By Yilma Bekele
It looks like we are all upset. All our independent Web sites are headlining the news. It is the main conversation among our people outside of the country. Mere language is not enough to describe our profound displeasure with the Libyan ruling class. Our anger knows no bounds.
What exactly is getting us so hot and boiling with righteous indignation? It is none other than the report by CNN regarding our daughter/sister Shweyga Mullah and her ordeal as part of the Gadhafi household. To begin with it is highly possible that Shweyga is not even her name. In the scheme of the unfolding story it is not even important but it is part of the story. How she got Libya is another breath taking tale all by itself. I assure you she just did not buy a plane ticket and flew into Tripoli. If she did she is an exception. Any way those two factors are not my focus here.
Our collective reaction is my interest in this horrific story. I am not surprised by the reaction of free people in the West. It is news to them. Stuff like this does not happen every day. I don’t mean to say there are no bad people in the US or Europe. I am sure incidents like this do occur everywhere. But I believe it will be fair to say they are isolated and very infrequent. Now when it comes to us Ethiopians why do I get this feeling that our anger is a feeble attempt to cover up our indifference to all the injustice that surrounds us?
I am not trying to belittle what happened to Shweyga. It is ugly and beyond my ability to understand the dark side of human nature. I am glad she survived her ordeal. Anti-Slavery International has set up a fundraising page on their Web site to help pay for her medical needs. The mental scar will take a long time to heal. Please go and give what you can. That is saving one human being. It is a beginning.
What I want to focus is the circumstances that made a young girl leave her village to be a maid thousands of miles away from home? She is one among the tens of thousands that roam the Middle East in search of a better life. Many stories have been told about their trials and tribulations in the hands of some that do not know the meaning of Human dignity or Human Rights.
Tezeta, Senait, Matente, Etsegenet are not just names. They are Ethiopian maids in Lebanon that committed suicide within a twelve days period in October of 2009. Tezeta jumped from a third floor, Senait from a balcony, Masente hung herself and Etsegenet jumped from the seventh floor. Those are our women. Our boys don’t fare any better. December 2008 twenty Ethiopians, January 2011 eighty, April 2011 sixteen, May 2011 forty Ethiopians drowning in the Gulf of Aden is just another boring story.
When asked about the situation in Tripoli this is how our rulers reacted. “The government of Ethiopia will make every necessary effort to bring the victim from Libya and get her due compensation for the damage,” Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Dina Mufti said on Thursday. You see what I mean. The horror is reduced to monetary compensation. No rage about how dare you do this to my citizen! No indignation and demand for justice! Pound for pound we must be the cheapest humans.
We are abandoned people. The government thinks of as cash cows to be abused at home or exported abroad for remittances. We have no place at home to turn to for justice. We have no Embassy or Consulate abroad that we call our own and turn to incase of emergency. We as a people are full of rage. The gist of the matter is in my humble opinion we are unable to direct this rage to construct a new reality that will ensure that there are no Shweyga in the future. In the end that is the only thing that matters.
Why do you think Ethiopians are the preferred maids in the Middle East? The answer is very painful. It is because we know how to suffer in silence. Our capacity for absorbing injustice and abuse is beyond comprehension. It is part of our culture. It is part of our up brining. The Gulf Arab knows that. We are afraid to challenge authority. Be it our own parents, a village chief or the Prime Minster we submit willingly. The most increadable aspect of this situation is that we think of it as a virtue. We keep quiet and justify it by saying silence is golden. We whisper but complain of not being heard.
Our government knows that too. Our leaders work very hard in stripping the little self-respect we might have every opportunity they get. They did not invent something new. They did not have to. They just used better knowledge to manage us. Every new technology is exploited to enhance our sense of paranoia and drive a wedge between us. Our ignorance is cultivated and fed back to us. I am not blaming others for our failure to stand up. I am blaming myself for going along with it. It is not what others are trying to do to me but rather it is all about what I am doing to myself.
We all have the capacity to do good or bad. For every Nelson Mandela within us there is also Adolf Hitler competing for attention. The seeds of good or evil are in us. The question becomes which of these seeds are each one of us going to water and cultivate. It is a choice we have to make. Shweyga is our face. Our girl is far away from home. She is afraid and confused. She is lost like us. Shweyga’s skin damage will be repaired by the Doctors. Even her mental scar will heal in time. But there are millions of Shweygas out there. Our indignation should be channeled to make sure there are no more. That requires a deeper look into our selves. If we want a lasting solution we have to look at the root cause of all this dark cloud hovering on our home land. As Henry Thoreau said “there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
10 thoughts on “Shweyga Mullah, the new face of Ethiopia”
What I don’t understand is that why do you call the lady the new face of Ethiopia? don’t you have other important things to write about or have you run out ideas? I am not saying that what had happened to our sister is not important but don’t be silly in trying to make this the biggest agenda of the Millennium. If you think that the Ethiopian gov’t should react angrily every time something happens to a citizen then I conclude that there is nothing you know about diplomacy. You need to go back and read the 101 of diplomacy and foreign policy.
Yilma’s article says a whole lot about us Ethiopians. We are victims of our own helplessness and couragelessnes. We are prisoners of fear. As the saying goes, fear incapacitates your soul. Fear enslaves your spirit. Fear makes you defenseless and cowardly. Fear makes you manipulable. Fear drives you to be a traitor. Fear steers you to be opportunistic. Fear forces you to molest your own self. Fear makes you deny the truth and facts. Fear drives you to insanity and fear makes you look old. That was what was happening in Libya, Egypt Tunisia, Syria, South Africa, East Germany etc. Finally, they fought against their own fear to overcome the evil fear itself and emancipate themselves from their anxieties and nightmares. One simple unemployed young man’s self-immolation was the cause of the tumulus events and Arab uprisings, which brought the peoples anger to explode. Of course, many people lost and are losing their lives and they know it. But they have reached the point of no return. Once tasted the sense of freedom are ready to bring it to the end, doesn’t matter what it costs. Otherwise they will be back again in their past nightmare which all prefer to die with honor instead for the future’s generations sake. Martyrdom for sweet freedom.
The cause, which initiated the uprisings in those countries, is more than ripe and has enough of it in our Ethiopia. In woyanes dungeons. Daily murdered by Woyane assasins. Intimated in open daylight by their agents. Picked up in the middle of the night from their home. Accused and imprisoned by their “courts.” our youth abused and systematically managed, demoralized by their manipulative system. Our sisters sold as if they are commodities without any protections. Our land sold forcefully to aliens who deposit sums of money in foreign accounts of the traitors. Our national treasure put up for sale to amoral mercenaries,
It is true that everyone wishes to leave the country to avoid the humiliation, psycho terror, and hunger of the heartless traitor regime and to look for jobs to support their families. This is just the tip of the iceberg to reach the root cause of our anguish and misery.. do not forget dear Yilma that even though the youth who overthrew monster Gaddafi knew nothing other than his system, was raised under the influences, systematic manipulations, his divide and rule methods and indoctrinations so do the East Germans, South Africans where freedom prevailed at the end. Thus, I am certainly confident that the Ethiopians are not any different to rise up sooner or later. The day is not far that the anger explodes to dynamism that will free mental distress and fear as the youth in those other countries showed!
Yes, Shywega Mulla is one of the symbolical new faces of Ethiopia. She represents all those faceless children of Ethiopia who have had the same fate as her as maids and nannies.
God bless Ethiopia and its people!
Mr. Dawit, the writer tries to put this poor and unfortunate young lady to show how life for our sisters in Arab land. It is not new thing for most of us who follow how life in Arab countries….A thousands of Ethiopian live the kind of life this poor lady lived…all the women life goes the same way what she went through, every day so many our sister in the Arab country paid a price including losing their precious life. so my friend don’t blame the writer he wrote the reality of our time.
Mr/Ms Dawit leave this site for us and please go and say whatever you want in Aiga Form.
I am so so sad to see such a young lady in such a trauma. I have asked my self most of the issues of the reality involving our folks in those Arab countries. time and again we have heard about such stories and even though its a proven fact such things have been happening not enough effort has been taken to stop people to those countries.
Don’t get me wrong and I am not being personal with anyone but I always wish that all Ethiopians would abandon going to Arab countries after those incidents.But its not the reality…I have done my best by stopping five ladies from going to any Arab country. They had no clue about anything and those MF delalas are modern day slave traders.
@Mr.Writer,I support what the “The Patriot” has said.
@dawit
Poor Dawit, this government missed so many opportunities that can define himself for his people. Shewyea represents all Ethiopians who are working outside their home land. Despite the fact that the new gets world wide attention, the government preferred being silence, a society constitutes a government to defend its citizens’ interest from aggressors and defend citizens from oppressors in time of calamity. As you well know last year alone the government can raise more than billion dollars from diasporas live abroad so the government should reflects it concern when such sort condition occurred
It is time to start the revolution and evict Woyanes. The humiliation of Ethiopians at home and abroad is vast. Christian-Ethiopians change their names to be slaves to cruel forces in the middle east.
The Woyanes except using them as cash caw and don’t care or protect Ethiopians anywhere. Remember to what happened to the siter who was killed in Florida, where the Woyanes refused to speak or protest on her behalf.
Woyanes are worse enemy than the Arabs who abuse our sisters, because the Woyanes besides taking our pride, our nation, our nationalism, have stripped us of all our rights and self-respect. As long as we let us them do that, they will keep ruling us.
The Arabs in Syria, in Libya have learned to have self-respect and die or live with self-respect. Ethiopians at home and abroad need to get self-respect before going to their grave as cowards and sub-humans.
Salan
Thanks Paul for telling the truth.
Thank you Yilma,
yes her face is the face of Ethiopians what else do we have that we are proud of this time? we are loosers in every aspect. we say are courageous people, but today’s history has proven that Ethiopians are cowards, who don’t dare to change their circumstances or comfront authority. Yilma wrote what is true and tangible. But sometimes truth is difficult to swallow. Even we don’t think of vengence for sisters or brothers who suffer in hands of foreigners. what kind of people are we. We cry like babies when we see our rulers kill our brothers, intellectuals and young protestors. It is a natural reaction for anyliving thing to think of vengence but when it comes to Ethiopians not a single person avanged for life loss during the last 20 years of oppression. Oppressors knew one language that is resistance. If you don’t resist they keep on treating you like HADGI whether they are woyanes or arabs or anybody else. Ethiopians have become selfdefeating creatures even unable to hold grudge towards those who brutalise our brothers and sisters.watching the face of our sister, I detest all kinds of Ethiopians who adopt the arabic culture of sitting on the floor, chewing Chat and smoking Shisha. It is the culture of our enemies who brutalise our sisters mercilessly. Any Ethiopian who shall not abandon such worthless arabic culture should be despised and treated like a wild animal. Those who respect tyhe blood of their citizen shall not celebrate or practice the culture of enemies. Yes Yilma, because of the Ethiopians who celebrate the arabic tradition instead of their own, our image is distorted. we have become ugly and identityless.
May THE GOD OF ISRAEL BLESS YILMA for telling the truth and admitting our weakness as Ethiopians.
@number1 Mr. Dawit.. you are such a piece of S#%t, why don’t you refer to how other countries go to war for only for the sake of citizens, let alone turn a blind eye when your citizen is treated this way. did you forget how Israel retaliated on Lebanon for the few rockets that landed on her land from Hisbollah? killing only 6 of their people? so i am not saying Israel was right, but just so that you know how other countries defend their citizens, or how Americans go to their limit when their “hitch hikers” got caught in Iran? what does Ethiopian embassy do? nothing except facilitating more ways in which the diaspora can send money back home. you woyane’s are just full of yourselves, the whole idea of a government is to protect citizens, otherwise did you think we pay tax just because we don’t have a better way to spend our money? what did you think the government was there for? to loot? rape? I suggest you go and read Politics 101 and also civil rights 101 while you are at it.