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Part 2

The PFDJ regime’s land policy has destroyed and is destroying the entire ecology of the Kunama landscape; it has disrupted and is disrupting the peaceful life of the Kunama people:

The PFDJ regime’s policy that the Eritrean land belongs to the state: “Meriet Mengsti,” a traditional colonial policy, going as far back as the British “State Land” and the Italian “Terreno Demaniale,” has, not only seized and deprived the Kunama people of the property rights of their own native and ancestral land, but it has also disturbed, disrupted and destroyed the natural and the harmonious ecological system of the Kunama land. Sadly, this man-made catastrophe is continuing up to these very days. The peaceful living and the life of the Kunama rural, as well of the urban population, have been and are being totally violated.

Concerning their land, the Kunama people have century-long principles regulating its ecology and preventing ecological effects which might affect their land. As the VKP/KAM’s team, has been repeatedly bring it up, the Kunama people’s land distribution, ownership and administration systems are based on the following principles:

A.- Land for dwelling purposes:

settlement of the Kunama villages, construction of houses, of hamlets and of provisional/temporary settlement areas for people and livestock;

B.- Arable/agricultural land:

for ploughing and growing various kinds of the Kunama crops;

C.- Grazing-land:

vast and fertile areas for grazing the numerous Kunama livestock;

D.- Reserved-Land:

for the recreation, procreation and conservation of the Kunama fauna and flora.

E.- Land for burial purposes (e. g. cemeteries):

highly respected, taken care of and reserved places for the burial of the deceased Kunama adults and for infants.

Having therefore such traditionally and well-kept and observed principles of distributing, administering and preserving their land, for centuries, the Kunama people had been living peacefully with and caring about the nature surrounding their ancestral land, until foreign forces intruded, intervened and interrupted that regular flow of natural cycle regulating the nature and the ecology in the Kunama land and consequently also the life and the life-style of the Kunama people. Throughout their entire existence, the Kunama people have always been victims of a foreign force, ruling and oppressing them in their own native and ancestral land. This has to come to an end and as quickly as the social, political and economic conditions, in the present Eritrea, take and follow a democratically conducted line. In order for this to come into being however, the present PFDJ’s rogue regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki, the major obstacle in the introduction of any democratic policy in Eritrea, has to come to an end. The regime has squandered every chance and the necessary length of time and credit of doubt (16 years,) it had been given to prove itself.

Back to the main theme that “the PFDJ regime’s land policy has destroyed and is destroying the entire ecology of the Kunama landscape and the Kunama life-style,” let us briefly shed lights on the above exposed areas, at the same time, reminding also the many settlers in the Kunama land, that they have been and are being made accomplices of an unjust land policy, undermining the very existence of a folk-group.

A.- As for their “Land for dwelling purposes,”

     the Kunama rural populations, used to having and moving about a vast land to settle in, as they like to live in smaller communities and spread about in many parts of their territory, settling not only in proper and established villages, but also in isolated hamlets and temporary encampments, in order to enjoy privacy as well as offer their large livestock, wider grazing areas. One is used to see Kunama houses, hamlets and little huts in remote areas and situated distantly from each other. For no apparent reason, such traditionally conducted free life-style of the Kunama rural populations, has always disturbed and worried the foreign rulers who have always tried and forced the Kunama to move to, form and live in bigger villages, preferably in visible areas and near highroads, so that the rulers could somehow have a full control over the Kunama people’s traditional free living style, each community regulating its own life, independently from each other. With the coming in power of the EPLF/PFDJ’s regime, the Kunama rural population, has been totally deprived of that freedom, subjected, not only into reducing its free life-.style, but also prevented to move about freely in its own homeland. Today there are police and military outposts even in the smallest Kunama villages and countriside, forcing the villagers, the farmers, the cow-herders and even the Kunama women to have ID-cards and other cards issued and paid for which would allow the villagers to move from one village to the next and within . This means a total disruption and destruction of the Kunama people’s culture, tradition and peaceful way of conducting their daily life and preserving their human and social interactions with their own fellow-ethnic-group’s members. The Kunama is being oppressed in his/her own home and family environment. The Kunama villages, hamlets, temporary or permanent encampments, are being continuously and frequently seized and ransacked and the Kunama villagers are very often forcefully ejected out of their habitats by the regime’s soldiers or by the Eritrean-Tigrian settlers in the Kunama land and faithfully supporting the regime.

B. Arable/Agricultual Land:

     traditionally, the Kunama rural population occupies and administers quite a number of crop-fields, cultivating varieties of crops. Though all those crop-fields are not used for tillage, each year, but at alternate times, so as to give those fields time to regenerate themselves, the Kunama farmers know exactly which parts of their land is appropriate for the appropriate crops and therefore, at times, they look for such parts even in other distant areas, as long as these are free and not yet being tilled by other farmers. Sometimes, the Kunama farmers do also agree to exchange the crop-fields, among themselves so as to offer, each other, a reciprocal help. Co-operation and the agricultural activities, conducted co-operatively, is a trademark of the Kunama farmers and their populations.

There are many other traditional ways, the Kunama people go about tilling and administering their land which, the non-native Kunama farmers may be ignorant of and therefore, breaking those customary rules, they very often, come in direct conflict with the Kunama farmers and rural populations. This is what has been and is taking place today in the Kunama land. The PFDJ’s regime, letting an uncontrolled number of its Eritrean-Tigrian farmers, settle in the Kunama land and aggressively compete with the Kunama farmers, who have never known conflicts in the tilling practices of their crop-fields, is not only committing open injustices against the Kunama people, but it is also laying foundations for outbreaks of conflicts, among those farmers and consequently also among the Kunama people and the Eritrean-Tigrian settlers in the Kunama land.

The PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki may be a transient one, but the legacy of injustices it will leave behind, due to its very inconsiderate land policy, particularly in the Kunama land, will have ominous consequences. By depriving the Kunama farmers of their fertile crop-fields, agricultural areas and mining sites, the regime’s regional administrators, its generals, its Eritrean-Tigrian ordinary citizens and their farmers, are sowing very dangerous seeds of resentments and of hatred among the Kunama people and these are warning-calls from those still-moderate Kunama. The rural Kunama population is not only and solely dependent on the products of its land, for its own subsistence, but it is also totally attached to it and extremely sensitive whenever its native and ancestral land is in anyway threatened. That threat in fact, is identified with that launched directly against its own very existence. This is a basic attitude and stand of every African ethnic-group. It identifies its own land with its own ethnicity,

In a recently posted article, regarding conflicts over ethnic land in Africa, the VKP/KAM’s team had pointed out that, the on-going outbreaks of the ethnic violence in Kenya have their bases on the monopolisation of the state’s social, political, territorial and economic powers as well as on the oppression exercised upon the minority folk-groups and on the historic expropriations of the lands of those Kenyan minority ethnic-groups, by the ethnic members of the ruling Kikuyu populations. As a matter of fact, in a short report on “The Guardian, Thursday January 31, 2008,” a certain “Xan Rice in Nairobi,” stated that, “immediately after independence, president Jomo Kenyatta encouraged Kikuyus to settle on fertile Rift Valley property given up by the British colonials, instead of returning it to the Kalenjins and Maasais from whom it had been seized. Resentment against the Kikuyus has simmered ever since.”

Translating this above statement into the recent history of Eritrea, one could simply plagiarise from and even repeat that “immediately after independence, president -.Isaias Aferki, - encouraged - Eritrean-Tigrians - to settle on fertile –Kunama land. – property given up by the .- Italian.- colonials, instead of returning it to the - Kunama – from whom it had been seized. Resentments against the - Eritrean-Tigrians - has simmered ever since” and is still simmering.

The Kenyan “Kalenjins and of the Maasais’s” scenario literally reflects that of the Eritrean Kunama. Ethnic oppressions have their limited times.

C.- Grazing-land:

       as it has been very often reported, described and proven, the

Kunama rural population, traditionally, possesses a lot of and different kinds of livestock: innumerable herds of sheep, of goats, of cattle and of camels which, according to their quantity and size, demand vast grazing-pieces of land as well as very spacious enclosures are required for the cattle, goats and sheep, some of which are kept at home for services, but others are let graze freely in the open and in distant and unpopulated areas. The whole of the rural Kunama population’s life turns round the rearing of its livestock and conducting of agricultural activities in its own native land. To disrupt such cycle of the Kunama people’s traditional living and life-style, by seizing their land and very negatively infringing in the rearing of their livestock, does simply mean, fundamentally undermining and destroying the very existence of the Kunama rural community, which is and stands for the genuine nucleus of the Kunama ethnic identity; it is the custodian of the Kunama culture, of the Kunama customs, folklore and pageantry. Targeting that nucleus, means aim at the very Kunama root.

With its very inconsiderate land policy, indiscriminate administrative system and with its deliberately conducted settlement, in the Kunama towns, in the Kunama countryside and in its fertile areas, of numberless Eritrean-Tigrian urban and rural populations and their farmers, the PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki is implementing the identical policy the late and former Kenyan president, Jomo Kenyatta, had adopted to settle his own Kikuyu people and farmers, in the “fertile Rift Valley” areas, the native lands of the “Kalenjins and of the Maasais,” thus preparing the precursors for the outbreak of the ethnic violence we are seeing in Kenya, these days. Let this be a vivid example and warning for all of Africa.

D.- “TARBA” (Sacred/reserved-land):

     The Kunama perhaps, is one of the few Eritrean ethnic-groups, if not the unique one, which keeps the tradition of having, very dedicatedly caring for, collectively guarding, defending and preserving, the so-called “TARBA,“ (forbidden/sacred/reserved) pieces of land, in many parts of its homeland, for the procreation, recreation and conservation of its fauna and flora. Those places abound in forestry, growing rare kinds of trees; of multiple species of vegetation and of thick bushes, serving as cover, hiding and shade for the wild animals to retire in the daylight or give birth to and grow their little ones. The Kunama collectively hold “Tarba” in such a high veneration that they fear of misfortunes which may fall upon them, if they, disregarding that tradition, would cut trees, hunt wild animals, chop down trees or collect dry fire-wood from them. The Kunama ancestry had deliberately preserved and instilled that conscience and fear upon its future generations, so that they would care for and preserve the fauna and flora in their land. Today the Kunama “Tarba” have become the primary targets of the settlers, occupying and desecrating them.

Ignorant of such very valuable and ancestral tradition, but very often, even very deliberately disregarding those Kunama traditions and values, the regime’s regional authorities and their fellow-settlers have been indiscriminately chopping down trees, collecting, fire-wood and even turning those places, into crop-fields and settlements for their farmers. The Kunama land today has lost most of its wild animal and its rare trees and the entire Kunama landscape is being rendered barren by the settlers, simply by undermining those traditional land laws of the Kunama people.

This is the awareness inducing us Kunama to sustain that “the PFDJ regime’s land policy has destroyed and is destroying the entire ecology of the Kunama landscape.” Its agricultural projects, being very aggressively conducted in the Kunama land, are more to damage than develop that part of the Eritrean landscape and ecology.

E.- Land for burial purposes:

     depending on their family roots, customary traditions and on the areas

of their own permanent habitats, all Kunama people have well-known, permanent, reserved and highly venerated sacred “burial places (cemeteries,)” of their own, to be found in many parts of their land, where their kinds already lie. Those places are surrounded by untouched and untouchable nature: trees, vegetation and flora. Those places are not only highly respected, but also carefully kept by avoiding to walking through them or undertaking any activity, except in the events of carrying out burial functions. Similarly, other burial places, are reserved for infants died, before having been introduced into the full membership of the Kunama society (through circumcision.) Those places too are just as respected and as highly venerated and having the identical characteristics as the burial places of the adult Kunama people. The Kunama burial places abound in vegetation and conservation of the rare, tropical and special trees, as the Kunama people are traditionally forbidden from cutting down those trees.

The very unfortunate reality today is that the regime’s regional authorities and the Eritrean-Tigrians, settled and settling in the Kunama land, who not only do not care about the Kunama people’s traditions and cultural values, but are also deliberately trying to destroy the ecology of the territory, are mercilessly chopping down those trees from and desecrating those burial places. This is a clear contempt for and insult to the Kunama people and their ethnic and cultural values. The regime and the settlers are intent to rendering the Kunama land, just as barren in forestry, as their own highland regions. It is therefore peremptory that this malicious practice stopped and stopped immediately.

Inconsiderate massive agricultural projects, construction of a network of unnecessary roads throughout the Kunama land, and the disorderly and uncontrolled settlement of the highland farmers, agriculturalists and ranchers are the major disrupting and destructive forces and factors which have brought and are bringing about the total collapse of the Kunama people’s traditional system of distributing, administering and preserving their native and ancestral land and the nature surrounding it. Let us therefore remind the PFDJ’s regime, its regional authorities in the Kunama land and the settlers, both from the Eritrean-Tigrian highland regions and from other parts of Eritrea that, if we are to prevent the Kenyan kind of precursors to outbreaks of ethnic violence in Eritrea, in the “Gash-Barka region,” particularly in the Kunama land, the ethnic identities, the cultures, the traditions and the land property rights of the Kunama people and of the Eritrean nationalities in general, are and have to be recognised, respected, defended and promoted, as the fundamental and the “sine qua non” bases of and for the unity, security and stability of the Eritrean nation and society. Nations are made up of people and therefore Eritrea can be a nation only if it is built on all of its own various nationalities.

The VKP/KAM: (February 09, 2008.)