As we celebrate our Independence Day, never should we forget about ALL Eritrean Veterans who felt the present, aimed at our future and embraced it all.

Walking parallel with our Veterans, let us remember and celebrate ALL Eritrean Martyrs who loved us then and love us still despite our mess and our flaws. They have met death and faced it standing. All died too soon.  Let us honor them in unity and never let them be just a name on a memorial at which we might not pause.

Our Veterans live now in a subtle center of fierce fandom  created by independence day, but  they also remain pressured by the humbleness they created as a rule of law during the struggle. We should remind them that they are the innovator of change for the Eritrea we all fought for. Most of our Veterans keep memories of their comrades as  reminiscences the enemy left in mass graves all over our land, with no marked tombstones and  tell us that we  need to honor them within a frame of unity.

Let us never forget our prisoners who fought in the name of freedom and asks us to respect all viewpoints. They also ask us to build a country with rightness. We should never forget the price they paid. They survived  war, only to be walked to dark prisons with no doors of return.  We do not know all their names, but we know they walked to each underground jail to protect a freedom so highly priced. We do not know which region of Eritrea  they came from, but we know they offered freedom to Eritreans. We shall never forget them.

Our Veterans tell us: “Remember us. When duty called, we went to war and paid the price to offer you a new day. We faced the stench of war. Our bones decay beneath the ground. Once we were young and laughed and talked and run and danced, like you all do. But now we are the Veterans that live with memories of a gore of blood and mud made by war. We can all strive and achieve and there is no barrier to success on building a progressive coalition  of different ideas, if the common denominator is an independent and prosperous Eritrea”.

On this Independence Day let us tell our Martyrs, our Prisoners and our Veterans: “ I saw you leaving and I never asked your name. Off you went to fight and died in that private hell called war. We might not have families’ ties but we stand side by side with you.  We cannot know because we were not there and it is beyond our comprehension to know all that war and battles bring, on how to carry the day-by-day with such a resolute purpose and keep hope alive. But we know you offered us freedom and ask us to strive for peace and stay away from any other bloody war. And most of all, you ask us to own the political power for the benefit of our people. We all face so many struggles today  that – at times- we have to figure out where to start to make the wrong right. We need to unite and lead our young generations to get their steps in, by showing unyielding  honesty about mistakes  and unwavering determination to hold hands and help each other.

Our Veterans is where all the best for Eritrea began. They give meaning to who we are today.

“Of all the forces that make for a better world, none is so powerful as hope. With hope, one can think, one can work, one can dream. If you have hope, you have everything.”
” Peace is a wall we will all create by building it brick-by-brick together”. (Trade mark)

Kiki Tzeggai