Meles means moderate—as in tone it down—what we have before us are people who are turning the volume up louder and destroying Ethiopia in the process.
Ethiopia is the birthplace and the cradle of Christianity. While Europe was still in the dark ages, Ethiopia was a place of God’s light as we accepted His teaching and His words and accepted Christianity while Rome was still feeding Christians to the lions. So it is with the deepest sorrow that I see a blessed land being cursed by tribalism and Godlessness of the type I have never witnessed in my lifetime. A blessed people have decided to turn to idol worshiping and blasphemy to honor a dead Prime Minister and in the process spit on thousands of years of our history and our reverence for God.
We are a troubled diamond divided between the children of royalty and the children of maids who are dead set on setting fire to our country with our limited thinking and our self-loathing. I arrive at this conclusion based on what I have been witnessing on the various social networks and our mealy-mouthed media outlets. When Meles Zenawi passed away last week, I was one of the first if not the first editors to post the eulogy of Meles Zenawi because I wrote the eulogy weeks in advance.
In the eulogy, I prayed for Meles’s soul and wished him to rest in peace and prayed for the healing of Meles Zenawi’s family. Concurrently I prayed for the souls of the thousands of lives that Meles Zenawi took and his storm troopers murdered with impunity without regard to life and God. I tried to strike a balance by paying respects to his death while refusing to white wash history and making him out to be a saint. To be honest, it was hard to pray for Meles for he was a man that induced terror and divided my country unlike anything have seen in my lifetime. Not even during Mengistu’s rule—a man I despise even more than Meles—has our country ever been as divided as she is today. However, as a man who believes in God, I know it is not good to celebrate upon the death of anyone and I also know the healing powers of forgiveness.
But my ability to hold back my fire is limited; I am a weak man because too often I turn to vengeance instead of harboring love in my heart. Thus, when I wake up the next day after I wrote the eulogy of Meles Zenawi, all the sudden I see a virtual lekso going on all over the social media—I started to bear witness to a Facebook lekso. First off, I was not aware that we had so many Meles Zenawi sympathizers in our community. I swear some of the same people who I thought were in the opposition were all the sudden revealing themselves to be duplicitous by comparing Meles to Menelik and calling him the greatest African leader of all time. From there the ridiculous morphed to outrageous; each day that passed the comparisons got more and more egregious—all the sudden people started to go from ridiculous comparisons to Mandela to worshiping him as a false god.
I know most of these people don’t mean a thing they say. If they cared about Meles Zenawi as they profess after his death, where were they with their confessions of love when he was still living? That is the thing about our people, they bury you while you live and love you after you die. If tomorrow I passed away, the very same people who hate me to death will show up at my funeral and start doing emba eskista as they shed crocodile tears to the same person who they called Saytan while I was still living. This is the part of Habesha that I hate the most, we never say what we mean and we never mean what we say. I don’t know, maybe it is a survival method that we learned in order to not get ridiculed and persecuted by our leaders. Maybe it is a byproduct of the derge where you had no idea who was a spy or your friend so you learned to keep your true feelings secret and you just went with the flow. I know for a certain fact even if I can’t prove it scientifically that a vast majority of the people crying for Meles Zenawi on Facebook and back home don’t mean it—they are just faking it to go with the popular trend. We are a people of followers; most people hold back their true thoughts and instead go with the popular opinion.
A friend told me the other day that Meles Zenawi called for a rally in 2005 in Addis Ababa. The day of the rally, supposedly 2,000,000 Ethiopians came out to express support for TPLF/EPRDF in the weeks leading up to the 2005 election. However, once they got behind a voting booth in the privacy of their own thoughts, 95% of Addis voted for Kinijit. In other words, a vast majority of the people who came out to support Meles Zenawi and the TPLF party were hiding their true intentions and ended up voting against him. They came out either because they were intimidated or because they saw other people doing it . This is the way of our people at times, trying to figure out Habesha thinking is akin to translating Egyptian hieroglyphics without the Rosetta stone. So it does not surprise me a bit that countless people came out in Addis to pay respects to Meles Zenawi, I am sure a vast majority of these very people went home and upon closing their doors took off their tikur netela and put on colorful clothing to say “eleleleelelel” and do eskista on the memory of the same man that oppressed them for 21 years.
I am loath to check Facebook and most of our media these days. Each time that I do, I get drawn into a cycle of hatred as I respond with hate to the shameful and despicable statement Meles Zenawi supporters make. Alas this is the problem of Africa, we are caught in a cycle of hatred and war that all sides seem to never break out of. Tigray people feel that Amhara people committed an injustice against them, thus they get in power and commit the same felonies on Amharas that they are convinced were committed against them. This happened in Rwanda too as Tutsis committed a genocide against Hutus for a past injustice. Breath it in fellow Ethiopians, we are slow walking towards the Rwanda model. Remember the hatred that you are spewing in reaction to past injustice might one day lead to the death of a million Ethiopians. It will be our children that will bear the burden and dig the graves for the poison that we emit.
Knowing this vicious cycle, I was going to hold this anger in and not write this article for I know that what I am writing at this moment will do nothing to bring selam. Instead these words will just further divide our community, but I refuse to remain silent as TPLF agents in America are intent on white washing the legacy of Meles Zenawi and erect in the blood of murdered Ethiopians a monument based on lies and fraudulence. I know the ways of propaganda artists, when a lot of people are attempting to do on the internet is to sow a seed of deceit in order to cover up the treachery of Meles Zenawi and his murderous regime.
I tried to respect Meles Zenawi upon his passing but I could not find a peace partner; I reached out to multiple “Woyanes” to offer a day of mourning for both Meles Zenawi and the victims he killed and in the process try to bridge the divide in our community. The logic was that both sides would lose—one side would respect Meles Zenawi upon his death and the other would have to acknowledge the victims he murdered. As hard as it would have been for me to pay respects to Meles Zenawi, I would have gladly done that if I could have found one person to take me up on my offer and swallow their pride for the sake of the unity of our people.
Instead of a peace partner I saw nothing more than pastors of blaspheme as I witnessed the people who I reached out to having a lekso orgy. The whole thing came to a head last night when I saw a picture of a little girl kneeling down and kissing the grave of Meles. When I see little children being used as a political prop, all bets are off. I withdrew my olive branch and it’s place I am now holding a tor to throw right at the feet of a Godless people who are worshiping Meles Zenawi as though he was the Messiah. Not even in church do I see as much worshiping as I am witnessing in Ethiopia. Jesus Christ, is there no shame, I see pictures after pictures of people crying as though their own father passed away and saying things like “I will exchange my father for you Meles”. This is the most shameful thing I have witnessed in my life, Ethiopia is being tarnished and our legacy of Christianity is being diminished by a tribal minority who are disregarding the teachings of Jesus and turning to the ways of Jews who prayed to a golden calf upon finding freedom from Egypt.
Now before I go on, if you think that I am a bigot or that I hate people from Tigray, let me dissuade you of that notion. I love Tigray as I love the rest of the 88 Ethiopian tribes, in my veins flow the blood of Tigray from my grandmother’s side. I no more hate Tigray than I hate Gonder, in the end we are one people united by one sendek alema. Let me say it again, I love Tigray and I don’t write this article to attack Tigray people. In fact I know that Tigray people suffer under the yolk and the chains of the TPLF government and that the average Tigray man or woman is suffering like the rest. It is the hodam TPLF stooges who are killing Ethiopia and when it comes to these hodams all 88 tribes have their share. When I go after TPLF sychophants I do so knowing that there are Oromo Woyane, Amahara Woyanes, and Woyanes from other tribes. When I say I am anti-Woyane, please don’t take that to mean that I am anti-Tigray.
It is with that said that I am about to tell you about one of the biggest offenders and the worst idols worshipers I have been following is a media outlet that I once wrote about and professed my love of. A few months ago I wrote of Sheba Post that they are a rational voice that is intent on speaking the truth instead of chasing sensationalism. Thus I staked my credibility on Sheba Post thinking that I was endorsing a credible news website. Instead what they have morphed into the past couple of weeks has been nothing short of disgusting. In the past month, Sheba Post has gone from an objective observer to a sick sycophantic fan club that act as though they are the propaganda arm of EPRDF. I don’t know if the crew at Sheba Post has decided to pick up a copy of Joseph Goebbels or has been put into a trance by the ghost of Meles Zenawi. Out goes objective news, in place are vile articles calling Meles Zenawi “one of the greatest Ethiopian leaders of all time” and making outrageous claims that Ethiopia is an exporter of food while Ethiopian children are dying of hunger and we are a donor nation begging for food from the world.
The last straw happened yesterday when I saw an article on Sheba Post soliciting condolences and then started a fan page for Meles Zenawi. Can you imagine the Washington Post starting a fan page for Obama? Can you imagine the New York Times soliciting condolences for Ronald Reagan? The answer is no, media should be there to inform their readers with facts instead of selling us a bill of goods and then initiating a propaganda campaign worthy of Fox News. I am now disavowing Sheba Post, I withdraw my endorsement and I stand ashamed of ever affiliating my brand with a band of banda leflefs who are nothing more than a mouthpiece of a tyrannical TPLF government who are at this moment practicing apartheid in Ethiopia.
I don’t hide the fact that I am not a “hard news” outlet; I am an Op/Ed website that gives an alternate view into our history, culture, and community. Sheba Post, on the other hand, are selling themselves as a “news” outlet when really they are nothing more than an organ of the EPRDF who are intent on making news instead of reporting it. They are shameless and shameful for refusing to report on the misery that is taking place in Ethiopia, instead they gloss over the oppression and the tyranny in order to paint an idealistic picture of Ethiopia to the world. Even Rupert Murdoch would be disgusted by the Sheba Post. They might as well change their names to Chebo Post because they are burning Ethiopia with their lies and their deceitful tactics.
But I will be honest, the problem is beyond Chebo Post, the problem is that of our community as a whole. Media outlets, with few exceptions, on both sides are populated by liars. Rumors are sold as facts and lies are sold as the gospel truth. Go to media outlets on both the anti and the pro-government sides and tell me how many lies you find in those sites. I would say I would give you a penny for each lie you find but alas I do not have a million dollars to give away. At least when I do fake news I tell you it’s fake news –as in satire—only in our community is satire dismissed as a lie yet a lie is accepted as the truth. This is why Ethiopia bleeds, this is why Meles Zenawi and his ilk will continue to oppress us in perpetuity for we are too gullible, we never question authority, and we accept liars as truth tellers.
Thus we find ourselves in our current state where Meles Zenawi is depicted as either Satan or Jesus and if you find yourself somewhere in the middle you are ridiculed as a sellout and a traitor by both sides. Habesha is an Oreo cookie with no cream in the middle, split the cookie in half and you will find blood where rational people go to be buried by the community. I know one thing, there is a rational middle that understands logical thinking and don’t gravitate to salacious media like Chebo Post. When will the silent majority speak up and drown out the local idiots that populate both extremes so that we can build a bridge called Common Purpose? How many more generations will be lost to the radical voices who scream the loudest but do the least work? How many more years will pass before people wake up and realize that some of the most vocal opponents and proponents of the Ethiopian government are nothing more than dance partners in Lucifer’s salsa as they both benefit from our outrage and division?
My father passed away more than 11 years ago. When my father passed away, I did not take to Facebook to blast other fathers. I did not take to twitter to brag that my father was the greatest father in the world. I did not build a golden statue of my father nor did I force people to come to his funeral. I did not force little children to serve as photo ops and tell them to kiss the grave of my father. Instead I cried alone and mourned his departure with silent tears and humble prayers. This is not what is going on with most people with respect to Meles Zenawi. Just as some people came to my father’s funeral whooping and hollering intent on being the center of attention while causing discomfort to my family, what is going on now are countless “look at me” jackasses who are whooping and hollering about Meles Zenawi in order to get attention. Grieving is not done in public, tears are not induced for others to see but because you feel the tears deep in your heart.
Leksos are not carried out on Facebook nor are the tweeted on Twitter. If you care about Meles Zenawi, get the hell off Facebook and Twitter and observe his death in silence. Samuel Gebru, stop updating Facebook every two minutes talking about the condoms in your hotel room when the expressed purpose of the reason why you went to Ethiopia was to attend the funeral of Meles. But most of you won’t do that, so I will let you have your “look at me” idol worshiping lekso at the Ethiopian embassy on Sunday, September 2nd. In return, I am calling all people who oppose the Ethiopian government and who have humility in your hearts while supporting humanity without regard to tribe. A candle light vigil will be held on the same day in front of the White House at Lafayette Square (scroll down for event invite). Please print out a picture of a victim who lost his or her life at the hand of Meles Zenawi, wear black, and bring a candle with you so that we can honor the dead and pay respects to the families who lost their loved ones during the reign of Meles or before.
It is sad that our community is going to be divided once again, instead of paying respects together; we will now be mourning divided apart by tribe and ethnicity. The cycle continues and the animosity goes unabated. May one day our children mourn the loss of a leader united through his legacy. We are not there as a people, instead what we have hyenas all around from Chebo Post on down who are burning the body of Ethiopia as a burnt offering to Esgyaber Meles. Irony of all ironies, Meles means moderate—as in tone it down. What we have before us are people who are turning the volume up louder and destroying Ethiopia in the process. This is what happens when you are intent on worshiping Meles I.N.R.I.
