Ethiopia’s “Religious” leaders – who do they have at HEART when seeking for Clemency!? .

Tadesse Haile

December 29, 2010

Before I delve into it and weigh in my 2 cents, a painful 2 cents, let me just say, I sync with what Zeru Hagos in his blog had said. I emphatically empathize his feelings on the “lobbying” & most of his thought-process on the whole “clemency” saga.

Let it be, let it be KNOWN, to those who campaign for clemency that the MAGNITUDE of CRIME perpetuated on Ethiopia’s citizens, in particular on the marginalized of society that sustained TRIPLE DEATH: (a) Institutional Destitution (despair, poverty, illiteracy, leprosy, polio, Famine, starvation…) and on top of these
(b) Imprisonment, torture, rape, persecution and ultimately VIOLENT execution.
(c) Extortion in repaying for the cost of BULLETS that their children, relatives were executed with

The magnitude of cruelty even made Ethiopia’s mothers lose their sense of –motherly instinctive- THE Reaction- unlike these argentine moms when going thru the same thing at the same era: PlazaDeMayo. The Ethiopian mothers were totally subdued and annihilated.

Question to the lobbyists and “forgiveness” preachers: Is your campaign being waged in explicit earnest human compassion with ABSOLUTE grasp on the magnitude of the heinous crime inflicted upon citizens?

If so, gauging the heinous crime that it was, where on earth were criminals of this magnitude pardoned? Every country who has gone thru this kind of tragedy left the process to the country’s post-tragedy legal process.

South Africa’s case & R&TC has no parallel or perpendicular cross-section validity to make comparison with Ethiopia’s as I will explain below.

South Africa’s R&T Commission.
The “Lobbyists”, clemency campaigners for Ethiopia’s DerG officials who committed heinous crimes against their own citizens are trying to mix Apple & Orange.

And in what wide-angle, is South Africa’s crimes & criminals interfaced with Ethiopia & Ethiopian criminals? What is the co-relation of the two country’s crimes & criminals?

The only common denominator that these 2 countries have is: crimes, serious crimes, have been committed! The similarity buck stops there. The “rationalized, justified” reason behind the crimes that the criminals leaned upon is what is important to look at and differentiate in their respective nations.

To put it bluntly, It is Apple & Orange! In a nutshell, the reasons respectively were as South & North. Why? Because, the two nations are geo-politically, culturally, institutionally, traditionally, demographically totally in contrast with each other. And the crimes perpetuated on citizens began & ended for reasons totally different to each country’s respective executors.

The criminals pursuit of the –X factor- in their respective nations had No similarity and relation.

Black, colored South Africans were not maimed, killed, humiliated based on their ideology, be it communism or back-ward feudal system which is the case in Ethiopia.

Black South Africans were humiliated the way all black skin colors have been humiliated around the world, simply due to their skin-color. That simple! Skin-color was the front-runner, the pacesetter!

And this being the front-issue, and now that the struggle ended in the way it did, the nation of multi-race needed a solace to soothe the past and move to future at a pace that is so sensitive. For multi-race people to co-exist, this requires national reconciliation so they live under the law of the land.

Even if Black South Africans WERE to be seeking for revenge against the whites, the Odds are stashed against them. Because No “advanced” Western nation would just stand by to see a white race be humiliated the way blacks were. That is reality and let us not fool our black stinky bottom, and swallow that bitter pill and recognize it. The only options for colored South Africans is to move on and look beyond and ensure their life’s security is hardened and the opportunity doors are opened for them to catch up.

And this REALITY has nothing to do with Ethiopia’s criminals and legal system. The crimes in Ethiopia were committed, as we all know, due to ideology, and the Oligarchy’s greed in consuming Ethiopia’s wealth (Don’t forget these oligarchy were sending off their off-springs abroad onto colleges, not just regular colleges, but prestigious colleges: The Harvard, The Princeton, The Stanford, The Columbia, The Oxford, The MIT, ..what not while ordinary Ethiopians future generation were wasted in the streets of Ethiopia one generation after the other).

What bigger crime is there more than this?


Ethiopia’s RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS
Involving in or campaigning a “SELECTIVE” process that has absolutely to do with a nation’s legal system & constitutional process in itself is a political act: containing little that is neutral.

These have always been the institutions that have been INDIFFERENT, MEDIOCRE during the Emperor and Derg savage era when citizens were reduced to sub-humans. In two categories: in Destitution & Derg’s Death squad.

Who forgets the famine tragedy in TiGray & Wollo in particular, in 1974 & 1984? Will you forget that? Will you?

Even those of us young kids in 1974 in the streets of Addis were traumatized by it. How can you forget not hearing the great Tilhaun Gessesse lamentation “way, way silu… “

Where were these religious leaders & institutions back then?
When thousands of our heroine youngsters sisters such as Menbere ATnafu in Kef. 3 Kebele 31 were hunted down and (God knows the torture, rape, humiliation, annihilation before her death) and our big bro Seyoum of Kef 3 kebele 44, who was perhaps only 20, chained and gunned down at Addis Ababas TekeleHaimanot square in 1977 in front of thousands so citizens know what will befall onto them if .. The impact to those of us young kids was tremendous. It is vivid that we continue to live with.

Seyoum, like thousands of us, was an Eritrean born Addis kid, who simply stood by his Addis EPRP brothers & sisters.

Addis didn’t teach us tribalism back then, as we kids, youngsters all from the ordinary people, from parents (Eritreans, TiGray, Amara, Qottu, ADere, Oromo…) had one thing in common: Addis Ababanism. Addis transcended us and it nurtured us love. And Love , of course, transcends.

It is, in fact, that Addis Ababan love that brought me to the attention of this subject. I vividly remember my childhood friends, brilliant Addis street children.. yet being from the ordinary, from the marginalized.. they often wasted their brilliant minds in an Institutionally destitute despair environment that was deliberately, systematically shaped and molded by the Oligarchy of Ethiopia (the feudal system and then Derg came and nurtured its own plutocrats).

It is this pain that in the inner me that these criminals didn’t just commit killings but also wasted generations’ of Ethiopia’s bright mind and life.

Who can forget Ethiopia’s shining star, our hero, the one and only one, the extra-ordinary BeAlu Girma! What happened to him!? Do you not know!? Who made him disappear!? Derg & its security apparatus! His crime!? Writing a book called Oromay. If you read, re-read the book, you wonder how much citizens were expected to shut up and shut off their mind in that abnormal era.

In a Normal nation, it neither brings death nor imprisonment. It was just too soft to even bring jail term. But again, the monsters were NOT Normal beasts and they killed Ethiopia’s unusual compassion human being.

Where were these religious leaders & institutions back then, in particular the bloodbath of 1976-1978? ..and we heard the interrogation of TeGadaly “Amora” as to his joining of TPLF, only after he witnessed Derg’s soldiers slicing off pregnant women’s belly as if that was fruit of orange. And who was leading Ethiopia then? Derg and its cruel & evil system!

In the culture of Ethiopia & Eritrea, Elders and religious leaders have special place. Ordinary citizens, as stoic as they are, see these religious leaders & their institutions beyond the human reach. They are expected to resist, reject any worldly stuff, mistakes. And expected to live & exercise humility, compassion and passion.

Have they when ordinary citizens were herded like a pig? Have they?