Ethiopia: I Always Remember in November and in…

Alemayehu G Mariam

For Ethiopians, November is a month which shall live in infamy

In November 2013, Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia are facing unspeakable horrors.

For the past few years, there has been systematic persecution of Ethiopians living, working and seeking refuge in Saudi Arabia. Even Ethiopians practicing their faith in the complete privacy of their homes have faced criminal prosecution and deportation. In 2011, according to a Human Rights Watch report, Saudi police arrested “thirty five Ethiopian Christians for ‘illicit mingling,’” while the  “Ethiopians gathered to pray together during the advent of Christmas, in the private home of one of the Ethiopians.”

It is no exaggeration to say it is open season on Ethiopian migrant workers and others seeking refuge in Saudi Arabia. Every day this month, Saudi police, security officials and ordinary Saudis have been hunting Ethiopians in the streets, beating, torturing and in some cases killing them. The video clips of Saudi police torturing Ethiopians are shocking to the conscience. The  video clips of Saudi mobs chasing, attacking and lynching Ethiopians in the streets requires no explanation. The photographs of crimes against humanity committed against Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia today are surreal and beyond civilized comprehension!!!

What is the regime in Ethiopia doing to help the estimated 200,000 plus Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia? Not a damn thing!

By its own admission, the regime has no idea how many Ethiopians are living in Saudi Arabia, but ludicrously promises to bring them all back “as soon as possible.”  The malaria researcher-turned-“foreign minister”, Tedros Adhanom, blathered that his regime “has condemned Saudi Arabia for its brutal crackdown on migrant workers in the kingdom. This is unacceptable. We call on the Saudi government to investigate this issue seriously. We are also happy to take our citizens, who should be treated with dignity while they are there.” “Unacceptable” is the most condemnatory language the regime could muster in the face of such monstrous cruelty, unspeakable barbarism and horrendous brutality and criminality. Al Jazeera reported that when outraged Ethiopians sought to peacefully protest in front of the Saudi embassy in Addis Ababa, they were arrested and beaten by regime policemen. “‘The police came and they beat us…and now more than 100 people are at the police station,” said Getaneh Balcha, a senior member of the opposition Blue Party movement, adding the party chairman and vice chairman were among those held.’” But should we really be surprised because…

In November 2005, Ethiopians faced unspeakable horrors in Ethiopia.

Following the parliamentary elections in May of that year, hundreds of Ethiopian citizens who protested the daylight theft of that election were massacred or seriously shot and wounded by police and security personnel under the exclusive command and control of the late regime leader Meles Zenawi. An official Inquiry Commission established by Zenawi documented that 193 unarmed men, women and children demonstrating in the streets and scores of other detainees held in a high security prison were intentionally shot and killed by police and security officials. An additional 763 were wounded.**

Every November since 2007, I have written a consecratory (sanctifying) memorial in remembrance of the hundreds of innocent unarmed demonstrators massacred and maimed in the aftermath of the 2005 parliamentary election by the current regime in Ethiopia. In my first memorial tribute, “Remember, the Ethiopian Martyrs of June and November, 2005 Forever!”, I reminded my readers that it was their moral duty “to bear witness for the dead and the living” as Elie Weisel,  the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, so nobly put it. We must remember because we have “no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

To forget the massacre victims of 2005 would be to forget the monstrous crimes committed against them and excuse the barbaric criminals who committed them. To forget the massacres is to assure the criminals they will never be held accountable because the crimes have been forgotten. Ultimately, to forget is to extend an invitation to the criminals in power to commit the same crimes again and again and on a greater scale with impunity.

I remember because I cannot and will not forget! Never!

I remember because if I do not who will be there to remember? I remember because if I forget, the crimes and the criminals will be forgotten. If I forget, how will history remember? History remembers only when there is someone to remember. So, I must remember. I must remember by bearing witness every Monday in November, and in December, and in January, and in February, and in March and in April, and…for  Ethiopia’s “youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. [I] do not want [the] past to become their future.”

There are many who view my efforts over the years with some appreciation and gratitude; there are others who think I am an implacable, stubborn and overzealous partisan for my cause. I believe overzealous partisanship in the cause of human rights is a redemptive virtue. We live in a world of human rights and government wrongs. Ethiopians live in a world of government wrongs. Obstinacy in the defense of Ethiopian human rights is no vice.

I remember the victims of the 2005 massacres. I remember each and every one of them. I remember the young women who will never get to be mothers. I remember the young men who will never get to be fathers. I remember the orphans whose parents were massacred. I remember the fathers and mothers who will never get to see their children and never have a chance to see their grandchildren.

I do not forget the criminals. I remember the 237 policemen who pulled the trigger; the arch criminal and mastermind who pulled the fingers of the policemen who pulled the trigger and the flunkies who followed the orders of the mastermind and orchestrated the whole bloody carnage.

I will always remember in November, and in December and in January and in February and in April…