Ethiopia: Zenawi’s “Oneres Burdens”
By Aklilu Demissie
May 23, 2007 — If by mischance some one looked in to a week in Meles’s view of the Horn of Africa (18/5/2007) in his Ministry of foreign affairs page, it would make a sane mind and body convulse how he tried feebly justify his impunity in Somalia.
The UN Undersecretary for development John Holms and his team expressed the UN’s and other international agencies concern and estimate of the killings and displacement of civilians from Mogadishu has put the despot in to defensive by reducing human tragedy in to a quantitative figure play.
It can be seen how the despot doesn’t want to be compared to Darfur genocide in terms of number and tragedy. From his explanation, the viciousness might have equaled but the numbers are just simply exaggerated as the world tends to get it wrong as usual: and, the invitation by the Hawiye clan elders to have resulted in untoward consequences. How does a person or population invite his/her own massacre?
For all the comments he made, after his brief visit to Somalia on May12, 2007 which was greeted by several bomb blasts, Mr. Holmes is being readied for Meles’ fiasco as a consequence of his unconsidered statements, while in fact Meles’s militaristic bravado was dead on conception of solving the Somali crisis militarily.
Mr. Holmes is also being accused of fabricating breeches of international humanitarian law and the al-Shababa militia, although participant in the violation was taken as a reason by Meles for his atrocities. In war, both fighting parties who violate international humanitarian law are responsible for their actions. There are no extenuating circumstances for killing civilians’ resultant to attacks from a warring faction.
Lynn Fredriksson of Amnesty International’s testimony on May 10th, 2007 had got her doses of accusation from Meles for exposing human rights abuses both in Somalia and Ethiopia. She was even labeled ignorant on how democracy operates.
The Sub-Committee on Africa and Global Health, chaired by Congressman Donald Payne, whose recent statements on Ethiopia have displayed resolute stand in defending democracy and exposition of the heinous crimes of Meles’ regime didn’t escape the blame of serious inaccuracies and a strong anti-Ethiopian bias.
Ethiopians know that both Lynn Fredriksson and Donald Payne have expert knowledge of the unbelievably pathetic human rights situation in Ethiopia.
The regime’s propaganda bombardment and character assassination attempt of Ms. Anna Gomes for speaking the immediate need of justice, freedom and democracy in Ethiopia didn’t materialize the way Meles and his domestic and international hirelings wanted it to be. Her determination and resolution has superseded the frail attempt of these hoodlum politicians. The most unacceptable term to any prudent Ethiopian is, the ludicrous name calling of Anna Gomes as a having a dwelling colonial-style mentality for telling the truth to the world and holding accountable those who have deliberately ignored excesses against humanity. For Ethiopians she is a hero and as she has said she would definitely be in Addis to celebrate the death of tyranny on the tomb stone of despot Meles Zenawi. New futile attempts of smear campaigns against Mr. Holms, Donald Payne and Lynn Fredriksson are typical last kicks of a dying, rotting despot. What on earth these guys have to do with his crimes so as to deserve his mendacious accusations!
For Meles’ lurid conscious these knowledgeable people get it all wrong. Well, Ethiopians all across the breadth and width of the country and abroad do not need a second or third party to expound their ordeals at the hand of a terror fanatic, whose patent of killing and destruction never regressed.
Whenever the depot finds a fine thread of a statement from AU or UN he establishes an implausible association of having no difference and ridiculously to be in agreement.
According to UN, Somali and other human rights organization the assault on civilians not only showed how poignant and sadistic the bombardments were but also indicated how Meles Zenawi used hunger as an instrument of punishment by blocking the distribution of food to the internally displaced (IDPs) Mogadishu residents. This war has shown the different facets of outrages against humanity to the world.
These ruthless mechanisms of using food as a means of flattening opposition is nothing new .The USSR during its height of communist rule deliberately used starvation, disease and negligence as instrument of punishment and degradation with the aim of destroying the will and resolve of dissention.
Not only in Mogadishu Meles has been using these inhuman maneuvers of starvation and hunger as a political survival tool but also in Addis Ababa with his deliberate artificial price hike on foodstuffs to bring the urban population almost to its knees. The harvest in the country is being confiscated by the buying power of the regime from the producer establishing complete control of the markets.
The sordid explanation of Meles and his cronies has been the administration of the city by a “care taker government”; which otherwise would not have taken place if it were to be lead by his party elects.
Obviously, the care take government is non other than his doing after jailing the winning Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP) MPs. He is using the pretext for impoverishing and submission of the will and determination of living in freedom and democracy. For Ethiopians the time for capitulation is long gone.
Imagine if CUDP had to lead by defying the will of the people, by now, all Addis residents would have transformed in to skin and bone. And the regime would have mobilized his vigilante mob against CUDP electorates of starving Addis and the nation.
Meles for the first time indicated that the New York-based committee for protecting journalists (CPJ) stating that Eritrea being the only country in Sub-Saharan Africa with no independent media outlet and jailing of journalists. Well, competition wise for the indecorous title, both Afewerki and Meles are unsurpassed in all categories of human rights abuses in the world. If there is any thing reported and sapping ink and paper from rights organizations in the world are these two despots. The May 2,2007 CPJ report even lists the number one backslider and leader of the dishonor list of CPJ over the last five years to be Meles where the government launched a massive crackdown on the private press by shutting newspapers and jailing editors . To Meles’s dreamy invisible world, every living human tends to get it wrong when it comes to his remorseless outrages against humanity.
At the onset of the Somalia invasion, Meles was breathless in telling the world that he invaded Somalia in self defense and he was not waging any body’s proxy war with no green or yellow light from any capital city.
Now, the realities on the ground have forced the regime in to accepting why it went to invasion unashamedly by coining the word “Onerous burden” on Ethiopia. The magnanimity and humongous evidence of the atrocities the regime has committed both in Ethiopia and Somalia have become indefensible. It seems to have dawned on the regime that it has become exceedingly troublesome to no longer justify killings. From the despot’s feeble and out of reality rhetoric , he has at least found AU’s Konare and Jendayi Frazer as scapegoats for the “Onerous burden” they may have put him by misfortune to settle disputes by the sword. Their beseech for not to leave Somali is quite contrary considering earlier warning from AU and America.
Diplomatically, no diplomat in Addis is immune from Meles’s rage. Their job survival depends on Meles’s good will. Many have damming report of their social misdeeds in the back streets of Addis piled in Meles’ security bureaus.
In the June and October 2005 killings by Meles’ Agazzi militia on pro-democratic demonstrators in Addis and the country no one dared raise the bar of security threat for the country by AU and UN. How and what paralyzed them from action while gun fire was raging and innocent civilians were being gunned down and thousands sent in to concentration camp ,only time will tell.
Whether he leaves Somalia or not, or he gets a moribund AU peacekeeping force is not a solution, nor telling Mogadishu residents to cut any shrubs in the front and back of their yards.
What is naive is how Meles is trying to load his “Onerous burden” and miscalculation and crimes on all Ethiopians. But every Ethiopian knows it is Meles’s war not poor Ethiopia’s. The regime has consistently and effectively has shown the world it is not bound by any rule of law- domestic or international.
None of Konare’s or Jenadyi Frazer’s testimony, justification or pulling on fringes of Yamamoto and his quotation will stand as evidence in the court of law as a defense when the time comes.
As to twisting and trampling on facts and horrendous fictional stories, no one parallels the regime in Addis Ababa: And, deciphering world reality is a taboo.
* The author is an Ethiopian based in the USA. He can be reached at [email protected]