By Assta B. Gettu

To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice (Proverbs 21: 3).

Do Western donors know that their donated money to help the hungry in Ethiopia and other poor nations has been used to buy sophisticated weapons ‘to fight terrorism’ instead of preventing hunger, to buy bullets instead of medicine, and to build military barracks instead of shelters for the homeless?

Famine, poverty, and disease have gone rampant in Ethiopia but never terrorism. Ethiopia is blessed for not having foreign terrorism, but cursed for producing famine, poverty, disease, and home-grown terrorists such as Meles, a self-declared dictator who is terrorizing the Ethiopian people for almost twenty years.

Meles Seitanawi (Zenawi) has turned the good intention of the donors into evil acts by misappropriating the donated money into his personal use to buy weapons and to bully his neighbors and his own people. For this reason, donors must be aware of the evil act of Meles Seitanawi before they send their donation to help the Ethiopian hungry children.

The hungry children of Ethiopia may get only a fraction of the donated money, but the rest is gone to buying weapons and military gadgets to maim and kill or destroy the opposing parties. The donors do not understand what I and others have told them what their donated money is doing in Ethiopia: It is killing innocent Ethiopians instead of helping the hungry and the sick.

It is my hope these donor nations will read Dr. Loretta Napoleoni’s books, Terror Inc: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism and Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zareqawi and the New Generation, on the economics of terrorism. Donors must stop donating money to Ethiopia unless they are hundred percent sure that the children of Ethiopia get all the donated money without being siphoned off the government.

At this critical time, one cannot distinguish the difference between the donated money and the money given to a particular church at certain times. On both cases, auditing is lacking, and that is why we see extremely wealthy preachers in some churches and ruthless dictators in some countries like Ethiopia, Burma, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Every Sunday, millions of Christians pour their money into the offering plates, but most of them do not really know where their money goes. In the same way, many celebrities and wealthy nations like the United States, Canada, England, and others donate their tax payers’ money to help the people of Ethiopia and other poor nations, but their money has become a deadly poison that has killed hundreds of innocent people Ethiopians in Somalia, Ogaden, Oromo, and the Amhara regions. Meles Seitanawi is using the donated money to buy weapons to destroy his opponents so that he could stay in power unopposed for ever and ever.

Ethiopia needs help from the West to overthrow dictator Meles Seitanawi, who has misused the donated money for his political survival instead of helping needy Ethiopians. For sure, Meles’ superficial government will collapse if the West and the World Bank stop supporting him, and instead turn their attention to helping Ethiopians to have a democratically elected government.

When Ethiopians tried to oust dictator Meles from his office by the ballot box at the 2005 elections, the West helped Meles by supporting him financially and politically, instead of condemning him publicly for over turning the people’s choice.

Even now, after Meles has slaughtered hundreds of Ethiopians, the fake election board has declared him a winner of last month’s local elections, which were boycotted by all opposition parties because of the rampant fraud. The West, I’m afraid, is going to repeat the same mistake by accepting the result of this farcical election.

In conclusion, the more money Meles gets from the West, the more harm he will continue to cause on the people of Ethiopia and people of the region.