Unhappy Performatives of Statehood
Staging Incompatible Narratives of Eritrea
through Academic Conferences
Tanja R. Müller
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Cifra 1. Banner for the International Conference on Eritrean Studies 2016 ICES. Asmara, Eritrea,
24 Julio 2016. (Photo © Stefan Boness/Ipon)
Performing National Narratives
Much has been written about performing and enacting national narratives, their rituals, y el
hyperbole often associated with them (Elgenius 2011; McCrone and McPherson 2009). Alguno
of the most powerful performances are in states or quasi-states that owe their existence to wars
for national liberation, independence struggles, and/or revolutionary movements (see for exam-
ple McConnell 2016; N’Guessan et al. 2017). As nations are ultimately “imagined communities”
(anderson 1983), performances of statehood advance nationalist goals: inclusion (or exclusion)
based on national narratives and state-founding myths (see Breed 2008).
In Eritrea, the first African state to achieve de facto independence in 1991 (de jure, 1993)
following a war of secession from Ethiopia, performing narratives of statehood was a twofold
endeavor. Primero, the ruling party cum government staged theatrical ceremonies on Independence
TDR 64:1 (T245) 2020 https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00898
©2020 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licencia.
107
Day and other important holi-
days such as Martyrs’ Day com-
memorating those who died in
the war for independence. Encima
tiempo, these ritualized celebra-
tions legitimized an increas-
ingly authoritarian government
(Woldemikael 2009). Segundo,
younger citizens were required
to honor those who fought in
the war for independence by
performing national service.
But over time, national service
became what Bernal (2014) calls
“sacrificial citizenship,” a seem-
ingly never-ending duty to the
nación. Soon enough, the rate
of emigration from the country
became one of the highest in the
world (Kibreab 2017).1
This situation has resulted in
Cifra 2. Eritrean soldiers in a military parade at the celebrations of the
13th anniversary of independence. Asmara, Eritrea, 24 Puede 2004. (Photo
© Stefan Boness/Ipon)
two diametrically opposed dis-
courses on Eritrean statehood:
one advocated by a powerful
human rights lobby mainly outside the country, and one propagated by the Eritrean govern-
ment and its supporters inside and outside the country. The resulting polarization makes it dif-
ficult for those seeking common ground, who are portrayed as either betraying the Eritrean
people or (supposedly universal) human rights, to make their voices heard.2
In addition to more conventional ways — such as demonstrations by pro- and antigovern-
ment supporters; social media campaigns and Twitter posts; as well as the hiring of lobby com-
panies in order to influence the stance of foreign governments towards Eritrea — both sides
used academic conferences, convened to mark the 25th anniversary of Eritrean independence in
2016, to perform their contrasting narratives of statehood. Whereas typically at conferences, el
1. Eritrea is the quintessential example of a diasporic state with a large percentage of its population residing outside
the country but with strong linkages with and connections to in-country developments (see Iyob 2000).
2. An overview of positions on both ends of the spectrum can be found on websites such as: www.shabait.com/;
www.tesfanews.net/; www.asmarino.com/eng; and www.meskerem.net/. An embodied performance of both sides
can be seen in the annual demonstrations each year in Geneva when a new report on human rights violations is
released by the UN Human Rights Council. This triggers, on two different days, a pro-Eritrea and anti-Eritrean
government demonstration, respectivamente, attended by large numbers of people on each side (see for example
Berhane 2016; Erimedrek org 2018).
Tanja R. Müller is Reader in Development Studies at the Global Development Institute and the
Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester (Reino Unido). She has worked for more
than 20 years on political dynamics in Eritrea and the Horn of Africa, and beyond. She is the author
of The Making of Elite Women: Revolution and Nation Building in Eritrea (2005) and Legacies of
Socialist Solidarity: East Germany in Mozambique (2015). Her latest work interrogates performances
and practices of citizenship among refugees and migrants, including “Acts of Citizenship as a Politics
of Resistance? Reflections on realizing concrete rights within the Israeli asylum regime” in Citizenship
Estudios (2016).
108
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Tanja R. Müller
Cifra 3. Celebrations in Asmara for Eritrea’s 25th anniversary, 2016. (Photo by Clay Gilliland; courtesy
Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0)
core objective is to debate theories and evidence with the ultimate aim of arriving at some sort
of truth, or at least a convincing interpretation of available data and evidence, estos 2016 events
featured academic discussion with quasi-theatrical performances aimed at different audiences.
The two contrasting conferences — held in Geneva, Suiza, and Asmara, Eritrea — were
not conferences in the common sense of the word. They were performances of Eritrean narra-
tives of statehood with objectives far removed from the usual meaning of the term “conference.”
Although on the face of it, these conferences were scholarly events, in fact they were perfor-
matives intended to produce future actions. Such performatives matter because they influence
political solutions that impact peoples’ lives in tangible ways. Both conferences were convened
by Eritreans, and both failed; they were “unhappy performatives” (austin 1962:14). Analyzing
how the Eritrean silver jubilee was staged through conferences offers a new way of understand-
ing international politics.
Putting Out the Word
Let’s Have a Conference
My story with both conferences began in Geneva in July 2015. I was visiting a friend when I
received an announcement that for the first time since July 2001 an International Conference
on Eritrean Studies (ICES 2016) was to be held in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, in July 2016 a
celebrate 25 years of Eritrean independence. Titled Eritrean Studies: The Way Forward, fue
meant to revive scholarly discussion on Eritrea and help create global networks of researchers
working on Eritrean issues.
As I read the call for abstracts, I felt excited and wary at the same time as memories flew past
of the July 2001 conference. It was a time of open debate and a future full of promise after a
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109
Unhappy Performatives of Statehood
vicious border war with Ethiopia had ended (see Negash and Tronvoll 2000). Various new inde-
pendent print media outlets had sprung up, and the conference itself brought together schol-
ars from abroad as well as established and promising young academics from the University of
Asmara (UoA). Despite various attempts by members of the Eritrean government and/or the
ruling party — the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) — to control the discourse
through the role of chairs or discussants, there was a free exchange of ideas and controversial
issues were debated in a generally open and frank manner. The crackdown on open debate and
dissent that followed a few months later, in September 2001, put an end to all that, ushering in a
dark era that climaxed in the eventual closing of Asmara University in 2006 (see Müller 2008).
At the time of the 2001 conference, I was ending a year based at the UoA, and many of my
former students who were at that conference have since gone into exile and are now part of the
diaspora. Only a few chose to remain or return from study abroad (Müller 2018b). Thinking
back to the 2001 conference, I wondered if free debate would be possible at the 2016 conferir-
ence in Asmara. It was a time when Eritrea more generally seemed to be opening up again to
the outside world — albeit in a very controlled way and from a low base (Müller 2012).
A few weeks later, while I was still contemplating what abstract to submit, I was thrilled to
find a second call for papers in my inbox. Sent via a friend, this call was issued by a well-known
Eritrean human rights activist based in Geneva. Titled Eritrea at Silver Jubilee: Stocktaking
on the Nation-Building Experience of a “Newly” Independent African Country, it solicited
papers for a conference in May 2016 (a couple of days before the independence celebrations on
24 Puede). This second conference assumed that Eritrea had the worst government in its entire
historia. Thus in contrast to the call for abstracts that came from Asmara, neutral in tone and
soliciting papers based on academic merit, the organizers of the opposition conference, as I shall
refer to it, clearly stated from the outset that they meant the meeting to be a forum that dis-
cussed the slide into oppression; it had an advocacy function3 — not least due to being held in
Geneva, the city where a few weeks later the second report of the Commission of Inquiry on
Human Rights in Eritrea (COI) would pronounce the Eritrean government guilty of crimes
against humanity.4
I, in retrospect rather naïvely, thought those two conferences provided the perfect opportu-
nity to put into practice one of my ambitions in relation to Eritrean studies: bridging the divide
between those who unquestioningly support a government that while being driven by a laud-
able developmental mission also has a lot to answer for in curtailing freedoms versus those who
vehemently oppose the government and in doing so make use of often questionable propaganda
and intimidation tactics that are in essence similar to tactics used by supporters of the govern-
mento. I should have known that nuances would not be welcome on either side, and that instru-
mentalization tactics to openly demonstrate either full support of the Eritrean leadership or
its vilification are the norm when it comes to events featuring Eritrea. But I was determined to
present the same paper at both conferences and see what might unfold.
One core theme both camps agree on is the central role of citizenship obligations, mayoría
materially manifest in the national service requirements that can become indefinite in duration
rather than end after 18 months as stipulated in the National Service Law (see Kibreab 2017).
While official statements see national service and other mobilization campaigns as the process
by which the liberation struggle is passed on to generations of Eritreans, the opposition regards
obligatory service as a key tool of oppression, some equating it to slave labor. Such slave labor
practices are the main reason behind the high acceptance rate of Eritrean asylum seekers in
Western countries (in stark contrast to refugees from other African nations).
3. For the call for papers for the Geneva conference see CCC (2015).
4. For a discussion of issues around the COI see Müller (2016).
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Tanja R. Müller
To both conferences I submitted an abstract for a paper on changing patterns of politi-
cal space in Eritrea. The themes in my paper go to the core of the national service conundrum:
the contradictions inherent in the struggles to combine overbearing national obligations, cual
most people accept in principle but not in the way they are being enforced, with personal aspi-
rations. My paper analyzes these contradictions in relation to concrete life histories of graduates
from the former University of Asmara, all of whom are committed to national development.
Some are still in Eritrea, but most have left. Their life trajectories show in concrete detail what
it means to be Eritrean and global at the same time. My paper thus not only puts the contem-
porary movement out of Eritrea into a wider perspective, it also argues that Eritrea is not on
the continuous downward spiral that the opposition conference’s framing suggested. De hecho,
things have opened up in the last few years in a number of ways. That the 2016 Asmara con-
ference took place at all is a clear sign of progress. (The paper was published by the Journal of
Development Studies [Müller 2018b]).
Initially when I made my two submissions, my intention was only to attend if my paper was
accepted by both conferences. For the Asmara conference, Yo tenía, in addition, put together a
panel with other colleagues on foreign policy in the Horn of Africa in which I was to speak on
Eritrean foreign policy, but that was the less important aspect of my involvement in the con-
ference. I heard nothing from either event for a long time, and to be honest did not expect to
hear from the opposition conference organizers, because in my submission I questioned the dic-
tum in the call for papers that stated we already knew the answer: Eritrea’s trajectory was one of
disaster. But then it came, the invitation to Geneva, and with it a program that on the face of it
seemed full of interesting contributions.
Shortly after, the paper I submitted to both conferences was rejected by the Asmara con-
ference on “scientific grounds,” giving me a first indication of the limitations of discussion at
the Asmara conference. Our foreign policy panel and my paper within it were approved, No
doubt because the paper included a critical account of Ethiopian foreign policy in the Horn
(see Müller 2018a). So here was my first dilemma: should I decline to travel to Asmara, as I had
originally planned? Going would mean accepting that certain issues were not up for discussion.
Or was my hope for openness wishful thinking? How could I have imagined one could speak
freely about a topic as sensitive as political space 15 years after the last attempt to do so within
Eritrea landed many people in prison or forced them into exile? But when debating these issues
with some of those who would have featured in my rejected paper, they were clear: por supuesto,
I had to go. The same answer came from colleagues from inside Eritrea who had commented
in the past how valuable it was to hear from people like me who were critical but from, as one
phrased it, “an insider’s view that understands the rationale behind many government policies.”5
When it also became clear that a number of colleagues from all over the world whom I had not
seen since the 2001 Asmara conference were to attend, I threw my doubts out the window.
The Eritrean Silver Jubilee Conference in Geneva
Performing Stocktaking of a Dictatorship
When I mentioned that I was going to the Geneva opposition conference, most of my Eritrea-
related contacts looked at me in disbelief. Perhaps they understood far more clearly than I
that there had to be reasons why I was invited that had little to do with my paper. When some
joked I needed police protection, I felt vindicated because I believed the conference was meant
to build bridges, not burn them. También, some valued colleagues were going to attend, even if we
ended up on different sides of the deep divide within the field of Eritrean studies. I told the
5. The quoted colleague wishes to remain anonymous. For an example of my previous work widely read in Eritrean
higher education circles see Müller (2012).
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111
Unhappy Performatives of Statehood
organizer beforehand that I would leave the event if discussions turned into personal insults.
De hecho, throughout the two-day conference, debates and discussions were on-topic and well-
mannered. Socially, any outsider seeing the participants seated together in a Geneva restau-
rant would think we were old friends. It not only looked but felt like that, which made it even
harder for me to accept that some of the people I shared food, wine, and laughter with at night
showed a ruthless determination during the day to use all the rhetorical means at their disposal
to demolish any nuanced analysis of Eritrea.
During the conference, it became quickly obvious that the participants were carefully
selected, like-minded people with a clear agenda. They were on one side, me on the other. El
conference was a small event of never more than around 30 people at any one time. It opened
with a talk by a Swiss parliament member who repeated the major allegations of the COI
informe. He did not mention how deeply flawed the report is; he took for granted its claims,
which were often unsubstantiated. His remarks set the tone for things to come, a bad sign for
a conference claiming to adhere to academic rigor. The next scheduled talk was to be given by
an opposition activist who had recently left Eritrea, but he could not attend due to visa issues.
De este modo, his talk was replaced with a panel that presented the assumptions behind the conference:
that Eritrea had a postindependence government worse than any in its history. At the very last
minute, I was asked to join the panel of three. I was the dissenting voice, not only questioning
the assumption but also speaking in favor of renewed EU engagement with Eritrea and the abo-
lition of UN sanctions. The conference convener moderated the panel, diluting what I had to
decir, misinterpreting me in multiple ways without giving me room to object. I increasingly real-
ized that I had been brought in as part of a stage-managed process.
Similar management characterized the second conference day when we presented our sub-
mitted papers. This should not have surprised me. The conference was organized by a human
rights lawyer who knew very well how to get his points across. De hecho, I felt like we were sitting
in a court judging the last 25 years of Eritrean history. A telling encounter came in one of the
breaks when somebody who had not heard my presentation introduced herself as working for
the COI team. She had heard my name and asked if the COI team had interviewed me. Cuando yo
answered I had never been contacted by the COI team, and would have been surprised if I had,
she realized who I was. Her moment of embarrassment said it all: the COI team only inter-
viewed people who were part of a known group of human rights advocates in line with its mes-
sage; the team did not engage with those known to have divergent views.
De este modo, here I was at an event where I was officially introduced as a valuable participant in
order to “present a range of opinions,” but to the invited listeners it was made clear in this same
introduction that in fact the “truth” about Eritrea was that it was ruled by a vicious dictatorship.
How unfortunate that I did not fully grasp that yet. It was very skillfully staged. I do value the
work that some of my fellow presenters spoke of, and of course there are multiple human rights
issues that need addressing in Eritrea. I also like most of them as people. I thus found myself
in an increasingly paranoid place, being used by a group with whom I share common interests.
It felt like being in Eritrea where conversations with government officials can consist of being
berated for knowing nothing in the same breath as one is being commended for one’s good
work on Eritrea.
The end of the conference made me feel even more uneasy. In his closing speech, the con-
vener thanked the funders, who do not want to be acknowledged at this point in time, y
promised a speedy conference report, as those funders had demanded. Not prone to follow con-
spiracy theories, I nevertheless wondered about those funders. The accusation by the opposition
of omnipresent Eritrean state surveillance networks did not convince me. I have no doubt those
networks exist and that they threaten people, but so do networks of opposition actors who are
no less threatening. I have personally received threatening calls on my mobile from opposition
people during a research trip with Eritrean refugees in Tel Aviv (see Müller 2015a:6).
112
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Tanja R. Müller
The conference report came soon. The fact that one participant, a mí, put forward a different
point of view was nowhere to be found. The report contained a photo of the presenters with me
next to the others even if my point of view had been erased.6 I left Geneva with very mixed feel-
ings. When I embraced a former Eritrean colleague who now lives in forced exile and we parted
with the words, “Maybe next time in Asmara,” I felt the sadness of the whole situation descend
upon me. “Next time in Asmara” would only come with regime change. But I knew too many
people for whom a regime change would not solve their predicament. I have never been an
advocate for regime change brought about by outside forces. I know and highly respect many
Eritreans who carry out their mandate in government ministries or as party functionaries with
courage and dedication. Had attending the conference put me on the wrong side of the fence
once and for all, making me an accomplice in an opposition agenda I had little sympathy for?
Had my attendance added me inadvertently to the persona non grata list of those refused entry
into Eritrea? Y, most importantly, as I see my ethical responsibility towards those whose
life stories populate my research, and who engage with me because I refuse to take sides but
“write what your research tells you” as one of them put it, what would those people say if I were
barred? Would they feel betrayed because I had indirectly used our encounters to foster a polit-
ical agenda, even if that was not my intention?
I need not to have worried too much about being suddenly embraced by the opposition.
Shortly after the Geneva conference, I received a phone call from a Swiss journalist who wanted
to understand what was happening. I was recommended as a quasi “government spokesper-
son” — a phrase we both laughed off in a subsequent background conversation about Eritrea;
a characterization that — apart from myself — nobody would object to more than the Eritrean
government itself.
The Asmara Conference
Performing an Academic Conference (Sort Of )
In many ways the Asmara conference could not have been more different from the Geneva one.
It was advertised as a major public event with its own website (the Geneva event was hard to
find anywhere on the internet) and was impressive in terms of size and organization, con 130
papers and an audience of more than 400 at peak times, including many government officials,
foreign embassy staff, and development partners mainly from UN agencies.
In line with most African governments and certainly those who fall into the postlibera-
tion category and have a developmentalist outlook, the conference was based on the dictum
that research is only valuable if it has a clear link to wider societal problems and their solu-
tions — something to be applauded in principle.
But once I was in Asmara, and not dissimilar from the opposition conference, the wider
rationale was clearly spelled out. The conference had as its main objective counteracting the
polarizing scholarship on Eritrea as advanced by those scholars who do not pay enough atten-
tion to the particular conditions of Eritrea. As we were told in the opening remarks, it would do
so by providing “truth based on facts,” by presenting the “real” Eritrea to the outside world.
One could see the conference as a public relations exercise aimed at countering the negative
narratives about Eritrea, leaving little room for critical debate. The trope in this framing, usado
by some of the conference organizers to discredit those critical of Eritrea, was the “so-called
expert” — an academic from outside who makes claims to knowledge that only an Eritrean
could have, but whose work is seen (falsely and for political reasons or as a form of knowledge
6. In that regard, the conference mirrored well-trodden dynamics of non-dialogue when it comes to Eritrea; for an
incident where this became a well-publicized discussion point on social media in which some of those behind the
opposition conference played a part, see Forte (2014).
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Unhappy Performatives of Statehood
imperialism) as authoritative. A number of those who were my fellow presenters in Geneva
would clearly fall into that category as would a number present in Asmara. The line between the
good “international scholar” and the bad “so-called expert” has always been thin, and one could
easily mutate from one to the other. The framing of the Asmara conference suggested that
almost by definition, if one questioned the tightly framed boundaries of allowable criticism set
not by the academic committee that was the visible face of the conference organization but by
government and party, one was in danger of being put into the “so-called expert” group.
Many positives can be said about the 2016 Asmara conference, not least that it tried to bridge
the gap between academic research and its applications. It also gave young (and not so young)
Eritrean researchers a platform to present their often excellent work — at least the work that
dealt with uncontroversial, development-centered topics that focused on achievements and
future challenges. But that was as far as critique was welcomed: as an analysis of why progress
had not quite occurred as planned (todavía).
Our panel on foreign policy in the Horn proved to be one of the most critical ones, even if in
the discussion some of us were put into our place by the Head of Political Affairs and Presidential
Adviser, Yemane Gebreab, who was in the audience and questioned the validity of our panel
because no Eritrean or indeed African scholar participated in it. I found those remarks infuriat-
ing if not unexpected, as not only did I explain at the outset that we had actively recruited schol-
ars from Eritrea and the Horn who felt the topic too treacherous to agree to participate, pero
also because it was the conference organizers themselves, después de todo, who had asked us to put two
more papers by European scholars on our panel. But the remark set the tone throughout: critical
research could be ignored if presented by people who could not possibly understand the “native”
viewpoint, people who were “so-called experts.”
Local researchers know better than to touch on truly controversial issues, as one could never
be sure of future repercussions. So, at the first major international conference on Eritrean stud-
ies in 15 años, the issue at the core of life for many Eritreans that needed a political and pol-
icy solution — national service and citizenship obligations — was astonishingly absent or talked
down as of little significance. A paper on representations that interrogated why so many
Eritreans leave the country by a member of the diaspora was one of the very few that men-
tioned national service at all, but even this cautionary mention was brushed aside not least by a
staunch PFDJ supporter from the diaspora who was in the audience.7
To somebody like me, who does believe in development alternatives and who has always
been supportive of and sympathetic to the Eritrean government’s developmental agenda, este
was a despairing state of affairs. I have repeatedly made the case in the past that narratives about
Eritrea are one-sided and partly underpinned by geopolitical dynamics (see for example Müller
2015b). But the same is true of the overarching narrative that the conference tried to enforce,
and that was repeated with vehemence at its closing session: all is well in Eritrea and the reason
it is being demonized by the West is due to its focus on self-reliance. The fact that so many of
its young people flee to neighboring countries or further is due to trafficking and incitement by
the opposition and outside forces. Those countries who grant refugee status to Eritrean asylum
seekers are to blame as well.
The paper of mine that had been rejected because the organizers deemed it “lacking sci-
entific quality” had exactly those issues at its core. I wondered how many other papers might
have been rejected because they were deemed too controversial or critical. I wondered again
if in some way I had betrayed those whose lives populate the research I could not present.
Those who have left Eritrea in often complicated personal struggles were written out of his-
tory throughout the conference as an aberration of minor significance in the wider scheme of
7. The paper was presented by Helen Gebregiorgis, “Representations and Storytelling: An Investigation of Why
People Are Leaving Eritrea” (2016).
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Tanja R. Müller
cosas. Did I make the wrong decision to attend the conference after the paper I really wanted
to present was rejected?
One of Eritrea’s symbols is the tortoise, meant to signify the path of the ruling party, mov-
ing often very slowly but eventually reaching its destination. Maybe I should take a more
tortoise-like view? And there were many encouraging signs that vindicated me being at the con-
ference — in addition to the joyful reconnection and frank conversations with many former col-
leagues from the former University of Asmara who were now teaching at various new colleges.
A number of young Eritrean students and scholars told me in private how much they appreci-
ated what I and some of my colleagues were doing; how it astonished them when we stood up
to Yemane Gebreab in public. At this level of personal encounter, I was convinced my decision
to attend was right.
One-to-one private conversations with government or party officials (which are everywhere
more frank than public ones) proved less uplifting. When officials, some of whom I have known
for decades, see it fit to end dissenting discussions with a version of the dictum “There are
things you do not know, thus you have to trust me that what you say is wrong,” they are likely
right at least with the first part of the statement. But social science research is not about treat-
ing official statements as truth (nor should one be regarded as a traitor for questioning them);
it is about interrogation, debate, and analysis. And when I compare narratives of ordinary
Eritreans with the representations of their lives in official discourse, there are things I can com-
ment on from a unique vantage point. But if nobody wants to hear them, or if one cannot even
agree to disagree with people whom I highly respect otherwise and who claim to highly respect
my work, what value does engagement have?
In the Asmara conference, it was the issues that came up in private conversations that were
crowded out, in favor of contributions from stage-managed participants. But who were those
contributions stage-managed for? While the conference was framed around “telling the truth
about Eritrea to the outside world,” as was stated on various occasions throughout the proceed-
ings, I kept wondering if that world actually noticed the conference at all. Maybe the confer-
ence was really a show for internal consumption, an event to demonstrate not least to college
students and staff that things were opening up, that a future of opportunities lay ahead. Mientras
many international media outlets visited Eritrea in the 12 months preceding the conference,
the conference itself was devoid of foreign media presence and it was left to the state-owned
ERI-TV to run lengthy features on each of the conference days. Maybe the conference was
really meant to reinforce the “truth” about Eritrea for its educated youth, and in such a context
my rejected paper, which would have picked up the silent deliberations many of those present
grapple with, would indeed have been explosive. It would have brought into the open the ques-
tion that dominates the thinking of a majority of youth — whether to stay or leave — who see
leaving not as unpatriotic and selfish, pero, tragically, as often the only way to lead a fulfilling life
while being committed to Eritrea and its development.
Unhappy Performatives of “Truth”
Austin’s distinction between happy and unhappy performatives, applied to these two confer-
ences, reveals them as events created with specific audiences and impacts in mind. The ultimate
objective was ostensibly to demonstrate “the truth” about Eritrea through a conference, pero
the two events instead turned out to be performances of conferences, or rather performances
of incompatible narratives of Eritrean statehood staged through conference-like events. Con
comprensión retrospectiva, they proved to be unhappy performatives because they did not complete what the
perlocutionary act of staging a conference intended for either side.
At first glance, both conferences could be evaluated as having achieved their intended
objectives, at least in the short term, and thus could be called happy performatives. Para el
organizers of the Geneva event, the main performative act was to stress — to an audience of
international human rights activists — the legitimacy of their condemnation of Eritrea as an
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Unhappy Performatives of Statehood
unhinged dictatorship. But the main representatives of the human rights organizations were
already involved in compiling the COI report as researchers; thus they did not really need con-
vincing. The organizers might still have felt they succeeded at least in part: The subsequent
COI report, released in June 2016, not long after the conference, confirmed that crimes against
humanity had been committed — using the conference as an event that provided proof of the
truth (HRC 2016). Como consecuencia, another UN body that had been considering lifting sanc-
tions against Eritrea recommended leaving them in place, even though monitors stated clearly
that no evidence was found of Eritrea’s continued involvement in Somalia or in support of
Islamic groups — the rationale behind sanctions (UNSC 2016; 2017). Of late, following the rap-
prochement between Eritrea and Ethiopia in June 2018 después 18 years of a no-war/no-peace
stalemate, the sanctions have been lifted. But even without considering these unexpected polit-
ical developments, the Geneva conference had little impact on the political and human rights
situation in Eritrea, which was one of its stated aims.
In a similar vein, during the Asmara conference one could easily get the impression that it
succeeded in demonstrating to foreign participants and, more importantly perhaps, to Eritrean
youth in higher education, the open exchange of ideas in a battle for “truth” showing them
the way to a better future for Eritrea. Pero entonces, a few days after the Asmara conference ended,
Eritrean reality as it presents itself for most of its citizens caught up with me: A little after mid-
night, once everybody had finished their work shift, I was invited to a traditional and elaborate
coffee ceremony by a group of young women and a few men in Asmara. They were joyful, gig-
gled, passed around pictures of one of their close friends. The ceremony was in fact held to cel-
ebrate this friend, let’s call her Asmeret, and her safe arrival in Germany after a three-month
journey on the usual, often dangerous, migrant track, via Sudan and across the Mediterranean.
A photo of Asmeret, smiling into the smartphone camera, was passed around, and the ceremony
in her honor was photographed and the pictures sent back to her. I don’t know how many cel-
ebrations like this still happen every night in Asmara or other Eritrean settings; I would imag-
ine quite a few. I know numerous parents, siblings, and friends of people who have left, waiting
for signs of safe arrival, or trying to discourage those still with them from making the danger-
ous journey.
In the narrative of both conferences, people like Asmeret are either absent or appear as a
caricature of themselves. Asmeret was not enslaved in national service as the organizers of the
Geneva conference would claim; in fact she held down a job in Asmara she enjoyed. ella era
neither trafficked nor otherwise brainwashed or incited to leave, as government spokespeople
commonly assert in relation to those who leave. But she could not see a long-term future for
herself in a country where business opportunities and personal ambitions are tightly controlled,
and where one never knows when a tightening of the few individual freedoms available will
occur. People like Asmeret should be at the center of contemporary debates on Eritrean devel-
opment and the way forward, not least to counter the almost pathological obsession among
Eritrean youth (in the words of a foreign ambassador to the country) that one needs to get out
if one is to have a viable future. This obsession is a direct function of the mandatory participa-
tion in national service for all high school graduates and dropouts. Young people are recruited
for specific positions; the government determines where one works, often for many years, y
all attempts to evade service duties are punished by imprisonment or other means, including the
intimidation of family members, or lack of access to professional development activities. Y
while salaries are now paid to national service recruits, it is not money that is the main issue,
but the freedom to chose one’s own career path. Even those who perform well in their school-
ing and are selected for future study have limited choice over their area of study or future pro-
fessional development. Igualmente, even when released from national service, the fact that the
government controls most economic activities and restricts travel limits opportunities for indi-
viduals who want to follow their own aspirations and remain in Eritrea.
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Tanja R. Müller
Since the rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, things have improved in many ways,
but the ultimate problem remains: young people in particular, whether part of the privileged
higher education cohort or not, see no future for themselves in Eritrea. En esencia, the vari-
ous versions of a complex “truth” that both conferences attempted to provide turned out to be
unhappy performatives. The intention to provide some form of positive change for Eritreans
did not happen. The Geneva conference, partly dominated by a similar generation as those
in power in Asmara and driven by old grievances, excluded the youth who will determine the
future of Eritrea. Their existence was only referred to indirectly through stories of victimhood
and suffering. These stories were given as evidence for the “truth” of the nastiness of the cur-
rent regime. The complex realities of life for youth in Eritrea, the trade-offs made in each indi-
vidual decision to stay or leave that were the focus of my paper, were largely absent. Sobre el
other hand, in Asmara, many youths were present, as presenters as well as audiences, but in an
equally choreographed way, not as victims but as beneficiaries of a developmentalist approach
geared towards the “improvement” of Eritrea as a nation through personal sacrifice if neces-
sary. And indeed, the numbers of students with scholarships to study abroad for masters or PhD
degrees have increased, even as the number of those who decide to return to Eritrea upon com-
pletion remains low.
Por último, the term “conference” used to stage different narratives of Eritrean statehood
on the occasion of its 25th anniversary was an unhappy performative in the same way James
Thompson has analyzed unhappy performatives around the conflict in Darfur (2014:120–52):
a broken promise. Instead of engaging in a proper debate seeking a common way forward, el
conferences were used as weapons in a trench war about historical truth and myth between two
sides who refuse to engage with each other, and in which those who should be at the center of
the future, or “the way forward” as one of the conferences proclaimed, had no voice or stake.
The outcomes of both events — the Geneva report made available online shortly after, y
the proceedings of the Asmara conference, which only recently have been published (Tsighe
2018) — should be taken with a grain of salt. As my insider’s analysis shows, both conferences
failed to engage the core conundrum of Eritrean politics and life. Neither conference produced
expert knowledge upon which wider political decisions could be based.
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