Ayder School Massacre: Meles-Isaias crimes remembered

June 5, 2004

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Who murdered these children? And where are the murderers? Time would tell

“On Friday (June 5, 1998 in Mekelle, northern Ethiopia), there was nothing to protect the children when a small warplane from neighboring Eritrea appeared over the eucalyptus trees near (Ayder) elementary school and dropped a cluster bomb, only to return from the opposite direction and drop another one… The second bomb cut down the fathers, mothers and neighbors who had rushed to the playground upon hearing the children’s screams. All told, 48 people were killed, including 10 children under 15.”
– Karl Vick (Washington Post Foreign Correspondent: Mekelle, Ethiopia, May 7, 1998)

Today we commemorate the cluster-bombing of the children and parents and good Samaritans of Ayder School in Mekelle. It was on May 5, 1998 when a warlord of a former Ethiopian breakaway province – Eritrea – ventured into insanity and ordered the killings of innocent children and their rescue-bound parents and good Samaritans.

Mekelle as well as Adigrat towns were not military garrisons, but were picked up by Shaebia leaders of Eritrea as targets where they would vent their failure and desperation and hate against everything Ethiopian by spilling the blood of the innocent.

What was the force that fueled them into madness, the madness of attacking Ethiopia? Yes, they had long known that their camouflaged agent in control of state power in Ethiopia, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi – would be cunning enough to manage and turn a nationwide Ethiopian anger against Ethiopians themselves. And the cost for Meles? Only perseverance in shedding crocodile tears along with the nation of about 70 million that was mourning in earnest. TPLF had woken up but was quickly soothed into political dormancy by its cunning leader who lived fighting for Eritrean interests. When millions of Ethiopian youths were lining up to join the army to administer an Ethiopian panacea to Eritrean illness, Meles repeated his carefully crafted words – “We never thought they (Eritreans) would stab us in the back” – with the intention of further confusing TPLF leaders, and think, and act accordingly, that the enemy was in Asmara and not behind their backs, in control of the reigns of power in the palaces of Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia’s northern borders with the belligerent nation-enclave Eritrea was left defenseless. There was no single anti-aircraft to stave off Eritrea’s mendacity to drop bombs on our people. All the while, Meles has been acting as a defense lawyer for Eritrea, vilifying and belittling Ethiopians who said Eritrean military threat was imminent.

1998, almost seven years after Meles lived helping Eritrea from equipping it military to boosting its now-bunkrupt economy to gallop at 8 percent annual growth thanks to an unbridled plunder of Ethiopian resources, was a wake-up call for TPLF leaders to address at least the people of Tigrai to rally behind them in the course of action of putting Meles out of office for, bluntly put, being an Eritrean agent.

They failed, and Meles should have told himself, “if I survive today, I will surive forever. If they don’t act this time, they will never act forever.”

Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian heroes and heroines who responded to the call of duty streamed to the northern war front, and laid down their precious lives in honor of their country. Let the hills and terrains of Badme, Zalambesa, Kulomekeda and Irob speak how many youths died by wiping out the black vestige of fascism that was busy desecrating the holy sites of the Ethiopian motherland.

Two years later, Ayder was forgotten, all the huge sacrifices Ethiopian Defense Forces who were only 50 miles out of Asmara, were made a laughing stock by none other the one who to this day masquerades as an Ethiopian leader. The Ethiopian commanders who were looking forward to capture the Eritrean war criminals were taken by surprise as they were ordered to stop because “Ethiopia had met its goals: ‘liberating’ its territory.”

Shaebia leaders, who cried out to the world to save them from the Ethiopian blitzkrieg, never lost a moment that their agent would, even in the 11th hour, rescue them, and rescue he did. Our defense forces were ordered to stop carrying the victory to its natural completion: bringing the rogue regime of Shaebia to justice for its crimes.

We commemorate today because the Eritrean agent has continued to destroy our nation as killings of innocent Ethiopian citizens have continued unabated. Recall the massacre of Addis Ababa University students? Along with those in Awassa and Tepi, from Ambo to Jimma, along with those latest victims of state-sponsored genocide in Gambella?

We commemorate the day because justice has not been served to Ethiopia, a country reeling under the foot of a masked Eritrean agent. We commemorate the day because we believe the enemy may pretend to play by the rules, and even go to the extent of proposing “multi-party elections” next year. But we commemorate the day which tells us that no mercenary group would abide by the rule of law, and play fair in non-existing democratic elections.” What did the TPLF dissidents gain when they thought there was a rule of law in the country, and they would force the Eritrean agent out of office?

We commemorate the day so that Ethiopians would have the wisdom and courage to deal exclusively with an enemy – who even as recently as a month ago attempted to crush the anti-Meles-Isaias Afar rebel uprising, and lied to the nation – through “Minister” Abai Tsehaye – that that the war near Awash-Arba and Metehara was a conflict between Afars and Issas. We commemorate the day because we believe with, unfailing certainty, that a united Ethiopia is too powerful to put an end to a rule by a mercenary.

Civilian Attack Stuns Ethiopians
By Karl Vick:
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 8, 1998

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MEKELE, Ethiopia, June 7 – On Friday, there was nothing to protect the children when a small warplane from neighboring Eritrea appeared over the eucalyptus trees near the elementary school and dropped a cluster bomb, only to return from the opposite direction and drop another one. It was the deadliest incident since the crisis began in May over a disputed 160-square-mile territory that both of these countries in the Horn of Africa have claimed since 1993.

The second bomb cut down the fathers, mothers and neighbors who had rushed to the playground upon hearing the children’s screams. All told, 48 people were killed, including 10 children under 15.

Mekele was quiet today, but skirmishes were reported along the countries’ disputed border. Ethiopia said it had reoccupied its border town of Zala Anbessa, 65 miles southwest of Asmara, after a daylong battle with Eritrean forces who captured the town last week.

U.S., Italian, German and British planes evacuated more than 1,000 foreigners late Saturday and early today after Ethiopia agreed to stop bombing a military-civilian airport outside Asmara.

Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki said he hopes the Organization of African Unity will produce new ideas for a settlement on Monday. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said over the weekend that “all-out war” could be averted if Eritrea agrees to a U.S.-Rwanda brokered peace plan that would allow a third party to rule on the land dispute.

But in the incipient border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the much smaller country whose border lies not two hours’ drive north of Mekele, most of the violence has been directed at military targets.

Scores of soldiers have died in skirmishes in and around the disputed land. Ethiopian air raids at the airport outside the Eritrean capital of Asmara on Friday and Saturday may have shaken civilians in the nearby passenger terminal, but what the planes hit was an Eritrean air base.

“Very clearly the Ethiopians were trying to hit a military target,” a Western diplomat said.

What happened at the Ayder Higher Complete Primary School was different. And that has overwhelmed Mekele, a dusty, orderly community where almost any of the 130,000 residents is as likely to have ties to one side as to the other.

The shock of a civilian bombing – there appears to be no military target within miles of the school – has been compounded by the apparent fact that it was delivered by an “enemy” whom many still regard as countrymen.

Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia five years ago after helping the current Ethiopian government come to power by fighting beside a rebel movement that grew out of Tigray Province. Mekele is its capital.

“It’s very bitter. I’ve always supported the Eritrean struggle,” said Netsannet, who represents a district near Mekele in the Ethiopian parliament. “I’m still trying to come to terms with it.”

“Everyone is in a dilemma,” said Taklehaimanot Asefaw, director of the hospital, which treated more than 100 people wounded in the raids. “No one expected such a thing from a neighboring country, a sister country. We are brothers and sisters, this is our feeling.”

The Eritrean government has denied bombing the school. But the school obviously has been bombed. The playground is riddled with holes, each a few inches across and a foot deep. They are sprinkled around the bank of spigots where children line up for a drink. Classroom walls bear irregular punctures. The metal roofs are in shreds. Every classroom window is shattered.

“It was very big,” said Buzuayhlelhu Nega, who said he saw the bomb explode in midair. “It was about 250 kilograms” (113 pounds).

A local man recovered an unexploded element of the cluster. It looks like a little bronze rocket, perhaps eight inches long, with clear plastic tail fins like one still lying a between the desks in one of the classrooms. He unscrews the base to reveal its chemical filling, a dull dense orange.

“I don’t remember how it came, but it felt like fire was raining from the sky,” said Tewhaba Berhe, who was inside her nearby house when she heard the first explosion. “My baby was outside playing when she got hit.”

Helen, 4, was the second-youngest victim. Tonight she lay in critical condition in the local hospital, a bandage the size of an adult’s hand taped over the shrapnel wound in her abdomen.

“I do not dislike the Eritrean people,” Tewhaba said over her only child’s labored breathing. “I dislike very much the people who planned to bomb us.

“I dislike war.”

The distinction is still made here. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the stone house her husband bolted out of when he heard the bomb explode, Birchika Mohammed Tum said she is not interested in politics and knows nothing of relations between her region and Eritrea.

But she is puzzled by the weapon that ripped open her husband’s stomach as he scrambled to their children shortly after 2 p.m. Friday. (All four who were at school that day turned out to be safe.) Birchika said the bombs she saw during the rebellion that brought the current government to power “went in one place. Whoever was there was hurt. This type of bomb splinters.”

Her children are staying with her grandmother. Outside her doorway, the men who have come to chant prayers of mourning are careful to keep their circle beneath the cover of a leafy trellis. Local authorities spent the weekend going from house to house, warning people not to gather in groups visible from overhead.