Killing people in the name of people is a characteristic feature of totalitarian dictators, especially of Marxists belonging to the Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist brands. They suppress dissenting voices by brutal purges, liquidations and state terror while justifying their crimes as actions to protect the rights of the people or the gains of their revolutions. In the leaders of the TPLF/EPRDF we have true followers and worshippers of these totalitarian dictators.

The heinous crimes committed on the Ethiopian people by the leaders of this organisation has been going on now for 30 years since the inception of the TPLF in mid 1970s. They came to power having sacrificed over 70,000 peasants and gullible urban youth; they stayed in power having sacrificed even more, considering the lives they wasted in the Eritrean-Ethiopian war alone exceeded that figure. Over the last five years the killing of unarmed civilians by the security forces of the TPLF/EPRDF runs in several thousands.

The ruling party could not contest these facts, nor do their apologists. The records are there for all to see. Instead what they always do is justify these crimes either as necessary sacrifices for liberation or as actions taken against disruptive forces, ethnic chauvinists, supporters of the Derg regime, as if the principle of the sanctity of life cannot be accorded to these labelled groups of people.

Lately Bereket Simon & Co, the leading hardliner cadres of the ruling party are busy in diversionary propaganda. They massacred people in the streets of Addis; they shot dead one MP-elect and attempted assassination on another; reports are now filtering through that they also killed a prominent CUD activist from Debre Sina; they arrested and mistreated several thousand members and supporters of the CUD & EUDF. They committed these and other violations of their own constitution and the laws of the land knowing well the actions would anger Ethiopians at home and in exile. They also knew well the international community would condemn them for it. They chose to shoot and kill in a premeditated act to stay in power. For leaders who had sacrificed over 140,000 people over the last 30 years, the most recent crimes mentioned above and the possible reaction to them were indeed immaterial. A factor in their calculations must have been that people can be silenced by state terror and donors can be appeased with diplomatic obsequiousness. In no time business will run as usual, as in the pre-election period; so they had thought cynically.

Having silenced the people at home by a cowardly murder, albeit temporarily, the hardliners may have thought it is time now to wage a propaganda war against the diaspora community. They are writing articles impersonating concerned individuals and groups in order to silence or shame the diaspora community. The aim is to deter them from exposing their heinous crimes to the world, to stop them from lobbying the donor governments to press the regime to allow full and independent enquiry, a due process necessary to reveal and indict the criminal elements in their ranks. There is nothing shameful or destructive in exposing the brutality of a regime steeped in the blood of the innocent, or in pressing donors governments to insist on good governance for making direct budgetary support for such a regime.

Allow me to argue why

The regime and its apologists use two sets of arguments: one set are intended to cause emotional blackmail, and another intended to shame or discredit activists. To blackmail the exiled community they claim that protest marches damage the image of Ethiopia, and stop the flows of foreign direct investment. They also claim that lobbying Western governments to stop aid to Ethiopia harms the poor people rather than the government. To discredit active campaigners they claim the organisers are former Dergue cadres, spoilt and destructive elements abroad, people who hate or begrudge Tegaru, and last but not least people who had said nothing when the Dergue committed atrocities against the people of Tegray.

Damaging the image of Ethiopia

The claim that protest marches and exposing the brutality of the regime in Addis will damage the image of the country is dishonest. Ethiopia’s image as a land ravaged by famine, poverty, civil war and AIDS pandemic was inherited from the Dergue regime. This image persisted and became deeply engraved since TPLF/EPRDF came to power. The current regime has singularly failed to change the negative image having failed to tackle famine, and having presided over the worsening of poverty and AIDS pandemic. Its involvement in a senseless and costly war of 1998-2000 caused immense damage to the improved perception of the country as a relatively peaceful and stable place in the Horn region in the early 1990s. Similarly in the last four years no one has done more damage to the Ethiopia’s image than the regimes brutal suppression of protests in Addis, Awasa, Ambo and other towns of Oromia, SNNP and Gambella. Finally it would be a great omission not to mention the role of Bereket Simon in tarnishing the country’s image, for he has drawn single-handedly condemnation after condemnation to her by his harassment of the private press, by his uncalled for statements against NGOs, and by his attempt to introduce extremely unpopular press law. Can he and his apologists accuse others of damaging the country’s image? I think not.

Scaring foreign investors

Similarly the claims that protests in the capitals and other cities of the west will scare foreign investors is self-serving at best and scaremongering at worst. First and foremost it is not the protest march but the massacre itself that scare away any sensible investor. Investors are not fools. They are well-informed people. One reason Ethiopia’s poor performance in attracting FDI, even compared to many other African countries in the last 14 years is the government’s appalling record on human rights. Sensible investors consult country profiles for Ethiopia and these are full of TPLF/EPRDF government atrocities. The regime in Addis and its apologists could not care less for investors, since all they care for is their power. Had they cared they would have respected ‘the sanctity of life’ as enshrined in their constitution. To violate that constitutional provision whenever it pleases them and ask people to keep quiet lest they frighten investors is tantamount to inviting them to be partners in crime.

Lobbying Western governments to “stop” aid

Another claim of the regime and its apologists is the alleged demand of protestors to their respective governments to stop ALL AID to Ethiopia. This is a blatant lie, a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts to undermine the unity and resolve of the participants. No petition was made to demand the withdrawal of relief or development aid which affect the people of Ethiopia. Petitions given to leaders of Western governments demanded that pressure be brought upon the TPLF/EPRDF government to be accountable for massacre of defenceless civilians and for gross violations of human rights at a threat of the withdrawal of direct budgetary support. PM Tony Blair was asked why Meles Zenawi, a member of his commission, murdered people for exercising their constitutional right to protest, why he invited him in the first place given his track record on this score, whether he should consider to drop him after causing embarrassment to him and the commission at such a crucial time of preparation for the G8 summit, and finally whether his government keep financing the Meles regime through direct budgetary support despite its misuse to inflict death and mayhem on the people of Ethiopia. These are legitimate questions and they should be asked. Unlike the regime in Addis, western governments are accountable to taxpayers, which include our exiled communities, and the latter should hold them accountable when their financial support given on conditions of good governance was misused and abused. Their pressure on the regime in Addis appears to be effective in reining its murderous security forces. If the regime and its apologists have problem with that so be it. What matters is that the regime is forced to stop from causing further bloodshed, to release thousands of civilians from detention camps, and above all to concede full and independent inquiry into the massacre despite Bereket’s ridiculous stance that CUD was responsible for the death caused by the guns, bullets and shooters belonging to his regime. These results are in part the result of intensive lobbying of western governments.

The regime’s apologists may have forgotten that Assefa Maru was assassinated using a vehicle that the British government had donated to the regimes police force which it helped to train. Unlike them the family of the victim, his colleagues and fellow countrymen will remember that. Ethiopians of the diaspora should no longer turn their face away when such crimes are committed by a government which enjoyed western taxpayers’ money to subsidise its security forces.

Thanks to the brutality and mendaciousness of the TPLF/EPRDF the diaspora Ethiopians have discovered their power to influence events at home. Already infected by the revitalised pan-Ethiopian nationalism of the motherland they have found unity of purpose and ways of exposing the crimes of the regime in Addis. The lobbying should continue, and western governments should be pressed to support democratisation process in Ethiopia through funding civil societies, research institutions, the free press, private radio and television services, and human rights organisations. The lobbying should continue so that donors funding is used to insure the emergence of independent judiciary and the neutrality of the state media and the national election board.

Stereotyping lobbyists and protesters

A common statement of the apologists is one that puts protesters and lobbyists all lumped together as a bunch of well-heeled, spoilt, irresponsible people. They are presented as a group who had superficial ties to their kith and kin in towns, and hence as Westernised people with no understanding of the needs of the rural population of Ethiopia. This stereotyping is of course groundless, simplistic and self-serving. No apologies are needed for being successful, since it is hard earned. It is also honourable that those who benefited from a fair system which rewards hard work want to see the same system put in place at home to benefit their hard working compatriots.

However the social and economic backgrounds of the lobbyists and protesters are as varied as the people at home. The fact is the majority of those who participated in protest marches are neither rich nor irresponsible. They are people who held two or three jobs to make ends meet and to help their families both in urban and rural Ethiopia. They take time off from demanding jobs to join protesters to express their indignation. The stereotypes are figments of the apologists’ imagination.

Can “silence” in the past makes one forfeit the right to speak out now?

Another common allegation of apologists is that since those who protest now had not condemned Dergue atrocities against ethnic Tegaru they should be discredited or be seen as people harbouring resentment against the people of Tigray. First of all the atrocities of the Dergue was not exclusively directed against ethnic Tegaru. It was directed against all who challenged it including ethnic Amharas. Only those whose views are confined by ethnic blinkers could not see the reality in its entirety. Secondly to say all who protest now did not protests at all when the Dergue commits those crimes is a deliberate falsification. Those who opposed the Dergue throughout its reign had denounced all its crimes including those committed in Tigray. Thirdly TPLF should remember that the majority of those who resettled in the West after fleeing to neighbouring countries were partly its own victims. What it had done to the EPRA in collaboration with the EPLF had alienated so many from taking interest in its “liberation war”.

Finally TPLF and its apologists seem to know some mysterious rule that states “if you did not speak out against injustice in the past you should keep silent now”. They all seem to be using this like a mantra, for instance when they denounced Prof. Mesfin Woldemariam for documenting their human rights violations. As usual they didn’t and could not challenge the facts of violations; they resented him for documenting them, throwing barrages of insults at him as if he, and not the Dergue, deserved the abuse for the violations of the 1970s and 1980s. The same mantra is used once again against current protesters in the diaspora. Instead of doing the decent thing – condemning the massacre, demanding justice for the victims – they “warn” and “advice” so that atrocities are ignored. Isn’t this telling about the pitiful mindset of the ethnic warriors?

Through a reign of terror unparalleled in Ethiopia’s history the Dergue had numbed and completely depoliticised a generation of Ethiopians. TPLF/EPRDF must have been grateful deep down to the Dergue since it had left them with a nation by and large disinterested in politics in general, even when the nation sensed the damage they are causing through the practice of ethnic politics. Now there is a new generation unaffected by the reign of terror of the 1970s, a generation who wants to transform the political system in order to speed up the country’s socio-economic development, eradicate hunger, disease, illiteracy once and for all. Thanks to the infectious attitudes of the young generation, even survivors of the reign of terror are now awakened to take interest in politics. If the regime and its apologists want to sue us for rediscovering our old interest in politics, so be it. Neither forced de-politicisation nor return to politics is a crime. What constitute a crime is once awaken to turn away when atrocities were being committed against fellow countrymen.

Recourse to victimhood

In connection to their propaganda of deterrence the regime’s apologists frequently mention the victimisation of ethnic Tegaru at the time of the Dergue. Time and again they mention the massacre at Hawzen market in 1988. That massacre was condemnable and was condemned. Mengistu and his cronies should be indicted for that. It is also my view that TPLF should be held accountable for that massacre, since their activities at a crowded market needs to be probed, especially in view of their knowledge that the brutal regime would commit atrocities given its track record. However, was the atrocities of the Dergue confined to the Tegaru? Didn’t the massacre of the Red Terror alone, estimated at tens of thousands, suffice to tell that the Dergue didn’t discriminate when it comes to killing? So, why is it that the Dergue’s crimes in Tegray is exclusively mentioned. Why is it a crime committed by the regime is mentioned every time the crimes of the TPLF/EPRDF are denounced? This writer believes it is to make the following implicit statements:

· the Dergue was nothing but anti-Tegaru, and the Tegaru was its and only victims

· somehow ethnic Amharas should feel responsible and feel guilty for the crimes committed by the Dergue

· as victims of the Dergue TPLF/EPRDF should not only rule the country, but should be forgiven for its excess

· Tegaru beware; the Amhara opposition are trying to victimise you once again

These statements are implicit because if they are explicitly put they will be shredded to bits for they fly against facts; and facts are what the ethnicist regime and its apologists hate to consider in their entirety.

Ethnic Amharas should not feel guilty for the crimes of the Dergue any more than Tegaru should for crimes of the TPLF. The people of Ethiopia, with the exception of few destructive elements, are wise enough to distinguish between the TPLF and their brother and sisters of Tigrayan ethnic origin. They would not impute the crimes of TPLF on them, since they know they were equally victims of it. In fact they will stand by them, as they did in the 1998-2000 war. They know their survival and prosperity were inextricably interconnected through a millennia of coexistence. Only TPLF and its apologists would like to cast the organisation and Tegaru as one and the same. It does so to legitimise its power, and to cause rift between Tegaru and the rest of Ethiopians. Ethnic Amharas were as much victims of the Dergue as those of ethnic Tegaru, Oromos, Gurages, Somalis, and the rest of the Ethiopian people. They should not/need not feel guilty for the crimes of governments that assumed power by force of arms, not by their choice.

Conclusion

Apologists and emotional blackmailers are out in full force to stop the protest and lobbying. The communities in the diaspora should not be deterred by them. On the contrary they should make more effort for the protest and lobbying to assume a structured and well organised form for enhanced impacts and continuity. They should also seriously consider the advice of Dagmawi to establish well informed and well resourced TV and radio stations to broadcast to Ethiopia via satellite communications. If the regime refuses to take its hands off the sate media to ensure neutrality, equal access to opposition parties and other stake holders, such alternative should be provided for compatriots. To express indignation at the massacre and mistreatment of people is not only a right but a duty of the Ethiopians in exile. It is their duty especially when their kith and kin at home were muzzled not to express their feelings or demand justice for wrongs done to them. As Edmund Burke said “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”