The Wicked Pact Against Tigray
How do people keep their composure despite an anger?
I will start with a Tigrayan Lady whose views I really liked. Principled, to the point and very genuine. Obviously she is in pain due to the current situation in Tigrai; I would be as angrier if I was a Tigrayan.
Today the people of Tigrai are facing calamities of biblical proportions and every person who has friends, relatives, parents and grandparents, and have memories that are facing savage attacks, would feel the same. It pains them.
In such a situation, we should tolerate any word of anger that we might perceive as offensive. But people feeling offended is the least of my concern— imagine your people facing eradication! That is my position and here is the clip of the lady venting her anger in a dignified manner. Listen to her here @ 2:39 mark
What triggered the anger of the lady?
Many of our region’s elite have a primordial mentality and they behave like brainless militia forces. They always forget the real problems and swerve to peripheral issues with the aim of agitating the common people. And the lady is angry at the ill-conceived misinformation that a few inciters of violence are spreading. However, she has clearly identified the culprits: the supremacist and narrow-minded ethnocentrisms.
The Eritrean army is a hostage under the control of the PFDJ that is perpetrating hate in collaboration with the ethno-centrist among the Ethiopian Federal forces. It didn’t take long for the so-called Ethiopian law and order campaign to show its ugly face and no one can gloss over the stark reality. The sooner the people of the region come to terms with it, the better. However, it’s sad to see forces of destruction feeding the fire with more dry wood instead of refraining from such an inhuman and foolish campaign.
And we have a supremacist sitting behind a camera and spreading hate, such as this person…
A matchstick pretending to be a person
This is a person named Haile from Tigrai Media House who has been provoking many people with his irresponsible and incendiary programs. His latest plan is to instigate a religious clash by diverting attention from the real culprits of the destruction of Tigrai to specific Eritrean Muslims. Time and again he has proven he lacks decency, morality, and basic human judgement. He has been hosting people who incite hate and bigotry and agrees with the primitive slurs they utter instead of staying neutral. In short, he salivates when his guests spew divisive venom. He never challenges his ethnocentric guests but echoes their views and emboldens them.
Last year, he hosted a known ex-bandit who now lives London and instigated hate against Muslims. Unfortunately, the pathetic octogenarian guest didn’t learn basic wisdom despite his age. Instead of preaching peace and harmony, he is still spreading hate. Worse, he doesn’t know what personal integrity is—he goes to a Muslim party and heaps praises on them but the minute bigoted people like the TMH interviewer host him, he lashes his bigoted insults at all Muslims. A typical opportunist instigator. And both the interviewer and his guest are a reincarnation of the murderers at Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines– the instigators who were behind the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. But we must blame those who remained silent despite the appalling instigation. The behavior of such people who hold village-quality grudges from ancient times, are worsening the situation.
Sometime ago someone from TMH asked me for an interview and I accepted with a condition: “Okay provided you don’t ask me to be hosted by the bigoted interviewer!” They never called me again; it seems the guy is the star of the station. And here is the clip where the bigoted TMH guy is running his mouth @10:95 mark.
And there is more
Eritrean Muslims are always victimized thanks to the usual slurs. There was also another interview by the station though the lady who interviewed a woman and a man was more professional, asked the right questions and challenged the ethnocentrists. The woman, whose reasoning exposes her ignorance (she doesn’t seem to have Received anything beyond grade school). She wants to incorporate Eritrea to her native Tigrai though she was generous and promised to give Eritrean Muslims a residence paper (she has no knowledge of citizenship) to live in her Tigrinya-controlled dream country, a united Tigrai and Eritrea! I suspect she was a contract worker somewhere living with a work permit–she thinks that is how Eritrean Muslims should live in their own country! Here is the clip @ 12:21 mark
The Long Struggle of Eritreans
The bigoted groupies have always targeted Eritreans, particularly Muslims. They massage the egos of the equally bigoted Tigrayans and Eritreans and saw seeds of hate between the two people. Their goal is to see the two countries turn to ashes. They believe the ashes and destroyed lives stand for their trophies. By God, how long can a people stand such humiliations and threats of a genocide?
And I have a serious criticism to the elite of the region. The imbecile supremacists of the Agazian-Tigray-Tigrinya and their likes launched their latest crazy campaign a decade ago, and senior Tigrayan officials used to host them in Mekelle. Knowingly or unknowingly, they emboldened them to heighten their assault on other citizens. Don’t Eritreans have enough mistreatment and abuse by the ruling PFDJ party that has made Eritrean citizens residence-permit carriers in their own land with no citizenship rights?
At any rate, we are humans and I do not want to add more to the pain of Tigrayans who are in the middle of an existential struggle.
Eritreans have failed to clean our house and we are reaping the harvest of our complacency. It’s time that every freedom-loving human being recalibrated. Otherwise, the vicious cycle of violence, vengeance, and wanton destruction will not come to an end.
Two decades ago, the forces of the EPRDF, led by the TPLF, humiliated the Eritrean army in collaboration with the rest of Ethiopia. And since then, the PFDJ has been waiting for an opportune time for a vendetta. In a region that worships vengeance, even for centuries-old grudges, in the current war in Tigrai the Eritrean PFDJ party collaborated with the rest of Ethiopia and is wreaking havoc in Tigrai. And it doesn’t seem the vicious cycle is stopping anytime soon.
Every human being with a little fiber of moral integrity must condemn the gruesome war. However, the Ethiopian General Berhanu Jullu or Jilla, said, “እግዚአብሔር ባይረዳን ኖሮ ነገሩ ከባድ ነበር.” (If not for the help of God, the issue was difficult). The general believes God was on his side bombing Tigray and devastating its people. That is the medieval mentality the region must deal with.
III, the cheeck sign of the Beni Amer Tribe
Going back to the instigation, the TMH bigot claims that those in the Eritreans army with III cheek scars are the cruelest in the Tigrai offensive. He goes further to describe them in the vilest characteristics.
First, I wonder where he got the statistics about the composition of the Eritrean army and how did he know who was cruel and who was kind—in a war for God’s sake! Secondly, some Ethiopians have pejorative terms for Tigrayans many of whom have scars on their eyebrows. It’s called “Grnab.” I wish the bigot would tell us how cruel are people with grnab? That is just an appalling mentality.
Do you know most of the insult I personally get is “You Muslim, you Jihadi”? True, I am a Muslim, but I do not know how that became an insult in the mind of the bigots. Sometimes I wish those people face real Jihadis, their own twins in ignorance, the ISIS types, the forces that made the word synonymous with killing, cruelty, ignorance and total disregard for human life. But it’s evil and not in my nature to wish that.
The late Idris Wed Amir left us a beautiful lyric
Etsebki wetsagmi deaa wdei glna
Eb rim ettgese nosa teate glna
HreTet AwHitet Tebib kenaknna … (linked here@16:08 mark)
May Idris wed Amir Rest In Peace….
Humming songs sooth the soul and sometimes I do it in seclusion. I forgot to stop recording when I hummed over the song in a tele-conversation with a friend. I hesitated to remove it. But then, what the heck, I left it there. Let me take you to a bigger fish…
Siye Abraha
Recently Siye Abraha, the known veteran of the struggle era of Tigrai made a surprising statement. He described his country by saying, Tigray prides itself for being a nation of FitHe Negest (Laws of the Kings).
Many veterans who we believed were progressive and liberal became very conservative and traditional once they mingled in the primitive society. What’s Fithe Negest? The codes that guided Haile Selassie and his predecessors to oppress the people? Doesn’t Siye Abraha know that when King Haile Selassie gassed the people of Tigray with the help of the British Air-force in 1943 he was the justice Fithe Negest? Still, I think the current campaign of hate and blood in Tigrai is inspired by Fithe Negest by the 7th king who has internalized it.
All the ills of the region is traced to the despicable, primitive manual that the kings who used it since the 13th century. I could accept that boasting from a village monk but not from a high-ranking veteran of the struggle, a senior official of the government, and a man who makes a living as an academician or a scholar!… well, Eritrea has its own share of problems and let’s have a glimpse…
What Does Eritrea look like today?
What is happening to my beloved Eritrea and Eritreans who have no stake in this war on Tigrai, is sad. I condemn the war with the strongest words, and I wish some of the misguided Eritreans will be brave enough to break the cycle of vengeance that has brought us here.
Neither the annihilation of Tigrayans or Ethiopians, or Sudanese will improve our lot until we elevate our thinking and respect lives and freedoms. We are stuck in the middle ages chasing windmills and the status of our cities provide enough exhibits. It’s sad to see the horse drawn carts have become a substitute for city-buses that we had when many countries in the region didn’t. It’s painful to see the pools of Mai-Jahjah empty and couldn’t provide water for hungry donkeys. It’s shameful to see the streets of our capital city infested with packs of stray dogs. It’s painful to watch the increase of destitute people to decreased to beggars in the streets. That should have kept us busy trying to find solutions instead of counting dead bodies and supplying fuel to the never-ending cycle of vengeance. It should have reminded us we have grave situations to attend to instead of jumping from one war to another.
We all know that vengeance does not allow you to attend to important life-matters, but transforms you into an animal, senseless, irrational and instinctively blood thirsty. Many existential risks surround us, and we need to fight that war and not be consumed with ego-driven, meaningless wars.
Awate Forum