By Alemayehu G. Mariam “Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,” said Sir Walter Scott, the novelist and poet. Is there “famine” in Ethiopia, or not? Are large numbers of people “starving” there, or not? Is convulsive hunger a daily reality for the majority of Ethiopians, or not? No…
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 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 Gebremariam Recently, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned that the African delegation he is expected to lead to the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December would walk out of any “negotiations that threaten to be another rape of the continent.” The Ethiopian dictator, who was speaking in Addis Ababa at a meeting…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Remember H.R. 2003? Do you remember H.R. 2003 (“Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act”)? That was a bill sponsored by Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.) to promote the “advancement of human rights, democracy, independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press, peacekeeping capacity building, and economic development in the Federal Democratic Republic of…
Alemayehu G. Mariam The Culture of Impunity David Dadge, Director of the Vienna-based International Press Institute, the oldest press freedom organization in the world, recently wrote a compelling commentary in The Guardian which should be of special interest to all Ethiopian human rights advocates.[1] He suggested that the current dictatorship in Ethiopia operates in an…
By Alemayehu G. Mariam Free Birtukan and All Political Prisoners in Ethiopia! On March 2, 2009, Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia throughout the world will be taking to the streets to protest human rights violations by the ruling regime, and to demand the release of all political prisoners. The preeminent political prisoner and the undisputed…
