Respected fellow-Kunama at home and abroad,
the “Kunama Political Party”, (KPP), in Kunama language, “Kunama Politika Buluka” (KPB), held its first Congress, elected its Central Committee Members and ratified its Political Principles.
The KPP is founded upon the following three principles, aims and action-plans:
a.- What is the KPP?
b.- Why has the KPP come into being?
c.- What is the KPP going to be?
Article 1.- what is the KPP?
It is the party of the Kunama People, striving to make the Kunama people’s voice heard. It is the party struggling, demanding and standing up for justice, equality, defense and preservation of the Kunama people’s communal and personal land property rights.
Article. 2- why has the KPP come into being?
It has come into being because of the evil activities carried out by past and present individuals, forces and governments, and the ill-treatment the Kunama, as a race and nationality, had to endure throughout its entire life and history.
The KPP is a political force, risen to face and struggle against the oppression, the killings and the various evil
activities, the Kunama, as a nationality, had to endure during the armed struggle for the Eritrean independence, and because of the oppression, persecution and the many killings, the present People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), is conducting upon the Kunama people, in their own native and ancestral land, of which property rights too, have been and are being confiscated and denied.
Historical background:
after the ancient forces, the followings are the other past governments, rulers and individuals which and who had exercised injustices and oppression upon the Kunama people and their land, and left such legacy, behind:
- the first ruler of Eritrea, Ras Alula Abba-Negga,
- the Italian colonial government; (ICG);
- the British Military Administration (BMA);
- the Ethiopian Imperial Government, (EIG);
- the Eritrean Liberation Front, Jebha-Al-Taharir (ELF), armed struggle group;
- the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front/Hizbaui-Gmbar (EPLF) and
- the present People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).
Ras Alula Abba-Negga:
short before the arrival and establishment of the Italians, as the colonizers of Eritrea, “Ras Alula Abba Negga, 1847- 1897, an Ethiopian commander, of the nineteenth century”, ruling in Eritrea at that time, had, for a very trivial reason, waged, a war of genocidal intent, against
the Kunama people, stopped only by the arrival, at the same time, of the Italians, in Eritrea.
The Italian colonial government declared the Kunama Land as “Terreno Demaniale”, without any regard to the Kunama people, and as if that were an uninhabited land and without its own rightful owners, the native Kunama people.
The British Military Administration, (BMA), based on its known, “divide and rule”, principle, and translating, the Italian “Terreno Demaniale”, into “State Land”, created enmities among the neighboring Kunama, Baria and Beni- Amer populations, favoring those ethnic-groups it supported, with the properties of those ethnic-groups it despised, (the Kunama).
Availing himself of the favorable times, offered him by the carelessness of the British Military Administration, the local villain, Hamid Idris Awate, one of the cruelest enemies of the Kunama people, committed the worst atrocities, the Kunama race had ever experienced, carried out against it, by a single individual.
During the period, prior to the federation of Eritrea with Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Imperial Government had formed various Eritrean and Ethiopian Tigrian, “Andinnet” groups, who were sent to the Kunama land, to create havoc in the Kunama land, and among the Kunama people, waging wars, raiding the Kunama cattle and terrorizing the Kunama people, with the pretext of intimidating and forcing them opt for the federation.
The Jebha-Al-Taharir/Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), inheriting Hamid Idris Awate’s brutal legacy, and also falsely accusing the Kunama people of siding with the Ethiopian government, undertook, during the initial liberation struggle years, an all-out hateful stand against the Kunama race, and in 1967, it burned, the village of Karkasha and many other Kunama villages, killing a considerable number of Kunama people, among the first ones,
the prominent Kunama:
1.- Adana Celestino,
2.- Frut Talla,
3.- Ashkulle Cassiano.
4.- The Jebha-Al-Tahrir forces set on fire, the house of Amos, a native of the village of Karkasha, who was burnt to death, inside his house, together with eight (8) of his family-members.
During the initial years of the struggle for Eritrean independence, the Jebha-Al-Tahrir armed group, operating in the Kunama land and led by Hamid Dinai, raided numberless herds of Kunama cattle, carried out acts of vengeance and committed ominous injustices.
At one time, the Jebha-Al-Tahrir leaders had taken as prisoners, about three-hundred (300) Kunama women, together with their infants, subjected them to forced labour and used them also as means of sexual satisfaction of its combatants.
The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front’s (EPLF) armed struggle group, had always nurtured deeply-felt grudges and vengeful resentments against the Kunama people and, ever since it came to power in the independent Eritrea and established itself as the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, (PFDJ), it conducted and it has been conducting untold atrocities of ethnic- cleansing proportions, far exceeding the injustices and the killings committed, upon the Kunama people, by the previous rulers of Eritrea.
Inheriting the land principle of the Italians’ “Terreno Demaniale”, and translating it into its Tigrigngna “Meriet Mengsti”, the PFDJ‘s regime confiscated the Kunama people, of the property rights of their native and ancestral land and turning it, primarily into its own economic play-ground, creating large commercial farms, confiscating and distributing the Kunama land, among its ex-combatants and supporters, resettled and is resettling there, countless populations, from the Eritrean neighbouring lowland regions and from the distant highland regions of Eritrea.
Similarly, the PFDJ’ regime resettled, in the Kunama land, many of the refugees, mainly Tigrians, returning to Eritrea, distributing the Kunama land among them, thus trying, to render “landless”, the Kunama people.
The Kunama people today are experiencing and witnessing
on-going evil activities by the Shabia regime, against them, in a manner totally unprecedented, unknown and unheard of, in the Kunama century-old-history.
It suffice to mention the cruel massacre of the Kunama brothers, Musa and Dirga, in Sikinibia (Shambakko), some years ago.
The Tigrigngna-speaking local police-force there chased the two Kunama brothers, Musa and Dirga, as if they were hunted wild animals and, for very petty reasons, gunned them down, in a bright day-light.
Likewise, the Tigrigngna-speaking civilians, living there, joined their fellow-ethnic member-police-force, ill-treated and killed other Kunama ethnic-members.
One of the saddest events, orchestrated by the regime’s civilian and military higher authorities, in recent years, was the indiscriminate mass-detentions, mass- imprisonments, mass-poisoning, mass-killings and mass- burial in a mass-grave, of twenty-six (26) ethnic Kunama- members, in the surroundings of the village of Maidima, in Serae region.
There are reported to be countless ethnic-Kunama members, men, women, under-aged children, and even young Kunama mothers, imprisoned together with their infants, and languishing in prison cells, in their own native land and in many other parts of the country.
Many other Kunama are unaccounted for, had disappeared and are continuing to disappear at the hands of the regime’s local authorities, in the Kunama land.
The Kunama today, have therefore, become very suspicious of and very deeply distrust any non-Kunama ruler or authority, exercising in their territory and therefore they have been and are urgently calling for their own Kunama-ethnic members, to take, in their own hands, the affairs of their own people and of their own native and ancestral homeland.
After having carefully documented and studied all the above enumerated sad historical, social and political events, which have always been following the destiny of the Kunama people, throughout their entire history, the elected members of the Kunama Political Party, (KPP), have been sensitized to rise up to the call to defend our Kunama people’s lives, our native land’s property rights and our culturo-linguistic heritages and our culturo- traditional values.
Article 3.- what is KPP going to be?
It is going to be the herald of the federal provincial or regional government of the Kunama people and of the Kunama land.
The Kunama Political Party will be the emblem and the source of good and just service to the Kunama people, to the Kunama land, to the Kunama social, political and economic prosperity and well-being.
In short, the Kunama people and the Kunama land will be governed and served by their own elected fellow-Kunama ethnic-members.
Traditionally, the Kunama is an agricultural and pastoral society; it sustains itself, primarily, from the products of its
Crop-fields and rearing of its large and varied live-stock, and it is, thus, absolutely dependent on its own vast and fertile native land, in order to meet those fundamental needs.
The settlement, resettlement policies and programs, in the Kunama Land, being conjured out by the present PFDJ’s regime, are not only, illegal, but also very detrimental and unjust measures, as they are clear violations of the Kunama people’s communal and personal ethnic land property rights, which is also their only source of subsistence.
Such measures are also in contravention with:
1.- “Article 27, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)” which states:
in those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language;”
2.- with the “United Nations’ Declaration of the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples (Adopted by General Assembly Resolution 61/295 on 13 September 2007):
Indigenous Peoples have the rights to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired. Indigenous Peoples have the rights to own, use, develop, control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership, or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired”.
The present PFDJ’s regime has deprived and is depriving the
Kunama people, of the property rights of their native and ancestral
Land, in order to implement its own agricultural projects, solely
aimed at meeting, primarily, its own commercial needs, those of its
faithful supporters and satisfy the land-grabbing drives of its own
ethnic-members.
The Kunama therefore, should not and must not be oppressed,
persecuted, penalized and killed, simply for inheriting, owning and
administering their own vast and fertile native and ancestral land.
From now on, no one shall ever attempt to chase our Kunama ethnic-members, like hunted wild animals, and gun them down, for trivial reasons!
No one shall ever try to indiscriminately detain, imprison,
mass-poison, mass-murder and bury, in mass-graves, our Kunama
ethnic-members!
In the future, no one, shall ever attempt to carry out ethnic-cleansing
activities, upon our Kunama race and ethnicity!
Article 4: the “Kunama Political Party”, based on its principle, the “Kunama shall Care for his/her/their People and Land”, shall always be fully supportive of any Eritrean or other ethnic/folk-groups’ members, deciding to take, in their own hands, and care for the welfare and well-being of their own people, in their own respective homelands.
The KPP shall also join and co-operate with such groups.
Guidelines for the future Kunama People’s
federal provincial or regional government:
Article 5: A.-the Kunama People’s federal provincial or regional government and its civil servants shall be composed of the Kunama ethnic-members;
- the Kunama People’s federal provincial or regional government shall be elected by its Kunama ethnic- members;
- the Kunama People’s federal provincial or regional government shall be one that engages itself in developing the region, in the manner congenial to the traditions, needs and requirements of its own Kunama people;
- the governor of the Kunama federal provincial or regional state, his/her civic servants, the regional and local police-force, the city mayors, town administrators and the Kunama districts and villages’ chiefs, shall be Kunama ethnic-members.
- The representative/s of the Kunama people, at the Eritrean national governmental level, shall be Kunama ethnic-member/s, elected by his/her/their own fellow- Kunama ethnic-members.
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Article 6.- B.- Land:
1.- the Kunama state’s provincial or regional capital-city is “Biara” (in Kunama language);
“Barenku/Barentu”, (in Baria language);
“Maitada/Maitzada ”, (in Beni-Amer/Tigre and in Tigrigngna languages).
“White-water”, (in English language).
2.- The Kunama land is the inherited communal and personal property of the Kunama people.
3.- The Kunama land is neither bought nor sold.
4.- All the local agricultural and commercial plantations,
such as those in Aligidir,
Garmi, (Bimbilna),
Sikinibia (Shambakko),
Dokinbia, Ingkota/Aikota, the mining and other commercial sites, as well as crop- fields, residences and other Kunama personal and communal land properties, which had unlawfully been confiscated, shall be returned to their own rightful Kunama owners.
5.- It is forbidden, in the Kunama land, to chop down trees,
palm-trees and other tropical and exotic trees.
6.- Hunting is forbidden, in the Kunama land.
7.- Antore, Biakundi and Magula shall be the provincial or
regional “reserve-lands” and “wild-life parks”, for the procreation and recreation of the Kunama fauna and flora.
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Article 7.- The following five (5) projects shall be of priority in the
Kunama land:
a.-digging of water-wells and building of dams,
implementation of water diversion schemes and
constructions of water-reservoirs;
b.- building of clinics and hospitals;
c.- building of schools and recreational facilities;
d.- developing of the Kunama agriculture and rearing of
the Kunama livestock, availing of the modern means;
e.- preserving of the basic Kunama culture and cultural heritage and values, and promoting them, on the bases of the requirements of the modern times, and developing the Kunama language.
Schooling and education, in the Kunama land, shall be compulsory, for the Kunama people.
Article 8: C.-Languages:
the main languages, in the Kunama land, are
Kunama;
Baria and
Arabic.
The Kunama school-children, from the first (1st) to the fifth (5th) elementary classes, shall be taught in Kunama language.
From the sixth (6th) classes upwards, shall be taught in English.
The Kunama people are free to choose and learn other languages of their likes.
Article 9: D.- Religions:
in the Klunama land,
1.- Christianity;
2.- Islam and
3.- Kunama Belief, are freely adhered to, practised and lived accordingly, by their own respective adherents.
Article 10: E.- Names:
1.- in the Kunama land, the names of the various Kunama territories, of districts, of localities, of cities, of towns, and of villages, as well as of mountains, of rivers and so on, shall be those given by, known to and called by the Kunama people themselves, in general, and by the Kunama inhabitants of those localities, in particular.
2- In the Kunama land, highways, avenues, roads, streets, public places, buildings and so on, shall carry only local Kunama names and the names of the local heroes and of the prominent Kunama personalities .
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Article 11: F.-The final Message:
should the names like:
1.- Kunama federal State,
2.- Kunama federal provincial/regional government, and
other terms, used and concepts expressed, in these political principles of the KPP, be unclear or cause some uncertainty, it is advised to seek for clarifications from its central committee and other members
May peace, justice and tranquility shine and reign upon the Kunama people and upon their native and ancestral land!
The Kunama shall Care for his/her/their own People and Land!
The KPP‘s Committee Members:
July 14, 2011.