Some people, many of them Meles' supporters, have been asking why TISJD targets the Prime Minister. Some suggest that we singled him out because his mother is an Eritrean. Some also argue that we target him because we are angry at what he did to the dissident group, and others say that we pick on him because the supremacy of the Tigrai ethnic group’s demise is being accelerated by Meles. All of these speculations are shallow and without merit.

The fact is that as long as the Prime Minister stands up for our unity, sovereignty and the strategic interest of our country, he can be an Eritrean altogether and it would not bother us at all. After all, Eritreans are not alien to the Ethiopian people. It is the Eritreans who try to magnify the degree of separation. The Ethiopian people never oppose a leader because of his/her ethnicity, social class or educational background.

The underlying fact remains though that the Prime Minister surrounded himself with people who are more Eritreans than the Eritreans themselves. Our call for the Prime Minister to step down is simply based on our observations of his track record concerning the national interest of our country. In 1991, when the entire country was taken over by the TPLF/EPRDF, many Ethiopians particularly the Tigrai community was elated because the rule of the fascist Dergue was over and they thought a new era of freedom, democracy and social justices was to prevail. But the people of Tigrai turned out to be the victims than beneficiaries. Tigrai is virtually the most isolated administrative region in the country. There is no single newspaper except TPLF’s divisive propaganda machine. Wegahta, the only privately circulating newspaper in Tigrai, which was very informative, was banned, and the editors had to flee for their lives. There are tens of thousands of prisoners in Tigrai who have not seen a court since the takeover by TPLF.

Meles' officials in Tigrai argue that they cannot bring them to court because they do not have trained judges. The Mekele Prison is well known for its one-way ticket: checking in but no checking out. The same officials are still blaming the dissident group for the massive imprisonment in Tigrai. Meles and Co. control the economic life of Tigrai. The region is infested with the Prime Minister’s spies, and Meles, totally rejected by the people of Tigrai, runs Tigrai through his thugs, using brut force. This is the state of Tigrai today, a police state within a police state.

Let as look at the Prime Minister’s policies since he came to power. As soon as the Prime Minister landed in Addis in 1991, he started attacking everything that all Ethiopians, regardless of our ethnicity, stood for. He trashed our flag and history and insulted our culture and identity. By aggravating and harassing the various ethnic groups, he tried to fan hatred between the people of Tigrai and the rest of Ethiopia; a divide and rule scheme engineered by Eritrea’s Shaebia. In a ceremony attending the Eritrean “independence”, he apologized to the Eritreans on behalf of the Ethiopian people for the pains that the Eritreans endured. He apologized to the Eritreans who massacred tens of thousands of Ethiopian Soldiers after they surrender. He apologized to the Eritreans who pulled the teeth of our people in Asmara. He apologized to the Eritreans who inserted Iron bars to the Private bodies of our sisters. He apologized to the Eritreans who invited all Ethiopians living in Asmara for food distribution and deported them to Ethiopia en masse without a single item of possession in their hands.

When the African Group and the then Secretary-General, Javier Perez De Cuellar, resisted Eritrea’s bid for independence at the UN, Meles shifted the issue to the Human Rights Committee with the collaboration of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, after the latter replaced De Cuellar as Secretary-General, and portrayed Ethiopia as an aggressor Country and argued that the independence of Eritrea was good for Ethiopia. The entire world Diplomatic community was shocked when the Prime Minster declared that the two ports that Ethiopia relied on for its security and economic interest were Eritrean. Throughout the shameful Eritrean occupation of our country, Meles acted as an Eritrean Viceroy than an Ethiopian leader. On the issue of Defense, the Prime Minister systematically dismantled our defense forces while Isayas was training and building his forces. Our war ships and aircraft were given to Isayas only later to be used to massacre innocent children in Mekele.

Meles' policies during the invasion of our land: When the Eritrean army invaded our country, the people of Tigrai found themselves in a precarious situation. The superior mechanized army of Isayas overwhelmed them. And yet they acted heroically and stopped the enemy from making further advances. In the meantime, our brothers and sisters were herded and subsequently executed in cold blood. Nobody knows what had happened to those Ethiopians who were rounded up from Badme and Irob. No one knows the whereabouts of our Air Force hero - Colonel Bezabh Petros. The travel of the President of the Red Cross to Asmara to inquire about the militias taken from Badme and our air force pilot did not bear fruit. Shaebia refused to give any information about them. The Pilot was last seen when the Shaebia officers, in a barbaric act reminiscent of the Middle-Ages, paraded him with bleeding bare foot, and being spitted at and slapped by Eritrean spectators at Adikeyeh. Fellow Ethiopians: Do you think we would be humiliated like this if we had a responsible and patriotic leader?

While the enemy was digging, killing, destroying and ransacking our land, the Prime Minister was dragging his feet to act. Knowing his previous history of serving Eritrean interests at the expense of Ethiopia, and the obvious attempt he made to sabotage the preparedness of our armed forces during Shaebia’s invasion, it is not hard to understand the lingering suspicion of many Ethiopians, that Meles has passed state secrets, detrimental to Ethiopia’s efforts to dislodge Shaebia from the occupied lands. To the People of Tigrai, the invasion did not come as a surprise.

Contrary to Shaebia’s thinking, the people of Ethiopia rushed to the assistance of their Tigrean brothers and sisters in those difficult years, and finally our defense forces paid heavy sacrifices to liberate our land and our people from the dark and savagery rule of Shaebia. God bless the souls of those heroic Ethiopians, who paid their lives to free us all.

Post-war Meles: The Prime Minister’s mind and heart never changed with regard to the Ethiopian national interest even after the fascistic act of aggression of Eritrea was crushed. He engineered the so-called Algiers Agreement deliberately to transfer our land to and legitimize the ownership of the Port of Assab by Eritrea. He went to the Media to promote the legal basis of Eritrean claim of Assab. He instructed the law firm that “represented” Ethiopia at The Hague not to include the issue of Assab in the presentations.

He deliberately misinformed the Ethiopian people with regard to the decisions of the Boundary commission ruling in favor of Eritrea. Forgive us to ask another question fellow Ethiopian brothers and sisters: Have you have ever seen or come across any literature indicating a national leader who deliberately makes his country landlocked or collaborates with the enemy to betray his people? You would not find it in any Encyclopedia.

Currently he has banned domestic and international reporters from entering the border area so that the plight of our people would not be known. Ethiopians in the border area are pleading to the Ethiopian people not to allow Meles to hand them over to Eritrea. We all remember when UNMEE transported international reporters to Badme that the residents told the reporters that “if the land is given to Eritrea, they will fight”. It is that kind of statement that worries Meles. Most of us also remember the October 4, 2002 incident, where our people reacted by firing guns to the air to worn Eritreans and their UNMEE collaborators. Since then, there have been almost daily provocations by the Eritreans. The abduction and cattle rustling continues. As the matter of fact there are more observation posts added to the area because of the rising tension. UNMEE's public information officer admitted this fact in a press release recently. The reason why we are not getting information of these incidents from the media is that there is an agreement between the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of UNMEE and Meles not to leak any information. There is a total news blackout in the border area.

Look at what was the Nigerian Government’s reaction on the Bakassi ruling by the International Court of Justice: Nigeria and Cameroon agreed to abide by the ruling of the ICJ and submitted their cases... However, the ICJ ruled in favor of Cameroon. As soon as the verdict was announced, the Senator and the Governor of Bakassi rushed to the area to listen to the people of Bakassi. They called for town meetings with the Army, prominent officials and the people of Bakssi. In these meetings the residents opposed to be Cameroonians and warned that, if the federal government does not support them, they will declare independence, and go their own way. Subsequently, “ The Council of State chaired by President Obasanjo and comprising all 36 State governors, together with previous holders of strategic national offices including a former President and chief justices, attended the meeting.” After seriously listening to the people of Bakasi and evaluated its national interest, the Nigerian government rejected the ruling regardless of its prior commitment to abide by the ruling (Read West Africa issue 4348, 21-27 October 2002). At the end of the day, national interest is the overriding issue for a responsible leader, whether it is Britain in the Falkland Islands, US behavior in the Middle East, the NATO powers in the Balkans or China in Hong Kong and Taiwan. National interest comes above all, all the way to the tiniest Island state.

Our presentation of the case is not to support the Nigerian action but simply to make a parallel between the two leaders. Our people in the border area are kept in the dark. The fear and the emotion of uncertainty of these people are beyond our imagination. No Ethiopian official is telling them the fact.

To prepare the groundwork and sabotage our country, the Prime Minister dismissed the TPLF CC and Politburo members illegally without due process. He acted against all legal instruments to dismiss the group who stood up courageously on the side of the Ethiopian people during the war. He cooked up “legal” schemes retroactively to put Siye Abraha, the war hero, and his family in jail indefinitely. To hide the crime in his financial dealings, particularly the illegal transfer of hundreds of millions of Birr to the Eritrean side, he has disrupted the activities of the banking and business communities. Meles suspects the professional bankers and business people have the knowledge of the transactions and hence the mass arrest under the cover of stamping out "corruption."

Thanks to the split of TPLF, Ethiopians have learned more about the monstrous nature of Meles and how anti Ethiopia the man is. Another unfortunate story is that the most senior and influential officials of TPLF who remained with Meles are the worst: the most corrupt, clannish and blindly pro-Eritrea, thus earning from Mekellians, the nickname, “ER (Eritrea) Positive”. Therefore, Ethiopians should not expect any positive change from these people. The issues that we presented in this paper are the tips of the Iceburg of Meles' crime against our country. Solidarity opposes the Prime Minister not only for working for the interest of Eritrea at the expense of Ethiopia, but also on the policies that he is conducting domestically.

Today, the Prime Minister is becoming more erratic, insane, and dictatorial. His officials are in a permanent revolving door. He put the country in an endless spell of meaningless meetings and Gimgemas. The country is falling in to a one-man dictatorial rule. His soldiers are busy killing our Afar brothers whose crime is is because they remained steadfast as being Ethiopians nationals; he is creating an atmosphere of fear in the Oromiya region and while denying the people of Tigrai their right to defend themselves against Eritrean aggression. Eritreans who have been giving us all kinds of names are calling Meles “Canning and smart” at the “Asmerino.com” and elsewhere. Why are they praising this man? His treatment of fellow Ethiopians outrages us. We come from Tigrai; form a minority ethnic group, who had grown very sensitive and wary to any form of discrimination.

We cannot remain idle and watch when university students are slaughtered. We cannot remain idle when our brothers and sisters are massacred at Awasa, and we cannot afford to become spectators when Meles's cadres and security agents fan hate and division in Gambela, spark bloodshed among the two major ethnic groups in that region. We cannot remain silent when Meles' militias massacre innocent Afar women. We are the sons and daughters of the people of Tigrai, who always stood up against injustice, be it of foreign aggression or internal dictatorship. Solidarity will continue the struggle and expose Meles' ever-increasing crimes, regardless of the harassment and intimidation against our members. Some of the Prime Minister cadres like Dr. Solomon Inquai who submitted a list of names of members of solidarity to the authorities to bar them from entering Ethiopia, are worried about the image of Meles than the suffering of the Ethiopian people from hunger, misery and poverty.

After the Tigreans at home and Diaspora, on whose behalf all crimes have been committed, totally rejected him, the Prime Minister is shifting his alliance to the Amhara elite group to prolong his stay in power. Some naïve individuals in some quarters are now hailing him for becoming a born-again Ethiopian. In our opinion, as long as he stands for the interest of our beloved country, Ethiopia, we do not mind whoever he forms an alliance with. But we want to ask the individuals who hailed Meles for extricating himself from the narrow group of TPLF in Ben’s News Page website, if he had seen a slight change concerning fundamental and substantive policy especially with regard to the Algiers agreement. Reversing the damaging Algiers agreement is a litmus test not only for Meles but also for future leaders of our country. The Prime Minister has not changed anything concerning the strategic interests of our country. He is shifting alliances to eliminate his enemies. Throughout his political life, this Prime Mister has been using individuals to kill, and destroy his enemies. We will not be surprised if this latest maneuver is designed as a transition to bring back his unholy alliance with the Eritreans. Solidarity believes that those who are polishing Meles' image to grab positions are short-sighted and opportunistic.

Meles the “Intelligent leader” - and Intelligence versus Wisdom: After the debacle of the border and the port issues, Meles's supporters and the opportunists around him, have changed tact. Realizing that Meles' policies could not be defended among Ethiopians any more, they have come up with a new twist. Now they are telling us that "whatever Meles' shortcomings, there is no better/more intelligent leader in EPRDF or in the country, and if Meles steps down, there is no one who could hold the country together”. In other wards, they are telling us that, “it is true Meles is killing the country, albeit in a slow motion, and if he were to be deposed, the country will collapse faster, therefore, the more time it takes for the country to die, the longer the feast is for us”. Well, what these poor souls are not realizing is that we have no issue with Meles over his intelligence, and we would like to remind them that there is a huge gap between intelligence and wisdom. Meles could be intelligent all right. So was the unabomber, who terrorized the US corporate world in particular and the American public in general, an accomplished scientist. And so is the Egyptian Doctor, who is Bin Laden’s deputy, and the mastermind of his evil empire. And who said Hitler’s social engineers, who concluded that humanity outside the Arian Nation is worthless, and should be wiped out from existence were not intelligent? To his supporters, Sadam Hussein is God, and we cannot question his intelligence, when one considers, the way he transformed himself from a faceless and angry orphan in the dusty streets of Tikrit, in northern Iraq, to one of the most feared and powerful rulers in modern history. And if you want an Ethiopian example of Meles, you have got the infamous scientist, Dr. Tilahun, who came with the notorious idea of solving Ethiopia’s problems by “seceding Ethiopia from Tigrai”, and almost declared holocaust on the people of Tigrai, as if he wants to beat Meles at his game.

We further want to remind Meles' supporters, and the gullible that intelligence is just a weapon or a means and not an end by itself, and without wisdom, far from being useful, it could be lethally dangerous as we tried to show above. To possess Wisdom is to have the ability of judgment of what is intrinsically good and just. Judging from his actions and the policies he followed, regarding fundamental national issues, and the arrogance and contempt he displays addressing the Ethiopian people, as well as the vitriolic language he uses against those who oppose his ideas, the Prime Minister is definitely devoid of any wisdom. For a country like Ethiopia, whose democratic institutions are not developed, having a prudent and wise leader is a matter of life and death for millions, as we witnessed in the war with Eritrea, the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the current alarming drought of epic proportions.

In conclusion: by dividing its people along ethnic lines, by rendering it landlocked and by ceding swaths of its land to Eritrea, Meles has placed Ethiopia at the mercy of foreign hands, exposing it to blackmail, by forces near and far, big and small. It finds itself strangulated strategically, politically and economically. By Weakening it, he has exposed it to the vagaries of nature, such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the current devastating draught. He has weakened its internal fabric, like a cancerous cell, that its survival is at stake more than any period in its long, sometimes arduous, otherwise glorious history. This is precisely why SOLIDARITY targets Meles as enemy number one. After all, he is the head of government, boss of both EPRDF and TPLF, commander in chief of the armed forces, just to mention the main few, among the myriad titles, as dictator extraordinaire, titles surpassing those amassed by Field Marshal Ida Amin Dada…. our position on Meles is therefore correct regardless whether his power is strengthened or weakened.

Our analysis is based on the kind of policy he conducts rather than the strength of his government or base on speculations as to how many years he is going to stay in power. History teaches us that no dictator had willingly brought democracy to any country, let alone one who came to power through the barrel of gun. Look around and you will find none. Meles could not be an exception, except he might outsmart many a dictator with deceit. This is to say that a dictator is a dictator, is a dictator period. In our opinion, Meles has faulted the nation and therefore, he should be brought to the court of law. We also want to remind our fellow Ethiopian mentioned above that our yard stick of evaluation as to whether Meles is true born-again Ethiopian or not should be based on what he does and not what he says.

Long live Ethiopia and Its people!
TISJD