After being locked up in jail for 6 years by Woyanne dictator Meles Zenawi, Ato Siye Abraha is finally free and next month he will start a public meeting tour in the U.S. His first stop is Washington DC on January 5, 2008.
Ato Siye’s U.S.A. tour is being promoted by almost every Ethiopian media in the Diaspora. Some try to portray him as a national hero. Ethiopian Review is the exception. Our position is that before calling public meetings and ask people to pay $20 or $30 per person to attend his meetings, Ato Siye needs to explain, through a press conference or some other means, about the positions he had held and the actions he had carried out as the former military head of the Woyanne regime.
Let’s face the hard fact before getting excited about Siye’s visit. He has not made any public apology for the enormous death and destruction he had caused as one of the top Woyanne leaders.
During the 1998-2000 war with Eritrea, at least 70,000 fellow Ethiopians had perished — for nothing. The dead did not even get proper burial ceremony. Their families were not compensated. The injured were completely abandoned. There is no national holiday to honor those who died. As one of the major proponents of the war, indeed the leading advocate, Ato Siye has the blood of at least 70,000 poor young Ethiopians on his hand whom he callously sacrificed using an outdated military tactic known as human wave to overrun Eritrean trenches.
Just because Meles locked up Siye Abraha in jail for six years as a result of internal Woyanne power struggle, the crimes he committed do not go away. He must account for his horrible deeds.
It is shameful, to say the least, on the part of many in the media to try to portray Siye Abraha has a national hero. He is a person who swam in the blood of countless poor innocent Ethiopians.