Fasika Sidelil’s Trigger- Happy Generation 

Being in my age group I hope he has the time to ponder and reflect on his past experience correctly and honestly. No doubt he is in the sun set of his life on this good earth. It was self evident that the regime he was part of was the most cruel government that he was denied even a cordial welcome by the officials of the then US administration 32 years ago. It was reported that he was given a special assignment by Mengistu to find dirt on the 60 formers officials and Emperor Haile resulting in the brutal murder of all of them. He was cajoling with Mengistu when an estimated 500,000 young people were massacred in a span of less than 6 months. I hope he has tried to contrite for the bloodbath by a regime he was part of. He might have not signed the death warrants but he could have gone to the extent to even black mail his colleagues. He should be forgiven but he has to ask for one. The scar on the surviving victims, their families and the generation as a whole will take generation to heal and becomes benign. May Allah Have Mercy on him and others like him! We also true to our tradition we should grace him with the same forgiveness. We should be not too entrenched about it.

Subject: Fasika Sidelil’s Trigger- Happy Generation By Samuel Estefanous, September 21, 2022

QUOTE: “Then, there is this anomaly staring us in the eyes…how come the three thousand years of history and civilization we put claim to failed to come to the rescue. God Bless” UNQUOTE

FANTASTIC PENETRATING QUESTION , especially — and most of all — to the well known elitist.

Humble Commentary, 21 Sept 2022
What happened to that modern upscale insightful knowledgeable brilliants who were honored by 9 X 10 inch size paper as a life long witness of the depth of knowledge that our Dear Black African Brethren and Sisters gained with a promise to guide our dear BLACK AFRICAN CONTINENT to the stratosphere !!!!!! What a brilliant far-sighted agenda!!!

What happened? What went wrong? Why did we become just parrots, repeating what we heard — or read- without any sense of understanding the depth of what we were reading and being taught??? Here is our usual expression for safety :” WE CAN’T HELP IT.” !!!!!!

AND THAT IS THE END

To whom on earth and for what purpose, a book by one the defunct and repulsive Derg regime’s sycophants and toadies be worth one minute of reading time? The riff ruff of the Derg regime butchered 60 plus public civil servants and top military leaders of Ethiopia, on whom the mother land invested so much of her scarce and precious resources. Highly educated prime ministers, the likes of the graduate of Sorbonne, PM Aklilu Habtewold , the unsung hero of the motherland was machine gunned down for his 30 plus years of dedicated and selfless service for his Ethiopia, together with the Oxford graduate PM Endalkachew Mekonnen also executed in cold blood at the tender age of 47, together with irreplaceable leaders like General Aman and many more.

What on earth can Fasika Sidelel talk about 30 years after the fall of the bloody butcher dictator era of Mengistu Hailemariam. The nerve and chutzpah, actually, vulgarity of the Derg remnants is mind boggling. Just disappear, disintegrate, beat it and get lost. Nobody wants to remember and recall the atrocities of those bloody 17 years of misery. These fools thought twitch slogans, Marxist-Leninist proclamations, they could build a nation. They were garbage in and garbage out. No deference, adulation or even recollection of their sad saga should be left for reminiscing. The dark period, 17 years of misery of the Derg era is what has led to the rise of the ethnofacsit TPLF and Meles era, and equally, if not worse ethnofacistic era of Abiy Ahmed and cohorts.

So Fasika Sidelel’ book , memoir or whatever, is all in the name : Dillella, more aptly hypocrisy laced with Marxist Leninist facade and ideologue idolatry. Nothing more, and therefore should be discarded to dustbins of yesterday’s “The Ugly and the Hideous”, only to be referenced to the future generations as “thou shall not repeat the stupidity, barbarism, and sub humanity of the Derg, led by butcher Mengistu and sycophants”

The author’s feeble attempt to normalize the atrocities of the derg, to trivialize its extensive and inhumane violations of even the ver basic and undeniable human rights to its perceived “political enemies”, “ anti revolutionaries”, its abysmal and shocking track record of unmitigated and rampant extra judicial killings should not be entertained by the current generation. The generation of the derg was characterized by rampant ideologue worship, massive travesty of justice and the start of uncontrolled extra judicial killings where the roots of dictatorship and the existence of a shadow executive branch of pseudo governments, unaccountable to any judiciary branch took firm root.

Here is a repulsive list of the atrocities of the derg, and the reader is highly encouraged to corroborate with facts and recorded history by the derg itself. No need to listen to the lies of derg sycophants like fasika sidelel or any other derg sympathizer.

THE DERG STARTED ITS REIGN OF TERROR BY THE MASSACRE OF 60 PLUS HIGHEST MILITARY OFFICIALS AND CIVIL AUTHORITIES OF THE GOVERNMENT OF EMPEROR HAILE SELLASIE.

1) the 60 plus officials were machine gunned down on November 23, 1974. They included the irreplaceable and dedicated public servants such as PM Aklilu Habetewold (Sorbonne graduate who served his beloved Ethiopia since his youth), PM Endalkachew Mekonnen (Oxford graduate and the first African candidate considered for the position of Secretary-General of the UN). The derg denied the families of the slain victims the bodies of their loved ones who were, husbands, dads, and brothers and sons like any other Ethiopians. The were buried in mass graves discovered after the fall of that repulsive military dictatorship.

2) through a process that bypassed any scrutiny of the judiciary branch, mengistu hailemariam and his derby fanatics allowed the extra judicial killings called “abiyotawi eremeja” by “kebele” and “kefetegna” thugs and murderers masquerading as revolutionary vanguards. fasika sidelel may deny the atrocities and barbarism of his era, but history and victims voices still shout for justice!!!!!!!

3) the readers are hereby encouraged to search the repulsive history of the derg butcher “kelbessa negawo”. This is an individual who executed many, including one young man whose new Peugeot 304 was confiscated by kielbasa after he was murdered. Thank God, justice was served when this filth and butcher was deported from the USA, after his ill begotten US citizenship was stripped and sent back to Ethiopia. Do not be surprised if the abiy regime and his oromumma thugs set kelbessa negawo free now in Ethiopia.

4) the claim that the derg had highly West educated professionals working under it is partially true and the reasons will be laid out here. After the fall of the Government of Emperor Haile Selassie, the derg purged the top offices and replaced them with its riff ruff and uneducated, barbaric illiterates. Thus the office of the prime minister, the chairmanship of the derg etc were all the 10 alekas, 50 alekas, 100 Alexa’s and 1000 Alexa’s of the derby gang.
The technical positions like the ministry of health etc were still left to the technocrats with the training and education. To a large extent the military was also antagonized and a new form of so called triangular decision making where a political cadre sat at the table with military leaders was begun. This part of compromising the professional military decisions of the army with the mumbo jumbo of the blabbermouth political cadres of the regime begun during the derg and is extant. Bottom line, the derg had no choice but keep the Western educated technocrats their positions past the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, with the caveat that “as long as they were not perceived as enemies of the state, anti-revolutionary etc.

5) many of the derg officials and cadres were thieves and looters, they confiscated the villas and best houses of the rich and famous, in the nation under the pretext of nationalization, and occupied houses they did not work for, drove cars they did not own and assumed a comfortable and luxurious life style behind doors while pretending to be men and women of the people. It is interesting to note that PM Aklilu in nearly 40 years of tireless service to his beloved Ethiopia as an assistant foreign minister, foreign minister, international jurist before the League of Nations, then at the UN, then as PM of Ethiopia had an impeccable record of service and dedication for the higher good, in his own words “ izih yemanagrachu end ande buden hogne ayedelem, alamacehn hule Ethiopia, teretachen hule Ethiopia, tiglachen hule Ethiopia naw”.

6) the highly respected and decorated General Aman had aptly described the undisciplined riff ruff and garbage derby as “duket sefari”, his refusal to sign on the deranged demands for extra judicial killings of the 60 officials of Emperor Haile Selassie, his subsequent fight with the cowardly derg vagabonds, his legendary annihilation of some of the derg assassins sent to his home by the coward mengistu are all testimonies of the qualities of the leadership both in the military and civilian sector Ethiopia had at the time.

So fasika sidelel can write 1000 pages or 10,000 pages of mea culpa, the facts on the ground will remain the same for eternity. The derg was the filth and stench on which the garbage TPLF grew and gave birth to the stink and eye sore that has become abiy’s PP.

I have a proposal for this elderly man. It would be a road to redemption for him if he donates every dime from the sale of his book to the families of the victims butchered by the regime he was enthusiastically part of and those who were extremely lucky to survive the torture and beatings during their incarcerations. Many victims who are still alive expected to be in their golden years and could be in need of the means to feed and clothe themselves. They may need help from medical experts to ease their PTSD hounding them every night. Otherwise it will be seen as selling the suffering of others the same way he sold his soul to the devil during that country’s most terrifying nightmarish 17 years. Let’s do this!

Many books written about the derg rule show that communism or revolution in the way it was practiced was brutal and destructive. All the groups which accepted this brutal ideology and struggled to implement it have to take the responsibility for the deplorable actions. The communist group that seized power after the Derg (TPLF) was also repressive and carried out targeted ethnic killings and displacements. The Amhara and Oromo were the main targets of the TPLF and even the TPLF leaders such as Siye Abraha mentioned that the TPLF run prisons were filled with the Oromos.

What terrorist TPLF did in general and in the past 31 years in particular and especially in the last four years is what makes the brutal Derg look good in the minds of many an intellectual. And I mean only those who are Ethiopianists or truly Ethiopian for lack of a better word. Derg was nothing but just another collection of African soldiers that was aching to grab power like everywhere else in Africa. Well, it takes some kind of unique nature to become a soldier, to volunteer to die in honor of country and people. In Ethiopia’s case, a general whose name I can’t remember right now explained it at the start of his memoirs the best. HAILE SELASSIE LEZELALEM YINUR (x3) was said each time with MELEYO in the right hand before a feast on crown celebration days and some other holidays. And a few years later it was changed to KEQORATTU MERYACHIN MHM GARE WEDEFIT or something similar also three times but only with the left hand.

Another officer remembers meeting Mengistu for the first time at an airport in America among Ethiopian officers on their way home and greeting him in English b/c he thought he was an American. All the way home Mengistu was talking none-stop about the injustices and the wrongs of the Imperial gov’t. But he never guessed he would be his boss one day since that kind of talk was becoming normal in those days. The same officer wrote Mengistu was beaten up in some southern USA town where he was receiving military training but never held a grudge against USA; instead he remembers him admiring the patriotism of everyday Americans and celebrating their flag even in sport stadiums at games.

To this day nobody has bothered to take a statistics on the army and other forces of Ethiopia before 1991. But the generally accepted feeling is that it was never built in ethnic lines and that it was mostly Orthodox Christian, the most dominant religion sect of Ethiopia that is uniquely Ethiopian. There were all kinds of generals though and even the small Gurage community had five by 1960s in the ground forces alone which was led by W/Selassie Bereka by 1970s, a Catholic Gurage who never missed MesQel celebrations in the village he was born rain or shine. A Gondere Orthodox senior general Nega Tegegn that was made governor of that province in the last days of Haile Sellassie’s seems to have a lot of respect for gen W/S Bereka but did indicate his senior was always finding an excuse sometime in September to get off work for few days every year. Mengistu himself credited gen W/Selassie for most of the wins in Ogaden before 1974, but that might have been out of spite for gen Aman whom he killed. As if that was not enough Catholicism in the small but very disciplined and well-trained army of Haile Sellasie, there was yet another general W/Yohannes Shita in the elite Imperial guard. A devout Catholic and a Gurage that led one round of Qagnew ShaleQa earning medals for his troops and himself in Korea and then Congo.

The number of Oromo officers in those days, from Sellalle alone, was staggering. The Airforce was said to have been dominated by officers from Wellega. General Abebe Ayana took flying lessons when he took the helm of that even though he was a veteran resistance fighter in the second war with Italy. A lot of people seem to agree the Ethiopian forces in general was dominated by Oromo rank and file before 1991. And it doesn’t look like it was done on purpose either. General Mulugeta Buli was chief of staff and many thought he would be the one trying a coup but he ended up being killed by gen Mengistu in 1960.

The army was one of the biggest institutions of Ethiopia and it had guns. The students didn’t have any guns but they had very little opinion about the western educated ministers and directors in H/S’s gov’t. The total number of students above 10th grade and their teachers was about sixty thousand by mid 1970s. The army, including the irregulars led by the legendary resistance fighter of five years, general Jagaama Kello, was around 40 thousand. The students never had any good feelings about the army even though they were joining it every year. The Airborne in Dukem was one of the forces the students were very attracted to. The elite air force bombers’ training institute in Bishoftu was the other one. While the Airforce came up with a revolutionary choir song which is still around, The chief of the Airborne, general Getachew Nadew, was executed by Derg. That airborne was never rebuilt again until the late 1980s b/c of EPRP’s successful sabotage. One of the youngest generals of Ethiopia at that time who was also decorated with the highest medal for bravery and a title JEGINA, Tesfay Habte Mariam, explains how EPRP betrayed Ethiopia and dismantled the elite force in his biography in detail. When he was taken out from the front and assigned to rebuild the legendary Airborne in Dukem, it was nothing but a fenced wilderness.

General Getachew Nadew was a highly respected military leader so much so he was in charge of the civilian administration of Eritrea. But a few years before that a fresh officer had joined his troops at another location, another force. That officer couldn’t keep his mouth shut when he saw how scared his new friends were of a certain corporal that doubled as intelligence. Winking and other facial expressions didn’t work on him and that scary corporal was listening to every word through the thin walls in the adjacent room. The clueless gen Getachew Nadew received a vile report from that corporal on the new officer and made a decision on the spot to send him back to the unit he came from. The report had shocked the general b/c it included sexual orientation of the subject that looked too good to be a soldier in the first place. He called him up to his office and make him carry his ‘contaminated’ mattress on his head and sent him to where he came from on foot while the jealous privates and corporals laughed their heads off.

That ‘too good looking for a soldier’ officer was none other than lt Col Daniel Asfaw. He became the absolute murderer among Derg murderers. And he might have started with the great general Getachew he couldn’t wait to kill but also in subsequent executions including the ’60’ until he was shot down by captain Yohannes in the failed EPRP coup in the palace grounds later. That same day Dr Senay Likke, a black belt UCLA or some other ivy league school chemistry lecturer, was also shot down by the same EPRP mole captain Yohannes of DERG. I don’t think the general public was sorry at any time when the likes of col Daniel were killed.

Recently I read Dr. Senay Likke tried to show his loyalty to Mengistu by doing what Jesus did to his 12 closest friends during pass-over, when he let the outcasted student leaders like him stay the night, out of gratitude. Even though the writer didn’t mention Dr. Senay by name, from the description of the physique of the feet washer the guess is it was him.

There was a coalition of the outcaste students’ communist parties, five in total, named EMALADIH. Meison was the biggest among those and it was kicked out first. And then ETCHAT was kicked out and it’s leader killed by ISLAMIA OROMIA in Harer and it’s deputy Assefa Tchabo, who made peace with himself and the public before he passed away, imprisoned for over a decade among many members. And there was another group called EMALERED or something that was formed by ex EPRA fighters who gave up fighting and reported in Asmara with their rifles. One of the leaders or the leader went to North Korea first and then to Holland where he was a student pre-1974 and wrote a book after he served a decade or so in Derg-prison before he was pardoned and given some kind of post in the last years of DERG; amazingly still Mengistu loyalist at the time of writing his book, Tesfaye Gessese or something if I’m not mistaken. But what kind of horrible things that same party did in Tigray during the Red Terror is another story of it’s own and his book doesn’t even mention that at all.

For the record EPRP was most probably much bigger membership wise, at least ten or twenty folds of all the communist parties that joined and were ‘eaten alive by DERG’ combined. I believe the general public and the students lost interest in politics and they didn’t give a damn, for a lack of a better word, what happened to WEZ LEGUE or any other league. The interest in reading what happened comes from different kind of angles. For those who were born too late to participate in the bloody years and for those who were not born yet. It is ingrained in Ethiopia

Those were the years that started to kill Ethiopia which can’t live without organized religion. When WPE declared none of it’s members could be religious, some of it’s own members couldn’t miss the 40/80 day marks of births of their children and traveled far and wide in disguise to get their newborns baptized in some remote churches. But again DERG believed the demonstrations at revolution squares it called at least three or four times a year all over Ethiopia were voluntary. Mengistu still mentions those as evidence of his mandate. HIZBU GILBITT BILO WETTA he says on his interviews often.

I can’t go into their heads but I believe higher education by itself and excelling in it is by no means a sign of good moral. Hitler had the best scientists of Germany testing how long a human being can last hanged upside down.

What was Kifle Wodajo thinking when he helped write this evil constitution that doesn’t exist in any other country in the world? Tamrat Layne said to Siyoum Teshome that he was only 39 when he became PM implying that he was a baby and didn’t know what he was doing. In the old days life expectancy was much lower than 39 to the down trodden and 35 is old enough to become president of USA if born here. Ababa-Mamush Tamrat Layne have done a lot of damage to Ethiopia whether his original name was Getachew Mamo of Oromo and a grandfather I forgot or not. They are all the same. They won’t break down and confess like he did but even that is no guarantee. Tamirat Aradaw picks and chooses and generalizes while evading direct hit questions before he agrees to give an interview. After all he was a baby at the age of 39. TPLF was the worst thing that happened to Ethiopia and makes DERG look like an angel. For DERG at least tried to defend Ethiopia but it took TPLF only weeks, literally, to declare how much it hated Ethiopia just b/c it wasn’t in absolute power anymore.

Albanian style communist mllt within the terrorist TPLF didn’t start at the university but at general Wingate boarding high school of five years. Height challenged near-dwarf pupil was one of the students in a volleyball game. Normally only tall kids opt for sports like volleyball and basketball. Only the kids of those days started school much later and were much older than today’s high school students. That short man was older than some of his teachers in ninth grade but thanks to his lack of height he looked too young to be there. He grew up being picked on at his village growing up. Not for his ‘bad looks’ but for the history of his grandfather and father. They were collaborators with fascist Italy during the five years occupation. Fascist Italy was so happy with them they had given the title Dejazmach which was revoked when the fallen flag rose up again. The pissed of father and grandfather blamed it on Haile Sellassie. “look at Asmara and how beautiful she has become now, if it wasn’t for that short amhara king, our village could’ve been the same” they would say often. Yohannes IV wasn’t exactly from their village and neither were the ancient kings like Sabagaddis. If the national hero Alula Aba Nega lived today he would be second class ‘Tegaru’ or ‘Tigraway’ just b/c he is from Tembien. ‘The crazy Ethiopians down south don’t know about purity of the blood. Look at that Menelik II, he might as well be from south sudan and yet they almost worship him.’

He was not a bad student but one day at HSU he received a B in Amharic but still made the grades to go to medical school. There was another Amharic 102 but he refused to take it. There was no Amharic in medical school in medical school. His professor told him he better took it now before he packed up and left to the center of town at the end of the academic year but he stubbornly refused. You know you’ll have to take the bus a few times a week from there? warned the professor. He never took that class b/c the revolution happened and he was suddenly in Asmara. His mother was born in Eritrea and he has claimed to be none-Tigrayan to dodge a cultural music and cultural show on parents’ day when he was at Wingate. To his defence he would’ve only ruined the show with his appearance. At medical school or at the main university campus he had tried his luck in becoming the student union president but had finished last. Not even close. And when he heard the results he blamed it on the amara students and their hate towards his ethnic identity. The newly elected president who beat him and the other candidates was from Tigray province and his name was Tilahun. Tilahun’s sister was a princess married to Prince Mekonnen Haile Sellassie.