The Horn Times breaking News 14 December 2012
“Allah Waa Akbar”…The cry of Ethiopian Muslims from Menagesha’s torture chambers
By Getahune Bekele
“Oh my Ethiopia what have you become?” wails a 39 year old Anbesa metro bus driver, GeremewBalcha (not his real name) who lives in the vicinity of the notorious Menagesha police station holding cells, about 25 KMs west of Addis Ababa.
Built along the road to Holeta Genet town, opposite to a vast flower farm owned by top TPLF cadre, Ato Sibehatu, father of the ruling junta’s mouth piece Mimi Sibehatu, the Menagesha police station has been used as torture and execution chamber since the Muslim uprising began several months ago.
“Every night from 10 am we hear the cry of Allah Waa Akbar, from the compound of the police station, we even count the crack of the whip as it landed on the victim’s body. Few minutes later the cry goes silent until the next victim starts screaming aloud, Allah Waa Akbar…” the tearful father of three explains.
The sheer brutality of the ruling minority junta against Muslim protesters
“It is heart breaking to hear the agonizing cry of female victims. Even when the torturers put a gag, we kept counting the bang…I just send my 7-month pregnant wife away to the town of Ambo as the trauma becomes unbearable. The community of Menagesha is severely traumatized. At times we hear mothers openly crying from nearby houses when gun shots rang out in the middle of the night. Are the federal police members executing prisoners? I don’t know.”Adds Geremew Balcha.
The Horn Times reporter who travelled to Menagesha on Tuesday evening 11 Dec 2012, further uncovered volley of bullets were in fact heard in the farm’s compound but he find it difficult to establish if the federal police executes intransigent prisoners there and dump bodies elsewhere.
Again on Wednesday 12 Dec, the same reporter observed more than 200 shackled prisoners crossing in to the farm on foot where they are going to work as slave laborers on a- meal- a- day payment.
It is a sad case of so-called liberators turning Voracious colonizers.
Affectionately known by the faithful around the world as the children of Billal-the Abyssinian, the moderate and peaceable Ethiopian Muslims are currently refusing to be ruled by a genocidal Tigre sheikdom and their struggle for religious freedom is gaining momentum, making the junta blanch with fright.
The ruling elite views this peaceful struggle as a prerequisite for more anti- TPLF insurrection by resuscitating patriotism laced with religious fervor firmly rooted in Ethiopiawenet.
The warlords also know that such wide spread movement has the potential to end the 21 year plunder and enslavement of Ethiopia.
According to a well respected political analyst based in Addis Ababa, making torture perfectly legal and the building of phony detention facilities shows the junta’s desperate attempt to crash the rebellion; and to Ethiopians, this brutality is a stark reminder of the 2005 genocidal massacre.
In another related news, an organizing committee member for Sunday’s march to Kality prison called on all Ethiopians from all walks of life to join their Muslim brothers and sisters in front of the main gate of the prison at 8 pm.