APPEAL

From: Voice of the Kunama People

Kunama Agara Mena(VKP/KAM)

and Kunama Civic Society

Kunama Narkaba Tummada (KCS/KNT) (January 15, 2008.)

To: UNHCR in Ethiopia,

USA’s Embassy in Ethiopia,

Canadian Embassy in Ethiopia

UNHCR’s and government’s local authorities in the

Tigray State

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

very worried voices of the Kunama refugees, from Shimelba refugee camp, in the Ethiopian Tigray State, have very recently reached the two Kunama organisations, reporting that the chairman of the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of the Eritrean Kunama (DMLEK,) Mr. Kornelios Adolay Osman, his deputy, Mr. Tewelde Minase and a certain Mr. Taddese Tesfai, an employee of the local UNHCR in the Shimelba’s refugees camp, are very closely working together to delay, under the pretext of so-defined “pending cases,” the departure, to the third countries, of certain Kunama individuals, though whose cases have already been long approved of. The reasons for such illegal and unjust activities are said to be that the DMLEK’s leadership has always opposed the resettlement in third countries, of the Kunama refugees in general and particularly of certain Kunama individuals, who have always criticised and condemned the criminal and the dictatorial leadership style of the chairman and of his deputy. That leadership has already killed 12 prominent Kunama and is constantly threatening to detain and kill again.

Mr. Kornelios Adolay Osman and Mr. Tewelde Minase are reported to be financially corrupting, Mr. Taddese Tesfai, who being an Eritrean-Tigrian and working for the UNHCR, is said to have also close acquaintances among certain local individuals, together with whom, he is reported to be helping the two Kunama leaders apply their sinister plans, by hiding the application and the approval papers of the Kunama refugees. Besides, Mr. Taddese Tesfai is said to be clandestinely and very actively working to disrupt the UNHCR’s whole program of the resettlement of the Kunama refugees in third countries, by advancing the cases of his own fellow-Eritrean-Tigrians. There are also reports of certain Eritrean-Tigrians having had their applications approved of under Kunama names.

Many Kunama refugees are also very critical of Mr. Taddese Tesfai’s activities, suspecting that in fact, he may well be having secret connections with the Eritrean regime at home and therefore working together with the two Kunama leaders, and aiming at closing down the whole program of the resettlement of the Kunama refugee in third countries. The two Kunama organisations, dear ladies and gentlemen, are therefore firstly and cordially, thanking you for your continuous and very humanitarian activities on behalf of our Kunama people and also very earnestly appealing to you to look into those worries of the Kunama refugees at Shimelba and continue to help them. May God bless you!

With kind regards,

The VKP/KAM and the KCS/KNT:

(January 15, 2008.)

Website:- http://www.baden-kunama.com

E-Mail:- vkp@baden-kunama.com

To the Ethiopian Government’s authorities  in the refugees’ matters,

To the USA’s Ambassador in Ethiopia,

To the Canadian Ambassador in Ethiopia,

To their officials responsible for the resettlement

  of the Kunama refugees now living

  in the Shimelba refugee camp,

  in the Ethiopian State of Tigray,

To the UNHCR in Ethiopia and

To all the International Humanitarian Organisations:

From the Kunama Civic Society/Kunama Narkaba Tummada (KCS/KNT)

and from the Voice of the Kunama People/Kunama Agara Mena (VKP/KAM):

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

though the two above mentioned Kunama organisations very cordially thank you for the very laudable, humanitarian and charitable activities you have been and are conducting on behalf of our Kunama people, by helping and resettling them in your own respective countries, they would still like to express their deeply felt concern and make their earnest appeal to you, once again, as news is being spread about that, at the moment, in the Shimelba refugee camps, there are strong forces trying to disrupt and hinder the Kunama refugees from availing themselves of the given opportunity to register for resettlement in third countries.

One of the new forces, said to being put in motion by the ever-growing number of the Eritrean-Tigrian refugees now reaching Shimelba, is questioning the issue of the Kunama refugees being allowed to be resettled in third countries, whereas they are not.

As you may know, ladies and gentlemen, the Kunama people, in the long history of their existence, had never abandoned their native and ancestral territory, as they are being forced to do it today. The reason is that, as the present Eritrean PFDJ’s regime of Mr. Isaias Afwerki is dominated by the Eritrean-Tigrian ethnic-group’s members, a massive settlement of the Eritrean Tigrians, from their highland home-regions of Akele-Guzai, Hamasien and Serae, has been and is being conducted in the entire Kunama homeland. Those settlers have not only been and are forcefully ejecting the Kunama urban population from their residences in their centres and the Kunama rural populations from their villages, hamlets and countryside, but they are also gradually and systematically dispossessing the Kunama of their crop-fields, of their land and of their livestock. Still worse, the Kunama people today are being also continuously alienated and persecuted in their own homeland, by those settlers. The Kunama people, today abandoning their native homeland therefore, are not doing it per choice, but per compulsion. The PFDJ’s regime is oppressing the Kunama people through purposefully and massively settling, in the Kunama land, its own Eritrean-Tigrian ethnic-group’s members who, in their turn are protracting the same oppressive policies of the regime.

Those Eritrean-Tigrians, today taking refuge in Shimelba and wishing to register for resettlement in third countries, have been and are also indirectly involved in causing the Kunama people’s plights and therefore they should present their cases to the local refugees’ authorities, independently from the cases of the Kunama refugees and not question the opportunities given to this persecuted ethnic-group’s members, as favouritism and try to disrupt and hinder them from being resettled in far away countries. Added to this, the leadership of the “Democratic Movement for the Liberation of the Eritrean Kunama” (DMLEK,) chaired by Mr. Kornelios Adolay Osman and by his deputy, Mr. Tewelde Minase, is also very actively co-operating in preventing, under the so-defined “pending cases,” some Kunama individuals from leaving for their new destinations, though their cases have long been approved of and completed by the refugees’ authorities. Those individuals, fallen victim of such unjust practices, are those who have always accused the DMLEK’s chairman and his leadership of conducting a criminal and dictatorial policy. We are therefore appealing also on behalf of those individuals too, and humbly asking the refugees’ authorities to defend and protect the refugees’ rights of those persecuted and seeking safety under the UNHCR.

Thanking you for your constant engagement in our Kunama people’s matters, we remain faithfully,

The KCS/KNT and the VKP/KAM

(December 29, 2007.)