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The silence of Ethiopian People

By Teodros Kiros

Silence is enigmatic. Silence speaks without speaking, hears without hearing, and sees without seeing. On the surface these enigmas are contradictory. How can silence hear without hearing, and see without seeing?

Those contradictions are the essence of silence.

We cannot see silence seeing, nor can we hear it, hearing.

Silence is silent because it has heard; silence is silent because it has seen. Sometime silence sees too much and hears too much; that is when silence remains silent.

Ever since the historic voices of the people were heard and seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen and now Libya, the Ethiopian landscape is environed by silence. You must be wondering what the people are thinking, what the people must be saying. Keep on wondering, because have determined to remain silent, for they think that silent is golden, or they may be secretly listening to Fortuna, to that moody teacher of time.

There is wisdom in this silence, in this stillness of time, when the mind is at its most active condition, when the mind is thinking about when and how to act.

The Ethiopian people have seen without seeing, heard without hearing, but they remain steadfastly silent. Perhaps, they have seen and heard it all. Some are still mourning the deaths of their beloved first in the hands of the Derg and now in the hands of the existing Tyrannical/Oligarchy.

Do not let the silence of the people disturb you. Great actions are always preceded by long periods of reflection during the stillness of time, when time is borrowed by deliberation, by public reason.

10 thoughts on “The silence of Ethiopian People

  1. Thank you Tewdros for the explanation why our people are silent & the hope you injected in us one day they will rise & create hell on the Meles dictatorship.

  2. During Menlik time, he increase the tax and send spy to discover what the people say, the report was the people of Ethiopia where complaining about the task, then again increase for the second time and the respond form the spy was still complaining and again increase the task, the respond form the spy was now the people is quite so Menlik say I know what my people is thinking so he said please get rid of all the task which is increased.

  3. forget killing and brutality even with out that this government is
    long over due 20 years in power what is that people need a change
    it’s only in Ethiopia all over Africa in general need fundamental
    change in the Government.

  4. Silence is taken to be gold when it only comes to social matters but not in case of national soverngnity and inborn human rights freedom.

    If silence lay over across the land of Ethiopia it is the prominent signs/manifastation of lost generation breeding through out the country who could not protect their mother land as well as their own human rights.

    They are the worest ever generation in the history of Ethiopia. Rather they envisage seeking asylum in foreign countries abandoning their duty to stand for their country on their turn.

    They are born and grown in the land where millions of people who are honest and patriotic lost their precious life had died for the noble cause ‘Ethiopia First’ .

    And yet every one either in diaspora who needs to stay aside in case of Ethiopian politics for the sake of property at home and the other coward generation at home contributed alot for the survival of the tyrany in Addis and disintegration of our country one way or the other.

  5. It is expected matters to be quiet,in our case, before the people take thire case to the srtreets.This silence may speak about the thoropugh preparation taken,and the desire for the right moment.Prhaps we are saying once the Lybian case is off head line news ,then it is our turn.

  6. first comes the shock and the denal and then acceptance. it sounds like you are on the second stage. the thing is the people in ethiopia are not sure libya or egypt style revolution at a time when the opposition is so weak and divided is a good idea and you cant force them from washington DC.

  7. Unity and preparation is very important for the application of BROAD BASED and SUSTAINED mass uprising against the entrenched criminal human rights violating brutal dictatorship enslaving and exploiting the wretched country’s human and material resources.

    Democracy and justice for all is what we want here and now. The SHAMEFUL brutal era of medieval dictatorship in 21st century MUST END! And it can ONLY end by the active 21st century people’s power as the case of the current ongoing revolutions clearly indicate. People need to stand up and claim their nature given liberty, freedom and dignities as well as all the opportunities and goodies attached to them.

    The people need to deliberate, negotiate, think, organize, strategies, etc, just like a shrewd cunning fox but when it comes to implementation and action NEED to take the boldest and the strongest sustainable steps and onslaughts now NOT like the cunning fox alone BUT rather like the strongest decisive LION in order to go through any possible obstacles by all means possible.

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