[WARNING: If personal notes get you bored, don’t read this.]
I was 11 years old boy when EPRDF took power. As a kid, I had a
confused feeling during the time the then 'Woyane' controlled Addis on Ginbot
20. During the nights before, we used to listen to 'Dimtsi Woyane’, radio
broadcasted by TPLF from battlefield. I remember the elderlies were very
worried however I kind of loved the guys from what they, the Woyanes, spoke on
the radio. In addition, my father, despite being a member of the then national
guard in the Ethio-Somalia border, had said he doesn't care if Derg is defeated,
or at least my sister had told me he had said so. As a child, I was looking at the opportunity of being reunited with my father when that happens.
Even though the 'Woyanes' were portrayed like monsters by the time they
took control of Addis Ababa, I liked them. I stared at them wondering at their
never-cut hair, old shorts, and sandals. I told a couple of them that I love
them when they come to our village for disarmament and search for illegal
holds of arms.
Soon later, they are worn with good uniforms and 'kesikis' shoes which
I had wished to have a pair. Their name became popularly EPRDF and the 'Woyane'
turned a derogatory term for 'Derg' propagandists already associated it with
equivalence to 'separatists'.
EPRDF took control of state-owned and widely listened radio
station monopoly and preached a lot about democracy, national liberation, equal rights, and so on. It was my formative age. Everything I listened to was sweet and
persuasive. On the contrary, the elderly in our neighborhood became so critical
of the new regime. I didn't know why but I thought it was only because it is a
government that EPRDF is hated and that only because newly formed opposition
political parties are not given the governing chance, that they are preferred.
I didn't know why people became more concerned about their ethnic
background. Discussions of the older people seemed always as if there is
something to be worried about. I couldn't get the slightest idea of what bothered
them until I turned 18 and went with my father to 'Kebele' to get an ID. I was
asked what my 'nationality' (not citizenship but ethnicity) was. I never felt like belonging to
any ethnic group before. I turned my face toward my father who took almost a
minute to respond to. He looked like he lost an internal battle immediately
after that. My mother and father are from different regions (at least by birth) and it never
mattered before. Until now, telling the 'nationality/ethnicity written on my ID is
embarrassing to me. I always felt it isn't representative of my identity. It is
like I’m legally forced to feel belonged to one group and not to the rest.
I'm from a very humble background, economically speaking. Some sort of
bitterness source of which I didn't figure out started growing in me against
the regime of EPRDF. I worked as a day laborer ('Gutter maintainer') when I
finished high school. It was when Addis started to boom in construction. I have
witnessed buildings and real estate mushrooming. These real estates’ residents
lifestyle comparison to the livelihoods in my neighborhood was significantly
clear. Then, I stopped working there and joined college. I had needed pocket
money and started home tutoring young adults of well-to-do families. I
graduated from college and formed a cooperative association with my college
mates. Even though, cooperatives were encouraged by the time we were founding
that association, many doors in the offices of the 'kebeles' were closed to us
because we were not involved as member of any league whose members the regime
wants to promote.
It was no surprise that when I first become politically active that my
most concerns were of economical. I worry about the ever-growing economical
gap, the corruption, and the marketing system that is over-controlled by the
regime. Now, years later, these are the least of my worries. It is not because
they are improving. They are even worsening. However, by the time I had to
thrive, survival became the issue again as I became more endangered beyond my
wishes for economic betterment.
Back in the most contested election of 2005, I have supported CUD,
participated in its unforgettable mass demonstration in May 2005, voted for it,
protested in the streets when I believed the election was rigged. But, I never
thought EPRDF was collection of people who will let us pay a lot, afterwards,
as people for staying in power. In the post-2005 election anti-government
protests, the regime's forces killed my age-mate neighbor Lealem. The regime has
made everything difficult to all of hardworking age-mates of mine in the
poverty wrecked neighborhood, Ferensay Legation.
With all the challenges I have faced and the efforts I have done, life
isn't any more difficult to survive but everything in it is meaningless. The
family and families in the neighborhood that has raised me are still in that
vicious cycle to survive in the poverty that I had grown in. The state rhetoric
of economic growth couldn't be convincing. The construction boom in my city
feels like the wealth of the city belongs to someone else. I reflected only a
few of my feelings in multiple blogs I have written.
Blogging has helped me think, revise my stances, rethink the sources of
problems and engage in more than writing activities. Through blogging, I have
come a long way. I'm a person with a developed or even maybe with a different
ideology than the person who I was when I started blogging.
My bold activities, including blogging, against the regime's officials'
impunity, failing policies, and unconstitutional acts, have already cost me a lot.
Everything became personal but again, I did downplay it as if it is not
personal. I was detained, tortured, and charged with "terrorism" and
held in prison for 544 days to finally get acquitted and forced to defend
myself of downgraded charges of ‘inciting violence through writing’. The case
is still on hearing in two courts: at the Federal High Court in defense of the
downgraded charge and at the Supreme court with my colleagues because the
Federal prosecutor appealed against our acquittal. To appear before two courts
for a single case is against the procedural law of the country.
Life after imprisonment couldn't be the same as before for my
colleagues and me. I have lost all the trust in the government's either capacity
or willingness to protect its people's wellbeing. I have read a lot of
government-sponsored lies written on state-owned Addis Zemen newspaper against
the Zone 9 blogging collective to which I am a co-founding member and to which
we were targeted as ‘enemies of the government’. My friends and I are living a
tragedy. We can't be anywhere we want for we don't have the luxury of being
considered commoners, but dissidents from whom the government is looking a
mistake to throwback to jail.
Some people tell me the countless migration of Ethiopians at risky
routes is motivated by economic challenges; I say the economic challenge is the
foster child of political failures. The same kind of people tell me prisoners
were killed when they try to escape a prison that had caught fire; they also
tell me people died in a stampede during a protest at a religious festival where the government in the country fired tear gas. I disagree because the cause of
death in either incident is irresponsible acts of government forces. I don't
just blame the helpless victims. The attempt to justify such kinds of things
drives me emotionally mad. It drives me mad because it could have been me who
has drowned in an ocean or who got executed by some terrorists in the Sahara
desert; it could have been me who has been burned down into ashes or who has
been killed in the stampede. I feel the pain because I know it all comes to me
yet before a while. And, I don’t hate (even like) my emotionality because it is
what makes me human.
I get angry, then sad, then frightened. I became more vulnerable than
before and more than an average person. This is the life of my and my
friends. We were raised in a way to end up dissidents. We are emotionally
affected. In fact, we can't have humanity without being emotional.
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