Ethiopian News, Current Affairs and Opinion Forum
Mesob
Member
Posts: 1516
Joined: 23 Dec 2013, 21:03

Violence flares in eastern Sudan: support the Beja Independence

Post by Mesob » 29 Aug 2019, 22:09

The Eritrean and Ethiopian governments should support the liberation and independence of the Beja Bedawit people to form their own nation-state.
This would create a stable neighbor and a homeland for all Beja Bedawit people along the western Red Sea shore in the present Sudan.

Violence flares in eastern Sudan: support the Beja Independence
By Mohammed Amin
in Khartoum
Published date: 13 June 2019 16:09 UTC |

As attention has been locked on protests in Khartoum, there has been increasing violence away from Sudan's capital amid a security vacuum that tribal leaders accuse the country's ruling military council of benefiting from.

Clashes have flared in several regions of the country, particularly in the already-fragile and troubled regions of eastern Sudan and Darfur.

Eastern Sudan has witnessed escalating tribal clashes that have led to the killing of more than 30 people in recent days, medical sources have told Middle East Eye.

“More than 30 people were killed in tribal and criminal clashes in Port Sudan last week,” a source said.

The clashes that erupted between the Beni Amir and the Nuba tribes began in Port Sudan last week and spread to the cities of Khashm el-Girba and Kassala in Sudan’s east.

The first case of tribal violence in the region was reported in early May in the city of Gedaref, where one person was killed in a clash between the Beni Amir and Nuba tribes.

More recently, eyewitnesses said clashes broke out in Port Sudan as outlaws raided the Red Sea city’s market on 5 June.

Osama al-Amin, an eyewitness in Port Sudan told MEE: “Gangs suddenly attacked Port Sudan’s central market on the morning of 5 June, looting the small shops and robbing people.”

“They were confronted by the police, which led to the injury of many innocent citizens,” he added.

“We don’t know where they came from and how they organized themselves to attack the people aggressively like they did, but there are rumors in the city that they have been released from the prison on that day without clear reasons,” another citizen of Port Sudan, Ahmed al-Tahir, told MEE.

“The criminals have fled to residential areas that are mainly inhabited by the Beni Amir, which provoked the Beni, leading to the injury of some people from the Nuba. Then the crisis erupted.”

Police dispersed the rioters, the sources said, before they began looting property in residential areas.

The eyewitnesses added that security in the city is deteriorating and tribal clashes have erupted in turn.

Fagiri Abdullah Fagiri, a prominent activist in eastern Sudan’s Red Sea state, said the death toll in various kinds of clashes this week has risen to over 30.

He added that the violence has sprung up in towns such as Khashm el-Girba, where one person was killed and another wounded, as well as in Kassala state near the border with Eritrea.

Fagiri told MEE it is widely believed that the Transitional Military Council (TMC), which has run the country since longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir was removed in an 11 April coup, and the agents of the “deep state” allied with it, are responsible for the tribal clashes. According to Fagiri, authorities have released criminal gangs from prisons and allowed them to run riot.

A Beni Amir tribal leader told MEE that members of his tribe who are in Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) are fueling the crisis.

“I saw many members of the former ruling party NCP telling people that the Nuba’s sons in the national army are using their weapons to kill the Beni Amir and we should respond to defend ourselves,” the leader, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

Recruitment campaign
According to the leader, the notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, which is controlled by the TMC, has been conducting a wide recruitment campaign among the Beni Amir.

However, a Nuba tribal leader denied his tribe was responsible for the deaths of Beni Amri Sudanese, adding that there is an “international” attempt to push the tribes into a confrontation.

“The Nuba and Beni Amir have been coexisting for long time and living together in many residential areas without any troubles,” he told MEE on condition of anonymity.

“These incidents coinciding with the political escalation in the country is suspicious.”

The Beni Amir are part of the Beja ethnic group that considers itself the indigenous population of eastern Sudan, while the Nuba tribe is an extension of the tribes that were living in the Nuba Mountains but displaced to eastern Sudan because of the repeated civil wars in their areas since 1983.

Salih Amar, a Sudanese political analyst specialising in eastern Sudan, noted that the tribal clashes, appearance of criminal gangs, political escalation and security vacuum all began after the violent break-up of the anti-military rule sit-in demonstrations in Khartoum and other cities.

Amar told MEE that the absence of the police from the streets points to the TMC’s involvement in the tribal incidents.

“The fragile situation in eastern Sudan and in the entire country is making things more serious,” he said.

“The appearance of the tribal clashes in the current situation is critical, and may lead to more negative consequences and instability in eastern Sudan.”

Mesob
Member
Posts: 1516
Joined: 23 Dec 2013, 21:03

Re: Violence flares in eastern Sudan: support the Beja Independence

Post by Mesob » 31 Aug 2019, 16:45

NARRATIVE PROFILE

Location:
The name Beja is applied to a grouping of Muslim peoples speaking dialects of a Cushitic language called Beja, and living in Sudan, Eritrea and Egypt. They are traditionally pastoral people whose territory covers some 110,000 square miles in the extreme northeast of Sudan.

History:
Many scholars believe the Beja to be derived from early Egyptians because of their language and physical features. They are the indigenous people of this area, and we first know of them in historical references in the Sixth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Over the centuries, they had contact and some influence from Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Turks.

A few Beja became Christians in the sixth century. The southern Beja were part of the Christian Kingdom of Axum centered in what is now southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. Although never completely conquered by a foreign power, the Beja in the 15th century were absorbed into Islam by marriages and trading contacts with nearby Arab tribes.

In the seventeenth century they expanded farther south seeking better pastures and conquering other peoples along the way. By the 18th century, the Hadendowa Beja were the dominant people of eastern Sudan.

There has never been an official census in Ethiopia/Eritrea, so figures are estimates from various field sources, notably published anthropologists. Uncertain data indicates there may be as many as 2,300,000 people total who speak the Beja language and identify themselves as Beja. The name Beja is form Arabic. The language name is Bedawiyet, also an Arabic name, related to the word Bedouin. A large number of the Beja speak Sudanese Arabic as a mother tongue.

Our figures estimate Beja speakers at about 107,000 in Eritrea, about 60,000 in Egypt and 2,134,000 in Sudan. It appears there are approximately 99,000 Beni-Amer speakers of Tigre. The total number of all Beja people in Eritrea speaking Beja or Tigre appears to be about 206,000. Some estimates are higher than 500,000.

All the Beja peoples, by our more conservative estimates, number 2,540,315.

Identity:
The Beja people are an ancient Cushitic people closely kin to the ancient Egyptians, who have lived in the desert between the Nile river and the Red Sea since at least 25000 BC. Various Beja groups have intermarried with Arab or southern (dark) Cushites over the centuries. All the dialects are mutually intelligible. Some speakers are bilingual in Arabic or Tigre (Ethnologue). There are perhaps 100,000 or more who are Beja socially and culturally, but who speak Tigre.

They are sometimes aloof, withdrawn, aggressive and warlike. The Beja have a uniquely huge crown of fuzzy hair, first recorded in Egyptian rock paintings (circa B.C. 2000). Rudyard Kipling gave them the famous name "the Fuzzy Wuzzies." Kipling was specifically referring to the Hadendowa, who fought the British, supporting the "Mahdi," a Sudanese leader of a rebellion against the Turkish rule administered by the British.

In this war the Bisharin and Amarar section of the Beja sided with the British, while the Hadendowa gained fame for defeating the British in two battles. The Hadendowa are thought to be the only traditional warriors who were able to break a British army "square" armed with modern weapons. In World War II the Hadendowa allied themselves with the British against the Italians who were supported by the Beni-Amer and other Tigre-speaking people.

Language: The Beja word for their language is To Bedawie (or To Bedawiat), and the people and language are also called Bedawiye, Bedawiuet (the Ethnologue name), Bedauye and Beni-Amer (with other variations). Subgroupings of the Beja people do not coincide directly with the dialects of the language. The major subgroups are: Ababda, Amarar, Bisharin, Hadendoa, Beni-Amer Beja, Beni-Amer Tigre and Babail Ukhra ("other tribes"). The Ethnologue mentions other ethnic divisions as Halenga and Arteiga.


---- http://orvillejenkins.com/profiles/beja.html

Post Reply