by Muluken Gebeyew
After 25 years of brutal ruling, TPLF has been severely shaken by the new generation peaceful struggle launched in the last one year. The youth, mostly born and brought up in the last 25 years have rebelled against TPLF’s ideology, policy and oppressive regime.
The youth in Gonder demonstration cracked the strong wall, the famous TPLF’s “divide and rule policy” when they said “Stop killing our Oromo brothers”, “Oromo’s blood is my blood”. This galvanised the existing Oromo youth’s peaceful struggle. The country was caught by spirit of change and the whole Ethiopia was “on fire”. TPLF tried every means to quash the struggle but failed. TPLF forced to launch “State of Emergency”.
Sadly, some vocal Diaspora political activists poured cold water on the struggle of the domestic youth by immersing themselves and actively engaging pro-TPLF activities. Instead of learning from the past 25 years weakness, once again the Diaspora politicians who consider themselves as “the leader” instead of “supporter” prepared to eat the fruits of the youth’s revolution before it ripe. Instead of working in partnership and uniting the opposition force against TPLF, some went far to be in the TPLF casino to play the age old games. Some declared how to disjoint Ethiopia; some others called conferences of single ethnic group as if the rest of Ethiopian nationals are “foreign” or not oppressed by TPLF led regime. Even those who are known for their Ethiopian agenda shamefully goes to micro division in ethnicity. Some launched war against ESAT, the most important alternative voice of Ethiopian people.
ESAT has been dong great job in fighting the TPLF propaganda and being the voice of the voiceless. ESAT can have its weakness but to launch war against ESAT is betrayal against the Ethiopian people and prolonging TPLF rule.
TPLF survived from death bed by this Diaspora based political activists betrayal of the domestic youth revolution. The strong wall of “divide and rule ” policy which was cracked by the domestic youths unfortunately well mended by the vocally active Diaspora political activists.
TPLF, of course invested all its resources for such to divide the Diaspora political activism from proactively supporting the popular movement at home. TPLF’s paid mercenaries are able to infiltrate the diasporas political activism and trapped it in their decade long “divide them by their ethnicities and religion, weaken them and rule” policy.
Once again, lets learn from our mistakes we have been doing again and again. Lets listen what the youths at home told us to work in partnership and unit our force against TPLF. Our role is not to “lead” but to “support” the home based struggle.
Ethiopia is home for all of us. We can build a country where no one is discriminated by ethnicity, religion, gender, ability, age, political opinion or other factors. The common enemy which is killing and imprisoning Ethiopians is TPLF.
Never abandon those brothers and sisters at home fighting TPLF’s led regime. Never give up. Had our forefathers gave up due to the might of Italian military forces, we would have been different people and our identity lost.
Open your eyes and ears, let’s listen the people back home and support the struggle in united approach! Let’s stand and work together to be owners of our country!