‘From Badge of Honour to Unbearable Burden’

In May 2016, global attention was gripped by the sight of hundreds of corpses washed ashore on the northern coast of the Mediterranean. About 450 of these bodies belonged to Eritreans who had undertaken the perilous journey across the Mediterranean from the Libyan coast. They had trusted their fate to boats that were hardly seaworthy in the hope of reaching Europe and finding asylum. This was not the first of such incidents; nor was it to be the last. Few people could fathom the reason why the victims would resort to such desperate measures, courting almost certain death, rather than remain in their own country. The book under review provides the answer in eloquent fashion. At the root of this exodus of Eritrean youth is the most heinous form of ‘national service’ that the world has ever seem. Initiated to inculcate the values of the liberation struggle to the Eritrean youth, the institution has degenerated into a regime of veritable servitude costing each conscript up to two decades of his/her life.