A mind-boggling usurpation of moral authority at the highest global level is set to unfold at the United Nations Climate Change Conference that begins in Copenhagen next Monday.
Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and one of the world’s worst dictators, is preparing to use that global platform to scold other nations for their irresponsible energy policies – and to demand hundreds of billions of dollars for African nations to compensate for global warming damage done to the continent.
The hypocrisy of Meles playing a role in Copenhagen – indeed a leadership role where he could potentially block a global agreement – is outrageous.
As Africa’s top negotiator in Copenhagen, Meles in recent weeks has already begun posturing as the moral environmental voice of Africa by criticizing industrialized countries for their “lack of seriousness” on global climate policy, and by threatening to lead a walk-out of the 52 African countries at the conference (out of 190 total participating nations) if their demands for compensation aren’t met.
Gulag Prisons
This theft-in-plain-sight of a critical global role is being carried out by a man who runs his own country by a “divide and conquer” strategy – hardly the best model for global collaborative decision-making.
Why would Denmark even allow this man to step foot in their country?
Directly to the point of the hypocrisy of Meles’ role as Africa’s chief climate change negotiator, Ethiopia is now facing one of the worst famines in its history as a consequence of his own environmentally disastrous laws and policies.
These include property laws that prevent farmers from owning their own land; that forbid foreign research and aid groups from entering the country; and a governing system that prevents any orderly agriculture and environmentalism, because Meles stays in power by keeping his country mired in a permanent state of war.
Ethnic Cleansing
By now the evidence for Mele’s crimes is far too extensive, public, and exhaustively well-documented to summarize in detail here.
The picture collectively painted is a tyrant who stays in power through total control of the political, economic, legal, media and military systems.
Here in Minnesota, where thousands of Ethiopians refugees have fled Meles’ brutality, tales of personal witness to all of these crimes, and many more, abound.
Minnesota, and other centers of the global Ethiopia diaspora, are often the best sources of close-to-firsthand information about Meles’ savage rule, because refugees stay in constant contact with friends and family at home while foreign journalists, aid workers and human rights workers are banned from the country.
Unstoppable Hatred
By no means least in the way of evidence against Meles is the Ethiopian blogosphere which is a bitter veil of tears, a deeply wounded cry of the heart.
In this global forum thousands of Ethiopians every day figuratively rend their garments, cry out to God, offer first-person testimonials of beatings and torture, and maintain online records of Meles’ crimes against humanity. Sometimes, overflowing with unstoppable hatred, they violently attack each other with words.
The only mystery that remains is why the world appears simply not to notice, to respond, or even to care in the least about the Ethiopia’s abysmal suffering.
It’s Rwanda and Darfur all over again. And it has been that way, although getting progressively worse, since 1991, the year that Meles took power in a coup and immediately began ethnic cleansing as a central tactic of his governing style.
And now the world’s leaders at Copenhagen have embraced this man into their highest deliberative council, and given him voice. What are they thinking?
Absolute Power
Meles’ 18-year rule of terror in Ethiopia has easily earned him a place alongside dictators such as Kim Jong-Il, Slobodan Milosevich, Muammar Qaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Omar al-Bashir, Than Swhe, and Ali Khamenei.
Would any of these despots be welcomed in Copenhagen?
Would any be given the chance to potentially veto a global climate accord?
Of course, Meles won’t do that. What he will do, though, is maximize his leverage through every means possible to further secure what for 18 years he has ruthlessly sought and won in Ethiopia, which is absolute power.
He’d let the world burn to a crisp before he relinquished that.
I last saw Aregawi Berhe in the summer of 1976. The big news gripping Britain was the heatwave — back then, the hottest since records began — and the dramatic Israeli commando raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda to rescue 100 hostages held by pro-Palestinian hijackers.
My mind was focused on neither. Aregawi Berhe had kidnapped me, and I was concentrating on survival.
At the time, Aregawi was a fierce young guerrilla leader in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray province. I was a young reporter on assignment for The Sunday Times, covering Ethiopia’s separatist wars.
On June 1, 1976, I was on a local bus on a winding mountain road between the towns of Axum and Mkele when Aregawi’s men ambushed it. Finding me on board, they seized me on suspicion of being an “imperialist spy”. My protestations that I was a journalist came to nothing.
For three seemingly interminable months, from June to September, they held my life in their hands as they marched me under guard through the rugged hills and barren deserts of Tigray and through the breakaway province of Eritrea.
We trudged at night under the stars to escape the unforgiving sun and to avoid being spotted and fired on by patrols of the Ethiopian army. In moonlight, we panted up steep, bare, eroded hills, scrabbled over rocks, pushed our way through thorn bushes.
On one occasion, worn out and parched in an area of desert, I had to suck water from cactuses to keep going. My 500-mile forced march under armed guard was the toughest thing I had ever done.
I was not alone. They had also kidnapped an entire British family, the Tylers. Lindsey Tyler was a veterinary surgeon working in Ethiopia on an aid project, vaccinating cattle against rinderpest. He was on a trip with his wife, Stephanie, and children, Robert, 8, and Sally, 5, when the guerrillas fired on their Land Rover. “We have children, for God’s sake … we have little children,” Stephanie shouted as bullets ricocheted off the stones.
Ultimately, we were freed unharmed. But being kidnapped was a jarring experience — physically exhausting, mentally dispiriting and, above all, lonely.
After my release, I buried Aregawi in my memory. I wanted to forget the whole sorry experience. My life was the future, not the past. But some things one does not ever quite forget. Being kidnapped is one of them.
The tangled memories have come and gone over the years, sometimes so vivid that they hurt. Those three months as a prisoner in Ethiopia taunted and haunted me — until last week, when I met Aregawi again for the first time in more than three decades.
I had considered sometimes going back to Ethiopia to find and confront my captors; but in that vast land, I thought, I would never find them. In any case, I suspected most of them had been killed in their long struggle against the Derg, the Soviet-armed military committee that ruled Ethiopia after it overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974.
One of Africa’s worst military dictatorships, the Derg held onto power until it was itself toppled in 1991 by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the guerrilla organisation that had kidnapped me.
Back in 1976 the TPLF was still a ragtag group of about 130 fighters whose goal was autonomy for Tigray province. Over the years it grew in strength, numbers and ambition, until it became the backbone of a revolutionary movement that took over the country with between 60,000 and 70,000 fighters. Aregawi, a founder member who rose to army commander, played no small part in its success. Then he vanished.
In 2004 the Ethiopian driver of a taxi I hailed in Washington DC revealed that not only was Aregawi alive; he was living in exile somewhere in Europe, after losing out in an internal TPLF power struggle. Perhaps I could find him after all.
A few weeks ago a chance discussion with Martin Plaut, the BBC’s Africa editor, put me onto my quarry. Plaut had met Aregawi recently in Holland and said that he wanted to meet me to say sorry.
I did not hesitate. After all these years I wanted to meet Aregawi again and discover what made him tick. I wanted to believe that, somewhere, there was an honourable man. I think it is a basic instinct that one does not want one’s suffering to be in vain. I wanted there to be some purpose to the hardships he had put me through.
When I telephoned Aregawi, I recognised his voice immediately. But I was surprised by his next words: “Come and stay.”
We laughed at the absurdity of it. While I bore him no grudge now, I would have liked to choose whether to be his guest or not 33 years ago.
Last week I drove in a taxi through the tranquil streets of the Hague to confront him. I never dreamt I would find my old kidnapper in this lawabiding city where the international criminal courts are trying Radovan Karadzic and Charles Taylor, the former leader of Liberia, for crimes against humanity.
I felt a twinge of apprehension as the taxi approached Aregawi’s flat in a working-class district. I need not have worried. In 1976 Aregawi was a strange, taciturn man. A political science graduate at Addis Ababa University, he had become a fanatical Marxist. Tall and thin with a wispy beard, he spouted wooden communist jargon and fiercely defended kidnapping as a legitimate political weapon. He gave me the impression that the sacrifice of an innocent life was less important than his own political ideals. His opinion of Britain seemed to have been fashioned by the day he stood in a line of Boy Scouts and welcomed the Queen, opening Axum cathedral during her royal visit to Ethiopia.
Now, instead of the rabid revolutionary I remembered, an avuncular figure stood before me, his hand held out in friendship. He said he was genuinely sorry for the hardship and trouble he had put me through.
We talked in his flat. On the wall was a small reproduction of that famous portrait of Che Guevara in his beret. It was clear Aregawi could not quite bring himself to turn his back on the revolutionary hero of his youth, even if he had ditched communism and no longer believed in armed struggle as the way to change Ethiopia.
“If I calculate the cost benefit, I would say gradual change would have been better than revolutionary change when I look back,” he said. “Revolutionary change was meant to transform society quickly, abruptly. But we were naive. You cannot switch on change like electricity; it has its own dynamics. We were not mature enough to see these things.”
Later, as we walked on a windy Dutch beach — I used to dream wistfully of the sea while I was being held in the hot Ethiopian desert — I asked Aregawi to give me his side of the kidnapping story. He was anxious not to be put in the same league as the vicious kidnappers who behead their hostages today. These vile killings horrified him.
“These days kidnapping has been given a religious dimension. There is no reasoning at all,” he said. “Today’s kidnappers are broken, blinded by hatred, not even merciful for their own life. You cannot compare their kidnappings with ours, which were for publicity, for a bit of money.”
Aregawi was adamant that he wished no harm to me or the Tylers. Of course I did not see it like that at the time. I was concentrating on surviving from one day to the next, on building the sort of relationship with my captors that would make it harder for them to kill me if I outlived my purpose.
As we talked, he seemed mildly hurt at having read in a book I wrote after my release that being his prisoner had been a low point in my life. “Nothing bad happened except taking you against your will,” he said, with a plea in his voice. “I had rough words for you. We had a cause. We had certain objectives. But I felt we were handling you as best we could.”
He still did not see that there were moments when, as a prisoner, I had feared circumstances might arise, as the unexpected tends to do in guerrilla struggles, that meant I might not survive. I don’t think Aregawi realised how difficult it sometimes was to feel I could be struck from the book of life and nobody would ever know what had happened to me.
After that interminable march through the mountains, I ended up in a guerrilla encampment in the northern desert of Eritrea, living under a bush, still under guard, while Aregawi decided what to do with me.
There followed more weeks of despair, during which I exchanged hardly more than three sentences a day with my captors. But on that long march I had begun to appreciate the misery and injustices that had driven Aregawi to rise up in armed rebellion at great personal cost to himself.
One in three children born in the villages we passed through died in infancy from disease or malnutrition. The nearest health and educational services were at least two days’ walk away, the nearest well three miles.
As the son of a district judge, Aregawi had been brought up with a sense of right and wrong. His social conscience made him aware of these glaring inequalities, and he wanted to change them. The pity of it, as he now recognises himself, was that he chose to do it by armed struggle. Despite thousands of deaths and regime change, that part of Ethiopia is about as backward and impoverished now as it was then.
My captivity went on and on until one day, after a long camel ride through a sandstorm, I was finally freed into Sudan. Soon the Tylers were released too, after being held even longer than I was. The guerrillas did not collect the $1m ransom they had demanded from the British government.
So, after all these years, what is Aregawi’s story? In exile, unable to go back to Ethiopia for fear of losing his life at the hands of his former comrades, he wonders whether the huge sacrifices he and other young idealists made were worthwhile.
Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country, is still confronted by extreme poverty and massive rural starvation. Its leader is one of Aregawi’s old revolutionary comrades, Meles Zenawi. This former medical student has turned into a virtual dictator — little better, said Aregawi, than those he replaced.
The need to strive for a brighter future for his people still dominates Aregawi’s life, although the reasons “are not the same”. He is driven by the memory of those countrymen whom he brought into the struggle and who “paid with their lives” for something good to come. “I must not betray these people,” he said.
He and his comrades shared a fine, idealistic vision, but, he admitted, none had a clue how to implement it. For a while their politics was inspired by Enver Hoxha and his mad Albanian “road to socialism”. Soon there came years of infighting within the TPLF, and disillusionment set in.
In the mid-1980s, during one of those terrible famines that have gripped Ethiopia in the past 30 years, millions of dollars flowed from western donors into Rest, the so-called Relief Society of Tigray, which was purportedly the humanitarian wing of the TPLF.
Aregawi told me that, instead of using the money to save lives, Rest gave it to the TPLF. He remembers sitting with central committee members preparing a budget; they agreed that 95% of the Rest money should be used for the cause.
“It bought weapons, ammunition and clothes for the fighters and paid for TPLF propaganda work,” he said. “It was very depressing. It made me very angry. The leadership literally had no sympathy for the people.”
Aregawi noted that western aid organisations had allowed their money to be misappropriated and that massive armaments flowing into Ethiopia from outside made the conflict more deadly. No power had offered the help that, in Aregawi’s view, they really needed to “give them the correct orientation to help themselves to establish a stable government”.
When, after building up a secret power base of loyalists within the TPLF, Meles Zenawi seized control of it in an internal coup, Aregawi finally split from the movement he had helped to build. He had enough friends to be able to escape with his life, first to Sudan and then to Holland.
Others were not so fortunate. Shawit, the handsome young fighter who in 1976 had led the attack on my bus and made me a prisoner, was imprisoned and killed by Zenawi for opposing his control, Aregawi said.
The TPLF developed into the mighty military machine that took over Ethiopia, and now “again we are in a situation where another dictator is in power. Getting rid of one dictator does not mean bringing justice, fairness and democracy. In fact we ended up changing the face of the dictator only. That is a tragedy”.
By kidnapping me, Aregawi caught me up for a very short time in his struggle for Ethiopia. If I feel personally disappointed that the struggle has not led to something better, how much stronger must the feelings be of a man who has devoted his life to this cause?
He confessed he had no real family life as such. He had had a fiancée when he was fighting in the bush, “but we couldn’t agree on many things so we separated”. He married much later in life, but the woman he calls the “mother of my kids” lives separately in Geneva with his two children. He visits regularly, but it is clear that family takes second place to Ethiopia.
He still harbours a strong vision for his country and a driving sense of duty to see this vision through.
The last time Aregawi and I parted — in 1976 — neither of us knew what the future held, but both of us had hope. Mine was immediate and selfish: I wanted to be free to get back to my own life. His was generous: he wanted democracy for his people and was prepared to make tremendous personal sacrifices for them.
Our parting this time was different. I am glad to have met him again. Hearing his side of the story helped to lay my old ghosts to rest. At the same time there was something sad about this goodbye.
He hopes his dream of a better future for the Ethiopian people can still be realized, and as I walked away I hoped so too. But the world, I felt, had let him down. It has, over the years, backed wrong-minded rulers in Ethiopia, set on repression and dictatorship, instead of supporting those who reject violence.
It is my strong wish that this aging revolutionary, who once held my life in his hands, should be able eventually to go back to Ethiopia in peace. That would be a clear sign that one of Africa’s many shameful scars had begun to heal.
When it comes to the ruling tribal junta in Ethiopia, there is no one who has as much clarity as President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea. He knows their real nature, what and how they think, their weaknesses, strength, and modus operandi. This is hardly surprising since he is the one who guided them all the way to Menelik’s palace in Addis Ababa. A few years later they turned around and stabbed him in the back and waged a war of attrition against Eritreans. Simply put, to Isaias and the Eritrean leadership, Woyanne is an experiment that went terribly wrong. To Ethiopians, it is a long nightmare. This monster must be eliminated soon in order for peace to prevail in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and whole Horn of Africa region.
Meles Zenawi and members of his Woyanne junta know full well Isaias Afwerki’s intention and what he is capable of. They live in constant fear with the realization that their treachery, as well as the ethnic cleansing they perpetrated against Eritreans will not go unpunished. That is why mere mention of the name Isaias, and discussions about cooperation between Ethiopian opposition groups and the Eritrean government send chills through their spine.
To protect themselves from Eritrea’s wrath, Woyannes have stationed over 80,000 troops right at the border in Tigray and moved most of their air force from central Ethiopia closer to Eritrea. They are also laboring day and night to have the U.S. Government and European Union to label Eritrea as a terrorism sponsoring state, to no avail so far.
Meles and gang, however, need not worry too much about Eritrea, because when the time comes, they will face fire not just from the north. Even the Agazi, Meles and Azeb’s Praetorian Guards, could turn against them. A few months ago the Deputy Commander of Agazi, Col. Alebel, has defected and he is now advising EPPF and Ginbot 7. We all remember what happened to Romanian dictators Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu in not too distant past. They appeared invincible, protecting themselves with layers of secret and intelligence services, while perpetrating horrible crimes against their people. The two monsters were later executed by their own special forces after a hasty trial and conviction on genocide and corruption charges when the people of Romania finally said enough.
Meles and Azeb are similarly responsible for genocide and massive corruption. They have committed mass murder against the peoples of Ogaden and Gambela where they burned entire villages, and in Somalia where Meles Zenawi’s soldiers raped Somali women, slit the throats of religious leaders, slaughtered over 20,000 Somali civilians and made 2 million Somalis homeless. Woyanne crimes in Addis Ababa, Gonder, Gojjam, Wollo, Ambo, Beninshangul, and other cities and regions of Ethiopia are too numerous to list. A time will come to account for all of them.
Discussion with Isaias Afwerki
It is with all this in mind that I met with President Isaias for the second time last month at his office in Eritrea’s capital Asmara. I went to Asmara on my way to visit leaders and fighters of the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) and attend their 2-day conference. The President invited my colleague Sileshi Tilahun and I for tea, which turned into a long conversation that took almost 3 hours. A few months earlier, in May this year, he gave us a 4-hour interview that has created a political wave in both the Ethiopian and Eritrean communities.
What I found striking when I met with Isaias Afwerki on both occasions was how humble, casual, and approachable he is. In describing President Isaias, the Woyanne propaganda machine tries to draw a picture of a power crazed madman, some one like Stalin or Idi Amin — chest full of medals, protected by a battalion of heavily armed, bulking bodyguards, living in huge palaces. I have seen none of that. There is no pomp and circumstance around Isaias Afwerki, and I did not see a horde of assistants circling him. I saw only one secretary who let us into his office. There is a spartan simplicity to the office itself — little decoration and some very uncomfortable chairs. I was told later that he made the chairs himself in his workshop.
The president received us warmly, with a broad smile and genuine sense of friendship. Sipping tea, we began our conversation. Sileshi and I started out by discussing the effect of his May 2009 historical interview. We delved into specific examples of the impact it is having. We summed it up by saying that there is now a much more improved atmosphere between Ethiopians and Eritreans as a result of what the president said in the interview. For many Ethiopians, the president’s words had a transformational effect on their view of Eritrea and its current leadership.
As some one who keeps himself well informed (some say he is an information addict), President Isaias is well aware of what is being said and discussed in the Ethiopian community. And he seems to be encouraged by the numerous positive comments he has heard and read, many of which were coming from some of his harshest critics in the Ethiopian community. He said that awareness of the need to come together “is now better than a year ago.”
The president is eager to build on the success of his outreach to Ethiopians. He urged us to help organize dialogue — similar to the public meeting that was held in Washington DC on August 9, 2009, by the EPPF chapter — between Ethiopians and Eritreans around the world.
On Ethiopian opposition parties
In this our second meeting with Isaias Afeworki, the other main topic of discussion was the current state of the Ethiopian opposition movement. The President is straightforward about it. He said that “the leadership is detached from the people.”
Indeed, the only reason Woyanne continues to cause havoc in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa is that there is no viable opposition party that is prepared to take over power from Woyanne. Most of the Ethiopian opposition leaders are halfhearted about the struggle. As the president put it, “there has to be an effective leadership in the field. The country is vast. You can lead an opposition group from right outside of Addis Ababa. There needs to be action on the ground.”
President Isaias told us that “Ethiopian political leaders continue to fail their people.” He recommends that the opposition leaders need to leave their comfortable homes in Europe and the U.S. and relocate to Ethiopia’s mountains and jungles, if they are serious about bringing change. Any opposition leader who is not willing to do that cannot and should not be taken seriously.
“Woyanne will collapse through evolution. Let’s revolutionize the process,” the president said. To that end, Ethiopian opposition groups need to come together and craft a “common political platform, which is lacking today.”
He expressed his hope that such a common political agenda and an inclusive united front of Ethiopian opposition parties will be formed before the end of this year (European calendar).
President Isaias says that his government is not shy about supporting Ethiopian freedom fighters. But the actual struggle must be waged by Ethiopia’s opposition groups themselves. What Eritrea wants to get in return is a “safe neighborhood,” a peaceful region, according to the president. He also envisions the creation of an economic integration among Horn of African nations. That is not possible as long Ethiopia continues to be ruled by a ravenous tyranny that attacks any thing it cannot control and leach on.
Even though currently there are some encouraging signs — such as an increased effort to form a united front — the foot-dragging by many of the leaders of the opposition parties continue, unfortunately. If they don’t come together and form an effective united front before Woyanne’s fake elections in May 2010, there needs to be a revolution in the opposition camp itself — all the leaders of these parties must resign and give a chance to the younger generation to take the lead.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (Addis Fortune) — For a change, and after several months of political doldrums, the landscape has begun to churn. Not surprisingly, the recent deal signed at the Sheraton Addis in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa between leaders of the four political parties, including the incumbent’s, has struck up the debate at the various gossip corridors across the city.
However, none of the political leaders is facing the sizzle of frying pan more so than Hailu Shawel. It is fast becoming a trying task just to find defenders of his, these days.
It seems apparent that the coming national election will hardly be harvest time for Hailu and party. The situation makes it painfully obvious that he will need to employ an abundance of damage control exercises in the few months ahead – all the while paying a huge price, much more so than any of the parties in the deal.
Negotiators from his party, the All Ethiopian Unity Party (AEUP), did not surrender easily after what was an exhaustive, two-month long inter-party dialogue.
Negotiators from the ruling party [in large part] and those from the other opposition parties [to a certain extent] have demonstrated unusual patience in keeping AEUP’s negotiators at the roundtable held inside Parliament. The latter were proven to be extremely wooly, with all the list of questions they would bring the following day, purportedly from Hailu.
The chief negotiator for AEUP was Yacob Leekie, brother of Senay Leekie, a Soviet trained Marxist. He was killed in the mid-1970s inside Menelik’s Palace, during a shoot-out between those who had supported Mengistu Hailemariam and others stood against him. Senay was a prominent personality in the early years of bloody political struggle within the junior military officers and the leftist politicians around them.
Yacob is also known to have been raised with the family of Kassa WoldeMariam, president of the Addis Abeba University, during the Emperor’s rule. His daughter, Yeshi, also a great granddaughter of the Emperor’s, is married to Hailu Shawel’s son, Shawel Hailu.
Nevertheless, none of the four negotiators of AEUP were as forceful and close to Hailu as Mamushet Amare. Once a captain in the Derg army, he was calling the shots during the negotiations.
Revealing the identities of those on the negotiating front on behalf of the ruling EPRDF is proved especially relevant: Bereket Simon, Hailemariam Desalegn, Sekuture Getachew and Muktar Kedir.
The Ethiopian Democratic Party (EDP) had been represented by its president, Lidetu Ayalew, as well as Mushie Semu and Mesfin.
There was a huge uncertainty, down to the very last day, as to whether or not Hailu’s party would actually sign the deal. They had threatened to drop out of the deal on several occasions. Reason being that they had wanted to talk about broader issues, they had felt would affect the coming election, and not simply the code of conduct. It came as a surprise to all when Yacob Leekie came around to agreeing to the signing at the end.
The final point of concern among negotiators was the supposed unpredictability of Hailu fearing he would go for a microphone in the presence of Meles Zenawi. Negotiators from the ruling party had gambled, too. They were not to be disappointed as they watched Hailu say what has earned him onslaught from his supporters and appreciation from his opponents across the aisle.
Praised, he was, at a dinner party which the ruling party, Woyanne, hosted. The party was hosted inside the Addis Top View Hotel, near Ras Amba Hotel at Arat Kilo. It was held to celebrate the deal on the electoral code of conduct the very night it was signed. Several political leaders from all the four parties were seated mingled at tables which looked designed to let them feel one another out.
Editor’s Note: The Angola Ambassador to Ethiopia is placing the blame on helpless African refugees who are migrating from one country to another to seek better life, since vampire regimes are making Africa unlivable. Where there is good governance there is no illegal immigration. What is needed is not more border security, but less corruption on the part of African governments — including the Ambassador’s own government of Angola, more free trade, more economic development, more education, and more freedom for the people’s of Africa.
Luanda – The Angolan ambassador to Ethiopia and permanent representative to the African Union (AU), Manuel Domingos Augusto, Sunday in Addis Ababa, urged a greater attention to the phenomenon of illegal immigration in Africa as it poses threat to peace and stability.
Manuel Augusto was speaking at the activities that marked the 34th anniversary of National
Independence, celebrated on 11 November.
“The experience teaches us that the stability of any nation demands the exercise of sovereignty
and the authority of the State within the national territory and effective supervision of its borders”, he stressed.
The Angolan diplomat acknowledges the hospitality and solidarity as pillars of the African Union, apart from calling for a careful reflection on the illegal immigration which is now representing a true threat to peace, stability, order and cooperation among States.
According to Manuel Augusto, the creation of a regime of migration to regulate the entry and
exit of foreign citizens is a key condition for the defence of the State sovereignty.
He added that such measure should be taken in accordance with the real capacity of each
state of receiving and keeping the residence of foreigners, within the premises of African
hospitality and dignity, without undermining the internal stability and specially the national
interests.
The Angolan ambassador advised for an interstate cooperation aiming at discouraging and
eliminating illegal immigration, thus promoting confidence in the good neighbourhood relations
among States.
Manuel Augusto recalled that the Angolan government had taken steps to respond to the
challenges of illegal immigration based on national provisions and international practice.
To commemorate the 34th anniversary of the National Independence was held a photo
exhibition that highlighted the participation of the President of the Republic, José Eduardo dos
Santos, at G-20 Summit, in Aquilla, Italy and the visit to Angola of the Pope Benedict XVI.
The visits to Angola of Russian president, Dimitri Medved, South African leader, Jacob Zuma,
United States’ State secretary, Hillary Clinton, were also portrayed at the event.
In his book Night, Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and the man the Nobel Committee called the “messenger to mankind” when it awarded him the peace prize in 1986, wrote:
For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future.
On November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis destroyed thousands of Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses throughout Germany, killing nearly 100 and arresting and deporting some 30,000 to concentration camps. That was Krystallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), the forerunner to the Holocaust. On March 21, 1960, apartheid security forces in the township of Sharpeville, South Africa, fired 705 bullets in two minutes to disperse a crowd of protesting Africans. When the shooting spree stopped, 69 black Africans lay dead, shot in the back; and 186 suffered severe gunshot wounds.
Following the May, 2005 Ethiopian parliamentary elections, paramilitary forces under the direct command and control of regime leader Meles Zenawi massacred 193 innocent men, women and children and wounded 763 persons engaged in ordinary civil protest. Nearly all of the victims shot and killed died from injuries to their heads or upper torso, and there was evidence that sharpshooters were used in the indiscriminate and wanton attack on the protesters. On November 3, 2005, during an alleged disturbance at the infamous Kality prison near Addis Abeba, guards sprayed more than 1500 bullets into inmate cells in 15 minutes killing 17 and severely wounding 53. These facts were meticulously documented by a 10-member Inquiry Commission established by Zenawi himself after examining 16,990 documents, receiving testimony from 1,300 witnesses and undertaking months of investigation in the field.
Under constant threat by the regime and afraid to make these facts public in Ethiopia, the Commission’s chairman Judge Frehiwot Samuel, vice chair Woldemichael Meshesha, and member attorney Teshome Mitiku fled the country with the evidence. They made their findings public on November 16, 2006, before a committee of the U.S. Congress. Their report completely exonerated the protesters and pinned the blame for the massacres entirely on the regime and its security forces. No protesters possessed, used or attempted to use firearms, explosives or any other objects that could be used as a weapon. No protester set or attempted to set fire to public or private property, robbed or attempted to rob a bank.[1]
The victims of the post-election massacres were not faceless and nameless images in the crowd. They were individuals with identities. Among the victims were Tensae Zegeye, age 14; Habtamu Tola, age 16; Binyam Degefa, age 18; Behailu Tesfaye, age 20; Kasim Ali Rashid, age 21. Teodros Giday Hailu, age 23. Adissu Belachew, age 25; Milion Kebede Robi, age 32; Desta Umma Birru, age 37; Tiruwork G. Tsadik, age 41; Elfnesh Tekle, age 45. Abebeth Huletu, age 50; Regassa Feyessa, age 55; Teshome Addis Kidane, age 65; Victim No. 21762, age 75, female, and Victim No. 21760, male, age unknown and many dozens more.[2]
Ethiopians have a special duty to bear witness for these innocent victims who died as eye witnesses to the theft of an election and the mugging of democracy in Ethiopia in 2005. They went into the streets to peacefully defend their right to vote and have their votes count, and defend the first democratic election in Ethiopia’s 3,000-year history. We must force ourselves to testify for them not just as victims of monstrous crimes but also as true patriots. For they acted out of a sense of duty, honor, love of country and deep concern for the future of Ethiopia. They died so that 80 million Ethiopians could live free.
Ethiopia’s dictators would have the world believe that the victims of their carnage were nobodies who did not matter. It is true they were all ordinary people of the humblest origins. But we value them not for their wealth and social status but for their patriotism and sacrifices in the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights.
Elie Weisel is absolutely right. We have a duty to bear witness against those who commit crimes against humanity and for the innocent victims of tyranny and dictatorship. We have to “force” ourselves to testify not only for the dead but also “for the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow.” We do not want the massacres of 2005 to become the future of Ethiopia.
When we bear witness for Ethiopia’s innocent victims, we bear witness for all victims of tyranny and dictatorships. For the cause of the innocent transcends race, ethnicity, religion, language, country or continent. It even transcends time and space because the innocent represent humanity’s infinite capacity for virtue as dictators and tyrants represent humanity’s dregs. When we bear witness for them, we also testify in our own behalf against that evil lurking secretly and deep in our souls and hearts. But by not forcing ourselves to testify against evil, we become an inseparable part of it. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” That is also the essential message of Elie Weisel.
Let us bear witness now for Zenawi’s victims. Let us tell the world that they cry out for justice from the grave. Let us testify that they died on the bloody battlefield of dictatorship with nothing in their hands, but peace and love in their hearts, justice in their minds and passion for the cause of freedom and democracy in their spirits and bodies. Let us remember and honor them, not in sorrow, but in gratitude and eternal indebtedness. Let us make sure that their sacrifices will tell generations of Ethiopians to come stories of personal bravery and courage and an abiding and unflinching faith in democracy and the rule of law. And when we despair over what appears to be the victory of evil over good, let us be inspired by Gandhi’s words: “There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.” Let us remind ourselves every day that “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men and women do nothing.”
[1] These victims were documented by the Inquiry Commission in its investigation of shootings of unarmed protesters in Addis Ababa on June 8, and November 1-10 and 14-16, 2005 in Oromia and Amhara “regional states”. See, http://www.ethiomedia.com/addfile/ethiopian_inquiry_commission_briefs_congress.html
(Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on Pambazuka News and New American Media.)
When it comes to the ruling tribal junta in Ethiopia, there is no one who has as much clarity as President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea. He knows their real nature, what and how they think, their weaknesses, strength, and modus operandi. This is hardly surprising since he is the one who guided them all the way to Menelik’s palace in Addis Ababa. A few years later they turned around and stabbed him in the back and waged a war of attrition against Eritreans. Simply put, to Isaias and the Eritrean leadership, Woyanne is an experiment that went terribly wrong. To Ethiopians, it is a long nightmare. This monster must be eliminated soon in order for peace to prevail in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and whole Horn of Africa region.