Introduction
I would like to start writing this short piece with this verse from the Holy Bible: “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment” Proverbs 12:19
Issues that led to the down fall of the Imperial regime in the 1974 Ethiopian revolution include, inter alia: famine in the north; demand for land to the tiller; rampant unemployment; moral decay exacerbated by prostitution and corruption.
The Imperial regime masterly employed carrot and stick to quell down public dissent contrary to the hasty trigger happy Derg regime; the TPLF regime enacted draconian laws to suppress freedom of expression; it instantly pulled the trigger against the opposition.
It would be no exaggeration to underscore those mountains of heinous crimes and gruesome acts of immorality, unprecedented in the history of Ethiopia, that have been committed in the past 22 years of the dominion of the TPLF/EPRDF regime.
A few snapshots of gruesome violations of human rights as reported by renowned human rights organizations and independent media outlets are given below.
Raping a retarded girl by an EPRDF policeman
This article is prompted by the recent act of rape committed by a policeman on a deaf and mentally retarded girl placed under his custody by good Samaritans who found her meandering in the street at night having lost her direction. According to the incident aired on ESAT TV on 16 February 2013, the good Samaritans took her to a police station and put her in the care of the officer in charge, but he raped her twice during the night. She reported the grisly affair using body language. Although he denied the crime, the rapist was taken to court and found guilty and sentenced to 3 years and seven months imprisonment. Many say he should have been put behind bars for life.
Repugnant act of savagery in Shoa
I was utterly disgusted by the nauseating savage act of torture inflicted on innocent peasant and his family residing in Dera, northern Shoa of Ethiopia.
Imagine the unthinkable scene of horror! Back in November 2012 a couple was ordered to undress completely naked and the wife forced to drag her husband to a public meeting place by pulling him with a rope tied to his private part. The six months pregnant wife was beaten on her stomach with the butt of the gun and miscarried. The husband was also badly beaten and had to be admitted to hospital for treatment
This unbelievably gruesome, embarrassingly savage, and unprecedented cruel act of torture committed by the EPRDF security operatives in the 21stcentury was surely meant to extract confession at the meeting from the peasant that he had a gun hidden in his house as well as terrify the community by making the couple an example. Only the victims know the ordeal they have been through to succumb to the demand of their tormentors.
The bestial act has reportedly unleashed a backlash from the community; that the local government administration is forced to frantically engage in a cover up spree as usual.
It is admitted by the local authorities and, boundless gratitude to ESAT, reliably verified and established that the peasant is a model farmer respected by his community. The EPRDF, as the notorious perpetrator of officially sanctioned torture over the last 21 years, has this time made a fatal error in its final days of vanishing for good.
I was deeply moved by the vehement condemnation of the heinous act by a renowned activist for democracy in USA and another lady from Australia. They both vividly expressed their anger, and rightly so, against the act of humiliating, tarnishing, and denigrating the image of Ethiopia and the civility inherent in our centuries-old enviable culture.
The clarion call for action made by these two heroic ladies should be applauded.
Basic cornerstones of the foundation of democracy and moral values are on the death row of the EPRDF regime, namely the Amhara and the Oromo ethnic groups, EOTC, Islam, and Human Development (Ethiopia ranks at 174 out of 176 nations according to the latest UDI)
Orthodox Tewahedo Christians and the two major ethnic groups had been targets of Fascist Italy for political extinction or impotency, which the ruling repressive part is emulating vigorously. All in all more than 96% of the Ethiopian people are being forced into subjugation. What a shame!
Azeb Mesfin has been a foster child of the MLLT soaring to the rank of the second powerful person in the Politbureau of the EPRDF dominated by TPLF. She rose to this position owing to the influence of her ‘Casanova’ husband on whom she landed after a wide range of sampling as it was the norm in the bush. She ejected Sebhat Nega, the Stalinist godfather of MLLT/TPLF and took over Nega’s position of CEO of EFFORT thus becoming filthy rich and corrupt supreme.
Under her watch “Addis Ababa of today has become a jungle of immorality comprising tall buildings hiding filthy slums; a terrifying dwelling place for thousands of homeless due to inordinate evictions, drug addicts, sodomites, lesbians, prostitutes, homosexuals, pimps, street dwellers, beggars, nude dancers, army of unemployed youth, undercover human traffickers, corrupt licensed cheap labor exporters to Arab countries and other dehumanizing habits all in full view of the TPLF warlords.. The Capital City would have been a green City envy of the world, but that opportunity has been lost by denuding it of its forest comprising enviable biodiversity and polluting its several rivers in the last 22 years the TPLF regime has been in power.”
Rape, eviction and sexual violence in Gambella
“The Ethiopian military responded to an April 2012 attack on a large commercial farm in Gambella region with arbitrary arrests, rape, and other abuses against scores of local villagers. Forced displacement, inadequate resources, and other abuses against Gambella’s population persist in the second year of the government’s “Villagization” program.”
According to HRW report dated 28 August 2012, titled “Attacks and “Villagization” in Gambella quote: Ethiopian soldiers frequently arrested and abused the female family members of young men they were seeking. Three women and a girl told Human Rights Watch that soldiers arrested, detained, beat, and then raped them to pressure them to disclose their male relatives’ whereabouts. Two additional women said that they witnessed other women being raped in detention.
One woman said her husband had been arrested after the attacks because “the soldiers said he knew where the rebels were.” When she went to the prisons to try and find him, soldiers followed her back to her home and raped her, she said. Her husband’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Another woman described what happened after soldiers arrested her in Wancarmie and took her to the military barracks in Gambella: “One night they took me out of the cell and said, ‘Show us where your husband is or else we will rape you.’ I persisted saying that I didn’t know where he was. Then finally they raped me. After that they released me and I decided to leave the country unquote
It is inconceivable that, in a country of 96.7% Christians (Orthodox 43.5%, Muslim 33.9%, Protestant 18.6%, traditional 2.6%, Catholic 0.7%, other 0.7% (2007 Census), gruesome immorality is spreading like a bush fire..
For how long are Ethiopians going to bear TPLF’s contempt with patience, its humiliating stance of our dignity with fear, its wholesale of all vital national interests with eerie indifference, and its arrogant refusal for change with wait-and-see attitude? Dethronement of the ruling regime has been long overdue.
Finally, procurement of advanced expensive military weapons is another bleeding source of corruption bleeding the poor taxpayers of Ethiopia and Egypt. War is not going to solve regional problems.
Egypt is the largest importer of wheat in the world, which means one of the most reliable export markets for Ethiopian farmers, more so including the Middle East. The question is why acquire advanced jet fighter airplanes to wage war over the Blue Nile River. Is it not a lunacy of the highest order to ignore diplomatic options and divert the money to economic development?
I close this piece with my daily mantra, which is: Demand the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience including Andualem Aragie, Eskinder Nega, Bekele Gerba, Reeyot Alemu, Leaders of the Ethiopian Muslims et al!
LONG LIVE ETHIOPIA!!!