Yeharwork Gashaw, an Ethiopian human rights advocate, was gingerly allowed to take the stage for 5 minutes to speak about her organization, Ethiopian Women for Democracy, at the Ethiopian Sports Federation in North America event in Dallas, Texas, on July 6.
During her brief speech when she started talking about political prisoners, the microphone was unplugged and the whole stadium went quiet.
After a brief commotion — some thought it was a deliberate sabotage, others said it was a technical glitch or an accident — the microphone became live again. Although her main aim was to introduce Ethiopian Women for Democracy, she, like everyone, was probably confused and probably scared by the commotion even her mild appeal for prayers was not welcomed by ESFNA leaders because her time was cut short and was escorted of the stage. Her two companions, who were on the stage left without saying anything.
It appears ESFNA officials panicked or some equipment malfunction took place. Nonetheless, the audience was taken aback by the incident, because none of the speakers during the ‘Ethiopia Day’ experienced such
microphone problem or interruption.
Was this an accident or deliberate attempt to silence Ethiopians of different view while giving the stage and great accolade to the likes of Mohamud Ahmed?
Families and Children are also a victim of ESFNA
ESFNA continues to abuse Ethiopian of all sectors including mothers and children and by ignoring the wishes and the interest of the majority. Fetya, a mother of three beautiful children is a good example.
During the long wait for ‘Ethiopia Day’ as it never started on schedule, Fetya was getting desperate because of her three kids were becaming restless. To give her some solace, I opened a conversation, as she was sitting straight across from me.
She said she has been in the stadium in this blazing Texas sun for the whole day because the ESFNA website claimed that there is activity for children in the morning and for adult entertainment in the afternoon.
On Friday, July 6, Fetya brought her 3 children to watch and participate in the children soccer. According to ESFNA website, Friday, July 6, 2007, schedule includes two programs for Children Soccer at 8:30 AM and 10:00 AM. Fetya said, she checked the website in the morning to make sure there was no change. When she arrived, there was nothing. When she asked two ESFNA officials about Children Soccer, they told her that they knew nothing about it.
After paying $15 dollar entrance fee, she decided to wait for ‘Ethiopia Day’ that was also scheduled to start at 5:30 PM according to their website. Fortunately, it started, but almost two hours late at 7:20 PM. Even after that, despite 3 months of planning according to the MC, technical glitches abounded. The sound quality was poor and a great commotion took place among the organizers.
One of the singers decided to stop in the middle of the song because the sound system was too bad. The MC, after a few minutes, decided to explain what was going on, cancelled the whole show and ordered the
staged cleared. After a brief hoopla, ESFNA officials decided to start the program again.
Fetya, a petite Ethiopian and her children endured a small ordeal. She said she cancelled school for her children to be with Ethiopian children, because as she explained that they live quite a distance from Dallas and they don’t get a chance to see other Ethiopians.
For Fetya, none of her expectations were met. ESFNA is about money, said said. Like many Ethiopians, her conclusion was on the mark.
MIAMI — A man visiting Miami on a youth mission is in critical condition after being struck by lightning on Sunday.
Hailu Kidanemariam, 40, was struck while going door-to-door, handing out children’s books in a northwest Miami-Dade County neighborhood.
Resident Maria Martinez said she had just received one of the books when Kidanemariam was hit.
“We heard like a gunshot,” she said. “When we turned around, I saw a cloud of smoke and this guy jumping, like basically being slammed on his feet. He just fell back and laid there.”
Lt. Elkin Sierra of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said paramedics brought Kidanemariam back from death.
“He had no heartbeat. He had no respirations,” Sierra said. “Our units intervened the way any emergency room doctor would intervene — we carry the same equipment — and brought back the pulse.”
Kidanemariam was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where members of his youth group were awaiting his recovery.
“He is originally from Ethiopia,” friend Francisco Perez said. “He’s studying theology and nursing in Puerto Rico. He was here working for his scholarship. He could go back to school in August.”
Perez said the weather did not look threatening when lightning struck his friend.
“It wasn’t even raining,” he said.
According to Jim Lushine, an NBC WeatherPlus severe weather expert, more people are struck by lightning before it starts raining or after it stops. (More Lightning Facts)
“If the interval between thunder and lightning is 30 seconds or less, definitely stay inside,” Sierra said. “Don’t let the bright conditions fool you and think that it’s OK to be outside during lightning strikes.”
JIJIGA, Ethiopia — The gray-faced young man lying in bed number 15 of the run-down local hospital wasn’t much of a talker. In truth, few people are these days in Jijiga, a desert town whose tense streets are patrolled by swarms of Ethiopian police.
But Nur Omar Ali, 25, whose neck was patched with dingy bandages, had a particularly good reason for being silent. His throat had been cut. He’d been attacked and left for dead nine days earlier at his remote village. When he was asked to identify his assailants, the camel herder’s eyes shined with hate. “”Ethiopian soldiers,” rasped Nur, clamping a hand to his stitched-up neck.
Then, scowling, he rolled over and turned his back on his hospital visitors. After all, one was a reporter from the United States, a nation closely allied with the Ethiopian government that is conducting a fierce anti-insurgency campaign in the Ogaden Desert — a civil war in Ethiopia’s impoverished Muslim east that appears to be worsening thanks, at least in part, to the global confrontation between the U.S. and Islamic radicalism.
Human-rights groups and media reports accuse Ethiopia — a key partner in Washington’s battle against terrorism in the volatile Horn of Africa — of burning villages, pushing nomads off their lands and choking off food supplies in a harsh new campaign of collective punishment against a restive ethnic Somali population in the Ogaden, a vast wilderness of rocks and thorns bordering chaotic Somalia.
Ethiopia’s regime angrily denies the charges, which it blames on propaganda spread by the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front.
“We don’t see any basic violations of human rights,” said Bereket Simon, an adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. “Abusing the people doesn’t make sense. You abuse people and they look to the subversives. It’s counterproductive.”
Yet in Jijiga, the only town in the embattled region still open to journalists, residents told of the secret arrests of prominent ethnic Somali businessmen with purported links to the rebels — hotel owners, construction contractors and traders in qat, the intoxicating plant chewed by millions in the region.
One man in that raw frontier outpost described walking eight days through the bush to escape a war-ruined zone called Fik, where he claimed he saw torched and depopulated villages. And a displaced camel herder told how his village close to the Somalia border had been emptied by the Ethiopian army and its residents trucked to garrison towns such as Shilabo, a counterinsurgency tactic once used by the U.S. in Vietnam, and meant to deprive the rebels of their civilian support base.
“They loaded people into trucks and just abandoned them there,” said Farah, 60, who like most people in Jijiga refused to give his full name for fear of police reprisal. “They treated us like animals.”
‘People are actually starving’
Mostly, though, the whispered talk was about hunger.
The Ethiopian army has locked down immense swaths of the Ogaden, blocking all roads and smuggling trails to commercial traffic, and thus triggering desperate food shortages in a desert already prone to famines. A teacher from the central Ogaden town of Kebredehar said most shops in that area had closed for lack of stocks. The prices of remaining foodstuffs such as rice, he said, had rocketed 400 percent — far out of reach of ordinary Ogadenis.
“We’re forbidden to talk about it, but there is a big problem,” said a worker with the Ethiopian Red Cross. “It’s not just hunger anymore. People are actually starving.”
Humanitarian groups met Friday with the Ethiopian military to appeal for reopening the roads, several aid workers in Jijiga said. The army agreed — hinting that the current crackdown on the troubled region may be winding down, possibly due to the start of the rainy season.
Nobody, however, expects the lull in fighting to last. Indeed, most people expect the killing to accelerate.
Ogaden has been bloodstained by more than a century of Ethiopian conquest, revolts against European colonial rule, Cold War proxy battles and abortive independence movements. The current cycle of violence began early this year, soon after Ethiopia decided to invade neighboring Somalia to topple an emerging Islamist regime — with the blessings of the U.S.
As in Afghanistan and Iraq, that blow against a perceived terrorist threat yielded unexpected fallout.
In the case of Christian-dominated Ethiopia, it helped reignite the quiescent rebel movement in the Muslim hinterland of the Ogaden, experts say.
Emboldened by Ogadeni sympathy for their co-religionists across the Somalia border, and taking advantage of the Ethiopian army’s preoccupation with taming Mogadishu, the ONLF rebels began successfully attacking towns.
The insurgents have long accused the “colonial” Ethiopian military of mass rapes and summary executions in the isolated villages of the Ogaden. But the rebels have come under some scrutiny too. Recent grenade attacks blamed on ONLF sympathizers killed a handful of civilians in Jijiga. And a devastating rebel assault on a Chinese-run gas and oil exploration project in the Ogaden in April left 74 dead, many of them unarmed workers.
‘I played dead for two hours’
“They came and ordered us out of our tents, then lined us up and shot us,” said Eskedar Demissw, 27, a driver at the oil camp and the only survivor from his team of 12 laborers. “It took five minutes. I was shot three times in the back. I played dead for two hours.”
The ONLF claims that the oil workers were gunned down by confused Ethiopian army guards.
“What the Ethiopian regime is doing in the Ogaden is a catastrophe,” said Qamaan Hersi, a rebel spokesman. “As far as the U.S. is concerned, what better way is there to create [Islamic] extremism than to oppress people the way the Ethiopians are?”
In fact, Ethiopia’s crackdown in the Ogaden has put the U.S. in an awkward position. Washington is still resisting Ethiopia’s request to list the ONLF as a terrorist group. And last week, the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa convened a large meeting of humanitarian organizations to discuss ways of getting aid into the war zone.
American civil affairs soldiers once built schools and drilled water wells around Jijiga. In the Ogaden, all those hearts-and-minds programs are on hold.
“I’m not sure the Americans would be very welcome anymore,” said Kassahun Gebregioris, an independent human-rights worker in Jijiga. “The Ogadeni clans associate them too much with the Ethiopians. And they don’t forget.”
Woyanne prosecutors demanded the death penalty on Monday for opposition officials and journalists convicted of trying to overthrow the government, treason and inciting violence.
“Since they have been found guilty on all counts, they should be punished with the highest penalty,” prosecutor Abraham Tetemke told the court.
The prosecutor also requested the court to confiscate all the properties of the journalists and publishers who were convicted along with the opposition leaders.
The court is expected to issue a sentence on July 16.
The accused, who have chosen not to defend themselves, did not speak during today’s session, but will have a chance to do so during next week’s court session. “They have not shown any sign of regret in the court, and they have not accepted the sovereignty of the court,” said prosecutor Abraham Tetemke.
“Therefore we request that they should be punished with capital punishment.” “The accused conspired to overthrow the government. In the process, they have created havoc, destroying state and private proerty. They are also responsible for the deaths of security forces and because of this we request the death penalty,” the prosecutor added.
The court gave the accused a week to provide any mitigating evidence. The judge had been due to pass sentence but he adjourned the hearing for a week to allow those convicted the chance to respond to the prosecutor’s statement.
The opposition leaders continue to hold a position that they do not recognize the legitimacy of the court and will not submit any document or evidence.
The courtroom was packed with relatives of the accused, who sobbed as they heard the prosecutors’ demand.
One woman sitting among the friends and relatives laughed derisively when the prosecutor demanded the death sentences. Judge Adil, thinking that the person who laughed was Ato Abayneh Berhanu’s wife, told her to leave the court. When she said that he is mistaking her for another person, [firde gemdil] Adil said that he will hold her in contempt unless she leaves the court room. He stopped the proceedings until she was escorted out.
The BBC’s Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa says the constant delays are hard for some of the prisoners’ families to bear.
Some women were visibly upset; others said bitterly that the government was deliberately delaying the case and playing with their lives.
After court adjourned, family members of the accused shuffled out silently, some with shocked looks on their faces, others wiping away tears.
Mulatu Teklu, 67, walked dazedly out of court after he learned that his youngest son, 32-year-old Yenene Mulatu, could die for his actions.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m very sorry.”
Others were more optimistic. Asrat Tassie, a former defendant and opposition politician who was among 25 defendants released from jail in April, said he was sure that a deal to pardon the leaders would come to fruition.
The officials were convicted last month of charges relating to violent protests over disputed elections in 2005 which the opposition says were rigged.
Nearly 200 people were killed in clashes between protesters and security forces over the vote that altered the political landscape in the Horn of Africa country of 81m people, handing the opposition a vastly increased share of parliamentary seats.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said he regretted the post-poll violence, but blamed it on opportunistic rioters and an opposition conspiracy to topple him by force.
Last month, he condemned calls by Western diplomats for the 38 to be released as “shameful and wrong”.
BBC reporter says that the sentences may not be the end of the story. The Meles regime has repeatedly said it cannot interfere in the judicial process. However once sentence has been passed, then there may be the possibility of clemency or pardon.
Some of those close to the prisoners now feel that talk of possible pardon is a false hope that comes from non-government sources and that the rumors could be a ploy by the Meles regime to minimize public anger. The latest talk is granting commutation of sentence from death penalty to prison term rather than full pardon. That may explain the prosecutor’s request for the death penalty.
(WCCO) Crystal, Minn. A man detained in the investigation of a Crystal, Minnesota, woman’s murder has been arrested as the sole suspect in her killing.
According to City of Crystal Police, the 21-year-old man is the brother of Rahina Mohammed, 45, who was found stabbed to death Saturday afternoon.
Mohamed’s husband found her dead of stab wounds shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday when he returned home from working his second-shift job. Police in Golden Valley detained the suspect at about 5:20 p.m. at a gas station, after a report of a person acting irrationally.
Mohamed was described as a prominent member of Minnesota’s Oromo community.
Police did not talk about whether there was some kind of fight inside the home, but they did say there were no signs anyone forced their way into it.
They said at the time of the initial investigation it seemed apparent the victim knew her attacker.
Mohamed came to America from Africa in 1982 at age 18 with her 20-year-old husband. They were among the first refugees from Oromia, a region of Ethiopia, to settle in Minnesota, where the largest contingent of Oromo people in the nation now live.
Many members of Minnesota’s Oromo community grieved at the victim’s sister’s house Saturday, and said that Mohamed had helped many of them adjust to life in America.
Charges are expected to be filed by noon on Tuesday.
Police said they are not currently pursuing any other possible suspects.
The homicide was the first in Crystal since 1996, according to authorities.
This article minces no words, is not constrained by diplomatic niceties and doesn’t pretend to chose polite words in the interest of political correctness. It intends to call things by their proper names because that is what has been lacking. We have had too many equivocations, skirting around issues and debates that often employ the phrases: on the one hand…and on the other hand. It is high time to take the gloves off and slug it out with bare knuckles and challenge those among us who are the betrayers and take urgent action to bring the country back from the brink of disaster or be prepared to face the harsh judgment of history.
Betrayal is a coat of many colors and we have seen it come and go in different shapes and guises. Some are highlighted here to help spot the wolves in sheep’s’ clothing: Ethiopia’s betrayers. But before naming the betrayers it is appropriate to identify the Betrayed.
The Betrayed are the broad Ethiopian masses who toil long and hard, but who are condemned not to reap and enjoy the fruits of their labors. They work under extremely trying conditions to feed and enrich others. They are those who don’t obtain fair prices for their produce, travel to distant towns to pay taxes and are sometimes required to give bribes to corrupt government officials so as to cut short the time it takes to settle their taxes in order not to miss the bus that takes them home.
These masses sent us to schools so that we, their sons and daughters, would be spared the hardship they had to go through and lead a better life than theirs. These are the masses that officials of all stripes tried to dispossess the land they tilled under one pretext or another; they are the ones who have been provided fertilizers on credit and were made to repay the money they owed by selling their entire produce or risk losing their land and become beggars. These are the masses that were told their debts would be forgiven if they voted for the Woyanne, but they voted their conscience!
The Betrayers
The list of the betrayers could be a mile long, but we will address only a few. The incumbent officials are not included in this assessment as their treasonable acts are too well known to require repetition here.
1. The Educated Elite
Some among the educated elite top the list of betrayers. They were educated using taxpayers money, but owe no obligation to the taxpayer. Their preoccupation is how to survive in the system, and do better than “the joneses”. Build better houses, buy better cars, wear better clothes and send their children to elite schools. This seems to be the be-all an end-all of their existence. They will not tolerate anything that prevents the attainment of these goals. They strongly believe these goals are attainable only when the status quo is preserved. Anything that upsets the status quo is anathema to them. They tend to defend the status quo mostly in subtle ways, but when these goals are threatened they come out swinging.
There have been accounts of wives who have told their husbands in no uncertain terms not to challenge their bosses (so that they don’t lose their jobs) even when their husbands were wronged. “Arfen lijochachinin enastemir” appears to be the operative command. Contrast this with our grandmothers who took it upon themselves to prepare provisions for their husbands who had not even declared their intentions to take part in the struggle to defend their country against foreign invaders. Their husbands had no choice but to declare their decision to join the fight as if it were their own. That was how Ethiopia was built.
Distortion of History:
In the past seventeen years, history has been distorted right, left and center with impunity. Our contemporary historians took no visible stand even when rulers such as Menelik II were being vilified for attempting to unify the nation and preserve unity at any cost. Menelik is projected as a colonizer for passing on to us a fully formed country complete with a language, script and flag of its own at a time when the rest of Africa was under colonial rule. Why is it difficult for some of us to be grateful for what we have and celebrate our nationhood? What are the motivations for belittling three thousand years of greatness which even the developed world grudgingly accepts. Is Menelik’s vilification indicative of a desire to have preferred being colonized over staying free? This boggles the mind as Menelik’s detractors have no historical parallels to use as a frame of reference as there were no other African rulers at his time. Who do they compare him with or against?
Some people in Ethiopia maintain that historians, priests, reporters and azmaris have common characteristics in that all four mention the incumbent regime favorably and wait until it falls before they start to openly criticize it. Some self-styled leaders of the Oromos who conveniently forget the wide-spread intermarriage across ethnic groups have been advancing a separatist agenda to keep themselves in the only job they know and in the lifestyle they have come to enjoy. The Eritreans and the Woyannes actively engage in promoting historical inaccuracies against Ethiopia to serve their own ends. What is puzzling is that most of our historians turn their collective deaf ears to all these instead of challenging them and establishing the truth. What is holding them back – self-interest, lack of conviction or defending their country’s history will cast them in the role of enemy of the state? Is our Ethiopianess something to be ashamed of and shy away from defending? If the answer to all of the above is “no” then let’s show them convincingly how proud we are to be Ethiopians!
The Leadership Vacuum:
The leaders of the opposition party who won the May, 1997 elections are languishing behind bars. These leaders are Ethiopia’s best and brightest and their unfair incarceration seems to have provoked no sustained protest or the emergence of other leaders to take on their mantle. What happened to the saying: “the situation creates a leader”? Or is the situation in Ethiopia not yet ripe enough for this to happen or our collective outrage has not risen to the level where such a leader could step forward?
Nothing could be more demoralizing than to see the likes of “Lidetu ( Solomon Tekaligne, Negussie etc.) mixing freely with the public in bars, restaurants and weddings with their heads raised high and speaking loudly with an assertive air. How does a society allow this to happen? Is this tolerance or naked fear? There should be a boundary line where tolerance ends and righteous indignation starts.
2. The Promoters of Democracy : The U.S., the EU and the World Bank
Much has been said about promoting democracy in the world and standing on the side of the oppressed rather than the oppressors. The U.S. and the European Union are at the forefront of this campaign. But no promise has sounded hollower than this as it was honored more in its breach than its performance. Despite such a promise, the U.S. has repeatedly and firmly asserted that “it has no permanent friends, only permanent interests”. In other words, the above promise holds when its interests and the interests of the oppressed coincide. Where the two collide, permanent interest takes precedence over the fate of 77 million Ethiopians or 154 million Pakistanis. This contradiction is brought home vividly by America’s blind support of the embattled leaders of Ethiopia and Pakistan who the U.S. claims are its steadfast supporters in the war against terror.
The European Union is the other promoter of democracy in third world countries. Unlike the U.S., the EU stands by what it says, but does not have the means to deliver on its promise. It is a paper tiger that has no sway over its member states. We have seen the Woyanne leader being invited and feted in European capitals and rubbing shoulders with world leaders at the G-8 summit while his hand was still wet from the blood he shed in the streets of Addis Ababa. We have witnessed most member states bend over backwards to provide funds to the Woyanne government despite the atrocities it commits on its own people.
Wonder of wonders, he was even asked to deliver a speech on governance in Africa. Don’t these countries have any respect for Ethiopians at all or do they hold us in such contempt that we deserve the Woyanne leader? Or does their self-interest overshadow their sense of fairness and justice? What they seem to persistently forget is that Ethiopians have long memories.
The World Bank:
Ethiopians in the Diaspora have had repeated opportunity to bring their case to the World Bank and to dissuade the Bank from providing funds to the Woyanne government which uses the funds to perpetuate its tyrannical rule. Each time Ethiopians protested loudly to dissuade the Bank from lending to the Woyanne regime, the Bank’s determination to provide more funds by employing “creative justifications” intensified. Is the World Bank uninformed about the oppression being perpetrated in Ethiopia? No, but as the Bank’s lending policy is an extension of the U.S’s foreign policy, the Bank obeys the State Department’s bidding. Since the U.S. is the provider of the lion’s share of the Bank’s resources, it is the case of “he, who pays the piper, calls the tune”.
3. The Diaspora
1. The Leaders of “KNA” and “KIL”
What could be more gut-wrenching than to address the leaders of Knijit North America and Kinjit International among the betrayers of the broad masses of Ethiopia? We all know that the Ethiopian people chose Kinijit as the party that could liberate them from poverty, injustice and the dehumanizing degradation Woyanne inflicts on them. Despite this fact, when Woyanne threw the legitimate leaders of Kinjit behind bars, it didn’t take long for a chasm to be formed between the leaders o f KNA and KIL in the Diaspora. Both profess to fight for the release of the jailed leaders and to put back on track the democratization process in Ethiopia. They are both deeply suspicious of one another and have no qualms about one undermining the other. Their professed loyalty to the jailed Kinijit leaders is very much in doubt judged by the suspension of all political activities such as demonstrations, fund-raising activities, lobbying etc. for nearly a year while they squabbled over who should lead whom and who should have control over funds.
The division between the leaders of KNA and KIL was a welcome respite for Woyanne which afforded it the opportunity to regroup and attack the opposition with a vengeance. The recently announced charges by the courts can be directly attributed to the inactions of the feuding factions. Had they set aside their squabbling and concentrated their efforts on intensifying the struggle, Woyanne would not have dared to take the actions it took. With support from Ana Gomes, Donald Payne and Chris Smith, the leaders in the Diaspora could have dramatically altered the political dynamic.
3.2 Leaders of Ethiopian Churches in the Diaspora
As a direct reflection of the political reality in Ethiopia, there is division among the church leaders in the Washington area between those opposed to Abune Paulos and those supporting Woyanne. The perplexing thing is that even those among the congregation opposed to Abune Paulos worship at the church headed by his appointee and contribute money generously. It is widely rumored that some church leaders have developed a taste for the finer things in life and are not ashamed to flaunt it. Those giving donations to the church do not call the church leaders to account for the money collected. Do the contributors assume that it is up to God to conduct an audit?
3. The Diaspora at Large
The Diaspora is a murky brew; an amalgam of Ethiopians from various backgrounds and with differing loyalties. Some are in favor of political change in Ethiopia and actively participate in political activities, and there are those who would like to see change in Ethiopia but are not sure how that change could be brought about; a small active group supports the EPDRF, and there are others who prefer to stay away from politics and are content with making money and living a life better than the one they left behind back home.
One can safely conclude that the Diaspora is an amorphous body that could be pulled in different directions by different interest groups for their purposes. On the other hand, the Diaspora is the life-blood of the various political organizations that are jostling for leadership positions. The financial donations the Diaspora makes provide the resources that drive the activities of the various political organizations. The Diaspora is not fully aware of the pivotal role it plays in shaping the political struggle. It hasn’t so far used its clout and called the various political parties to account.
Ethiopians in the Diaspora can be divided into elites and non-elites and the following are some of the characteristics they exhibit:
The Elites in the Diaspora
Some among the educated elites in the Diaspora have not been shy to take the following stands:
o They worry that there is no group that is prepared to take over the leadership from the Woyanne and therefore would prefer to wait
o There are some who feel that living under colonial rule would have been better than living in abject poverty and would support if white South African farmers were to come to Ethiopia (even with their security forces) and produce enough food to feed the populace. This argument assumes that starvation in Ethiopia is the work of lazy farmers in stead of bad governance
o There are some who feel that the jailed leaders were tactless in that they should have agreed to take their seats in parliament and fight from within to bring about change. Don’t they know the nature of the enemy?
o There are those who attack every article that calls fro unity and preserving Ethiopianess and try to divert the issue and put the writers of such article on the defensive
The Non-elites in the Diaspora
Some in the Diaspora who left Ethiopia during the Derg’s regime hold the following opinions:
o That they are the only ones who could speak authoritatively on oppression and sacrifice and all others should defer to them. They strongly feel that crossing the border to the Sudan or Kenya and making it to safety in the U.S. and other places affords them enough credentials entitles them to the right to voice their opinion on how to bring change in Ethiopia
o They feel that those who had worked under previous regimes are tainted and therefore should be excluded from the political process. They have no respect for age or profession and seem to be emboldened by the fact that no one challenges them when they express their opinions
4. Conclusion
Enough points have been raised to spark nation-wide and Diaspora-wide discussions and come to a conclusion about what course of action to take. The discussions should culminate in actions that should be taken with firm determination and implemented with a sense of urgency. There is no time for hair-splitting and equivocation. We have had enough of that. What is needed is action.
The decisions that emanate from the discussions should be bold and no-nonsense. They should examine the full spectrum of options including the role of diplomacy and armed struggle. After all armed struggle could be justified in the same way as surgery is to remove malignant tumors.
It is strongly suggested that Ethiopians in the Diaspora and back home organize study groups, digest the points raised and embark on courses of actions that bring us closer to our goals.
No worthy daughter or son tolerates seeing a crying mother; so let’s achieve a rejoicing Ethiopia rather than the one crying betrayed by her own children!
Hailu Kidanemariam, 40, was struck while going door-to-door, handing out children’s books in a northwest Miami-Dade County neighborhood.
(WCCO) Crystal, Minn. A man detained in the investigation of a Crystal, Minnesota, woman’s murder has been arrested as the sole suspect in her killing.