By Fekade Shewakena
Ato Sebhat Nega’s interview on the Voice of America, Amharic Service, recently sounds like a play out of Orwell’s, Animal Farm, but it also speaks volumes about the mindset inside TPLF, and the groupthink the regime officials are possessed with. Like all people intoxicated with power and anything that comes with it, Ato Sebhat had no limits or inhibitions to stop him from making bold faced lies. Ato Sebhat belongs to a category of humans that Orwell describes as people who use ordinary language “to make lies sound truthful, murder respectable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.
The voice of America Amharic service has also invited listeners to put questions to Ato Sebhat for a future airing. But what is the use of asking questions when you know the person who takes the questions thinks the sky is the limit for lying? This man didn’t even stutter for a second when he told us that his TPLF invented Ethiopia and introduced the Ethiopian people to one another for the first time in history.
An interesting part in the interview was also Sebhat’s elaboration on the nature and work of EFFORT, the so called Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigrai, the TPLF business conglomerate. Sebhat told us what Mussolini would tell any journalist in 1935 about his “civilizing” ventures in Ethiopia when he told us about the role of EFFORT in building the Ethiopian economy. Now that is very interesting in itself but the man’s idea of what capitalism is and his vision of how he intends to build it is even more troubling. This robber baron bragged about EFFORT being the biggest investment company in Ethiopia and wants us to be surprised by that achievement. What would have been surprising was if a company supported by a ruling party, that has unlimited capacity to crush all its competitors and one that has the privilege of getting as much as 3.2 billion birr debt written off by the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia by order of the ruling class, was to rank in second place. It is ironic that the Ethiopian people have to subsidize the same company which in the first place was set up with money and property looted from them. But I credit Ato Sebhat for inadvertently but bluntly telling us that his idea of building capitalism is preparing the Ethiopian people for apartheid-like serfdom.
Why make big lies?
Absolute power often makes absolutely delusional. Understandably, some of the lie has its source in Sebhat and his friends being delusional. There is a pervasive groupthink inside the opaque TPLF clique that is heavily powered by its narrow ethnic nationalism. Like all autocrats, they often manufacture their own facts and after repeating that for a while tend to accept them as truth. Once they accept a lie as truth they often stick by it even if evidence proves them wrong. Anyone presenting evidence to the contrary is often considered criminal or the enemy and punished. This is why every opposition in Ethiopia, weak or strong, and citizens who dare to ask fair and hard questions are subjected to merciless persecution. That is why Birtukan Mideksa is languishing in prison. That is why we hear a barrage of draconian decrees being promulgated every now and then. That is why entire villages in the Ogaden were burnt to the ground and people killed like flies. Isn’t their crime only asking questions and demanding to be consulted before they were forcibly evicted from their land to give way for foreign oil finders? It is the same reason that led to the genocide of the Agnuak in Gambella.
Many people I know were dumbfounded to hear Ayatollah Sebhat, say that his clique invented Ethiopia in 1991. It is unbelievable how a very old man of his age pulled the energy needed to put a bold face as his mouth puffed the mega lie that the Ethiopian people came to know one another for the first time after his group took power 18 years ago.
You may think this goon is off his medication when he spewed this offensive absurdity, but the truth is that this is right out of the talking points of the entire delusional TPLF cabal who are trying their best to rewrite history. There was a big public amazement about Ato Girma Woldegiorgis, the “President”, regarding a letter he wrote in condolences for Tilahun Gesesses death. Ato Girma is reported to have written thanking Tilahun Gesesse for breaking through a government ban of singing in Oromoffa. Many people cringed how this extremely old man of not so good health, and on his way to God, can make such a bold faced lie through his teeth. Ato Girma, I heard, is reported to have confided to people close to him, that he has not read the letter himself and that it was written in the Meles Zenawi’s office for him to sign and issue. I found Ato Girma’s explanation plausible. This is purely a TPLF kind of lie.
This self-serving clique thinks that Ethiopians don’t even know that the period between Menilik and Mengistu Hailemariam has seen a more ethnically diverse ruling class, than TPLF’s ethno-centered reign of the last 18 years. Sebhat, Meles and Bereket think that they have succeeded in hiding from us that, for the first time in modern Ethiopian history, since Menilik, there are no Oromo generals in any key position in the Ethiopian army. Sebhat and the whole clique think the Ethiopian people are not watching.
The assertion of Sebhat that the TPLF invented Ethiopia also tells us something more: this tribal clique thinks and acts as if it is still the Zemene Mesafint (Era of the Princes) in Ethiopia. They deny the existence of time in between. As far as the TPLF is concerned, the most revolutionary proclamation that made land public property in 1974 and that fundamentally took away the key instrument of oppression of one group of people by another, has not taken place. If they admit that this actually happened, and that there was a revolution that transformed ethnic relations in Ethiopia, they know their colonial and apartheid look-alike tribal politics would fall apart. They have also convinced themselves that there was no parade of cultures of nations and nationalities during the dergue. They think they have invented that too. They don’t want to think the Institute of Nationalities in Addis Ababa was even set up under the dergue. They think the Ethiopian people spent sleepless nights trying to find out the ethnicity (nationality) of Mengistu and the rest of their rulers. History and time exist only when it agrees with the TPLF. Since they are stuck in time, they have not lived to see the early periods of Mengistu who at the time used language similar as theirs as reason to slaughter Amharas. Meles and Sebhat still keep calling Mengistu the protector of Amharas. Those of you who may have been amazed by Sebhat’s phantom assertions should know that these are the ingredients from which Sebhat’s sick and thick mind is made of.
Yes, if you see what looks like a colonial or an apartheid model of governance in Ethiopia today, where 93% of the leadership of the country’s army is from Sebhat’s ethnic group (Tigreans) and the security and bureaucracy is almost exclusively controlled by TPLF operatives, the reason is that Sebhat and Meles and Bereket think we cannot see reality for ourselves but take their words for everything they claim and read the history they have tried to rewrite for us.
It is obviously a futile exercise to ask questions of people like Sebhat Nega, Meles Zenawi or Bereket Simon in hope of getting a straight answer just as the VOA journalist tried hard on Ato Sebhat. These people have eaten up all sense of cultural inhibition and decency to stop them at anything. For example, you may want to ask them, as the VOA journalist, Ato Addisu Abebe, tried on Ato Sebhat, about the ever narrowing political space for opposition groups in the country, even give them a quantitative measure of how narrow it has gotten or compile testimonies from everyday people in Ethiopia who are disgusted with their rule, or show them research by respectable international human rights groups, and academics who tell us that the political space for building democracy in Ethiopia has diminished and human rights abuse is at its worst. Sebhat and Meles would simply tell you that democracy is flourishing in Ethiopia and people are happy. “There are no angry people in Ethiopia”, said Sebhat in the VOA interview. How much evidence you may have to the contrary does not matter. Even the people whose children are mowed down on the streets of Addis Ababa are happy and love the Agazi as far as Sebhat is concerned. Meles in a recent interview with the Financial Times was asked about the draconian civil society laws recently instituted in the country. He simply said, “some people would say this is clamping down, we would say this is an empowering law.” In TPLF-speak you can say “we killed them in order to let them live.”
Ato Sebhat, if you happen to read this I will live you with the following two lines hoping that you will let them permeate through your head.
1. Not all political conflicts in a country are ethnic conflicts or wars between nations and nationalities. Your characterization of conflicts in Ethiopia as a war between ethnic groups is too dumb even to people who have not read history. Rivalries and wars come in different packages including in the form of class conflicts. They even occur within the same ethnic group and there were many in Ethiopia. Even as they were struggling against their oppressive rulers, the Ethiopian people have often considered themselves Ethiopians who were not given a share of what their country should give them. This is a country where people across ethnicity rose up together to defend. Ato Sebhat, there in Adwa, near your village, you can find the bones of most nationalities in Ethiopia. And that your notion that we knew each other with the help of TPLF in 1991 exits only in your paranoid and tribal dense head.
2. Like every people who lived under tyranny, the Ethiopian people will rise up, most likely in your life time, to take back their country. Looking at it from where most of us stand, your government looks more like an apartheid establishment than anything else. Believe me, the people you have burnt their villages will rise up from the ashes soon. The people whose children you mowed down on the streets of Addis Ababa have not forgotten. The Amharas and Oromos and the rest of our people you despise and whose children you are packing your prisons with, are not far from the horizons of their freedom. Even the people of Tigrai in whose name you do your crimes will definitely rise up some day and will say enough already, get off my back and not in my name. You will find that you have left your children a pile of ash and thin air instead of the personal wealth and prosperity you accumulated.
3. Please spare the people of Tigrai from lying in their name. I have not seen anything to show me their ownership of EFFORT as you claimed. Sir, through your actions and your tribalization of loyalty and privilege you are buying hatred for the people of Tigrai. Tragically you have done this with some success. Please know that ethnicity as a political tool can be redirected in any direction and with relative ease. You have no monopoly of it, sir.
I wish you and the cabal can come back to your senses before it is too late. The silence of the people you subdued by force is fooling you. You have confused silence with agreement and happiness. You are sitting on a time bomb, sir. There are angry people all around you. You said they are not the people “they are individuals” but how many million individuals do you think constitute a people?
Ato Sebhat, if you have made your lies with some mix of truth, we would have engaged in a useful debate. It is sad that you limited my job to restating everyday observations, things that are as clear as the September sky over Ethiopia. In the words of the satirist I quoted above, “we have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious has become the first duty of intelligent men”.
As for VOA’s call for questions to Ato Sebhat, I have only one question that I ask you to put to him. I have the same question put to Senator McCarthy in the US senate at a hearing known as the Army-McCarthy Hearings in 1954 by the head attorney of the US army – “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
18 thoughts on “Ethiopia: Anatomy of Sebhat Nega’s big lies”
“Ato Sebhat, there in Adwa, near your village, you can find the bones of most nationalities in Ethiopia.”….what a fact!!!….here is what i can say for those EPRDF liers….wherelse in the other part of the country that you can find several pile up of bones?
I would like to acknowledge the writer for sharing the feeling i had during the interview sesstion that absolutely delievered to me a big relief.
This guy so called Aboy Sibhat is a lie machine. We better forget what he said. Like PIA said, his words provoke laughter out of extreme amazement. What a shameless junta!!
Hello every one… if you tell a blind man, blind he will tel you i am not blind cos the blind man he dos not know that his blind.so there is no use of reasoning the only thing this woyane will understand is to ship them wherever darkness they came from by force long live EPPF.
Dear writer,
That was Fantastic one.
“Gahtan” Sebhat claims “He” united Ethiopia!.. OMG!
Dear fellow citizens..I have piece of advice. Let’s stop wasting our time doing the same way Aigaforum is doing. In fact TPLF wants to read such anger from us. THEY DO like it. WE need Action, We have only one year to go before our next election 2010. We can’t wait another 5 more years though Meles vows to keep Birtukan in Jail. NO by no means should we let Meles and his Co be on the throne. NOR even any other party who anticipates taking the power prior to showing its manifesto or program. Because, such ethnic-cleansing, hatred among nations and antagonism should stop forever. PLEASE We Ethiopians don’t want to see a fragile party any more.
Meles will go hell! But not later than 2010!
Please join me with a slogan..”History 2010.” It could be paralleled to the Adwa Victory during the Italian Invasion.
Ethiopia Will Prevail
I agree with Hagos! we need to figure out what the next action plan should be – discuss ideas online and in a bigger forum if possible. we have said what needs to be said, and we all feel the same – more or less that this sadist woyane regime needs to go! don’t you all agree?
It is an interesting article.
To Elias Kifle
Please use the term “Ayatolah Sebhat” instead of “Aboy Sebhat” from now on; since he is the spiritual leader of the Woyane clique.
Hamid…kkkkkkk. I like that
Where is the Ethiopian’s Patriotism? This Generation is a “Talking Generation” We needed action yesterday. Fight from inside and outside on various ways. Transitional Government on Exile and lets work towards that end. Establish democratic system. Return back our dignities–Human Dignities!!
God Bless Ethiopia and the People!! Emen!
Fekade Shewakena
Very good writing. It is easily to see that you are giving more time and reason for peaceful resolution.
Sir. These individuals you are referring are not humans anymore. They have no dignity, moral, Ethic, soul and human conscious at all. They are the look like human being wild and savage animals. For them it doesn’t matter what is right and what is wrong. What is good or what is bad. We are facing really very bad creatures seem are from another planet.
If some one once decided to lie, die or do anything bad, it doesn’t matter what he is doing, saying or what others doing and saying too. He thinks always his way.
So, It is nice to give them chances, again. But these individuals don’t want any chance. They already know that they have no chance if they behave as human beings. Their chance is based on acting beyond any human conscious. That is what they are doing for long time. This way they came in. This way they are here and this way they decided to leave.
Yes, they are our biggest problem. They are affecting the nation badly. But don’t see them as humans. They are creatures; need to face them that way. They have no time and ability to read and know about the Ethiopian history. Their reading is gun, killing and destruction, not paper and education. They are already decided to make their history acting as savage and brutal animals.
Sebhat is the worst stupid and fool individual I ever came across. Before I knew who he was, I thought he could be somebody. But hearing him on VOA, gave me the clear picture what kind individuals are facing our nation. “Aboy Sebhat, father of Tigry and blah blah” calling/admiring/ relaying on him by Tigrians is to me like worshiping a fool, stupid and worthless person. He is the biggest liability Tigrians ever faced. Shame on them. Is he the father of Tigry? KKKK. You are hopeless. He even cannot be a step child. He must be a creature dropped in Tigry by chance from the satanic world.
Hearing him on VOA behaving as fool, childish and ignorant tells how the TPLF’s bunches are. He is their reflection. Sebhat being called Aboy by Tigrians is a comedy making laugh. Yes, he is a boy. Never grown up to be an adult. Is he the mele’s advisor and our country is ruled this way? O, God. Where are the brave Ethiopians? How is it possible the fool and criminals like Sebhat able to behave this way in our beloved Ethiopia? What is wrong with us. We know how they came in. We must behave they way they do to take them out. They have no idea about peaceful resolution. Don’t hesitate. Be committed and determine. This is the only way to deal with them. Or else they will continue committing crimes for long time.
They started at the corner of the nation with 5 old rifle and 10 boys/holligans. Is it difficult to confront them in the middle of the nation. The source is in Addis and all over the country. Their base/ocean/dumping ground to the looted wealth is in Tigry. It is difficult to cut that route? Even few and determine Ethiopians could do that. Stop talking. Be brave and face them wisely through their weak position.
It is time to confront and eliminate them. Tigrians that are responsible for these thugs need to make clear their positions. This old and dementia Sebhat and his family group is affecting Ethiopia in the name of Tigry. Tigry is responsible what is going on in Ethiopia because of Sebhat, meles and their criminal group.
To begin with Sibhat is an old man turned so called Tagay, and now a billionnaire capitalist at the expense of the Ethiopian people,ethiopian tigres included! Am sure he cant differentiate capitalism from communism, and just echoes what meles tells him like a “kolo temari”, or like ,more befitting, “a parrot”!
Rather than discuss or ask questions of these parasites and vampires who are sucking Ethiopias blood dry, we need to act and put the stick deep in thier hearts !!! and finish them and thier tyrrant rule once and forever!!!! Amen!
ስብሃት ለፍርድ ይቅረብ!
Remember what the hyena said,”Since they cann`t catch me or harm me,let them curse me or say all the bad things if I care”.The TPLF leaders don`t care about the rest of the Ethiopians.They can do whatever they want(take a look at their actions in Ogaden),say whatever they want and get away with it.They don`t care about the truth itself.
Thank you for uncovering the ugly nature of the new Tigre emerging bourgeoisie – Sebhat Nega is an arrogant criminal who killed and murdered hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians, who also raped and looted the Ethiopian treasury. The latter is even more revealing as his preposterous claim of the so called Tigre endowment or EFFORT!!! Like Yilma said we didn’t know Tigres for their enterpreneurial skills but they are certainly known among Ethiopians as drought victims and by extension professional beggars “Lemagne” – and I don’t think it is the years of begging that founded EFFORT but it is the looting of the Ethiopia over the last 19 years!!!!
That is right, why do not we estabilish a Transitional Governmen in Exile? Is there any laws that prevent us from estabilishing one. Those liers are going to repeat the lies untill they believe it will become truth. But all The Ethiopian People know what is the truth. We do not have to go that far to Adwa. We can remind them that, anyone can remember EPRPs in their early strugle times, they were composed from all nationalities, in eary 70’s, from my understanding. May be Aboy Sibat forgot that, because too many fat in his head.
Dear Fekade,
Thanks for all the time and effort you put to write such a great piece. You clearly articulated the lies and ignorance plus the crimes of the criminal thugs led by gang Meles. Sebhat has all reasons to lie, he has been lying for 18 years and saw no challenge to his lies, his family and inlaws are looting Ethiopia left and right, blooding its children in the was form, he must and should cover these crimes in any way possible. What else would you expect from ruthless beast? Good example is what they are doing in Ogaden.
Again, good job mr Fekade, keep up the good work!
Good fela zenndro!! Ayatollah Sebhat said that it is his clique who invented Ethiopia in 1991. It is unbelievable his mouth puffed that the Ethiopian people came to know one another for the first time after his group took power 18 years ago. You may think this goon is off his medication when he spewed this offensive absurdity, but the truth is that this is right out of the talking points of the entire delusional TPLF cabal who are trying their best to rewrite history.
We all know that the claim and forecast of GDP growth rate in Ethiopia is one of the endless and shameless lies by the terrorist TPLF. The fake GDP growth rate forecast is cooked by the top level TPLF cadres who graduated from dedebit desert university. The IMF more or less rubberstamps and echoes just what TPLF says without any validation, none whatsoever, through independent data gathering, analysis and conclusion. In its last forecast, however, the IMF could not take the ridiculously big time lie by the terrorist TPLF. Therefore, in order to save what is left of its credibility, if any, the IMF cut the TPLF’s lie by half so that it wouldn’t look completely absurd and off base given this time of economic difficulties throughout the world. TPLF has no boundaries for its lies and could not limit its lies of GDP growth rate to single digits. Why limit it to a single digit like 5, 7, or 9%? Once you lie, lie big. In fact, the core guiding principle of the TPLF is lie big and bold, and then keep repeating the lie shamelessly and you will find some gullible receptors for your lies down the road. Sometimes you might be able to bargain with the terrorist TPLF to bring down the fake statistics telling them frankly that what they are saying is totally nonsense and foolish. What you cannot do though, no matter what, is you cannot bargain with them to bring down the fake statistics of the GDP growth rate below 10%. The least they would accept is 10% no matter what the real data is or no matter what the reality on the ground is. They would not even accept ‘9.9% GDP growth rate’. A 10% growth is the least they can accept to match their malicious and mendacious propaganda of “double digit GDP growth”. Terrorist TPLF accepts anything remotely close to a single digit only if you mention inflation right after it. While everybody knows the real inflation in the country is in more than quintuple digits, terrorist TPLF shamelessly lies that it is in single digits or it would be in single digits in the month we are winding down. That is what the terrorist-and-liar-in-chief Meles said a couple of months ago – single digit inflation in June 2009. There is also a limit you cannot bargain beyond for inflation rate just like for the GDP growth rate. Terrorist TPLF might accept anything as close to 10% as possible from the lower side like for instance 9.9999999999% but never top 10% inflation rate no matter what or no matter what the reality on the ground is. This is because if you get to 10% it would not match the shameless malicious mendacious propaganda of ‘single digit inflation rate’. The only time they accept a ‘double digit inflation’ is , a big IF at that, only when the time line for bringing that double digit down to a single digit is given in the same breathe- like ‘in June 2009’ as the terrorist-and-liar-in-chief Meles said. The myth they want to create for themselves during their reign of rule of terror is ‘double digit GDP growth rate and single digit inflation rate’. The main motive for such bold and shameless lies is clear to everybody. Terrorist TPLF has come to understand that there is so much the endless and shameless lies about the bogus democracy and sham election they have been orchestrating can do for them as far as hoodwinking the donor western countries is concerned. For terrorist TPLF it was about hoodwinking the donors and buying a day in power. For the donors though, it was about giving the terrorist TPLF the benefit of the doubt and also giving them sometime to get their acts together to do the right thing for the country. However, what has been observed in the last 18 years in Ethiopia is things are going from bad to worse by the day. The May 2005 sham election has exposed the true nature of the terrorist TPLF to the benefit of those donors who had not known it very well until then. At that point in time, the terrorist TPLF was forced to dismount in disgrace and great humiliation from the fake democracy horse it had been galloping almost freely. With that, terrorist TPLF had to also change the narrative and it came up with ‘developmental state’ mantra borrowing it from China and southeastern Asian countries. The ‘developmental state’ mantra was supposed apply to those states with real consistent ‘double digit GDP growth rate and single digit inflation rate’ over reasonable number of years. Terrorist TPLF is, therefore, cooking up these fake statistics in order to fit in this developmental state mantra. In the small ridiculous thinking of the terrorist TPLF ringleaders, once they create this buzz and fake image for themselves in the minds of the donors, these donors would continue to tolerate and look the other way when they commit genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity; they ignore their untold dismal human rights records, intimidations, abuses, tortures, massacres, arbitrary detentions and all their excesses. The terrorist ringleaders would hope that once they create the false narrative in the minds of the donors, the latter would continue to provide the vital aid they need for their survival in power. In a nutshell, the latest desperate tactic of survival adopted by the terrorist TPLF is ‘intensify the terrorism and draconian rule against the Ethiopian people but narrate boldly and shamelessly the fable about the double digit GDP growth and single digit inflation rates’. Sometimes even TPLF itself appears to be a victim of its own propaganda. Despite the shameless lie of the fascist TPLF and the echoing of the slightly modified version of the lie by its financier, the IMF, let us do the following. Let us assume for a picosecond (just for the sake of argument) that one of them is correct in the forecast – either IMF or TPLF (we however know very well neither has an iota of truth in the bogus claim, even the slightest, as far as the Ethiopian economy is concerned). If one is telling the truth, it means the other must be lying and we all know pretty well the usual suspect when it comes to shameless fabrications of lies after lies. Of course, the IMF is also guilty by association and deliberate negligence for the truth. If you look at the discrepancy between the two forecasts, it is over 100%. How come you have such a world of discrepancy if both are looking at the same real economic data? Even if they use entirely different models for the forecast, you cannot reasonably come to such a huge discrepancy. This confirms nothing but the fact that neither is basing its forecast on real data. The TPLF completely cooks the statistics solely for political motive and the IMF just echoes it. The only exception this time around being the IMF could not echo the lie AS IS in the face of the global economic downturn. BTW, the IMF does not gather independent data on its own for the economic activities of a country but rather uses whatever is forwarded to it by corrupt greedy dictators that have all the incentives to lie and lie big. By choice and with deliberate motive, the IMF gets ‘swindled’ by TPLF and the likes.
Dere
Well versed article, I am really impressed by the clarity and the flow of the ideas you rose! And this is one front of our struggle against them and we all know it is not the only one!!! These tugs may think in thier wildest dreams that what we all r doing is just brag on the net. But all the true sons of Ethiopia realise that our sword should be sharp from both edges and we are blessed with the leaders just to make sure this!
Ethiopia will be saved by her beloved sons and daughters, and by the will of Lord the Almighty!