head and be convinced that there is nothing like hade hizbi hade libi propaganda or mengisti malet hizbi; hizbi malet mengisti; or the infamous connection mengisti is hager and hager is mengisti..... all this is PFDJ's tactics to control and keep us in fear. Please let us challenge them the very fact that a government is by definition a temporary entity that has to be selected (voted in) by people in order to serve the country for a specific period of time. That is all. A government can never be connected with a homeland. The home land belongs to all of us with different, probably conflicting ideals, which is natural and these ideals are what people need to see in order to select which officials to put in the government to lead the country or which officials to kick out of government offices for incompetence.
The good news is though even Roman Empire has been reckoned with and surely PFDJ and its regime's existence will be trashed down to toilet when the right time comes at which time Eritreans in Eritrea and abroad will have the right to vote, the right to freely move in and out, the right to have their property rights reserved, and the right to call into account their government.
Long live Eritrea
Being a extremely proud Dutch / Eritrean Canadian, I pains me to see ANY representative do anything at any festival outside of Eritrea on behalf of the PFDJ! This regime enjoys the freedom of international movement in other countries that it wouldn't dream of giving its own citizens. It's a shame the liberal Dutch, whom have dropped the ball on calling Tyranny what it is for a veeeeeeeeeeeery long time now, allow this display of propaganda! It's time to get back to its Calvinist roots and not allow this amoral regime any forum for it's lies and call into its accounts its religious persecution!