YOU ARE INVITED TO HEAR A REPORT FROM OBANG METHO ON:
• The SMNE Team’s work in Ethiopia over the last five months as they traveled throughout the country, talking to university students, elders, community leaders, religious leaders and government officials—including their observations, concerns and recommendations, particularly the issue of insecurity, leading to the internal displacement of millions of Ethiopians.
• The WAY FORWARD to more sustainable freedom, justice and prosperity in Ethiopia and the challenges before us; in particular, meaningful reforms, actions and protective measures that must guard the positive change we have seen and protect its continuation.
• How to contribute to the SMNE’s ongoing effort, both financially and as people who care about the outcome as there is an enormous amount of work to be done and we cannot do it without your financial support and other means of support.
• We are appealing to those who really believe in what we are doing. We have received much encouragement to continue; but now, we need those of you who feel this way to back it up with a generous donation. This must be a collective effort!
• Please click at the link to contribute http://solidaritymovement.org/donate.php
• Help us to put Humanity before Ethnicity and build a vibrant movement that seeks unity, justice, freedom, reconciliation, peace, equality and prosperity in Ethiopia
THE FUTURE OF ETHIOPIA WILL BE STRENGTHENED TO THE EXTENT WE ACKNOWLEDGE AND VALUE THE HUMANITY OF EACH OTHER!
The SMNE is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization and donations received are tax-deductible in the US.
Yes Sir!! Yes Sir!!! All I can say is Yes Sir!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As always, you hit it right on the nose. I have said this umpteen times before and I will say it again with assured correctness. The national question is amicably addressed and answered since 1995. It should have been the long delayed time to go after the problems that is proven to be common to all with undivided attention and airtight unity. Why? Because the reality on the ground says so! The concern that has left the common/woman in Oromia with night and days of nightmare is the same as the one doing the same to that citizen in Amhara region. The same goes in all other ethnic groups. Poverty as it so apparent in the old country, for that matter throughout the globe, does not discriminate. It is not custom made over there. I have told you this from own ocular proof that I had in the 1960’s. In one of my sight-seeing trips where our bus passed through Gondar and Gojjam, I saw numerous peasants walking the roadside with heavy loads of firewood and other essentials and others just tending their domestic animals. They were both men and women wearing tattered and no so clean clothes and having emaciated faces which show they had a hard time feeding themselves and their families. It was a photo copy of those in my own region. Before that I used to be told how poverty was planned and put in place only on my Oromos by the kin and kit of those down trodden people I saw by the roadside and every village we passed through. That experience sealed it for me that the burden is the same in its nature once passed the national equality question: The nationality question, being, having the right to conduct its business in its own language in its region. This and other issues with regards to the nation’s rights question have been amicably answered after 1995 but the poverty common to all, even though there have been progress to chip it away, it still grinding those very proud people irrespective of ethnicity. This is out there to be seen by every genuinely concerned old countryman/woman. Those who have refused to look at this binding problem are those ‘pick-and-choosers’ because that is not their first-come-first-serve agenda which is to carve out a separate territory as their own demesne. They accept no less. That is why they want someone to declare armed war on them so they can say they have the ‘right to defend their people’. And they are not even united among themselves. When the burning issue is to create a unified and strong national party, they are busy to form a union within themselves. TPDM with Arena, OPC with OLNP, OFDM and other ‘pending’ groups, AAPO, NaMA with who knows what!!! It is disgusting!!! Why do the people of Tigray want more than one party? Why my Oromos want more than one party? Why my Amhara neighbors want more than one party? Why? Such refusal to fixate the eyes on the prize is rampant that applies to every ethnic group. The truth of the matter is that the song of nationality has been sung enough but for this and that reason such a song is being kept alive by those who are seriously stricken with an affliction that makes them hateful and suspicious of others other than their ‘own’. These are the groups that are pushing the gem of the colored to the brink. O Boy, they are itching to pick a fight with the current administration, jumping and daring him!!! They go like ‘You’re one coward! You are so weak!! You want me to prove that to you? Look, I just killed hundreds of those who I hate!!! I just robbed your bank and pillage your small town depot!!! You wanna to do something about it? Step right down, I’m waiting for you!!! I don’t give a damn about your laws and will break them whenever I feel like it!! You’re so debile and sapless!!!’
This is the grim reality. This is not a regime of that 1974-75 period. It is that regime of 1991-1992 where everyone thought he/she could exhale freely and ask for anything. But this time, it is it!!! This is it!!! Either every stakeholder has work in it, around it peacefully or sink that pride of the colored down into an insurmountable abyss. If the abyss is the result then every one of us will see the entire 100 million people on the move!!! We will see when that down-trodden Amhara peasant going for the throat of his equally dirt poor countryman in Oromia and vice versa; A Somali doing the same to his blood and flesh Afar and vice versa and on and on. What you and I have been witnessing is the harbinger of what may happen unless the bigots are rendered irrelevant by all of us peacefully. Those of us in the profession of journalism have the noble duty of putting these haters on the spot. You should seek and obtain interviews with these miscreants and smack them in the mouth(not physically) with tough questions. Tell them what bigotry is and does and what they have been is just that. Do not worry what they may and will call you just because they have called you that already. You are either a neftegna or a neo-Gobena. You have to be steadfast and relentless because they are pushing the country to the brink of unseen destruction and bloodshed.
Please read that as: It is NOT that regime of 1991-1992……