Forgotten victims

The forgotten war in Tigray contains a tragedy within a tragedy, that of the Irob. This is a minority of 50 thousand people, predominantly Catholic, who live on the disputed desert border between Eritrea and Tigray, in Ethiopian territory, and who are exhausted by three and a half years of brutal and violent occupation by Asmara's troops and risk death. 'extinction. In the autonomous region of northern Ethiopia, two years of civil war have caused at least 600 thousand deaths, millions of displaced people and a famine caused by the double killer, war and climate change. The Irob, last of the last and voiceless, have lived for centuries in a mountainous territory on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea which the troops of Asmara occupied in November 2020. Since then these people of farmers who have not been subdued even by the colonial troops Italians in the last century, reduced to hunger, saw their land transformed into an open-air prison. The tragedy began when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed allowed Eritreans to cross the border. During the years of conflict in Tigray, the Eritreans, allies of the Ethiopian federal army against the common enemies of the Tigrayan TPLF party, invaded the province, closed the borders, divided families, prevented access to aid and began a trial of forced assimilation, imposing language and documents and proceeding with forced enlistment which in the Eritrean army lasts up to 50 years. No mediation. A video from early April posted on social media shows a village where the Asmara military gathered the population in the square, inviting them to take the new Eritrean documents. The new owners have invited those who do not want to leave what has always been their home

Those who rebel disappear without trial, as has happened for a quarter of a century in Eritrea ruled with an iron fist by the military regime of Isaias Afewerki, and - just like in the neighboring barracks state - there are spies ready to denounce opponents. Ethnic cleansing is taking place – as denounced by the Irob Anina association which defends the rights of the community – through assimilation, forced conscriptions and the ban on access to organizations distributing humanitarian aid stopped on the border with the Irob province. The only access routes are the mountainous paths, which are very dangerous. Thus in the villages and in Alitena, the most important city, there are no longer any medicines and food is scarce, while houses and hospitals have been looted by Asmarine soldiers and women have been raped. Why does Eritrea claim and occupy these territories? They were actually assigned to Asmara by the Algiers agreements that led to the armistice between Ethiopia and Eritrea after the 1998-2000 war. But no one negotiated with the Irob, they simply ignored them, imposing an agreement that violates the UN convention on rights of indigenous peoples. On Friday 12 April the Eritrean Minister of Information declared that the lands along the border with Ethiopia belong to Eritrea, which takes nothing away from others and gives up nothing of what is its own.

A few days earlier, significantly, the troops of the Ethiopian federal army moved away from the province. The only one to break the silence was the Catholic bishop of Adigrat Tesfaselassie Medhin. In a letter written for Easter (which Ethiopian Christians like the Orthodox celebrate on May 5), he talks about the "unspeakable suffering of the population", the hardships and death due to two years of conflict and drought, in particular of the Irob minority, "marginalized" and whose essential needs are ignored. The Irob who feel they are Ethiopian and not Eritrean want to resist. But the young people flee because they no longer believe in the future and only the old remain to die as slaves in their land.


NP May 2024
Paolo Lambruschi