Ethiomedia
| May 11, 2008
GONDAR, Northern Ethiopia (Ethiomedia) - Ethiopians repulsed a Sudanese army attack and captured eight soldiers during a battle near the border on Friday, a press statement released to Ethiomedia said late Saturday night.
The Ethiopia-Sudan Border Committee said the Sudanese army had crossed the border into Ethiopia via Tach Armacheho of Gondar region, and begun to burn down Ethiopian-owned agro farms when the local Ethiopians sent out a traditional clarion call that an enemy has encroached upon sovereignty and should be engaged immediately.
"The Ethiopians fought back the Sudanese army which fled the area," the committee said.
"Ethiopians would - in the fighting spirit and stamina of their gallant ancestors - defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of their Motherland," the statement said, while calling on local government officials to warn the regime in Addis Ababa to refrain from intervening in the conflict, presumably on behalf of the invading Sudanese forces.
The areas now being threatened with Sudanese occupation are viewed by Ethiopianas as historically sacrosanct. Quara, one of the two districts invaded by Sudan, was the birth place and stronghold of Emperor Tewodros (ruled 1855-1868), a leader revered as the unifying force of the nation-state of Ethiopia. Another area under Sudanese threat, Metema, is the sight where Emperor Yohannes IV, was killed in 1889 after nearly crushing the expansionist Mahdist forces of the Sudan.
"The Ethiopians in these areas are fiercely independent that there is no doubt the Sudanese would run into death traps if they try to take over the lands," one political observer told Ethiomedia.
On April 21, heavily-armed Sudanese soldiers sent to evict Ethiopian farmers from their ancestral lands, burned down 24 Ethiopian farming settlements and took 34 civilian captives from Nefis Gebeya of Quara Woreda. According to the committee, the Sudanese soldiers returned on April 25, and built their first camp on one of the farming zones ceded to them by the Meles Zenawi regime.
"The army burned down a flour mill of the farmers who also lost a tractor to the occupying force," the statement added.
Sudanese diplomat confirms Zenawi ceded land to Khartoum
Mr. Mohamed Hassan Babiker, a diplomat at the Sudanese Embassy in Addis Ababa, has confirmed the transfer of Ethiopian lands to Sudan.
According to a May 9 report by the Amharic Service of Deutsche Welle (DW), Mr. Babiker said a long standing fued between Ethiopia and Sudan has been resolved amicably with
Sudan getting its lands that has been under the control of Ethiopia.
"We didn't take Ethiopian areas. What we got back are Sudanese areas that have been the cause of dispute between the two countries,"
the Sudanese diplomat said.
The ruling regime in Ethiopia has largely imposed a news blackout about its complicity with the Sudanese government. In an interview with the Voice of America (VOA) on Friday, Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, a prominent human rights activist and scholar, said the Ethiopian people had no idea about what was going on along the border areas with the Sudan.
"All the cry for help comes from Ethiopians in the Diaspora," said a puzzled Professor Mesfin, who during the time of Emperor Haile-Selassie led a team of scholars that studied where the border should be demarcated, and is obviously opposed to the secret transfer of sovereign Ethiopian areas to the Khartoum regime.
In addition to frequent statements by the Ethiopia-Sudan Border Committee, a number of independent media such as the Voice of America (VOA) Amharic Service, Deutsche Welle Amharic Program, a Washington DC-based private radio Addis Dimts and Ethiomedia have carried out interviews with victims of the occupation of Ethiopian areas by Sudanese forces.
Ethiopians & The burdern of a mercenary rule
Since Meles Zenawi came to power in 1991 as head of the largely peasant and politically ignorant TPLF rebel group, Ethiopia lost her 1600-km Red Sea coastal line - along with the
undisputedly Ethiopian Port of Assab - to Eritrea in 1993. Meles, himself an Eritrean who as recently as few months ago told a local Radio in Tigray that TPLF was
mainly formed to secure the independence of Eritrea from the "colonial rule of Ethiopia" - strongly campaigned for a UN recognition of Ethiopia as a landlocked
nation.
When Eritrea invaded Ethiopia in 1998, Ethiopians erupted with anger to punish the invaders. However, Meles kept a low profile until the national anger subsided,
and two years later and after the deaths of 70,000 Ethiopian soldiers, he aborted an imminent Ethiopian military victory over his native Eritrea, and set up a boundary
commission that he provided with documents favoring a pro-Eritrea ruling. In fact, according to one political observer, "Meles fought against Ethiopians from his office
in an Ethiopian palace." When Ethiopia was represented by an Eritrean, the country lost large areas to Eritrea, including the flashpoint of the two-year war, Badme.
Mr. Meles Zenawi landed a third major blow to Ethiopian sovereignty just recently, when he bartered a 1600-km stretch of very fertile areas (with 30km to 60km width into the hinterland) to Sudan in return for
political favors from Khartoum, traditionally a haven for fleeing Ethiopian political dissidents. In recent times, the government of Al Bashir has been deporting Ethiopian political dissidents despite strong opposition from human rights groups.
Eye-witnesses that Sudanese troops have invaded Ethiopian areas include American and Israeli citizens of Ethiopian origin who have been running modern agro farms in the areas after signing contracts that last for over 15 years. Sudan is now saying the same investors may continue working on the same farms but after signing contracts under Sudanese law.
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