ኢትዮዽያ

ኢትዮጲያዊነት ከብሄር በላይ ነው።

'ላለፉት ቀላል ለማይባሉ ዓመታት አገራችንን አስጨንቆ የያዛትና አሁንም ላለችበት ቀውስ የዳረጋት የጐሳ ፖለቲካ አሳብ እንደማንኛውም ፍልስፍናና ሀሳብ ተወልዶ፣ አድጐ፣ አርጅቶና በስብሶ ተፈጥሯዊ ሞቱን ሞቷል'
ዶ/ር አርቲስት ቴዎድሮስ ካሳሁን ገርማሞ (ቴዲ አፍሮ)

𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖆𝖙𝖍 𝖔𝖋 𝕳𝖔𝖕𝖊

It is the middle of spring and this morning was a beautiful sunny day where I live here in the UK, and I decided to take a stroll and enjoy the sunshine, wanting to get rid of the winter chills out of my bones.

It is a short walk my wife and myself usually take and en route that takes you onto a small park with a few eye-catching flowers and cherry trees. In the middle of this park, there’s a narrow path for walkers and cyclists. To my surprise, there was a small but discrete signpost with a rainbow sign arching over the name “Path of Hope”. It’s new and it wasn’t there before. Seeing that, created a special feeling inside me. I did not think that was the official name of that particular path, and I have a feeling that someone is trying to send a positive message while we are all crawling in these dark times of the covid 19 pandemic and it made me realise there are people in this world who hope for hope and those who hope against hope. The former are those who make peace, bring calm to the lives of others while the latter are those who disturb the waters, create turbulence, cause anxiety and drive people insane, and when possible also happily cause death and destruction.

Our society is no exception to this. While we live here in the UK or elsewhere abroad, one time or another we have come across and received various expressions of love, and other times experienced the ugly face of overt and covert racism. As a result, some of us had a so-so whilst others had the worst experiences.

Love is kind, love is tolerant and love is forgiving whereas hatred is cruel, vengeful, and unforgiving. Above all, it is venomous. Talking about love and hate is talking about good and evil.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, and political prisoner once said “the battle between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” He also said those who clearly recognise the voice of their conscience usually recognise also the voice of justice.

The problem, therefore, arises when people start acting instinctively and without recognising the voice of their conscience. The reason why this tiny signpost generated so much turbulence deep in my heart was that at the time I was walking with a heavy heart thinking about the killings which are taking place in my homeland, Ethiopia. As we speak thousands are being displaced, hundreds killed, mothers and fathers separated from their children and many more thousands have lost their entire livelihood. When such death and destruction visits your home, your village, your town, the desperation becomes unbearable and fear of the impending death unimaginable. We inevitably ask ourselves “Is this what we’ve become? What have these poor people done to deserve this? Is speaking a different language or believing in God in a different way a crime?

We can keep asking many more questions endlessly but none of the answers will be the solution to our questions. Most people are believers and have some sort of faith. You bet, there isn’t a single faith that preaches such merciless acts and atrocities. So why in a country where most people are believers these things keep happening?

One needs to look back at our own history without going too far back. Ethiopia has been in conflict with itself ever since students in the 1960s started demanding “Land to the Tiller” and that saw the end of Emperor Haile Selassie. Then there was the Derg with all its slogans to exterminate all oppositions, the Red Terror, the killings between EPRP and Meison, the war against the EDU, EPLF, ELF, TPLF, EPRP, WSLF, etc. Then came the EPRDF with TPLF as its beacon/brain, etc. Over those years hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, much more blood than there’s water in a river has been shed. For almost sixty years or so, the solution everyone had offered has been as yet more killings. This got even worse during the reign of the EPRDF. To make matters worse, TPLF’s and its supporter's poisonous seeds of division based on ethnicity were sown amongst our people. All these onslaughts by the various fascist groups had left our people in total and dire chaos, confusion, darkness, and hopelessness. These bad elements still do exist within the fabric of the present government as well and a lot can be said about that but that’s not within the remit of this article.

In such circumstances, there are only two choices and these are either to join in the box with confusion and chaos and enhance the internal temperature or to be outside the box and take a moment to think.

That position also helps us see if there’s an outside heat source that speeds up the turmoil within the box. Can we, therefore, see ourselves holding a damp cloth that will extinguish the outside heat and at the same time throw light into this dark hole(box)?

Is it possible for us to pause a little and listen to the voice of our conscience and be one of those people who’d cast the ray of hope?

Let’s be the dove that’d bring the olive branch to our people. Let there be a rainbow of peace across our beloved motherland. Let’s stop being part of the problem, or sometimes knowingly or unknowingly adding fuel to the fire but be that path of hope to our people. Let all patriots and compatriots stand united under the banner of love and peace!

Dr. Tibebu Wubetu
20.04.21

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