Look #4 on this picture and you might have immediately recognized that something is wrong in his mind. He bowed his head while the rest are headup and with confidence. Look again #7 and #11, who are younger in age and experience, gave their life for the cause of the working class and EPRP.
The full name of #4 is Fenti Beyene who joined that May Day operation of 1969 Ethiopian calendar for propaganda and agitation task to be carried out overnight in the eve of May Day 1969. He has a good experience in martial art and he could have defended himself and others but he did the opposite by betraying his comrades who are younger to him.
When I was in Mirmera session1972, he was a torturer /security body guard and a driver to Wollo’s regional Hizb Dehninet. Some still bitterly remembers him for his betrayal and crime against his comrades. 99.9% of the operation in that night was successful except the sub-city where Fenti participated (North east of Dessie) and the rest of comrades were caught red handed with materials in use. This was a tragic moment as no one escaped the massacre of Dergue’s cadres and the news spread wild all over the province with shock. Some of the theory survived until now is that the whole members of the group were caught because somebody in the group has infiltrated or betrayed his comrades and this implies Fenti Beyene was the culprit. He is the only ALIVE person from that group and I am sure he "enjoyed" life under the Dergue as bodyguard and might have continued working under Woyane as security worker.
#9 and #11 were my close friends and we were comrades. #9 (Mohammed Yimer) was a gifted with oratorical skills as well as sound understanding of theoretical and practical knowledge. He used to teach/help us singing "YETGILU NEW HIYOTE" without any support and it was amazing how he tried to practice inside a big auditorium full of 5 to 7 thousand students (morning/afternoon shift). He was a son of poor family and always was expected to do something to help them. #11 (Jemal Abdulqadir) is a son of Yemen and Ethiopian parents. He was a staunch supporter and activist in EPRYL.
#5 was a brilliant student in our high school who used to sell Lottery tickets on the street and a good organizer of self-help projects among students. The rest are teachers and Ediget Behibret Zemachs and we knew each other during those high school days. I am happy that after many years helped tell the truth about this picture and hope to see it again without the devil among comrades.
Finally,these martyrs are fruits of the heroic student movement in W/ro Siheen High School who will be remembered proudly by current and future generations.The irony is, the murderers and torturers of these martyrs are set to get pardon and be released from jail without a due respect to them and a due consultation and approval of their families. Colonel Ejigu,Captain Yimam, Abdulhafez Yessuf, Fenti and others who are directly responsible for this massacre should not be allowed to walk around with their hands dripping the blood of our comrades! Never!
South Sudan National Anthem is practiced by the South Sudanese living in London and will be sung on the 19th of Janaury 2010. At their recent meeting they spent 3 hours practicing the following lyrics of the Anthem:
OH GOD (X5)
WE PARAISE AND GLORIFY YOU FOR YOUR GRACE UPON KUSH
THE LAND OF GREAT WARRIORS AND ORIGIN OF THE WORLD CIVILIZATION
OH KUSH (X2)
ARISE AND SHINE, RAISE YOUR FLAG WITH THE GUIDING STAR AND SING SONGS OF FREEDOM WITH JOY
FOR PEACE LIBERTY, JUSTICE SHALL, FOREVER REIGN
SO BLESS SOUTH SUDAN
SO LORD, BLESS SOUTH SUDAN
OH BLACK WARRIORS, OH BLACK, OH BLACK WARRIORS
Let's stand in silence and respect saluating
saluating millions of martyrs
whose blood cemented our nation's foundation
We vow, we vow to protect our nation.
Oh Eden, Oh Eden
Land of milk and honey, hard working people
Uphold us united in peace and harmony
The Nile Valleys
Forst and Mountains shall be our source of joy and pride
So bless South Sudan
so Lord bless South Sudan
So bless South Sudan
so Lord bless South Sudan
All the outcry on what is happening in Ivory Coast brings to my mind the 2005 election in Ethiopia and how the incumbent regime lost the general election but imposed martial law, shot dead more than 200 peaceful demonstrators, jailed close to 50,000 and imprisoned more than 120 opposition leaders. There was little said by Washington or London save for a few hardy souls from the EU. The double standard and hypocrisy is nauseating. Ivory Coast sprinkles salt in our still open wound.
I remember it was a coup maker called Guei who jailed the national football team of Ivory Coast because it had failed to win. This was how the story was presented and brought Ivory Coast to mind and to the ridicule that has been the lot of other African countries:
9 August 2010 (by Selay Marius Kouass)
A wave of consternation swept through the Ivorian football world when the national team players were detained in a military barrack after they failed to reach the knock out stage of the 2000 African Cup of Nations. Recent incidents brought to mind bitter memories of the players’ detention of 2000, underscoring the lingering unhealthy relationship between politics and sport in the West African country.
Football promotes the honour of Ivory Coast like most African countries. A win or lose brings pride or frustration to the Head of State. In 2000, at the African Cup of Nations hosted jointly by Ghana and Nigeria, Bonaventure Kalou – older brother to Chelsea’s Salomon Kalou – and his team mates experienced the wrath of the ruling military junta led by late General Robert Guei.
On 24 December 1999, the military junta seized power after a coup. At the Galieni military barrack in central Abidjan, Robert Guei summoned players and the technical staff of the FA and warned them that they were not heading for the tournament to fight for themselves, but for the honour of the whole country like soldiers in a battle.
“Remember that you are soldiers on duty, soldiers on the battlefront. […] You should bring the trophy back home,” said the General in an order that was broadcast on state-run television and radio. The success of The Elephants could have helped the military junta to gain the trust of the population who had been resenting some of the military leaders following repetitive human rights abuses and a rough governing system.
At the 2000 African Cup of Nations, things went wrong and Ivory Coast were soon eliminated in their group and ranked 16 out of 16 representatives.
On the evening of January 31, 2000, at Novotel Hotel in Accra, Ghana, the players had just eaten and were about to go to bed before their back home flight the following day. That same night, the Ivorian presidential plane landed at Kwame N’krumah InternationalAirport and the Ivorian contingent was ordered to leave the country for Abidjan. Players and staff hurriedly packed up and embarked. After a one-hour flight, the plane destined for Abidjan – the economic and political hub of the country – landed at the YamoussoukroAirport, 300 km north of Abidjan. Thereafter, soldiers drove the national football team to Zambakro military barrack, about 30 km from Yamoussoukro.
“You are a disgrace for the whole nation. We paid your bonuses before the beginning of the African Cup of Nations and you showed no commitment to win this cup. You need to be taught some lessons about patriotism in this barrack […] the next time, instead of a jersey, you will wear soldier uniform and you will spend 18 months in a military barrack,” the General threatened.
The event made us chuckle. After all, the Ivoirians were boasting impressive economic growth, an old benevolent despot who built his own bigger replica of the Vatican (at Yamoussoukro, the former president’s birthplace and with a stained glass window painting depicting president Houphet Boigny as one of the three Majis visiting the baby Jesus!) and no big scale civil strife. However, ever since I learnt from one American expert on Africa that jealousy originated in Africa I had been stubbornly insisting that that Ivoirians are jealous of the Horn of Africa and would imitate us sooner than later. Jealousy having originated in Africa, if we believe the white expert, it has proved to be deadly and, as they accuse us often, cannibalistic. It eats us up, good or bad the reason. The war torn Horn of Africa has been viewed with envy by many Africans, especially by the attention seeking tyrants. Open any newspaper any morning and you will see Somalia being among the top news, South Sudan and Darfur being the target of crises of protest this way or that, Ethiopia hogging the pages with massacres or famines (or even cooked up news of economic growth despite the starvation of at least 14 million people) and be an Ivorian and suffer this humiliation. It did not take long for the Ivoirians to have their own civil war, to have a war engendering crisis on identity (who is Ivoirian? Who is Burkinable?), and to engage in civil war. Of course not being experts on the matter they made peace in a short period but the virus was already in their blood. Identity crisis is a bug of devastating results. Somalis who imagine they are Afghans, Ethiopians who think they are foreigners (some of them just because they prefer spaghetti to the local staple called Injera), South Sudanese who refuse to be Arabs, a Djibouti tyrant who has concluded half the people in the country are his enemies, etc…), a deadly cocktail promising eternal conflict. Who would not be jealous? Many people fear to say the obvious: so called peace, especially in the absence of democracy, gets to be boring. The old tyrant of Ivory Coast was dull and predictable, an ego maniac but not as repressive and interesting as an Amin, a Mengistu, or an Nguema. Second rate really.
Rigging an election is not new. The Ethiopian tyrant has even become nostalgic and re imposed the defunct one party system that was favored by Sekou Toure amongst others but Guinea has now passed through a troubled election and put in place a new president. Ethiopia, Kenya, etc all have had their fake elections and subsequent murders. Kenya has even given a chance to the so called International Court to once again rile against Africa (forget Western officials who should be sought for war crimes and genocide). Argentina has put on trial and condemned the junta leaders who were responsible for the murder of some 30,000 people while the regime in Addis Abeba is going to release criminals who waged terror on the people and liquidated more than 250,000 citizens. Bizarre? The least we can say. Gbagbo is just trying to adapt, to put to rest his genuine African jealousy as concerns the Horn of Africa. What is so wrong with that? Anyways, Ivory Coast promises more trouble and bloodshed as does South Sudan in my opinion. Darfur is at war, the Ogaden is burning, Djibouti is convulsed by armed struggle of the FRUD. Somalia’s hardliners have merged and are promising more bloodshed—so what else is new? The West is crying foul at Laurent Gbagbo. It did not do so with Meles Zenawi. Double standards? Yes. Meles Zenawi is a puppet who takes any order emanating from Washington. Consider his disastrous invasion of Somalia. That is why he is backed by the World Bank, the IMF and the West in general. Gbagbo has done well to be jealous but if he wants to be the Meles Zenawi of the West in that part of Africa he has to copy the Ethiopian tyrant. Not to let Alassane Ouattara play the part like Alpha Conde is doing in Guinea. By itself, jealousy is not enough. It takes a serious effort to destroy one’s country with the help of the Westerners. I am not sure Gbagbo has learnt the lesson.
I woke up from my dream
…. And saw
The Image of Christ and Dionysus,
I don’t know if I felt the grief…
But I know I saw,
The teaching of the sacrifice
All is written in that cross.
And turned my face
At the corner of my room
I saw the groom
It was empress Taytu
I thought of her feat
The strength of her bone
The depths of her soul
And, here I am!
A stranger in a very strange land
Living life standing next to a shore
And counting down the sand….
Harping pain
crunching my teeth with disdain…
Here I am; surrounded by a mocking flock
Who can walk and talk
Within them lives a life of sarcasm.
But there…
At the dark corner of my room
Lit a light
I see the empress
leaning against the wall with grace
more living than I
With her piercing eye, asking me why?
I looked at the image…
From its dark corner, did project the search….
A journey to my void mentality,
to the seat of my washed Identity.
It stares unto me and bombarded my mind with a look,
Which I said it might mean this,
“Have you heard of the rabbit in ‘THE BARO’?”
Which tunneled its own cage
And hid under the darkness of its own mind.
Tell me, if its tunnel justifies its existence…
Or if it is an escape from its means…?”
Tell me…Shouted at me….
“Sitting in the darkness…
Is that the case?!!!
Is that the marvels of its life
the survival gesture
‘’TO BE OR NOT TO BE’
Nature and nurture…
Tell me…
Is that?!”
The image of the empress continued it curse ….
“When will your vision be served?
When will you say,
‘In this country,
Life lived with clarity and reason
With no shattering, gloomy armaments of disdain
Tell me when?’
When will you praise,
The achievements of your own times
Than living the past,
When will you deter your lip, from condemning your present?…
When will you un-shackle your soul
From the tone of such void accent…
And leave your own footprint
Tell me….
When will your image stands next to mine…
as a mother and granddaughter in mind….
Tell me….you the rabbits of THE BARO…?
Does your time has an end…
For the infant, whom turning to his mother’s breast
finding a dead corpus ….
It says on-to me,
“You are the rabbits of the THE BARO
Sunk deep down in sorrow
Waiting for a new day, unless and otherwise tomorrow…”
Yes, I am…!
But there; at the dark corner of my room
where only on it, lit a light….
I see the infiniteness
But leaning against the bounded corner with grace…
More living than I…
with her piercing eye…
Asking me why?
Look #4 on this picture and you might have immediately recognized that something is wrong in his mind. He bowed his head while the rest are headup and with confidence. Look again #7 and #11, who are younger in age and experience, gave their life for the cause of the working class and EPRP.