Ethiopians who oppose Meles Zenawi’s ethnic apartheid tyranny persistently ask the U.S. and European governments to stop financing the regime, while forgetting that we in the Diaspora send over a billion dollars in hard currency to Ethiopia per year in a form of remittance. This amount is greater than what the Woyanne junta receives from its Western backers. In 2008, Dr Alemayehu G. Mariam wrote:
It was an eye-opening revelation to learn that Ethiopian Americans contributed a cool $1.2 billion to the Ethiopian economy this past year. That is “only second to the amount generated by Ethiopia’s exports.” Last week Elias Loha, Manager of Reserve Management and Foreign Exchange Market of Ethiopian National Bank, fretting over “a cut in vital remittances from Ethiopians in the United States” told Reuters: “We are concerned and worried that as a result of the financial crisis… some of the Ethiopians may loose their jobs and as a result they may stop sending money to help their families back home.” Could that be a backhanded way of giving us teeny-weeny credit for the much vaunted stratospheric “10 percent a year economic growth” Zenawi gasbags about? [full text]
Isn’t about time that we ask ourselves what we can do instead of begging the US and EU to help us?