CGTN || Ethiopians are expressing anger and frustration over several university students, most of them women, who remain missing after their kidnapping two months ago.
A growing social media campaign echoes the BringBackOurGirls activism in Nigeria over the mass kidnapping there of scores of schoolgirls in 2014. Ethiopians across the world are pressuring President Abiy Ahmed for answers in the abduction in the Oromia region.
In Washington DC, and the U.S. states of Maryland and Virginia protesters to the streets condemning the government over silence in connection with the abduction, which happened in the Oromo region of Ethiopia.
Photo courtesy: VOA Amharic
“We condemn the abduction of university students” and “Justice to those who are attacked by extremists” are few of the placards that protestors were carrying.
Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States, Fitsum Arega, received a letter written to prime minister Abiy Ahmed. Abebe Belew, the coordinator of the protest, personally handed over the message to the Ambassador.
“We are confident that the Ambassador will hand over the letter to the prime minister,” Abebe Belew is cited as saying in the DW Amharic report.
Ambassador Fitsum discussed with protestors, and he said that he would present the message to the Ethiopian government and follow up with it.
“Why is government silent about the abduction?” and “where are the students” are the crucial questions that Ethiopians are asking.
Prime Minister Ahmed’s government has been praised for appointing women to prominent positions “but with regard to the abducted girls, in its silence, it is violating a tremendous number of their human rights,” Yared Hailemariam, director of the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, said in a statement Monday. “Ethiopian authorities have failed to protect the victims of the abduction and to take necessary measures to bring them back.”
It is not clear how many of the students remain captive. The prime minister’s press secretary, Nigussu Tilahun, disclosed on Jan. 11 that 21 students from Dembi Dollo University were released while six remained captive.
But family members say they haven’t heard from their loved ones.
“The last time I heard from my daughter was a month ago. She said youths from the local area took them to the forest. I don’t know what happened to her since,” Yeneneh Adugna, who lives in Central Gondar in the Amhara region, told The Associated Press. “We are living in an anguish every day. We are crying every day. We want to know whether they are alive or dead. No one is giving us any information.”
The Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia says 18 university students, 14 of them female, were seized while returning home from university.
No one has claimed responsibility for the abduction, but Oromia regional officials have blamed the armed Oromo Liberation Army, which is clashing with government forces in the Western Oromia region. The armed group has denied the accusation and said the government itself was to blame for the kidnapping.
As a father of a wonderful daughter and now a grandfather of an angelic granddaughter my heart has been aching and bleeding since the news of abduction of these innocent daughters of all of us!!! Once again I feel utter helpless am holding everyone including the officials of the central government and Oromia Region. I call upon every patriotic countryman/woman of law expertise to take PM Abiy and his entire cabinet, Al-Toweel Shimelis Abdisa and every official under him to court and sue the living daylight out of them. These legal experts should call for assistance by every global humanitarian organization, The EU, The Hague, USA and the UN. Tell them Shimelis and his entourages are the kidnappers. Tell them PM Abiy and entire members of his cabinet are laughing at the agonized parents of the victims. Tell’em!!! These officials seem to be so disconnected from the society they are ruling that they have gone totally tone-deaf!!!! It seems that they don’t or will never understand what kidnapping of a daughter means or how it feels just because they are not like those parents who don’t have other choices except to send their daughters to a school tucked somewhere in a wilderness hundreds miles away. If these officials have to send their daughters to a far away place for schooling it will be here in the USA or Europe where they will be attended by full time personal butlers and cooks. They will never understand what kidnapping of a daughter means!!! They’re making me sick!!! Sue their ever ballooning behind in a court of law. Embarrass the living daylight out of these tone-deaf truants of governance!!! I am holding every one of them responsible. Pretty soon I am gonna graduate them to be pedophiles!!! Every one of them!!!! And that will be their career highlight forever!!!! How about that!!!!
If such heinous act as kidnapping of students particularly female students is not nipped in the bud with telling blows, it is going to spreading like wild fire. We know kidnapping of young girls for forced marriage in one of our sick customs and this incident could have been used to deal it a crushing blow and make a statement both by the federal and regional governments. Such savage act is the result of the poison that fiefdom mongering bigots have been spewing around since the 1970’s. They were spitting hatred from their missionary canteens first, then from the dump sites in Asmara and Al-Qahirah and now there on site since returning to the old country. We all notice that these ‘new republic’ planners are not talking about the plight of these innocent young girls just because they see them ‘not belonging to one of their own’. For them ‘mum is the word’!!!! You know why? It is because they are ‘over burdened’ with their sinister work to yank away a territory just to claim it as their personal fiefdom and then take their turn at looting!!!! These modern day black Neo-Nazis have contaminated the environment there so much that they have left behind many toxic ‘super-fund’ sites in several regions. It will take more than a generation to clean up.