Today, I am writing as a very proud Ethiopian, born to parents who belong to two different ethnic groups from the southern parts of Ethiopia. But I am writing today because I was saddened by the usual sickening effort of the TPLF to always confine Ethiopians to reside and thrive only in their ethnic enclaves.
The TPLF mouth piece, the Ethiopian Reporter, wrote two days ago (09/02/09) about the repatriation of 804 “Amharan” households “illegally settled” in “Bench Madji Zone” of the “Southern Region”, back to Humera in “Amhara Region”.
Why was it in the first place “illegal” for them to move to any place within the Ethiopian border and settle, as long as the neighborhood has welcomed them, unless freedom of movement and settling in any part of the country is made illegal in the Ethiopian “Constitution:”? From the Reporter article it can be inferred that these settlers have been living there for about two years, and have been farming and happy in their new home, growing rice, pepper, and oil seed (selitt), all important products for domestic consumption and export. This shows that the settlers were welcome by the local residents, as they have been actively farming and harvesting their products in the last two years.
If there was any problem with the locals, they would not have been able to farm and harvest in the last two years. But because the local people didn’t care about ethic politics, and welcomed and accommodated these people, the TPLF was angry and sought a strategy of repatriating them back to “Amhara Region” against their will, leaving their harvest and anticipated profits (I am sure, a couple of kilos of pepper would have fetched them more than 140 Birr they were handed out during their repatriation).
The other reason the Reporter gave to their repatriation was that these settlers occupied a land that was intended for investors. Who are these investors (foreign or nationals) and how many people they are expected to hire from the local people is not clear in the article. If we multiple 804 households by the average family size in Ethiopia, which is 6, we have approximately five thousand individuals being dislocated form the site. Will the investor hire more than 5000 people in the area? Nothing is clear from the article. Should we give a priority to an investor over a citizen in such a scenario?
And if at all these people have to be resettled, why back to “Amhara region”? Aren’t there other places in Ethiopia which can accommodate these people in other parts of the country? Why make them feel they can only live in “Amhara Region”? This is a consistent strategy of the TPLF to confine everybody to their ethnic enclaves, eventually making them believe that they are different, forcing them to believe that they belong to these or that ethnic group before they are Ethiopians, to which they have to say no.
I beg every Ethiopian to say no to this sinister motive of TPLF, express their anger to such moves of the TPLF that is heading towards fragmenting the country.
