Tedla Asfaw
Ato Ewenetu Tulema wrote a piece in Amharic remembering the victims of the Hawassa/Awassa massacre nine years ago on the month of May, and the perpetrators of this heinous crime on unarmed people of Sidama are still free men. More than forty dead and close to hundred injured and those who committed this crime are now on high posts of government and one such man is the current ambassador of TPLF in South Africa, Melese Marmo.
Melese Marmo should be put on spot light in a democratic South Africa where he is residing on this May. Ethiopians in South Africa should organize a protest rally in front of the TPLF Embassy and held Melese Marmo accountable to the massacre in Hawassa/Awassa while he was a vice president and the security chief of the Sidama Region.
Berekt Simon and his friends who are the architects of this massacre according to Ato Ewenetu Tulema's piece(April 2009) though they are now on their comfortable offices in Addis Ababa, the cry and the call for justice we make in South Africa against one of their collaborators on this ninth anniversary will remind them that we didn't forget their crimes and the judgment day is near.
Such protest at the time the Genocide Watch is zeroing on Meles Zenawi for its crime in Gambella, Ogaden and other parts of Ethiopia will bring attention to seems forgotten crime like that of the Hawassa nine years ago. This is what is expected of the Diaspora activists to mobilize and be the voice for the voiceless in Ethiopia.
I want also on this occasion to congratulate the Washington D.C. Ethiopian activists who expose the law firm DLA Piper by buying spot on the taxi cabs for its alliance with the genocidal regime of Ethiopia. These are actions that will bring result on the long run by exposing all who are profiting from blood money in Ethiopia.
This coming May has also important significance because on this month four years ago Ethiopians went out peacefully and voted TPLF out of office. More than two hundred people were massacred on broad day light in Addis Ababa by assassins bullet while the world is watching and no one is charged for this crime.
The "untouchable" Meles Zenawi is now investigated by the Genocide Watch for crimes against humanity in Ethiopia's Gambella and Ogaden and it is appropriate to show our support for such investigation while we remember the victims of Hawassa massacre.
TPLF is doing what it has been doing since it came to power in May 1991, gunning down with impunity and that has to be stopped and let us come out and expose one of the criminal gangs, Melese Marmo, who is now residing comfortably in South Africa.
