Idris Said ‘Aba Arre’

Idris Said ‘Aba Arre’ was a prominent critic of Eritrea’s mother-tongue education policy. He was arrested after publicly denouncing the earlier arrest and detention of a group of dissenting ruling party politicians.

Months before his arrest, he published his seminal work on mother-tongue education, in which he criticised the government’s post-independence language policy and its negative impact on the majority of the country’s language groups.