A visitors’ book for Radio Erena: the digital resources of the media workshop (1)

A visitors’ book for Radio Erena: the digital resources of the media workshop (1)

Jan 25, 2018

Media workshop: A Visitors’ Book for Radio Erena project

The digital resources used during the workshop sessions

One useful resource when dealing with Eritrea is this website:

http://erythree.edj-code.fr/ soberly alluding to the tragic situation of Eritreans on the homepage and mentioning the role played by Radio Erena.

Chapter One of this original website is entitled “Torture camps or Hell on earth”.

A journalist of Eritrean descent who works for Radio Erena tells what she went through: the torturers who had kidnapped her cousin made her listen every 5 minutes to recordings of her 24-year-old cousin being tortured and raped after being kidnapped in the Sinai region. The kidnappers’ goal: get a ransom. They demanded 37,000€ to set free journalist Meron Estefanos’ cousin. Eritrean-born Meron has been living in Sweden for 25 years. There she has founded an international Commission for Eritrean refugees who are captured, tortured and ransomed by traffickers of human beings, especially in the Sinai Desert as they flee to Europe.

To know more about Meron Estefanos a 3:39-minute podcast is available for students; it was broadcast in December 2015 on the RFI website:

http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20151226-meron-estefanos-bat-refugies-erythreens-victimes-trafiquants-europe-afrique

Meron Estefanos tells the story of one of her male cousins who fell into the hands of traffickers and for whom she had to pay a ransom. We easily get the emergency situations she has to face, the kind of situations in which Radio Erena helps migrants. Meron, as a journalist for Radio Erena, tries to save migrants from drowning, torture and death. This web radio and Meron’s phone number are the last backup solutions for the people escaping dictatorship. Meron has a Twitter account; I will send them a private message later on.

Here is a link to her website Eritrean Initiative on Refugee Rights:

http://eirr.org/

Now let’s go back to Chapter One.

The first page and first chapter sum up the predicament of Eritreans: none of them escapes suffering and torture. Thousands of them die as they try to flee the country.

Then we get to know Cécile Allegra, another journalist who took part in a striking report on the migrants’ situation, a report that was awarded a prize but some of the pictures are quite shocking. The excerpts on the website from “Voyage en barbarie”, an essential documentary when dealing with Eritrean migrants, have to be presented and commented upon by the adult in charge of the workshop. Even if schoolkids can deal with Chapter 1, they should be shown only some of the pictures.

This chapter mentions a third journalist also presenting broadcasts for Radio Erena named Amanuel Ghirmay, who has spotted 105 traffickers. The Eritrean government cover up the traffickers’ misdeeds and take advantage of the financial manna from human trafficking.

Before we ended the “reading” of Chapter One an 11-year-old relevantly pointed out that those traffickers act like Nazis.

Chapter One can be dealt with in a 45-minute session with comments and explanations from the teacher.

This chapter sheds light upon three reporters who aim at denouncing human trafficking.

It also makes it clear that Radio Erena is not an ordinary media like the media teenagers are used to or the media we tend to listen to when driving to work. Radio Erena may help save lives… but not all lives.

Translation: Virginie Delbergue professeur documentaliste district de Lille-Est 

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