First Published: The New Voice, Vol. VII, No. 25, December 11, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The Guardian newspaper has shamelessly intervened in the internal affairs of the Eritrean liberation movement.
The Eritrean people are fighting against national oppression by the fascist junta that rules Ethiopia and claims Eritrea as its territory. The Ethiopian junta, which succeeded Emperor Haile Selassie after his rule was toppled in 1974, has waged a bloody war against the Eritrean people’s fight for self-determination. The Eritrean people demand complete independence and liberation and are waging armed struggle against the Ethiopian occupiers.
The fascist clique of Mengistu that rules Ethiopia has received much military and political support from the new tsars of the Soviet Union and their mercenary troops from Cuba. In one week in 1977, the Soviet Union airlifted $1 billion of arms supplies, including napalm, to the Ethiopian junta.
In this situation, people in the Eritrean liberation movement naturally denounced the Soviet Union as an enemy of their struggle, an aggressor and a perpetrator of monstrous crimes. We reported in a previous issue (Oct. 16, 1978) that the Eritreans for Liberation in North America (EFLNA, formerly the AESNA) and the Association of Eritrean Women in North America (AEWNA) held congresses and resolved to oppose “the Soviet-led revisionists and their aggression against our country” and “their Cuban and East German puppets.” They have maintained their opposition to U.S. imperialism, too.
This news stung the Guardian, which is a thinly-disguised supporter of Soviet social-imperialism. The Guardian chose to intervene in the internal life of Eritrean organizations. In its Oct. 25, 1978 issue, it printed claims that a split had occurred in the EFLNA and even published figures of the alleged number of members in Boston and six other cities who do not accept the denunciation of Soviet aggression. Openly meddling in internal affairs of a Third World liberation movement, the Guardian said, “According to sources within the organization, the majority of members now reject and criticize the AESNA leadership and the recent resolution.”
The Guardian also sought out a representative of another Eritrean organization and published an interview with him. The Guardian did not ask any questions about the Soviet Union’s activity in Eritrea.
It is totally chauvinist and opportunist for the Guardian to gossip about the internal affairs of Eritrean liberation groups. We denounce the Guardian’s meddling in the internal affairs of the EFLNA!
The Guardian bitterly hates the theory of three worlds, which is the Marxist-Leninist strategic outlook on the international situation today. Two outstanding characteristics of opponents of the three worlds theory are that they play at armchair revolutionary and they objectively serve Soviet social-imperialism. The Guardian has developed the role of armchair revolutionary from spectator to active intruder in the struggles of Third World people from its headquarters in New York City. It was compelled to go down this road because it is a hidden supporter of Soviet social-imperialism. The Guardian, unable to refute the fact that the Soviet Union arms the enemies of the Eritrean liberation struggle, had to find a sensational issue to divert attention. So it grabbed some rumors and tidbits about the internal struggle in the Eritrean groups and used them to cover up a statement on Eritrea and Ethiopia that completely ignores the question of the Soviet role there.
The Guardian’s intrusion into Eritrean affairs is a logical development of its stand on Angolan events in 1975, when it presumed to tell people that one Angolan group was revolutionary while two others were not. The Marxist-Leninist position was to demand that both superpowers get out of Angola and stop creating antagonisms among the Angolans. Then as now, the important thing for the Guardian was to commit its own acts of interference in order to cover up Soviet social-imperialist intervention.
The New Voice reported only that the Eritrean liberation groups had publicly denounced the Soviet Union. We confined our news to the important point of concern to the people of the world: “More and more liberation groups are coming to see that the Soviet Union is their enemy, too–not a counterweight to the U.S., not a wavering ally, not a friend, but an enemy.”
The Guardian has picked up the imperialist habit of trying to dominate the struggles of Third World people. It copied this chauvinist practice from the Soviet social-imperialists. Now the Guardian is destined to learn that such intervention is doomed to fail. Neither new tsars nor armchair revolutionaries can dictate to the Eritrean liberation movement!