Alemayehu G Mariam Last week I had an opportunity to address a town hall meeting in Seattle sponsored by the Ethiopian Public Forum in Seattle (EPFS), a civil society organization dedicated to promoting broad dialogue, debate and discussion on Ethiopia’s future. I was asked to articulate my views on Ethiopia’s transition from dictatorships to democracy…
Alemayehu G Mariam Ethiopians are having a very hard time. Inside their own country, they are victimized by dictatorship, famine and pestilence. Thousands of Ethiopians who have fled political persecution and economic privation caused by systemic and massive corruption and poor governance are facing unspeakable victimization in various parts of North Africa, the Middle East…
Alemayehu G Mariam The Plight of Andualem Aragie and Other Political Prisoners in Ethiopia The “Gulag” prison system in the old Soviet Union was infamous for warehousing and persecuting dissidents and opponetns. The gulags were used effectively to weed out and neutralize opposition to the Soviet state. They were the quintessential tools of Soviet state…
Alemayehu G Mariam In a memorandum sent to Deutsche Welle’s (DW) [Germany’s international broadcaster] “correspondents outside Ethiopia” in late 2010, Ludger Schadomsky, editor-in-chief of DW’s Amharic program, blasted “ethiomedia and similar sites by extension” as a “disgrace” to press freedom. “The amount of hatred splashed across [ethiomedia] is a disgrace to any politically sober mind,” declared…
Alemayehu G. Mariam The Chinese Dragon is dancing the Watusi shuffle with African Hyenas. Things could not be better for the Dragon in Africa. In the middle of what once used to be the African Pride Land now stands a brand-spanking new hyenas’ den called the African Union Hall (AU). Every penny of the USD$200…
Alemayehu G Mariam The new African Union (AU) headquarters was inaugurated last week. It was “China’s gift to Africa.” China picked the entire USD$200 million tab for the building, fixtures and furniture. The China State Construction Engineering Corporation constructed the building using nearly all Chinese workers. Meles Zenawi, the dictator in Ethiopia,…
Alemayehu G. Mariam Crimes Against the Mind If a person were to {www:maliciously} burn or {www:vandalize} another’s house, it would be regarded as a serious property crime under the laws of any nation. If one were to walk into a bookstore and steal thousands of books and give them away to any passerby, that would…
Alemayehu G Mariam From the International Slave Trade to the International Maid Trade In the days of the Atlantic slave trade, the Middle Passage was the journey of slave trading ships from the west coast of Africa to the New World. Portuguese, British, French, Spanish, Dutch and other slave traders maintained outposts along the African…
Give me Liberty or Give me Death! On 11/11/11, Yenesew Gebre, a 29 year-old Ethiopian school teacher and human rights activist set himself ablaze outside a public meeting hall in the town of Tarcha located in Dawro Zone in Southern Ethiopia. He died three days later from his injuries. In an interview with the Voice of…
Alemayehu G. Mariam In February 2011, at the onset of the Libyan Revolution, Moamar Gadhaffi trumpeted to the world, “They love me. All my people with me, they love me. They will die to protect me, my people.” He called the rebels fighting to oust him from power “rats and…
