Based on the information from the main stream Ethiopian Media, I have learned that the founding father of the racist regime in Ethiopia, Sebhat Nega, will come to Germany and give a speech in the Budestag /The German Parliament/ on October 20, 2012.
And the appearance of the wrong man to the right place makes me to write this short letter that might be helpful in shedding light on the political stature of this villainous dictator and on the nefarious deeds of his degenerated party /TPLF/. On the other hand I would like to underscore that this letter is based on the bare fact and open air truth; and it is completely free from the sense of vitriol and defamation.
On the other hand I do believe that Sebhat Nega, as an influential invisible hand behind TPLF, must take the lion share of the cons and prons of TPLF’s deeds and he has to hold personal responsibility for the crimes that has been committed by the TPLF regime against the Ethiopian People.
Among the innumerable crimes and repressions of TPLF I would like to bring few of them to your attention as follows:
1. Imposition of Different Repression Waves: For the last two decades, Sebhat Nega’s TPLF regime has sustained its brutal rein by inflicting different waves of repression on whole or partial society of Ethiopia. Among them the following are the major ones:
A. Post Election-2005 Repression Wave: The adoption of the broad and ambiguous “Anti-terrorism law” proclamation No. 652/2009 is one of the post election-2005 repression wave that wrecked freedom of expression and press freedom in that any news reports or commentaries on rebel groups can be taken as supporting, promoting, encouraging or endorsing the causes of terrorists; and journalists reporting on rebel groups could be convicted for terrorism. The implication of this law like dictatorial edict has also endangered the basic human rights including the rights to bodily integrity, peaceful assembly and the right to fair trial. The “anti-terrorism law” also denies citizens the right to fair trial by stating a terrorist suspects can be held for up to four months without being charged. And many journalist, activists and opposition party leaders have been the innocent victim of this dictatorial order that left them behind the bar for no practical reason.
B. The De-Amharization Repression Wave: This hatred-filled tendency was started at the infancy of TPLF as a ripple (Reference: “A Political History of TPLF” /1975-1991/, doctoral thesis Amsterdam, 2008, by Aregawi Berhe, Page 201). But right after TPLF came to power, the ripple has become a full size of wave of repression by mete out the Amhara people periodically in the following manner:
i. Internal Deportation and Expulsion: As the Chinese warrior Sun-Tsu said “Remove the firewood under the cooking pot”, the expulsion of Amhara people from different regions of Ethiopia by the TPLF regime is one of the cruellest conspiratorial repressions to weaken and impoverish the Amhara people by de-stabiliying hundreds of thousands of families to start life from the scratch. For example in year 2012 alone 78,000 Amharas have been expelled from south region of Ethiopia by confiscating their tenure.
ii. Demonizing of the Amhara as a People: This includes historical revisionism, mudslinging, name calling as “Neftegna” and propagation of TV documentaries which vilify and antagonize the Amhara people.
2. Land Grabbing: It is one of the incidents that the indigenous people of the Gambella Region have been denied its natural right to live on its ancestral land. 42% of the Gambella region has either being earmarked for lease or awarded to neo-colonizers (particularly Saudi Arabian and Indian land-grabbers) at a giveaway price which left more than 70,000 indigenous people for forcible relocation to the place where the soil is dry with poor quality and without infrastructure. As a result the indigenous people are suffering from hunger and starvation.
To enforce the forcible relocation of the indigenous people the TPLF regime deployed the army on the unprotected civilians. And the Ethiopian Defence Force (aka: the military wing of TPLF) has committed mass murder, rape and conflagration of villages.
3. The Ethiopian Gulag Archipelago: The TPLFregime has set up Gulag like three federal and 120 regional major prisons. However, there are also innumerably unofficial detention centres in which most of them are located in military camps including in Dedessa, Bir Sheleko, Tolay, Hormat, Blate, Tatek, Jijiga, Holeta, and Senkele. These prisons accommodate both criminal prisoners and tens of thousands of political prisoners. Their condition is extremely harsh, overcrowded and life threatening. Lack of appropriate sanitary facility, shortage of water and round sleeping are common. In regional prisons forced labour is compulsory.
But above all, in the central police investigation headquarters in Addis Ababa called Maekelawi (with its nick name “Guantanamo”) and in an unofficial military camp prisons the TPLF henchmen often use a series of torture and brutal interrogation to extract confessions particularly from prisoners of conscience and political prisoners. It includes whipping on the soles of feet, overstretching of limbs, slow dripping of water on the head, pulling out of nails, forcible extraction of teeth, weights suspended on testicles, plunging into water, solitary confinement in dark cell for long period of time, signing a confession, forced self-incrimination, threatening with injection of HIV-infected blood, forcing to denounce others, burning with cigarette, drowning into ice cold water and beating with rifle-but, stick, whip, belt etc.
4. Show Trial: Trials of political prisoners are held only for show. Their “guiltiness” has been determined in advance. And most charges on political prisoners are fabricated to incarcerate them and to intimidate others to total submission. Incidentally the Ethiopian courts are one of the institutions that have lost public credibility.
In conclusion, the appearance of Sebhat Nega at the Bundestag which is the symbol of freedom, justice and equality faces both logical and empirical difficulties. Rather, as his counter parts like the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and the former leader of Liberia Charles Taylor he would stand his trial at the Hague International Criminal Court. Of course we have learned from history that criminals never escape from the court of law; and sooner or later the truth will come to light and Sebhat Nega and his henchmen will face their trial. But till then I would like to say this from the bible (2.Corinthians 6:14)
“……….For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” or equivalently to say it in German “……Denn was hat die Gerechtigkeit zu schaffen mit der Ungerechtigkeit? Was hat das Licht für Gemeinschaft mit der Finsternis? ”
Regards,
Dawit Fanta
October 19, 2012