By Yilma Bekele
It was a beautiful weekend in Oakland. It was sunny, warm and clear blue skies. We celebrated Meskel like never before. Every year you see more young ones scurrying around between your legs and all over the place. It is a population explosion with the new arrivals and the newly born. As usual it was both serene and lavish. The folks of Medhanealem cathedral know how to give a feast fit for Ethiopians.
We are both proud and happy to have a caring church that knows its responsibility to people and country. To watch so many Ethiopians having fun and rejoicing in celebrating their heritage is heart warming. You can take the Ethiopian out of Ethiopia but you cannot take being Ethiopian out of him/her. The fact we were treated to such a holiday spirit is not an accident. Here in Oakland we have a little advantage. We are blessed to have a caring and humble father that has managed to keep has flock together and avoid the bad and terrible things that are happening all around us. Our church is under constant attack and church leaders like Abatachen have shown us how to be to be resilient. We might bend but we will never snap and break.
I am sure it took a lot of planning to organize such an event. Since there is the issue of setting fire (Demera) both the City and the fire department have to be notified. There were tents to be pitched, table and chairs to be set. There was food and water to be brought and special playing pen for the young ones to be set. Traffic control is always an issue and setting up the sound system takes knowledge. It all went well due to excellent planning by the Church Board and their helpers. A lot of Ethiopians went home happy.
It is such a joy to see Ethiopians coming together. United and working for the same purpose and goal. Priceless!
Another important event took place on the other side of this continent. The location was Uptown Manhattan and the name of the place is Columbia University. Here on Wednesday September 22nd. another set of Ethiopians defended our honor and hoisted our flag sky high for all to see with the lettering ‘Do not thread on me!’ embossed on good old green yellow and red. Our people chartered buses, drove in their private cars, took the train and flew to be present at this important event. They came as far away as Carolina, as close as Boston as next door as New Jersey or a tad far as Connecticut. They came to speak for the voiceless. They were a few hundred in real numbers but they were hundreds of thousands in spirit. They were not alone. All Ethiopia was with them. They showed the tyrant ferenji respect is not a substitute to our love and respect.
Columbia University got more than what it bargained for. The hired TPLF lobbyists and the Professors for ‘sale’ were exposed for what they are, tyrant coddlers! Columbia heard the cry of the Ethiopian people loud and clear. They were seen going around like a chicken with is head cut off. First they removed the crappy flattering autobiography, then their Professors rebelled and called foul, and were forced to move the venue to a lower setting and crowned their debacle by canceling President Bollinger’s appearance.
Ethiopians in the Diaspora worked together and waged a successful campaign to turn this unjust invitation into a teachable moment. Students and faculty of Columbia University were made aware of the plight of our people. We emailed, faxed, called and made a lot of noise. Our independent websites were relentless and our airwaves were filled with somber discussions. We were at our best. We did it not out of hate but out of love for our homeland.
I wrote an article regarding the individual’s visit. I gave the examples of Fascist Italy’s aggression of 1935 and Jimmy Carters blunder in the aftermath of the 2005 elections to lament on Ferenjis disrespect for our sensibilities. I mis-spoke. I apologize. Both examples are off target. When Italy invaded our motherland our people did not fold their hands and sit around waiting for the bombs to fall. No they marched north to confront the enemy. The fact that Italy possessed airplanes loaded with poison gas and heavy guns capable of doing great damage was not a deterrent to the sons and daughters of Tewodros, Menelik, Tona, Abajifar and Yohanes.
When our honorable guest lost the election in 2005 and decided to win by any means necessary our people did not throw their hands in the air and went back home. They rose up to confront a highly trained and lethal Agazi force of the Prime Minster and engaged the enemy in Merkato and around the nation. Merkato is our sacred ground. Our ‘ground zero.’ Let us just say we lacked the resolve to take the game to its natural conclusion. (Our Kenyan neighbors took note and called Mr. Kibabki’s bluff. Today, Kenya with a democratically drawn constitution will surpass our country in a short time and take the leadership position in African Affairs.) We lost over two hundred sons and daughters of Ethiopia. I did not mean to dishonor the memory of our brave people that stood up against all odds.
My rant against Columbia University is a misplaced anger and a feeble attempt to shift responsibility to others. The confrontation should have been against myself. Don’t you think it is about time we as a nation do some deep agonizing introspection? Self-examination is long over due. Columbia University, for whatever reason have decided to bestow such honor on an abuser of human right and that is their prerogative. It makes us sad and loose respect to an institution that is supposed to be a center of advanced learning and higher moral expectations. After everything has been said and done the problem is ours to solve or live with.
So the question that is keeping me awake at night is how come the people that go out of their way to keep our heritage intact even in exile are the same people that enable Woyane’s atrocity on our people. How come these sons and daughters of Ethiopia are helping a single ethnic based Junta that exiled them out of their homeland by investing their hard earned money in his ponzi scheme? How could you claim to love Ethiopia and give money to those that are destroying Ethiopia?
My question to my brethren and myself is how did we get here? At what point did our character get devalued like our useless currency the Bir? Despite the on going attempt to rewrite our history Ethiopia has existed for centuries as a Nation State. Believe me there aren’t that many countries that can claim that. Today in 2010 how come we have become the poster country for an example of a failed state? Is there a historian, a sociologist or political scientist that can pin point the date of our collective rush to disintegrate?
It has been forty years now since we started this down ward spiral. We have managed to pick a few nasty habits in this difficult journey we embarked upon. The sons and daughter of those proud and brave souls that defined Ethiopia have been bullied to submission at home or reduced to a bunch of destitute nomads roaming the planet in search of a peaceful corner to lie down and die in peace.
There are two psychological terms that come to mind when we think of the predicament we find our selves in. I am speaking about the concepts of ‘intervention’ and a term known as ‘the Stockholm syndrome.’ In part two this search for explanation I will put my two cents worth to elaborate our dysfunctional behavior that is feeding the monster we have created. In the mean time we thank both groups in Oakland and New York for keeping hope alive. Melkam Meskel sons and daughters of brave Abeshas.
By Yilma Bekele
Let just say it is painful to hear that a prestigious University like Columbia has invited Ethiopia’s tyrannical leader Meles Zenawi to speak at the annual World Leaders Forum. As an Ethiopian I feel insulted and mocked upon.
Then again we Ethiopians are used to having our country and people judged with different sets of values and standards than what is applied to others. The cowardly stand taken by the League of Nations that failed to condemn Italy’s aggression against a member state served a severe blow to the Organization. Emperor Haile Selassie’s prophetic words ‘”It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” Still rings true today.
We will always remember former President Jimmy Carter’s retreat from telling the truth on the aftermath of the 2005 general elections. When the PM declared state of emergency this is what Mr. Cater said, “We believe collectively that the decision of the prime minister was not excessive in preventing any possible arousal of animosity or violence among his own supporters or the opposition.” Such endorsement of an illegal action emboldened the tyrant to let loose his private Agazi force and specially trained sharpshooters on unarmed civilian protesters and the world ignored our cry.
Columbia University is not ‘just another’ institution. It is the fifth oldest in the US (1754) and is credited with affiliation with the most Noble Prize winners in the world. The World Leaders Forum that extended the invitation has the following regarding its guest:
Under the seasoned governmental leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, now in his fourth term, and vision of the Tigrai Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Ethiopia has made and continues to make progresses in many areas including in education, transportation, health and energy.
Does that statement reflect facts on the ground, as we Ethiopians know it? For such a prestigious research University the statement seems to have been written by a freshman that is not yet clued on the importance of fact check and adherence to higher academic standard of proof before publishing. TPLF is neither visionary (student of Albania’s Enver Hoxha) EPDRF is a subsidiary of TPLF and the progress is a mirage concocted for donors and enablers and we can prove that without much fanfare.
Here is your ‘visionary’ leader undressed as seen by his poverty stricken subjects that pray daily to all the Gods for his quick departure from the land of Abeshas.
His visionary policies include:
Land: The State owns all of Ethiopia and the people lease the land and pay rent. The State uses its ownership to reward or punish the citizen depending on ethnic and political affiliation.
Business and Industry: All key industries and private businesses are owned by the TPLF party and it affiliates. EFFORT is a super conglomerate owned and controlled by the party. It owns Banks, Cement factory, Brewery, Insurance, Transportation, Tannery, Engineering etc. EFFORT is bigger than Ethiopia and is not accountable to the State.
Communications. Telephone service both land and cellular is owned by the state. It is a cash cow for TPLF that uses the income for its own survival (on security, bribing Bantustan chiefs, and buying individuals loyalty) instead of upgrading and modernizing the system, Thus in this day of explosion of cellular technology Ethiopia is next to last in Africa.
Media: The state controls the single Television and short wave radio transmission services. ESAT (Ethiopian Satellite Television) that is trying to level the playing field by offering independent news and entertainment service from abroad is being subjected to jamming using sophisticated Chinese technology. The print media has been decimated and at the moment on life support with no chance of survival. Publishers, editors and reporters are victims of secret service death squads and forced exile from their homeland. Internet when available is still slow dial up service with all ‘independent’ sites blocked.
Politics: TPLF divided our country into ethnic Bantustans called ‘Kilils’ like as in South Africa during Apartheid rule. This is your basic ‘divide and rule’ policy pursued by colonialists to have the natives fight for the limited resources. In theory although the Kilils supposedly have their own people in charge, in practice it is TPLF cadres that are running the show.
The so-called EPDRF is a Hollywood style façade for show. The different Party’s are the brainchild of TPLF and nothing more than puppets on a string. Any opposition that dares to challenge the mighty TPLF is subjected to intimidation, harassment and cooption. No viable opposition is tolerated. The Chairman of Andenet Party Bertukan Mideksa is solitary confinement and denied visitors, Red Cross and medical attention. As for the four elections they were nothing but a farce. The recent one in May of 2010 was the ultimate joke played on the world where the single ethnic based party garnered 99% of the vote. So much for participatory democracy.
Dear organizers, if you have only talked to Ethiopians at home you would have found out that famine is a fact of life in TPLF’s Ethiopia. ‘According to estimates by the United Nations World Food Program, 14.3 million people in Ethiopia are threatened with starvation—every fifth person in the country http://www.wfp.org/
When we say your ‘visionary’ leader is a murder it is not some kind of metaphor rather a statement with verifiable facts. Ask Addis Abeba University students that have been recipient of Woyane justice. Unlike Columbia University, AAU has become a cadre training institutions with most of its able and seasoned professors dismissed by the PM (1991) students murdered (1993, 2001) and independent associations banned.
We Ethiopians are a little confused when you claim ‘progress’ that is being made by the regime under the PM. On the other hand we are perfectly aware of the fact that our country ranks 171 on the UN Human Development Index. I doubt being ahead of nine countries is a source of pride. I am sure the PM will mention stability and peace as one of his legacy. That is not rue either. Since his assumption of power there has been inter ethnic clashes in Gambella, Awasa, Jimma, Ogaden, Afar, Arsi and all university campuses including the TPLF capital Mekele. Today’s Ethiopia is a police state with security personnel in every government office, neighborhood control centers (Kebeles) and so called Kilils or Ethiopian Bantustans.
With all due respect your invitation of a dictator whose crime has been recorded by such credible organizations as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors without Boarders, International Federation of Journalists and your own State Department Human Rights Report is very perplexing for his victims. I very much doubt you will sleep easy after reading any of the above organizations reports.
You can talk all you want about ‘freedom of speech’ but the fact of the matter is that your honored guest does not believe in that. It also makes one wonder if you will accord the same right to Osama Bin laden or how you would feel if the shoe is on the other feet and Addis Ababa University invites Mr. Bin laden to expound on the his ‘seasoned leadership’ of a terrorist organization and the progress he is making in extending his tentacles all over the world.
I assure you with or without your help Ethiopia will be free. Your honored guest will be tried by the Ethiopian people for his crimes and our country will rise up one day to usher liberty and the rule of law in our ancient land. After over thirty years of civil war, dictatorship, famine we are one tired people. Your ill advised action makes us sad but not despondent because we know we are capable of overcoming any hurdle and rebuild our country to join the international community as free and equal.
