Earlier today I posted a story about the conflicting reports of what was taking place in the Netherlands.
That confusion ended a few hours ago with victory for the Eritrean opposition.
The mayor of Veldhoven – the towns where the YPFDJ conference was being held – was ruled to have been within his powers to order it to end.
The Eritrean regime has until 8.00 pm tonight to leave.
Story below
Martin
Source: Dutch News
The decision by Veldhoven’s mayor to ban a conference by the only political party permitted in Eritrea was upheld by a court in Den Bosch on Friday afternoon. The organisers of the conference went to court to have the ban against their meeting at a conference centre in Veldhoven lifted.
Mayor Jack Mikkers said on Thursday evening he would not allow the meeting to go ahead, after police arrested over 100 demonstrators who had gathered outside the conference centre where the gathering was due to be held.
The 128 people arrested were all released from custody on Friday morning and the public prosecution department has yet to decide if any of them should face charges, broadcaster NOS said.
The People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, the only political party permitted in Eritrea, had planned to hold its annual youth European conference in the Netherlands this weekend. Despite the ban, local broadcaster Omroep Brabant said the meeting had started on Friday afternoon. According to the conference Facebook page, some 500 people are in attendance. However, a spokeswoman for the conference centre told the broadcaster that an alternative programme of music is taking place instead.
Provocation
Many Eritrean refugees in the Netherlands regard the conference as an act of provocation, Tilburg University professor Mirjam van Reisen told NOS earlier this week. ‘The government wants to show the Eritrean community that it still rules in the Netherlands,’ she said. Eritrea has been condemned by the UN for crimes against humanity and the UN estimates hundreds of thousands of Eritreans have fled the country in recent years.
Dutch government ministers said earlier this week they were unhappy about the meeting being held on Dutch soil but that there were no grounds to ban it in advance.
Martin Plaut 
Yemane Tesfai | 15 April 2017 | africahornnow.com
The Parable of Veldhoven
Under the title of “Dutch Authorities Banned YPFDJ Conference: A Zero-sum Game for Eritreans”, Mr. Teweldeberhan Gebre, attempts to explain away the showdown in Holland within the simplified and naïve frame of the game theory. Mr. Gebre would have been more truthful if he explained the unfolding events in Veldhoven applying the more realistic common-sense “theory” of cause and result. Indeed, there is cause and result in everything that happens in this wonderful world. Enjoy!
During the Reign of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia there were three brothers born in the blessed land of Erena. Their parents called them simply A, B and C—A like Abraham, B like Benyam and C like Caleb. A, the eldest, decided to join the resistance like his father Hagos did before him. After a few years C, the youngest decided to also join the existential fight for the survival of the homeland. The nationwide strife against the colonial masters raged on for decades and consumed the precious blood of thousands including that of A and C. A perished at Halhal on the last day of September 1982 and C fell during the liberation of Massawa in February 1990. The following year more than a century of occupation ended. The people of Erena were free at last!
Hagos returned home half-blind with a crippled left leg and with the two sons of Abraham and the nine-year old daughter of Caleb. Negisti his wife had died from a broken-heart. The three children were war orphans. Benyam and his wife Sara gladly took over the responsibility for the three children and grandfather Hagos.De politie heeft ingegrepen bij een betoging van tientallen Eritreeërs en sympathisanten in Veldhoven.
Alas, soon all family members realized that the intoxicating joy of liberation was short-lived. Benyam shut the family-owned brick-making works and went to Sawa. Hagos assumed the role of the bread-winner by taking up a night guard job at a local nightclub favored by the children of the nouveau riche liberation war elites. Each passing year the Hagos family’s hope for redemption was dashed.
Hagos’ health was rapidly deteriorating and his will to live was eroding with each passing week. In desperation, Sara decided to contact her cousin Almaz and beseeched her to save Abraham’s two children from the servitude military camp called Sawa. It took much resource and time but the two young men, after a perilous journey, ended up in Maastricht, Holland. For all practical purposes, Erena had been turned into a country not for young people—where dreams to study, to work and to build a happy family with a bright future had been stolen by the new homegrown rulers.
On Good Friday 2017, Almaz’s 20-year old (made-in-Sweden) daughter Luna came face-to-face with liberation war martyr Abraham’s two sons (Dawit and Filimon) but on the opposite side of the picket line. Luna had just left the bus which brought her and the rest of the Swedish contingent to the YPFDJ conference center. Dawit and Filimon were shouting slogans against the ruling party’s romance with the sons and daughters of regime-anointed Diaspora parents. They did not recognize each other in the melee but Luna and the two brothers share the same lineage and country.
For Luna, Erena is a summertime paradise with ample distraction that spirits away her senses from the drudgery of working in a high-street pharmacy in Stockholm. For Dawit and Filimon today’s Erena is a vast open prison where the regime possesses everything except the air we breathe—the land and all infrastructure on it (including veteran fighter Hagos’ house) and every living creature on the land, especially the youth.
Postscript: Why does meskerem.net babble about the violation of the Dutch constitution when there isn’t any constitution back home in Eritrea. Dear meskerem.net, does Mr. Yemane Gebreab or for that matter the mayor of Asmara permit Sawa-alumni to assemble and confer in their homeland?
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