The hunt for Dawit Isaak

Outside of the book fair, long queues meander with patient people who want to come in. The supply is large, and the visitors who are accustomed to wearing comfortable shoes, they are easily dressed and ready to wait. At a stand on the second floor stands Martin Schibbye with his latest book. People stop and read about a conflict in northern East Africa that many have forgotten.

Why did you want to write the book about Dawit?

- I felt that after 18 years Dawit Isaak was for me an icon, a picture and a counter that ticked, and I wanted to know more about the person of flesh and blood, says Martin Schibbye. Who was he as a brother, as a colleague, as a journalist, but then I also felt that we knew too little about Eritrea. This young country, not even 30 years old, why does it look like it does?

Many might associate Eritrea and Ethiopia as countries in a perpetual conflict. A conflict that will never end where, as usual, it is the little people who suffer. One of them is Dawit Isaak, who fought for democracy at Setit, Eritrea's first independent daily newspaper, when he had returned to his homeland after a time in Lerum. A humanist and cultural man who wanted to create better conditions in the new independent Eritrea. In prison without trial, he ended up in a cell in a prison and still sits there.

- I became very confident when I met a fellow prisoner for Dawit: Mohammad, and he described life in the cell, says Martin Schibbye. How Dawit sat on his mattress of wheat sacks, how he translated books, how he was called the "kiosk man" in the cell, which meant that if anyone wanted to pick up an order or get something from outside, it was Dawit you went to.

- The little glimpses of life in captivity, made me feel safe and made me feel: this is a man who retains his intellectual capacity and who finds meaning in the suffering. And who lives.

- Democratic development is underway, a movement that takes on a ton of land by country, both West and East Africa, says Martin Schibbye.

-I think that the conditions now, given the peace in the region, are better than they have been in a very long time.

Two conflicts that have ended can help free Dawit. A border dispute with Ethiopia is resolved, the sanctions the UN has had against Eritrea are gone.

- And I think a decisive date could be the choice in Ethiopia 2020, if that process gets rolling without too much setback, then I think Eritrea also wants to show the world that now we are entering a new era, now we are leaving history behind us. Then I hope and believe that Dawit can be released in the end.