Letter to the Diaspora

There are 12 million refugees worldwide, who have fled their homes because of fear of war, natural disaster, or persecution as a result of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. By and large, refugees leave their countries either on foot crossing treacherous borders or by boat across unchartered waters. Very seldom do refugees travel overseas carrying their native countries passport on board an airplane through their countries airports.

In United States and Europe there are many Ethiopians who migrated in the early eighties as refugees running away from the summary execution and torture chambers of the Derg. There also those who legally flew out of Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, waving their Ethiopian Passport, during the Emperor, the Derg and the current government. They migrated for educational, medical or social visits. Later these immigrants sought asylum in the US and Europe for various reasons, that nonetheless may amount to fear of returning back home.

Among the 12 million real refugees around the world, there is none other than Ethiopians who confuse their hate for the ruling regime with the country. Their apprehension to the political format in Ethiopia transcends to their dread to the country. Their hate to the ruling party translates to detestation to any good news about Ethiopia. Their hostility to the incumbent party results in their alliance with the historical enemies of the country. There is no immigrant community in history who collectively campaign against their own country and ally with historical enemies of their native land.

Few years back the rhetoric of the vocal Diaspora about the illegal secession of Eritrea and later the willful giving in of our sea outlets were the drumbeats of Ethiopian nationalism and a slogan against the current regime. The position that EPRP took against the invasion of Somalia during the Derg was detested by many as unpatriotic.

Today, among the vocal Diaspora, we have all sorts of Somalia's UIC apologists and those who are trying to forge alliance with Eritrea's EPLF. We all hear about a cliché the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." EPLF fought against Ethiopia during the Emperor, the Derg and even now against EPRDF after being granted their "independence" on a silver platter. Thus EPLF's animosity has always been against Ethiopia. If indeed EPLF is the enemy of your enemy, logic dictates that the enemy of the vocal Diaspora is Ethiopia.

There has never been such vulgar rhetoric targeted at our country as captured and evidenced by every blog and tabloid website. Some websites address Ethiopian Armed Forces as "Meles' Army." Incase you folks do not know the army is about 300,000 and all are not from Adwa. The army has voluntarily attracted many unfortunate young folks from every village in Ethiopia as a means to make a living. It is the same thing as Senator John Kerry of Massachussets said about American soldiers in Iraq. As he said, they are not Bush's soldiers; they are the poor ones who did not make it to college.

Some feature the portrait of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the current leader of the UIC and the x-leader of Al Ithad Al Islamia, on their front pages as some kind of a messiah. This exposes to the rest of the world the decadence, wantonness and ugliness of Ethiopian politics by people who claim to be more Ethiopian than others. It is no surprise that the UN, USA, EU and the world community are oblivious to all marches, petitions and rallies of such a saboteur crowd against its own native country.

A principled opposition is one thing but a blind hatred towards anything good about the country and blind support for any threat against the country is unwarranted. We all have some misgiving about the incumbent party. There are 77 million people of us, here in Ethiopia, who have been trying to lead our lives under this one and the two previous regimes. We have no luxury of lamenting on our on misfortunes as some of you have in far away lands. We live it and we try to make the best of it. Millions of us chose to stay in our country, even under adverse conditions and refused to leave our mother land. We love our country with all its misery and we live in it for it is the only country we have.

If a Jihadist bombs a mini bus it kills one of our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters that we directly relate to. If the government arrests a fellow teacher, trader, journalist or student we are the ones who support the family, line up in a long prison queue, every weekend to supply food and clothing. If some one gets killed in a riot, we are the ones who mourn with the immediate family, take care of funeral services and attend to other IDIR matters. So we say to all of you stop playing politics with our lives.

We may not like the incumbent party but we love our only country that we live in, no matter how destitute it is. Most of all we thrive and aspire to live in peace and harmony and we pray every day for it. We try to create harmony and friendship with our neighbors in our communities regardless of religion, creed and ethnicity. In case you folks abroad have not notices we thank god it is not as bad as you say about our country. Yes there are problems in some areas and we try to use our old tradition of Shimglina to calm conflicts and solve some community problems. Relatively speaking, despite all the problems we have in our wretched existence, compared to other countries we would like to believe that we live in peace and harmony.

We want to tell you that we would like to hear some good things about our country once in a while. Even if we have serious problems with the ruling party, we believe it is our problem, Ethiopia's problem, which needs to be solved by Ethiopians. We do not like it when you in Diaspora defame the whole country and ally with Ethiopia's historical enemies. We would like to criticize the incumbent party in our country with our own voices no matter how stumpy the voice is. We do not like it when you use Shabia Radio and TV to blast the whole country in the name of opposition.

We advise you to learn from Congressman Charles Rangel, an opposition Democrat who represents Harlem and a harsh Bush critic, who was not impressed by Chavez's rhetoric. Speaking of the remarks of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, he was quoted as "You don't come into my country, you don't come into my congressional district and you don't condemn my president. If there's any criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans whether they voted for him or not," He also said. "I just want to make it abundantly clear to Hugo Chavez or any other president -- don't come to the United States and think because we have problems with our president, that any foreigner can come to our country and not think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our Executive Branch."

The lesson here is we Ethiopian should be the harshest critic of the Incumbent party but we should be cognizant of the fact that we can have only one ruling party at the helm of the state at a time. Until we vote it out of office, we are not amused when any foreign agent, especially that of Shaebia and UIC apologist blast the country, the people and the state. We are not impressed with your press releases and outlandish proposals either.

Some of you distance yourselves from the Somali border conflict and claim that it is not your responsibility but that of the ruling party. We hate to tell you that you the Diaspora have never been responsible for anything that has ever happened here in Ethiopia. We Ethiopians loath war more than anyone in the world. We want to live in peace with all our neighbors. We also want diplomacy and dialogue to take precedence to resolve conflicts. But when its historical enemies gang up against our country we worry a lot.

Some of you wish us not to celebrate the coming Millennium. You want to wait until you liberate us to celebrate such a milestone. We hate to tell you the obvious that the millennium come once in 1000 years. We are afraid we can't wait that long and neither can you. According to you, your suggestions amount to holding off celebrating every conceivable holiday such as Genna, Eid, Fasika, Mawlid, Timket, Arrafah and so on until and unless you folks come to power.

With or without your crocodile tears we Ethiopians have been struggling to bring changes in our country, somehow and someway aspirating for a salvation and thriving to create bright future for our children.