How is it you might ask, that this 10
million human tsunami remains almost unknown to the world? And why, why
would ten million Ethiopians, one in every 8 people in the country,
risking their lives in many cases, seek refuge in foreign, mostly
unwelcoming, lands?
The answer lies in the policies of the
Ethiopian regime which have been described by UN investigators in
reports long suppressed with words such as “food and medical aid
blockades”, “scorched earth counterinsurgency tactics”, “mass murder”
and even “genocide”.
Most of the Ethiopians refugees are from
the Oromo nationality, at 40 million strong half of Ethiopia, or the
ethnic Somalis of the Ogaden. Both of these regions in southern Ethiopia
have long been victims of some of the most inhumane, brutal treatment
any peoples of the world have ever known (it has been estimated that a
full half of all Oromos were wiped out during the western supported Abyssinian Imperialist
colonialization during the late 1800’s by the forefathers of “Emperor”
Haile Sellasie).
These past few years saw the worst
drought and famine in the Horn of Africa in 60 years yet almost all of
Oromia and the Ogaden affected by this catastrophe were prevented from
receiving food and medical aid by the Ethiopian regime.
What country in the world is allowed to
expel both the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders during such a
humanitarian crisis and not be roundly condemned by the international
community? Only Ethiopia.
In Somalia alone the UN has admitted at
least 250,000 starved to death during this famine with estimates for the
victims in Oromia and the Ogaden running at least this high.
500,000 people starving to death in a
couple of years and no outcry from the world? At one point up to 1,000
people a day, mostly women, children and the elderly, were dying of
hunger and all we got was a New York Times best seller on the CIA’s
“dirty wars” in the Horn of Africa which somehow failed to condemn this
enormous crime.
Ethiopia remains the largest recipient of
international, mainly western aid, in the world. Recently sources in
Addis Ababa from within the offices of the IMF have sent word that
Ethiopia’s import bill has reached almost 12 billion dollars a year
while exports are only $2 billion. $10 billion a year in “aid”, “loans”
or “investment” make Ethiopia entirely dependent on foreign good will to
survive yet the world is helpless to prevent the enforced starvation of
hundreds of thousand or over 10 million Ethiopians fleeing their
country?
In the past ten years we have seen many
reports on over two million Iraqi refugees and now another more than 2
million Syrian refugees. Yet more than twice this number of Ethiopian
have become refugees and this fact remains unknown to the world?
When speaking of these crimes I am not
speaking in the past tense for every day some 3,000 Ethiopians flee
their homeland, almost 100,000 a month, another million or more this
year. Many flee by boat from the shores of Somalia, heading for Yemeni
shores and hopefully on to safer lands. How many boats sink with the
loss of almost all onboard, or worse yet, have their passengers thrown
overboard while still offshore will never be known. The international
navies that patrol this region seem to care little for preventing the
human trafficking mafias from carrying out their ghoulish trade, far to
busy protecting the interests of the major shipping lines through these
very same waters. Have you ever heard of a drone strike or commando raid
on a human trafficking headquarters? Are any of these vermin trading in
human misery ever listed on international “Most Wanted” bulletins?
Why should they, for the criminals ruling
Ethiopia not only are allowed to continue business as usual but
actually see their cash flow in the form of “foreign aid and investment”
increased by a third since 2010 while at the same time hundreds of
thousands of Ethiopians starve to death.
So next time you are confronted by images
of lines of corpses along the shores of Italy remember that this is
something that goes on almost everyday in the Horn of Africa but doesn't
merit comment, let alone disgust and outrage by those most pious of
commentators in the international media.
By Thomas C. Mountain from here
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