A B R U T A L M E R C I L E S S L O S S O F L I V E S

What promises to be a better, peaceful and prosperous new year, 2015 has shifted its passage of astral travel already causing brutal, to name a few, heartaches around the world.

The Islamic State militants in Libya cruelly shot and beheaded 30 Ethiopian Christians.
The Nigerian militant Islamist group Boko Haram continues to harm innocent citizens.
The Attacks against foreigners including Ethiopians continues to haunt in South Africa.
The sinking of boats full of refugees in the seas of Middle East is becoming like the Watergate mystery.

The rampant culture of racism among United States police is regurgitating the social injustices that have been crushed, chewed and cremated in the past.

The dangers of online dating with the unknown and family violence crimes are creating indecisive results for justice systems.  

The Israelis and Palestinians continue to play tug of war destroying the peace process, people and their infrastructures.

The mysterious vanishing of Indonesian and Malaysian airplanes in the eastern hemisphere without trace continues to puzzle the International Air Transport Association and International Civil Aviation Organization.

The Bali 9 tragedy which saddened a lot of people around the world finally laid to rest.

Indonesian president, Widodo, executed Australian duo, Chan and Sukumaran and 6 other death row inmates from different countries in a cold blooded draconian style law and order while the 9th Philippine’s woman received a last minute reprieve.

I felt the pain pounding in my heart thinking what it would also be like for the families and friends of those executed by a barbaric style firing squad.

With all the miscarriages of justices and corruptions in judiciary systems in Indonesia & around the world, fortunately, luck has been with some people for surviving the merciless decisions. Regrettably, luck was not on Bali Nine Australian duo and 6 inmates’ side and certainly I am convinced that their time was up and destined to die this way mainly as a result of their Karma.

Karma is a fundamental doctrine that all of our actions- mental, vocal and physical will have equal repercussions, affecting us. It’s the principle of cause & effect where our intent and actions influence our future. Good intent and good deed contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad intent and bad deed contribute to bad karma and future suffering.

It’s our actions, deeds and motives of the past, depending on its severity, that brought our harsh realities of incessant sufferings of today. 

We are mortal beings destined to go, in different circumstances good or bad, in an avoidable power like the source of a big torrential river grounded on our Karmic retribution. We can only redeem it in our present lifetime with good intentions and deeds for a very happy life in our next lifespan.   

Unfortunately, when our time is up nothing I mean nothing will save us. We all have seen people survive from unforeseen disasters like tsunami, bushfires, airplane crashes and so on, and tend to believe miracle and guardian angels are on their side.  

The truth is those survivors are not ready to pack up yet. Hey! I’m not talking about irrational wonder. This divine truth has been around since human evolution but we just haven’t been embracing it as a result of our varied upbringing and nurtured in a diverse spiritual choices. This may sound strange and new phenomenon to you but our life’s worth finding out more about the concept comprehensively without making overstatements or otherwise. We have the “Choice”.

However, this tragedy should be the day of awakening and whatever the cause maybe, good, bad, karma or else, the maximum punishments bestowed on human lives are excessive and unjustified and should be replaced with other forms of reprimands that can rehabilitate those honestly remorseful offenders.

They didn’t mean to bring anguish to their families and everyone around the world. Maybe they’re there to create a cause: telling the world that there still exist brutal injustices that need changing. They certainly caused huge impact of empathy reverberating in our nation and around the world that will bring change of hypocrisy, accountability and inequity.   

If offenders sincerely admit their youthful and stupid mistakes and asked you for forgiveness and mercy, what would you do?

As continuing track records of offences show, legitimizing death as a form of punishment to deter drug trafficking has never worked and lots of visiting innocent foreigners still keep falling victims of this brutal injustice. It’s very sad that this barbaric action would rather discourage more foreigners from visiting the beautiful Indonesian Isles thereby crippling its economy and human interactions.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo defiantly defends his reasons and appears to have rejected any clemency claims even before he reads each specific clemency petitions from death row inmates.

The president appeared inexperienced foreign policy diplomat who hasn’t anticipated the state of affairs that threatens to undermine Indonesian & Australian relations, a bilateral relationship far more important to Jakarta by ignoring an honest request for clemency of its citizens.

As for Widodo he will get his own remuneration as an effect of his deeds, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

It’s always a great occasion when nations decide to resolve their problems through diplomacy in a peaceful means of magnanimity, honesty, fairness, justice, and mutual benefits. Such great agreements are born out of strong principled presentations of each sovereign nation pursuing its national self-interest. Because of unpolarised interactions, national leaders will start to recognize the legitimacy of all well founded claims and concerns of each other as riparian conditions.

The exchange houses-diplomats are not to be used as rubberstamping institutions but as a functioning body to foresee and examine any requests, grievances, agreements, resolutions, treaties, even policies during the negotiations, ratifications and ultimately granting of the congenial decisions unconditionally.

This is a reminder to all countries who exchange diplomatic representatives such as embassies, consulates or any proxy agencies for their respective countries not as symbolic but must give assistance at a time of critical statuses and open to communicate effectively and fairly to listen to each other’s concerns and compromises to accommodate the interests in an harmonious and humane manner more specifically in a time of disaster and distress about their citizens.

I wish the Indonesian people and other present day law abiding countries to denounce the ‘out dated’ death penalty categorically and practice universal law to live with the global community humanely.

To those unsympathetic individuals who took an unlikely side because of offender’s ethnic backgrounds or filled with hate mongering biased moral judgement, must wake up to their consciousness to put “humanity before ethnicity” and practice the fundamental ethical principle of “treat others the way you want to be treated.” 

Finally, I send my deepest condolences to all the families of the executed, my warmest gratitude to the organizers of ‘We Stand For Mercy’ appeal, lawyers who indefatigably & effortlessly fought the injustice battle to the end and to those who took part in doing everything in this distressing, upsetting and heartbreaking epic journey.

 I hope 2015 finally ends on a very good and remarkable note.

Good bye & RIP 

OVERCOMING THE STATE OF NEW AGE BARBARISM

The group formerly established (by misguided & deceitful management? see video) as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) also known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) recently renamed itself simply as Islamic state (IS), to represent worldwide Muslim Community, is appearing ferociously inhuman than first thought.

                Truth in Media - The Origin of ISIS from GC on Vimeo.
 

They remain condemned and unrecognized to this today. Many mainstream Islamic and non-Islamic communities refusing to acknowledge IS and considered the group unrepresentative of Islam.

The group has been designated as terrorist organisations by the United Nations & many countries are directly instigating war against them

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They started their onslaughts by beheadings of soldiers, civilians, journalists and aid workers, as well as the deliberate destruction of monumental cultural heritage sites.

Now, they come up with a terrifying backwardness vengeance to crusade against Christians.

Recently dreadful news has been circulating around the world; this time IS is targeting Ethiopian Christians. Clearly, they must have run out of other justifications to turn their gun against their Christian fellow human beings.

Ethiopian authorities have finally confirmed 30 Ethiopians have been callously killed by IS extremists in Libya.
 

A song by Ethiopian Artist, Jacky Gossee, dedicated to Ethiopians killed by Islamic State in April 2015

The cold blooded execution of innocent Ethiopians by IS in Libya is heartless, horrible and absolutely against the teachings of Islam.

To the new generation’s young people whose opportunities are unlimited to succeed in anything they choose to do with the access of technology at their fingertips need to be extremely aware of the conundrums within it, their young and stupid identity augmenting their curiosity not to fall victims in the hands of IS or any radical organizations, which brutally carry out injustice against humanity, that will jeopardise their life.

This chilling fanaticism in the name of Islam against brotherhood of Christians is unsubstantiated and backwardness.

Come on IS! These acts of barbarity and primitive ideas of the crusade era won’t get you anywhere. You must find an ethical and vindicated reason for your resolution without killing unexpecting and uninvolved innocent people. 

 

We all understand the disparities and unfairness some of our Muslim brothers and sisters have to endure. The same is true for some Christian brothers and sisters but IS regrettably slaughtered amiable innocent Ethiopian migrants in search of peace, freedom and justice by instigating war on Christians.

Like all of us in the diaspora, those Ethiopians left home leaving everything behind and dispersed in every direction in search of all the opportunities that peaceful existence has to offer in an unknown distant country. Change, unfortunately, didn’t come as they anticipated for some fellow Ethiopians as they continue to suffer in the Middle East, Yemen and surprisingly subjected to discrimination assaults among our own bloodline in South Africa.

Opportunities in unknown distant countries have tremendously changed in the last two to three decades and apparently life has been harder for some previously migrated Diasporas everywhere for all sorts of reasons.

I hate to say but the truth will eventually emerge someday as more and more refugees mainly African origin, it seems, purposely dumped in the seas and an organized crimes have been committed by covertly sinking the refugee boats on their way to the imagined, “promise land”, better opportunities starting in Europe as a predominant destination.

        Ethiopian and Eritrean migrants on boat transporting from Libya to Italy

European countries can’t tolerate being a safe haven endlessly to the influx of refugees anymore as this continues to create all kinds of economic, political and social upheavals and imbalances with the already existing diaspora communities and its citizens. 

Now we have heard, seen and recognized all upsetting incidents thru all media hypes and the Ethiopian government’s guilty conscience pacification of 3 mourning days for the runaway peace seeking fallen victims, what do you think has to be done to stop this never ending brutal suffering?

An honest moral compass to transform our misfortunes ongoing in circles is to make an unconditional change in our own back yard. This may not be my areas of expertise but extensive life experience, my sense of right and wrong tells me that change starts with us (at home). Ethiopians need to change to create harmony among themselves and save our people from fleeing persecution to total destruction in the hands of a predator and Machiavelli. In addition, world communities need to take responsibility to defend its society from falling in the hands of terrorism in a concerted effort.

Above all, our leaders need to look at what worked and what did not and why. It appears that they were again finger pointing at each other for all the failures. None seemed to want to take the slightest responsibility for the letdowns.

Our political leaders do not seem to realize the importance of critical reflection and drawing lessons from past mistakes. Unfortunately, this trend seems to have been mainstreamed into the nexus of our culture. It is probably related to the failure of our institutions of higher learning in delivering and nurturing an intellectual nation that values competing models and views while promoting critical thinking. Such a culture has permeated all our social and political life.

Clinging to our established beliefs even in the face of contrary evidence, failing to identify real sources for our failings, failing to value the importance of doubt and scepticism in our thoughts and actions are only indicative of the failure of our educational institutions. We will never succeed in establishing participatory democracy until and unless we challenge this view openly.

This line of thinking encourages a fearful & reticent character which is adversarial to the democratic frame of mind. This is unacceptable, for it creates a roadblock to our collective search for democracy. Intimidating individual for offering a critique of an idea, action, or institution is an egregious violation of free speech, a quality vital in participatory democracy.

Let me be clear here that I do not blame the new generation or all the courageous young journalists who wanted to inform the public the truth thru the glass doors they grew in. They are products of a traditional society which is high in power distance, i.e., a culture that accepts inequality between leaders and the led, the elite and the common, the managers and the subordinates, the professors and the students, favouritism or partiality, nepotism instead of merit or competence, etc., etc.

Behaviours of all kinds that express such inequalities may be confused with humility or modesty or shyness culturally customary, prudence, and admiration that permeate our professional and social lives.

Let’s all be mindful, first we were divided as ethnic groups before we found our self-further polarised within our respective communities literally everywhere we look. Individuals with hard-line extreme views have held sway on our politics long enough leading us only to conflicts and failures, now it is time the forces of good from all sides of the divide start pulling in the same direction wisely focusing on the greater common good without dowelling much on the past. Our politics should move out of divisive cultures that characterised it for as long as we can remember by shunning the tendency of focusing on what makes us different since that approach has not only remained unproductive but also failed miserably and evidently as it stands out for the freedom it deprives and the refugees it produces. We have gone our separate ways with a great cost, yet any failure to chart a way of getting along constructively in any capacity either as people of one nation or as friendly neighbours is even likely to be at a much higher cost.

No words can describe the shock, grief, and compassion so many of us felt at the ruthless loss for the families and friends of those so inhumanely murdered Ethiopians. We owe our deepest condolences to them and utterly condemn these barbaric acts. I commend the diaspora Ethiopians for standing strong together as one Ethiopian family as we have always done irrespective of our religious differences to condemn the brutal suffering of Ethiopians wherever they are whether or not we share the same religion, ethnicity, political views, age, gender or any other characteristics.

We got it wrong once again and I beg to differ. I believe it is time to be free from the past and focus on humanity and citizenship rather than ethnicity. What brings us together is more powerful than what divides us.

It’s Time For Change that Ethiopians of every faith everywhere call out for our freedom and pursue the moral transformation of ourselves, our society and the government.
 

Ethiopia and its people will live together for ever!