If Somalis knew the serfdom in Ethiopia

by Aklilu Demissie

For those who are not yet awake the borders of Ethiopia now extend to the shore lines of Bossasso, Mogadishu and Kismayu in the East, just curtailed for the time being by the Indian Ocean . If there are the most humiliated people that exist in the world under a brutal dictator are Ethiopia and Somalia .

You can go to other war on terror front lines, Iraq and Afganisistan; thanks to America ’s blessing they have legitimate, elected assemblies to lead their countries. Thanks again to America ’s curse an illegitimate, rejected tyrant is let loose unleashing the most heinous crimes against humanity in Ethiopia and the Horn.

On what they call a third front on war against terror, you have the most hated, ruthless tyrant who managed to survive after defeat at the polls with the help of misguided backers in the State Department. America paradoxically has preferred to do business with a rejected tyrant, Meles Zenawi.

The Ever tightening noose on freedom and democracy in Ethiopia is being carried out in the plain view of the American government. Presently the pressure for democracy and release of people’s representative parliamentarians, poverty reduction specialists, and the youth is sidelined in order for Zenawi to extend his sphere of influence in the Horn at the expense of the desire for change in Ethiopia . The war in Somalia has allowed the brutal dictator continue brutalize in a renewed vigor any descent at home.

The Somali people are not naïve about how Meles rules in his home town .After losing the elections in May 2005, with his direct command and rule of the security apparatus, entirely based from his ethnic tribe has desecrated the meaning of being elected and representing a cnstituency.

After refusal of parliamentary participation by the opposition party members, his security forces relentlessly chased representatives individually from dawn to dusk threatening them with their lives. At present there is no opposition member in parliament who had not been threatened with attack on his/her family. Worse, some had been taken to a freshly dug out grave yard, their hands tied behind their backs and told they would be buried alive if they didn’t participate in the parliament. Many had got physical beating both in town and in rural areas .Those who produced parliamentary card on the assumption they would get the immunity the constitution has ascribed for elects were ridiculed by Meles’ security people and were told to shove it up their ar**. They were told Tigrayan brothers didn’t die for you [elected opposition members of parliament] to snatch it by throwing good- for-nothing papers in boxes.

Some have been obviously bribed and abandoned the cause of freedom and democracy. They now beg for the population to come around their party. Others since they couldn’t bear the pressure of the security apparatus, just decided to participate giving the excuse of fighting the regime from the parliament and sarcastically told not to be seen opposing foreign diplomats advice.

The gallant, democratic champions have been successfully defending themselves by routing Meles’forced witnesses in the Kangaroo court.
For every exposition of the regime’s treachery what awaits them every day in Kality is hell. These present and future hopes of Ethiopia have never succumbed to every text book of systematic torture they have been exposed by Meles.

For Somalis and the world, this is the Meles who is articulating democratic governance. Be it Gedi or Yosuf who have been given premiership and presidency respectively by Meles, blessed by UN do not at all have the slightest reign or power to rule Somalia. Nor does any of the ethnically federalized regions [kelel] of Ethiopia , which are in fact ruled by de facto Tigray officials, rutheless TPLF secrete service and Agazee militia.

The Somalis should not think that their Ethiopian counterparts to be living in a free and democratic country. In Ethiopia you can not see what the West would like to call it, faces of freedom. People live under the yolk of an ethnic minority regime bent on division, subversion and killings.
Every day it is a land of detention, torture, mayhem carried out by a one man state of Meles Zenawi. Since the current political turmoil in the country could not be contained by a now rotting propaganda machine and repression of Meles, he just resorted to the world with his casus belli in order to ease the growing domestic and international pressure stemming out of unbelievable crimes against humanity.

He might have thought it could be sophistication if he went out hunting three Al Qaeda international terrorists on terror list. And, his daily rolling on burning earth to have gone for a while. The expectation was a rallying from his victims who are gagged and live a slave like life in their own country. For brief moment the tyrant may have felt he got a brief respite from the ever growing struggle in Ethiopia for freedom.
He could not crush the spirit of change reeling in Ethiopia : and he could not wipe it out with live bullets, humvees, bazookas and rampant, indiscriminate detention and torture.

Who will buy Meles? Somalis? A rejected, ruthless, blood thirsty tyrant in Ethiopia who rules by sword and bullets?

Inebriated by his self grandeur he was congratulating himself to have done the AU and UN’s dirty business.

A terrorist in his town can not claim to have bestowed freedom and stability to Somali people. Somalis should know as long as Meles is in Somalia, they should say goodbye to freedom, democracy and the right to live, which Ethiopians do not have at present. They should forget sovereignty and territorial integrity and cohesion.

The United Sates Government has clearly abandoned and put aside its face on the dream of human being to live in democracy and freedom in Ethiopia . No foundation exists for social security, happiness, improvement and progress in Ethiopia . It is naïve for it to be extended from Meles to Somalia .

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This article was orginally published in the DEBTERAW website on Jan 03, 2007