By Dawit Fanta
Last February I read an article from www.feteh.com about the expulsion of more than 78,000 people from South Region (Feteh Newspaper Volume 5, No. 175, February 17, 2012, Page 15). It said the expulsion is a direct order from the president of the region for those who came to dwell in the region since the end of August 2007; and they must leave the region and go back where they came from without reparation. It is literally to mean “Internal Deportation with Confiscation”.
In fact, in the last 21 years of TPLF regime it is not a new experience to see the expulsion of Amhara people from different parts of the country. For example, two years ago I saw a mass of expelled people on the street of Addis Ababa and almost all were Amharas who had been expelled from Oromia region without reparation.
From the point of view that the autonomous of the regions are under a great influence of TPLF, the “Direct Order” of the puppet regional president is a cover story and I do believe that it is the extension of TPLF’s insidious war against the Amhara People.
Before we see the TPLF formula of Expulsion, let see what kind of grand crime it commited against the Amhara people in the name of National Census.
Data Massaging-The Silent WMD*of TPLF
In fact, data massaging is a kind of political manoeuvring tactic by which manipulating data for one’s advantage.
Throughout its two decade in power TPLF was using it for so many reasons. For example, a year ago Zenawi was arguing that the number of famine stricken people in Ethiopia was 6.5 million; however, the actual figure was around 13.5 million.
But most of all, the statistical decimation of the Amhara people was the significant one. Before we go through the full story, let’s see what looked like the attitude of TPLF towards the Amhara people during its infancy:
“……………..anti-Amhara propaganda was subtly encouraged within the movement. Cultural events, theatrical performances as well as jokes and derogatory remarks were used to disseminate this poisonous attitude. Fuelling some historical grudges perpetrated by the ruling classes, the Sibhat faction tried to cast doubt on the possibility of living in unity with ‘the Amhara’. While they stressed how Emperor Menelik’s army pillaged the property of Tigrian people during its Adwa campaign, the damage the same forces had also incurred on the Amhara or Agew peasants was intentionally ignored”.
/The above piece was excerpted from: A Political History of TPLF (1975-1991), doctoral thesis Amsterdam, 2008, by Aregawi Berhe (the purged but one of the founders of TPLF), Page 201/.
Since TPLF’s infant stage it was using historical revisionism to vilify and demonize the Amhara people owing to the assumption that the Amharas can be the immediate threat to jeopardize the execution of their ignoble plan. And we know that how much damage did TPLF inflict for the last 21 years on the assumption of “retaliatory abuse”; but among them the Statistical Decimation of millions of Amharas is the critical one in which its silent effect is intolerable.
In 2007 the population census report was made public. But contrary to the estimated 2.6% population growth rate which was based on the 1994 census and different demographic surveys carried out between the two period, the national growth rate was 2.51%; whereas, heretically and exceptionally the Amhara region population growth rate was disclosed 1.7%.
Here, there was no any fundamental economic transformation or any cataclysm that had taken place in the region to cause such sharp decline; rather the available demographic and socio-economic data showed the Amhara region was in the same status as the other regions were. So the paradox of 1.7% growth rate is a TPLF made Statistical Weapon of Mass Destruction to depopulate and deracinate the Amhara people from the Ethiopia political and socio-economic realm by cutting budget which would be equivalent to the decimated 2.4 million people and by reducing the number of representatives in the parliament so as to lessen the Amhara influence.
Expulsion- A Means to Impoverish Amharas
“Remove the firewood under the cooking pot” Sun-tzu (4th Century BC)
The arable land of the Amhara region is one of the over populated one, and because of the arable land policy of this despotic regime, land is a greater leverage to subdue farmers to EPRDF administration. So the only option they are left with for existence is to migrate to other regions. But once too often the TPLF regime keep silent until these migrant farmers are well organized, make family and have tenure. Right after they form a well established transplanted community, it adopts a proxy-decree to expel them with no reparation; as a result their tenure will be confiscated, their family thrown away to street life and they destined for absolute destitution.
Actually, it is part of the long-standing political conspiracy of TPLF to weaken and impoverish the Amharas in time.
* WMD-Weapons of Mass Destruction.
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