TPLF AND THE DEMISE OF ETHIOPIA

By Nadew Kebede

As we enter the 14th year since TPLF took power in Ethiopia , we have reached at a cross road in our history when we have to make a choice to save our country or to watch helplessly as it is being systematically and gradually ruined in to oblivion by the TPLF.

TPLF started their programme with an open anti Ethiopian policy and have ever since attacked our country on all fronts, unashamedly making a mockery of its history, its people and culture unrelentlessly. After 14 years of TPLF rule, our people are still impoverished and oppressed and are burdened with disease, unemployment and lack of any future prospect and backwardness. Thousands of our country folk have been forced to live as refugees across the world in search of a livelihood. HIV/AIDS is decimating the population. We are being insulted and treated like slaves who must suffer a bitter fate. We are being pushed deeper and deeper into a gulf of misery, poverty, and our basic rights have been taken away from us. We get only grief and humiliation every day. Despotism and arbitrariness of the TPLF/EPRDF are suffocating our people and they are gasping for breath. People have no strength left and have reached the limit of their patience. We have to take a pose and see where we are heading!

For the rural as well as the urban population, life has become hard labor and eternal suffering. TPLF/EPRDF have taken away the land from the rural population and they are using it as a weapon of subjugation. People have been forced to pay huge amounts of tax while their children go hungry and their requests for alleviation of debts have often been met with confiscation of land, raids on their property, murder and expulsion from their villages. Whole families have been forced to leave their villages and fled to the towns and cities to beg for food and to search for opportunities. Thousands sleep rough in the streets in cities and towns across the country, in make shift shacks, and die of hunger and disease. The huge influx of so many people in to Addis Ababa from all parts of the country has been an embarrassment for the authorities who claim to the world that they are champions of the poor and oppressed people of Ethiopia. Yet their contempt for the people knows no bounds. They don’t seem to see the poor people as human beings even outwardly. People have been beaten-up in the streets and then loaded on to trucks and dumped on the outskirts of Addis Ababa as soon as they arrived in order to avoid causing shame to the authorities. They have been made homeless, destitute and helpless refugees in their own country.

The TPLF/EPRDF announce to the world that their constitution supports individual rights and freedom. However, in reality no one has any rights including their own supporters. TPLF consider that individual freedom is something like a food ration that they can handout to people only through their generosity. The right to speak, to think, to assemble, to discuss peoples’ needs, freely and without government interference or to take measure , through local initiatives, to improve living conditions is seen by the regime as subversive and slanderous insolence. Any request people make is seen as a crime. People have been deprived of their rights to organize themselves into unions at work places to defend their interests. TPLF/EPRDF decide what should be written and said on the national press and have never stopped trying to muzzle the free press and eliminate those who work in it. Disappearance, murder and imprisonment of journalists, who work for the free press is a common occurrence. There is no other organization in the country that has suffered so much in the hands of TPLF/EPRDF as the Ethiopian Free Press Association. Its members have been murdered, threatened, fined and jailed repeatedly and a lot of them forced into exile.The assault on this organization is still continuing. TPLF/EPRDF set up and implant surrogate unions at work places to act as informers. In this manner, they have enslaved the Ethiopian people and they do so under a constitution which they claim supports human rights and individual freedom.

They imprison, murder and force into exile members of opposition political parties and their supporters and anyone who has the courage to speak on behalf of the interests of the people . The Ethiopian public cannot forget the fates of Dr.Taye W/Semayat, Assefa Maru, Mekonnen Dori, Asrat Woldeyes, Abera Yeman-ab not to mention the hundreds of others who are languishing in prison with out any hope of getting a fair hearing in a court of law. TPLF/EPRDF punish people for showing a good human heart and a responsive spirit as if this is a crime. To pity a downtrodden and tormented person with no rights is to commit a grave crime against humanity that cannot be tolerated even under a despotic regime.

The entire population through out the nation is subjected to the arbitrariness of a corrupt, bureaucratic and incompetent administration, whose employees are installed in place not for their ability but for their allegiance to TPLF/EPRDF. These people have proved to be embezzlers of public funds and thieves who not only have no concern at all for the interests of the people but who harm those interests. They have made themselves the sole beneficiaries of our country’s resources. The general public have no voice in the expenditure of the tax money that is forcibly collected from them. The money collected in taxes from the impoverished people goes to fill the bank accounts of corrupt officials and government cadres in foreign banks and to buy weapons for the suppression of the people instead of being used to fight poverty and disease and for the construction of schools and hospitals for the tax paying public. While the masses of the Ethiopian people toil and suffer, the embezzlers of public funds and the pillagers of the people live in abundance and enjoy themselves.

These corrupt and incompetent individuals have reduced 99% of the population to destitution and, have brought our country ever further towards ruin by exacerbating the hatred and divisions they have created between the various ethnic groups in the country. Conflicts between neighboring ethnic groups/tribes arising from land disputes, grazing rights, access to water resources, tribal rivalries and other causes are rife. Clashes occur regularly, for example, between Oromo and Somalis groups in the south of the country due to land disputes resulting in the loss of many innocent lives. These kinds of disputes are not confined to one region only but are widespread throughout the country. Local issues that used to get resolved amicably by village elders and officials are now sorted out in the battle field and law and order within communities has completely broken down. People have been made to see each other as enemies and their attitudes to one another to harden.

The tribal/ethnic conflicts that have afflicted the country at large have been spreading even to University campuses and other higher education establishments. For a long time, disturbance have been stirred up by government agents by creating ethnic divisions and hatred among students. The murder of two students who came originally from Tigray , recently in the Arba-Minch Water Institute, was the culmination of an ethnic feud developing among the various factions within that institute. The pursuit and advancement of knowledge and enlightenment for the good of all has given way to ignorance, hatred and mutual destruction as a result of the divide and rule policies imposed by the TPLF/EPRDF for its own political expediency and to bring students under its control. The regime has tried to make these places breeding grounds for prejudice and narrow nationalism and universities remain prime targets for its merciless attack ever since it took power in 1991.

Attack on businesses owned by people who ventured to live out side of the so called ethnic zones other than their own has continued to grow. Many businesses in the south of the country ,particularly those owned by Tigrians, have been targets of wanton destruction and arson and the owners of these businesses have received threats on their lives which have forced them to shut down their businesses and to flee the area. Many people have lost their livelihood in this manner. Many find it hard to find work outside of their allocated ethnic zones even if they have the knowledge and expertise in a particular job. Skilled manual labour that could have been usefully employed has been wasted and people have been forced into unemployment and deprivation. This has made the transfer of know-how from one region of the country to the other very difficult and has been a barrier for growth in many parts of the country. Fear of being attacked has restricted the movement of people , businesses and capital from one area to the other. This can only be damaging for the entire country and does not benefit anyone except the TPLF/EPRDF who want to keep the population in check to perpetuate their hold on power.

When it took power in 1991, The TPLF/EPRDF told the world community that the independence of Eritrea will bring peace and stability in Ethiopia. Far from helping to bring peace and stability, the rivalry and struggle for power between the two former allies, TPLF and Shabia has brought devastating wars and misery on the population on either side of the divide. The threat of more wars is ominous and these two groups are ready to experiment with the lives of more innocent people in a war which either side has no wish to end as long as they remain in power. Both Shabia and TPLF have become hosts to a number of international, regional and local forces who wish to impose their influence and dominance in the horn of Africa. The horn region has been polarized as never before and this situation has created a permanent threat to peace and stability in the region. TPLF and Shabia have become mortal enemies and both are operating indirectly to annihilate one another by sponsoring and supporting rebel groups which they rear and nurture and who have given allegiance to them. The security and safety of our country has therefore never been in more danger than it is now because of the instability within the country and threats from outside.

The Ethiopian people seek their last salvation. In the coming election we have a chance to help ourselves out of the grave of poverty, ignorance, lack of rights; and disease and to determine our own destiny, and to deliver ourselves from the yoke of the TPLF/EPRDF. Let’s tear down the wall of division that has been placed between us by the TPLF/EPRDF opportunists and let’s reclaim our country together and gain the freedom that has been snatched from us by their guns. It is time to wake up and to realize that we must get out of a situation that is becoming unbearable for everyone.The Ethiopian people , seek justice and protection.Time has come to stop the suffering.

Victory to the Ethiopian People

God bless Ethiopia.