Part 18JN08 .- On what bases does Ato Tedros A. Ghebrelul, claim  the “Kunama” to be “a people on the verge of extinction?” :-KCS/KNT (June 09, 2008).

Part 17AP08: The PFDJ’s regime and its regional authorities,  in the Kunama land, are sequestrating and stealing grain from every Kunama household:  VKP/KAM and the KCS/KNT (April 01, 2008).

Part 16MC08:-There are and there have always been very hidden and systematic ethnic-cleansing activities, conducted,  against the Kunama people, by the PFDJ’s regime  of Ato Isaias Afwerki’s and by his and its supporters:-  VKP/KAM and the KCS/KNT (March 28, 2008).

Part 15N07:-UNHRC THE REFUGEE AGENCY  (November 2007)

Part 14AU07:- Is it really true:  “Eritrean Regime Now Trafficking Children?“  (By Awate.com’s Gedab News, - August 24, 2007.)  The KCS/KNT: (August 29, 2007)

Part 13AU07:-From the Kunama Civic Society/Kunama Narkaba Tummada (KCS/KNT) and from  the Voice of the Kunama People/Kunama Agara Mena  (VKP/KAM) .- The KCS/KNT and the VKP/KAM: (August 24, 2007).

Part 13

From the Kunama Civic Society/Kunama Narkaba Tummada (KCS/KNT) and from  the Voice of the Kunama People/Kunama Agara Mena  (VKP/KAM)

To: the UNHCR in Geneva;

To the UNHCR in the Ethiopian State of Tigray;

to Amnesty International and

to all International Human Rights Organisations,

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

the above two Kunama organisations have been appealing to you several times, concerning the plights afflicting our Kunama refugees in Shimelba, in the Ethiopian State of Tigray. They are here again today too to recount those plights.

Though the Government of the USA has very generously offered those Kunama, the opportunity to be resettled in its country, there are other contrary forces intruding, threatening, intimidating and forcefully preventing those Kunama refugees, from registering for resettlement and creating all possible obstacles to delay the departure of those whose cases have already been approved of by the local UNHCR’s authorities.

The main force very actively engaged in such inhuman activity is nothing else, than the leadership of the very organisation which carries the Kunama name and is meant to alleviate the plights of its own people, but it is instead adding more sufferings to those poor Kunama refugees.

The leadership of the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of the Eritrean Kunama (DMLEK), led by its chairman, Mr. Kornelios Adolay Osman and aided by his deputy, Mr. Tewelde Minase, has turned that organisation into its own property and solely serving its own political and financial interests and therefore it is using every method to keep those Kunama refugees under its own control. It forcefully recruits its soldiers from those refugees and “exacts a weekly tax of one Ethiopian Birr – or about 11 cents – from each adult in the camp”.

For the leadership of that organisation therefore, the continuous presence and permanence of those Kunama in their refugee camps are guarantees for its political and financial gains and existence.

Initially, Mr. Kornelios Adolay Osman and his comrades were totally against the USA government’s program to resettle those Kunama, but being unable to hinder it altogether, they are now using other means to disrupt the program. According to the reports by those Kunama refugees themselves, the DMLEK’s leadership has managed to convince the UNHCR’s local authorities to divide those Kunama into three groups:

1.- the first group includes those individuals whose cases have already

and long been approved, but put and kept under a permanent

“pending” status. These are those Kunama individuals who have

always been very strongly opposing and criticising the DMLEK leadership’s dictatorial style and murderous acts committed against their own fellow-Kunama. That group, made up of educated and prominent Kunama individuals, is reported to be, not only constantly kept under a strict surveillance, but also intimidated, persecuted and even have their lives attempted several times, by the killer-troop of that leadership. Those individuals’ lives therefore are in a very precarious and serious state.

We are earnestly appealing to the UNHCR to see that those individuals are immediately let to depart for their destination in order to secure their lives. The longer their stay in those camps, the more they are likely to fall victims of that merciless leadership, just like the fate of those 12 Kunama individuals, Mr. Kornelios Adolay Osman and his companions have already killed.

2.- The second group is said to include all the ex-soldiers whom the organisation had recruited forcefully, but that they have now decided to abandon it and live as civilians. These too are kept in a continuous

“pending status”. They are equally threatened and persecuted.

3.- The third group is formed by those Kunama refugees defined simply as “eligible” ones and therefore their cases are regularly processed and concluded. Among that group though there are said to be many loyal supporters of the DMLEK’s leadership. This group is said to be regularly leaving.

On one hand, the DMLEK’s leadership is taking advantage of the resettlement program to send its own supporters, but on the other, it is either intimidating those Kunama willing to register or hinder the departure of those who have been legally processed and accepted.

Though, the KCS/KNT and the VKP/KAM would wish that all the Kunama refugees would take this golden opportunity to leave those refugee camps, the two Kunama organisations do not see the above categorisations to be just and fair and therefore their appeal to the highest UNHCR’s authorities to intervene and give clear directives that all Kunama are given equal opportunities and that the DMLEK’s leadership is totally forbidden and prevented from entering those Kunama refugee-camps and disrupting that very humanitarian program of the USA’s Government, on behalf of those Kunama people.

The DMLEK’s leadership is being reported to be blaming the KCS/KNT and the VKP/KAM for causing the “pending” status of those Kunama, arguing that the continuous appeals of the two organisations are affecting inversely the cases of those Kunama refugees. This is a sheer absurdity and a nonsensical argument as the leadership itself is the force causing intrusions and disruptions in the resettlement program. Many Kunama refugees are declining to be resettled only out of fear of the DMLEK leadership’s reprisals and therefore such evil-force has to be stopped.

In the name of our Kunama refugees in Shimelba and in the name of all Kunama people, at home and abroad, the KCS/KNT and VKP/KAM, very cordially thank the USA’s Government and the UNHCR’s authorities for their humanitarian activities on behalf of our suffering people.

With gratefulness and regards,

The KCS/KNT and the VKP/KAM: (August 24, 2007).