Rihana Nesrudin
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Ethiopian academics and intellectuals have not been any less disillusioning. These individuals, including those working & residing safely in various universities around the world have freed themselves from the basic responsibility a decent society puts upon its intellectuals – to pursue and speak truths. Intellectuals are in a unique and privileged position to expose the lies and deception of the powerful given they can do so with minimal risk of loss of livelihood, imprisonment or physical harm (real fears the average person has). Having spent years in study and training, they have the analytical tools at their disposal to help us differentiate fact from fiction, to help us remove the veil of deceit created by government propaganda. But what our intellectuals have chosen to do is be loyal to their ideological convictions instead of truths. They have chosen to cheer as the Prime Minister declared, “there were no civilian deaths” while engaged in a war, to celebrate as free and democratic an election with virtually zero genuine competition, and to excuse and explain away systemic rape and massacres as unfortunate consequences of war. They sing the songs of liberalism, democracy and morality in the Western classrooms within which they teach in the mornings, to only sit in front of their computers later that evening solemnly spieling to their Ethiopian audience about law and order, Ethiopian exceptionalism and the unforgivable sins of their disfavored groups. If I were not alive to witness it all as it is taking place, I would have certainly dismissed it as cynically written bad fiction.
There is something particularly pernicious about Ethiopia’s current state of affairs. Not only do elite groups of all stripes – technocrats, intellectuals, human rights activists, religious leaders, media – legitimize the actions of such a repressive government through an almost sadistic level of active support, but they do so with an added air of moral superiority. They have managed to sell to the public that a war that has mainly devastated innocent men, women & children is done in the pursuit for justice, to rid us of a special kind of evil that exists only over-there, never with us. Not only are we being told that death & destruction are a necessary evil, but that it is being done for our own good, for the good of Ethiopia. We, for our part, have chosen to believe it.
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Read the whole article https://addisexpressions.com/2021/07/13 ... l-failure/
An Example
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