Within the interesting list of 59 questions that were posed to the former PFDJ official, Abdella Adem (see Awate.com of 16 May 2004), question No. 17 was a little noticed query about the fate of a citizen referred to as ‘Letedawit of Hagaz’. The former PFDJ man, who was administrator of Keren province sometime after ‘liberation’, did not attempt to answer the question related to Letedawit.
I asked about ‘Letedawit of Hagaz’ to a compatriot from that township, located 25 kms south of Keren. I was horrified to hear the story. It is one of the many yet untold chilling stories of gross violations of human rights in Eritrea perpetrated against innocent individuals in the hands of the hordes of the lawless one-man regime.
In this story, what shocks its listener/reader is not only the circumstances of the death of Letedawit but the fact that the family members of the victim were imprisoned and tortured and finally intimidated to never tell to anyone anymore about how Letedawit died! Narrated below is only a small part of the story about ‘Letedawit of Hagaz’ that Abdella Adem was not in a position to answer. (Readers who know anything about the tragic incident are encouraged to kindly speak out and tell the whole truth in order to make better known one more serious case of violation of human rights in Eritrea.)
The full name of ‘Letedawit of Hagaz’ is Letedawit (i.e. Weletedawit) Abraha Medhin. She was a domestic worker in Kuwait until late 1990 when she traveled to Eritrea to visit her parents and other extended family members. At the end of her annual leave days in early 1991, she goes back to the Sudan, accompanied by her brother, to process her return trip to Kuwait. Upon her arrival in Khartoum, the 1991 Gulf war erupts and she finds herself stranded in the Sudanese capital. In the meantime, she also receives bad news from Eritrea: her brother, who accompanied her to the Sudan, was killed by Tor serawit at Anbetu Bridge (Bonta AnbeTu) on his way back to his village of Qushtign near Hagaz. Letedawit returns to Eritrea to mourn her brother.
The return to Kuwait became near impossible and Letedawit decided to open a small shop in Hagaz near a ‘secreto’ or ‘segretgo’ (undercover bar) owned by a lady from Tigrai, Ethiopia. Letedawit and her neighbour had constant altercations because the secreto-owning lady reportedly refused to stop pouring dirty water in front of Letedawit’s shop.
One fateful morning, Letedawit angrily shouts out rude words against her neighbour following another alleged splash of dirty water in front of her workplace. In the quarrel, the two ladies beat each and both received some bruises; the secreto-owner received a slight cut on her head. However, the matter could have ended there were it not to the fact that Letedawit’s neighbour had a friend (wushima) who was an important security person in the newly installed government of the much feared EPLF. Upon his arrival, the security man found his friend with a cut on her head. Immediately, Letedawit, who was known to her quarrelsome neighbour as ‘eta nai jebha’, was snatched out from her shop for short questioning at the police/security station. The security man (friend of the secreto-lady) started beating Letedawit long before reaching the security/police station in Hagaz.
Soon after, a relative who heard the news about Letedawit’s detention goes to the security office and manages to talk to her. Letedawit then shouts and tells her relative in Blin: "He is beating me very severely and I am afraid he is going to kill me!".
Letedawit’s relative tells his concerns to a senior government official in town who reassures him: "She is safe in the hands of her government and she will be released within 24 hours".
The next day, the relative goes to the detention place asking to see Letedawit. The prison guards question him if he was her relative and then tell him this: "Letedawit has committed suicide, hanging herself by her own cloth, ‘aderye’. You can take her body for burial".
The extended family members collected Letedawit’s body and took it to Keren hospital for autopsy. Doctors in the Keren hospital advised them to proceed to Asmara with the body. Autopsy results in Asmara showed that Letedawit died because of beatings, and that her neck bones were broken severely.
The body was taken back to Hagaz where her community members staged a demonstration in front of a government office asking for justice. The demonstrators were threatened to bury the body and disperse soon.
The community tried to persevere with their demands for justice. A committee of 5 was formed to pursue the matter but they and some family members of Letedawit ended in prison. After 2-3 months of imprisonment, the detained persons were released and Letedawit’s parents were intimidated and then forced to sign on a paper which is claimed to have stated as follows: "Letedawit killed herself, and the committee of 5 from the community should not interfere in this case."
My source to this version of the Letedawit story also said that her father and other family members are to this day afraid to say anything about the circumstances of her death although in private everyone in Hagaz and the surrounding region knows what had happened to Letedawit in the hands of the EPLF government’s security apparatus after the ‘liberation’ of Eritrea from the cruel regime of Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Regards
W.Ammar
