Post
by pushkin » 31 Oct 2020, 16:56
The deep hostility, resentment, and envy we see from present-day Tigray and its representative, TPLF, toward Eritrea go back centuries to the time when Eritrea was formerly known as “Medri Bahri.” Our forefathers felt that neighboring Tigray could never be trusted and that Tigrayans were generally treacherous, shifty, and untrustworthy. Hence, the term “Libi Tigray” or “Twisted like the heart of a Tigrayan.”
Who could forget TPLF’s naked invasion of Eritrea under the pretext of a “border war” and the brutality with which it treated Eritreans living in Ethiopia? They were separated from their spouses and children in order to inflict maximum psychological pain and ensure that the families they left behind become destitute and end up on the streets after the loss of their breadwinners. They were then made to cross the border into Eritrea by walking through landmines. Some 19,000 young Eritreans from the Warsay generation later died in defense of Eritrea’s sovereignty. To date, Tigray, in whose name the expansionist war was fought, is illegally occupying sovereign Eritrean territory in defiance of the Hague ruling. No self-respecting Eritrean can ever accept that.
During the fight for Eritrea’s independence, tens of thousands of Tigrayans were settled in Eritrea by the Ethiopian Army and became informers and guides for the Dergue, penetrating Eritrean societies and liberation movement networks because of their familiarity with the Tigrigna language and local customs. Some Tigrayans even saw it as their chance to overcome their inferiority complex and were particularly brutal toward Eritrean civilians as spies and security officers for the Dergue.
If we go back further back in time to the days when Eritrea was a separate entity known as Medri Bahri, the first thing that the Tigrayan leader Yohannes did after he was rewarded with modern weaponry by the British for his collaboration with the British Colonial forces was wage an expansionist war on Eritrea, which was then an independent entity known as Medri Bahri with its own ruler Bahri Negassi. He ended up pillaging Eritrean villages and stole thousands of sheep, goats,s, and cattle. True to their heritage and kleptomaniac ways, Weyane leaders did the same exact same thing during their 1998-2000 naked invasion of Eritrea, plundering villages and destroying martyrs cemeteries.
Although Neighboring Tigray has had a subversive history against Eritrea throughout much of its history, its worst behavior has been under Weyane’s rule, who has vowed to turn Eritrea into Somalia and has spent tens of millions of dollars to that end trying to sow discord and divisiveness among the Eritrean society much as it has done to Ethiopia through its divide-and-conquer ethnic federalism or bantustanization. Neighboring Tigray’s past treachery and back-stabbing ways have left a lasting imprint on the Eritrean psyche.