Message Calling for the Immediate Release of Professor Mesfin Wolde Mariam
By: prof.Mammo Muchie
Iam deeply disturbed by the arrest of Prof. Mesfin who has been nationaly acknowledged as a human being with:
a) deep and abiding values of non- violence, an independent thinker and a centred and with a morally rooted personality and character,
b)a person who has warned his students from the 60s onwards not to embroil Ethiopia into needless turmoil,
c) a record in teaching our generation including his present jailors with examplary and unequalled dedication and knowledge,
d) integrity and an examplary courage on the side of the down-trodden having tirelessly been working through his writings and speakings to improve life for the most ordinary people,
e) an excellent academic as well as a tireless critic of three regime that successively brought national disaster rather than national development,
f) a person known for his legendary resistance with rock-firm principles defying all tempetation to surrender to tyranny in the pursuit of liberty for ordinary people,
g)- a distinguished record as a national scholar activist and many more...
Professor Mesfin is a true true son of the Ethiopian nation, whose contribution to his nation can be read from the impact he has over generations of university students who took his lessons in first year geography. They all acknowledge fondly his contribution, and were they not to be blinded by the thirst of power including his present jailors. They too were his students! Indeed he does not deserve to spend one second in the rotten jail of the ethically unworthy and the intellectually empty self-styled leaders whose only distinction lies in mismanaging grossly our nation's educational and public affairs! These are people who worry more about property than human lives.They can hardly stand besides Prof. Mesfin let alone occupy his lofty spiritual and cultural wealth. He does not deserve to be in jail. He deserves to continue teaching public purpose, public service, public ethics, which he has been doing against incredible odds over the last decade through the Human rights organisation he founded. He continued to teach and proved to be a priceless motivator to make Government obey law and the inalienable rights of ordinary people. He did this by preaching non- violence in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatama Ghandi. It is ludicrous to accuse him of inciting violence as I had personally many days of arguments with him on how a society like Ethiopia with dictators unbridled by legal norms and/or moral norms cannot avoid forceful change. My recollection is that he always argued for a non- violent path to Ethiopia's future. Part of the reason is related to the fact that the people who will fight on opposing camps are the students he loved and nurtured with education. One can see him pained by the thought that violence can bring anything enduring. He said it will never do that. That is what I remember of my discussions with him. How can his jailors accuse him of inciting violence? It is simply decietful to ascribe a position he has not espoused ! I call for his immediate release and call all Ethiopians, Africans and peace and non- violence loving peoples to work round the clock to make his release immediate. Professor Mesfin is in his 70s. His health should not needlessly and thoughtlessly be put under pressure by the dead-weight of the forces that are surely afraid of the independent voice for human rights that he speaks for.II I speak for Professor Mesfin and the students who became martyrs from personal experience.I was one of the many people who protested when Tilahun Gizaw was gunned down.I was put in an American jail for protesting against his killers of the time. I remember the prison being a terrifying experience. The people who now are clinging to power with terror and repression of students: Meles zenawi, Kassu Illala, Abdul- Megid Hussien, Genet Zewde- have turned out to be the worst hypocrites in the world. Meles's real name is Legesse. He took a name of a student activist called Meles who died fighting, among other things, the murder of the duly elected student leader Tilahun Gizaw. Abdul-Mejid Hussien and Kassu Illala used to co-ordinate protests with myself and others against the then Military Government's red-terror in Europe. I remember some of us in Holland raising funds from X-Y to write a pamphlet on repression on human rights protesting strongly against the vast murder of students unleashed by the Military regime. Those were the days. I never thought- perhaps naively- that some from that period will join a government that murders students. I have lived enough to witness this tragedy! The Chinese say " We live in interesting times." The irony of history is twisting the arms of the tyrants. Now it has become the turn of yesterday's students to become the killers of today's students. They have turned into bloody tyrants or have become part of the machine that is doing the work of blood-letting against our innocent nation. They serve a regime that sent troops on campus and killed 41 students. Now when it is pointed out to them that they themselves came to power in the wave of opposition to student murder, they try clumisly and stupidly to blame the police for botching up the job, and accuse Professor Mesfin and Dr. Nega as the instigators. The 'crime' of the two professors apparently is to do with their having saying the students should struggle for their rights, which , amongst other things, have to do with the demand for the removal of security forces from the campus. What is wrong in advising the students against injustice and security presence on their campus? Did not the TPLF raise arms to fight the Military regime? What kind of regime is that that stations troops where students are supposed to learn in freedom? By the way, who ordered the police? Why were there a co-ordinated statement ordering the police to 'take any action necessary' by the regime's centre(the Office of the Prime Minister), the Minister of Education and the Police Commissioner. Those in power are the real culprits. The ordinary policemen and women and the students are the victims.The minimum the power holders should do is ,at least to own up that they have ordered the killing by issuing statements authorising police to shoot kill to protect the property themselves and their like have looted over the last decade! These dangerous opportunist politicians have deepened the sore of the nation rather than healing it. They have neither created a good feeling for the nation,nor dented the overwhelming and humiliating poverty and violence haunting endlessly our country's destiny. They deserve nothing but utter contempt. They must not be allowed to lie out of the trouble they have put our unique nation- a nation that still has a chance to be one of the most humane, learned, law-abiding, peaceful and moral republics of our age. The evil, the lie, deception and now terror they have unleashed on our people must and can be stopped. After ten years of rule, what is there the power holders can show as achievements? The country has been designated as the 206th lowest income earning, that is nothing but to be the poorest of the poor world! War has plagued the country over the last two years. The centre cannot hold as the narrow ethnicrats have split in half accusing each other of corruption and treason.A frightened regime has begun to murder students. The latter action is the ultimate depravity showing indications of a moral and intellectual collapse of the regime. But from such innocent blood of the students shall be sown the begining of the end of the regime as we have come to see it. Let us all continue the struggle to defeat the evil of violence and poverty that the Meleses, Kasu Illala's, Genet Zewdes and Megid Hussiens as persons have come to epitomise. They have become the very expression of violence which no amount of deceit and public relations can help them to undo and clear.Remember,one hundred thousand people have died in a two year war-as apparently it is now slowly emerging- there seems to have been no clear reason or clear political objective to guide it. These are murderers who have been fattened with World Bank grants and other foreign hand outs. They have no imagination, let alone a plan for transforming structurally our nation out of structural poverty and violence. We must be prepared to resist these dangerous anti- people grouplet. The sooner they leave our righteous nation, the better for all.They must not be alloweed to get away with murder.They must be exposed with dedicated resistance. I urge all of us to become a community of discernment, a community of dedication and a community of courage, and a community of defiance and resistance. Only then can the nation be revitalised and renewed.Release immediately Professor Mesfin!
Release all political prosoners!
The killers must be brought to Justice!
Mammo Muchie
Aalborg, Denmark