Setting the record straight on the Martyrs’ database

When Awate.com wanted to display the martyrs’ database they obtained from Eritrea on their Martyrs Album[1998-2003], they asked the help of Asmarino.com. Tes converted  some excel spreadsheets provided by Awate.com  into a Format that allowed the information provided to be displayed on Awate’s old home page under Martyrs’ Album .  And that was used only for that purpose, except for one case. With Awate.com’s consent the data was also used to broadcast the names of the Martyrs on Voice of Delina in 2005 during the week of June 18-30. (Awate’s Saleh Gadi participated by reading some of the names himself.)  Eritrean volunteers  from  around the world read the names. Asmarino, at great cost, bought extended air time for three days to broadcast the special program titled ‘ድምጽና ሓወልቲ ይኹኖም! ኣስማት ስውኣት 1998-2001’.

The data that was provided to Tes by Awate.com to display it on their Martyrs’ Page had only 9 Fields : (1) Rank, (2) Name, (3) Father’s Name, (4) Grandfather’s Name, (5) Sex, (6) Round, (7) Birth Year, (8) Year of Martyrdom, (9) Age. These were the fields that were provided to Tes as he worked on that database; nothing else was provided to him. They made sure that it was the minimum database needed to set the structure. After that, they must have filled in all the other data that was not given to him because their article that came out soon showed an analysis based on a a much broader data.

The data base Asmarino has now displayed on its website originates directly from Asmara, from what they used to call, “Mingar database”. This one has 37 Fields, many of which have yet to be displayed in our website. In addition to the 7 fields mentioned above (asmarino's data base does not contain year of birth or age), there are: (1) Mother’s Name, (2) Name of Mother’s Father, (3) Name of Mother’s Grandmother, (4) Registration Number, (5) Registration Date, (6) Military ID, (7) Rank, (8) Responsibility, (9) Name of Origin, (10) Name of Zoba, (11) Name of Sub-Zoba, (12) Address, (13) Address of Zoba, (13) Address of Sub-Zoba, (14) Regiment, (15) Date of Joining the Round, (16) Place of Martyrdom, (17) Name to be told (in case of death), (18) Name of Father to be told, (19) Name of Grandfather to be told, (20) Relationship (of the one to be told), (21) Zoba to be told, (22) Sub-Zoba to be told, (23) Name of District to be told, (24) Name Village to be told, (25) Name of Street to be told, (26) Year, (27) Code: Text Geez, (28) Code: Death Code, (29) Agent: C-Agent.

As can be seen from the above, there is a great discrepancy between the data information they provided Tes with and the one we acquired from Asmara.

Hopefully this little misunderstanding has been cleared now.

Asmarino Staff

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