| Arhe Hamednaca | |
| Office1: | Member of the Riksdag |
| Constituency1: | Stockholm Municipality |
| Term Start1: | 4 October 2010 |
| Term End1: | 24 September 2018 |
| Birth Place: | Yiker, Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea |
| Party: | Social Democratic Party |
Arhe Hamednaca (born 1953) is a Swedish politician and former member of the Riksdag, the national legislature. A member of the Social Democratic Party, he represented Stockholm Municipality between October 2010 and September 2018.[1]
Hamednaca was born in the village of Yiker in the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea.[2] He is an Orthodox Christian.[3] Whilst a child Hamednaca witnessed many acts of brutality committed against Eritreans by Ethiopian Armed Forces and Highland Eritrean paramilitaries opposed to Eritrean independence.[3] He began helping Eritrean rebels fighting for Eritrean independence.[3] He was abducted and tortured for a month by the paramilitaries before his father secured his release.[2] [3] A year later, in 1968, Hamednaca, aged 15, joined the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) as a child soldier.[2] [3] The paramilitaries abducted Hamednaca's father, tortured him and kept him prisoner for years.[2] [3] In the late 1970s the ELF began to fragment and Hamednaca left the front line.[3] He left Eritrea in 1977, first moving to Sudan before arriving in Sweden in December 1984.[2] [3]
Hamednaca and his family lived in the Östberga suburb of Stockholm.[2] He studied at a Komvux whilst working as a cleaner at a kindergarten.[2] Financial circumstances prevented him from attending university.[2] He worked for Storstockholms Lokaltrafik (SL) from 1990 to 2002 and for Fryshuset from 2002 to 2010.[1] [2] In 2002, following the murder of Fadime Şahindal, Hamednaca founded the Sharaf Heroes organisation to help young people affected by honor crimes and change perception of women.[2] [3] He became a special advisor to Minister for Democracy, Metropolitan Affairs, Integration, and Gender Equality Jens Orback in 2004.[3] Hamednaca is a critic of the totalitarian government of Eritrea led by dictator Isaias Afwerki.[3] [4] [5]