Beyond Fear: Eritrea’s Silence, Generational Divide, and the Path to Change

Beyond Fear: Eritrea’s Silence, Generational Divide, and the Path to Change

Semere Solomon

September 26, 2026

Introduction

For many years, concerned Eritreans have asked a painful question: Why do people inside Eritrea appear to endure oppression, repression, and the steady narrowing of public life in silence?

That silence takes many forms. It can mean pretending not to see what is visible or not to hear what is openly said. It can mean denying events taking place before one’s eyes. It can mean withdrawing into the private calculation: Why should I care and invite trouble? Is not suffering with one’s people already a shared fate? Above all, it can mean repeating—or appearing to accept—the regime’s daily narrative.

The question becomes even more troubling because Eritreans fought a thirty-year liberation struggle, resisted powerful external forces, and achieved national independence in 1991. Why, then, has a society that made such immense sacrifices for self-determination found itself unable to openly challenge an authoritarian system that has denied many of the freedoms for which that struggle was fought?

The answer cannot be reduced to cowardice, indifference, or cultural passivity. Eritrean silence is neither natural nor freely chosen. It has been shaped by fear, collective trauma, surveillance, punishment, political isolation, and the deliberate destruction of social trust. It is also reinforced by the emotional power of the liberation legacy and by uncertainty about what could come after the present system.

Yet silence should never be confused with consent.

This essay examines the roots of Eritrean silence; the ways fear has deepened; the widening divide between the Gedli generation and the Warsay generation; the significance of youth exile and diaspora resistance; and the conditions that may help Eritreans move from fear and isolation toward democratic civic action. It does not claim that change is imminent or inevitable. Authoritarian systems can survive for long periods despite public suffering and institutional decay. But no political order can indefinitely depend on coercion, secrecy, militarization, and the denial of a future to its young people.

The task, therefore, is not only to oppose tyranny. It is to prepare a credible, inclusive, and constitutional alternative to it.

Silence Is Not Consent

In Eritrea, there have been important acts of dissent over the past three decades, even if they were quickly suppressed or marginalized. These include the 1993 fighters’ strike; the 1994 peaceful mobilization of war-disabled veterans; the petition of Eritrean scholars known as Group 13; the reform movement associated with Group 15; the 2013 Forto incident; public appeals issued at different moments by Catholic bishops; and the protest movement around Al-Diaa Islamic School in Asmara.

Outside Eritrea, a broad range of political organizations, civic initiatives, media platforms, youth groups, refugee networks, and human-rights advocates have also challenged the regime. Their efforts have often lacked unity, coordination, and sustained strategic direction, but they have nevertheless kept alive a political consciousness that the regime has tried to extinguish.

Still, the central fact remains: a society subjected to one of the most restrictive political systems in the world has rarely been able to transform widespread grievance into durable and organized domestic resistance.

This reality should be interpreted carefully. Under extreme authoritarianism, silence can be an existential strategy. Citizens do not know whether a colleague, neighbor, classmate, relative, or fellow soldier may be reporting to security organs. They may fear not only prison, torture, disappearance, dismissal from work, or military punishment, but also retaliation against parents, spouses, children, siblings, and extended family members.

In such circumstances, people may attend government ceremonies, national holidays, festivals, seminars, and political gatherings not because they genuinely believe in the message, but because they want to avoid suspicion and preserve a measure of private peace. They may repeat slogans they do not believe. They may appear to defend policies they privately reject. They may remain silent because silence seems less dangerous than truth.

Over time, conformity creates a misleading appearance of public consent. When everyone appears to support the system, each individual may conclude that he or she is alone in opposing it. That is one of the most effective forms of authoritarian control: not persuading every citizen, but making every citizen believe that resistance is isolated, futile, and dangerous.

How Fear Became Structural

Fear in Eritrea is not merely personal. It is institutional, social, and familial.

There is no independent press, no free civic space, no meaningful legal protection for political dissent, and no reliable avenue for citizens to organize peacefully around common interests. Surveillance penetrates schools, workplaces, ministries, military units, local administrations, and community life. Although modern communications technologies may be used for monitoring, much of the system’s strength rests on human networks, uncertainty, rumor, and the erosion of trust.

A person need not be arrested for fear to work. The possibility of arrest is often enough.

Fear also becomes collective when punishment extends beyond the individual. When a young person escapes national service, relatives may face financial penalties, detention, harassment, or confiscation of property. Families can be made to feel responsible for actions they did not take and could not control. Such collective punishment turns political dissent into a threat not only to the individual but to the entire household.

The same pattern reaches beyond Eritrea’s borders. Many Eritreans abroad continue to face consular pressure connected to the 2 percent recovery tax, travel documents, inheritance, property matters, and other bureaucratic needs. The effect is to carry coercion across national boundaries and to create the appearance of diaspora consent even where support may be reluctant, transactional, or fear-driven.

Fear deepens when it becomes normal. People begin to adjust their lives around what cannot be said. They lower their expectations. They postpone plans. They accept that their future is uncertain. They teach themselves and their children that survival requires discretion, silence, and avoidance of political questions.

The result is not simply repression. It is the dismantling of horizontal trust—the ability of citizens to speak, cooperate, organize, and act together.

The Liberation Legacy and Moral Paralysis

The PFDJ has not depended only on coercive institutions. It has also drawn political strength from the memory of the liberation struggle.

For many Eritreans, independence was not an abstract political event. It was achieved through decades of sacrifice, displacement, loss, imprisonment, military struggle, and collective perseverance. The struggle formed a moral world built around sacrifice, discipline, unity, endurance, and the primacy of national survival. These values helped sustain a people confronting formidable external forces.

The problem is not the liberation legacy itself. The problem is its political misuse.

The regime has repeatedly invoked national security, external enemies, regional instability, Ethiopian aggression, Western intervention, and the blood of martyrs to justify indefinite control over citizens’ lives. Criticism is often portrayed as treason. Demands for constitutional government are depicted as imported agendas. Calls for accountability are framed as attempts to weaken Eritrean sovereignty.

This creates a deep psychological trap. For citizens who honor the sacrifices of the liberation generation, acknowledging the severity of present repression can feel like an unbearable admission that the independence they fought for has been betrayed. Some therefore explain away injustice as temporary. Others argue that the country requires patience, endurance, and discipline. Others compare Eritrea to troubled states elsewhere and conclude that conditions are no worse.

These responses should be understood not simply as political loyalty, but as ways of protecting a painful historical identity. The more a person’s sense of dignity is tied to the liberation struggle, the more difficult it may become to confront the gap between liberation’s promise and the authoritarian reality of the independent state.

The challenge for Eritrea’s future is therefore not to reject the memory of Gedli. It is to reclaim its democratic meaning. The struggle for national self-determination should not be used to deny citizens self-determination within their own country.

Gedli and Warsay: Two Experiences of Sacrifice

The divide between the Gedli generation and the Warsay generation is one of the most consequential fractures in contemporary Eritrean political life. It is not merely a matter of age. It reflects different collective memories, different experiences of the state, and different understandings of sacrifice, citizenship, and national purpose.

For the Gedli generation, Eritrea’s sovereignty is often the defining achievement of a lifetime. Many endured war, hunger, displacement, and personal loss to secure independence. They may view discipline, sacrifice, national unity, and vigilance against external threats as essential values that protected the nation in its most vulnerable years.

For the post-1998 generation, sovereignty is not a dream won through struggle. It is the only Eritrea they have known. Their central political experience has often been shaped by Sawa, indefinite national service, meager pay, constrained education, blocked careers, delayed family formation, restricted movement, and the inability to plan a normal adult life.

What one generation may describe as endurance, another experiences as institutionalized exploitation.

This difference is particularly visible in the meaning of citizenship. The liberation generation often sees citizenship through the lens of collective duty: defending the nation, preserving independence, and accepting sacrifice in moments of danger. The younger generation increasingly asks a different question: What does citizenship provide in return?

For many young Eritreans, citizenship has come to mean compulsory service without a clear end, dependence without security, education without opportunity, work without fair compensation, and belonging without freedom of movement. They are denied the ordinary foundations of adulthood: the ability to choose a profession, establish a household, care for parents, marry when they wish, raise children securely, travel freely, and participate in public life.

This is why appeals to “the blood of the martyrs” no longer carry the same political power among many young Eritreans. The phrase may still command reverence, but when it is used to justify indefinite sacrifice without rights, accountability, or a future, it can become hollow and exhausting.

The task is not to turn Gedli and Warsay into enemies. Eritrea needs the historical memory, courage, and national commitment of the older generation, as well as the urgency, lived experience, and democratic aspirations of the younger generation. The country’s future depends on a dialogue that respects sacrifice without allowing sacrifice to become a permanent command over the lives of future generations.

Voice, Exit, and Diaspora Resistance

In a functioning political system, citizens can express grievance through public debate, independent media, political parties, elections, unions, peaceful assembly, courts, and civil society. In Eritrea, these avenues have been systematically closed.

When voice is blocked, exit becomes a form of political expression.

For many young Eritreans, leaving the country is not simply an economic decision. It is an act of refusal. It is a rejection of indefinite conscription, arbitrary control, and a future without dignity or autonomy. The risks are enormous: shoot-to-kill orders at borders, detention, trafficking, abuse in transit, dangerous journeys through deserts and across seas, and the uncertainty of refugee life. Yet many still leave because remaining can appear more hopeless than fleeing.

In this sense, Eritrean youth have often “voted with their feet.” Their departure signals a profound loss of confidence in the political and social contract of the state.

Exile, however, does not end the political conflict. It transfers it abroad.

Older diaspora communities, particularly those established during the liberation struggle and the early years of independence, may have built cultural associations, community centers, festivals, media networks, and political structures that retain close ties to the PFDJ narrative. Some view defense of the state against sanctions, regional threats, or foreign criticism as a patriotic responsibility.

Younger refugees and post-1998 migrants often bring a sharply different experience. Many fled national service, detention, repression, or the destruction of their personal futures. They do not see official festivals, political gatherings, or diaspora institutions as neutral cultural spaces. They see them as extensions of a system from which they escaped.

This tension has helped produce movements such as Yiakl and the Blue Wave. These movements have challenged the image of pro-regime diaspora and have helped many Eritreans overcome isolation and public fear. They have also demonstrated that once citizens are beyond the regime’s direct territorial control, suppressed grievances can become visible collective outrage.

But outrage alone cannot build a democratic future.

Diaspora activism must preserve its moral legitimacy by distinguishing peaceful civic resistance from conduct that endangers civilians, deepens social division, or confirms the regime’s portrayal of all opposition as chaotic and destructive. It must also become more organized, accountable, inclusive, and strategic. Eritrea’s democratic forces cannot defeat authoritarianism by reproducing its habits of exclusion, intimidation, personality worship, or intolerance of dissent.

Erosion Is Not Yet Transition

The weakening appeal of the liberation narrative, the mass exodus of youth, the anger of the diaspora, the aging of political and military elites, and the absence of a clear succession mechanism all point to serious long-term vulnerabilities within the Eritrean system.

However, vulnerability should not be confused with imminent collapse.

Authoritarian systems can survive prolonged economic decline, social exhaustion, international isolation, elite aging, and public resentment. They may endure because coercive institutions remain cohesive, because citizens fear the consequences of change, because opposition forces remain fragmented, or because people cannot imagine a safe and credible alternative to the existing order.

Eritrea’s political order may be brittle, but brittleness does not tell us when or how a rupture will occur.

The central question is therefore not whether the regime has weaknesses. It clearly does. The question is whether those weaknesses can be transformed into a peaceful, organized, and legitimate transition rather than a vacuum, violent struggle, elite conflict, or further national fragmentation.

This requires strategic humility. No one can predict the exact event that might alter Eritrea’s political landscape. A leadership crisis, a split within the security apparatus, an economic shock, regional change, a symbolic act of resistance, or an unforeseen public incident could become a catalyst. But catalysts matter only when societies possess networks of trust, a common political program, and institutions capable of guiding a moment of opening.

Without preparation, the collapse of fear can produce confusion. With preparation, it can become the beginning of democratic transformation.

Lessons from Other Transitions

History shows that fear can be broken, but it also shows that the fall of an authoritarian ruler does not automatically produce a stable democracy.

Tunisia demonstrated how an act of personal desperation can ignite accumulated national grievances. Its key lesson is that people may suddenly discover that they are not alone. Yet Tunisia also benefited from social and institutional conditions that Eritrea does not currently possess to the same degree, including organized civil society, labor structures, and a military with a distinct relationship to political power.

Chile demonstrated the importance of opposition unity and a credible institutional vision. The “NO” campaign brought diverse forces together around a limited but powerful democratic objective. Its lesson for Eritrea is not that a similar path can be copied, but that a transition requires more than denunciation. It requires a shared political program and reassurance that justice will not become indiscriminate revenge.

Romania showed that an apparently invulnerable police state can unravel rapidly when public fear breaks and the coercive apparatus loses confidence. Portugal showed how prolonged war, conscription, exhaustion, and dissatisfaction among lower-ranking officers can create openings for change. Ethiopia demonstrated how youth networks can amplify accumulated grievance and reshape national political possibilities.

These cases are not templates for Eritrea. Eritrea has its own history, political culture, security system, diaspora reality, regional environment, and social divisions. But they offer several broad lessons:

• Fear is powerful, but it is not permanent.

• Public courage becomes contagious when people see that they are not alone.

• The behavior of security institutions can be decisive in either preserving or ending authoritarian rule.

• Opposition unity matters most when it is built around clear, limited, and shared principles.

• A transition becomes more credible when ordinary citizens and public servants believe that change will bring order, rights, and accountability rather than chaos or collective punishment.

• Preparation before a political opening is more important than improvisation after it.

The Security Apparatus and the Question of Change

In any transition, state institutions are not monolithic. Civil servants, local administrators, teachers, health workers, police officers, military personnel, junior commanders, and senior officials do not necessarily share the same interests, fears, privileges, or levels of responsibility.

In Eritrea, the senior military-security elite may have strong incentives to preserve the existing system. Some benefit from privilege, access, patronage, and impunity. Others may fear legal accountability for serious abuses. They may view political opening as a direct threat to their status and security.

Lower-ranking officers, conscripts, and ordinary soldiers may face a different reality: low pay, uncertainty, harsh living conditions, stalled careers, family separation, and the same lack of future faced by the wider youth population. These conditions can create dissatisfaction and moral strain.

But dissatisfaction should not be treated as evidence of likely defection. Fear, surveillance, institutional discipline, dependency, and the danger of collective punishment may still sustain compliance. The possibility that a chain of command might fracture under extreme pressure is real, but it cannot be assumed.

A responsible transition strategy should therefore avoid language that calls for indiscriminate confrontation or violent reckoning. Instead, it should communicate several principles clearly:

• Those who have committed serious crimes must face lawful, evidence-based accountability.

• Ordinary civil servants, conscripts, and lower-ranking personnel should not be treated as collectively guilty.

• Security personnel who refuse unlawful orders, protect civilians, or support a lawful transition should have a place in a future constitutional order.

• The goal is civilian rule, professional institutions, and justice—not revenge, humiliation, or state collapse.

This distinction can reduce fear among people trapped within the existing system and make a peaceful transition more imaginable.

A Path Beyond Fear

Eritreans cannot overcome fear through slogans alone. Fear is weakened when citizens can see practical reasons to trust one another and tangible evidence that a different future is possible.

A serious democratic project for Eritrea should rest on a minimum common program:

• End one-man rule and establish a constitutional political order.

• Release political prisoners and account for those who have disappeared.

• End indefinite national service and establish lawful, limited, professional national service consistent with human dignity.

• Guarantee freedom of expression, association, religion, movement, and peaceful assembly.

• Rebuild an independent judiciary and restore the rule of law.

• Protect the equal citizenship of all Eritreans regardless of ethnicity, religion, region, gender, language, generation, or political background.

• Establish a transparent process of transitional justice that distinguishes individual responsibility from collective blame.

• Support truth-telling, reconciliation, compensation for victims, and the restoration of social trust.

• Reform the security sector under civilian constitutional authority.

• Build institutions capable of addressing economic recovery, education, public health, employment, land, housing, and the return or reintegration of refugees and diaspora communities.

Such a program does not require every political actor to agree on every ideological question. Eritreans will continue to differ over economics, regional policy, history, culture, and the pace of reform. But they can agree that no citizen should live indefinitely without rights, accountability, legal protection, or a future.

The most important work may begin before any dramatic political rupture. It includes building civic networks, supporting independent media, documenting abuses, strengthening youth and women’s participation, fostering dialogue across generations, preparing constitutional ideas, and creating habits of democratic disagreement.

A democratic future will not be secured merely by removing an authoritarian leader. It will be secured by replacing a system of fear with institutions of trust.

Conclusion

Eritrea’s long silence should not be mistaken for contentment, consent, or the absence of political consciousness. It is the consequence of prolonged coercion, surveillance, collective punishment, fractured trust, and the closure of civic space.

Yet fear is not permanent.

The regime may still command obedience, but obedience obtained through fear is not the same as legitimacy. A state that denies its citizens voice, dignity, mobility, and hope cannot indefinitely rely on historical memory and coercive control. The liberation legacy cannot be preserved by silencing the people in whose name liberation was fought.

The path beyond fear will not be easy, immediate, or linear. It will require courage, patience, organization, and moral discipline. It will require the Gedli generation and the Warsay generation to meet not as rivals but as partners in completing an unfinished national promise. It will require diaspora communities to replace fragmentation and personality-centered politics with principled cooperation. It will require citizens, former officials, soldiers, professionals, religious communities, women, youth, and victims of repression to imagine a country governed not by fear, but by law.

The goal is not vengeance. It is justice.

The goal is not disorder. It is constitutional order.

The goal is not to erase Eritrea’s history. It is to honor its sacrifices by ensuring that future generations inherit a country where sovereignty belongs not only to the state, but to its people.