We, a group of independent and concerned scholars, are deeply disturbed by the arrest of Prof. Mesfin and Dr Berhanu. Each of them are outstanding national figures in their own right. Professor Mesfin has been  nationaly acknowledged as a human being with:

a) deep and abiding values of non- violence, an independent thinker and a highly centred individual 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) an 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 regimes 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 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. All students of Addis Abeba University have been weaned on by his book on the Geography of Ethiopia. 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 and Dr. Berhanu do not deserve to spend even 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 pale in insignificance besides Prof. Mesfin let alone occupy his lofty spiritual and rich cultural wealth and standing. 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  some of us 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.

Our 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 one of us remember in previous discussions with him. How can his jailors accuse him of inciting violence? It is simply decietful to ascribe a position he has not espoused ! 

We call for his and Dr.Berhanu's immediate release and call all Ethiopians, Africans and peace and non-violence loving peoples to work round the clock to make their immediate release. We have heard he and Dr. Berhanu have gone on a hunger strike. 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

Some of us can speak for Professor Mesfin and the students who became martyrs from the authority gleaned from personal experience. Some of us were part of the many people who protested when Tilahun Gizaw was gunned down. One of us was put in an American jail for
protesting against his killers of the time.  As the youngest member of those jailed, he remembers the American prison being a terrifying experience. The people who now are clinging to power with terror and repression of students(the so called EPRDF group) have turned out to be the worst hypocrites in the world. 

Some of these top EPRDF government officials were used to co-ordinate protests with some of us and others against the then Military Government's(Derge's regime) red-terror in Europe. We vividly remember some of us in Holland raising funds from a non-governmental
organisation called X-Y to write a pamphlet on repression on human rights protesting strongly against the large scale murder of students unleashed by the Military regime. Those were the days, We never thought- perhaps naively- that some from that period will join a government that  murders students. We 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. Yesterday's students 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. Berhanu 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 a 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 ,atleast to own up that they have ordered the killing by issuing statements authorising police to 'shoot to kill' to protect property. The latter appears to be the illegally
amassed stolen property which they themselves and their like have looted over the last decade through a direct translation of political power into self-serving economic benefits! Yesterday's poor students have  turned into instant millionaires while our nation grinds down into the abyss of deep depravation and poverty.

And yesterday's students have mutated into dangerous opportunist politicians. They have written a biography for deepening 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 human, 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 place on earth, that is nothing but to be the poorest of the poorest 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, and arrest on trumped- up charges honourable citizens like Professor Mesfin and Dr. Berhanu Nega.

This latter action is the ultimate depravity showing indications of a moraland 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 know it. 

Let us all continue the struggle to defeat the evil of violence and poverty that the this regime has come to epitomise. The regime officials 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 betterfor all. They must not be allowed to get away with murder.They must be exposed with dedicated resistance. 

We 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.

'In an age of universal deciet, to speak the truth becomes a revoloutionary act.' (George Orwell). Professor Mesfin and Dr. Berhanu spoke for  improving the living and being of ordinary people. They should not deserve to be punished for speaking
truth to power. 

Release immediately Professor Mesfin and Dr. berhanu Nega!
Release all student prisoners and other innocent civilians!
Release all political prosoners!
The killers must be brought to Justice!

Network of Ethiopian Scholars
 emial:c/o  [email protected]