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.
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.”
The great American novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote: “All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken. …” On October 6, 2010, Birtukan Midekssa, Ethiopia’s First Daughter, also headed home from nearly two years of captivity to the loves of her life, the ones she was forced to forsake, her daughter Hal’le, her long-suffering septuagenarian mother and 80 million of her countrymen and women who prayed and waited to see her walk free. It will be an October to remember.
The Stockholm Syndrome
Dictator-in-chief Meles Zenawi says he freed Birtukan because she asked for a “pardon”; and “pardon” he did in “words that are like a cloud of winged snakes,” to quote Percy Bysshe Shelley, drifting aloft a sea of lies, damned lies and total fabrications. The history of the law is replete with monstrous examples of false confessions: innocent individuals victimized into admitting atrocious crimes under duress, torture, threat of violence to themselves or loved ones, diminished capacity induced by extreme psychological and physical deprivation or mental impairment induced by prolonged and harsh solitary confinement or by trickery and deception.
Prisoners can be brainwashed to say anything by those who control them. Prisoners who have endured torture, extreme degradation and abuse have been known to do shocking things to please their captors and ease their own pain and suffering. Abused prisoners have been known to deceive themselves into believing the cruelty of their captors as acts of kindness. It is called the “Stockholm Syndrome”. When the victim is under the total and complete control of her captor for her basic needs of survival and her very existence, she will say and do anything to please her captor. The victim will comply with any command or demand of her captor just to survive and remain sane, and not self-destruct by giving in to the terror and rage she feels for her helpless situation. It is ironic that Birtukan in this so-called pardon allegedly confesses and apologizes for wrongdoings committed in Stockholm, Sweden.
It is not difficult to parade a prisoner before television cameras and force her to confess her “crimes”. Political and war prisoners subjected to torture, deprivation and psychological manipulation have been known to condemn themselves, their families, their countries, and even the Almighty. Brutalized prisoners have been known to collaborate with their torturers to inflict horrendous violence on fellow prisoners. Political prisoners in solitary confinement have been driven to hysteria and madness by their isolation. Political and war prisoners have committed suicide to end their suffering at the hands of the captors.
Birtukan was held for months in a dark room with no human contact except a few minutes a week with her mother and daughter. Fear, anxiety and despair were her only companions. Heartache knocked constantly on the door to her dark room needling her: “Did you do the right thing leaving three year-old Hal’le to the care of your aging mother?” Self-doubt kept her awake in that dark room where time stood still asking her the same question over and over: “Is it worth all this suffering? Give up!” But a voice in her conscience would echo thunderously, “Like hell you’re going to give up, Birtukan. Fight on. Keep on fighting. ‘Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.'” In the end Birtukan signed Zenawi’s scrap of paper making exception to convictions of honor and good sense. We expected nothing less from such a great young woman.
Zenawi Wrote It, Birtukan Signed It!
What is written in the so-called pardon request is a transcription of what Zenawi said during his ignominious appearance at Columbia University[1] a couple of weeks ago. Using forensic document examination techniques, it can be demonstrated to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that Zenawi is the invisible hand that authored the pardon document. Simply stated, Zenawi wrote the pardon to himself and had Birtukan sign it. It is just as simple as that. But scientific investigative techniques aside, we all know, as Mandela has taught us, that “Only free men (and women) can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.” Terms and conditions are always dictated to prisoners. Birtukan is no position to negotiate her release by pardon or any other means. Zenawi wrote down his release terms and conditions and ordered Birtukan to sign it. The alleged “pardon” request could in no way be regarded as Birtukan’s voluntary confession of wrongdoing; it is Zenawi’s hallucination of Birtukan’s wrongdoing. It is hogwash.
Zenawi’s “pardon” may be “real” to his Western donors who want to ease their guilty-as-sin consciences for providing billions to support his dictatorship. For Zenawi’s apologists who will sell their souls for a patch of land to build a shack and throw in their grandmothers to sweeten the deal, it may be a real pardon. For the opportunists, brown nosers, derrier-kissers and mercenaries, it may be a legitimate pardon. But to any freedom-loving Ethiopian or any other reasonable human being, the “pardon” is nothing more than the reveries of a self-absorbed megalomaniac garbed in legalistic hokum.
The fact of the matter is that an innocent person’s freedom is not negotiable or pardonable. An innocent person cannot ask for a pardon nor a career criminal grant it. Zenawi makes a travesty of the institution of pardon, which has a long and honored history in human civilization; and occupies the highest position in the tradition of the law. Zenawi robbed Birtukan of her freedom. He did not free her by a “pardon”. Birtukan has always been free. Zenawi let Birtukan out of prison in 2010 for the same reason he put her in prison in 2008: Enlightened self-interest. He jailed her to make sure she will not whip him at the polls. He let her loose to pander to Birtukan’s generation and hoodwink the international community.
Just last year, Zenawi emphatically and sadistically guaranteed that “there will never be an agreement with anybody to release Birtukan. Ever. Full stop. That’s a dead issue.” Now he says she is “free” to go because she scratched her initials on a scrap of paper. When his Western donor sugar daddies pled with him time and again to let Birtukan go, he told them to go to hell, hell, hell. When the Western donor fat cats unsheathed their gelatinous claws and threatened to withhold aid, he laughed in their faces. But he finally had to let Birtukan go (as he could never free her) not because he is a statesman, compassionate or squeezed by the donors, but because he is ghastly afraid of what Birtukan represents. She represents Ethiopia’s youth. She represents Ethiopian women. She represents the dreams and aspirations of 80 million people. She represents the ascent of freedom and democracy and the descent of dictatorship and oppression in Ethiopia. In sum, she represents the “future country of Ethiopia”.
Zenawi knows the youth and women of Ethiopia hold the key to his very survival and the permanence of the ethnic homelands (Bantustans) he has toiled for so long to create. He also knows they hold a deep grudge against him for chaining Birtukan in the dungeons of Kality while shackling them in what has become Prison Nation Ethiopia. By letting go Bitukan, Zenawi seeks atonement and redemption in the eyes of the young people and women of Ethiopia. It is his twisted way of asking them for a pardon. By releasing Birtukan, Zenawi hopes to release and unleash the good will and support of Ethiopia’s youth and women to himself and his regime.
It is laughable that Zenawi wants to be seen as magnanimous for granting “pardon” to Birtukan. But self-delusion is the quintessential attribute of all dictators. Zenawi confuses the arrogance of vanity with magnanimity. When a thief is forced to return what he has stolen to the rightful owner, it cannot be said that he is a virtuous man or performed an honest act. When the slave master is forced to emancipate his slave from bondage, it cannot be said that he freed the slave. The slave was always free until enslaved by the slave master. As one cannot thank the thief or praise the slave master, neither can Zenawi expect gratitude for doing what he could never do: Free Birtukan! Magnanimity, he must know, is to the virtuous as vice is to the vicious.
But Zenawi missed a fine opportunity to be truly magnanimous. He could have simply said he let Birtukan out in the interest of justice or for humanitarian reasons. Better yet, he could have done it in strict compliance with his own “pardon law”[2] in a process that is perfectly transparent yielding an outcome that would have preserved Birtukan’s dignity while saving him face. He could have stunned his critics by following his own law and performing a simple compassionate act. He could have gained the grudging respect of his opponents and the admiration of all for acting so courageously and honorably. He could have generated so much good will for himself. He could have even seen a glimmer of his own humanity. But his vampiric addiction to victimizing others, his irrepressible need to humiliate and suck dry the last drops of dignity from his opponents, the raging anger in his mind and the flaming hatred bottled in his heart will never allow him to become anything but what he is. But humiliating others is like throwing a boomerang which travels elliptically in the air and returns to the person who threw it. Zenawi did not humiliate Birtukan by forcing her to sign a scrap of paper confessing to wrongdoings she never committed. He humiliated himself by showing how petty, vacuous, small-minded and contemptible he is. But why waste ink or paper talking about a “pardon” that is not even worth the paper it is written on.
We are happy Birtukan is out, no longer in the dungeon. It does not matter how she got out. We couldn’t care less if she got out by scratching her initials on a scrap of paper oozing with lies and fabrications. We do not care if she got out by singing praises to a dictator. To be perfectly frank, we don’t give a damn how Birtukan got out of Zenawi’s prison. We are just glad she is out and back with her daughter, mother and the rest of her family, and her people. If Zenawi wants us to thank him for letting her go, we will be magnanimously happy to do so: “Thanks for nothing!”
For the rest of us who love, admire and respect Birtukan, let us resolve from this day on never to mention the name Birtukan Midekssa with the word “pardon” in the same phrase or sentence. It is blasphemy to say Ethiopia’s First Daughter and foremost patriot was pardoned into freedom by a universally-condemned human rights abuser.
It is not about the past. It is about now! What time is it?
It is Time to Celebrate Birtukan!
What a great young woman Birtukan truly is! What a genius she is! Birtukan signed that baloney passing off as a “pardon” and walked straight out of prison. She proved that she is indeed Birtukan Invictus, master of her destiny and captain of her soul. In a contest between beauty and the beast, brains trumped brawn once again. I can only imagine what she was thinking when she read the scrap of paper she was forced to sign. She probably chuckled a few times as she skimmed the paragraphs drenched in lies. I can imagine her gently reminding the so-called elders (shimagles): “Gentlemen, but you have forgotten so many of my others crimes. How could that be? Please, please, let me make a full confession”:
I, Birtukan Midekssa, in addition to all of the crimes I have confessed to committing as set forth fully in this pardon request, am also personally responsible for other dastardly crimes including global warming, global poverty, the global financial crises and recession, the war in Iraq, hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, USA, sunspots and the disbanding of the Mickey Mouse Club.
Oh, well! Let us just celebrate Birtukan. Let us celebrate her enormous sacrifices. Let us pay her homage for the long months she endured in solitary confinement in one of the worst prison systems in the world as documented in the 2008 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report on Ethiopia. Let us thank her for standing up to dictatorship. Let us show her our genuine love, appreciation and gratitude for being an enduring symbol of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Ethiopia. Let us support her in anything she desires to do for herself and her family. Above all, let us embrace her for the moral courage she showed under the most inhumane circumstances.
Birtukan now has attained greatness reserved for the very few. She now walks in the very footsteps of Mandela, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. She must now walk the same long walk Mandela took to bring freedom to South Africa. She must now march the long march that Gandhi made to bring independence to India. She must now walk across many bridges like Martin Luther King to heal a nation divided by hatred. It will be a long walk and a protracted march to her dreamland of the “future country of Ethiopia.” But I have no doubts, none at all, that she will one day enter triumphantly into that glorious “future country” to the rhythmic ululations of millions of her people.
It’s Time to Tell Birtukan We Are Mighty, Mighty Proud of Her!
I want Birtukan to know that I am proud of her more than words can describe. I am proud of who she is and what she has accomplished in advancing the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights in Ethiopia. But there are a few other things I would like for her to know also. If she ever feels that she may have let us down while she was in solitary confinement, I want her to know that the pain and suffering she endured in the dark in total isolation has uplifted us for our lifetimes. If she ever has doubts that she could have done more for us while chained in Zenawi’s dungeon, I want her to know that she has done more in solitary confinement than a million of us put together sitting idly in freedom. If she ever experiences misgivings for signing a scrap of paper to reunite with her daughter, her mother and her people, I want her to know that we are proud, damn proud she signed it to get the hell out of hell. If she ever thinks that she has to explain something she did or did not do, said or did not say while caged in Zenawi’s prison, I want her to know that her actions speak louder than any words she may be able to utter. She has nothing to explain; her life of struggle and suffering for her people speaks volumes. If she thinks she could have done things differently or better, I want her to know that she did it all just right. We would not want her to change a thing. She spoke the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She paid a high, very high price for speaking truth to power. But so did Mandela. She knows it comes with the territory for all great leaders. Above all else, we want her to know that we are mighty, mighty proud of everything she has done, EVERYTHING! She has nothing to regret, and everything to be proud.
It’s Also Time to Understand Birtukan
Let us also understand Birtukan. It is true that she is a strong young woman of conviction and principle. That is why I call her Birtukan Invictus (the Unconquered) or ayibegere. But even the strongest steel exposed to the harsh elements suffers metal fatigue and bends. Let us remember that for the past two years Birtukan was denounced, vilified, strong-armed and manhandled. She was thrown into the dungeon of wrath and tears. She was beaten, tortured, bludgeoned and bloodied. She was thrown in solitary confinement. She was mocked, ridiculed, humiliated and disrespected. Zenawi has done everything he could to shatter her bones, cripple her body, break her heart, crush her spirit and confuse her mind; but her soul — the temple of her principles, her compassion, her decency, her courage and her bottomless love for her people — remains intact and unblemished. Zenawi could not touch it! Birtukan still stands tall, unbowed and unafraid.
I plead with all of her well-intentioned colleagues and supporters who surround her to take it easy and give her breathing space. A victim of solitary confinement, the worst form of psychological torture, needs time to heal and regain her inner balance. Let us always remind ourselves that Birtukan was kept in solitary confinement under the most degrading conditions. She was told she has been abandoned and forgotten by the world. She was told day and night that nobody cared about her, nobody gave a damn. She was told she will die alone in that dark cold room. Now she needs to be with her family and friends and the people who love and care about her to heal the deep psychological wounds of the silent torture of solitary confinement.
The winds of politics will sway their fickle cargo to and fro, but it is unfair and inconsiderate to hang out Birtukan in the political wind so quickly after she had spent so much time in solitary confinement. She needs to be left alone for awhile. She does not need to be burdened with problems. Though we all know that Birtukan is an ordinary young woman destined to do extraordinary things, we should not mistake her for “superwoman” who can solve all problems for all people by waiving a magic wand. It has been taught that “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” This is the season to honor Birtukan; it is the time show how proud we are of her. This the season for us to show her our love, respect and admiration. This is the time for her to rest her weary body and nurse her battered spirit. It is not the time or the season to put the burdens of discord, squabbles and dissension on her frail shoulders.
Free All Political Prisoners in Ethiopia
Birtukan is let out of prison, but tens of thousands of others remain imprisoned for their political beliefs. We must continue to work arduously for the release of so many other political prisoners whose names and faces are known but to their families and their torturers.
There are also other prisoners who are in dire need of help. These inmates inhabit a prison of their own making. They are the prisoners of hate “locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness”, as Mandela would describe them. They live in a prison of the closed mind dwelling in a body with a stone cold heart. Our sister Birtukan has been to hell and back; but her tormentors still live there; or in the verse of Mark Spencer:
So here sits the prisoner,
Shackled in his cell.
Wrestling with the demons,
Of his private hell.
In the right season and at the right time, I have no doubts that Birtukan and her generation will free those shackled in the cells of their private hell because they know all too well the wages of hate. Birtukan and her generation will rise up and declare in the words of Martin Luther King: “We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.” It is now the right time and right season to rededicate ourselves to Birtukan’s “future country of Ethiopia.” No more bitterness, no more hatred, no more cruelty and no more inhumanity.
Birtukan Unbound! Prometheus Unbound!
I have had no greater honor in my life than pleading Birtukan’s cause at every forum and opportunity available to me since she was jailed in December 2008. Birtukan has been a source of great inspiration and strength to me. I have learned the true meaning of moral integrity and courage from her. I stand in awe of her for the price she has paid speaking truth to power. Though she is young, she has shown more wisdom than so many of her elders who have spent so much of our lives in pursuit of formal education.
There are countless individuals and groups throughout the world who have toiled so hard to see Birtukan free. Many of them worked quietly. I have seen many young people use modern technology to make Birtukan’s case known to the world. I have seen many young people flooding public events with flyers of Birtukan’s imprisonment, standing by the street side waving banners and silently protesting at candle light vigils. I have seen some walking the halls of power in America and heard of others doing the same in Europe, Canada and Australia pleading for Birtukan’s release. Each and every one of them deserves our gratitude and appreciation. I believe all of us who have worked in Birtukan’s cause have done so not just because we believe Birtukan is an extraordinary leader and compassionate human being, but also because she is the quintessential symbol of her generation. Our unshakable faith in Birtukan is merely a reflection of our unwavering faith in her generation. I willingly confess that I truly, sincerely and genuinely believe in the existence of that wonderful dreamland which Birtukan has often described as the “future country of Ethiopia”!
God Bless Ethiopia! God Bless Birtukan Midekssa and Her Family!
Ethiopian civic and political groups, media, activists, scholars, and artists announce that November becomes “Ethiopian Election Massacre” commemoration month around the world. In preparation to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the Ethiopian Election Massacre, a worldwide task force has been formed. The task force organizes various activities and a worldwide conference next month.
On May 15, 2005, over 26 million Ethiopians voted peacefully to elect their leaders. As the results started to come in, showing a landslide victory for the opposition party, Meles Zenawi went on TV and declared a state of emergency. He also ordered re-votes in several districts where members of his party went down in defeat, banned political rallies, and unleashed his killers against peaceful citizens who protested his attempt to steal the election.
When the Addis Ababa Police showed restraint, Meles ordered all of them to be disarmed, and gave the Federal Police and his personal army, the Agazi, a shoot-to-kill order.
The Agazi and Federal Police snipers from roof tops and military trucks gunned down young, hundreds of unarmed protesters with 50 caliber rifles. Over 50,000 students and other individuals were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in remote parts of the country. All senior members of the opposition CUD were arrested. All the private press were shut down.
The 2005 election massacre was one of the darkest moments in the history of Ethiopia.
This coming November, we will remember those fellow Ethiopians who gave their lives for their right to vote and for their vote to be counted.
Let’s come together to remember the victims of Ethiopian Election Massacre.
Let’s also unite and devise a new strategy to fight for a better Ethiopia where freedom, democracy and justice will prevail.
More details will released by the organizing committee in the coming few days.
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The Ethiopian Election Massacre Remembrance Task Force
