Letter to the Editor
July 9, 2006
Dear Dr Pirio & Dr Gregorian,
I read with interest the article Jihadist Threat in Africa that you authored and was posted on the United Press International website and also posted on a respectable pro-democracy Ethiopian website - Ethiomedia.
The conclusion you made in the very last paragraph of the article is absoutely wrong and misrepresents the reality on the ground in Ethiopia. The main Ethiopian opposition party (Coalition for Unity & Democracy Party) that won more than a hundred seats in Parliament in the May 2005 elections plus other prominent opposition parties that won dozens of seats in Parliament never resorted to armed rebellion or any form of violence as so wrongly stated in your article.
In fact, it is the "winning" party that used massive fire power to shoot the heads and the chests of hundereds of innocent boys, girls, men and women in the streets of Addis Ababa and elsewhere simply because they protested that the elections were rigged. The reward for the non violence struggle that the leaders of the CUDP advocated for and preached to millions of their supporters is 250 days (and still counting) of imprisonment in inhumane conditions in overcrowded jails. This is a fact that even the seemingly ardent supporters of the Ethiopian regime such as the US Government admit and openly ask the Prime Minister to release the political prisoners.
Gentlemen, you present yourselves as authorities in conflict resolution and communication and experts in the Horn of Africa and World Affairs. You are Presidents of major institutions in the US. One of you (Dr Gregorian) even have a staff member at the Institute of World Affairs who originates from Ethiopia (copied). How come you get such a basic fact, not even disputed by some of the major supporters of the Ethiopian regime, completely wrong? How can we then trust all other wisdoms, assertions and conclusions expressed in your current article as well as in other publications?
I hope you will take this terrible error (or misinformation) seriously and research to learn more about the facts of the peaceful struggle for freedom, liberty, democracy and development that we Ethiopians are conducting. I hope you will also have the humility to accept your error and issue an apology to the leaders of the Ethiopian peaceful struggle that are suffering in the regime's jails.
Yours sincerely,
Samuel Habtu Belay
belay_samuel@yahoo.co.uk
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