“I have never seen fighting like that.” Hatu Gebremedhin sounded exhausted, and he was. He’d just made the 10 hour drive from Melbourne to Sydney. “I have been awake for the past 36 hours,” he said, and it was well past 3.00 in the morning.

Hatu is an activist with Brigade N’Hamedu in Australia.  The Eritrean opposition to the Eritrean regime had mobilised over 300 supporters in total from across the country – from Perth, Tasmania, Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney, as well as Melbourne.

The clashes took place in a suburb of Melbourne on Friday 12th January.

“The PFDJ chose the area precisely as a place to have a fight,” says Hatu. It was vicious, with rocks and metal polls. The Brigade managed to get 100 opposition supporters to the area rapidly. The clash left 14 people injured, some of them so seriously they had to be helped to hospital, where they are now recovering.

“We won – 100%”, says Hatu. “But I don’t feel good about the injuries – they are a loss to me.”

The opposition had been working for many months to warn the Australian government, local authorities and police that these events might turn violent. A petition was sent to Andrew Giles, the Minister of Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, signed by over 900 people to halt the event because it involved “a foreign power in the radicalisation of children and its implications for the Eritrean community in Australia.”

But they were determined that there would be no repetition of the January 2023 tour of Australia and New Zealand by Yosuf Saiq, head of Organizational Affairs of the PFDJ.

Yosuf Saiq used the “festival” to spread the regime’s propaganda, with footage from a video showing children carrying weapons.

This year, Yosuf Saiq was denied a visa to come to Australia.

The Eritrean opposition went all out to explain why they were opposed to the planned “cultural festival” – issuing press releases which were distributed to the media [see below]. As a result, the events got considerable coverage, much of which was sympathetic to the opposition.

The PFDJ moved the location of the event at least four times, and the Brigade managed to persuade the authorities to cancel at least three of these. In the end the police said they did not have the resources to respond, and the fighting took place, leaving bloodstains on the streets of this quiet Australian suburb.