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Part02

“Land Proclamation No.58/1994 stipulates that land belongs to the Government which means that the land belongs to the people with the government bearing the responsibility of preserving it  for future generations”  By shabait.com’s Staff, Jul 11, 2007.  Is this not a clear contradiction in terms,  an arrogant assertion and a pretentious claim?

During and following the “Joint Meeting of Cabinet Ministers and Regional Administrators”, the PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki reaffirmed its land policy, by asserting that the Eritrean “land belongs to the government, which means it belongs to the (Eritrean) people, with the government (PFDJ’s regime) bearing the responsibility of preserving the (Eritrean) land for future (Eritrean) generations”.

Let us, first of all, question the PFDJ’s regime claim of being a “government”. A “government is a ruling body/authority freely and democratically elected by its subjects”.

Ato Isaias Afwerki had been an uncontested leader of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), for over twenty years, before ascending to the throne of the independent Eritrea, again, not only uncontested, but also unelected by the Eritrean people and is being ruling the country, for the last sixteen (16) years with an iron-fist. This means that there are very basic elements missing, in order to recognise, let alone define the PFDJ, as a government. Whatever this not duly elected and unduly ruling body is deciding, proclaiming and implementing is therefore just as illegal as its own self and authority. Why is it taking, Ato Isaias and its regime, that long to call for general elections in Eritrea? Is Eritrea not yet independent? Is the regime very afraid of being booed off the power?

Let us categorically exclude the meagre excuses of the “border war”, of the Eritrean people not yet “ready for democracy and for democratic elections” and other similar nonsensical assertions and arguments.

Eritrea had been declared “independent” before the border war with Ethiopia. The Eritrean people fought almost for half-of-a-century, for their independence, because they had wanted to be free to choose their own people to rule them with democratic principles, otherwise they would have stayed under the yokes of their foreign rulers and colonisers.

Many Eritreans today, are regretting the socialist rule of the Derg’s regime and that of the Emperor Haile Sillasie, not because they are longing for oppression, but because the dictatorship of the PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki is much more oppressive than that of the two powers.

Though they had simply asserted that they were “interested in the Eritrean land, but not in the Eritrean people”, neither the Imperial regime of Haile Sillasie nor that of the dictator Mengstu Hailemariam, had ever officially and categorically declared and proclaimed that the Eritrean “land belonged” to them, “which meant it belonged to the (Eritrean) people with the” Imperial House and the Derg “bearing the responsibility of preserving the (Eritrean) land for future (Eritrean) generations”. Perhaps the two powers knew what land meant to people.

If, according to the PFDJ regime’s “proclamation, land belongs to the government”, how could it, at the same time “belong to the people” too, if the Eritrean people have no authority to administer it as they please and pass on the ownership of their own native and ancestral land to their own children? Does the “future generation”, mean the children of those land owning Eritreans, or just any person belonging to the future generation in general? The PFDJ’s regime is creating not only an amorphous Eritrean society, but also a perilous Eritrean land.

As the www.Awate.com’s team, has very correctly laid down in its recent article, titled, “Planting The Seeds of Friction, for decades, the laws and traditions governing land use and land ownership were as varied as the people who lived in the land. In farming-oriented societies, particularly the highlands, the traditions and laws were diverse: communal ownership of land (Diesa or among Saho-speakers, shashina) familial land ownership (risti) and individual ownership of land (meriet weki) In pastoral societies, in the lowlands, where bigger lands are required for grazing, the local system was replaced in the Italian-era by dominale (demaniale) (state own system.) Still, the Kunama whose homeland is the Gash basin have a totally different land system that they use in cycles of fixed years”, the PFDJ’s regime is not either wishing or intending to bring about positive changes in the Eritrean land tenant and administration systems, thus trying to improve the life standard of the people, but it is simply intruding in the diverse land distribution, ownership and administrative systems of the different Eritrean nationalities. The “preservation of the land for future generations” has been maintained and conducted by the various Eritrean nationalities, for generations and in the best various manners, congenial to the various Eritrean different communities. The primary aim of the PFDJ’s regime in its land reform therefore, was not and is not to bring about improvement based on justice and equality, but to favour some communities (the Eritrean highlanders), to the detriment of other communities (the Eritrean lowlanders), thus accomplishing what the Awate’s team defines as “Planting The Seeds of Friction”. Whose “agricultural land” is it that the PFDJ regime’s regional authorities in the Kunama land, claimed to have recently “allotted in Haikota sub-zone”? (Shabait.com, Jul 10, 2007).Who are the beneficiaries of that “allotted land?” Surely, they cannot have been the Kunama of the Aimasa region, (where Haikota lies), for they are the natives and the legitimate owners of their ancestral land and therefore they do not need to be allotted of their own land, by an intruding authority. Undoubtedly, the highlanders and other landless Eritreans were the ones being favoured with such presents. This is also the reason why today there is only one way mobility towards and massive settlements only of the Eritrean highlanders in the western Eritrean lowlands, particularly in the Kunama land. Looking today, at the map of the Kunama land, created by the PFDJ’s regime, we Kunama notice that the geography of the Kunama land which used to have its far western borders with The Sudan, has now been chopped off and given to the “Hedareb, to the Rashayda” and to other non-Kunama populations, with the statement that “Tessenei” (Sinai in Kunama), a town right in the heart of the Kunama-Tika region, has now been designated as their regional capital town. How is this very clear usurpation of the land property rights of the native Kunama to be explained and justified? How are the Kunama people, particularly those of the Tika region, taking such arbitrary and forceful appropriation of their native land, by strangers? Are and will they be likely to live in peace with those intruding populations, once given the opportunity to claim for their land property rights? The PFDJ’s regime is really “Planting the Seeds of Friction” in that part of the country. With its flimsy land proclamations, “allotment of land” to whomever it likes and with its arbitrary and indiscriminate settlement programs, in the western lowlands, very specifically in the Kunama land, the regime is not only and deliberately fomenting divisions, conflicts and hateful sentiments among certain Eritreans populations which already traditionally have always had deeply-rooted resentments, due to contentions over land, but it is also endeavouring to deprive the native Kunama and others, of their own ancestral land, making them feel alien in their own natural environments and, at the same time, offering, to every individual with financial means, the priority to occupy, buy, trade and claim for absolute land property rights in the land not of his/Her own. This is not only disintegrating and destroying a society, but the entire nation. Eritrea and we Eritreans have better very carefully watch all social, political, military and economic moves of the present PFDJ’s regime, for it is not only with its land proclamation it is contradicting itself, but the whole of its ideological, socio-political and cultural package is full of contradictions, of confusions, of confusing doctrines, of incomprehensible principles and of destructive proclamations. The PFDJ is a deadly beast.

The VKP/KAM: (July 30, 2007).