The Fines and the Spies

Abstract

Since 2005, the Eritrean state has implemented measures against the increasing desertion of conscripts by retaliating against deserters' families. This article explores the fears spread by this measure in Eritrea and analyzes how people have interpreted its erratic enforcement, including in those countries to which deserters have fled in massive numbers to seek political asylum. The retaliation has served to 'export' fears about the Eritrean state's surveillance abroad and has reshaped political imagination concerning the power of the Eritrean authoritarian state in the diaspora. I argue that imaginings about the state play a crucial role by curbing the political dissidence of new exiles and by giving rise to new fault lines in the diaspora communities in ways that are beneficial to the current Eritrean leadership.

Eritrea: a mafia state?

“…Tedros, who was registered in Italy, declared that the Eritrean translator whom he met in the camp turned out to be a hidden state agent since 'he advised us to ask for economic refuge, and he cheated in the interviews, giving us a bad name.' (Bozzini 2015) This finding is replicated in the Netherlands where a number of court cases were brought by members of the youth wing of the ruling partythe YPFDJin relation to their employment by the Dutch immigration service (van Reisen and Mawere 2017, 370-406). Professor Mirjam van Reisen had accused members of the YPFDJ who worked for the immigration service of having ties with the Eritrean government.…”

Nomos, Hostis, and War: State-Building Process and Armed Forces in Africa

“…Following the border war of 1998–2000, however, the state turned to increasingly authoritarian policies aiming at the personalization of power in the president’s hands (Bereketeab, 2018, p. 164), persecution of internal enemies (nonetheless not on ethnic or religious basis) including random punishments, political control of the population (Bozzini, 2015), and maltreatment of the military forces in economic activity. The resource extraction from the territory is weak, and the government requires taxation of the diaspora to increase its liquidity.…”

“…The resource extraction from the territory is weak, and the government requires taxation of the diaspora to increase its liquidity. The military service turned indefinite in 2002, and military conscripts started to be used in the economic segment to increase the resource generation of the state in the so-called Warsay-Yekealo Development Programme (Bereketeab, 2018, p. 164; Bozzini, 2015; Riggan, 2016, p. 6). Thus, the country’s economy was by the ruling elite.…”

Post-Liberation Politics and Political Space in Eritrea: Interrogating Aspirations among Educated Youth

“…A number of recent articles have interrogated the complexities of state-citizen relations in Eritrea. This work has brought to the fore the tensions between top-down and bottom-up understandings of citizenship obligations within a highly centralized state that seeks hegemonic control not only within the country but equally over its substantial diaspora (see for example Bozzini, 2015;Hirt, 2015;Opas and McMurray, 2015;Woldemikael, 2013). One important focus has centred on contestations by and within the Eritrean diaspora.…”