YES, IT'S UNFAIR; BUT KEEP THE FAITH AND EMPOWER THE PEOPLE
(By Dr Tsegaye Ararssa)
Yestetday, Dr Tedros Adhanom was selected as the Director-General (DG)of the World Health Organization (WHO). Tacitly, the member states endorsed the Ethiopian regime that Tedros represented first as a Minister of Health and later as a Minister of Foreign Affairs. In so doing, it endorsed a repressive regime that killed, maimed, detained, dispossessed, displaced several thousands of Oromos and terrorized the whole country otherwise.
Dr Tedros has been a key figure in these hard times, times when all these unspeakable tragedies were caused by the regime's military and its special forces, the Agazi.
Dr Tedros was the chief apologist of the regime's abysmal human rights record in the last many years. As a Foreign Minister, he made it his duty to "buy" multimillion dollar lobbyists to help them cover up the human rights crisis by deceiving or mollifying the decision-makers in the powerful nations (Senators, Congressmen, MPs, Ministers, Commissioners, etc). He was one of the key figures that exploited the disaffection of the global south (esp of Africa) thereby giving them a false hope thereof to become their voice.
Dr Tedros oversaw many health (eg. cholera) and humanitarian (eg. famine) disasters as a Minister. He thus sanctioned unnecessary suffering and preventable deaths. He colluded with international pharmaceutical companies to conduct inhumane (trial) experiments on humans in Oromia and beyond.
His regime, run as an apartheid-like state that favored one ethnic group against the remaining 80, has perpetrated unspeakable suffering on millions of Oromos and millions more in the wider Ethiopia.
His regime, which is now ruling through terrorist tactics, is responsible not only for the thousands of killings, arbitrary arrests, and forced disappearances, but also for the rising tensions and impending conflicts in the entire horn of Africa.
Yesterday's selection was an act of deliberate neglect of this human suffering created at the local, national, and regional levels when the member states intentionally (mis)judged his records to "hope" that he will be the next head of the supposed carer of world health.
To those of us who came from the part of the world he had wreaked havoc on, the choice signalled the complicity of the international in the acts of injustice perpetrated at the national and local levels. We felt violated by the international as well as the national. We felt doubly repressed. And the choice of Dr Tedros signaled a conclusive statement that there is no hope of getting a fair hearing and/or achieving justice beyond the national borders.
The international once again conspired with the national to deliver an outcome that is against the interest of the people. The unjust orders of states (re)produced an unjust global result. Poor/Weak states who are placed in asymmetrical power relations with the supposed 'carers' of world health (aka profiteers of the international medical and pharmaceutical industrial complex) have "chosen" a candidate representing a repressive regime that oversaw several health disasters.
This event has demonstrated how the international process is rigged in favor of states (as opposed to the peoples thereof). This was also an event that showed us how the international can turn a deaf ear to the demands of peoples in whose name brutal political leaders pursue their personal ambitions in the international forum.
The international chose to side with the powerful fellows from a thoroughly unjust national system. The international chose to favor injustice.
The choice ignored the suffering of millions who, for decades, paid dearly under the genocidal Ethiopian regime.
Oromos and other Ethiopians from all walks of life resisted the appointment of Dr Tedros Adhanom as DG of WHO. Their voice of resistance was ignored as WHO defied all the evidence it was provided with, as it went on to defiantly choose Tedros for the position.
But our resistance will survive and outlast this DG and the injustice of WHO.
As a nation in resistance, we continue to fight for health justice in a fairer and generally more just world. Our resistance have survived many a repressive regime. It shall survive this DG.
The people--only the people--shall have the last laugh.
The resistance continues. We shall not relent. We shall not relax--until justice (health justice or otherwise) prevails.
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