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GENOCIDE Part 2
In “Part One” on the above title, the VKP/KAM’s team had posted only fractions of the entire report by an ex-member of the regime’s “counter intelligence section” where crimes of ethnic-cleansing proportions have been revealed to have been and are being committed by the regime’s “3rd and 5th operational zones,” upon ethnic-Kunama members.
In this piece of writing, the team will go into the details of that report as well as insert its own comments. Let our readership be reminded that, the many persecutions and “ethnic-cleansing” activities, so far carried out, against the Kunama race, by the different powers, individuals and groups of individuals, have always followed a constant line, with identical aims and methods which clearly prove that they do keep increasing only in intensity, but not in their quality and quantity. The Kunama is being “ethnic-cleansed,” by those different forces, simply because it owns a vast and a fertile native and ancestral land.
This has always been true in the past and it is so at the present times, but we, the present Kunama generation, do adamantly oppose and refuse to let it continue.
Returning back to the report in question, the regime’s ex-member of the “counter intelligence section” stated that, “the labels conjured out and tagged against the innocent Kunama were cynical as feeders, fund raiser and contributors be in kind or finance, providers of hiding places, spying for, ambushing and planting land mines.”
All these “labels” do not respond to the reality of the Kunama people’s character, conduct and behavioural patters. The Kunama, particularly the rural population, is today being forced to lead a slavery-like life, with the regime’s military forces spread all over the Kunama land, controlling, oppressing and restricting every movement of the entire population.
Historically, traditionally and according to its customary behavioural patters, the Kunama society, partly due to its geographical and attitudinal distance from the main centres of the Eritrean politics, (Asmara and Highland Regions – Kebesa), has never cared and never been involved in carrying out such kinds of violent and secretive activities. The Kunama do react and openly confront their enemies, only and whenever they perceive the existence of their race and of their ancestral land are put in jeopardy by external forces.
At the present times however, one cannot totally exclude extremist Kunama elements operating under ulterior motives and therefore the Kunama people cannot and should not be indiscriminately and massively accused of, detained, jailed, tortured, poisoned and mass-killed, simply for“conjured out and tagged labels.” On the other hand, it is not the first time that the Kunama people are being falsely accused and persecuted, though they have never been either the members or the supporters of “Andinnet = Union)” or even of the “Independent Movement.” The unfounded accusations and consequently the untold atrocities waged against them, by the ELF’s forces in the past and by those of the EPLF/PFDJ’sregime, at the present times, are simply added “conjured out and tagged labels,” used as justifying factors.
The report continues:
“this massive and indiscriminate detention has covered overwhelming parts of the rural Kunama areas where members of the Kunama ethnic groups used to live for centuries. The sites included in this appalling ethnic cleansing project were Faulina, Boshoka, Shambakko, Bimbilna, Tolegamuja, Aimaba and Koitabia. Further, to intensify and finalise the projected campaign on time, reinforcement forces were called up to take part in the campaign with the command force of the third operational zone. The prison cells of Shambakko, Barentu, Boshoka, May Dima and Mendefera were actually administered under the intelligence unit of the ministry of defence, intelligence units of the 2nd and 3rd operational zones, and the intelligence unit of the 25th regiment respectively.”
The Kunama “areas,” listed above, are the most populated ones, because of their vicinity to the river Sona (Gash) and therefore very fertile areas, both agriculturally and for grazing purposes of the large Kunama livestock. Those areas therefore have been carefully studied and chosen by the regime’s forces, as the most suited ones where to carry out their ethnic-cleansing policies. The fact that “reinforcement had been called up to take part in the campaign, to intensify and finalise the projected campaign in time” clearly proves the PFDJ regime’s firm intention, not only to “intensify its project,” but also to increase the number of the Kunama members summarily killed, using every possible and speedy means, (e.g. chemical zed poison.) Ethnic-cleansing activities have always been committed in speedy manners, so as to avoid detections.
The commanders of the “2nd and 3rd units of the operational zones” and of the “25th regiment” are the elements we Kunama retain as directly responsible for the mass-killing of those Kunama ethnic-members. Such activities are the ones internationally known and condemned as“crimes against humanity,” leading their perpetrators to the high criminal courts in The Hague.
Let those criminals be reminded of this.
The report further states that, “the prisoners were bloodily harassed, molested and tortured to say yes to accusations which are alien to them and know nothing about. Here, the main motive behind the curtain was to paralyse and to put an end or stoppage to the ongoing struggle being waged by the Kunama movement – DMLEK. Since DMLEK was getting strong backing and had intensified small scale military operations through which it became popular in the Gash-Barka regional administration; and to retaliate and foil the resistance, the regime has piled all the crimes and punishments up on the innocent civilian Kunama. The calculation of the regime was to cripple the movement of DMLEK by revenging up on the parents, close relatives and wives of the fighters. The purposes of the torture, harassments and killings are nothing but emanated from the frustration the regime is getting on daily bases for which it has failed to keep up with opposition’s pace.”
As it is known, “DMLEK (Democratic Movement for the Liberation of the Eritrean Kunama,)” is a Kunama organisation, struggling for the Kunama people’s ethnic, socio-political, territorial and economic rights. It is one of the Eritrean opposition member organisations, forming the “EDA (EritreanDemocratic Alliance.)” Like the other Eritrean opposition organisations, DMLEK too is adopting every available means at its disposal, to advance its just cause.
Surprisingly enough, the PFDJ regime’s “calculation is to cripple the movement of DMLEK by revenging up on the parents, close relatives and wives of the fighters.” Our queries are:
why has the regime identified only the DMLEK, as its main enemy, and carrying out its vengeful activities only against the Kunama people and only against “the parents, close relatives and wives of the fighters,” if all of the thirteen Eritrean opposition member organisations too are similarly struggling and enjoying the same support of their respective members? Why has the regime chosen, as its prime target, the Kunama“innocent civilian” populations, instead of directly confronting the DMLEK’s forces? Does this not clearly show and prove that the main motives of the PFDJ’s regime to wage such crimes against the Kunama people, are only “ethnic-cleansing“ ones and not combating the opposition? Why does the PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki, not wage identical wars against the opposition organisations made up of the members of its own Eritrean-Tigrians and against the other Eritrean ethnic-groups’ members which are at times, even more supportive of their own organisations than the Kunama people? We are yet to hear that the regime has ever either poisoned or carried out mass-killings of the members of the Eritrean-Tigrian ethnic components. If, as the report says, those mass-killings of the Kunama people “are nothing but emanated from the frustration the regime is getting on daily bases for which it has failed to keep up with opposition’s pace,” why does it not declare an all-out war against all of the Eritrean opposition member organisations, forming the EDA? The regime is either afraid of certain members of the opposition or it has purposefully envisaged and is conducting its ethnic-cleansing activities, only against the Kunama people and their organisation DMLEK, in order and solely to clear-up the Kunama race from its native and ancestral land, so that its own people become the heirs of that vast and fertile land.
This can be its only objective to achieve.
Comparing the criminal policy of the PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki with that of the Dergue’s regime of the Colonel Mengistu Hailemariam, we can only state that, no matter how criminal the latter may have been, it had never targeted “the parents, close relatives and wives of the (Eritrean freedom) fighters.” It is to be noticed that the PFDJ’s regime is thought to have fought a long war to liberate Eritrea and the Eritrean people, (including the Kunama,) from the Ethiopian colonisation, but the reality today is that the regime is waging an open war against the Eritrean people in general and against us, the Kunama people, it has a totally different aim: sweeping us out of our own native and ancestral land. There cannot be therefore any further and patent evidence to prove that the PFDJ’s regime of Ato Isaias Afwerki is waging a clear “ethnic-cleansing” war against the Kunama people and against the Kunama race. Though the regime may use the DMLEK’s activities as an excuse to unload its rage upon the “innocent Kunama civilian” population, it is totally failing, surely on purpose, to find out why the “Democratic Movement for theLiberation of the Eritrean Kunama (DMLEK)” has come into being, in the first place, and therefore try to work out and settle the problem peacefully, but this is not part of the regime’s policy as it has the only aim of “ethnic-cleansing” the entire race. Let it however be clear to the regime and to its forces that, by using violent means to settle conflicts is not to sedate, but to intensify them and therefore, the Kunama just cause demands for just means to achieve such settlement. The regime’s “ethnic-cleansing” moves are intended to kill not only and not so much the Kunama people’s just cause with unjust means, as the Kunama race itself. (It continues in Part three.)
The VKP/KAM: (November 5, 2008.)
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