aqumada

By Wegesha

As a concerned Ethiopian living in the U.S, I wrote to my representative (senator Hillary Rodham Clinton) regarding the situation in the motherland. I know others are also doing the same and it is my hope that our efforts won't be in vain. Below is the letter I wrote:

 Dear Senator, 

I am writing this letter to bring to your attention the recent events that unfolded in Ethiopia. As you recall, the highly contested elections of May 15^th, 2005 resulted in the deaths of 36 civilians and mass arrests of thousands of opposition supporters. The continued repression has now taken the form of indiscriminant killings of civilians as young as 10 years old. The evidence is out there for all to see and has been reported by local and international news media. Ethiopians in diaspora have held rallies protesting these killings in every part of the world including New York . Unfortunately and regrettably, the Ethiopian people can not turn to their government neither for protection nor to be served justice and hence we have been forced to ask the international community not to turn a blind eye to the dire situation in Ethiopia.

Shortly after the May 2005 elections, two independent election observation groups (the European Union election observation unit and The Carter Center) described the process as “not having met international standards.” Since then the government sanctioned repressive machinery has been rolling in full force, initially banning the right of the people to assemble and consequently initiating the first wave of killings only to be followed by the second wave during the first week of November 2005.  The government sponsored ethnic tension has reached its zenith and has been used as a reason to justify mass killings in the rural areas of the country. All opposition leaders have been stripped of their parliamentary immunity and are now detained facing charges of treason and the death penalty.

I will refrain from listing the myriad of atrocious actions that are being taken against the people of Ethiopia for it would seem pure fabrication and unsubstantiated exaggerations on my part. I would rather have a neutral and objective body look into the facts to see the degree of despotism, the surface of which I have only scratched here. It, however, gives me no comfort to see all the evidence accumulate to realize tyranny, in any disguise, is still tyranny. It also gives me no comfort to wake up every night drenched in sweat wondering if today will be the day when all my family will be wiped out, whose crime so far has only been to be born Ethiopian. 

I hope the international community will be cognizant of the repercussions of the tense situation in Ethiopia and will provide due attention. Fresh in our memory is the genocide that took place in Rwanda only a decade ago while the U.S. took the stance that “African problems should find African solutions.” In all the rhetoric of politics, I hope there still remains some element of international morality, the center piece of which is humanity. It would be too easy to speculate “what went wrong?” from the vantage point of hindsight.  

Thank you.   

Sincerely