Education Purses

We cannot accept anymore the myth that nobody can be worse than Hitler, Stalin, and Pot Pot; the reason we cannot is simple: the worse already exists, and if we do not see it in all its aspects, dimensions and activities, we simply let it expand. Even if an impotent and marginal state like pariah, bogus-Ethiopia, can generate nightmares of incredible extent. If not by itself, by the justified reactions it can provoke to its inhuman practices.

Amhara and Tigray ruled Abyssinia: the realm of ignorance and barbarism

Parochial and iniquitous relic of eras bygone for Europeans and unknown to Americans, Meles Zenawi’s tyranny has more in parallel and common with the Medieval times of Sigeric, Geiseric, Hilderic, and Athalaric than with 19th century despotisms and 20th century dictatorships.

Ruled by quasi-analphabetic monks, whose heretic Christianity had been refuted by Constantinople and Rome, the Amharas and the Tigrays based their society on fear and blind, unquestioned faith. Their hatred of Catholic and Protestant missionaries and European explorers of Gueze, their own old and liturgical language, caused torture and death to many willing to expand Lights and Knowledge in that part of the world.

Literacy was traditionally viewed very suspiciously by the debteras, these heretic and mostly illiterate monks, who read their Scriptures with the utmost difficulty; to cover their ignorance, they order their servants to hide manuscripts and to kill Westerners who attempt to take them for study and publication in Europe and America. In a place like this, ‘public school’ is never an institution truly accepted and irreversibly adopted by the local, anachronistic establishment.

It goes without saying that, with the expansion of the Amhara kingdom at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the enslaved peoples, the Oromos, the Sidamas, the Afars, and the Ogadenis became the object of unprecedented genocide. The genocide had a definitely cultural educational dimension; they could not let them preserve their national and cultural identity because this would soon create liberation struggles as it did. For a moment, the Abyssinian tyranny decided to export Amhara culture and education to the enslaved peoples. This was Pandora’s box.

With their national languages written in Latin, thank to the educational efforts of European missionaries and academia, the Oromos, the Ogadenis, the Sidamas and the other enslaved peoples learnt to great extent Amharic as a foreign language, and this helped them understand better their invaders, their brutal and barbaric culture, and their totalitarian and anachronistic mentality. As a matter of fact, it became easier to the oppressed peoples of Abyssinia to differentiate themselves from the oppressors.

The problem was ‘solved’ in another way at the times of the pro-Communist Mengistu tyranny; Amharic would become in Abyssinia what Russian was in the Soviet Union. This effort lasted almost two decades, and generated among the oppressed peoples an even stronger feeling of refutation of the oppressors. In today’s Abyssinia, the majority of those who can speak Amharic hate, despise and detest Amharic as language of their oppressors and tyrants. Useless for them, except when in contact with the tyrannical administration, Amharic will become even more insignificant, when the Oromos, the Sidamas, the Afars, and the Ogadenis achieve their independence and statehood. The reason is simple: if for the entire country, the literacy rate is approximately 43%, literacy among Amharas does not exceed 20%.

Today, with Meles Zenawi’s effort to embellish the Abyssinian tyranny and make resemble a democracy, police practices are pursued in most of the provinces trying to turn children originating from the oppressed peoples away from the schools. The totalitarian Zenawi administration realized that the only way for fake ‘Ethiopia’ to survive is to resemble a mortuary; either they butcher of they kick out of the school without pretext. UNESCO and the other international bodies, world academia and NGOs should focus on the following document issued before some days by the Oromo Liberation Front.

A 2007 Mortuary called ‘Ethiopia’

It bears witness to an obscurantism far worse than that of Hitler and Stalin; and this is not an exaggeration or a figure of speech, but the tragic reality of a 2007 Mortuary called ‘Ethiopia’.

Expulsion of Oromo students form schools continued

Since its ascendance to power the Ethiopian minority regime has been bent on campaigns of terror on anything Oromo well across the board. In recent past, it focused on expulsion of Oromo professionals from their jobs and deriving Oromo kids their rights to education. Accordingly, this month alone, 9 Oromo students were expelled from schools in West Shawa zone of Oromia for no known reasons.

The names of the victimized students are:

1. Girma Nagassa (previously imprisoned for 8 months and later released without charges),

2. Getacho Idoosaa (also been suspended from school for a year before)

3. Dagitu Tashome

4. Anbassa Tariku

5. Tadassa Tasu

6. Dajane Ababiyaa

7. Tamira Tarafa

8. Garado Asafaa

9. DajaneAduyna

Residents of the areas have identified the following under cover government security officials who are behind the crime against Oromo kids in the area:

1. Shanbal Nagassa (works for district administration office)

2. Baqale Banti (vice administrator of the district)

3. Sichala Dheressaa

4. Balate kumaa (member of school board)

5. Ababa Lelisa (works for rural development office)

6. Alamayo Tafaa

We would like to alert Oromos in the region to be aware of the covert operations of these individuals and take necessary precautionary measures.

Victory for the Oromo People!