PRESS RELEASE: Peaceful Demonstration in Front of the Polish Community Club if Festival of Dictator is not Cancelled!

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – 5 JANUARY 2024 – Eritrean Australian youth movement known by “Birged Nhamedu” is planning to hold a peaceful demonstration in front of the Polish Community Club to disrupt Eritrean festival organised by supporters of the Eritrean Dictator Isaias Afewerki.

Pro-democracy Eritreans from all over Australia will be gathered and protest in front of the Polish Community Club (19 Carrington Drive, Albion) where this event occurred between 11-14 January 2024 if authorities don’t stop the event because of the Eritrean Government’s Foreign Power Interference and Influence (FPII) in Australia. Members of Birged Nhamedu approached the manager of the Polish Community Club and explained the reason of the planned protest in front of their venue if the event is not cancelled. This taxpayer funded non-inclusive militaristic festival is organised by the Victorian Eritrean Community Association and Eritrean National Communities Council Inc under the pretext of Eritrean Cultural festival.

For the last 24-years, high-ranking People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) officials have been given politically motivated hate speeches and seminars to promote the oppressive dictatorial regime of Afewerki. While the Eritrea regime has voted against the U.N. resolution to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the manager of the Polish Community Club chooses to serve the Eritrean Dictator Isaias Afewerki with widespread human rights violations in the Horn of Africa. In the last eight months members of Birged Nhamedu and Eritrean justice seekers were trying to engage several Australian authorises and government officials including police and had written various letters explaining the intent of the festival and urging them to cancel the festival.

Eritrea is a nation located in the horn of African on the Red Sea coast that won its independence from Ethiopia in 1991. For the last 32 years, the country has been ruled with an iron fist by the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), the only party in the country, without constitution, free and fair election and any form of rule of law. Since 1995, the Eritrean youth have been forced to serve in an indefinite military service akin to slavery. These Eritrean youth are horrendously abused under such practice, with no viable option to fulfil their personal aspirations of education and professional growth, family lives and forced to leave the country illegally.

Eritrean Birged Nhamedu is a decentralised Eritrean pro-democracy youth movement in diaspora first initiated in 2022 in Europe and fast spreading all over the world including Australia, struggling for democracy, justice, rule of law and freedom of speech in Eritrea, and is not dictated by any form of religious or ethnic divisions.