By Alemayehu G. Mariam Birtukan Midekssa condemned to life in prison by a vengeful dictator, but unconquered. Birtukan thrown into the dungeon of wrath and tears, but defiant. Birtukan beaten, bludgeoned and bloodied, but unbowed. Birtukan mocked, ridiculed and disrespected, but gracious. Birtukan denounced, vilified, strong-armed and manhandled, but unafraid. Ethiopia under the crushing boots…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam It was a remarkable display of raw machismo: “My way or the highway… or jail!” It was a one-man political theatre, a monologue about absolute power, domination, toughness, brawn and pugnacity. It was a demonstration of sang froid machismo calculated to taunt and sneer at the opposition, and bombard them with…
Alemayehu G. Mariam The “delegation of African negotiators” rumbled into Copenhagen rubbing their palms and licking their chops to load up tens of billions of dollars in carbon blood money and make a quick exit. They were disappointed. There was no gold at the end of the Copenhagen rainbow. At the end of the day,…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Use a sledgehammer to smash a butterfly! That is the exquisite art of war unleashed on Ethiopia’s independent press by the dictatorship of Meles Zenawi today. The latest near-casualties in Zenawi’s war on Truth have just escaped by the skin of their teeth. Their distress signal ricocheted across cyberspace last week….
By Alemayehu G. Mariam The inconvenient truth about Africa today is that dictatorship presents a far more perilous threat to the survival of Africans than climate change. The devastation African dictators have wreaked upon the social fabric and ecosystem of African societies is incalculable. Over the past several decades, bloodthirsty dictators like Uganda’s Idi Amin,…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam In his epic autobiography, the great Nelson Mandela used the metaphor of the “long walk” to describe his decades-old struggle against apartheid and minority rule in South Africa. In Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela described, among other things, his labor of love trying to steer his nation away from racial and…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Transparency International [TI] (the global coalition against corruption) has just released its 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Once again, Africa has the dubious honor of being Kleptocracy Central, the continental home of the most corrupt governments in the world. Leading the parade of kleptocracies are the regimes in Ethiopia, Sudan, Zimbabwe,…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam In his book Night, Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and the man the Nobel Committee called the “messenger to mankind” when it awarded him the peace prize in 1986, wrote: For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and the…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam “No alternative in the opposition,” they whispered anonymously. What a disgusting phrase to use in justifying support for a ruthless dictatorship? That is apparently the scuttlebutt on Embassy Row in Addis Abeba. Reuters’ Barry Malone reported last week, “Most Western governments want Meles to continue because there is no alternative in…
Alemayehu G. Mariam It is hard to talk about Ethiopia these days in non-apocalyptic terms. Millions of Ethiopians are facing their old enemy again for the third time in nearly forty years. The Black Horseman of famine is stalking that ancient land. A year ago, Meles Zenawi’s regime denied there was any famine. Only “minor…
