Last week has been a week of fiasco for the Meles regime. First, we saw the grilling of his Charge d’Affaires – Fisseha A. Tessema – at the U.S. congressional hearing of March 28, 2005.
(Meanwhile in Addis Ababa, Muslim students of Addis Ababa University staged a protest rally on Sidist Kilo Campus today after word spread across campuses that the Holy Quran had been torn to pieces elsewhere, sources said. Observers were quick to implicate the government in the act. Engulfed by political unrest simmering since the rigged May 2005 elections, the ruling party of dictator Meles Zenawi has tried to incite violence between Muslim and Christian groups to divert the crisis, according to our correspondent Gemoraw Kidane).
US Congressman Chris Smith and the other representatives came up with the hard facts and were not ready to compromise themselves and cover up Mr. Zenawi’s abhorring human rights records. The hearing was also a rare occasion that provided us with the opportunity to see the true colors of the State Department officials.
Mr. Donald Yamamato’s defense of the indefensible was simply – as to this writer – a sign of the failure of US foreign policy in the Horn of Africa. The Undersecretary and other officials of the State Department look like standing in sharp contrast with the reality. But the Congressmen and Women at least showed us the vitality of American values of human rights and democracy. That is all Ethiopians want. We did not ask the US to come and liberate us; what we asked the US officials is simply to recognize how a ruthless regime has turned the nation into a police state. It was an event that showed us that the triumph of the good is inevitable.
The next and most important news about Meles’s regime last week was the fiasco which happened to the carefully formed “independent” commission of inquiry which was mandated to investigate the killings in June and November 2005. Five out of the eleven members withdrew themselves from the commission long before the report is published. This has tarnished the image of the already ‘talked-about’ commission.
The eleven members of the commission inquiry which was established in December 2005 in order to whitewash the atrocities of Meles’s security forces were:
Frehiwot Samuel (President of the SNNPR Supreme Court)
Shiferaw Jamo (private consultant),
Abuna Elsa (Bishop, Ethiopian Orthodox Church),
Abel Musse (Catholic Church),
Hikmet Abedlla (Business woman),
Tamrat Kebede (formerly African Development Bank Employee),
Sheik Elias Remedan (Deputy Chairman of the Ethiopian Islamic Council),
Dereje Jenberu (Deputy President of the Ethiopian Mekane Eyesus Church),
Gemechu Megerssa (former official of Ministry of Education and AAU),
Abdu Seid (works for Pastoralist Concern Association of Ethiopia),
Wolde Michaeal Meshesa (Deputy President of the Federal First Instant Court.
When the five withdrew themselves from the commission due to “health problems,” I thought what kind of epidemic suddenly swept the commission? May be the bird flu? You never know! The interesting part of the story was those five members of the commission were the ones who seemed to have more independence than the other members of the commission.
The five members who felt the political sickness were: (1) Shiferaw Jamo, who is a respected economist and an independent consultant. Though he has strong connection with people like Girma Birru and other top cabals of the OPDO, he seemed to have maintained his sanity which led him to his present ‘sicknesses’. (2) Abuna Elsa is one of the monks of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, like other archbishops who are in the black gown he is unknown quantity. He might just have a rude awakening of what he is doing and feared for his soul. Abel Musse works for the Ethiopian Catholic Church, and as his Church was one of the few Ethiopian institutions which deplored Meles’s violence in those trying days, his position is understandable. Hikmet Abdella who is a business woman and Tamrat Kebede who worked in the past for the African Development Bank are relatively independent and might have decided not to undermine their names by supporting the white wash project of Mr. Zenawi.
Sources close to the works of the commission indicate that the report has already been written and absolves the Meles regime from the crimes it committed against the Ethiopian people and blames the CUD and other opposition forces for the killing of innocent civilians. Had it not been to the opposition of the members of the commission who have now left because of their ‘sicknesses’ the report would have been presented to Mr. Zenawi’s sham parliament. According to the same sources, on the advice of foreign consultants which Mr. Zenawi hired, it was agreed to include some slight criticism on the Police and the Security Forces. This is meant to provide credibility to the sham report.
The mass defection of members of the commission is, however, an important development. It just shows that the commission was never independent, and members of the commission who had differing opinions were forced to leave than endorse the outcome of a report they did not participate with good conscience. Like the Meles’s “inquiry commission” which was set up as a publicity stunt to investigate the Gambella Genocide, the findings of this commission are all too evident, white wash. Sham parliament and sham commission of inquiry!
