Contested Versions Of Collective Memory in Postindependence Eritrea

Eritrea emerged as a postwar nation in 1991, but the country does not have an officially declared transitional justice policy. However, the government has implemented some drastic semiofficial transitional justice measures that are hampering transition to democratic governance by perpetuating contested versions of the past. This paper examines the politics of memory in postindependence Eritrea with particular emphasis on how the Eritrean Government creates and preserves historical narratives that promote its ideological underpinning and how it obliterates that which does not fit its hegemonic political agenda. In so doing, the paper builds on theoretical framework of "silencing the past."