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[Zmeselo]

የነ ጌታቸው ረዳ አዲሱ ፓርቲ ስም "ድሞክራሲያዊ ስምረት ትግራይ" በምህፃረ ቃል «ድስት» ተብሎ እንደሚጠራ ያውቁ ኖሯል?






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[Zmeselo]

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[Zmeselo]

Ironically, PP leaders and their cadres find the phrase "Oromummaa ideology" more offensive than the threat of invading Eritrea's sovereign Port of Assab. After two years of rhetorical speeches from the prime minister, his cabinet, and PP cadres, President Isaias finally broke his silence with some bitter truths, which has upset Oromummaa expansionists.

Open Letter: To Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki on His 34th Independence Day Keynote Address

https://addisstandard.com/open-letter-t ... ess/?amp=1

May 27, 2025


President Isaias Afwerki delivering a speech during the commemoration of Eritrea’s 34th Independence Anniversary in Asmara on 24 May, 2025 (Photo: Eritrea Ministry of Information)

Your Excellency President Isaias Afwerki,

I extend respectful congratulations to the people of Eritrea on the 34th anniversary of independence. Eritrea’s hard-won sovereignty is a testament to its resilience. Yet I write not only to congratulate but also as a fellow citizen of this region—burdened by decades of remorseless conflict, deep mistrust, and exclusionary politics—and as a young academic aspiring to a future for the Horn of Africa founded on mutual respect, shared security, and transformative cooperation, offering thoughtful and candid reflection on the claims you have put forward.

I read your Independence Day keynote address with close attention, having seen the English translation shared by your Minister of Information. While it was rich in historical memory and national pride, I found its tone and framing deeply unsettling. The address often interprets our region’s complex realities through a narrow, grievance-focused lens, rather than offering a constructive vision for the future.

You begin by invoking the grandeur of independence, sovereignty, and unity, and rightly so; these are ideals worthy of ardent embrace. Yet your declaration of Eritrea’s undeterred march toward progress rests uneasily alongside the pervasive climate of suspicion, repression, and internal silence that defines your governance. How can unity be genuine if it is forged in the furnace of dissent crushed and voices stifled? Is sovereignty truly exercised when the very soul of a nation is shackled—its youth endlessly conscripted into wars over which they have no voice and no hope?

You paint the global stage in stark terms—the rise and fall of great powers, the shifting sands of geopolitics, and the machinations of external forces seeking to divide and conquer. I do share your concerns about the erosion of multilateral institutions and the rise of nationalist great-power politics, which pose dangers to Africa even as they present unprecedented opportunities. Your recognition of Africa’s marginalization in the shifting global order rings true, as does your hope that turmoil may birth opportunity; with global powers retreating into inward-looking nationalism, the burden and opportunity now fall to Africa to assert its agency through clear, collective resolve. Yet, this moment demands that African states transcend grievance and slogans, embracing coordination, imagination, and principled leadership to achieve genuine self-determination. Your Excellency, while your address rightly unmasks the distortions in the global order—such as the weaponization of finance and persistent structural subjugation—it risks retreating into a fortress of insularity and blame accusation, missing a vital chance to foster broader solidarity and vision.

You also spoke of external enemies conspiring against Eritrea and called for “holding the yoke firm” amidst the meanderings of these powers—focusing on domestic priorities and mobilizing the energies of your people toward development. These are noble intentions, certainly. Yet in casting Eritrea as a fortress besieged, ever vigilant against a parade of enemies, both visible and hidden, you risk overlooking a danger that lies closer to home. Is it not often the case that the greatest siege is the one which imprisons from within? A state that sees treason behind every shadow may, in truth, be waging war on its own people’s hopes and aspirations.

Your vision of Eritrea’s future—framed by industrialization, infrastructure, and the mobilization of human capital—sounds promising. But if the price of this “inexorable progress” is the subordination of individual conscience and the denial of political plurality, then what kind of victory is this? Who truly wins when the masses are marshalled into merciless wars—conflicts born not of reason or justice, but from bitter seeds of distrust sown between leaders blinded by swollen egos? More piercing still is the question you dare not ask: What role has Eritrea itself played in weaving the very chains of poverty, dependence, and stagnation you so acutely lament? Such a focus demands unflinching honesty—acknowledging silenced voices, ignored grievances, and the pervasive fear that stifles free thought, innovation, and accountability. The nation’s true potential will remain fettered so long as this tyranny endures.

Yet beyond internal challenges, there lies a quieter threat in our region—one cloaked in the language of safeguarding liberation. Your address often portrays Eritrea solely as a victim of foreign meddling, yet it ignores Eritrea’s own role in regional strife. Under your leadership, Eritrea has fuelled instability—arming groups and even directly sending forces into neighbouring countries. In the recent war in Ethiopia’s Tigray, Eritrean troops crossed the border and participated in documented atrocities, actions for which you have shown no remorse. These were not defensive acts, but co-authorship in brutality. Dismissing these actions as the work of hidden proxies is a dangerous rewriting of history. If sovereignty means anything, it must mean accountability for one’s actions.

Ethiopia’s internal challenges—governance failures and contested identities—are our burden to carry, not yours to weaponize.

Your comments about Ethiopia rely on reductive and one-sided characterizations that raise serious concerns. Your dismissal of Ethiopia’s complex democratic struggles as nothing more than foreign-directed performance and your oversimplification of its federal constitutional system with labels like “Oromummaa ideology” or “Cushitic-Semitic antagonism” disregard Ethiopia’s internal diversity, legitimate grievances, and sovereign agency in its constitutional experimentation. You cannot claim neutrality while simultaneously invoking—and weaponizing—sensitive identity markers that perpetuate cycles of exclusion and violence.

The framing of “Oromummaa” as a threat in your speech mirrors dog whistles employed by reactionary elites and revives a mode of threat-making statecraft that has been a persistent tool in Ethiopia’s governance for centuries. This logic of securitization is deeply embedded in a long history whereby Ethiopian statecraft systematically constructed the Oromo people—the country’s largest ethnic group—as an existential threat to national unity. Since the 16th century, this divisive old trope, first scripted by the medieval monk Abba Bahrey, was amplified by European missionaries and upheld as an article of faith by successive regimes to justify exclusion, repression, and violent assimilation.

What you present as critique is, in truth, complicity in an exclusionary logic of statecraft—resurrecting divisive old tropes that have long justified the securitization of Oromo identity expression. This persistent pattern has transformed legitimate Oromo political and cultural claims into perceived security threats—a tragic trope you, freedom fighter, have, unfortunately, adopted.

Let it be clear: Ethiopia’s internal challenges—governance failures and contested identities—are our burden to carry, not yours to weaponize. We welcome critical regional dialogue but reject paternalism disguised as analysis. We may falter, but we will not outsource our future. This generation does not seek lectures from the architect of yesterday’s violence; we demand accountability, honesty, and room to breathe.

Likewise, your depiction of Ethiopia’s pursuit of Red Sea access as an act of brinkmanship misses a chance for regional cooperation. Ethiopia’s interest in securing access to maritime infrastructure is neither new nor illegitimate. It stems not from a desire to undermine Eritrea but from the logic of economic survival and regional interdependence. You say the Red Sea is being eyed with hunger. But let me ask you: what man, locked in his house with no door to the world, would not seek a key? A country of over 120 million people, seeking reliable, sovereign-linked access to the sea, is acting within the bounds of strategic necessity. More importantly, a prosperous Ethiopia with diversified trade corridors can benefit its neighbors—including Eritrea—through increased connectivity, investment, and employment. What is required is not suspicion but cooperation, not walls of resistance but corridors of trust. To frame this regional imperative as conspiratorial is to misread the opportunity before us. Eritrea, with its underutilized ports, stands to gain economically and diplomatically by anchoring itself to broader regional development. The Red Sea need not become a new theater of contestation. It can instead be a shared platform for prosperity and mutual gain.

Eritrea’s claim to sovereignty must never become a shield to silence dissent or a license to dominate, especially considering its youth are subjected to indefinite conscription and repression.

Your account of the crisis in Sudan fell into a similar pattern. You rightly mourn its devastation, but attributing the civil war almost entirely to external sabotage misses the deeper truth. Sudan’s crisis has roots in decades of authoritarian rule, regional marginalization, elite rivalries, and broken promises. Foreign meddling is real, but it is dangerous to cast the Sudanese solely as pawns. More importantly, Eritrea’s own role in the region—whether as observer, broker, or partisan—is not neutral. Our region deserves honest accounting — including from those who claim to resist interference while engaging in it with impunity.

Your Excellency, I do not write to diminish Eritrea’s aspirations or sovereignty, nor to undermine the importance of self-reliance and national discipline. However, sovereignty must not become a cloak for siege mentality, nor should isolation be mistaken for integrity. While your rhetoric leans heavily on grievance, it is insufficient to condemn Western or external subversion without sincere introspection. True agency begins with accountability—toward our people, our history, and the truth. Eritrea’s claim to sovereignty must never become a shield to silence dissent or a license to dominate, especially considering its youth are subjected to indefinite conscription and repression. Our generation—both Eritrean and Ethiopian—has been caught in cycles of fear and silence, which we refuse to inherit or perpetuate as pawns in a statecraft fueled by mistrust. The Horn of Africa cannot afford another decade lost to recrimination and suspicion. Progress depends on cooperation grounded in transparency, honest dialogue, and the courage to rebuild trust.

Our histories — Eritrean and Ethiopian — are deeply entangled. We have known war, betrayal, and sacrifice, but we have also known hope, kinship, and the possibility of peace. The brief rapprochement of 2018 proved that our people hunger for a different future. That hunger remains unmet not because it was naïve, but because we still lack the courage to meet one another in truth.

It is time to end suspicion and begin the hard work of regional integration with honesty and vision. We must move from a politics of grievance to one of mutual benefit. These future demands leadership that listens as much as it speaks, seeking clarity instead of blame and offering trust rather than accusations. As a young African scholar, I refuse to accept permanent grievance as our guiding ideology. Africa has indeed been wronged and meddled with, but we cannot let resentment alone become our cause.

Yet amid these challenges, a path forward is lit by our shared yearning for peace and dignity. The fleeting rapprochement of 2018 showed that coexistence is possible. We want to live not as adversaries haunted by old wounds but as neighbors free to define our own futures. This will demand courage: abandoning zero-sum mindsets, building trust through transparent dialogue, and moving from blame to mutual responsibility. The Horn of Africa deserves better, and we — its youth — demand better. We do not seek to inherit the wars of our elders or the silences they imposed. We dream of a region that breathes freely — one where borders mark cooperation, not conflict, and where history serves as our guide rather than a cage.

Let independence be not just a legacy of the past but a promise to the future—a future where Eritrea’s strength is measured not by the barracks it builds but by the freedom, dignity and prosperity it secures for its citizens.

With hopeful resolve,

Dr. Mebratu Kelecha

Concerned Ethiopian Academic

Editor’s Note: Mebratu Kelecha (PhD) is an independent scholar based in the United States. He holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Westminster, an MSc in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding from Durham University, an MSc in Public Policy and Management, and a BA in Public Administration from Addis Ababa University. His research focuses on governance, conflict dynamics, critical peacebuilding, political economy of development, social movements, and democracy. His work has been published in leading academic journals across these fields. Dr. Kelecha can be contacted at m.d.kelecha@gmail.com.

[Zmeselo]

Ethiopia: Over 7.74 Billion Birr Illegally Transferred from Commercial Bank of Ethiopia Accounts. https://borkena.com/2025/05/27/ethiopia ... -accounts/





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[1/2] This morning, Ethiopia 's Federal First Instance Court, Arada Division Bench, granted the police an additional 8 days to continue investigating nine healthcare professionals while keeping them in custody. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/ ... ed-medics/

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[Temt]

የነ ጌታቸው ረዳ አዲሱ ፓርቲ ስም "ድሞክራሲያዊ ስምረት ትግራይ" በምህፃረ ቃል «ድስት» ተብሎ እንደሚጠራ ያውቁ ኖሯል?


LOL!



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