The Tragedy of ex-fighter
Meriam Hagos
Disappeared in the
“Eritrean Way”
Debora Zerai, Meriam
Hagos and Zerai Haile (pictures taken 1991-1992)
"I cannot
believe that my friend Miriam Hagos is still in
“prison”. I say “prison” but the big question
is do
I really know where she actually is. No, I really don’t know where she
is. All I know is my laughing, funny and lovable friend is nowhere I could
reach her, talk to her or see her. Is she in prison or is she dead? I do not
know that either.
But the sad part of it is- It is not only me
who don't know. Her only daughter doesn’t know and her own Mom died
without ever knowing where her daughter was. Neither her friends, nor any other
member of her family knows where she is. My good friend Miriam simply disappeared!
If she is in prison why can’t anybody see her? Why can’t her own daughter see
her? Nobody has seen her for the last eight years since 2001 and “they” tell us
she is still around.
I hear that her own daughter had asked, was it
once or maybe twice or more than thrice, to be allowed to see her Mom or
write letters to her or talk to her on the phone and was repeatedly told that
her mom was alive and well-cared for “Somewhere” but “NO!” to seeing or writing
or calling her. And long and painful eight years have just gone by! Just
like that.
It was
late morning or early afternoon sometimes in the month of October when two
simple looking men walked calmly into her office. Two simple looking men, not
wearing any kind of uniform, simply walked into her office and took her.
Who were they?
Nobody knows! Where did they take her? – Nobody knows. Why did they take
her? Nobody knows. Of course anybody could speculate but neither her own family
nor any of her friends, co-workers or anybody else knows for sure who the two
men were or where they took her and why.
Afterwards,
her two co-workers who were at the office at the time told anybody that asked
that two men came to the office and simply took her and as she walked out of
the office with them she had looked them both in the eye and said, “Just
tell people that they came and took me.’ And my dear and lovable friend Miriam
was never ever seen again.
Eight
years! Nobody asked who those two men were and neither did anybody
ask why they were taking her. They themselves did not say who they were or
where they were taking her. No explanation, no apology, no nothing. They just
took her! And nobody has seen my lovable friend Miriam ever since. Eight years!
You know,
people write books on such stories. Yes, they do! And believe me, Miriam's and
many others like hers would have made a nice and interesting reading. The
writers would have given it a very interesting title like “The Disappearance of Ms So and So”…or “The Mystery of
Ms….Last Day’ –something like that and I, being a mystery lover, an Agatha
Christie reader, would have loved to read it if it was somebody else’s story.
But this one,
let alone to read it, I still don’t even want to talk about it because it
really and truly hurts! Yes! It hurts so bad nothing else compares to it! They
say, all pains go away as time passes. Yes, it is true
even the pain of the death of a loved one passes away as time passes. But
this pain of Miriam never goes away. Not only does it not go away,
it gets worse and worse as time passes by.
Nevertheless,
whether it hurt or not, if it had happened in America or in any hundred other
places in the world, people would have written about it and others would have
read it. And mostly and most importantly when something so unjust like this
occurred, people would have made a riot to show their dismay and disgust and
would have called and shouted for justice. BUT NOT in
ERITREA where it actually happened.
Yes, my friend
Miriam Hagos disappeared without a trace in Eritrea. Yes! Eritrea- a tiny, mini, myni mo of a country, almost nobody knows about unless one
mentions Ethiopia and declares that it is close to Ethiopia
and maybe add that at one time it was part of Ethiopia before it became an
independent country in 1991 and then, only then, you might find one in a
thousand who would say, “Oh yea, Eritrea!”
Yes! It
happened in Eritrea, in that tiny country whose people, at one time, not
very long ago either, were fighting for freedom and independence from the
Ethiopians because the Ethiopians were not respecting Eritrean human rights and
dignity.
Yes, it happened in Eritrea
but why am I not
surprised! I am sad, bitter, hurt, angry, frustrated but I am
not at all surprised! Why? Because it happened the Eritrean Way!
And what, in God’s name, is the Eritrean Way one might ask! THAT! What happened
to my friend Miriam and many others is the Eritrean Way- that is the Eritrean
Government’s Way, that is the “fighters’ way’.
Yes, the fighter’s way! The fighters who
fought for independence from Ethiopia, the fighters who fought for justice, for
liberty, for human rights and human dignity, the fighters who later on became
the Eritrean government.
Yes! I am not
surprised at all because everything has been the Fighters’ Way. Yes,
things had always been like that, doing whatever you feel like doing, not
respecting any law or rule, not caring to follow any rule at all. I am not
surprised because I got used to it from seeing it all the time.
What is worse,
after a while, it started looking that there was nothing wrong
with it- that it was the right way of doing things. Not only me- but almost
everybody in Eritrea thought whatever the Government of the fighters did
was right. Even if you felt it was
wrong, it was Right. It had always been like that.
Many things
felt wrong but they were right! Putting a person in prison without a court
order sounds and feels wrong, but when the Government put Miriam and all the
others in prison without them seeing their day in court, it was right.
When the
government refused to disclose their whereabouts, it felt wrong but it was
right. When the government refused family members to see the prisoners, it felt
wrong and it hurt a lot, but it was right! Because that is the Eritrean
Way- On second thought maybe I should say “The Fighters’ way” and quit saying
the Eritrean Way!
But this thing could only happen in Eritrea-
nowhere else. Even the Ethiopian Dergue whom we had
condemned as being Fascist allowed family members to see their prisoners. But
in Eritrea, it is okay if you just take a person and put him in prison,
not only for 48 hours but for days, weeks, months and even years.
It is still
okay if you do not tell family members, children, husbands, wives,
friends, the whereabouts of their loved ones. It is
still okay if you do not disclose the reason why they are wherever you have put
them. Almost like the “magic wand”, you wave it and make people like my friend
Miriam disappear into thin air and nobody asks you
about it and you don't care explaining it.
That is the
most frightening thing. Nobody says anything, nobody does anything about it!
Everybody accepts it and life goes on as usual. Isn’t that strange?
Nobody says anything, nobody writes about it, nobody
talks about it even in private.
Isn’t that frightening! It is just as if the
prisoners were never there, never existed, never been born. Nobody asks about
an unborn person. It is so very sad that my good friend Miriam has simply
disappeared and the silence surrounding me in Eritrea is so great that I feel
that I had dreamed her and that she was never born.
How do they do
that?? How do they make us to feel like that- forget our loved ones, forget our
values of right and wrong, forget to fight for our rights. What about all those
years we fought because so many wrongs were done on us? Where did all that
fighting spirit go?
What are they
telling us that we have clogged our ears and closed our eyes and have refused
to fight for their rights which indirectly are our own rights as people. We are
so silent, it is deafening. Eight years???
I
wonder what I, as a single person, can do for my dear and
lovely friend Miriam? What can I do for you my friend
Miriam? Maybe always remember you and never ever forget you?, that I had done everyday, for the past eight years.
But
it did not help any. Maybe write about you and make them
know what they are doing to you is unfair, unjust and simply not
right? If writing would help, I would write everyday.
But
I know it doesn't. Many before me, if not in Eritrea, outside of Eritrea,
had written about you and many others and it did not help at all! Yes, how can
it ever help because we are dealing with people who, without any shame, say,
"Oh! the fact that they
are in prison hurts us more
than anybody else- these people were our own comrades. we
really feel sad that this thing happened to them.
What
about all those years we fought because so many wrongs were done on us? Where
did all that fighting spirit go
"Can
you imagine? That's the kind of people they are! But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they are
what they are. Because
I, yes, I with many thousands like me, let them be
what they are now.
And
the sad part of it is we also let ourselves be what we are now.
The time to do something was when we felt" Even if you felt it was wrong, it was
right" - that was the time when we should have done
something. Yes, that was the time! Can somebody talk me down, please! "
Written by a close
friend of Miriam Hagos
Background
Miriam
Hagos
Miriam was the type of person who speaks her
mind. She would criticize
openly and suggest changes. It was difficult for her to interact or deal
with
a culture that did not encourage openness. Soon, she was put under
surveillance
and, like many others, suffered a great deal for harboring petty bourgeois
tendencies.
Between the years 1979 and 1981, she was put in prison for two years.
She suffered kidney problems and had difficulties with her eye-sight.
Having served
her sentence, she was asked (by one of the superiors) how she found her
revolutionary training. She replied back by saying that she was in prison
and
not, as he intended her to feel, in training. He said that she has not
learned
a lesson yet, and he returned her to prison for some more months.
When she was released and asked the same old question, she replied back by
saying, “I was in training."
There she met and married Zerai Haile, a fellow fighter who also joined
the movement from North America. In 1985, she had a daughter and called her
Deborah. She raised her daughter under difficult conditions. After the
independence of Eritrea, she worked as the Head for cinema management.
On the 26th of September 2001, three Eritrean ex-ambassadors who
resigned from their posts by criticizing their government organized a meeting
in New York (the USA). They were: Haile Menkorios, Hebret Berhe and Adhanom
Ghebremariam. Zerai Haile, Miriam's husband was living in the United
States since 1996, and It is reported that he was one of those people who
disrupted the meeting, and verbally abused the three ex-ambassadors. He
was in support of the PFDJ. Not only
that, but in 2001, Zerai Haile wanted to disassociate himself from his wife and
the mother of his child due to
Miriam’s firm stand on the current
Eritrean affairs, and he divorced her through his power of attorney.
When Miriam heard what had happened and what her ex-husband did at the meeting
in New York, she expressed her displeasure and her disappointment over the
phone. Those who know them say that Zerai was furious and angry at Miriam and
he was heard saying that “she would face the consequences”. What was contained
within their private lives came out in the open. People who know say that Miriam was reported
by her ex-husband and was put in prison on 6th of October 2001,
because she showed (however indirectly) her support for those who asked for
change.
Elsa
Chyrum
London, UK