By Odaa Hora
Under the Geneva Convention of 1950 the POWs, Article 4:
Prisoners of War (POWs) were defined as the member of the armed forces of a party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming pacts of such armed forces. Members of crews, including masters, pilots, and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict.
Article 82
A prisoner of war shall be subject to the laws, regulations and orders in force in the armed forces of the Detaining Power; the Detaining Power shall be justified in taking judicial or disciplinary measures in respect of any offence committed by a prisoner of war against such laws, regulations or orders.
Article 84
A prisoner of war shall be tried only by a military court unless the existing laws of the Detaining Power expressly permit the civil courts to try a member of the armed forces of the Detaining Power in respect of the particular offence alleged to have been committed by the prisoner of war.
The official definition of a mercenary given by the revised Geneva Protocol of 1949 is “[a person] who is motivated to take part in hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain,” and who receives “…material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to [regular or local] combatant.”
At the end of the 1980s, the global political wind of changes was blowing in Europe, the Warsaw Pact and the leading USSR began collapsing day by day. The wind of changes blew in the right direction and brought a rain of liberty and Freedom to the Berlin to Latvia in Europe, and To Kazakhstan in Asia.
As a part of the World community on this blue planet, we the people from the horn of Africa region as it was called The People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia ruled by the military junta, Mengistu Haile Mariam ruled by Terror and horror for solid seventeen years dreamed of, by saying, metaphorical “If freedom rains in Eastern Europe, and within the USSR, it may shower for us in the Horn of Africa.”
While we have had a good reason to hope, it is unfortunate that hope did not hold for more than nine months. It turned out to a dead-born child. The wind of change for the people incarcerated in one of the primitive, barbaric, predatory Abyssinian Empire blew in the wrong direction. It blew against us, back to the past in its worst form. Monster one The military junta, Mengistu Haile Mariam was replaced by another monster from the same school of ML ideological indoctrination.
Mengistu Haile Mariam was popularly known in folk’s mouth within the empire as the father of red terror a prayer of his three prophets M-E-L and, the son of Leonid Brezhnev and absolutely dependent on the Soviet Union throughout his tyrannical solid seventeen years rule.
At this junction of history, the last secretary general of the USSR, M.Gorvachev shift the paradigms his predecessor’s relationship of the Soviet Union and Mengistu’s Ethiopia and rejected the provision of MiGS, MI-helicopter gunships, Tanks, Kalashnikovs, the extension of the contracts of what so ever assistance. That was not just a slap in the face of Mengistu, but it was also the final hour of a dead man walking to its graveyard.
M.Gorvachev also counseled him to negotiate with the rebels who have already possessed the upper hand in the front lines cracked down his troops brick by brick. Mengistu rejected Gorbachev’s proposal even cursed him by calling as revisionist.
As an insult, vilification of the others who question the warlords, tyrants who come to power at gunpoint in the empire are a traditional heritage. Mengistu called all people’s liberation fronts “the disorganized bandits who dream to thorn apart his “አንድት ኢትዮዽያ” the empire.
As it has always been and self-pontification, grandiosity, bravery was /is a chronical cultural disease transmitted from one to the other tyrant we took power, and Mengistu cannot be otherwise, instead of coping the fact on the soil, first he scapegoated his generals as the causes of the losing battles of his troops day by day and blamed them that they have incorporated with the rebels whom they were supposed to fight and win.
He said I proclaimed the campaign of “everything to the war front! Mobilized all resources, man, and women of the country to combat the bandits and secessionists until one man left. Instead of fighting for the oneness “እናት ሀገር”, “Motherland,” you have sabotaged the war and plotted a planned coup against him and you want to take the power but could not get it by any means. He cursed them ordered to be Marshall courted and finally executed eleven Generals he stationed in Eretria and Tigray.
He made an attempt to save the empire and renewed the relationships with another traditional old friend of the empire, the Israelis and continued biting empty redundant propaganda drums that in fact could not save him from collapse and flight.
Without going to the remote past over centuries of the rule of Abyssinians (mainly Amhara and Tigre) Warlords, despotic monarchy, seventeen years of tyrannical rule of Mengistu were on collapse day by day. His soldiers many of them peasant conscripts, forcibly recruits who were lured away from their villages do not even know why for, they are dying in the deserts of Tigray and Eretria far away from their villages who were demoralized, and disorganized and let alone to fight and win the battle. They were defeated and captured and Mengistu was forced to flee to Zimbabwe out of the empire to save his neck in the final hours orchestrated by the USA.
Monster one was substituted for Monster two and now called Meles Zenawi, again under the auspices of the ambassador of the USA, Herman Cohen. The acts of the replacement of monster two trivially, in political jargon called “soft landing.” a misnomer by itself.
It was based on the USA policy of the establishment of clientelism in the Horn of Africa that they lost for the last two decades by Soviets and disregards of the over centuries of deep-rooted socio-political and economic grievances of the house of prison called “Ethiopia” from God forgotten barbaric Abyssinian Empire ruled by the aliens of the north, and the naivety, anathema and the arrogance of the white house administration in the region and breeding of tyrants in the African content as a whole and Abyssinia special.
What was left for the people resides in this prison house and the region as a whole was nothing, except biting their lips and waiting what does tomorrow brings, and survive to witness the real face of monster two who was brought to the grip of the political power?
What was known for granted about monster two was that his real name was Leggesee who adapted the name Meles, born in Adaw. He went to the Dedebit desert to liberate Tigray, one of the poorest province suffering from chronic hunger and famine blamed as a long-planned and executed policy of the Amhara rules since Sahle Maryam “Menelik II.”
His personality as it was said by his comrades in rebellion period in Tigray desert, he was a chauvinist, narcissist, power–geared, selfish, cold-blooded killer, mischievous, intriguer, with forked tongue and misdeeds. More importantly, he was politically branded Stalin admirer, prayer, and practitioner that indeed enabled him to capture the leadership’s post of the TPLF finally 1988. He considered the post–Stalin Soviet Union as “social-imperialist” and preferred the Albanian model of socialism.
POWs AND MERCENARIES: ALL IN ONE
As it was known as the longest-running civil war in the African continent, a battle almost three decades old, being waged between Eritrean rebels, who want independence from Ethiopian colonialism. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, the military junta followed the footsteps and the policy of the despotic monarchy in relation to Eretria, and the oneness of Ethiopia or death “ አንድት ኢትዮጵያ ወይም ሞት.”
He stationed forces thought to number 230,000 men of his army backed by almost as many militias in Eritrea alone. After decades of war and devastation, Mengistu’s army was defeated in Eretria and Tigray.
As a result, it was estimated that over 350,000-member army was captured and treated as POWs. Among them, about 140,000 Soldiers in Tigray and Eretria escaped to Sudan. While Eretria wanted to return the POWs captured by EPLF under auspices of the International Commission of the Red Cross.
The TPLF whose initial preamble and struggle were for the liberation of Tigray, who made a U turned in its final phase, from liberator of Tigray to the invader and occupier of the empire to the whole south from Tigray proper. To accomplish the task, the TPLF created a satellite umbrella organization and packed in one bag under the name of the “Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Fronts (EPRDF) infused with EPDM.
Within the bag of “EPRDF” new invented political parties prefixed with all the-national names incarcerated within the empire designated, the?Peoples Democratic Organizations (?PDOs), such as OPDO for Oromos, SPDO for Sidamas, etc., out of all captured POWs deployed in the north with the core TPLFs as the master and the commander in the list.
The captured POWs of Mengistu’s troops by TPLF and EPLF deployed in the northern regions of the empire were not brought to justice according to the Geneva Convention for the crimes they committed for decades of bombardments, massacres of innocent civilians they committed in each and every village of Tigray and Eretria. Instead, they were converted to be an ally and baptized by TPLF and packed in one bag to conquer the south. One must keep in mind that these were the best-trained army troops of the Mengistu regime stationed in the north whose names were self-explanatory, such as the so-called “ናደው”, “Nadew” means, destroy, crack troops, etc.
While the core TPLF-rebels were a set of illiterate young Tigran peasantry trained guerrilla militias, who knew nothing about the south except rich resources. They speak only their mother tongue, Tigran language that was spoken only in the far north, in Tigray and Eretria.
They were/are strangers to the people of the south in all instances even to the flora, the fauna and nature of south as a whole. One can consider them, metaphorical as in a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that does not exist.
The Empire established obligate predatory-prey relationships since the establishment of the Abyssinia Empire by their grandfathers that holds true to the very date. To maintain this inherited status quo the new TPLF-brigands in desperately need these conglomerates of POWs-PDOs who can guide the blind men to the center of the empire, and the land of Milk, Meat, Bread, Honey, Coffee, Tea, Gold, Silver, lists without limits in the empire.
In other words, the move to the garden of Aden, the road to heaven, to the richest part of the empire from the heel of Tigray deserts, the invention and the establishment of the new PDOs by TPLF under the garb clad with EPRDF was a calculated En passant to invade, conquer and occupy the south under the mentor of the core TPLF-brigands.
It was known that the population of Tigray alleged that the TPLF represented were about 2.5 million (ca. 5 %) out of estimated 50 million people incarcerated in the Abyssinia Empire in the 1990s. Thus, without POWs; the mercenaries, the TPLF-bandits would have gone back to Tigray, from where they come, as they come, and with what they come without a shadow of a doubt.
They also knew that there are formidable people’s liberations fronts older than TPLF, such as the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the Sidama Liberation Front (SLF), the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the Afar Liberation Front (ALF), etc. whose people survived the eliminations policies of the aliens of the north(Amharas and Tigre mainly) and suffered over centuries, demands self-determination, and decolonization of the empire.
They fought against Mengistu regime side by side in their corresponding regions within the empire. The Tigrayans also knew their popularity, belovedness within their own people, and that they are the hope of the liberation of their nation from the yoke of one of the primitive, barbaric and predatory Abyssinian Empire on this planet.
In fact, that was precisely what the tyrants of Dedebit had destined to witness within that tiny, nine-month period of their occupation of Finfinne in 1991 in the so-called the period of transition from tyranny to democracy in speeches and writings. Indeed it turned back to the worst tyranny as in the past. Fascism took hold to maintain and consolidate absolute power, in one man and one part hand and controlled the empire from Finfinnee to the peripheries as their fathers and grandfather suited to the contemporary global terms and slogans once they sat tall in the saddle of politics of the empire.
As the TPLF lead troop reached Oromia they were, in fact, strangers, and further invaders of the aliens of the north who looks like a zombie, a dead man walking, whose ribs can be counted, and the gun they carry seems heavier than themselves. The historical phenomenon recalled back the memories of the Oromo people and the entire south the era of Menelik-Yohannis period of colonization and aggrandizement of the south and the police of eliminations, grotesque acts of crimes against humanity, commitments of genocides and ethnocides by Neftegnas “gun-carriers” the dogs of wars.
In fact, the TPLF followed their grandfather’s footsteps and practiced it in face value, substituted by now called the “tribes of Yohannes,” and Emmiyee (Mother) Menelik was at least left for the Amharas, in fact, both of them cut from the same cloth.
It was/is an open secret that the TPLF clan will employ and deploy their breeded POWs, dogs of wars, the mercenaries to serve as the loyal guardians of the hidden agenda of the core TPLFs once absolute power is consolidated in their hand in the south
The grand plan policies of elimination of the indigenous people from their ancestral soil, committing genocides and ethnocides, to acquire their lands, to lease it, to exploit the rich natural resources, agricultural products; cash crops like Coffee, Tea, Chat, flower, the lists have no limits will be executed by implementing all the cruelest tactics and tools of repressions and evictions.
These plans are the major tasks to be accomplished by the new PDOs, mercenarism as the labor of their division under the command of the TPLF armed gangs “Generals” and militias. Right after sitting tall on the saddle of the political power, the TPLF-gangs deployed their dogs of wars under the mantra of “Revolutionary Democracy” “ህዝባዊ አደራ” similar to Meneliks “ሀገር ማቅናት” both meant Elimination of the formidable forces and the people, to be ruled and consolidate power in one man, one part hand as it has allows been in the history of the poorest and barbaric empire.
The people in this house of prison knew nothing except famine, war, forced displacement, flight, terror and horror, ruled by tyrants one after the other. The atrocities, mass murders, mass arrests, torture evictions, rapes, looting etc., turned their major accomplishments enshrined in the regime’s apartheid system since her establishment that strengthened its brute from year to years in every region.
The TPLF-clan maintained consolidate and cling into power by the command post for day one of their occupation of Finfinne, the last solid twenty-eight years to the very minute. Those placeholders who were /are titled to televise for public consumption were/are all mercenaries transformed from the POWs to PDOs painted such as Oromo, Sidama, Afar, Somalia etc, to serve as vassals the fascistic regime lead by the core TPLF-Brigands.
What the world had destined to witness after Irreechaa massacre and declared a state of emergency is nothing but the extensions of the policies of Fascism they deployed since their arrival to the Finfinnee highland. Some facts and figures may shed more light on the subject.
Oromia and the Oromos were/are the primary targets of the aliens of the north since history in recording and the occupation. Thus, the atrocities and massacres of TPLF began right on the way to Finfinnee to the heart and the soul of Oromia and the Oromo people in 1991 and increased exponentially from years to years in all compass of the direction of the borders of Oromia and her neighbors to the very hour.
Massacres of Oromo’s in western Oromia committee in eastern Waalaga region in 2008, the Irreecha Massacre, 2016, the war of elimination of that is going on in the eastern and southern and northern Oromia and the millions displaced from their ancestral soil right now.
The Looqee massacre of May 1992, where peaceful protestors of Sidama people from a ten-year-old boy to the elderlies were slaughtered indiscriminately, and their dead bodies were eaten by Hyena, hundreds of innocent civilians were harassed, and imprisoned.
The Wardheer massacres of the Ogaden people in 1994. The mass killings and brutal murder of The Anyuak people in Gambella in January 2016 orchestrated by the TPLF regimes local puppet.
In comparison to the atrocities that the tyrannical regime committed and committing in daylight and in darkness on the soil since the fascist TPLF regime has catapulted into the political saddle the enlisted cases of crimes against humanity within the empire are tips of the Icebergs.
The challenging question to find out the correct answers, when it comes to the relationships of the TPLF-Fascist regime and the people in this prison house is not where and when did they commit genocide and ethnocide, but where and when did not they committed genocides and ethnocides, since they grip the political power for the last solid twenty-seven plus years of tyranny in the empire and beyond.
It must be taken for granted that the TPLF-fascists regime by itself is a mercenary enterprise motivated in exploitations of the south and enriching the ruling cabal i.e. political elites, bureaucrats, reckless military personals and their place of birth by committing mercenary crime, murder for profit, killing for money, the desire and greed for ill-gotten gains were both non-violence and violence mercenary crimes overlap.
The highly significant lawlessness, corruption of the TPLF-fascists also taken for granted, the crime against humanity, genocides continued and remained profitable regimes induced employment. Of old, it has been said that “the love of money is the root evil.”
Serving as an armed personnel in the Abyssinian empire as it has always been meaning recruited to protect the ruling cabal and their corresponding institutionalized socio-political-and economic apparatus.They were/are always the vanguards of regimes politics in the history of the empire.
The assumption and the propaganda machines of the ruling cabals of Abyssinians on twenty four–seven (24X7) that gun-carries as the vanguards and the security of their own people, sovereignty,Oneness the empire, protectors of the civilization i.e. 3000 years old etc. that was /is in fact a best myth tools effectively deployed to security mercenaries: murders,the dog of wars for money that could not even buy breed for their life.
In other words, the enterprise of warriors and war machines were /are the property of the regimes one overtaking over the other at gunpoint since the establishment of the empire, ruled by the aliens of the north to the very date and remind profitably.
It was also known that armed personnel who questions the regimes policies, employment, and deployment and attempted to serve their people as they sworn, speaks peoples language and brave enough to reject the commands of the tyrants were /are jailed dehumanized, cursed, and in worst case executed as betrayals, saboteurs, coup plotters, etc.
The current unfolded events on the Oromia soil, as a result of the dynamics of the struggle of total liberation of Oromia shock and knocked the doors of the TPLF-fascists and their mercenaries, the dogs of wars, the PDOs proved their loyalty again and again and reaffirmed their preparedness to die for their masters to the last day of their life.
There will be no best teacher as time itself, for those who maintain healthy brain-mind in one socitey that can think, investigative, interrogative, analysis and ferret out the truth and purify it from its debris, from lies, fraud, gambling and from all non violent crimes of the conglomerates of mercinaries packed with this the prison house called”Parlament” of the empire in defacto a “Kindergarden” per se, I granted to vote for the renewal of the extension of the commitments of genoicde and eliminations policies enshrined in TPLF-Fascists policy since they were brought to the political power, and thier foot holds Finfinne called the State Of Emergency (SOE) relentlessly.
The favored flatters, the wicked, submissive ones clad with the garb of Oromo whom the tyrant regime intentionally selected vassals to commit covert and overt actions from within the Oromo people were caught redhanded in dong dirty works, misdeeds, fraud, lies, and mischievous acts in front of global eyes.
What we have destined to witness just two weeks ago, a litmus test, in the so-called parliamentary vote to approve an extension of SOE to re-legitimize the absolute power to gun carriers: the dogs of wars and to continue committing genocides in broader mass. The world has seen a member of the “Parlama” rising his two hands simultaneously to vote for the resolution, similar to a criminal caught red-handed by a policeman and ordered! Raise your hands up in the air! before you shot dead!
Time also proved that the other, at most half of them whom the liberation struggle for dismantling the fascist regime lead by Qeerroo-Qaarree and the Oromo people within the prison house liberated their mind and were able to say BIG NO once in their life and joined their peoples genuine liberation struggle for whom heroes and heroines sacrificed and are sacrificing their life right within this minute in entire Oromia.
The game of gambling, fraud, hypocrisy, and self-profiling on the name Oromo whomever, we are, where ever we are, and for whatever motivation we performed, the detectable duality works within Oromos is a snow from yesterday.
It could be wise either to join the genuine liberation struggle which has no Ifs, ands, or buts or better cloth mouth on the subject. A man who lies to himself and believes his own lies become unable to recognize the truth, either in himself or in anyone else and he ends up losing respect for himself as well as for others when the tyrannical regime is universally condemned on the global stage.
The genuine people’s liberation fronts heroes and heroines did not sacrifice their lives and sacrificing their life not repair one of the most primitive and barbaric empire in the planet, but to digest, crack down the deep-rooted rotten subhuman system. Taken for granted there no repaired empire in the human historical recordings.
Empires died out with the same tool they were established and sustained, and that is the law of the nature of empire, and no one above the law of nature let alone the dependent, the poorest and predatory empire of Abyssinia, the burden of the vast majority of the people incarcerated within it yet.
We must always keep in mind, that empires began to die from the day they were born, the question is then not how but when, let alone one of the poorest and barbaric degenerating empire of called Ethiopia that attempts to buy days and weeks by deploying the mercenaries, the PDOs the dogs of wars, killing for money, do anything for money they get out of it. As our elders say:Sareen abba guddise hinyattuu: when translated Dog never bite his Owner or Master.
When the fascist regime implements his elimination policies, again and again, continues the commitment of genocide officially in each and every angle of Oromia and beyond. We the people have a natural right, an obligation to survive first and then to live us, global citizen.We have an absolute and natural right to defend our selves with all possible means necessary to achieve the scared goal of Liberation.
INJIFATNOON KAN UUMATA OROMOOTI!!!!!!!
For more visit https://oromolands.blogspot.com/
Two leading candidates to become Ethiopian Prime Minister are Lemma Megersa and Abiy Ahmed of the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), an Oromo branch of the ruling party. Other than being Oromos, nobody can provide an experience or merit-based case for both candidates. Lemma was infamous for his controversial decision in 2017, banning ethnic Somali students from schools inside Oromia. Meanwhile, Abiy Ahmed helped spread TPLF’s spy program and he is a chronic self-promoter, who is famous for allegedly interviewing himself and editing his own Wikipedia page. One of the excuses thrown around for appointing Lemma or Abiy as PM has been to “finally” have an Oromo leader for the first time ever, as falsely claimed by foreign reporters who are not aware of Ethiopian history. Unfortunately, thanks to recent vile ethnic politics, many outside journalists do not know that both Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II (Oromo mother) and Emperor Haile Selassie were mixed-Oromos.
