We have learnt that the security forces in Addis Ababa have arrested leaders of the Blue Party and the UDJ who were leading a peaceful demonstration against the atrocity and brutality perpetrated against legal residents and migrant workers from Ethiopia by the Saudi Arabia security forces. Further reports indicate that TPLF/EPRDF security forces have savagely beaten and detained many more people who took part in the demonstration against Saudi government’s atrocity. We have also been informed that the ruling party has prohibited the planned demonstration by Medrek for today, the 17th of November 2013.
As SHENGO unquestionably does and holds the government accountable for failing in its duties, everyone knows that the basic responsibility of any government is safeguarding the wellbeing of its citizens and the territorial integrity of the nation. Given the erratic behaviour of the regime in power and the repressive nature of its security forces, TPLF/ERDF’s has little, if any, regard for the wellbeing of Ethiopians at home and abroad. Instead of showing concern and standing for the rights of Saudi’s victims and their families, the government has chosen to re-brutalize its citizens. Clearly, this shows that the regime does not care for its citizens’ emotional, physical, political and social wellbeing.
It is to be remembered that last year, this same government forcefully prohibited Ethiopians from conducting a peaceful march to express their objections to the construction of a memorial monument for Graziani in Italy. The whole world knows that it was Graziani, aka “the Butcher of Ethiopia, who ordered the indiscriminate killings of thousands of Ethiopians in 1937. We are grimly reminded of this event every year on the 12th of Yekatit and yet Ethiopians were shamefully forbidden to protest the building a monument for this fascist leader.
We strongly and unequivocally condemn the shameful acts of the TPLF/EPRDF regime for its inactions to protect our citizens and the Saudi government for the savage acts of its security forces.
The regime in Ethiopia has lost the sense of history in which many of our ancestors made ultimate sacrifices for. It is a regime that does not respect the wellbeing of its citizens even after learning that women were gang-raped and children left to die. It is simply a regime that demeaned itself beyond common belief and hardly deserves the name – government, in the modern sense of its term.
Shengo condemns the brutal repression of the peaceful demonstrators in Addis by the security forces. We continue to stand in solidarity with the victims in Saudi Arabia, their families and will air their plight in the international arena.
We ask Ethiopians both within the country and in Diaspora to unite and double their efforts to pressure the Saudi authorities to stop the brutality against Ethiopians immediately. Shengo will continue to lead and support such efforts being made by the Diaspora community everywhere.
We ask the international community to condemn the inhumane treatment of Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East and demand that the Saudi regime end the forcible repatriation of migrant workers and refugees.