A Bit of an Ethiopian Irony

I am on your side if you’re a student being brutally harassed for peacefully demonstrating in the name of the oppressed. I better yet feel more affected if you are of the poor and innocent farmers, local person of Finfinne area encroached by all sides from a completely devious government that cares the least about its people but its political image and survival.

However I more than ever feel more ashamed, pathetic for being part of the whole image of this Ethiopia and absurd Ethiopians all over.  There could be a million reasons to make me sad and most Ethiopians would fit in that category.

I witnessed people I do know personally getting over excited with their Ethiopian identity, trying to brag about it all the time with the green, gold and red stripe being everything they talk about, everywhere, while the rest try to hide their identity, feel ashamed of where they are from, or even tell a complete lie about their nationality. While the later group is clear evidence for the non existence of the same people within the boundaries of the land demarcated as Ethiopia in the horn of Africa, there also are completely blinded oxymoron people exiled in the west beating their drum with the motto “one country one people” in big crowds of fanatic ignorant Ethiopians riding the ideological silence of denying history. There is no fairly run one Ethiopia, it can only be realized by the same rhetoric of oppression and domination by one group of people on the other as it happened throughout history. Denying it and shouting one Ethiopia, one people is a completely ignorant ideology in my opinion. Ethiopia has always been composed of different people of various cultures and ethnicities. Denying this and bundling people into one big mass of crowd must be wrong. Ethiopian-ism can’t be attained by pushing a mere motto which is remnant of our oppressive past. Rather it has to be based on tolerance, respecting and acknowledging our difference and supporting one another.

Then follows the other hypocrisy; people of the same “one Ethiopia” policy regularly seen attacking one ethnic group for the present political struggle in the country, irony number one. Then they turn a blind eye when poor and marginalized people get forcibly and systematically evicted from their land, irony number two. And they even show wary or indifferent position for the Oromo protests going on at the moment.  

In the same way, you will qualify within the same category if you are an Oromo protester or supporter and turn a blind eye to the oppression of the poor and marginalized minority groups in Gambella, Benishangul and South Omo regions. These people faced the worst form of oppression by the government in forms of evictions from their ancestral land and protected areas to give way to huge corporate monoculture farm land for vague sense of development for others far away and in the case of Gambella and the continuous assault in the form of gigantic dams with the Southern Omo and Benishangul people and other local minority groups with little or no support from others who either claim to have fanatical position of one Ethiopia or those voicing their opinion to the oppression of one group of people.

If you claim to be Ethiopian and ignore the plight of Gambella, Benishangul and South Omo people being evicted from their land, how can anyone think these people as part of Ethiopia and not the victims of Ethiopia?

Let alone standing up for our fellow compatriots far away, we are even against each other, brutalizing our children and the helpless in every possible way in the name of culture- another gruesome irony widely seen in Ethiopia.

We tend to get extremely irritated and angry when a policeman beats up, injures and even sometimes fatally destroys life while we tend to have a completely opposite position when a father or guardian does the same or worse to their children. Yes, studies claim a staggering 99% of children go through a form of abuse at home, school or within their community. What a shame! Imagine the number of children going out on the streets, get scarred for life and lose their lives sooner or later for this much tolerated or even accepted and praised cultural brutality. How can one expect a politician or policeman to be respectful and fair to others if we ignore a person as close to a young Ethiopian as a parent or guardian do such a barbaric act to their own, perhaps, a policeman who had gone through the same process in his/her childhood.

Then follows the case of brutally discriminating and hurting our own people for their sexuality in the name of culture or one own religion, the way we treat our helpless and voiceless animals all over the country.

If you think all of this is culture, you must also consider oppression, police brutality and killings as part of our culture as it had been part of our society for centuries.

So get your thoughts back my fellow people. Get yourselves together. Stop shouting slogans of oppression, division. Don’t speak for some and completely forget others. Embrace your differences and root out bad cancerous cultures, respect each other and love the other. There is no one Ethiopia, or any one ethnic group, there is humanity, life and all our moral values begin from there.