Archive                                                                                                                                        Links     

Part 8

Who is benefiting from the millions and millions of Nakfas, said to being invested by the PFDJ’s regime in the “Gash-Barka region” in general and in the Kunama Land in particular  and who is speaking in the name of the Gash-Barka populations?

Day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year, the PFDJ regime’s main organ and mouth-piece, “www.shait.com’s Staff,” has been and keeps reporting that there have been some major developmental programs implemented in the “Gash-Barka region” in general and in the Kunama Land, in particular. If we were to consider the claimed completion and the number of all those described developmental programs, we could suppose that those two regions have turned into a master-piece of the regime’s national development drives and their people fully benefiting from them, but the reality speaks a totally different language. Not even for whom those programs have indirectly been intended to benefit, are said to have achieved their goals. Added to this, a lot is being said in the name of the “Gash-Barka,” (the lands of the Baria/Nara, of the Beni-Amer and of the Kunama) populations, but who is speaking for them? Who are the ruling authorities of those regions and in whose hands are all the social, political, economic and military powers there? Who has in his own hands, the entire Gash-Barka region, today?

Speaking in practical terms, the “shabait.com’s Staff,”

titled its latest “NATIONAL NEWS,” as follows:

1.- “Assistance extended to IDPs in Shilalo and its Environs.”

The VKP/KAM’s team has been very repeatedly questioning the PFDJ regime’s false definition, as “Internally Displaced People” (IDP), of the preponderantly Eritrean-Tigrians inhabitants of the Kunama “Badumma Plains.” These had been ejected during the 1998-2000 Ethio-Eritrean war. They had been ever since resettled in many and in internal parts of the Kunama territory, with the false view and pretext that they were internally displaced people. The truth was and it is that those Eritrean-Tigrian populations in fact, had forcefully settled in that part of the Kunama land, today known as “Badumma and its environs,” in the late 1940s and early 1950s, after having brutally conducted an ethnic-cleansing war against the native Kunama and ejected them from there. Those Kunama were and still are the true “Internally Displaced People,” (EDP.) Today those Eritrean-Tigrians themselves have become the victims of the same misfortune and of their own misdeeds. They were and are the natives of the Hamasien region and therefore they should have been returned back to their own native and ancestral homeland in Hamasien and not resettled in the Kunama land, thus creating further conflicts and enraging the Kunama people ever more. Eritrean ethnic-groups’ members can become IDP only when and if they are displaced (just like the Kunama,) in their own respective homelands and not in the home territories of others, as every Eritrean ethnicity has its own known place. Those Eritrean-Tigrians therefore are falsely defined as “IDPs.”

“Shilalo,” (a village the Kunama call –.Shila-lau – the village just beyond the little hill,) is one of many villages which those Eritrean-Tigrians of Hamasien (Hamasienauian,) used to live in.

According to the www.shabait.com’s Staff, “different housing construction materials have been extended to former war-displaced citizens in Shilalo and its surroundings, which are now being rehabilitated. The IDPs used to live in makeshift camp of Ad-Keshi for 7 years.”

The village which today has been baptised, (perhaps by an Eritrean-Tigrian Coptic Keshshi – pastor) into “Ad-Keshi,” is what by the Kunama is called and known as “Delle,” a locality, right in the middle of the Kunama Aimasa region, founded by the Italian catholic missionaries and capuchin friars, but the Eritrean-Tigrians have forcefully imposed their own name and meaning. Today, that village and its surrounding areas are said to have been ecologically damaged by those Eritrean-Tigrian settlers and “IDPs.” Those same populations have now been returned to “Shilalau” and offered all the help they can get, to continue occupying the Kunama land. Clearly the ones benefiting the regime’s “different housing construction materials” are not the Kunama populations, but the Eritrean-Tigrians, supporters of their regime. Not only that, but “the head of infrastructure for the Gash-Barka region, Mr. Tekle Kelati, pointed out that more than 5000 were previously provided with farm plots. In addition to receiving farm plots, needy families received financial assistance.”

Being, “Mr. Tekle Kelati” himself an Eritrean-Tigrian, he could direct that “assistance, construction materials” as well “financial assistance,” only to his own kinds, including the allotment of those “farm plots” which are anyhow chunks of the Kunama land. It is clear therefore who the beneficiaries are. The oppression of the Kunama people in their own land and the discrimination exercised between the Kunama and the Eritrean-Tigrian populations are being conducted hand in hand by the regime’s local authorities. While the ones are marginalised, the others are highly favoured and provided with all kinds of the available help.

2.- “Rehabilitated IDPs in Gash-Barka leading better life thanks to  assistance extended to them, UN official says.”

Identical arguments can be made regarding the above statement and the people benefiting from the help deriving from all sources. The native populations of the Gash-Barka region, the Baria/Nara, the Beni-Amer and the Kunama, are said to be living below the poverty levels, whereas the “rehabilited IDPs” are reported to be “leading a better life thanks to the assistance extended to them.” Why should the ones helped and the others not? Why should the non-natives be favoured and the natives not? Does this not clearly prove, as the Kunama keep saying, “akumatia kishamoabbu,” (because it is their government?)

3.- “114 million-Nakfa potable water supply project under   implementation in Tessenei town jointly by the Government  and European Union.”

“Tessenei” is a town situated right in the middle of the two Kunama regions of Aimasa and Tika, but today it is very predominantly inhabited by the Eritrean-Tigrians and by other non-Kunama populations, whereas the Kunama inhabitants of it form only a tiny minority. There is no doubt therefore that the “114 million-Nakfa water supply project” has not been made to benefit the Kunama, but the settlers.

The “European Union” is being, by the regime, very cunningly drawn into sharing and committing those injustices, by blindly believing in and following the discriminatory policies of the PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias. Afwerki. It is known that the foreigners cannot perceive the subtle policies, being conducted by a local dictatorial regime, in a multi-ethnic and multi-culturo linguistic society, like that of Eritrea.

4.- “Inhabitants of Gash-Barka region express readiness for all- round resistance.”

In the waves of the war rumours, between Eritrea and Ethiopia, it has nowadays, become customary of the PFDJ’s regime to try to mobilise all its supporters abroad, and the poor Eritrean people at home to “express readiness for all round resistance.”

The regime’s Diaspora supporters do not know what it would imply to experience again the consequence of the latest 1998-2000 Ethio-Eritrean war, but our enslaved people at home do know it very well and are firmly crossing their fingers that nothing similar occurs again.

For the “shabait.com Staff,” to claim therefore that “inhabitants of Gash-Barka region express readiness for all round resistance” is a very poor and a simple lie. Not even the regime itself is “expressing its readiness,” sensing the real dangers threatening it firstly.

5.- Golij (Gulluj) sub-zone: rehabilitated families show significant  improvement in their standards of living;”

There is no difference in content, between the above numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5, concerning the benefits the “IDPs” of “Shilalo,” those in “Gulluj’s sub-zone,” those in “Tessenei” and those in the entire “Gash-Barka region” are accruing from the regime’s assistance and therefore, one could only state that a constant line of a partisan politics, is being conducted and played out by the PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki. It is an Eritrean-Tigrian regime and therefore it is all out to benefit itself, its own kinds and those few opportunistic members of the other Eritrean ethnic-groups. Not only the Gash-Barka region, but the Afar region, the Semahar and the Senhit and the Sahel regions too are today being turned into the play-grounds of the PFDJ’s regime and of its Eritrean-Tigrian ethnic-group’s members.

As it is its customary, the “shabait.com’s Staff” reports:

6.- “President conducts tour of inspection in Gash-Barka region.”

Though the name of the “Barentu” town is given as the place the news is suposed to have originated from, it is instead reported that, in all of his very frequent “tours of inspection in Gash-Barka region, the President” is said to have never set foot in that town, but just fly over it, land in, “inspect” parts of the two regions and fly back again to Asmara or Massawa. Over the main purposes of his “tours of inspections in Gash-Barka region,” the VKP/KAM’s team has written articles after articles, condemning the regional authorities overall developmental projects as well the one-sided aims of the “President’s tours.”

The places he visits are those guaranteeing his own financial resources and the persons he meets and interacts with, are those of his own close ethnicity, of his own political and military mentality and of his own dictatorial and oppressive rule. Neither the Kunama nor other populations of the Gash-Barka region are therefore benefiting from the highly glamorised developmental projects, be they “housing construction materials, potable water supply projects, water-diversions schemes” or of any “financial assistance.”

The VKP/KAM: (December 23, 2007.)