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A Response to Zelalem Eshete P.H.D

This article would have opened a long over due dialogue if the call was for “all Ethiopians” as opposed to “all Amharas” and from an Ethiopian rather than a person who says he is an “Amhara ethnic individual”. The root problem for today’s Ethiopia is, with all due respect, people like Zelalem Eshete P.H.D. who make broad brushstroke statements without one fact to back them up. Let us not get sidelined by accusations of an anonymous Amhara problem when there is a real Ethiopian problem to solve!

Before I go through the real issue for today’s Ethiopia, I’d love to ask Zelalem Eshete P.H.D. a question. He suggested that  all Amharas (and Ethiopian Amhara specifically) marginalized abuse that “all Amhara forefathers” according to the article  are responsible for? Where and to whom and what historical reference are we talking about, exactly?

By saying let’s “stand by the gap”, what gap can we stand by in today’s Ethiopia as if the Amharas have the upper hand or are somehow better positioned to fill in? Perhaps we are the missing piece to fill the void since we are pushed to the curb by false accusations of things that have happened a thousand years ago that nobody has evidence of or historical citation to back the accusations but some crooked TPLF “historians”. Is it they who are funding you to re-write history?

I have the right to ask what acts exactly I should confess about that only my ethnicity is responsible for in the history of Ethiopia? What deeds am I repenting for? This article, as daringly bold as it is, should have stated what events it’s talking about, specifically. When and where was this historical event that has happened in over 3000 years of history of Ethiopia that my ethnicity is solely is responsible for? And what cowardice or cruelty did it carry out to another ethnic group of Ethiopia to pretty much kaput the whole country? Please cite the event for us so we can “repent”! Now, you must deliver as you already senselessly called upon us by insinuating the we are the core problem to moving forward.

My brother Zelalem Eshete, my forefathers, at least to talk about my own family history, were snatched from the picture every time Ethiopia was invaded or attacked. For them Ethiopia was first before their wives and children. My grandmother, alive to this day, lived all her life in the Oromo region and speaks the language well (very well actually) and all her dear friends and business partners were and are all Oromo and so growing up, even though in Addis, I always somehow thought we must be Oromo since my mother, aunt, grandmother and my grandfather speak and pretty much exercise Oromo tradition in the house. I never heard anything derogatory that my mother or my grandparents said about the place where they lived peacefully and respectfully with others. I must share this with you – my grandmother actually boasts to this very day every time she is challenged that she will move back to Denbi “my Oromo people will bail me out” that was her rhetoric.

So for me, my grandparent’s memories were of good people, good friendships, love and a beautiful fertile place they’ve lived throughout their lives up until the Durge regime took everything away from them and had no choice but to leave from the place they’ve always known. I remember, even though I was very little when my grandfather died, his body wasn’t buried so the Oromo friends could come from Elibabure Denbi to cry as it is always the case in Ethiopian culture. And when they arrived the way they cried in their own traditional way made “lekeso” unique and special, at least for me. My great grandmother remained living there even long after my grandparents relocated and every time she came to visit what we would eagerly wait for was “enchoté” as we all love eating “enchoté”. We celebrated Oromo tradition by virtue of my grandmother living there for almost their whole life. So I had a hard time (at least from my own family experience) to what I have to say to confess and repent from. Both sides of my grandparents almost lost everything during the Italian war and after the Italians left and the King came back, they were working in rebuilding Ethiopia just as everybody else and every other ethnic group was doing.

Please, since you called on “All Amhara” I’d like to have an answer to what specific historical event you want me to confess and repent from as my forefathers history is as I put it above.

The Durge regime accused them and put my grandparents in jail for months after taking everything they’ve worked for labeling them “nefetgna” and so my childhood up until the TPLF taking over I know of the Amhara regime being attacked and now even more by the TPLF junta.

As far as reality goes, for the last 23 years we are the foremost target by TPLF gangs, young girls of Amharas are given injectables so they won’t reproduce, last I checked it is only the Amhara people who are are depopulated, accused of living in certain places of their own country. Their own parliament accounted 2.5 million people missing were Amharas – ethnic cleansing to put it in the exact word on it. As I am writing you this letter, in Waldeba, Harar, Benishangul Gumz and from other places the Amhara people are being told to go back to their own region after living a millennium in such places. I find it ironic that you chose to generalize and call on all Amharas being “be’firde gemedelenet”  when you should have called on the international community to stop the genocide that is going on right now against the Amhara people!

In the whole history of Ethiopia, if I have to go through history even though Zelalem Eshete’s article is not in accordance with history. In thousands of history of Ethiopia here isn’t a single event that one ethnic got organized and carried out attack to another ethnic. There were wars between ourselves one ruler against the other, but never one ethnic to another ethnic up until Meles formerly known as Legasse Zenawi and his gangs, who are organized themselves as “Tigraian”liberation front.

I eagerly await for your response. I would hate to fail taking action from preventing Ethiopia falling of the cliff because of my rebelliousness.

 

Lydia <lyduindc@gmail.com

 

 

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