Eritrea Tired of Having to Point itself Out on a Map

After journalists around the world became familiar with the locations of small countries such as Tunisia, Jordan, and Bahrain, following their state-wide protests and outbreaks of violence, Eritrea declared that it too wanted to be internationally locatable, but without the hassles of actually having anything interesting happen to garner international media attention.

Isaias Afewerki, who has been president of Eritrea for the last twenty years, says there is no need to any kind of democratic revolution to overtake his country, but adds that it’s annoying when he has to tell school children or foreign ambassadors that yes, Eritrea is in Africa and, yes, Eritrea is next to Somalia. “Why do people know where Somalia is? That place sucks!” Afewerki said in an internal memo leaked before the official announcement.

Eritrea has only been an independent nation for twenty years, which is coincidentally the number of years Afewerki has held the office of president. The country gained its independence from Ethiopia following a UN monitored vote in which 99.79% of citizens voted the same way, a clear indicator, Afewerki argues, that everything is fine.

The new stance on national identity was announced at a sparsely attended press conference, convened by members of the state-run media, including Eri-TV and the Eritrea Profile. Those few other media outlets that were invited refused invitations on the grounds that they either did not know where Eritrea was, or because they were terrified of going to a country that has remained at the bottom of the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index since 2001, performing even worse than North Korea.

THE PRESS wasn’t scared, it just didn’t know anyone who would be there and wanted to avoid having everyone stare and be like, “who is that? He’s been here the whole time but he isn’t talking to anyone.”

Shortly after the announcement, Turkmenistan and Burma also released statements saying they want to gain more international attention, but had no reasons any of their citizens would want to revolt. “Just turn on the news,” Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, president of Turkmenistan, was reported as saying. “Clearly the government is doing a great job and no one is complaining. Ever.”