The winds of change that is sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa cannot be stopped by Meles Zenawi and his thugs. As the African saying goes, “No one can stop the rain.”
No amount of wind bagging about economic growth, divide and rule tactics, and state terrorism will prevent 80 million Ethiopians from demanding their liberty, human dignity, democratic rights, and a better life in their own country.
The time has now come for us to say, “Enough is Enough!” Beka! Gaye! Bass! Yiakel!
Ethiopians shall unite, rise up and take control of their destiny. They stand as one — from the rural villages to the cities and the Diaspora — to remove Meles Zenawi’s Woyanne junta. 20 years of dictatorship is enough! 20 years of massacres… 20 years of corruption… 20 years of abuse of power is enough… 20 years of mismanagement, misrule is enough!.
Meles Zenawi has been a cause of death and destruction. During the last 20 years tens of thousands of people have perished. His security forces have committed crimes against humanity and Genocide in Gambela, the Ogaden region and elsewhere in the country. His abysmal human rights records are well documented by the Department of State, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, the United States Congress and the European Parliament. There is an overwhelming prima-facie evidence for the United Nation’s Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court.
In 2010 he conducted a fake election, hired a lobby firm in the United States, and claimed that he won a whopping 99.6% of the seats in the rubber stamp parliament. His wicked macroeconomic policy has resulted in hyperinflation, massive devaluation, bank looting, rampant youth unemployment, spiraling cost of living, grinding poverty, and forced migration. His disastrous agricultural policy, despite the so-called big push by the West, is unable to feed the ever-growing population of the country. By the end of 2010 close to 10% of the population is living on food aid. Food aid has been used for political purposes.
Furthermore, Meles is selling the country’s virgin lands to foreigners by evicting poor peasants from their ancestral land, resulting in major land grab, environmental catastrophe and human displacement. Meles has created a landlocked country that is inhabited by more than 80 million people. That is why we, the Global Civic Movement for Change in Ethiopia have resolved that the 20 years of brutal rule of Meles Zenawi must end.
We call upon all Ethiopian civil society organizations, churches, mosques, schools and universities, professionals, business people, laborers and civil servants, the youth, men and women to rise up in nonviolent resistance as their brothers and sisters have done in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya to remove the Meles regime.
We call upon members of the Ethiopian Defense Forces, the police and security services to stand with the people and protect them from the Meles dictatorship. We make a special call to them to refrain from using deadly force against their brothers and sisters in the same way as their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt have done.
We call upon all Ethiopian civic organizations world wide to engage in consultations with all democratic forces inside and outside of Ethiopia and provide moral and materiel assistance to bring about democratic change in Ethiopia.
BEKA! GAYE! BASS! YIAKEL!
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