GIESSEN – (ebp). “As long as the dictatorship is not finished, we will be demonstrating every year,” says Klaus-Dieter Grothe, fiercely. As in previous years, the Green City Council had announced a demonstration to protest against the Eritrea Festival in the Hessian Halls – and more than 100 like-minded people joined him.
Including Abraham Kiro, who can not understand why the festival is approved at all: “We have been liberated in Germany, but the dictator is persecuting us to this point.” This also looks like Mussa Ibrahim. It was a “impertinence that the festival took place in Giessen”. For many people who had fled from the dictatorial regime had also found refuge in the initial reception facility. In the Hessian Halls, the controversial festival is now in full swing. There is music, waffles are baked, in the middle play a few girls volleyball. There is also a bouncy castle. At first sight it seems like a big family feast – if not the many Eritrean national flags and posters, which deal with the history of the country. Critical voices are looked for in vain. “A quarter-century full of stability and development” is in English on a banner.
“There are many things that are going well in Eritrea,” says Dirk Vogelsang of the German-Eritrean Society in an interview with the Anzeiger, pointing to figures that 80 percent of the Eritreans have access to clean drinking water. They did not want to conceal the problems, but they could not understand “why Eritrea sets standards like no other African country”. While inside is celebrated, outside is further demonstrated. “You danced on the bodies of your brothers and sisters,” pending on a poster. Other protesters hold up bloody images, which are said to be the result of ill-treatment by the government.
“In the Hessian Halls, representatives and supporters meet one of the worst dictatorships in the world,” complains Klaus-Dieter Grothe, while the demonstrators in the background are “enough is enough”. “There is no legal system in Eritrea, people are arrested and no one knows where they are going,” says the Green politician.
