Not fraternal. We are equals in this, no Eritreans have gone to Ethiopia to wage war. The war , the occupation, the attacks on civilians, the rapes, the forced marriages, the chemical weapons, I could go on and on, were all done by them to us. It's unfair and unrealistic to keep having a dialogue as though we are two equal partners . To this day, Eritrea does not occupy any parts of Ethiopia while Ethiopia defies a 2002 UN ruling and occupies 25% of our country. We have not had any of their war criminals on trial or asked for reparations for the 30 year-war . Instead we helped the current regime get into power and allowed them access to our ports . Can I say one thing about the waters that seem so important to Ethiopians? When they did have control of our waters , under both Haile Selassie and the Derg, it didn't help them at all! They still had famine, instability, ethnic strife , corruption , poverty, illegally and rampant diseases. The truth is that if you remove Eritrea from the equation and give them all of our waters, Ethiopia would still suffer from every ailment they have now. This is a deeper issue of a culture that is so alien to us that we will always be at a disadvantage when dealing with them. Ethiopians are willing to do things that Eritreans can never phantom. We have withstood attacks from every front and it has simply strengthened us. We do not have this fabled fraternal past history and the history we do have is deeply painful. There is no need for dialogue or reconciliation , we simply need to be more vocal about the injustices that happen to us. It's so Eritrean to no address lies, to ignore detractors and keep marching forward. This is admirable , but in this day and age of 140 characters or less news cycles , it's important to call them out on any and everything, all the time. We should reply to any and all mentions of Eritrea . We have to be at those tables and engage those discussion, not this.
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Received on Tue Oct 27 2015 - 19:43:38 EDT