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Corruption in the Ethiopian JUST US Sector

For the past several months, I have been commenting on the findings of the World Bank’s “Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia”, a 448-page report covering eight sectors (health, education, rural water supply, justice, construction, land, telecommunications and mining). In this my sixth commentary, I focus on “corruption in the justice sector”. The other five commentaries are available at my blog site.

Injustice minsitry 3Talking about corruption in the Ethiopian “justice sector” is like talking about truth in Orwell’s 1984 Ministry of Truth (“Minitrue”).  The purpose of Minitrue is to create and maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute, all knowing, all-powerful and infallible. The purpose of the Ministry of Justice in Ethiopia is to create the illusion that the ruling regime under the command and control of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) masquerading as the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Front (EPDRF) is absolute, all knowing, all-powerful and infallible.

I have long caricatured the “justice sector” of the TPLF/EPDRF as a kangaroo justice system founded on a sham, corrupt and whimsical legal process. What passes off as a “justice system” in Ethiopia is little more than a marketplace where “justice” is bought and sold in a monopoly controlled by one man supported by a few nameless, faceless and clueless men who skulk in the shadows of power. It is a justice system in which universal principles of law and justice are disregarded, subverted, perverted and mocked. It is a system where the poor, the marginalized, the audacious journalists, dissidents, opposition and civic society leaders are legally lynched despite the criticism and bootless cries of the international community. It is a system in which regime leaders, their families, friends and cronies are above the law and spell justice “JUST US”.

My first critique of the TPLF/EPDRF “justice system” appeared in 2006 when I wrote a 32-page analysis titled, “Keystone Cops, Prosecutors and Judges in a Police State.” It was written in the first year of what has become my long day’s journey into the dark night of advocacy against human rights violations in Ethiopia and Africa. The piece was intended to be a critical analysis of the trial of the so-called Kality defendants consisting of some 130 or so major opposition leaders, human rights advocates, civic society activists, journalists and others in the aftermath of the 2005 election. I tried to demonstrate that the show trial of those defendants was little more than a third-rate theatrical production staged to dupe the international community. I also tried to show how a dysfunctional and bankrupt judicial system was used to destroy political opposition and dissent. I described the “judicial proceedings” of the Kality defendants as “an elaborate hoax, a make-believe tribunal complete with hand-picked judges, trumped up charges, witless prosecutors, no procedures and predetermined outcomes set up to produce only one thing: a  monumental miscarriage of justice.”

A glossy “diagnosis” of corruption in the Ethiopian justice sector

The WB’s “diagnosis” of corruption in “Ethiopia’s justice sector” is based on “interviews of 60 individuals” including “federal judges and prosecutors”, police, private attorneys, etc. in the capital and at another location. No ordinary citizens were included in the interview panel or the smaller focus groups. The study is intended to “explore the incidence of corruption in Ethiopia’s justice sector (including not only the courts but also several other organizations).” The “justice sector” includes, among others, “courts, police, prosecutors, administrative agencies with quasi-judicial powers, and public and private attorneys, prisons, and those in the executive and legislative branches responsible for enacting the laws and regulations governing their operations”.

The report begins with unusual disclaimers and apologia. The author proclaims that “this report begins from an agnostic standpoint—attempting only to document reality in Ethiopia’s justice sector and to compare it… with the situation elsewhere in African and other countries…” It is not clear what she means by “an agnostic standpoint”, but her analysis is frontloaded with servilely apologetic language manifestly intended not to offend or appear to point an accusatory finger at the ruling regime in Ethiopia. The report appears to have been written with some trepidation; perhaps the author was afraid of a backlash (tongue-lash) from the regime. The author timorously tiptoes around well-established and notorious facts about corruption in the regime’s justice sector. In light of the many disclaimers, reservations and contingencies in the report, it is obvious that the author does not want to call a spade a spade, so she calls the spade a bucket. But corruption by any disclaimer is still corruption; and Ethiopia’s justice sectors reeks of corruption.

The author claims an examination of  “corruption in the justice sector is important because it undermines the peaceful resolution of conflicts, the control of corruption in other sectors, the strengthening of the normative framework underlying private and public actions (the rule of law), and the creation of a predictable environment for public and private transactions.” According to the study, corruption in the Ethiopian justice sector “takes one of two forms: (a) political interference with the independent actions of courts or other sector agencies, or (b) payment or solicitation of bribes or other considerations to alter a decision or action.” The study claims the “most common form of corruption involves bribes solicited by or offered to police to ignore a criminal offense, not make an arrest, or not bring witnesses or suspects to court (which can cause a provisional adjournment of the case). Traffic police are the worst offenders.” Another “common form of corruption” involves “payment of court staff to misplace case files or evidence” (a practice that has nearly disappeared because of new judicial policies on archive management introduced under a Canadian International Development Agency program”.

The author provides a catalogue of corrupt practices which she claims are disputed by various respondents in her study but include “(a) sales of judgments or other judicial actions in civil disputes; (b) lawyers’ solicitation of “bribes” that never reached the bench; (c) prosecutors’ misuse of their own powers, in response to bribes or political directives, to advance or paralyze a case; and (d) the corrupt actions of various officials entrusted with enforcement of judgments, especially in civil cases.” She attributes the divergence in viewpoints to a “likely gap between perceptions and reality [which] are partly a function of the persistent lack of transparency in personnel policies.”

What is remarkable about the WB “justice sector” study is the fact that the author, by focusing on the “most common form of corruption” (i.e. petty police, particularly traffic police, corruption), fails to critically probe grand corruption involving party officials and regime leaders and their cronies who routinely subvert the justice system through political interference and pressure to protect their political and economic interests. She circumvents serious inquiry into grand corruption in the “justice sector” by providing catalogues of “potential forms of criminal and civil corruption” and “corruption risks”. She appears averse to investigating high-level corruption that occurs in the process of judicial appointment of handpicked party loyalists and hacks, laws written to aid certain elites in society, or in the debasement and corruption of the integrity and independence of the judiciary. She ignores the type of justice corruption that occurs in “state capture” where economic elites develop cozy relationships with political and judicial officials through whom they obtain favorable judicial decisions to advance their own advantage. For instance, on the issue of political interference in the judicial process, the author demonstrates her “agnosticism” by reporting that “the one who came closest eventually admitted that ‘there was some [political interference], but it was very rare.’” Other responses ranged from ‘a moderate amount’ (limited to the bad apples) to the extreme of holding that ‘every civil judgment is sold.’”

Curiously, the author points an accusatory finger at petty corruption as the “most common form of corruption” distracting attention from the systemic and structural corruption in the justice sector. The importance of petty corruption must not be understated because of the serious impact it has on the lives and livelihoods of ordinary citizens interacting with police, prosecutorial and other petty judicial officials. There is ample anecdotal evidence of petty corruption in which ordinary Ethiopian citizens and businesspersons are “shaken down” by traffic cops or minor functionaries in the judicial or state bureaucracy seeking small bribes. However, though petty corruption may be easier to detect, the real focus should be on grand corruption which is systemic, structural and difficult to detect and nearly impossible to punish. Structural and systemic corruption in the legal institutions, rules, and norms and those who are practitioners in the system create, maintain and sustain a culture of corruption in the justice sector, which the author appears to overlook.

Justice corruption is primarily a systemic failure of judicial institutions, lack of political will and capacity to manage judicial resources, maintain integrity of institutions. The author makes abstract references to the usual catalogue of corruption variables but does not seek to gather data to illuminate the scope, breadth and gravity of the problem of political interference and lack of accountability in the justice system. Grand corruption in the justice sector stems from the fact that political officials have wide authority over judicial officials (from appointment to management of judicial functions); and political officials have little accountability and incentive to maintain the integrity of the justice sector. There are few functional formal systems of control in the relationship between the judicial and political processes in Ethiopia. If there ever were control systems, they have been broken for a long time making it nearly impossible to administer fairly the laws while maintaining accountability in the form of a robust reporting system and transparency in the form of robust management practices. Such institutional decay has promoted the growth of a culture of corruption in the justice sector and continues to undermine not only the broad adjudicatory role of justice sector institutions but also public confidence in the integrity of the justice system itself.

Justice sector in a police state?

Justice in a dictatorship is to justice as military music is to music. No reasonable person would consider martial law (military rule) to produce justice.  By definition dictatorship — a form of government in which absolute power is concentrated in the hands of a dictator or a small clique — is the quintessential definition of injustice. Any form of government that operates in flagrant disregard of the rule of law is inherently corrupt.

I have on previous occasions tried to expose such corruption in Ethiopia’s “justice sector” with anecdotal evidence of arbitrary administration of justice or denial of fair trial to those accused of  “terrorism”, “treason” and even “corruption”, opposition leaders, human rights advocates, journalists, etc. In the kinder and gentler police state that Ethiopia has become, any petty “law enforcement” official of the regime has the power to arrest and jail an innocent citizen. As I argued in my February 2012 commentary, “The Prototype African Police State”, a local police chief in Addis Ababa felt so arrogantly secure in his arbitrary powers that he threatened to arrest a Voice of America reporter stationed in Washington, D.C. simply because that reporter asked him for his full name during a telephone interview.  “I don’t care if you live in Washington or in Heaven. I don’t give a damn! But I will arrest you and take you. You should know that!!”, barked the impudent police chief Zemedkun. If a flaky policeman can exercise such absolute power, is it unreasonable to imagine those at the apex of power have the power to do anything they want with impunity. The regime in Ethiopia is the petri dish of corruption and living proof  that power corrupts and an absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In my view, denial of due process (fair trial) is the highest form of corruption imaginable in the “justice sector” because it results in the arbitrary deprivation of a person’s life, liberty and property. Could anyone (other than those politically connected) really expect to get a fair trial in the regime’s kangaroo courts or fair treatment in the pre-trial process?

The systemic corruption in the “justice sector” is that the law of the land is ignored, disregarded and perverted at the whim and fancy of those in power. For instance, the presumption of innocence (Eth. Const. Art. 20(3)) is openly flouted. The late leader of the regime used to routinely and publicly talk about the guilt of opposition leaders, journalists and others standing trial without so much of an awareness of the suspects’ right to a presumption of innocence or appreciation of the risk of prejudicial pretrial publicity emanating from such inflammatory statements which are prohibited under the Constitution and other international human rights regimes (e.g. Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 14(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 7(b) of the  African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR)). In 2011, the late leader of the regime proclaimed the guilt of freelance Swedish journalists Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye on charges of “terrorism” while they were being tried and he was visiting Norway. He emphatically declared the duo “are, at the very least, messenger boys of a terrorist organization. They are not journalists.” Persson and Schibbye were “convicted” and sentenced to long prison terms.

Show trials by publicity and demonization are another hallmark of the regime’s justice system. Following the 2005 election, the late leader of the regime publicly declared that “The CUD (Kinijit) opposition leaders are engaged in insurrection — that is an act of treason under Ethiopian law. They will be charged and they will appear in court.” They were charged, appeared in “court” and were convicted. In December 2008, the late leader railroaded Birtukan Midekssa, the first female political party leader in Ethiopian history, without so much as a hearing let alone a trial. He sent her straight from the street into solitary confinement and later declared: “There will never be an agreement with anybody to release Birtukan. Ever. Full stop. That’s a dead issue.” In making this statement, the late leader proclaimed to the world that he is the law and the ultimate source of justice in Ethiopia. His words trump the country’s Constitution!

In 2009, one of the top leaders of the regime labeled 40 defendants awaiting trial as “desperadoes” who planned to “assassinate high ranking government officials and destroying telecommunication services and electricity utilities and create conducive conditions for large scale chaos and havoc.” They were all “convicted” and given long prison sentences.

Violations of the constitutional rights of those accused of crimes by the regime are rampant. Article 20 (2) provides, “Any person in custody or a convicted prisoner shall have the right to communicate with and be visited by spouse(s), close relatives and friends, medical attendants, religious and legal counselors.” Internationally celebrated Ethiopian journalists including Reeyot Alemu, Woubshet Taye and many others were denied access to legal counsel for months. Ethiopian Muslim activists who demanded an end to religious interference were jailed on “terrorism” charges were also denied access to counsel.  They were mistreated and abused in pretrial detention. Scores of journalists, opposition members and activists arrested and prosecuted (persecuted) under the so-called anti-terrorism proclamation were also denied counsel and speedy trials and have languished in prison for long periods. Suspects are interrogated without the presence of counsel and coerced confessions extracted. Yet, Article 19 (5) provides, “Everyone shall have the right not to be forced to make any confessions or admissions of any evidence that may be brought against him during the trial.”

Article 19 (1) provides, “Anyone arrested on criminal charges shall have the right to be informed promptly and in detail… the nature and cause of the charge against him… Article 20 (2) provides, “Everyone charged with an offence shall be adequately informed in writing of the charges brought against him. Recently, the regime arrested members of its officialdom and their cronies on suspicion of corruption and kept the suspects in detention for months without informing them “promptly and in detail the charges against them”. Although the regime’s “top anti-corruption official” claimed that the corruption “suspects have been under surveillance for two years”, on their first court appearance, the prosecutors requested a 14-day continuance to gather more evidence! There is no judicial system in the world where suspects are arrested of committing crimes after being investigated for 2 years and then the prosecution asks for endless continuances to gather additional evidence.

Injustice impersonating justice

The 2012  U.S. State Department Human Rights report concluded, “The law provides for an independent judiciary. Although the civil courts operated with a large degree of independence, the criminal courts remained weak, overburdened, and subject to political influence.”  The WB could have done a much better job of “diagnosing corruption” in Ethiopia’s “justice sector”. Candidly speaking, any deficiency in the report should not reflect exclusively on the World Bank or its consultants but on Ethiopians, particularly the Ethiopian intelligentsia, who do not seem find it worth their time or effort to read, challenge and supplement such reports. It seems few, very few, Ethiopian scholars and analysts take the time and effort to locate, study and critically analyze such important studies done by international institutions and other private research institutions.

I doubt the WB justice sector study will be of much value to policy makers, scholars or the casual reader. Having said that, the burden is on Ethiopian scholars in Ethiopia and abroad to work collaboratively and carefully document corruption in Ethiopia’s justice and other sectors. No study of Ethiopia’s justice sector is worthy of the title if it does not rigorously evaluate the factors that are at the core of corruption in the “justice sector” – absence of the rule of law, lack of independence of the judiciary,  absence of due process, lack of impartiality and neutrality in the judicial process, the culture of corruption and impunity and the lack of accountability, transparency and confidence in the legal system. Such a study is the principal responsibility of Ethiopians, not the World Bank or its consultants. On the other hand, when the sword of justice is beaten into a sledgehammer of injustice, it is the supreme duty of ordinary citizens to expose it!

Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer.

Previous commentaries by the author are available at:

http://open.salon.com/blog/almariam/

www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/

Amharic translations of recent commentaries by the author may be found at:

http://www.ecadforum.com/Amharic/archives/category/al-mariam-amharic

http://ethioforum.org/?cat=24

An Ethiopian walking on eggshells.

An Ethiopian walking on eggshells. By Yilma Bekele
No question I have to be careful writing this column. That is why I choose the title. Some of us are quick to take offense or assume holier than thou attitude when it comes to the subject I am gingerly trying to confront. I decided to approach the issue head on and let the chips fall where they may.
It all started after reading my friend Dr. Fikre Tolosa’s article regarding the Oromo question in our homeland. I was impressed and empowered by his lucid analysis. His grasp of our ancient history is second to none and his piece on the current situation was a showcase of his vast knowledge. The response to his presentation did not fit the gravity of the subject matter he so carefully laid out. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. I expected a mature and open discussion so we can have clarity and help us see the problem that has confounded our people for quite a long time. There is nothing like looking at an old problem with a fresher perspective equipped with new knowledge and experience gained from learning and observing.
Thus with my disappointment for those that claim to speak for the oppressed and down trodden I left the subject matter behind and moved on to other things. But that nagging feeling of searching for an opportunity to put the matter into some perspective stayed with me.
I was making my breakfast one early morning when I heard Public Radio discussing the anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers and the Mississippi of 1963. I was mesmerized by the story. For those that are not familiar with the history of America and its race relations I will do my best to give you a snapshot of the period.
The 1960 USA was a different country from what we see today. The two races white and black might as well have been living on different planets. They claim the north was a little different whatever that means but in the south USA being black was not a small matter. The State of Mississippi was ground zero for racism in its ugliest form. It was not de facto apartheid but it was definitely de facto segregation. The two races kept separate neighborhoods, separate schools and separate existence.
Medgar Evans, a veteran of World War II who fought for his country, a college graduate and a civil right campaigner applied to the University of Mississippi law school and his application was rejected due to his race. This was 1954. Mr. Evans continued his work in the civil rights movement by helping organize boycotts and setting up chapters of NAACP (National Alliance for the Advancement of Colored People) in his home state.
Some white folks in Mississippi did not appreciate the likes of Medgar Evans that were trying to upset the norm. Separate and unequal was their philosophy. Thus on June 12, 1963 a white fellow that took the distorted view to heart shot and killed Medgar Evans thinking that his act will stop the march of history. Here is the lyric to a beautiful song by Bob Dylan trying to make sense of this tragedy.
A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game.
How true, the hapless individual with no name was just a ‘pawn in their game’. I felt a strong sense of attachment and empathy to Medgar Evans. He was not a complainer. He was an activist. Despite the danger to himself and his family Medgar worked to right what he felt was wrong. That was the story being told on the radio the morning as I was making my breakfast.
You see they were not discussing how awful it was to be a black person in Mississippi in 1963 but rather how things have changed due to heroes like Medgar. There was lynching, separate bathrooms, designated water fountains, unequal schools and a whole bunch of grievances to talk about but what was the point of dwelling on the negatives when one can construct on the positive? Slavery was an ugly period with the consequences still lingering until today. There is no denying that when you look at the America of 2013. But in that radio program they choose to take a positive approach. Remember the past but look what has been achieved in such a short time and build on that was the message.
And I thought here are a people brought with chains to serve, systematically dehumanized due to the color of their skin, psychologically whipped and untold atrocity visited on them but are triumphatically celebrating their endurance with hope and I was humbled. I was filled with a new sense of my ability to overcome and thrive. The sacrifice of Medgar Evans in Mississippi gave perspective to the suffering of my people in Ethiopia and the possibility of one day celebrating such a bright future in my ancient land. I thought of Professor Asrat that suffered for my freedom, I remembered Assefa Maru that was gunned in broad daylight for his resolve not to bow down, I stay up nights thinking of my brother Eskinder and Andulalem, Bekele, Wubeshet, my sister Reyot and many others enduring pain on my behalf. I dare not complain because it is a lot better to work harder so their sacrifice is not in vain.
My education did not end there. A few days later the same Public Radio brought out the story of race relations in the state of Alabama. This was another dramatic story with a positive twist. It took place in June of 1963 and the setting was another place of higher education. The person being interviewed is the daughter of the then Governor of the state and she was only a 13 years old girl at the time when the tragic drama took place. On that fateful day her father stood in front of the University of Alabama to block a black person from registering. The confrontation between the state and the federal government was a made for a picture moment. George Wallace the Governor lost but he made his point when he vainly declared ‘segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.’
Peggy Wallace the daughter is one of those rare human beings that are able to emerge from such a tumultuous period with integrity. Her father redefined himself in the later part of his life but what struck me most was her statement ‘I am a Wallace but I am different.’ In the radio interview she said ‘It has taken me a lifetime to step out from the shadow of the schoolhouse door….I decided I wanted to leave a legacy for my children … one of change. If you have the courage to find your own voice, you can make change. I wanted Burns and Leigh (her children) to know that their mother found her voice and had the courage to stand for change. That she wanted change. That she did change.’
The two stories lifted the feeling of hopelessness and the heavy burden I feel when I think of my homeland. It is good to know that individual action could galvanize a whole nation to stop and pay attention. Medgar Evans sacrifices on behalf what is right and George Wallace’s defiance against what is just made people realize change is necessary. The nation was confronted with the reality that evil things were happening and no one is free when others are oppressed.
My happy thoughts were jarred when I listened to a Voice of America interview with an individual presenting himself as an Ethiopian historian. Ato Gebrekidan Desta is other things but definitely not a historian. Listening to his bombastic analysis it is easy to tell that his whole purpose was to settle a score not to enlighten or find a meaning in a scholarly manner. It looks like he first arrived at a certain conclusion and went about looking for incidents to fit his theory. He reminded me of our Woyane leaders that never miss a chance to condemn the Derg while at the same time working hard to emulate and surpass the atrocity they so much hated and supposedly fought to get rid of.
Our friend Ato Gebrekidan passionately puts down early Ethiopian history and the leaders in his vain attempt to build the resume of Atse Yohanes. He dismisses all historians as tools of other Ethiopian kings while blindly forging ahead to construct his own reality regarding his favorite king Atse Yohanes. I was appalled when Ato Gebrekidan dismissed all previous historians as nothing but tools of the old regime. Such worthy intellectuals as Belaten Geta Hiruy Welde Selassie, Dr. Sergew Hable Selassie, Bahru Zewde, Richard Pankhurst, Donald Levine, Harold Marcus and other giants were all considered unworthy of respect.
I have not read or come across a historian worthy of his profession that has disparaged or dismissed the contributions of Atse Yohanes and the part he has contributed to enrich our ancient history. On the other hand there is no need to belittle and vilify others so as to put him high on a pedestal. Ato Gebrekidan speaks more like a hired cadre with a mission not like a professional, a teacher and seeker of the truth.
I am grateful to VOA for inviting Dr. Shumet Sishagne to give us a better perspective on how to look at history and how to talk in a civilized manner with the goal being to teach but not preach. Dr. Shumet, God bless him is a perfect example of what it means to be an expert on a subject. In a calm and reserved manner he was able to give us perspective on how we view our past and how we interpret the event that took place to establish what we call home today.
Whether we like or not, whether we approve or not there is a country called Ethiopia and there are over eighty million souls that are physically and politically recognized by the international community to be residents of that defined space. While countries still are waging wars to conquer and increase their physical size we in Ethiopia have actively been engaging in dismantling the big to create mini kingdoms. The first causality is Eritrea and thanks to the largesse of the TPLF party today for the first time in our history our country does not have access to the sea. Although the TPLF party’s main agenda was to create another enclave for obvious and other reasons it did not materialize. Unfortunately there are still a few that keep insisting on resetting the clock back to the last century to the time when we each tribe or ethnic group was isolated from their neighbors and ruled by a despot, a warlord or hereditary king.
That was the response to Dr. Fikre’s article which I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Some were vividly remembering what happened during the period of nation building and presenting it as a crime. Fortified with imagination fueled with hate it looks like they want to settle a dispute which took place may be over a hundred years ago right now and today. Their emotional outburst confounds most that have a difficult time relating to a part of history that is old, outdated or not in the radar of the average person that has moved on to other things in life. It is sad to see some that supposedly have tasted enlightenment with college degrees to prove it and tasked with the burden of higher expectations by their people sink low and peddle ethnic politics for fleeting ego massage.
No one can turn back the march of time. The responsibility with the generations to come is learn from history so what was done wrong would be righted and educate themselves and their children to avoid future mishaps. The example I gave regarding Mississippi and Alabama are perfect examples where the responsible action of using the law and open discussion have resulted bringing about a just and fair system. The job is not done yet but looking at the foundation laid it is easy to predict that whatever comes next would be positive and a plus.
If such approach can overcome the hurt and hate that engulfed the black American population that was bought and sold as a commodity, held separate and systematically kept ignorant surely in our country where the different ethnic groups have intermarried, worship together and have so much in common the chances of building an all-inclusive society is not a fools dream. There is no need to go around looking for proof when all we got to do is look deep at our own linage and see the rainbow nature of our family tree.
It is easy to hate. It is a lazy persons approach to explain difficult situations with hysteria and moronic one lines. Giving a smart and reserved response requires knowledge and common sense. Some choose to cater to the lowest denominator among us and hurl insults or question a person’s character and integrity when confronted with the truth.
Dr. Fikre’s questions have not been answered yet. Those that advocate separation and going it their way have not made their case why such action will result in a better situation for the people they are trying to liberate. They have not explained the many important but grave issues of dealing with millions of people that will be caught in the middle. This article is not enough neither would it try to point out the many consequences of such drastic measures advocated by some but any discussion should address all issues that come with acts of national divorce. On the other hand the proven and successful means employed by the US, South Africa among others should be looked at closely to solve a national problem that needs to be dealt with delicately.
I also believe while not belittling the national question to me at this moment in time the number one question confronting our country is the issue of Democracy and respect for Human Right. Solving those two important questions would naturally resolve the issue of equality. Respect for individual right will translate to respect for right of nationalities. I believe our time and effort is better spent on getting rid of the Woyane group that is the cause of all problems and the source of disharmony among the children of Ethiopia. I urge you to please read the articles and video this piece is based on. The links are at the bottom.

Ethiopian History Discussed on VOA


http://www.zehabesha.com/amharic/archives/3573
http://www.zehabesha.com/amharic/archives/3758
http://www.songlyrics.com/bob-dylan/only-a-pawn-in-their-game-lyrics/