Hama Tuma
Meles Zenawi , a man who identified himself as a Tigrean (his ethnic group) and hated Ethiopia, was not able to say all reports of my death are exaggerated though his death was announced long before he kicked the bucket from an ailment that his friends have decided to keep secret. His death was late by Ethiopian standards and expectations while his masters, loyalists and sycophants wailed at his sudden passing away.
The death of this cruel despot has highlighted the degeneration of his regime unto a North Korean type of immense shame and parody and has exposed the level of ridicule that sycophants can sink into voluntarily. For most Ethiopians, Meles Zenawi was dead more than a decade ago when he emerged as a narrow Tigrean nationalist and advocated the breaking up of Ethiopia based on ethnicity. The corpse moved on spreading havoc, ceding Ethiopian land to the Sudan, forcing thousands of peasants and pastoralists out of their land and handing it over cheaply to environmental disaster making Indians, Chinese and Arab so called investors, fanning ethnic and religious division, proving himself as a loyal puppet of the West. Meles Zenawi was a pest hated by Ethiopians as much as the cursed famine that plagued the country time and again including under his rule. Those who declared that the people respected the tyrant do not know the meaning of respect.
The North Korean type funeral show was, to put it mildly, disgusting. Quite a few uninformed souls and those who had deliberately been covering up for the despot talked of Ethiopians mourning their leader. Ethiopians in the know wonder even if the tears of Azeb Mesfin, the wife of Meles, were for real. The choreographed funeral show suggested that the tyrant died before they announced it and they had had time to prepare for the show. The sight of North Koreans when their tormentor Kim Jong Il died a few years ago was a comedy of sortswith soldiers and women and citizens all wailing for the camera (see below) . No one missed the fact that they were all marshaled out and ordered to weep. The Meles cabal has done the same. State media interviewed street children and the homeless who proudly declared that Meles brought security and development and they were thus able to sleep on the streets without fear of any violence. Thank you Meles indeed! Families mourning the deaths of their kin were rounded out of their tents and taken to the government erected tent of mourning for Meles and told to cry there and get filmed and interviewed by the State controlled TV/media. And with the official cameramen active with their videos who dares not to be seen weeping? Money was paid to drag out tears out of people who were otherwise full of joy to see the dictator dead. Evidently, Meles was genuinely mourned by those whose life and wealth depended on him, the young and inept officers raised to higher ranks by him and all those who feared his death may herald the end of the Tigrean fronts domination and control of Ethiopia. Paid for and choreographed mourning. Even refugees in Khartoum seeking laissez passer documents to return to Ethiopia were told that they have to publicly mourn and demonstrate support for Meles before they get the paper. If you do not weep you are punished. Remember Kim Jong ILs death. This was the report with photos to accompany it:
North Korea’s hardline regime is punishing those who did not cry at the death of dictator Kim Jong-il, according to reports.
Sentences of at least six months in labour camps are also apparently being given to those who didn’t go to the organized mourning events, while anyone who criticized the new leader Kim Jong-un is also being punished.
Those who tried to leave the country, or even made a mobile phone call out, were also being disciplined, it has been claimed.
Hysteria: North Korean soldiers mourn Kim Jong-il at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace
Real or fake? Pyongyang residents react as they mourn over the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
Weeping: Children weep at the death of the supreme leader, Did theynreally know who he was?
And the foreigners who enjoyed his servitude, who have been given Ethiopian land to exploit or, as in the case of the Sudan, to take as theirs are also sad. And those who have established military bases on our soil and were able to use Ethiopians as cannon fodders for their wars in the region (the tennis court partner of Meles was none other than the American ambassador). And political fools like Bill Gates and African dictators who lost a brother. For all these, Meles was an intelligent leader, a visionary, and for Bill Gates, who only talked no more than a few hours with the forked tongue Meles, Ethiopians are enjoying great health progress thanks to Meles. If there has been so much progress in the health sector how come Meles went to tiny Belgium for medical treatment? The malaise is actually widespreadmany African leaders go abroad for routine medical check up and some of them die there also. In Ethiopia, the health system has almost collapsed, the public hospitals are a disgrace, the private clinics expensive and most of the time ran by quack doctors who diagnose throat cancer as sore throat and cancer of the rectum as hemorrhoids. Swear to God. Bill Gates attended the tyrants funeral and was quoted praising the departed. Not more than 5% of children are vaccinated, life expectancy is 56 years at best and infant mortality rate among the highest in the world. The budget for health is only 3.6 % and so one wonders why Bill Gates talks of miracles in the health sector. Susan Rice represented Barack Obama who has himself praised the defunct (many Ethio-Americans had voted for Obama and I am sure some of them for whom Ethiopia does not matter will do so again) and gushed out praise and eulogy to a murderer and a war criminal . She has for long been a political idiot of sorts who advocated the cover up of the Rwandan genocide arguing that using the G word may not be good during election time. The Meles eulogized by Susan Rice never lived in Ethiopia. If he was uncommonly wise as Rice claimed unabashedly he would have ruled Ethiopia democratically, depending on the choice and will of the people and would not have relied on repression and massacres to stay in power. What is being intelligent and wise anyway? Serving Washington or being wise enough to gain the support of the people to justify ones rule? The foreigners loved Meles so much so that Ethiopians wonder if there were two Meleses in the world. Ethiopians know a street smart lying tyrant, responsible for the killing and disappearance of thousands, an ethnic fanatic with enough hatred to arm an anti people WMD, the butcher of the Ogaden and Gambella, the man who has more than 35,000 political prisoners in his dungeons and secret prisons, a cruel and corrupt anti Ethiopian who has aggravated the impoverishment of Ethiopians. 12 million people depend on food aid, inflation is at 20% minimum and even people in the urban areas are unable to afford two miserly meals per day. Meles, one apologist said, was not corrupt in the usual sense but the despot was corrupt in the best African sense whisking away, along with his wife and family, no less than 2 billion dollars. He may have no Swiss bank account but he has American, British, Cayman Islands and Malaysian bank accounts. Meles was corrupt since his guerrilla days, depositing millions of dollars in the Saudi American bank and buying property in London and other European cities and using more than a hundred million dollars for his own speculation and trading in the stock market. If there is any economic benefit it is in and around the palace and around the Tigrean ruling elite and does not concern the majority of the poor Ethiopian people.
The West helped and backed Meles and his Tigrean group long before the tyrant took power. Meles worked, hand in glove, with Britain and the USA, with Germany and Sweden, with Norway, Libya and the Sudan. He sold Ethiopia long before he got to control the country. He chased away the South Sudan SPLM and opened the border for the Sudan of Omar Beshir to attack the SPLA (the present rulers of South Sudan seem to have forgotten this!). He was instrumental in the secession of Eritrea and gave permission for the security forces of Isaias Afewerki to murder Eritrean dissidents on Ethiopian soil. Most of all, Meles proved a determined puppet, backing the invasion of Irqa, registering as a foot soldier in the so called war against terrorism, serving the Wests interest in the Horn and all over Africa and invading Somali twice to serve Western interests. This and more is what have made him adorable in the eyes of the West. This is why the West lies about the reality of Ethiopia and hails and praises the predator of the free press and one of the vilest human rights violators in Africa. As Susan Rice knows, dictators like Nguema and Idris Deby, not to mention Museveni, Kagame and many others, are tolerated and praised because they are Americas babies. As Kirkpatrick said years ago, because they are our own SOB s. Meles was an SOB par excellence and those who hailed the mass killer are no less guilty of condoning his crime against the Ethiopian people.
And where is the so called economic progress? It is not an endangered animal but an extinct one. Hirelings like Abdul Mohamed (a confirmed CIA operative now working in Darfur) and so called human rights activist Alex de Waal (a long time Meles groupie) have even dared to assert that Meles has followed the Chinese path and transformed Ethiopia. What transformation? A ring road in Addis Abeba? Half built buildings? Shoddy roads? The lack of electricity and drinkling water? A stinking city? Half a million homeless and more than 75% below the poverty level? An agricultural sector in ruins and permanent starvation stalking the land? A modern hotel in remote Hawzein not visited by anyone? A joke of an MIT in Makalle, Tigrai ? Kiosk and grocery type colleges? The fleecing of Ethiopia by Tigean state controlled conglomerate called EFFORT ? The 11% annual economic growth is a result of false government statistics backed by the IMF and others for political reasons to cover up the bankrupt economic policies of Meles Zenawi. There is little or no economic transformation other than benefits for the Tigrean sold out bourgeoisie and for foreign investors of all sorts. No wonder the fate degenerate Saudi billionaire Sheikh Alamoudi wailed that he has lost his right hand with the death of Meles (thereby disappointing Ethiopians who had expected the Sheikh to lose more than one hand).
Meles was surely a hardworking man. It takes a lot of work to steal hundreds of millions, to push ten million people to starvation, to put thousands in prison, to supervise torture, to ruin a whole country, to chew choice Kat every afternoon and to toe the line as set by the West. It is hard work to lie day in and day out, to play the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde show all the time, to decide on big and small issues, to supervise the theft of millions of dollars by ones own wife and cronies. Meles Zenawi has to work hard to handle and deal with so much hatred for millions of Amhras and Oromos, Gurages and Somalis, etc. and to plot and actualize their suffering and pain on a constant level. In the end he was a tiny man at al levels and he could not contain his hatred and thirst for exclusive power and mix it comfortably with his addictions. Meles Zenawi had to die by his own folly depriving his kin and ethnic fanatics their ease of ridign roughshod over millions. The time of reckoning has come and those from his ethnic group who hope that Arkebe or some other Tigrean substitute will salvage them from the impending doom are fooling themselves dangerously.
Ethiopians have had to endure the totalitarian regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. They were ordered out to demonstrate and express support for the regime or face sanctions on basic necessities and so they went out en masse and cried death to our enemies and long live Mengistu. Some people did not even go out before they heard over State radio that they have demonstrated in favor of the great chairman. A similar event has taken place. The carrot and the stick to bring people out on the streets and to weep for the very man who made their life miserable and humiliated their country. A charade and as one report puts it the North Koreans are not amused by the pale imitation. Ethiopians, as we know, may be a quiet and private lot but they are wily and with their own sense of humor. It is not beyond them to cry and weep when they are actually bursting with joy. Let no one take them for dupes, no. They did not keep Ethiopia sovereign and independent by being fools even though they had and still have their share of traitors. Those in fear of losing their drone base and mercenary are shedding real tears and worried if the crisis ridden group in power may weather the storm. They have and they will have more to weep about. Amen. Aside from that, saying good riddance is in order! May his loyal friends follow him on his journey to the end of the damned!