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sarcasm
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Eritrea: the Martyrs' Dream - "Hidri Suwuatna"

Post by sarcasm » 19 Jun 2021, 09:42

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Eritrea: the Martyrs' Dream - "Hidri Suwuatna"

(What the Book of Martyrs Doesn't Say - Part II)

by Yosief Ghebrehiwet

[This article was written on on August 28, 2010 as the second part of "What the Book of Martyrs Doesn't Say" and posted here in asmarino.com. Given the endless invocation of the martyrs' names in Paltak, faceBook and websites to serve dubious causes, it seems to me the content of this article remains as relevant today as it was then two years ago - hence, the motive to post it again.]


When a revolution with no justifiable cause goes through so much horrendous sacrifice, as the Eritrean Revolution has, it seeks justification in numbers only: “because so many died for it.” And when further clarification is demanded to get us out of the vicious circularity entailed in this explanation, we are again referred back to the dead for further articulation: “hidri suwuatna” (“our martyrs’ dream” or, literally, “what our martyrs entrusted to us” ). The cause is believed to be unerringly and unambiguously known to the martyred simply “because so many could not have died in vain”. With death in numbers comes certitude in knowledge, something that a martyred would have never attained had he/she survived it all or died alone. Because claiming otherwise is considered to be sacrilegious, all explanations are supposed to come to an end at the martyrs’ grave site (meqabir harbegnatat). But even so, a persistent question haunts all those who accept or promote this circular argument: what could this hidri, as only known to the martyrs, possibly be? Since we cannot resurrect the dead and make them talk, there has to be a human way of finding out what this hidri is all about.



The first hurdle we meet in deciphering the content of this hidri is if we take it as given that there was one and only one hidri that all those tens of thousands martyred shared. What kind of a common hidri could the thousands of rounded up peasants forcibly kept in the trenches, the thousands of child and underage soldiers who were not mature enough to decide on their own, the thousands of students who were never sure of what they were doing and kept rebelling under one cause or another, the thousands of ethnic- or religious-motivated sectarians with nationhood last in their minds, and many others more – Marxists, Baathists, Arabists, Islamists, tribalists, nationalists and patriots – possibly share?



And even if we grant that there were many in ghedli, irrespective of their numbers, who had worthwhile dreams in their heads, there is the further question of whether those dreams were doable: Did any of those dreams ever made it outside their heads? Was the road they embarked the right means of achieving those dreams? Were their dreams ever achievable within the ghedli context? Were they able to hold on to their dreams for long within the toxic environment of ghedli? Even as they believed otherwise, all along it could have been someone else’s dream that they were fighting for; and for that, not one to their liking. After all, was it not the dream of the urban elites, both of the Muslim and Christian types – a mere fraction of the population – that was imposed on the peasants and pastoralists?



If there has never been one cause, let alone a justifiable one, the invocation of hidri suwuatna by most Eritreans to provide meaning to a discordant past, to seek rationale for an unflattering present and to infuse hope into an uncertain future demands a much needed explanation.

Hiding behind hidri suwuatna


The main reason why Eritreans from all walks of life want to hide behind “hidri suwuatna”, “that sacred mission of preserving our martyrs’ dream”, is that that phrase could be made to be all the things you want it to be. It has become a place holder, a blank slot, to be filled in with whatever variable to get the result that one wants. After all, the dead are not with us to contradict the many assertions made in their name. Here is, in fact, one made by none other than Isaias Afwerki on this year’s Martyrs Day (President Isaias’ speech on the occasion of Martyrs Day 2010):

“Taking into account the uninterrupted obstructions created, the achievements registered through resolute rebuff as regards keeping intact our pledge for liberation and freedom, as well as honoring the trust of martyrs over the past 20 years are not to be viewed lightly, though these may not correspond to our lasting aspirations. …… This way or the other, their arguments and fabrications [the Woyanies’] have been laid bare in due course, while at the same time Eritrea keeps on standing on reliable moral ground, which in turn amply attests to the reward of our martyrs.”

Continue reading https://asmarino.com/articles/1445-erit ... suwuatnaq7

sarcasm
Senior Member
Posts: 10186
Joined: 23 Feb 2013, 20:08

Re: Eritrea: the Martyrs' Dream - "Hidri Suwuatna"

Post by sarcasm » 23 Jun 2022, 04:14

Still very relevant!

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