All that I can do is cry, for I have no power to change the unraveling tragedy in my Beloved Ethiopia, which I love from the nerve centers of my being.
I cannot stop crying when I see the flagrant violations of the existential rights of our mothers, whose children are being killed in broad daylight. Imagine that you the parents of any Ethiopian who love your children for whom you live and for whom you labor from dusk to dawn are bombed, maimed, and crippled right in front of your eyes.
This particular regime came to power to correct the mistakes of the line of regimes, which preceded it, and the people hoped and dreamt that the cycle of oppression would end once and for all.
Now the same regime is returning to repeating the same mistakes.
Why should this be? Is this the iron law of history that the regime is snared in?
The issue is not that the regime in power should be paralyzed when the country is being destabilized. Regimes must respond to situations, which justify action, but always guided by reason and proportion. Where is the public reason of our leaders when they violently respond to existentially propelled actions of Ethiopians who do not want their lands to be taken away from them in the name of development?
The demands of the people are reasonable and should have been handled reasonably. They have constitutional rights to ask for regime change up and including the right to secede from the prevailing regime arrangement. It is under standable that the people feel ignored, famished and disappointed that the developmental glitter did not reach their lives. That they remain poor, as if that is not enough, they are now being massacred on the streets and they too, if they can, will do the same.
I cannot help but cry with the mothers who are burying their children whom they raised amidst unbearable poverty by working away at odd places and sometimes even selling their bodies to send their children to schools, so that they could one day support their own parents.
Where is the joy in shortening these miserable lives, when the young voices of hope are asking for a peaceful regime change?
This cycle of violence by the regime and those who must respond must end. I counsel the opposition not to stoop down to the level of the arrogant regime and settle things on the streets of democratic dialogue by all Ethiopians through the articulation of a common good.
Our mothers and father should not cry. They should not be seen despairing and wishing that they too should die.
Let reason prevail and let the opposition also restrain itself from playing the game of violence and stop using the young voices so that they could come to power. This is the vicious circle from which my people should be freed. The people are not toys that power mongers can use when they need them. Regime change is the activity of the people in concert guided by a new understanding of Ethiopianity.
I say to the regime listen to the people’s demands and handle them lovingly and justly and I say to the opposition stop using the young voices to advance your will to power by any means necessary.
Let the people decide through the new lens of Ethiopianity cleansed from the corrosive effects of ethnicity. The Ethiopian people must decide the fate of Ethiopia as Ethiopians and not as members of ethnic groups and privileged classes.