We are running out of time before fully documenting our history

By Gebremedhin Gebru
Tigrai Online, February 15, 2015

Since its formation on 18 February 1975 in Dedebit, Western Tigrai-Ethiopia, the Tigrai People’s Liberation Front (T.P.L.F); has waged a costly armed struggle against one of the strongest brutal regime in Africa that came to an end on May 28, 1991.  During this period, T.P.L.F was also militarily confronted by a number of armed political organizations including: T.L.F, E.P.R.P, E.D.U, and E.L.F to mention some.

T.P.L.F’s seventeen years of intense and arduous struggle that resulted in the removal of the Dergue Fascist Regime and the other enemies has cost more than 60,000 lives and more than 100,000 Freedom Fighters are left with permanent war injuries.

Besides to the fascistic-military oligarchy and the other enemies, the 1984 draught was another formidable enemy that has been conquered since the coming of the T.P.L.F that caused the deaths and displacements of hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans.  The drought posed a situation of total annihilation of the people of Tigrai as a people. The situation was so bad, the BBC reporter Michael Burke described it as ‘’a biblical famine in the 20^th century.’’

Withstanding all these challenges, Woyane Tigrai  has proven to be the true vanguard of not only to the Tigrayan people, but it's more also true liberators of all Ethiopian people.  It is the movement of the people and real prime example of all oppressed people around the world.  Woyane Tigrai also proved to the world that nothing is impossible.

The T.P.L.F led rebellion had the backing of the Tigrai people.  Thus, TPLF’s rebellion has proven to be a popular struggle with a full fledge support from the people of Tigrai.  T.P.L.F’s armed struggle is one of the shining histories of the people of Tigrai. 

The martyrs who were the fallen heroes and heroines during the Seventeen years of the arduous struggle had their own dream.  Their dream was for their people to get dignity, equality, justice, liberty, democracy, and development. We are living the dreams and should be grateful and respectful to our selfless Tegadelti and Weyenti. This generation has also a historical responsibility to safeguard and strengthen the prevailing peace, democracy and development and should emulate our martyrs who gave their lives.

In a nutshell, besides to protecting and enhancing the prevailing peace, democracy and development, I do believe that fully researching and documenting the armed struggle of T.P.L.F and the people of Tigrai is one of the important historical responsibilities that this generation has to accomplish without further delay, when most of the aging Tegadelti and Weyenti are still alive.

In this regard, there will be a number of issues to be clarified and discussed in depth. Those among others may include:

• Type of information to be collected
• Source of information
• How the information is to be collected, consolidated, analyzed, interpreted and reported/presented
• How the information collection is to be organized
• Who will be the stakeholders
• Resources required etc.

In the attached article, which could serve as a point of embarkation for discussion, I’ve tried to further elaborate on the necessity of documenting the history, on the source of information and the different actors who could be involved in this historical task.

Respect to our selfless Tegadelti and Weyenti and Many happy returns to the historic 40^th Anniversary of the Founding of the T.P.L.F!

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