It was while thumbing through the pages of the Ethiomedia website that I
stumbled on this report that carries gory account of gruesome human rights
violations taking place in Ethiopia. Words cannot convey what I felt while
reading this account of the barbaric atrocities and I could not sleep that night.
After having read the report, the least which I could do was to respond to one of
the pleas (i.e. making the world community know about this atrocity) of the few
brave Ethiopians who, at the peril of their life and in defiance of a vindictive
ethnicist regime, compiled and wrote this report. So the next morning, I decided
to translate it from the original Amharic language in which this report has been
written into English. I have translated this Amharic document with the hope of
reaching many people, dotted across every nook and corner of the world, who
are concerned with human rights. Once the big hurdle of translating the original
Amharic document into English has been overcome, translating the English
document into other European or even Asian languages would be a minuscule
task owing to the available technology at hand. And I will shortly embark on the
task of translating the English document into different European languages
(French, Dutch, German, Spanish, etc) with the help of some editorial help from
Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian foreign friends dotted around the world.
For four consecutive days I stayed hooked on a computer (located in an internet
café) translating this Amharic document into English on some days working for
as long as 11 hours a day. As I could not afford the luxury of working on my
own computer (as I have not taken laptop with me on vacation), I was not able
to go through this document thoroughly to make detailed review of minor
translation errors. But I believe that my translation would do justice to the
original Amharic document in lucidly bringing out to readers what the few brave
Ethiopians have compiled with extraordinary dedication, dexterity, sense of
patriotism and above all, sense of humanity. Translating some of the offensive
insults (directed at defendants by the Tigrean ethno-nationalists) into English
was not an easy task as the nuances in Amharic cannot be adequately captured in
the English language. So I had to search words and expressions in English which
approximate to the Amharic nuances expressed in the original Amharic
document.
