Brief Background on Repatriations from the Sudan
It is to be remembered that many Ethiopians, most of which consisted people of Welkayt-Tegede and the environs migrated to the Sudan as early as 1960s and ‘70s due to the civil war. They settled in refugee camps located in Derabil, Safawa, Umrakuba, Tewawa, Umgurdja and some in towns and cities such as Gedarif and Khartoum. Some managed to escape to third host countries such as USA and European countries but for most they had to live the harsh conditions and Sudanese government abuse until today. (This is is a topic of its own. I will come back to it some other time)
In mid-1990s, the TPLF led government with the help of the United Nations carried out a massive repatriation program of Ethiopian returnees from Eastern Sudan. In the 1990s the TPLF led regime started a repatriation program that was carried out under divisive ethnic lines of resettlement and that favored its supporters. Those that supported the TPLF and the once that were from the Tigrayan ethnic group were rewarded with generous compensations, fertile land, housing and free transportation to whichever destination they chose. Most of the Tigrayan returnees along with ex-TPLF fighters were resettled in places such as Humera and Rawyan, which are localities that rightly belong to the people of Welkayt-Tegede. Today, the Tigrayans residing in these areas have made a fortune and are big business owners. They are also, the most extreme hardcore TPLF supporters and financiers. Since they they are primary beneficiaries they are willing to do what ever they can to defend the TPLF and hence, their interests.
Unfortunately, for those who opposed the TPLF, particularly for the people of Welkayt-Tegede, the story was a whole lot different. Although, the UNHCR was supposed to carry out the registration and repatriation program (in cooperation with the TPLF gov’t), most of the insider work was run by TPLF hired cadres that made sure they opponents were left out by creating loopholes of filtering. One of these techniques was to impose Tigrayan ethnic identity on the people of Welkayt-Tegede. If an individual of Welkayt-Tegede native chooses to resettle in Welkayt-Tegede, they were required to state they ethnicity as Tirayans, since at that time the TPLF has annexed these regions into Tigray.
Nevertheless, many people were unhappy and outraged by this measure and began looking for alternative means of reaching their homeland. Others helplessly fell for the TPLF’s ill conceived and manipulative scheme of imposing new identity and arrived at their destinations. Those that were aware of TPLF’s poisonous plan chose to resettle in the “Amhara” region namely in places such as Gonder, Armacheho, Abderafi, and so on in an attempt to avoid that evil plan. Some of this people later moved to Welkayt-Tegede through the back-door, while other remained in the named towns and villages and started a new life maintaining their identity and dignity. Today there are thousands of Welkayt-Tegede natives living in Abderafi, Amachiho, and Gondar alongside the people with whom they share a common culture, psych, and identity for hundreds of years.
The 2007 Ethiopian Census and Imposed Ethnic Identity
The third national census is expected to be conducted starting May 28, 2007 in much of the country with the exception of Afar and Somali regions. According to Addis Fortune, (through AllAfrica.com), Ethiopia’s population was 39.5 million in the first census conducted in 1984. This number increased to 53.5 million in the 1994 census. Today Ethiopian population is estimated around 77 million. The third census was initially scheduled to take place in 2005 but was postponed as a result of the general elections that coincided in the same year.
In the same Addis Fortune article, Professor Beyene Petros and chairman of the opposition UEDF cautions the census to be carried out properly asserting that, “It is sensitive and has a serious implication on budget, identity and territorial issues." It is due to this fact and for reasons that I discuss above that I raise my suspicion in the process of the census. Are people allowed to freely state or declare their identity without any retribution of any form from the governments’ cadres? Even though the article states that teachers would conduct the data collection, I have no doubt that the government has a hand in manipulating the outcome in a way that favors its agenda.
In today’s Ethiopia where people are highly sensitive about their identity and where the political structure is based on ethnic identity, population census cannot be carried out clearly and freely. This is also true in Welkayt-Tegede, where there is a high tension between the Tigrayans and the native inhabitants. The Tigray people and the native inhabitants as well as the TPLF elites know that there is a clear sense of difference in their identity and socio-cultural makeup. However, these elites minimize/ignore all these factors and attempt to restructure the issue along language similarities, i.e. both groups speak Tigrinya.
In fact it is interesting to see TPLF’s absurd in way of dividing the people of Tegede. In an effort to legitimize its annexation of Welkayt-Tegede, the TPLF looked at the language pattern of the local people to determine how fluent they are in either Tigrinya or Amharic. Since, the people of Welkayt speak Tigrinya fluently their annexation to Tigray was assumed to be unquestionable, however the people of Tegede showed mixed patterns. The people residing in northern part of Tegede were leaning to Tigrinya, while those in the southern part were leaning toward Amharic. Thus, according to TPLF, those people who leaned toward Tigrinya language were considered of the Tigrayan ethnic group and consequently were incorporated into Tigray and the rest who leaned toward Amharic were left with the Amhara region.
As such, to the people of Welkayt-Tegede, this year’s census is nothing but a carefully orchestrated social engineering of redefining the identity of the local people in a standard that fitted their (the TPLF's) long-term goal of systematic and silent ethnic cleansing. It is saddening and humiliating to see the TPLF intentionally promoting the domination and extinction of minority people in a world in which humans are fighting for the preservation of extinct animals and plants. Today we are in a world where a larger and stronger group tries to respect and protect the rights of a minority group and where diversity is preferred to forced assimilation. Nevertheless, the TPLF has none of these good characteristics and these are the deficiencies that will ultimately bring its catastrophic demise.
