PRESS RELEASE
BY GINBOT 7 MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRACY AND JUSTICE

[Click here for Amharic version]

Ginbot 7 strongly Condemns the Appalling Crime against humanity Perpetrated by the Meles Zenawi Dictatorial Regime in the Ogaden region.

Human Rights Watch, a respected and credible human rights advocacy group, in its well-documented report has accused the tyrannical regime of Meles Zenawi to have had committed crime against humanity in the region of Ogaden on a report issued June the 12th 2008.

According to the report, many villages have been burned down. Children, elderly women and men have been brutalized by the Meles Zenawi army. Women have been raped, people have been forcibly displaced and their properties confiscated. Human Rights Watch clearly states that Meles and his cohorts should be held responsible for grave violations of human rights and crime against humanity.

For a number of years, such despicable crimes have been committed against the people of Ogaden and still continued unabated. It should also be noted that the brutal regime of Meles Zenawi has in the past committed and continues to commit similar crimes in other regions of Ethiopia. The crime committed by the regime in the Oromo, Gambella, Amhara, Southern Ethiopia, Afar regions and the city of Addis Ababa and many towns is well documented

Where as we all have suffered the indignity of brutalization by Meles’ regime and have been victims of it’s brutal acts of savagery, we have been handicapped to act together and rise against this evil. One main reason for our failure is our inability to work against the ethnically divisive politics of the regime and remove the seeds of discord the regime has sown among Ethiopians, in order to maintains its hold to power unchallenged.

Our deliverance from the difficult and tormenting situation that we all find ourselves lie only in our resolution to fight back this dangerous and venomous politics of division and incitement and to unite against the regime’s brutal army and its intelligence forces. It is only through sharing the pain and the suffering of individuals and communities anywhere in the country as the pain and suffering of all of us and generate within us the burning desire to do whatever it takes to stop it. The collective battle cry against tyranny should be “Injustice anywhere in Ethiopia is injustice every where in Ethiopia”

The time has come that we take the first step of building solidarity by condemning, in one voice and in the strongest term, the despicable crime being perpetrated on the people of Ogaden. This also goes to demonstrating to our compatriots in the Ogaden that we stand beside them in their hours of distress and sufferings.

Ginbot7 Movement for Justice, Freedom and Democracy strongly condemns this crime committed against the people of Ogaden. The Movement affirms its commitment to help in whatever way it can the struggle waged by the people of Ogaden to resist this appalling carnage unleashed against them by the regime of Meles Zenawi.

Similarly Ginbot7, calls upon political parties, members of the civil society, institutions and individuals to stand up and condemn the criminal acts of Meles’s regime in Ogden. We also reiterate our call to Ethiopians to take any wrong committed in any corner of the country as a crime committed against all the people of Ethiopia.

Only such act of unity and solidarity in our part will in the end abort the malicious plot by Meles Zenawi and co. to divide and rule us. It is only when we act with shared purpose and mission that we can stop the wanton destruction of lives and communities by the Meles’s regime and force this regime to account for the crimes and treason it has been committing against the Ethiopian people and the security of our country.

Ginbot7 uses this opportunity to urge the international community to stop the financial, military and material support it provides to a regime that is committing crime against humanity in its own country and beyond. In fact we would like to inform the international community that the close relation it has established with the most brutal regime in Africa is playing a huge part in prolonging the misery and the suffering of the Ethiopian people. It has to be noted that such practice has been generating serious resentment amongst the vast majority of Ethiopians. If the international community will not be forthcoming with reviewed polices that make the interest of the Ethiopian people, not the interest of a handful tyrants, the linchpin of its relation to our country, the consequence will be that it would end up being seen as an accomplice to evil in Ethiopia. In the long run, the spread and entrenchment of such extreme attitude amongst Ethiopians, will not be beneficial to both the interest of the people of Ethiopia and the international community.

Hence, Ginbot7 particularly calls upon Western governments to revise their hitherto distorted policies on Ethiopia and rally behind the struggle of Ethiopians for justice, freedom, democracy and the respect of human rights.

Ginbot 7