The video below shows a shocking story about 80,000 Ethiopians who survive on trash at the Addis Ababa city dump in an area called Korah. Many of the people who scavenge through the trash are children and women. These people are living under such horrible poverty not because Ethiopia is a poor country. Some of the reason is that Ethiopia’s treasure is being squandered and looted by Meles Zenawi’s ruling party, that educated people who can help develop the country are forced into exile, and that the country is being ruled by a government of idiots.
This video below will make any decent human being sick. The billions of dollars donation collected from around the world by the Meles regime in the name of these people is being used to keep them under such hellish poverty. This is done with the full knowledge and active collaboration of the poverty-mongers at the World Bank and IMF, as well as Western governments who are financing the parasite regime, and training its killers to keep it in power (see here). Ethiopians are smart, hard working people. With the right government, they can make a decent living. Ethiopians do not expect the West to give them their freedom. We are simply asking the U.S. and E.U. to stop giving weapons and money to the brutal, parasite regime that is sucking the life blood of Ethiopia.
And below are some horrifying pictures of how tens of thousands of children live in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. These people live under such obscene poverty partly because the so-called “government” is busy buying thanks and fighter jets, and building concentration camps, instead of schools. The other reason is that the Ethiopian elite that has the capacity to do some thing about it simply chose to be indifferent.
Two or three decades ago, every Ethiopian from each imaginable sector of society would have been grossly offended by the utterly sad spectacle of the brave Birtukan Mediksa, a defenseless woman, a mother of a child, paraded in public and forced to undergo televised self humiliation and public shame. Birtukan Medkesa’s ineffable inner turmoil and agony are, perhaps, best captured by Eskinder Nega’s acute observation when he wrote: “… Birtukan shook her head sideways as I spoke: ‘We are proud of you,’ I told her. ’You are our hero.’ There was pained expression on her face. Something is visibly bottled up in her, pushing to explode …” Then he poses the apt question: “…What kind of heartless men would threaten a woman with indefinite imprisonment until their demise unless she admits to ‘deceiving the nation and the government?’ Where is their moral compass?” The answer to Eskinder is that they have no moral compass. They never had one, nor will they ever care to have one. It should not be expected from sadist criminals who have savoured every bit, second and minute of the pain and agony they inflicted on an entire Ethiopian nation and millions of our people for the past twenty years, at every turn and interval.
It is known that the fundamental line of demarcation that separates dictatorship from democracies is the respect accorded in the latter for the sanctity and dignity of the human beings. Individual liberty as expressed by the concepts and practice of the rule of law and due process is at the very foundation of democracies. The glaring differences among the two political systems are the way they treat their citizens as subjects, on the one hand, and autonomous individuals with dignity and humanity on the other. In democracies the weakest members of society—prisoners of war, convicts, and the mentally ill—are treated humanely and in accordance with the rule of law. The laws protect the personal dignity and liberty of the human individual. The Geneva Convention and other norms and laws of international nature are also meant to guide the behaviours of states and non-state actors alike on ways in which “enemies” are supposed to treat and deal with each other. In democracies, the laws and norms of society do not permit a prisoner to be paraded for a televised public humiliation, like what Meles Zenawi and his thugs imposed on Birtukan.
Even convicted felons, jailed for murder, express themselves and testify in public only if they agree to it. Nothing is as much a nemesis to the supreme and cherished values of liberty and human dignity as to have to speak against one’s self interest leave alone to engage in an act of forced self-humiliation. Indeed, watching Birtukan give the interview the way she did, under apparent and tremendous duress, violates the core of our essence as Ethiopians. Where the actual shame lies is in fact in the coercion against a defenseless woman like Birtuakn.
But what were the purposes of shaming and subjecting a harmless and powerless woman to public humiliation by parading her on national television to utter the words she did? Is the target only Birtuakn, the woman and the mother, the political leader, or does it have a further reaching objective beyond the public and televised rape of her humanity and individuality? The intended effect of crushing one’s self esteem in this case is also meant to crush the self–esteem of her supporters: The millions of Ethiopians who advocated for her release, held vigils, went to demonstrations and rallies, put her picture high in public places from US to Europe, from New Zealand to South Africa. In his lust for vengeance, that is what Meles Zenawi had masterminded.
What, indeed, happened to Birtukan during those lonely days and nights over the stretch of two long years? What was it that sapped her ability to speak her mind as before? What horrors, physical and psychological, was she subjected to break her sense of self? What cruelly creative methods did her tormentors use to cause all the unspeakable effects of physical torture in ways that wouldn’t leave visible signs on the outside when she steps out of the prison cell and among the Ethiopian people? What toll did complete and total deprivation of information and communication with the outside world, supplanted by constant infusion of government propaganda, exact on her spirit? In his lust for vengeance to punish Birtukan for her act of speaking truth to his power, Meles Zenawi subjected her to the unspeakable and the unthinkable, to coerce her in front of the television camera, and designed such a heart wrenching spectacle to humiliate the millions of supporters of Birtukan by parading her on national television while millions watched the chilling scene in angst.
After all, for these millions and for us all citizens, Birtukan represents the struggle of the Ethiopian people for liberty and justice. She embodied their dreams and aspirations, for all those who watched her, the millions of Ethiopians longing for justice, equality, and liberty. Two years ago, Birtukan stood in defiance of the regime and its unjust demands. In “Qale”, a testament of her moral courage, she was defiant against an oppressive and unjust order of her captors and tormentors. During the nearly two years of languishing in jail she had to endure the torment of a solitary confinement, and so much more by way of physical and mental terror, to exact a heavy toll on her mind and soul, until Birtukan was made to engage in an act of public shame and humiliation.
There should not be a shadow of doubt that this basest of acts, such barbaric and heartless act was done with the calculated agenda of killing the ideals of liberty and justice she championed for the people of Ethiopia; it was done to murder the noble ideals to whose height Ethiopian humanity has aspired to reach; and it was done to stampede over the millions of Ethiopians hungry for freedom, equality and democracy. By desecrating and discrediting the messenger, the embodiment of our aspirations, with her own words in an orchestrated televised interview, those universal values of freedom, liberty and justice are also put to public shame and humiliation.
No lingering doubt should be nagging the mind of any sane citizen. The aim of the cruel drama is clear and loud: Meles declares once again, we can break your leaders; we will make them bow and cow to our will; we can humiliate the pan-Ethiopian identity Birtukan represents. Derivatively, we can, at any given time, take away your self esteem, your dignity and your self-respect as Ethiopians. We can make you shiver with fear; turn you into a sheepish subject that can only function under our will and whim. In her essay on Courage and Resistance, Susan Sontag wrote: “…Courage inspires communities: the courage of an example–for courage is as contagious as fear and fear disperses them…” It was Birtukan’s moral courage that was the target, in an attempt to replace it with fear. Fear of the power of Meles Zenawi’s state, an unjust power. Fear pervading the human individual and society, the Ethiopian people at large, as has happened in the near totalitarian police state of Meles Zenawi’s ethnocentric dictatorship.
Surely, the inhumane acts of public humiliation and forced confessions of course have their precedents where totalitarian dictatorships have reigned. As is well known, during the former regime of Col. Mengistu, under the spell of its Marxist Stalinist ideology, people were forced to conduct the so-called “self criticism”, admitting guilt or an alleged “crime” in public, if not televised, and engage in an imposed self incrimination. It is a practice that has its origins from Joseph Stalin’ s infamous show trials and self-incriminating confessions of Bolshevik leaders, his onetime comrades—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, “the golden boy” of the Bolsheviks, and many many others. A practice that became the norm on the dark side of the Iron Curtain, whose millions of dissidents found themselves in dungeons in Siberia, known as Gulags. Prisons and solitary confinements that were designed to crush the human spirit in freezing Siberia and other desolate places that also meant to desolate the human soul and break the will. Human spirits whose stories are embodied by such renowned Russian dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. The award for which Birtukan is nominated bears the latter’s name. Brutal dictators of our most recent times including Sadam Hussein of Iraq and Idi Amin Dada of Uganda employed similar practices as well.
Not coincidentally, the regime of Meles Zenawi has its roots in the Stalinist-Albanian brand—an ideology he and his TPLF comrades espoused during their formative years. But even more, the Meles and TPLF Stalinist mode of thinking was born and reared with another quasi ideology — a vehement hatred of Ethiopians and Ethiopiawinet. Such a worldview was at the core of TPLF’s ideological outlooks starting from their early days when it championed its original agenda of the secession of Tigray from Ethiopia and the formation of the Tigray republic. Meles Zenawi and his friends saw the universe and the problems of society through the prism of ethnicity or “nations and nationalities”. Society’s prime contradictions had their basis in the “question of nationalities”. And the prime agenda of its struggle? That of ushering in a society in which “nations and nationalities” are the core organising principle of identity and society. In contrast, the human individual’s sanctity and dignity, liberty as well as moral values that sustain society, values such as self realization, a higher spiritual and attainment and the realization of a truly free being of the human individual, do not figure whatsoever in this worldview.
The ethnocentric driven quasi ideology which Meles Zenawi’s TPLF erected as the edifice of the current Ethiopian state has become the alpha and omega and the standard bearers against which all and sundry policies, activities, and ideas are measured. Of course, sooner rather than later, the hidden agenda behind the official ideology of the state, and the attendant hodgepodge “Revolutionary Democracy,” proved to be a façade to mask ethnic minority domination and the all too pervasive hegemony of the ethnocentric elite of Tigray over the rest of the Ethiopian people. (The term here is used to differentiate the latter from the non-ethnocentric and democratic elite of Tigray). The current reality in Ethiopia reminds one of the proverbial Orwellian dictum found in Animal Farm that “some animals are more equal than the others.”
As argued in the preceding sections, when the cruel sadists chose to savour watching such a sad spectacle of a defenseless woman being paraded on national television, they surely have a dual pronged evil agenda. In the process, the tens of millions of Ethiopians are humiliated too; they are made to feel that they are powerless, and indeed are made to feel the pangs emanating from the mighty power of Meles Zenawi, at the helm of the ethnocentric dictatorship. The purpose is none other than exacting submission, subservience, and fear by the populace. Let us recall what was done to Tamrat Layne. The erstwhile prime minister of the TPLF/EPRDF regime was forced to confess his alleged crime in front of the so-called parliament, and the public watched him, dumfounded, on national television. The rest is a well known story of Meles Zenawi’s one time comrade in arms serving prison for several years on corruption charges.
One is hard pressed to pose the following question. Is it then only a coincidence that the only two high profile cases during the reign of the TPLF/EPRDF regime of Meles Zenawi’s ascent to state power who were made to endure the agony of public humiliation and shame happened to be non-Tigrayans? This line of reasoning and claim is not without a foundation. A glimpse can be offered of the thinking behind Meles Zenawi’s and that of his associates in the TPLF and their stooges in the so-called EPRDF. In the Aftermath of Birtukan’s release, the prime website of the Woyanes in the Diaspora wrote the following about a TPLF cadre known as Amora and in whose honor they produced a film: “Let us hope lessons have been learned here by every one! By now we should all know, after watching the story of Amoraw and others, if there is injustice and repression Ethiopians do know how to fight till the last drop so to speak. Amoraw died because he did not want to blink even when faced with certain death to save his life let alone a warm jail! He fought till death and brought about the current constitution. The constitution must be respected. The Government must be respected for it is the government of the people! And these are the lessons we hope Birtukan and others have learned, that no one is above the law!” So goes the editorial posted on the said Woyane Website. The message of is clear, only the TPLFites can endure pain, torture and death.
Be that as it may, for any one person who has any lingering doubt, what has emerged once again is further proof of the baseness of the characters at the helm of the Ethiopian state: Brutal, cruel, sadistic, and low life scum of the earth. A bunch of cold blooded thugs that have no moral compass whatsoever, as the prominent journalist Eskinder Nega tried in vain to find one. Today, such are the people claiming to rule over the eighty million plus Ethiopians, claiming to be the “government” of Ethiopia worthy of respect, acceptance legitimacy by the citizens of the Ethiopian nation. If there is a single soul who is not utterly outraged at the multiple crimes committed on Birtukan by the Meles Zenawi, it is telling as to the lowest depths we have sunk as Ethiopians. It is also telling of the degradation of our essence as human beings devoid of all moral values–compassion, empathy, forgiveness, respect and empathy for the weak and powerless—which have been the pillars of functioning societies throughout the ages.
We have seen our nation our people subjected to all forms of agonies; we have witnessed in agony piles of skeletons; we have carried heaps of humiliations against our humanity and Ethiopian identity until this very day by the Meles Zenawi’s regime. The people of Ethiopia have no choice but to redouble the resolve to fight and remove this sadist group of criminals from power by all and any means necessary. Let us then resolve and fight until the end to bring about a truly democratic political order, where the dignity and sanctity of human beings and the freedom of the individual are held the paramount values in our ancient land.
One bard stated some time ago: “I believe in aristocracy, though, if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure.”
The power to endure all trials and see the inevitable triumph of humane and just Ethiopia over cruelty, injustice, and dictatorship. No doubt at all, we shall overcome indeed!
A fight broke out at a ruling party meeting chaired by Meles Zenawi last month, which ended with his spokesperson, Bereket Simon, flat on the floor, according to reliable sources close to the ruling party.
Bereket had to get medical attention for the injury he sustained from a {www:sucker punch} by Abadula Gemeda, the former defense minister and currently speaker of the fake parliament.
Following the incident, Bereket was absent from work and his regular press conferences for several days.
Reportedly, the brawl broke out when Bereket insulted Abadula Gemeda, and Abadula responded in kind. Bereket then approached the much bigger Abadula in a threatening way. Seconds later Bereket was knoked out cold.
As is the case with most despots, Meles enjoys keeping his puppets at each others throat.
Birtukan Mideksa is out of jail. Without exception (not including Woyane thugs) all Ethiopians are pleased. After all we are the reason why she went to jail isn’t it?
I heard about Wz. Birtukan five years ago. She was one of Kinijit’s leaders and associates that were hauled to Kaliti after the 2005 elections. She symbolized Kinijit from jail. Birtukan’s letter from jail was very powerful. Here in Oakland we made a poster quoting a line from her letter “Kinijit is spirit. It is a spirit of freedom – a spirit of love and unity.” It is very uplifting. Dr. Berhanu thru his intellect and Weyzero Birtukan thru her magnetic personality and charisma emerged as the two leaders that took Ethiopia by storm.
Upon their triumphant release the two leaders choose different means to achieve their goal. Although they are taking different routes the destination remains the same, a free and democratic Ethiopia. Judge Birtukan’s determination and tenacity paid off with her successful launch of Andenet Party. Wz. Bertukan is no weakling. It took all of her strength to reconstruct Kinijit. She was harassed, detained, her supporters beaten sometimes hounded out of towns but she stayed the course. There was not any stone they left unturned to frustrate and force her to give up and ‘go home’. She has demonstrated her free spirit when she defied Ato Meles and set his friend Seye Abreha free on bail. They call it judicial independence.
Andenet was her answer to Woyane leaders. She was going to beat them working within their restrictive laws. Bertukan became the talk of the country. Again Ato Meles used illegal means to arrest her. He is above the law of Ethiopia. The law of the land and the Constitution do not apply to the ‘leader’.
Chairman Bertukan was not just thrown in jail. For six months that we know of she was kept in solitary confinement. She was not allowed visitors, the Red Cross, outside medical help or any contact except her guards.
Solitary confinement is torture. It is considered a form of psychological torture. It is illegal and it is a criminal act. It is inhuman. Senator John McCain knows about solitary confinement, here is what he wrote:
“It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—more than two years of it spent in isolation in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cell, unable to communicate with other P.O.W.s except by tap code, secreted notes, or by speaking into an enamel cup pressed against the wall. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”
Terry Anderson the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press was kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1985. He was released in 1991. In his memoir ‘Den of Lions” he recounts his bitter experience and ‘solitary confinement’ is a bitter chapter he would rather forget. He wrote ‘“The mind is a blank. Jesus, I always thought I was smart. Where are all the things I learned, the books I read, the poems I memorized? There’s nothing there, just a formless, gray-black misery. My mind’s gone dead. God, help me.”
After sharing a cell with other hostages he was thrown into solitary confinement and after a few weeks he recalled in his memoir “I find myself trembling sometimes for no reason,” he wrote. “I’m afraid I’m beginning to lose my mind, to lose control completely.”
Under the guidance and leadership of Ato Meles and his associates Ethiopia has become one of the few places in the world where government sanctioned torture and inhuman punishment is the norm. This is not news to all the western enablers of Ato Meles including the United States, Great Britain, Germany and France. After all the US is training his army and Special Forces while the British trained the police. I don’t mean to leave the Chinese out but you really don’t expect the People’s Republic to be bothered with such trivia as Human Rights. We Ethiopians are perfectly aware of what goes on in ‘Meakelawi’ and in all the Kilil Bantustans but we choose to look the other way. We seem to be willing to substitute the building of a few condominiums and phantom economic growth to loss of liberty and decent to one-man rule.
Guess what the more you tolerate the bully the bolder he gets. Bully’s feed off other peoples discomfort and misery. Our TPLF bosses use bullying to ‘conceal shame or anxiety to boost their self-esteem: by demeaning others, they feel empowered’. What is being played this past week in our country is both sad and shameful. This indecent and inhuman show of power by a government against a solitary human being soiled our nation.
The injustice done against Chairman Birtukan demeaned all of us Ethiopians. It showed how mean and callous we have become. This kind cruelty against a citizen by the state is considered obscene. It is very difficult to understand how a ‘leader’ of eighty million people take personal revenge against an opponent and use state machinery like the courts and public security to break the will of the individual? I felt emptiness in my stomach when I saw our sisters/mother/party leader’s interview prominently displayed at their foreign web sites and broadcasted to the Ethiopian people. It was a slap in the face. All I could do was marvel at the capacity of those producing this unfolding event. .
One is forced to ask why all this display of their ugly side for the whole world to witness?
Is the reward worth the deed? What was the message and was it effective? Did Ato Meles and company gain from the current tragic event they have unveiled? How is it different from the other methods they have used to destroy the lives of past leaders? In today’s Ethiopia TPLF atrocity against citizens has become something of a spectator sport.
Assefa Maru of Ethiopian Teachers Association was gunned down by ‘state security’ while on his way to his office. They did not try to hide it. Dr. Taye Woldesemayat was kept in solitary confinement while being chained like a wild animal and was exiled upon release. Dr Asrat Weldeyes died due to abuse and denial of medical treatment. Dr. Berhanu would have met the same fate if he had set foot back home. Ato Bekele Jarso of Oromo Federalist Party was kept at Kaliti to show him of things to come and quietly chased out of his country. As we witness the release of Bertukan, General Asmenew Tsige is being slowly made to die by his captors. The extent of Woyane terror will be told and humanity will cringe. We Ethiopians will shrug it off. We have become immune to acts of cruelty against each other.
Why do you think Ato Meles and company feel safe and comfortable doing all this atrocity? Do you think we have something to do with it? Did you see Ato Meles and associates celebrating their cherished accomplishment last week? They were happy they got the apology they demanded. They were acting like little kids in a candy store. Look you worthless Ethiopians, we can jail your leader, torture her and make her apologize to the mighty Meles for daring to question his superior mind and intellect! And there is nothing you can do about it. That is what they said. Their actions spoke loud.
Our response was predictable. ‘I told you he will destroy her’, ‘she should have known better’, ‘it is too bad she suffered’, ‘it is nice she is back with her family’ etc. etc. Where is the rage? Where is the response to do something about it so it does not happen again? The fact of the matter is Chairman Bertukan does not want our sympathy. Did it occur to you may be the Chairman was perfectly aware of the danger she was in by challenging the dictator? May be that is what dedication to a cause is all about. The possibility of being hurt or killed is part of the package of challenging a totalitarian state. Leaders like Chairman Bertukan do it not for personal gain or fame but out of a sense of doing the right thing. It is people like the TPLF folks who claim to have fought Derg injustice but turn around and demand payment for their service. Mercenaries, if you ask me. People like Chairman Bertukan require no payment or sympathy from us. They just want us to wake up from our slumber and do the right thing.
We are proud of our sister. The fact that she was able to walk out of Kaliti hellhole intact is a testimony to her strength. The prince of darkness and his associates used the two years to break her will and damage her humanity. They used sleep deprivation, isolation, starvation, physical violence and selective admittance of current bandas like the so-called elders including Ephraim Isaac, Pastor Daniel and other trash to infect her brain with demoralizing stories. It was an all out war orchestrated by the Prime Minister and his associates. Ato Meles was on top things with his periodic report to the rest of us regarding her weight gain and her being ready to sign his confession.
After everything is said and done the only thing left is sadness at the situation our country finds itself. We are being shepherded by shameless characters that have no sense of human decency. The fact they engage in such criminal act for the world to witness and congratulate each other for a job well done is testimonial to their madness. They display the typical characteristics of intolerance, indifference and grandiosity seen in dangerous leaders like Hitler, Saddam or Kim Jung Il.
Chairman Bertukan needs rest. We urge her supporters to give her time to decompress and unwind. She is in a fragile state of mind. She has gone thru a lot of ordeal. We urge her family and supporters to be aware of the people around her. It is our responsibility to shield her from further pain as she slowly recovers. Mental and physical abuse is not a simple matter to be shrugged off. What was done to her by Ato Meles and his security personnel will haunt her for a long time to come. We should avoid demanding from her but rather give her the time to work things out her own way and her own pace.
The best medicine for Chairman Bertukan is to go out of Ethiopia and get peace of mind and professional help. The problem is if she does that Woyane thugs will start the rumors that she abandoned the cause. That is their way of keeping her close to her abusers so they can prolong her agony. And some of us like a wound up doll will repeat Woyane logic and hurl insults at her. It is not farfetched. We saw it happen to Dr. Berhanu. There were plenty that were ‘disappointed’ he did not go back. They are the same folks who praised Bertukan for retuning but went into their hiding place once she was jailed. Do you think Woyane skirt is big enough to hide all these hodam enablers?
It has been crystal clear for a while that the West (U.S., U.K., Germany others) will not be of any help to the struggle for freedom in Ethiopia. In fact, they are fueling the repression with billions of dollars in assistance to the brutal regime led by their favorite beggar despot Meles Zenawi. However, Ethiopians are not without options. We just need to take matters into our own hands. In the following article German-Foreign-Policy.com reports that the German government is offering an expanded bilateral military cooperation program to the Meles regime in 2011 in order to serve its east African interests:
The German Bundeswehr is expanding its support for Ethiopia’s armed forces, despite persistent accusations that they committed serious war crimes. As was confirmed by the parliamentary state secretary in the German Defense Ministry, Thomas Kossendey, Berlin is offering Addis Ababa a bilateral military cooperation program for 2011, which includes the training of army and air force officers. A so-called organization for development aid is also involved. Berlin has been supporting the Ethiopian regime for years, because it has made itself useful as the West’s East African proxy. Over the past few years, Ethiopia, in coordination with Washington and Berlin, dispatched its troops to Somalia to overthrow forces displeasing to the West and committed grave war crimes, according to reports from human rights organizations. These organizations are also accusing the Ethiopian army of ignoring the rules of warfare in their repression of Ethiopia’s domestic rebellions. In his talk with german-foreign-policy.com, Dr. Berhanu Nega, who opposes the regime in his country, raised grave accusations against Germany’s policy toward Ethiopia. Dr. Berhanu considers the hope that the West would be helpful in Ethiopia’s democratization process is doomed from the outset.
Germany’s interest in Ethiopia and east African can be protected by supporting the people of the region to get their freedom, not by funding the parasite Woyanne regime that has made the region a perennial war zone.
Just a couple of decades ago Khat (ጫት) consumption was limited to a small area of Ethiopia, mainly eastern and south eastern of the country. Today, Khat use is {www:pervasive} in all parts of Ethiopia, except the Tigray region where it is outlawed.
As a result, currently a growing number of Ethiopian youth are addicted to khat, causing most of them to be less productive citizens who walk around like zombies.
The ruling party doesn’t want to control khat — although it knows about its debilitating effect on the society — because many of its officials are deeply involved in the khat trade
It is estimated that the khat market in Ethiopia alone generates well over one hundred million dollars per year.
Attracted to the fast money from trafficking in Khat, the Meles regime officials are upgrading to heroine, a dangerous drug that fries the brain. These days, in Addis Ababa and other major cities in Ethiopia, heroin use is becoming rampant, destroying the lives of a significant number of young Ethiopians.
According to Ethiopian Review sources, most of the heroine is entering the country via Ethiopian Airline flights from Asia. The traffickers include airline hostesses and airport officials who are affiliated with the ruling party who easily bypass security checks.
The heroine market in Ethiopia has become so lucrative that as a business strategy, Ethiopian aviation officials, and Ethiopian Airlines itself, are giving blind eye to heroin traffic, turning Ethiopia into a major narcotics transit route between Middle Eastern, Asian, and West African heroin markets.
The amount of drugs transiting via Ethiopia is increasing., according to OSAC. “Heroin transits Ethiopia for markets in West Africa, Europe, and the United States, primarily due to Ethiopia’s good airline connections between those markets and Asia. Nigerian and Ghanaian traffickers use Ethiopia as a transit point on a limited but increasing basis.”
