Ato Irgau Bahta

On the 28th of March 1976 an Ethiopian army Colonel,  Bishu Gebre Tekle and his bodyguard, were assassinated by  EPLF fighters aided by the colonel’s mistress Nebyat. Nebyat was the patron of a bar and lured her lover into meeting her at the entrance of her establishment. The ambush happened in the city center in the Eritrean capital Asmara, in the early hours of the evening. Nebyat and her young son along with the two fighters who shot the colonel escaped swiftly arriving safely in the countryside under EPLF’s control. (Connell, 1993). Ato Irgau Bahta lived in the same block where the assassination had occurred, alongside his wife, seven children, his mother and brother in law. Around 11pm that night members of the 30th brigade of the Ethiopian Army dispatched from the the Kagnew Station military base forced their way into Ato Irgau Bahta’s apartment and terrorized the defenseless family.

It is believed the army unit was under the command of a Shaleka Asmelash. After ransacking the apartment and stealing various jewelry items one of the soldiers shot Ato Irgau Bahta in the head. Ato Irgau Bahta was holding one of his young children in his arms when he was shot and fell on the ground alongside his child. His brother in law was taken outside in the street and shot at.

The bullets missed him and he was spared. Ato Irgau passed away at the age of 43,  in the arms of his young wife and his mother in-law, who  were not able to get any help until late the next morning. Ato Irgau Bahta was born in Adwa, Tigray, Ethiopia and moved to Asmara early in his childhood

He worked as an electrician with the Lo Russo company and was well liked and respected in the community. In the same night a young high school student, the only child of a mother that was employed as maid with an Italian family, was also killed by the same Ethiopian Army unit. He was shot and his body thrown from the third floor of the building where he used to reside. He lived above the premises where the Ethiopian colonel had been ambushed.

At least eight other individuals were executed by the Ethiopian army on the night of March 28, 1976 in the city center of Asmara. The next night, March 29, 1976 more civilians were rounded up and executed by the Ethiopian army. At least twelve bodies were dropped and laid around the block were Ato Irgau and his family lived. The funeral procession of Ato Irgau Bahta could not proceed until the bodies were removed later on the next day. It is believed that many of the victims of the second night were civilians whose names were found at Nebyat’s bar in a book where she kept the names of individuals that owed her money, a common practice of local businesses.
The Ethiopian army in 1976 was under the command of Colonel Menghistu Hailemariam who is currently living in exile under the protection of the Government of Zimbabwe in the outskirts of the capital, Harare.  Source contributed by his son Isaias Irgau (10/01/2011) 

Here is an interview made by Amrit Wilson with an Eritrean woman Saba Asser, one of the survivors of Ethiopian prisons and torture, after eleven months of detention in one of Asmara 's toughest prison, Mariam Gimb. She refused to admit that she was working for the EPLF organization. She was not willing to collaborate and denounce her comrades

“For each arrested person there are seven to eight interrogators. They tie your big toes and your hands together, your arms around your legs. Then they put a stick under your knees: this is called the number eight because your body is in the shape of an eight. They make a ball from the cloths and vomit of prisoners and put it in your mouth. They turn you up side down and then they start beating the bottom of your feet. You hang from the stick which they lay with its ends on two tables. Seven or eight people take turns beating you. When one gets tired, another gets over. On the first night they beat me all night from 5.30 p.m. to 4 o'clock the next morning. They wanted the names of my friends before they could flee from their homes as soon as the curfew was lifted at 6 in the morning. ……the second day at 8.30 in the morning they called me again…they beat me from 8.30 till 12 o'clock. One hour of number 8 and then 9. In number 9 my big toes were tied together and while I am lying on my belly they stood at the sides of my back.

Your hands are tied, they hit your feet with a stick made of leather. As they beat you their hands turn red and sometimes start bleeding. So you can imagine if it hurts them that much, how much it hurts the person that is being tortured.”

Ethiopian repression in Eritrea
Source The Eritrean case, published by RICE in 1982

1980s

Excrept from In Defence of My Kunama People part 2 Saturday, 13 October 2012 06:21

The following innocent citizen were killed by killed by the Derg's fedain and Cadre in Gash Setit in the 1980s

1.Faraa from Asabaina  brick store owner, 1980 killed for his money and property.

2.     Ghebre Luul (Shambako) gardener 1980, killed for his money.

3.     Tesfai, flour mill owner of Bimbilna, 1980 killed for his money.

4.    Tonino Alangai retired teacher, Dase, 1980 he was accused of being Jebha’s sympathizer and
was killed in cold blood while begging: Kona Kebini dedame, these were his last words.

5.     Abel Musa (Cadre) killed in Bimbilna for his different opinion, in Dergue regime.

6.     Mahamed Bedani and his son killed for his money, 1978.

7.  Manga Ali from Fode who was a war prisioner  was killed  in 1979 in Kolluku.

8. Mehari Tesfasghi, head of Nuro Idget, accussed of ELF sympathizer was killed in 1977 in Barentu.Sale felice has used a “Sanja” to kill him. A Kunama Catholic priest, padre Attillio Alibo was almost faint as he saw this victim and said “Why are people so cruel to each other”? This father was unable to take food for two days and finally,

9.     His dog was gunned down with Kalashnikov infront of his wife, children and neighbors to show off his “brevity” and cruelty.  You now live in Europe.Had it been in North America, you could have counted your years behind the bars. These killings and killing of your own dog shows your cruelty, personality, and decency, and what kind of person you were and are a madman, lunatic and mentally disturbed. You are cancer for kunama’s struggle, freedom and emancipation. Read more

In  late 1979, during the strategic retreat of the Eritrean forces,  the Ethiopian troops in the highlands of Eritrea killed 348 people, imprisoned 1,474 , raped, destroyed 102, 746 houses and killed 956 domestic animals. ( Eritran Relief Association 1979: 3) During the 1980's the civilian population were  also subjected to aerial and artillery bombardment  in the less accessible liberated and semi liberated areas of Eritrea.  For  example , in the second half of 1985 alone at least 1000 civilians suffered war injuries, several hundred were disabled and at least 200 died. A statement by Major Bezabih Petros, a prisoner of war pilot captured by the Ethiopians in April 1984 highlights the barbarity of the Ethiopian regime,
          "We definitely know civilians will get hurt but, knowing that the people sympathize with the  rebels, the order is to bomb everything that moves..

• Fifteen Eritrean prisoners were executed on 10 January 1986 after they had been held for several years.(Dines, 1988:151)
• The massacre of 39 Nara youth at Mogoraib on 19 October 1985.

In May 1988 400 people, mostly women and children, were crushed to death by tanks in the village of She'eb.

There are still fresh in the memory of every  Eritrean the events of May, 1988 when the Ethiopian forces crushed to death  400 people, mostly women and children when their tanks rolled into the village of She'eb. Despite this atrocity was committed by the Mengistu government, from late 1986 until about 1989 the ELF leader Abdella Idris was involved in negotiating with the Mengistu government (De, Waal 1991:252) As the progress of this could be the Mengistu regime in late 1988 met with five former ELF members (who claimed to represent 750,000 Eritreans) to accept their proposal for the creation of an autonomous Eritrean region in the predominantly Muslim lowlands.

• Atrocities were also reported between April and May in several parts of the provinces of Hamasien, Senhit, Akele Guzai and Serai. In esacaping from these atrocities  the number of internally  displaced Eritreans  rose to 100, 000 in 1988 - 1989, with approximately 40, 000 fleeing to Sudan from the coastal regions.

• After Rebels' Gains, Ethiopia Vents Its Wrath on Civilians By JOHN KIFNER, Special to the New York Times Published: August 30, 1988

If the ELF leaders had a good willingness to encourage and harmonies the Eritrea Liberation Army to work in cooperative rather dividing, the Ethiopia army would have not had to committee all the atrocity. Alsayed (2009) also states that 30 years later we can clearly see the strategic error committed by the founders of ELF in the cost not only to our lives and properties, but also to our social fabric and cultural values, including the refugee exodus (mainly from the Muslim/Lowland areas)

By the end of the war in 1991, there were 500,000-600, 000 Eritrean refugees in Sudan, between 80,000-100,000 in oil-producing Arab states, 30,000 the United States and Canada and 18,000 in Germany alone (Pool 1993: 394)