On June 20 each year there are mass mourning processions around the country to various graveyards designated as "Martyrs Cemeteries". In 2003 however, something else happened in the days following Martyrs Day.
Saturday June 21, 2003, the government announced the names of those who fell while preserving the sovereignty of their homeland.
Those were very sad days. There wasn’t a single street in Asmara where there was not at least one mourning tent. Grieving families gathered and mourned for their lost loved ones.
The announcement of names was conducted in different districts of Asmara and people who had gone to those places that day are still haunted by the cries of the grief-stricken families: some who lost three or four brothers, some their husbands, others their fathers or children.
There were also courageous acts of self-consolation on the part of some of the families. I was told that an elderly man loudly said “Victory to the Masses!” after hearing the names of two f his sons but slumped down at the name of his third child. Similar stories were abundant those days.
That Saturday, Feven Tsegay and her three sisters had accompanied her mother to their administrative area. It was their secret wish that their long-lost brother would somehow turn alive somewhere. Just wishful thinking!
The eldest and the only boy in the family, Yosief Tsegay was a member of the third round of national service and had courageously fallen defending his motherland during the Weyane’s second offensive. His father was also killed while on a clandestine mission during the struggle for liberation.
As the loudspeaker uttered his name Yosief’s mother and his two sisters sprang up and started crying wildly while Feven sat frozen with tears flowing down her cheeks. Tears of sorrow over the loss of her only brother and yet tears of pride.
“I really don’t have any recollection of that moment but I remember drifting into unconsciousness and when I woke up I was in bed, my younger sister looking down on me,” narrates Feven.
“As we all mourned the loss of my brother, we consoled ourselves with the fact that there were other families who lost more children or jus the only child. We instead convinced ourselves that if it wasn’t for the lives of our martyrs we would have never been able to safeguard the sovereignty that our formers martyrs handed us…” she went on saying.
Ever since that day, during the candle vigil on the eve of Martyrs’ Day, Feven’s mother and her sisters go out in the street with a golden framed photograph of Yosief, to honor and cherish the golden gift that Yosief and his fellow martyred compatriots gave Eritreans.
Eternal glory to our Martyrs!
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