By Yared Huluf
One is constantly reminded of, even if one wishes to forget, the material and psychological impacts left behind on both the victims and perpetrators, antinomes they may be, that still linger on unabated to these days. As there has not been a clean break between the oppressors and the oppressed, as was the case with the colonial masters and the rest of the colonized African nations. In Ethiopia, the descendants of the victims and that of the oppressors still live together side by side, crammed into a single container (called Ethiopia) as if nothing wrong one had done to the other and yet at the same time, old habits die hard as they say, the descendant of the offenders still crave and want to continue the statuesque of domination in all aspects of life.
If one had a divine power at his/her fingertips one would wish to exhume the remains of Menelik, resuscitate to life and ask a hard question: Why he did sell out the people who fell under your domain to a foreign colonial power, unbecoming of any leader cruel or benevolent?
The pain of the crime committed, when the Treaty of Wechalle was signed May 2, 1889, is still felt every passing day 131 years and one month since its enactment.
Let us accept the chauvinists view that Menelik had no evil intentions when he signed the treaty to sell off the land and its people. They wanted us believe, it was a clever diplomatic maneuver to stave off a worse consequence the Italians had in mind.
Signing the treaty as he did, according to his followers , shows he was a farsighted leader unlike his predecessors.
If that was the case, how then was it possible that he signed two versions of the same treaty without fully and completely understanding the contents of both versions, unless one is to accept that he was an imbecile with no thinking fiber left in his brain and/or that of his advisors! It was most probable that he was an imbecile. What the followers do not want to tell us was that Menelik’s mind was progressively deteriorating due to the affliction of syphilis (tabes dorsales) he suffered from.
That said, Menelik was determined to destroy and weaken the Tigrian people regardless his own mental illness and predicament. One feels sorry for the ailment he suffered from but this could not an excuses in defense for the catastrophic mischief he did against the people under his rule. Perhaps he was not an imbecile, he knew what he was doing that there were two versions most probably he himself involved in collaborating so us to help him wriggle out of trouble when and if things go contrary to what was planned, as they deed in the end.
Suffering cognitive loss aside, he was selling part of the country and its people to foreign powers, his predecessors never ever had dreamt of doing, let alone its land and people offering for a wholesale, Yohannes said he had no rights to offer a handful of its soil as a gift when approached.
To reinforce the evil intensions of the Treaty of Wehchalle what transpired after the Battle of Adwa was the most things of all. After the Italian defeat one would have had hoped the Treaty of Wehachelle being revoked and binned; reparation paid, Instead what he did after the defeat of the Italians at the Battle of Adwa, was not only endorse the Treaty intact but he offered more land to the Italians north of Mereb by signing yet another Treaty of Hewet before the blood of the dead heroes dried.
Who in his right mind would secede yet more land after defeating an enemy? Who in his right mind would uphold a treaty that led to a war in the first place? Unless his cognitive power was compromised as we said earlier on, or he was evil extraordinaire who wished his adversaries a total and complete disintegration into pieces? But why? Tigrians and Eritreans were his loyal subjects and had done nothing untoward for Menelik to calibrated their demise.
Menelik sold part of the land that fell under his control once it had lost its leader, for financial gain and at the same time to divide and weaken the same people to two different masters whom, he rightly thought, could be a challenge to power he held.
In the end, the crime committed by Menelik achieved its ultimate level goal. It broke the backbone of the Tigrians and Eritreans by dividing two inseparable people who marched hand and glove at the dawn of history and then forced them to slave for two different colonial masters. The Eritreans for the Italians and the Tigrians for the Amharas. The Eritreans were forced to learn Italian language and culture, the Tigrians Ahmharic language and Amharic culture, except they did not have fully they call their own to be proud of.
A nation that produced individuals the likes of Zeray Yaecob and Yared who revolutionized the church and state culture and institutions; people who wrote the Bible in their own language were coerced to abandoned their own and practice alien version that was ill-formulated and translated from other languages and culture.
The same goes to the Quran. It was translated in to Amharic. Nowhere in the world is the Quran translated from Arabic to other languages. The followers of the Prophet advocated no Quran other than Arabic in content is valid and yet in Ethiopia this was/is ignored by the ruling group to propelled their own ethnocentric language and culture and force the Moslem believers to recite in Amharic language.
Of the two people divide the Tigrians came out worse both economically and culturally. At least the Italians had developed economy that trickledown and benefited the Eritreans. There were no such things from the Showan except misery.
Not only did Menelik, subjugated and rule Tigrians by dividing and handing over half to the Italians, his present followers conveniently found it useful to call Tigrains as a minority people, as if they engineered it themselves to serve them a purpose in the past as well as today. They call the Tigrisns ኣናሳ (this term has multi-pronged means: in its face value it means minorities but its insidious and invidious meaning is to portray Tigrians as inferior lice ridden scrooges). It goes without saying the term implies that the Tigrians are not worth deserving isopolity and are required to heed and obey the Amhara majority rule like it or not.
Menelik provides the initial tool with which Tigrains were hooked by the neck and drugged to the bloodstained pool to drawn and be killed.
Imagine as is the case now that Tigrians are expected to live with the rest in Ethiopia but put up with the denial to hold key government positions in their own country as it has been in the past.
Imagine even if they manage to secure high status in international stages, the first people to oppose their positions are none other than the diehard chauvinist unionist Ethiopians. A case in point is the opposition of WHO Chairperson, Dr Tedros Adhanom. Many if not all black peoples in the world would find this weird and unacceptable that Ethiopians opposing an Ethiopian running an international Organization! How can anyone live with such people?
One can understand the reasons Menelik and his followers adopted such tactics and sellout for their own benefits, but it ought to be crystal clear for Tigrians and Eritreans as victims that perpetuating the multifaceted conspiratorial designs of their colonial masters committed 131 years ago would adversely affect their abilities to stand alone, recovery, prosper and move forwards.
A bright destiny for Eritrean and Tigrians can only come if they are united as one people Christians and Moslems, believers and. nonbelievers, low and highlanders and with the difficulties the world now faces hope for the best.
If this is not a case and everyone works towards its achievement, there is no future for Eritrea nor there is for Tigray. Tigrians should stand for Eritreans and Eritreans for Tigrians not out of sympathy but out of necessities. One does lend hand for the other for one’s own sake; otherwise both are doomed to failure.
If for fear to offend tens of thousands of honest, fair, upright and good intended Amharas, Tigrians and Eritreans lot drop your guard against the vocal chauvinists who are always in the driving seat, we will never get rid of this scourge and possibly mend our differences in the distance future with the well intended Amharas.
Tigrians and Eritreans mean no harm to anyone, when and if they say we had enough and we want to go it alone, even if it hurts the feelings of descent and well intended Amharas, we ought to forge ahead free of chauvinists and detractors to clear the pollute air. It nice that is dealt there is amble ground to come together but not now when the Chauvinists are tearing their heads.
The two need to act like the Germans who broke the Berlin wall and came together. The Germans busted the conspiracy webbed against them so as to keep them divided and broke so they would not change the status-quo of the world. The Germans did not dwell on insults labeling against each other as Eritrean call Tigrians Agame, በላዕ ኹዕንቲ, ተሽካም በለስ, ደፋእ ኹችነ and much less so the Tigrians calling Eritreans ሐሽከር ስላቶ!
Mirror in the hall,
Did you get my call?
Stop being worst enemies of your own soul.
For everyone’s sake!
One is constantly reminded of, even if one wishes to forget, the material and psychological impacts left behind on both the victims and perpetrators, antinomes they may be, that still linger on unabated to these days. As there has not been a clean break between the oppressors and the oppressed, as was the case with the colonial masters and the rest of the colonized African nations. In Ethiopia, the descendants of the victims and that of the oppressors still live together side by side, crammed into a single container (called Ethiopia) as if nothing wrong one had done to the other and yet at the same time, old habits die hard as they say, the descendant of the offenders still crave and want to continue the statuesque of domination in all aspects of life.
If one had a divine power at his/her fingertips one would wish to exhume the remains of Menelik, resuscitate to life and ask a hard question: Why he did sell out the people who fell under your domain to a foreign colonial power, unbecoming of any leader cruel or benevolent?
The pain of the crime committed, when the Treaty of Wechalle was signed May 2, 1889, is still felt every passing day 131 years and one month since its enactment.
Let us accept the chauvinists view that Menelik had no evil intentions when he signed the treaty to sell off the land and its people. They wanted us believe, it was a clever diplomatic maneuver to stave off a worse consequence the Italians had in mind.
Signing the treaty as he did, according to his followers , shows he was a farsighted leader unlike his predecessors.
If that was the case, how then was it possible that he signed two versions of the same treaty without fully and completely understanding the contents of both versions, unless one is to accept that he was an imbecile with no thinking fiber left in his brain and/or that of his advisors! It was most probable that he was an imbecile. What the followers do not want to tell us was that Menelik’s mind was progressively deteriorating due to the affliction of syphilis (tabes dorsales) he suffered from.
That said, Menelik was determined to destroy and weaken the Tigrian people regardless his own mental illness and predicament. One feels sorry for the ailment he suffered from but this could not an excuses in defense for the catastrophic mischief he did against the people under his rule. Perhaps he was not an imbecile, he knew what he was doing that there were two versions most probably he himself involved in collaborating so us to help him wriggle out of trouble when and if things go contrary to what was planned, as they deed in the end.
Suffering cognitive loss aside, he was selling part of the country and its people to foreign powers, his predecessors never ever had dreamt of doing, let alone its land and people offering for a wholesale, Yohannes said he had no rights to offer a handful of its soil as a gift when approached.
To reinforce the evil intensions of the Treaty of Wehchalle what transpired after the Battle of Adwa was the most things of all. After the Italian defeat one would have had hoped the Treaty of Wehachelle being revoked and binned; reparation paid, Instead what he did after the defeat of the Italians at the Battle of Adwa, was not only endorse the Treaty intact but he offered more land to the Italians north of Mereb by signing yet another Treaty of Hewet before the blood of the dead heroes dried.
Who in his right mind would secede yet more land after defeating an enemy? Who in his right mind would uphold a treaty that led to a war in the first place? Unless his cognitive power was compromised as we said earlier on, or he was evil extraordinaire who wished his adversaries a total and complete disintegration into pieces? But why? Tigrians and Eritreans were his loyal subjects and had done nothing untoward for Menelik to calibrated their demise.
Menelik sold part of the land that fell under his control once it had lost its leader, for financial gain and at the same time to divide and weaken the same people to two different masters whom, he rightly thought, could be a challenge to power he held.
In the end, the crime committed by Menelik achieved its ultimate level goal. It broke the backbone of the Tigrians and Eritreans by dividing two inseparable people who marched hand and glove at the dawn of history and then forced them to slave for two different colonial masters. The Eritreans for the Italians and the Tigrians for the Amharas. The Eritreans were forced to learn Italian language and culture, the Tigrians Ahmharic language and Amharic culture, except they did not have fully they call their own to be proud of.
A nation that produced individuals the likes of Zeray Yaecob and Yared who revolutionized the church and state culture and institutions; people who wrote the Bible in their own language were coerced to abandoned their own and practice alien version that was ill-formulated and translated from other languages and culture.
The same goes to the Quran. It was translated in to Amharic. Nowhere in the world is the Quran translated from Arabic to other languages. The followers of the Prophet advocated no Quran other than Arabic in content is valid and yet in Ethiopia this was/is ignored by the ruling group to propelled their own ethnocentric language and culture and force the Moslem believers to recite in Amharic language.
Of the two people divide the Tigrians came out worse both economically and culturally. At least the Italians had developed economy that trickledown and benefited the Eritreans. There were no such things from the Showan except misery.
Not only did Menelik, subjugated and rule Tigrians by dividing and handing over half to the Italians, his present followers conveniently found it useful to call Tigrains as a minority people, as if they engineered it themselves to serve them a purpose in the past as well as today. They call the Tigrisns ኣናሳ (this term has multi-pronged means: in its face value it means minorities but its insidious and invidious meaning is to portray Tigrians as inferior lice ridden scrooges). It goes without saying the term implies that the Tigrians are not worth deserving isopolity and are required to heed and obey the Amhara majority rule like it or not.
Menelik provides the initial tool with which Tigrains were hooked by the neck and drugged to the bloodstained pool to drawn and be killed.
Imagine as is the case now that Tigrians are expected to live with the rest in Ethiopia but put up with the denial to hold key government positions in their own country as it has been in the past.
Imagine even if they manage to secure high status in international stages, the first people to oppose their positions are none other than the diehard chauvinist unionist Ethiopians. A case in point is the opposition of WHO Chairperson, Dr Tedros Adhanom. Many if not all black peoples in the world would find this weird and unacceptable that Ethiopians opposing an Ethiopian running an international Organization! How can anyone live with such people?
One can understand the reasons Menelik and his followers adopted such tactics and sellout for their own benefits, but it ought to be crystal clear for Tigrians and Eritreans as victims that perpetuating the multifaceted conspiratorial designs of their colonial masters committed 131 years ago would adversely affect their abilities to stand alone, recovery, prosper and move forwards.
A bright destiny for Eritrean and Tigrians can only come if they are united as one people Christians and Moslems, believers and. nonbelievers, low and highlanders and with the difficulties the world now faces hope for the best.
Not only Bademe is Eritrea, Axum, Adwa, Temben, Raya-Azebo, Welkait Tsegedie, Enderta, Agame, Shire, Kelete Awelaelo are all Eritrea. Also Sahil, Barka, Kesella, shamboko, Hamadan, Akole Geziay and Seraye are Tigray.
Stop bickering against each other, stop being petty and little, grow tall and great.
Stop implementing you adversaries agenda that works against your interest and wellness. Do not be a tool and a laughing stock; think ahead and destroy enemy plots.
If for fear to offend tens of thousands of honest, fair, upright and good intended Amharas, Tigrians and Eritreans lot drop your guard against the vocal chauvinists who are always in the driving seat, we will never get rid of this scourge and possibly mend our differences in the distance future with the well intended Amharas.
Tigrians and Eritreans mean no harm to anyone, when and if they say we had enough and we want to go it alone, even if it hurts the feelings of descent and well intended Amharas, we ought to forge ahead free of chauvinists and detractors to clear the pollute air. It nice that is dealt there is amble ground to come together but not now when the Chauvinists are tearing their heads.
The two need to act like the Germans who broke the Berlin wall and came together. The Germans busted the conspiracy webbed against them so as to keep them divided and broke so they would not change the status-quo of the world. The Germans did not dwell on insults labeling against each other as Eritrean call Tigrians Agame, በላዕ ኹዕንቲ, ተሽካም በለስ, ደፋእ ኹችነ and much less so the Tigrians calling Eritreans ሐሽከር ስላቶ!
Mirror in the hall,
Did you get my call?
“Yes, Break the Mereb wall
Once and for all.”
Stop being worst enemies of your own soul.
For everyone’s sake!
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