Dear Netters:
Here are a more excerpts from an article that describes the sad plight of the Kunama people. The Kunama speak a Nilo-Saharan language and have been generally looked down upon by all their neighbours. They inhabit the fertile lowland area between the Mereb and Tekeze rivers (Gash-Setit region). The EPLF has big plans for this area. As the only large, fertile land in all of Eritrea, it has become a preferred location for resettlement.of EPLF fighters and development of large-scale commercial plantations.
The Kunama are being forcibly villagised, and their ancestral lands are turned over to EPLF loyalists from the highlands. The Kunama refer to them as "Tigrini."
"The advent of Eritrea as a newly created state has put the Kunama in the position of double periphery now that the national borders have divided them on the ground with several thousand Kunama living in Tigray."
"In spite of a small population [~60,000] the Kunama are conspicuous in Eritrea. The live in an area contested for centuries by diverse foreign and internal powers. The consolidation of nationalist sentiments in the wake of Independence fosters a climate of suspicion and distrust towards the government."
"Recent violent incidents combined with the ills inflicted upon them by the behaviour of Tigrini individuals have produced a movement of thoughts and emotions, particularly acute nowadays… There is now a hypertrophy of fear among the Kunama communities, a generalized phenomenon particularly visible in the towns with the rampant presence of government agents."
"The Kunama as a whole are identified as a people who sided with the Derg during the war, and the stigma is enduring despite the fact that the Ethiopian army numbered many Eritrean Tigrini in its ranks. The Kunama's decision was in great measure determined by the action of the ELF and its precursory elements."
"Idris Awate, the national hero worshipped annually in Eritrea as the man who defiantly opened the hostilities in Eritrea against Ethiopia in 1961, is remembered by the Kunama as the mass murderer who was their main executioner in the period 1943-1949. He is now enshrined in the foundation myth of the new country and his tomb has been erected as a monument on the edges of Kunama territory. "
"To this day, the Kunama accuse the British of having been instrumental in planning the hostilities and Idris Awate is vividly remembered for the appalling atrocities he committed and instigated at that time."
" Deep political problems are masked behind the current focus on refugees/returnees from the Sudan... Crucial in that regard is the current programme of villagization, compelling whole villages to move away from ancestral land in the name of 'visible' development. The forced removal of local communities, partly because of refugee resettlement is an ongoing process specifc to Kunama land."
THE SHAMBUCO INCIDENT - Two Kunama Farmers Murdered for not Selling Their Own Sorghum at a Price Demanded by the EPLF Police:
" On 11 March, 1995 two Kunama were killed in the marketplace following an incident with the police. I was staying in a village close by when this happened and met the next day with Kunama who witnessed the incident... Accounts differ on the number of Kunama arrested who were sent to prison in Barentu. All Kunama up to Om Hager felt deeply over this event and it reached momentous proportions as a source of concern."
[Source: D. Lussier, 1997. Local Prohibitions, Memory, and Political Judgement Among the Kunama: An Eritrean Case Study. XIIIth Conf. of Ethiopian Studies, - Kyoto Japan]