Dear Dehai,
Please post this message on your website.
It is almost three weeks since the Lampedusa incidence where an unbearable number of Eritreans have lost their lives. For us Eritreans not hundreds but tens or even a single life is too much. The Lampedusa disaster is being grieved by Eritreans everywhere around the world. The sad issue is watching those who try to politicize it and turn it to their advantage like Meron Estifanos shedding crocodile's tears on her latest post.
It has been a known practice for some years now that people of some regions outside Eritrea sign up as Eritreans in order to find easy acceptance as refugees, a practice that has been bloating the true Eritrean number to heights. Lampedusa is now subjected into such a practice at least by those who report about it. It was mentioned at the beginning that the boat was loaded with Eritreans, Sudanese, Ethiopians, Somalis and other African nationalities numbering into the 500's in all. Now the number seems to have stopped at 518. The surprising information coming out of Eritrean Orthodox churches in North America is that of these only 8 were Ethiopians and the rest 510 were all Eritreans making the deceased all Eritreans. I am not sure how this statistics was obtained. Though it is sad for any one to dye, we need to know for sure the approximate mixes of nationalities in the boat and how many are true Eritreans believed to have been dead? If the Eritrean
Embassy in Rome can share the information with us.
Solomon Berhane
Received on Tue Oct 22 2013 - 12:16:56 EDT