dawn never came.

The rain from the clouds of hope over Anuakland never produced moisture needed for our renewal. Hope for peace and justice became the things of the past. Pain and suffering continued to be part of daily life for the Anuak. After the June and November killings in Addis Ababa, the Anuak felt that they were not alone. The horror that had come to them two years earlier was now being carried on in the capital city of the nation. The same terror and the pain they experienced as mothers and fathers had now reached to the mothers and fathers of Addis.

That was the time when I started speaking up more for everyone and this was when more Ethiopians became aware of the work of the Anuak Justice Council. I am convinced that unless justice comes to all Ethiopians, justice will never come to the Anuak. Unless peace, equality and opportunity come to all Ethiopians, none of these will come to the Anuak. I realize that unity is crucial as the only way out of the front door to a better future. What Ethiopia needs today is unity, even more than it needs democracy. Such a unity must be based on equality, mutual respect and tolerance.

The current government is using division to advance their agenda because it is the only way they can survive. They try to use it in different forms because they are a minority government oppressing the majority. To remain in power, it is necessary to divide the majority on the basis of ethnicity, religion, region, educational levels, gender, politics and language. Most of you CUDP leaders know very well that Zenawi is an ethnic power-broker, playing the ethnic card of one group against the other. He is out for the destruction of our national fabric, fragmenting and excluding groups from political representation and economic opportunity even as he takes issue with separatist groups.

Most of you CUDP leaders know this better than do I because when you campaigned, your platform was to reclaim the country from ethnic hatred and economic disintegration. We know that after the election was rigged and after the protestors were killed and you were arrested, that there was a great decline in the little political voice we had had. The media was suppressed, not only ours, but the Western media as well as they seemed to not cover what was happening in Ethiopia because Meles was claiming to side with the west on the war on terror; yet we know very well that Meles was terrorizing his own people.

The reason I am saying this is not because I am a member of a political party. Joining a political party is not my intention, but I have a moral obligation and duty to express my opinion even if we do not agree. When you, the CUDP leaders were in prison, there was a time when I spoke for all Ethiopians, calling them to work together, to respect one another and when there was disagreement, to talk about it. During this same time, I, like many other Ethiopians, called you my leaders, even though I was not a member of the CUDP.

There were many other Ethiopian political parties who also did the same — the UEDF, the ENUF, the EPPF, the OLF and the ONLF publicly talking about their leaders being in prison. When 38 of you were released on July 20th, thousands and millions of Ethiopians felt they had also been freed, including me. Yet, we knew that even as you emerged from your cells, that you would re-enter an Ethiopia that was even more tightly held under the tyrannical controls of the Woyanne, affecting us in most every arena of our lives. Such controls, corruption and mismanagement have ignored the real problems of our people and have heavily contributed to worsening our crises—like the crises related to our economy, our poverty, the lack of access to clean water, education and health care.

Kinijit leaders, we live in a country with no real future. Our children are dying every day. If they are lucky, our youth, except those in the Tigray region, are only studying up to grade 10 in an educational system that is worse under this regime than during the Dergue. Even those who have an education must be content with doing handicraft work. Those who are not so fortunate, end up on the streets as beggars or prostitutes…continued on next page >>