Eritrea: Awate.com and Professor Bereket Habteselassie

Professor Bereket Habteselassie outpaced literally every other awate.com contributor by devoting close to a 15-thousand word-paper (small-size book) to respond to Awate Foundation´s anti-Christian stereotyping mission also known by many as Ali Salem´s jihadist project. This ominous project has to be called by its right name so that no more wrong medicines are prescribed as did the Professor in his otherwise very brilliant document.

The paper, which is part of his yet-to-be published book, is entitled State, Religion and Ethno-Regional Politics (awate.com 03/01/10). In it, Professor Bereket implies religious extremists will be satisfied if Arabic was made a national language or if ´exploiter Christian settlers´ vacated the Moslem lowlands.

The Awate.com/Ali Salem project is focused on threatening and vilifying the Tigrigna Christians in the highlands for selfish and narrow political gains and is hardly interested in working with other democratic forces to transform the Eritrean society. In fact, its objective has so far been to weaken and divide the exiled opposition and discourage and confuse the Eritrean youth.

These dangerous, extremist conspirators are demonizing the ethnic Tigrignas essentially because over a century ago the Italian colonizers built the country´s economy in and around the Asmara Plateau giving them social and economic advantages over the lowland Moslems.

The Belgians built the Rwandan economy around the favored ethnic Tutsis – a reality which eventually led Hutu extremists to kill almost a million of them in 1994. The Tutsis had to pay for Belgian colonial transgressions.

Moslem and Christian Eritreans should remain united and guard themselves against blind and dangerous fanaticism.

Professor Bereket erred in suggesting that some lofty constitutional proposal (important as this may be) would be the answer to hate. As a trained lawyer, he knows it is impossible to legislate how people should shred their hate or be selfless or inclusive.

With due respect to Professor Bereket, here is a more sensible first step for him to pursue, if he so desires. He could and indeed should urge the Awate Foundation and its backers to apologize to the Eritrean people for fomenting religious hatred and tension. The damage has already been done. And there is no better way to heal and unite except through an act of reconciliation which the foundation says is one of its main goals.

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