Part One: Leave and Never Come Back! Three years ago—on July 3, 2015, around 10:50 AM—a few (and I stress, a few ) connected, mafia-like members of the TPLF operating within the state-owned Ethiopian Airlines still considered themselves above the law. That day, they used a fabricated “security concern” and a vague accusation of “political tendencies” as a cover for their real motive: ethnic profiling. They sent security officers to my office at the Aviation Academy and literally forced me out, saying only, “Leave” —with the unspoken but clear message: “And never come back.” And I never did. To an outsider, especially someone unfamiliar with the inner workings of the airline, this may sound unfathomable. How could a civilian airline allow a political group to carry out mafia-style operations against its own employees? But I was not alone. Many before and after me have faced similar intimidation and injustice. While these individuals acted under the banner of the TPLF, I want to m...
On November 15, 2020, at 11:55 AM, Senait Mebrahtu tweeted (in Amharic), “From now on, if you don’t cease what you are doing, I will release a video of you being abused in prison and put you to shame forever.” This tweet was directed at the renowned, award-winning Ethiopian journalist and human rights activist Reeyot Alemu. Reeyot was a prisoner of conscience for five years under the TPLF-led government of Ethiopia. Senait is an active member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that held power in Ethiopia for twenty-seven years until it was ousted by a popular uprising in 2018. That same day, the spokesperson for the TPLF—now the ruling party in the Tigray region—appeared on a regional TV station and threatened to launch rockets into neighboring Eritrea and other targets within Ethiopia, just hours before attacks were carried out on two airports in the Amhara regional state. There are striking similarities between the two threats: both serve as evidence of...
‘Simulator’ Democracy: The case of Ethiopia Tariku Abas Etenesh T here is a simple aerodynamic rule that states ‘ Every lift is corresponded by proportional amount of drag’ . This is to mean that the power generated by an aircraft to fly forward will be met by the same amount of air resistance. In addition to flight, this is the case in every facet of life. Attempts at flying into new ventures, be it personally or nationally, are naturally met with resistance as a positive mark of assumed success. And it is not always external; often times, the resistance comes from within: we could call it self-induced drag. To check this, it would suffice to look back into moments where we, both individually and as a nation, have sabotaged and shot down our own selves not far from the runway of our most coveted dreams because we failed to properly handle resistance. Drag-less Democracy ? The lift –drag principle is true for all governments; especially those who claim to ...
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