Ethiopian Spring in the Summer of 2016?

– Alemayehu G. Mariam

No people [in the world] will remain smothered, meaning oppressed, for ages. It is [a] universal [truth]. No people, to the extent that they are people [human beings] and [as evident] in world history will not remain [like an inanimate object] in one place, they will not stay put in one place as one [an oppressor] may want them. When they [people] become very bitter, they explode. This is a universal truth. There are no people who will not rise up when they become bitter [can’t take it anymore]. Historically. Now. And in the future.”

Aboy Sibhat Nega, T-TPLF mastermind, kingpin, godfather, guru, power-behind-the-throne and capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses) (2013).

Is Judgement Day upon the T-TPLF?

Eth Demos2In December 2015, I wrote about the coming of an Ethiopian Spring in a commentary entitled, “Ethiopian Spring in a Winter of Discontent?”

I observed: “I cannot predict the exact time and date the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF) will fall in Ethiopia. But the handwriting of its fall is on the wall.”

A month later in January 2016, in my commentary “No Country Left for Ethiopians?”, I wrote that when judgment day arrives for the T-TPLF, it shall come “unexpectedly like a thief in the night.”

Is Judgement Day upon the T-TPLF now?

The people of Ethiopia have been crying out for justice and fairness for 25 years. All their pleas have fallen on the deaf ears and blind eyes of the T-TPLF.

The T-TPLF has answered the pleas of the people with bullets from AK-47s and machine guns.

They say, “Justice is like a train that is nearly always late.”

The Justice Train has been long overdue in Ethiopia; but I have been hearing the distant rumble of that train for years. Chugging silently. Chugging slowly. Chugging relentlessly. Chugging unstoppably. Chugging audaciously.

In 2016, the Ethiopian Train of Justice is chugging apocalyptically!

I can see it entering the station. But I don’t know who is aboard the train.

Does the Ethiopian Justice Train carry the messengers of peace or the harbingers of civil war?

I pray it brings the messengers of peace for I believe, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

But I do not hear the call of the peacemakers.

I hear the call of the war makers announcing judgment day: “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, ‘I am strong!’”

Those the T-TPLF has brought to their knees and rendered weaklings for a quarter of a century are now standing up defiantly, fearlessly, and matter-of-factly declaring: “We are strong! Ethiopia strong! One Ethiopia strong!”

I should like to believe, as Gandhi taught, strength does not come from physical capacity, the chatter of machine guns or the explosive power of bombs, rockets and missiles.

Strength comes from an indomitable will. A heart of gold and a will of steel.

After a quarter of a century of T-TPLF rule, the people of Ethiopia are showing their indomitable will: “T-TPLF! Enough is enough! We can’t take it anymore! We’re going to fight back! We ain’t afraid you! Go to hell, hell, hell!”

When change came to Tunisia in December 201o, it came like a thief in the night.

The Tunisian spark ignited the Middle East and North Africa. All hell broke loose and the wrath of the people was visited upon the dictators.

Is that thief in the night aboard the Ethiopia Justice Train?

I don’t know because I don’t know the answer to the following questions:

How long can the T-TPLF go on lording over 100 million people as though it owns and operates a land of slaves?

How long can the T-TPLF maintain Ethiopia as a slave plantation where they are the masters and everyone else serfs?

How long can the T-TPLF go on displacing farmers from their land and plunging them into abject poverty?

How long can the T-TPLF evict homeowners from their homes, drive out business owners from their businesses and desecrate churches and mosques to line its bottomless pockets?

How long can the T-TPLF go on selling vast acreages of ancestral lands of the Ethiopian people to the Chinese, to the Indians, to the Saudis, to the Turks and others for literally pennies?

How long can the T-TPLF go on massacring young people exercising their constitutional right of peaceful protest?

How long can the T-TPLF go on silencing the voices of 100 million Ethiopians?

How long can the T-TPLF keep its boots on the necks of 100 million Ethiopians?

How long?

I say, not long!

Not long! Not long!

August is the cruelest month for the T-TPLF.

Meles Zenawi, the demi-god thugmaster whose hand rocked the T-TPLF cradle for decades, died allegedly in August 2012. The exact date of Zenawi’s death remains a T-TPLF state secret.

Four years later in August 2016, I ask the question, “When will the T-TPLF cradle fall once and for all?”

“When” is that that gnawing and needling question that keeps up patriotic Ethiopians thinking about the nightmare that could follow the long night’s journey out of T-TPLF rule. (“Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop, When the wind blows, the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, And down will come baby, cradle and all.”)

There is a hurricane force storm of popular discontent, anger and rage consuming the T-TPLF today.

The people of Ethiopia are rising up everywhere. Ethiopia’s Cheetah’s (young people) are on the prowl. You can you them growl everywhere.

When will the bough at the treetop of T-TPLF criminality and corruption break in the face of this hurricane of anger and resentment?

I cannot say, but I can say the bough has snapped! For sure! The only question is when (not if) T-TPLF cradle of criminality, corruption and crimes against humanity will come down crashing.

So it is:

Humpty Dumpty T-TPLF sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty T-TPLF had a great fall;
All the king’s horses and the king’s men
Cannot put Humpty Dumpty T-TPLF together again.

Neither Debretsion Gebremichael, Samora Yunis, Senbat Nega, Tedros Adhanom, Seyoum Mesfin, Arkebe Oqubay, Abay Tsehaye, Abadi Zemo, Tsegay Berhe, Azeb Mesfin, Haftom Abraha, Redwan Hussien, Hailemariam Desalegn (?) nor anyone else in T-TPLF thugdom can put Humpty Dumpty T-TPLF together again.

The T-TPLF is heading toward political calamity

Ethiopia has failed utterly to become a functional nation under the T-TPLF.

In Ethiopia today, there is not one group that is content with the present T-TPLF-controlled “ethnic federalism” scam.

For more than a quarter century, the T-TPLF has used the creed of “ethnic federalism” and divisive ethnic politics to cement itself into power. The T-TPLF has masterfully employed a strategy of fear, loathing and hatred to set one group of Ethiopians against another to cling to power. The T-TPLF for a quarter of a century has been playing a shell game of phony political parties, calling itself “EPRDF”.

The TRUTH is the T-TPLF (EPRDF or whatever it wants to call itself) is overwhelmingly rejected by every ethnic group in Ethiopia, bar none!

The T-TPLF knows its ethnic and party shell game jig is up.

The T-TPLF today is finding it impossible to impose its absolute will on the people of Ethiopia without getting a push back, a fight back and a kick on the back side.

The people of Ethiopia are standing their ground. No more will they stand and wait for the T-TPLF to kick them around.

The young people are leading the fight back and push back. Not with violence but peaceful defiance. With courageous civil disobedience. With resolute nonviolent resistance. With steely determination. Without fear. Without hesitation. Without doubt.

The youth are the big hole in the T-TPLF dike (dam).

For a long time, the T-TPLF tried to buy off the youth with glitter. The T-TPLF tried to intimidate, arrest and jail the youth. Today, the T-TPLF is massacring the youth. But the youth keep on marching, marching in the streets and shouting out: “Stop killing our brothers in Oromia. Stop mass killing of Amhara people. Stop T-TPLF supremacy. Release political prisoners now!…”.

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future,” said the man who was the idol of the late thugmaster Meles Zenawi.

The T-TPLF can never own Ethiopia’s youth. But Ethiopia’s youth own Ethiopia.

The T-TPLF thinks it can stop the leak in the dike of popular anger and outrage by using its trigger-finger and massacring student protesters.

What the T-TPLF fails to realize (is in denial about) is that behind the trickling flow of student anger and rage is a massive lake of fire stoked by massive popular frustration, resentment and bitterness.

The T-TPLF tries to legitimate itself through its own delusional conquest narrative of alleged military prowess, fabricated economic success, façade of political stability, etc.

The T-TPLF says only they are the only ones who are brave and powerful; only they are the smartest and the brightest; only they are the chosen and the rest are the God-forsaken.

Everyone else is a cowardly “retard” as a jabbering and giggling T-TPLF mouthpiece described it not long ago.

The T-TPLF can think what it wants; believe what it chooses.

But none of it is going to matter.

It is a universal truth that the people united can never be defeated.

The T-TPLF can use it guns, tanks and planes, but the more the T-TPLF kills innocent Ethiopians, the stronger will be the resolve and determination of the people to fight for their freedom.

None of it is going to matter.

In one recent video online, a man in the street is heard saying, “Under TPLF rule, we are already dead. Worse than dead. We can’t be anymore dead than we already are.”

An incredibly powerful statement by a man in the street who echoes the deeply held sentiment of the general population.

When people are forced to choose between freedom and slavery, second class citizenship and subhuman treatment, they will choose to fight and will never be put to flight.

This principle applies even to people the T-TPLF refers to as “retards” and “low-lifes”. The Nazi used a slightly different word to describe the non-Aryans in Germany: Untermenschen (subhuman).

The T-TPLF Ubermenschen (supermen ) v. the masses of Ethiopian Untermenschen.

There is no question that the people of Ethiopia will defeat the T-TPLF. The people of Ethiopia will be victorious.

Judgment Day has arrived for the T-TPLF.

There is no way on earth to stop a people who have declared in their hearts and minds and to the ugly faces of the t-TPLF, “Beqa! Angeshegeshen! Quaq alen! We ain’t gonna take it no more!”

You don’t have to take my words for this turth.

Ask Sebhat Nega, the godfather of the T-TPLF. He will tell you like it is. Raw. No bull.

No people [in the world] could remain smothered, meaning oppressed, for ages. It is [a] universal [truth]. No people, to the extent that they are people [human beings] and [as evident] in world history will not remain [like an inanimate object] in one place, they will not stay put in one place as one [oppressor] may want them. When they [people] become very bitter, they explode. This is a universal truth. There are no people who will not rise up when they become bitter [can’t take it anymore]. Historically. Now. And in the future.”

Onward and forward!

We are strong! Ethiopia strong! One Ethiopia strong!