Posted 12th July 2008
By Yilma Bekele
It is an old saying. What it means is bad or illegal acts committed in the past are liable to cause problems today. In other words, there is no escaping the past. Sooner or later the day of reckoning will come. In Amharic we have the same saying ‘be seferut kuna yeseferu’.
What brought this is the news of the arrival of International Criminal Court (ICC) Deputy Prosecutor Mrs. Fatou Bensouda in Addis. Apparently there is report of imminent indictment against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir regarding his crimes in Darfur.
Sudan’s name comes from the Arabic “bilad al-sudan”, or land of the blacks. Sudan is a very big country in terms of size. It is slightly more than one-quarter the size of the US. Our dear friend al- Bashir is one of those tin pot dictators that litter our continent. It was in 1989 he took power as Chairman of Sudan’s Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and served as chief of state, chairman of RCC, prime minister and minister of defense. It is a situation of ‘le ras sekorsu ayasansu’. In the good old tradition of African despots he got legitimacy by organizing a national election and winning 86.5% of the popular vote. Al-Bashir is not very greedy it seems. Normally African despots like 99.9%.
Al-Bashir is the same individual that suspended all political parties upon assuming power as a military leader. He also introduced the Islamic Sharia legal code on a national level. This was an affront to the southern Christians and others. In 1998 he wrote and adapted a new constitution. In 1999 he passed a law allowing limited political association but made sure that it was a ‘castrated opposition’. It did not last long. In December of 1999 he drove his tank to the parliament and ousted his friend and mentor Hassan al-Turabi who was the speaker of parliament.
So much for tolerance and limited democracy. Sudan is internationally known for its civil war between the southern half and Islamic North. The conflict has been going on for the last twenty years. Our own Emperor has worked very hard to bring the warring factions together. The conflict has caused millions to be ‘displaced, starved, and deprived of education and health care’. Much progress was made throughout 2003, and in early 2004 al-Bashir agreed to grant autonomy to the south for six years, split the country’s oil revenues with the southern provinces, and allow the southerners to vote in a referendum of independence at the end of the six-year period. al-Bashir has managed to break the agreement on several occasions.
As the situation in the South was somewhat stabilizing, another conflict broke out in Northern Darfur on the western part of the country. Since 2004 a pro-government militia called Janjawweed has been a carrying out a policy of wholesale massacre and collective punishment against the local population. According to Amnesty International, Human Right Watch the government has facilitated the killing of between 200,000 and 300,000 civilians and the displacement of more than 1 million people.
This is the situation that has brought the International Criminal Court to get involved in this high stake poker game. The action by the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina, will mark the first time that the tribunal in The Hague charges a sitting head of state with such crimes, and represents a major step by the court to implicate the highest levels of the Sudanese government for the atrocities in Darfur. The African Union is crying foul and invoking all kinds of obscure phrases such as sovereignty, internal affairs and the untouchability of a sitting head of state. Crocodile tears if you ask me. Each and every one of them is afraid the precedent set by such far-reaching action.
We in Ethiopia are very much exited about such a development. The crimes being committed in the Ogaden against our fellow citizens have been amply recorded by a host of International organizations and displaced persons languishing in Kenya and elsewhere. We call upon the ICC to look into the human catastrophe-taking place in Ogaden, Gambella, Gondar and Southern Ethiopia.
We are in agreement with the principle that no one is above the law. That no government is immune from prosecution. That massacre of civilians, deliberate acts of starvation and acts of collective punishment of peaceful UN armed civilians is cause for indictment and those who commit such crimes should answer to a court of law. We are hopeful that al-Basher and his associates will be made to answer for their hideous acts and the Sudanese people will find solace in knowing that ‘the chickens are coming home to roost’. I am sure Professor Al is paying close attention to this development. We feel empowered.
……………………………………..
Return Back to: ABBAY MEDIA FRONT PAGE
My fellow Ethiopian,
As you well know the porpose of any language is to communicate with people of different origin. Hatrage of any language is groundless and simily
refelects one’s narrow mentality.
If we have to argue what makes us think that the oromos are the magority when they are 40 percent. I even doubt pure bred oroms are 40.
I am sorry I am going in a wrog path. Simply we are ethiopians and we should fight our bad greedy ethiopians of any tribe. Be it oroms, amhars, tigres, gurages haderes you name they are the cause of our divisions.
My friend let us abandon our fear of each other and unite and fight these
criminals who divided us int a thousand parts. Unless we do that we will never be indepenant.You could make Oromgna the national language it is not going to change the life of the orom.
Peace between the different tribes of our nation.
Getachew,
How is that changing Ethiopias national language from Minority language (Amharic) to Ethiopias Majority (Afaan Oromoffiaa) became hate ?
In Democracy the society have the right to vote on what their representing national langauge ought to be. In most democratic countries the majority language is automatic national language of the nation, i hope Ethiopia also will follow and apply the same priniciple and standard to promote the majority language (Affan oromoffiaa) as Ethiopias national language instead of minority language (Amharic).
Greetings
It is a great news to the poor people of Darfur. I usually take the Us justice dept or Us/Europe based human right group watch data with a grain of salt but this one I think is indisputable. It is believed that they actually killed more than 400,000 during the time mentioned in the article.
A so called Devil on a horse back known as Janjaweed is on a mission exterminating certain group of people based on their religion or tribe. This monstrous group claim the fight is for land and water but I think their reasons are more than just that. I believe their hate towards black Christian Sudanese is the main reason why they continue the mascare till this day. Even if the liar, Omar al-Bashir denied the relationship his government has with this group, it is very clear and known by a lot of people that they are being supported and financed by his government and I think that they actually get orders from the central government on how and when to carry out some of their horrifying actions.
The good thing is though, there are some people who are willing to put their time and effort to see something to be done about the atrocity and crimes that are being committed before the rest of the world . I am not a fan of any western organizations by no means but credit to ICC for attempting to do something good here. I hope the mother fraker pays for what he has done.
Meanwhile, You wonder sometimes what God is busy with when you see poor people are put on fire, children are executed and treated like slaves, mother and daughters are raped in front of their family, little kids are dying out of severe starvation and young Ethiopian women are treated like animals in Arab countries, … you just wonder what he is busy with…Why can’t he give a break to those, who needs him so much?