M for Murder and Malaise

By Yehwalashet Girma

January 15, 2006

“Some spoke of how they were taken away in mass round-ups in Addis Ababa and how they suffered appalling beatings at the hands of the security forces. Witnesses spoke of seeing people tortured and killed at Dedesa camp in west Ethiopia, where about 50,000 people were detained.” – The Observer; Jan 2, 2006 (Caption and photo montage: Ethiomedia; Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Heavens)

THE HISTORY OF ETHIOPIA has been that of a continuous struggle for independence from foreign aggression lasting over several centuries. It has also been a struggle within itself, often ending up in fratricidal wars with incalculable sufferings to its inhabitants. Whatever the situation, however difficult and serious the problems, the people finally prevailed, their will persisted and the country remained steadfast. The leaders of the people and of the country played a pivotal role in shaping the destiny of the nation. Hence, the future of Ethiopia depends on how the leadership in the country would associate itself with the people politically, economically and socially. The people’s relations with the government and the government’s ability to instill confidence in the people would be the most important determinants if a peaceful Ethiopia is desired.

The personality of a leader is an important factor in holding any country together. Leadership can be a dictatorial, democratic, or a touch of both. Though seen as a darling in Washington and London and as an emerging democratic leader by a few, Meles’ rule is autocratic and totalitarian. His lust for power is insatiable. He controls everything – the armed forces, the judiciary and the legislature. He is now trying to instill fear in every Ethiopian by the police state he installed without due process of law against the so called constitution. His security forces are mowing down students, the old and the young alike in the streets of the capital and everywhere else. The police are arresting anyone and everyone and people are disappearing. Control is being built on terror. This can not be considered any different to state terrorism in the west. The powers that be and all peace loving people of the free world should take all actions necessary to prevent the annihilation of the Ethiopian elite by a so called partner in the fight against terrorism.

The outside world has been hoodwinked to believe that everything is transient in Ethiopia, but this is apparently shallow, as can be witnessed by the on-going disturbances. Hatred is simmering deep down. With this fact to contend with, there would neither be peace nor stability in this unfortunate country. The country is devastated by famine and backwardness and on top of this, when racial and ethnic considerations are whipped up, the problem becomes untenable. Meles lives on this rationale. His ethno-centric based governance plays well into his hands. The Oromos do not accept the Amharas as their compatriots because of the wedge he has hammered in between them. The Amharas, the Tigres and the Oromos are at each other’s throats and this suits Meles profusely as “divide and rule” is his dictum of governance. If people are not divided, he can not obviously rule. The regions and the “kilils” he created are the exact replicas created by Benito Mussolini when he unsuccessfully tried to “divide and rule” Ethiopia – the same fate will befall Meles because Ethiopians will not fall prey to this evil adventure for long.

The political priority that Meles and his henchman have set up works indefatigably to isolate, fragment and neutralize the Amhara, and the Oromo group; they do everything possible to create perpetual enmity and rivalry between the Amhara and Oromo nationalities so that these two major nationalities may not realize their potential to live together democratically. The Amharas and the Oromos have intermarried and each is entrapped within the social fabric of the other. This fabric can not and should not be torn apart due to the sinister machinations of Meles and his cohorts.

The world never responded to the cry of agony of the Ethiopian people when Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia and annexed it as a part of its East African Empire. The plea of the Ethiopian people fell on deaf ears and fascism was allowed to emasculate the nation with mustard gas and other weapons of mass destruction. The superiority in arms and the advanced war technology used to supposedly subjugate the Ethiopian people could not extinguish the fire of freedom that was burning in every soul and body of the Ethiopian defenders and Italy was vanquished for the second time in a mere sixty years. Another sixty years elapsed and another “Mussolini” in the guise of Meles is on the pedestal of power in Ethiopia. In the case of Meles and his totalitarian rule, governments are flirting with him- to the extent of naming him one of the commissioners for Africa, an invaluable partner in the fight against world terrorism, a new breed of democratic leader and so forth. When a regime commits atrocities on its own people it can not be called representative. Maybe Meles is better off to administer his own constituency where no one was allowed to be a candidate and where all votes were apparently for him and his henchmen. The Tigrean people were not given any choice. One would never know the outcome if there was genuine election in Tigrai, but one can assume that it would not have been 100% TPLF. This is democracy Meles style—one of the so called pragmatic leaders of present day Africa.

It has often been said that outside influences can modify events in one way or another in what is happening inside a country. These influences could either accelerate or retard developments within the country, but they can not by themselves stop internal developments. In what directions these forces will react is a wait and see game. The outcome depends on the degree of pressure applied from without and the resistance to change from within. This is not a question of when but a question of how much; and if governments have the will to put enough pressure, the resistance that Meles portrays is like a house built on sand-it could and would be washed away.

It is a time for Ethiopians to know who their friends are because as the saying goes “a friend in need is a friend indeed.” The West, especially the United States and Britain have supported and aided the Meles regime for the last fifteen years at the expense of the Ethiopian people. They have poured millions of dollars to the development efforts of the country. The truth is that the efforts by these governments have done very little to alleviate the problem the country and the people are facing. DONOR GOVERNMENTS SHOULD NOT BE BLIND TO THE FACT THAT MELES AND HIS COMRADE IN ARMS WERE ONLY SIMPLE GUERRILA FIGHTERS A MERE FIFTEEN YEARS AGO WITH NO KNOWN RICHES TO THEIR NAME, BUT THEY ARE NOW MULTI-MILLIONAIRES WITH MILLIONS IN THEIR NAME IN MANY FOREIGN BANKS AS HAS BEEN DICLOSED RECENTLY.

They own corporations, run semi-government profit-making organizations to the exclusion of others and make good of the millions they get as budgetary support and other aids. No wonder that they do not want to give up power and want to cling to it by all means–even at the expense of hundreds if not thousands of lives they exterminate. There are no gas chambers as yet as in Nazi Germany, but who needs these when they have the red-bereted “Agazi” who would do any and everything for them. By the way, Hitler started out with concentration camps initially in order to “Aryanize” the German people before he built the gas chambers to exterminate the non-Aryans. Meles is right on track as to the construction of the concentration camps. He has filled them with people who oppose his regime, whether he would follow suit and build gas chambers in order to cleanse the country of the opposition is yet to be seen.

The Ethiopian people have said enough is enough and have risen in unison. Nothing and no one would stop the tide of change that is sweeping the country. It is still in its infancy but it is not too far away when the Meles regime will be swept away from under the carpet. Where he and his cohorts will end up is something they should think about since the fury of the Ethiopian people will have no boundary or limit. The day of reckoning is fast approaching and Meles’s hold to power can not last long. As I pointed out earlier, internal factors are the considerations that will determine the fate of Ethiopia. Outside influences may shape the outcome only in how long it might take to bring about the change, but change will come. More people may be massacred, a number of students may be killed or imprisoned, political figures may be incarcerated and be brought to kangaroo courts and they may even be sentenced to death for trying to make sense out of the senseless, but CHANGE IS SURE TO COME. A NEW DAWN IS ON THE HORIZON AND ETHIOPIA SHALL RISE AND THEN AND ONLY THEN WE SHALL DECLARE WHO OUR TRUE FRIENDS WERE. THE ROAD TO FREEDOM IS LONG AND ARDUOUS BUT WE SHALL PREVAIL.

Long live Ethiopia