Ethiopian Religious Groups Want Death Penalty for Gays

Tucked in the northeast corner of Africa, Eritrea is one of the most closed societies in the world, so much so that it's sometimes dubbed the "North Korea of Africa."

President Isaias Afwerki does not tolerate any independent media. The Internet is restricted. Reporters without Borders recently named it 179th out of 179 countries for freedom of expression.

It's illegal to criticize the government which could mean something as simple as complaining about the city power outage. Even gatherings of more than seven people might get you hauled into a police station.

"Even asking a question like, 'Where is my father?' if your father is in jail," says Isayas Sium, an Eritrean-American software engineer in San Jose, Calif., who left the country in 1995. "These are the questions you cannot ask, let alone protest or criticize the regime."

From his perch in California, Sium tries to stay politically connected to his country. He marches when there's a local demonstration, contributes to refugee causes and posts on Facebook.

But there's always one thing missing. The people inside Eritrea don't dare to "like" his Facebook posts. And they never march in the streets themselves. For Eritrean activists living abroad, this silence can be frustrating.

So Sium had an idea: If we can't ask them to come out, what if we ask them to stay home?

An Act Of Defiance

Eritreans typically hit the coffee shops and movie houses on Friday nights, so the idea was to use this as a passive resistance that hopefully could not be punished.

The movement was dubbed Freedom Friday, or Arbi Harnet in the Tigrinya language that is widely spoke in Eritrea. Sium and other activists abroad then had to inform Eritreans in a country with no free media. So they smuggled out a phone book, organized volunteers on Facebook and started cold-calling the fatherland.

"At first it was a strange thing," says London-based activist Selam Kidane, "for somebody that you don't know to phone you randomly and talk to you about things that are considered quite dangerous."

Sium agrees.

"The first question they ask is, where'd you get my number? Then we tell them, 'Oh, I don't know you, I got your number from the phone directory.' So some of them say, 'OK, thank you.' Some will just hang up after they hear ...[EDGE]