Anti Amhara crime perpetrators should face justice

By Zelalem Abate
April 18, 2013

 One may ask why rulers commit genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing on the very people they rule. Although nothing would justify, heinous rulers always provide bizarre and incomprehensible justifications. The tyrants in Ethiopia, for example, say Amharas were evicted because they cut trees. For them cutting trees is enough reason to commit ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. As the world knows, these kinds of despicable crimes have be.en committed in Rwanda, Liberia, Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries. The star actors of genocide and crimes against humanity in Rwanda, Liberia and Sudan are already facing justice. The tribal and racist-primitive rulers who have been committing ethnic cleansing and crimes against Amharic speaking people (the Amharas) for the last 22 years in Ethiopia are still leaving lavish lives at the expense of the resources of their victims-the Amharas.

“My country, Ethiopia
You are fool, deceivable
You feed your murderers
While you starve your martyrs!”

Uprooted from his native soil, a father holds his baby high to his chest as he stares into an unknown future (Photo: Fenote Netsanet)

No single spot exists in the mountains, plains, low lands, deserts, jungles, rivers and lakes, where Amharas did not spill their blood to protect the national integrity and sovereignty of Ethiopia. A lot has been said about the battle of Maqdala, Adwa, Mychew, and The Five-Year War with Facist where Amharas gave their chest for bullets and their whole body for mustard gas in order to transfer a proud and free country to us. Let’s just gaze at the very near past. It was the Amhara peasants who broke the back bone of invader Siad Barre. It was the Amhara militia who protected our natural sea ports until mama Ethiopia’s neck and breasts were butchered by her traitor children. What is the gladiator Amhara getting in return now? Systematic discrimination, frequent eviction, endless displacement, repeated ethnic cleansing, chronic crime against humanity, and genocide?

One of the leading Ethiopian online news papers on Ethiopian affairs, Ethiomedia, covered on its March 17, 2013 front page, that 59 uprooted Amharas were killed by car accident in Benishngul Gumuz, western Ethiopia while they were forcefully evicted after their property was confiscated. ^[1] Similarly the Ethiopian Satellite Television, an independent news outlet, reported that more than 3, 000 people were evicted from Benishangul area. ^[2] These crimes were also discussed in the Voice of America Amharic program. ^[3] The evicted people and the deaths include children and pregnant women. Mind you, the victims only crime was being born Amhara. Dr. Yakob Hailemariam, one of the Lawyers who investigated the Rwandan Genocide, call this act of the TPLF lead government ethnic cleansing.^[4]

In this 21^stcentury human traits such as age, gender, and ethnicity are protected human characters. In civilized societies (at least in theories), discriminating based on these protected traits is illegal and immoral. However, concepts such as legality and morality are not found in the dictionaries of the barbaric tribal rulers of Ethiopia. Unfortunately, the ruling party’s fundamental policy in Ethiopia dictates cadres to organize people based on ethnicity and the language they speak. Furthermore, this backward policy (The Wild-animals’ law as the distinguished scholar professor Mesfin woldemariam calls it)promotes the different ethnic groups to discriminate each other based on human nature such as race, language, religion and so on. The Amharas, who are mainly against this uncivilized jungle law, have been the prime victims of this brutal and retarded policy since the racist Tigrai People Libration Front (TPLF) took power through a Trojan horse- the Ethiopian Democratic Libration Front (EPRDF).

Frantic search ongoing after deadly Texas blast

      By JOHN L. MONE and MICHAEL BRICK | Associated Press
April 18, 2013
(Update - At least 15 people are feared dead and over 180 injured. Over 100 homes are destroyed and many other buildings damaged. The explosion was like an earthquake it registered 2.1 on the Richter Scale).
WEST, Texas (AP) — Rescue workers searched the smoldering ruins of a fertilizer plant Thursday for survivors of a monstrous explosion that leveled homes and businesses in every direction across the Texas prairie. As many as 15 people were feared dead and more than 160 others injured.
Daybreak revealed a breathtaking band of destruction extending outward from the West Fertilizer Co. in this small farming community about 20 miles north of Waco. The thunderous blast shook the ground with the strength of a small earthquake and could be heard dozens of miles away.
Several buildings with smashed roofs and leveled walls still were smoking early Thursday.
"They have not gotten to the point of no return where they don't think that there's anybody still alive," Waco Police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton said of rescuers.
The explosion that struck around 8 p.m. sent flames shooting into the night sky and rained burning embers and debris down on shocked and frightened residents. It leveled a four-block area around the plant that a member of the city council, Al Vanek, said was "totally decimated."
There is no indication the blast was anything other than an industrial accident, Swanton said.
The toll included 50 to 75 houses, an apartment complex with about 50 units that one state police officer said was reduced to "a skeleton," a middle school and the West Rest Haven Nursing Home, from which first-responders evacuated 133 patients, some in wheelchairs.
Swanton said earlier that authorities believe between five and 15 people were killed in the blast, but stressed it was an early estimate.
Three to five volunteer firefighters were among those believed to be dead, Swanton said. A single law enforcement officer who responded to a fire call at the West Fertilizer Co. shortly before the blast was accounted for early Thursday.
In the hours after the blast, residents wandered the dark, windy streets searching for shelter. Among them was Julie Zahirniako, who said she and her son, Anthony, had been playing at a school playground near the fertilizer plant when the explosion hit. She was walking the track, he was kicking a football.
The explosion threw her son four feet in the air, breaking his ribs. She said she saw people running from the nursing home and the roof of the school lifted into the sky.
"The fire was so high," Zahirniako said. "It was just as loud as it could be. The ground and everything was shaking."
William Burch and his wife, a retired Air Force nurse, entered the damaged nursing home before first responders arrived. They split up, searching separate wings, and found residents in wheelchairs trapped in their rooms. The halls were dark and the ceilings had collapsed. Water filled the hallways and electrical wires hung eerily from the ceilings.
"They had Sheetrock that was on top of them. You had to remove that," Burch said. It was "completely chaotic."
Some witnesses compared the scene to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and authorities said the plant made materials similar to that used to fuel the bomb that tore apart that city's Murrah Federal Building.
Although authorities said it will be some time before they know how many lives were lost, they put the number of those injured at more than 160 early Thursday. West Mayor Tommy Muska told reporters that his city of about 2,800 people needs "your prayers."
"We've got a lot of people who are hurt, and there's a lot of people, I'm sure, who aren't gonna be here tomorrow," Muska said. "We're gonna search for everybody. We're gonna make sure everybody's accounted for. That's the most important thing right now."
At the Hillcrest Baptist Medical Hospital in Waco, elderly people were wheeled in on stretchers. A man in a wheelchair with his T-shirt covered in blood winced as medical professionals tended to wounds on his head and left arm.
The town's volunteer firefighters had responded to a call at the plant at 7:29 p.m., Swanton said. Due to the plant's chemical stockpile, "they realized the seriousness of what they had," he said.
Muska was among the firefighters, and he and his colleagues were working to evacuate the area around the plant when the blast followed about 20 minutes later.
The main fire was under control as of 11 p.m., authorities said, but residents were urged to remain indoors because of the threat of new explosions or leaks of ammonia from the plant's ruins. Swanton said early Thursday authorities were not concerned about lingering smoke from the fire, and noted that rain from a morning thunderstorm helped their efforts.
Dozens of emergency vehicles amassed at the scene in the hours after the blast. Firefighters used flashlights to search the still-burning skeleton of an apartment complex that was all but destroyed. All that remained of a nearby house was the fireplace and chimney, standing tall among smoldering embers of what was once someone's home. Smoke filled the air.

Mr. Obang Metho’s Statement at the U.S. Congressional Briefing on Land Grabs in Africa

African Land and Natural Resource Grabs Destroy Lives and Futures of Africans 
         Mr. Obang Metho, from the SMNE, gives warning of the impacts on the people at the U.S. Congressional Briefing on Land Grabs in Africa

I would like to thanks Congressman Christopher Smith, Chairman of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations and members of the subcommittees for making this briefing on land grabs in Africa possible.
I am honored to be among those invited to talk about the impact of these land and resource grabs on the people of Africa. It is a vitally important issue that needs to be confronted. To me, this is not just about land grabs, but it is inherently about life grabs. In Africa, as well as in many other places, when you take someone’s land, you take away the means to an entire family’s livelihood, wellbeing and future. I am thrilled that the World Bank is also addressing this issue and hope it will soon lead to concrete action that saves lives.
To me and the organization I lead, the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE), the problem of land grabs is not

Mr. Obang Metho (center) at the U.S. Congressional Briefing

new. We have been actively working to expose and find solutions to these land grabs since they began in 2008 and partnered with the Oakland Institute in 2011 in a comprehensive in-country study on: Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa: Ethiopia.[i] What is going on today is an immoral and predatory practice by African strongmen and their powerful partners that is targeting the most vulnerable people on the continent.
When I speak today, my testimony will not be as an outsider, but as a witness. When I talk about the people being displaced from the land grabs, in many cases I am speaking about people whose names I know. They include my uncle, my cousins, my nephews, my extended family, my community and my people—the people of Gambella, the people of Ethiopia, the people of Africa and the people of the world. We the people of Africa must be able to feed ourselves, but when the powerful take the food and land we have to sustain ourselves, leaving little behind for the indigenous, it is unconscionable and should be challenged. I welcome the opportunity we have to talk about this today. I request that my statement be submitted into the record in its entirety.
Introduction:
When the global food crisis of 2008 struck, with its food shortages, sky-rocketing food prices and widespread riots, it sounded an alarm that began the global race for fertile agricultural land, particularly land with access to water. Asian countries in the global south, like India, China, and South Korea, simply did not have enough unused, suitable land to meet the increasing need for food for their people. Some European countries were in the same position. Arid countries in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, may have wealth from oil, but they were large importers of food and have little or diminishing arable land. Underground water aquifers were already being depleted in efforts to irrigate existing food crops.
Soaring populations, decreasing available land, environmental degradation and lessening confidence in access to adequate imports caused many governments to search beyond their borders for new ways to ensure a supply of food for the future. At the same time, speculators, investors and multinational agri-businesses began to see food as a high-profit commodity which could be profitable like oil, minerals and other natural resources.
So began the second scramble for African land that has led to massive land grabs of land already occupied by the people of Africa. For most of those affected, it has led to widespread displacement and to greater, rather than less, food insecurity. This abuse of land rights has happened most easily in nations where authoritarian regimes maintain their control over the people through suppression of basic freedoms, human rights abuses, fraudulent elections, corruption and military power. Unfortunately, many of these foreign investors become complicit as they partner with Africa’s strongmen.
World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim said at their annual meeting last week, “Usable land is in short supply, and there are too many instances of speculators and unscrupulous investors exploiting smallholder farmers, herders, and others who lack the power to stand up for their rights. This is particularly true in countries with weak land governance systems.”[ii]
In many countries in Africa freedom does not exist. Freedom House in their Freedom in the World Study for 2012 ranked Sub-Saharan Africa as 82% un-free or only partially free. People who dare to demand their rights or who expose the dark side of those in power, do so at risk to their lives and futures. Those in power do not represent the best interests of their people, but instead represent their own interests. With the search for agricultural land, authoritarian governments with weak adherence to laws and few protections for the people are making secretive deals to lease both small and large swathes of some of the prime agricultural land to foreign and crony investors for negligible amounts (e.g. $1.19 per hectare in parts of Ethiopia) for up to 99 years. Equivalent land reportedly brings $350 per hectare in places like Indonesia and Malaysia and thousands in the farm belt of the US.
Much of the food is destined for export or wherever it can bring the highest price. Most Africans are small farmers; though poor, they have been able to sustain themselves because of their land; however, the displaced will no longer be able to be self-reliant and may easily end up hungry or in need of food aid. Although some of the food produced will end up locally, food prices may well be beyond their ability to pay. The displaced are mostly in the rural regions where education and training have been lacking, leaving most ill-equipped to find other jobs. Institutions, meant to strengthen civil society, often do not exist or are under government control. Because there is little accountability or transparency, it has opened the doors to high-level corruption, crony favoritism and illicit transactions as secretive deals, with vague contracts, are negotiated by regime power-holders.

A Focus on the Gambella region of Ethiopia, my birthplace and the epicenter of land grabs in Africa:

Ethiopia is one of the leading examples on the continent where large scale land grabs are going on. Gambella region, considered to have the potential for becoming the breadbasket of Ethiopia or the Horn of Africa, may now fail to feed its own. The region has some of the richest, most fertile land and abundant water in the country. My own ethnic group, the Anuak—as well as other indigenous groups like the Nuer, the Mazengir, the Komo and the Opo—consider Gambella their ancestral home, but little investment has been directed towards this marginalized and undeveloped region. Now, Gambella is the region most significantly targeted for land grabs.

Behind the Ethnic Cleansing in Benishangul-Gumuz

by Fekade Shewakena

The despicable and barbaric action of targeting, evicting and deporting ethnic Amaharas from the Benishangul-Gumuz ethnic state in western Ethiopia is a horrific crime and a crime against humanity by any measure and the outrage of Ethiopians across the world is justified. The stories we hear from the victims themselves and the witnesses who saw it are heart wrenching. Thanks to social media and communication technology, we are hearing from the victims themselves and seeing some of their tragic pictures in real time irrespective of where we live. Thanks to the folks at ESAT TV and Radio for the relentless coverage. I have even heard many supporters of the Ethiopian regime, at least those who live outside of Ethiopia, condemn this barbarism. They should be applauded for that. What kind of sane person cannot be outraged when watching this replay of a Nazi pogrom that targets an ethnic group who were literally frog-marched and, in the words of the victims themselves, told to go to “their country” and “wherever their ancestors were born”? What do you feel when you are told this nonsense in your own country, the country your fathers and forefathers defended and died for? The victimized ethnic Amharas were beaten, violently dragged off their homes and forced to pay for the trucks that packed them inhumanely, transported them out of the Benishangul Gumuz state, and dump them at the edge of another ethnic homeland without anything to help them stay even for a day. The government has not even denied or confirmed reports that one truck loaded with more than sixty people had overturned at night and fifty nine deportees were killed. We heard that women were giving birth in the wilderness and children died of suffocation. What kind of decent human being would watch this unconscionable action of a government do this to its own people, particularly to the most vulnerable and not get outraged?
While we are at it, it is good to know that this is a part of Ethiopia where even Sudanese nationals related to tribes inside Ethiopia freely move in and out as they wish and depending on the season of their comfort. Note also that the Amharas are not a minority in this ethnic region. Based on the 2007 census, Amharas with 21.8% are the second largest ethnic group among six other ethnic groups inhabiting the area. The largest ethnic group, the Berta, is only slightly larger than the Amhara at 25.4%. Important to note is also that the Amhara are allowed only to elect officials to all levels of government but cannot be elected themselves – democracy Ethiopian style. And lo and behold, this is the area where we are building the huge Nile Dam that we are being asked to contribute money for and that Sudan and Egypt hate like the plague.
Only the Ethiopian government media thinks it is hiding this horrific story. Embassies of Ethiopia’s donor countries in Addis Ababa, who tirelessly tell us how they care for civilization and human rights, have also chosen to look the other way. This barbarism is theirs too as they are underwriting it in so many ways. That may partly explain their silence. The only silver lining I found in this whole sad story is that the local, indigenous tribes and ethnic groups have not joined the officials in this crime. Many, we even heard, were sympathetic to the victims. We all need to be proud of them. They have not lost their senses even as their chiefs lost theirs.
But here is the major point. Many Ethiopians seem to miss the root cause of this crime and get outraged at the chaffs. The root cause of this ethnic cleansing and the factor that created it is embedded in the vision set out for Ethiopia by its rulers, the TPLF/EPRDF, as soon as they took power. The officials of the Benishangul-Gumuz state and those in Guraferda, Bench Maji Zone, in the Southern Ethiopia Regional State, were executing a Grand Vision imbedded in the creation of the ethnic homeland – the Killil. That is why some officials seem to be surprised by our surprise and were giving incoherent responses to some media interviews. In a way, you can argue that the local officials who are doing this crime are also victims of the Grand Vision which they were told was a good official policy.
The Benishangul officials somehow failed to learn from their comrades in the Southern Regional State in Guraferda Bench Maji who as we speak are doing the same thing. Had they done it a few victims at a time, the outcry would have been easily muted. In the Guraferda case, they seem to get smarter after doing a massive eviction when they started out last year. Now they are doing it on “a smaller group of victims at a time” basis. They seem to have learnt that the larger their victims the louder the visibility and outrage. Other than that, the local officials are doing their job prescribed in the Grand Vision.
When Meles Zenawi said, “what is Axum to the Wolayita and the Castles of Gondar to the Oromo”, he may have spilled the beans quite early in his tenure, but he was not saying it out of ignorance or saying anything outside of what he believed. The suggestion was to create a psychology among people that anybody born outside of your ethnic homeland does not belong with you – that Ethiopia’s numerous ethnic groups are mechanically joined units that share very little among one another. The Grand Vision stipulates that the best way to divide and rule Ethiopia, and fight age-old and powerful Ethiopian nationalism that stood on their way, was to reduce it to divided units and inward-looking ethnic nationalism. Of course, this was not an innovation by Meles or TPLF. It was first invented by the Italians who twice invaded Ethiopia and, to their unforgettable surprise, found out that Ethiopian nationalism is more powerful to tear down, and that it is hard to divide Ethiopians along their ethnicity and conquer their country. A version of the current ethnic map is first made by Italian strategists and visionaries, if you can call them that.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am all for the rights of ethnic groups to promote their cultures, languages, etc., and believe that any attempt at democratizing Ethiopia should do its best to do away with ethnic inequality in the country. I also know it is a challenge for any government trying to address it. I have monkeyed with Marxism- Leninism when I was a collage kid. When I began to see and understanding my country fully, I found out that any solution for Ethiopia’s ills can only be based by studying and understanding Ethiopia and its complexities and devising indigenous solutions and not by importing European ideas. I believe we can find our own solutions.
Anybody who thinks that the motive behind the manufacturing of the “killil state” by the TPLF/EPRDF was to empower ethnic groups and help them promote their language, culture etc, and do away with ethnic inequality, was apparently taken for a ride or has not paid attention to the philosophy embedded in the formation of ethnic homelands – the killil. The fact is you don’t necessarily need the ethnic killil to make ethnic groups or so called “nations” and “nationalities” and “peoples” equal. In fact, for ethnic groups to be equal citizens in the country, you don’t necessarily have put them inside a geographic enclave. I am a student of geography. I can make you digital maps of ideal federal states that can be optimally used to help avoid inequality between ethnic groups, fight poverty, and strengthen the Ethiopian union, all at the same time, by crunching hundreds of variables on a computer. It is even possible to avoid the current ridiculous hierarchical classification of ethnic groups into “nations”, “nationalities” and “peoples” which inherently perpetuates inequality.
The current practice only exposes the regime that it does not have even a slight commitment to the rights of ethnic groups. I know many have come to this conclusion by looking at what the regime is doing to the Agnuak in Gambella. According to current practice in Ethiopia, you will lose your

TPLF Ambassador gets a Surprise Audience in Houston: Women in Hijab

        by dula
Ethiodemocrat.com

Yellow Hijab, Symbol of Resistance

With their beautiful attire and Hijab on the head, Ethiopian Muslim women surprised Woyanes and everyone in Houston on Sunday, April 14, 2013. Instead of usual cordial and subservient Ethiopian woman, who were often absent from such rallies, Woyane Ambassador was confronted with assertive, and bold Ethiopian women, who at last understood the damage the regime has done to their people regardless of where they hail from.
Unlike in the past the conference was packed, but the Woyane Ambassador might have thought the Muslim audience was his usual allies of the past from Tigre or some allies from the South. To his surprise, he faced a different class of Ethiopian women who at last decided to face the Woyane beast head on.
The Woyane amassed security, for protection, and to silence the opposition, despite such preparation and the presence of such force, the Ethiopian women refused to be silenced and refused to be kicked out of the audience even after the Woyanes urged the police to do so.
The new face of Ethiopian resistance was no more men with jackets, and pants, but Ethiopian women with Hijab. With their coordinated attire, the women filled over half of the audience, showed their protest banners demanding the release of political prisoner and more.
The Ethiopian community in Houston showed up inside the conference room and on the streets in force to demonstrate its displeasure with the Woyane Ambassador from Washington. After months of advertising and promotion, the Woyane Ambassador Girma Biru showed up to collect funds for the Abay Dam, believing his cadres in Houston sold the idea with an ironclad confidence. At the beginning, Houstonians gave the Ambassador the benefit of the doubt to tell his version of the Woyane story and about the Abay Dam. At the beginning, the confident Ambassador narrated the importance of the dam to Ethiopia and how the Woyanes are pulling Ethiopia out of it darkness, while this assertion is highly debatable and probably patently false.
To the surprise of the Ambassador and many Ethiopians, almost half of the audience was women of the Islamic faith. The turnout was beyond any ones expectation; the conference room was packed and some people were forced to stand up. Besides filling the conference with their beautiful attire and yellow Hijab, the Ethiopian women put the Woyane cadres to the task repeatedly raising the plight of their brethren and forcing the police to ask some of them to leave. However, the women would not have it and refused to budge, and the police were forced to back down as the audience turned to their defense.
To his credit, the Ambassador agreed to answer all questions at the end despite his Woyane handlers’ recommendation that all questions be submitted in advance in writing so that they can dictate which questions to be asked or not to be asked. The audience protested to Woyane handlers’ recommendation and the Ambassador relented and took questions from the audience. Unfortunately, he was unable to give straight answers as the audience was looking forward, and the conference degenerated into chaos and the police were called in intervene a few times.
Another surprise to Woyane and other Ethiopians, most of the audience turned to be from the opposition. When the room was cleared off all the protestors, only small groups of people were left with the Ambassador.
As the meeting become unruly, the ambassador decided to call of the meeting and the Ethiopians audience starting singing “Woyane Leba” and Lelaba Genzeb Ansetim”
When the Ambassador cancelled the meeting, he urged those Woyane supporters stayed afoot to make their contribution. However, an awe struck Ambassador was left with an empty room of few supporters and Woyane cadres who organized the meeting. This should have been the most humiliating moment for him: seeing empty conference full of Police and Woyane cadres.

Stop Financing Forced Eviction and Ethnic Cleansing in Ethiopia

by Tedla Asfaw

We Ethiopians in front of the World Bank Head Quarter in Washington DC on April 20, 2013 are bringing the voice of poor farmers, pastoralists and indigenous people of Ethiopia who are forcefully evicted from their land by Tigrean land lords and foreign land buyers to enrich themselves.This month alone thousands of Amharas from Ben Shanguel Gumez are removed from their farms to give away the land to Tigrean land lords.
In Gambella more than 3 million hectares of Annuak land was sold to foreigners to produce food for their own people. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Nations claim securing land to feed their people for future. More than 70,000 Annuaks have already been forced from their land and another 150,000 will be displaced in the coming few years.
All this eviction and ethnic cleansing is financed by World Bank. The Ethiopian tribal junta can not do this eviction and ethnic cleansing without the support of USA/UK financing it at all levels including paying salary for those who are chasing the people. Annuaks are now an endangered species so does the Mursi people who are chased away from the South Omo Valley hunting ground to clear the land for the regime sugar company. Mursi’s who resisted are murdered in large numbers.
The Amharas who lived for years dispersed throughout Ethiopia have been targeted by the regime since it came to power in 1991. The regime killed and chased Amharas by using its ethnic collaborators in Oromia in the past and at present using the Southern and Western regions ethnic warlords.
We all know that the World Bank denied loan for Cambodia in Summer of 2011 for the government displacing its farmers. Why should it be different for Ethiopia in 2013 ? We demand the World Bank to come clean by distancing itself from the crime committed by the tribal mafia and junta of TPLF. What was good for Cambodia is good for Ethiopia !!

Dr. Berhanu Nega with Sisay Agena of ESAT, on the current Ethiopian politics

Dr. Berhanu Nega, Chairman of “Ginbot 7 Movement for Justice Freedom and Democracy” on the current Ethiopian politics with Sisay Agena of ESAT.

The 2005 general election

During the 2005 elections, Berhanu debated Meles Zenawi. Despite the post-election political impasse, CUD met on 20 August and elected Berhanu mayor of Addis Ababa. Dr. Admasu Gebeyehu and Assefa Habtewold were elected Deputy Mayor and Speaker of the city assembly respectively at the same meeting. Had the CUD taken over the task of running the city, Berhanu would have been the first elected mayor in Ethiopia.
However, the October riots led to Berhanu’s imprisonment, along with CUD chairman Hailu Shawul, Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, and Former Senior UN Prosecutor Dr. Yacob Haile-Mariam and other leaders of the CUD, as well as a number of civil rights activists and independent journalists. They were charged with genocide and treason. Amnesty International and the European Union recognized the prisoners as political prisoners and requested immediate and unconditional release. The Ethiopian Supreme Court, however, sentenced all of this group to life sentences. After the intervention of the international community and Ethiopian elderly, majority of the leaders were pardoned after 21 months of prison on 20 July 2007.
While in Kaliti prison, Berhanu wrote and published a book Yenetsanet Goh Siked (“The Dawn of Freedom”), which was published in Kampala, Uganda by MM Publishers in May 2006. The book, over 600 pages long, included an account of his time with the EPRP.
Source: Wikipedia

The Rulers of Ethiopia Should Face Justice for Crimes They Committed Against Amharas in Ethiopia

   by Zelalem Abate
E-mail: zelalem.abate1@gmail.com

One may ask why rulers commit genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing on the very people they rule. Although nothing would justify, heinous rulers always provide bizarre and incomprehensible justifications. The tyrants in Ethiopia, for example, say Amharas were evicted because they cut trees. For them cutting trees is enough reason to commit ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. As the world knows, these kinds of despicable crimes have been committed in Rwanda, Liberia, Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries. The star actors of genocide and crimes against humanity in Rwanda, Liberia and Sudan are already facing justice. The tribal and racist-primitive rulers who have been committing ethnic cleansing and crimes against Amharic speaking people (the Amharas) for the last 22 years in Ethiopia are still leaving lavish lives at the expense of the resources of their victims-the Amharas.
Would you please listen to these verses, Emama Ethiopia?

“My country, Ethiopia

You are fool, deceivable

You feed your murders

While you starve your martyrs!”

No single spot exists in the mountains, plains, low lands, deserts, jungles, rivers and lakes, where Amharas did not spill their blood to protect the national integrity and sovereignty of Ethiopia. A lot has been said about the battle of Maqdala, Adwa, Mychew, and The Five-Year War with Facist where Amharas gave their chest for bullets and their whole body for mustard gas in order to transfer a proud and free country to us. Let’s just gaze at the very near past. It was the Amhara peasants who broke the back bone of invader Siad Barre. It was the Amhara militia who protected our natural sea ports until mama Ethiopia’s neck and breasts were butchered by her traitor children. What is the gladiator Amhara getting in return now? Systematic discrimination, frequent eviction, endless displacement, repeated ethnic cleansing, chronic crime against humanity, and genocide?
One of the leading Ethiopian online news papers on Ethiopian affairs, Ethiomedia, covered on its March 17, 2013 front page, that 59 uprooted Amharas were killed by car accident in Benishngul Gumuz, western Ethiopia while they were forcefully evicted after their property was confiscated. ^[1] Similarly the Ethiopian Satellite Television, an independent news outlet, reported that more than 3, 000 people were evicted from Benishangul area. ^[2] These crimes were also discussed in the Voice of America Amharic program.^[3] The evicted people and the deaths include children and pregnant women. Mind you, the victims only crime was being born Amhara. Dr. Yakob Hailemariam, one of the Lawyers who investigated the Rwandan Genocide, call this act of the TPLF lead government ethnic cleansing. ^[4]
In this 21^st century human traits such as age, gender, and ethnicity are protected human characters. In civilized societies (at least in theories), discriminating based on these protected traits is illegal and immoral. However, concepts such as legality and morality are not found in the dictionaries of the barbaric tribal rulers of Ethiopia. Unfortunately, the ruling party’s fundamental policy in Ethiopia dictates cadres to organize people based on ethnicity and the language they speak. Furthermore, this backward policy (The Wild-animals’ law as the distinguished scholar professor Mesfin woldemariam calls it)promotes the different ethnic groups to discriminate each other based on human nature such as race, language, religion and so on. The Amharas, who are mainly against this uncivilized jungle law, have been the prime victims of this brutal and retarded policy since the racist Tigrai People Libration Front (TPLF) took power through a Trojan horse- the Ethiopian Democratic Libration Front (EPRDF).
The Amharas are the second largest ethnic group in the country. Some, in fact, argue that Amhara could be the largest group in the nation if counted in unbiased manner. Ancient and modern history teaches that this population group existed with other ethnic groups in Ethiopia and the surrounding East African countries since humans started to live as society on this earth. However, the Amharas have never claimed certain regions of Ethiopia as their own sole state. Unfortunately, TPLF created a segregated area called Amhara killil (Killil -a local term for segregation) for these groups of people.
Many including former members of TPLF have stated that TPLF leaders have been labeling the Amharic speaking people as their enemies since they organized themselves as communist Guerilla fighters in the early 70’s.^[5] The crimes committed against Amharic speaking people since this rebel group (formerly labeled as terrorist group by USA) took power are the practical applications of this former communist Guerilla fighters’ racist-jungle manifesto.
As mentioned above, systematic discrimination of Amhara has been on the making for more than two decades. As soon as the TPLF took power in 1991, it cleansed more than 42 intellectuals (almost all of them Amharas) from the teaching positions at Addis Ababa University.^[6] It established a unique and effective contraception programs in the Amhara communities to reduce the number of births. No sane Amharic Speaking individual with viable conscience is allowed to take key positions in the government. Those individuals who claim to represent the Amharas in the government are either non-Amharas or Amharas who sell out their soul and conscience to money and other ephemeral advantages.
About two years after the TPLF took power, thousands of Amharic speaking people including women and children were massacred in the eastern part of the country called Bedeno.^[7] It needs an outstanding historical film maker to document how these unfortunate people were thrown away from the top of the cliff as high as 100 meters. It takes Schindler’s List film director to document the suffering of the children of these victims. It takes the skill of a horror film maker to produce how

TPLF/EPRDF Nefarious Deeds That Will Blow Your Mind – Ethnic Cleansing

by Ewnetu Sime

We are witnessing unprecedented hatred to Amhara ethnic group under Tigrai People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)/ Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRDF) ethno-centric dictatorial rule. As soon as TPLF/EPRDF came to power in 1992, the regime and supporters began to brutalize the Amhara ethnic group in particular. A well-coordinated support with extremist loyalist to the TPLF/EPRDF regime incited conflict in Arba Gugu, Hararghe area against the Amhara ethnic group. The houses of Amhara were burned with people inside, people were killed thrown over the cliff, people of hacked to death in broad day light, robbed, bodies mutilated by regime supporters. Some of the lucky ones fled to Addis Ababa, other took shelters in nearby towns. Ethnic cleansing was conducted in unprecedented scale. In 2012, poor farmers of Amhara ethnic group from the southern part of Ethiopia were expelled. People were made homeless; similarly, in 2013 Amhara ethnic group from Benishangul-Gumuz area forceful evicted. TPLF/EPRDF’s ethnic dictatorship anti-Amhara policy claimed many lives in many parts of Ethiopia. Sadly, the TPLF/EPRDF’s leaders and associated tugs are getting away with ethnic cleansing crimes. To-date no one is charged for it.
It is evident that as Derg came to power in 1974, they ruled the whole country in terror and brutality. Derg’s regime was faced with resistance and gravely weakened and finally defeated by TPLF/EPRDF and Eritrea Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF) guerrilla warfare. TPLF/EPRDF guerrilla movement transformed to large scale by recruiting fighters partly by intimidation of the Tigeran peasants, and finally able to mobilized thousands of fighters. They disseminated in their fighters propaganda of hatred to other ethnic and continuing to exhibit parochialism even after they assumption of power. Before TPLF enter Addis Ababa they quickly formed EPRDF to get a cover as an Ethiopian force. The TPLF claims in its propaganda that they fought Derg dictatorship for the pursuit of liberty or ideals of democracy has been revealed as carefully crafted deceptions. It is not too surprising that it is done to stay in power by coercion enforced by viscous Agaiz private armies that are recruited from one minority ethnic and secret police organization to continue their tyrannical rule.
As we briefly look back why the Weyane’s/TPLF revolt started we found that primarily reason was a conflict with the local authority to protect economic interest within Ethiopia. However, in mid-1970’s the Weyane intelligesta has shifted from the regional problem to call secession from the centralized Ethiopia state. For this reason, since the guerrilla years the Tigrian identity and historical heritage to Ethiopia has been deliberately and systematically reinvented by their leaders to mislead others. The rich and long Ethiopians history and nationalism has been distorted.
Their leaders have no love for Ethiopia or compassion for people except for their interest that is driven in creating non-viable ethnic states and provoking ethnic conflicts.
It is well to remind ourselves, their supreme leader Meles Zenawi made statements in public that Ethiopia flag is a piece of rug, proud to be pure gold ethnic, has done treachery acts about Assab, the Algerian agreement etc. all these originated from dogmatic ethnic political beliefs.
Furthermore, as TPLF/EPRDF’s seized the power, they implemented the divide and rule strategy under disguise of ethnic rights ideology. It quickly adopted a new constitution “the right of ethnic/nationalities Rights” under Article 39, 46 and 47. Of course, these articles objective are to divide and rule at same time to erode the eighty nationalities unity and diversity that coexisted side by side for generations. Even though active social interaction and intermarriage among nationalities is always a given fact.