Mereja Forum

[clear12]

በተለያየ ቲዎሪ ውስጥ አምልኮን ማስክ አድርጎ ሰዎች ላይ የሚጣበቅና የሚያስቸግር መንፈስ ከታች በተዘረዘሩት መልክ ሰዎች ላይ ጥቃት ያደርሳል:: አብዛኛውን ግዜ በኣገራችን አንደዚህ አይነት ችግሮች በግልጽና በሳይንሳዊ መልኩ ምንነቱና ማንነቱ የሚታወቅ ባለመሆኑ በቀላል ሊፈታ የሚችለው ችግራቸው በተገቢው መልኩ ቴራፒ(Self-help therapies) ስለማይሰጠው ተጠቂዎቹ ግለሰቦች ብዙ ችግር ውስጥ ሲወድቁ ይታያል:: ይህ video ይህንን ችግር በሰለጠነ መንገድ ለመፍታትና ለህዝባችን በአለም አቀፍ ደረጃ ተቀባይነት ያላቸውን መረጃዎች በማቅረብ ለማስተማር ታስቦ የተሰራ ነው:: - Information is Power!!

[Meret]

መልስህን የምታገኘው ዘመናዊ ነን ከሚሉ new age movement አምላኪ ቴራፒስቶች ከሆነ አንተም እራሱ እነሱን ከማምለክ ያውጣክ። ሰዎችን አትከተል መፅሐፍ
ቅዱስን በግልህ እያነበብክ ፀልይ።

[Wedi]

clear12

Read this book Negative Ethnicity - from bias to genocide 2003 by Koigi wa Wamwere

It is great book!!

Excerpt from the book

The Lost Lessons of Africa

I am down, and around me a big fire rages. Our village is razed and destroyed. There are screams every¬ where. People are running away but most, like me, cannot. They are hurt and down. I inhale smoke and smell burning flesh, food, and timber everywhere. I see a man coming with a flaming torch for burning houses and food stores, a spear to stab my heart and a sword to slit my throat and kill me as they have others. I think it is the end, but not yet.

Please, don't kill me, I plead with whatever breath I have left. We are Africans. We are brothers.
Without looking at me, he thrusts the spear into my side and cuts my throat. Die, die, you dirty louse, he says. I am not your brother. I am not your tribe.

Tasting blood in my mouth, I slide into unconsciousness with that word ringing—tribe, tribe— until the world falls silent. When I wake up, I am in the hospital, wrapped in bandages from head to foot. A Good Samaritan picked me up and brought me here. Several months later, I go to my village but it is no more. When I look where my house stood, there is another on the land that is no longer mine. Both the new house and the land now belong to him who tried to kill me. Because I am from another ethnic community I am evicted from my home and land and cleansed from the Rift Valley Province where anyone who is not Kalenjin is called a foreigner. I cry and ask, Why? No one answers.

John Mwangi of Rare farm in the Nakuru district of Kenya gave this account in 1998. Four years earlier, in Rwanda, ethnic hatred killed one million men, women, and children in a genocide that took only three short months to execute. Africa and the world were horrified, but the lesson of this tragedy, as so many others in Africa, was soon lost. In Africa, ethnic hatred continues to kill.

But ethnic hatred, this negative form of ethnicity, did not begin to kill African people yesterday. Since independence in the 1960s, at least five million Africans have died from civil war and strife they have created among themselves. Before the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, horrible massacres and genocides, many still in progress, were never acknowledged or have since been forgotten. For instance:

In Sudan, civil war has killed two million people since 1983. In Nigeria, in September, 1996, 10,000 to 30,000 Ibo people were massacred in the northern region and one million fled as refugees to the Ibo-dominated east. Non-Ibos were expelled from the eastern region.

By the time the Biafran war with Nigeria ended in 1967, two million people in the eastern region had died from war and related starvation and disease.
In Uganda, dictators Idi Amin, Obote, and Okello killed approximately 800,000 people between 1966 and 1986 for belonging to the wrong ethnic community and other cultural differences.

In Burundi, beginning in April, 1972, 200,000 majority Hutus were killed when minority Tutsis decided to eliminate all educated Hutus,- and since 1993, a nine-year civil war has killed another 200,000 people.

In Liberia, a civil war that broke out in 1989 killed 150,000 people and drove 1.1 million into exile out of a population of three million.

In Angola, the civil war that began in 1975 and ended in 2002 killed one million people and created four million refugees.

In Somalia an ongoing civil war that began in 1991 has killed more than a million people.

In Algeria, civil war has killed over 100,000 people since 1992.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a four-year war involving Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, Chad, Namibia, and Zimbabwe has killed 2.5 million people.

In Sierra Leone, more than 50,000 people have been killed and more than one million forced into exile in a ten-year civil war that started in 1991 and only recently ended. In South Africa, 20,000 black South Africans were killed in ethnic violence between 1985 and 1994 elections.

Researching the figures for the millions who have died as a result of negative ethnicity in Africa, I was often reminded of the atomic bomb. When it was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, it killed 100,000 people. When it was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, it killed 40,000 people. Nuclear weapons are feared today because of these massive death numbers. Yet Africa, which has no nuclear bombs and has never suffered a nuclear attack, has created its own weapon of mass destruction, one more powerful than the atomic, hydrogen, or neutron bombs: negative ethnicity. With it, Africa has killed, and continues to kill, millions of its own men, women, and children. While other nations develop bombs for self-defense, Africa's bomb of negative ethnicity is of its own making and blindly targeted at self- destruction.

Africa is fast dying. As I write, AIDS has killed eighteen million of us, and is killing 750 persons every day in Kenya alone. While Africans may not yet have the medical know¬ how to stop the AIDS holocaust, why not do something to stop the holocaust of negative ethnicity?

Rational people ought to avoid anything that kills them. As the Kenyan Gilcuyu proverb goes, hiti ndiheagwo keii— One does not give a human being to a hyena twice. So why do we continue to give millions to the hyena of negative ethnicity?

Another Gikuyu proverb runs, gutiri wirutaga na iwa ungi—Nobody learns from the pain of another. Yet the fire of negative ethnicity has burned Africans not once, not twice, but many times, and for a very long time. Why have Africans not learned from their own pain?

It makes me sad to see the government of Kenya playing with ethnic demonization, discrimination, war-mongering, and ethnic cleansing, as if Africa has not suffered enough genocides already. It makes me angry to see opposition politicians increasing their political support and negotiating power by fanning ethnic bias, suspicions, and fears, as if commission of the same crime by those in power is not enough. With African leaders turned into tribal chiefs and warlords, negative ethnicity has become an inescapable prison and grave for African people. It makes me nervous to see journalists, priests, academics, and most of our intellectuals who, rather than educate their communities in human equality, acceptance of others, and the interdependence of all, beat the drums of negative ethnicity on the march to elite privileges.

Despite its prevalence all over the world, negative ethnicity seems little understood in Africa or anywhere else. In April, 1998,1 met with the U.S. Black Congressional Caucus in Washington, D.C., to urge African-American representatives not to support or give money to the African dictators who are torching Africa and killing Africans. One congress¬ man, Donald Payne of New Jersey, told me that when he met with an African leader to ask him not to kill his own people, he was told, "Here in Africa, we have a big problem of ethnic conflicts. We need strong governments to put out these fires. You in America do not understand tribalism. Do not criticize us when we do what we must to save our people. Africa is not America. We need an iron hand to stop things falling apart."

I visited Payne several times to try to correct this misconception. I explained to him that African dictators foment negative ethnicity to keep the people weak, so that the dictator's power will not be challenged. "Strong governments" is a euphemism for despotic regimes. Eventually the congressman saw that Africa does not need dictators to fight negative ethnicity. Africa needs to rid itself of dictators and the ethnic hate they breed.
Despite the mountain of books and academic papers so far written on "ethnicity," the African-American congress¬ man is not alone in his ignorance of the correlation between dictators and ethnic conflict.

An African graduate of Cornell University was urged not to return home to his country while it was under the tight grip of negative ethnicity. He said that he would return because, as a professional who did not dabble in politics, negative ethnicity would leave him alone. A short while after his homecoming, he was dead, a victim of ethnic fighting. Had he cared to understand the virulence of the problem, he might have lived.

Today donors—Western creditors, that is—pour millions of dollars to revive economies that have been scorched by ethnic fires, only to see their investments go up in smoke, consumed by wars of negative ethnicity, the very monster many fostered and continue to enlist as their ally in the never-ending efforts to divide and subdue Africa. The United States, the UN, and others send their soldiers to Somalia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to put out ethnic fires without understanding their source. At times, as in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia in the mid-1990s, the United States and others have tried to use the same negative ethnicity to conquer and build new spheres of influence.

Educated people in Africa, Europe, and Asia see negative ethnicity ripping their countries and people apart, but many, including the dying victims, continue to cling to it. In the last decades the world celebrated the release of Nelson Mandela and the fall of white apartheid in South Africa. If not understood and stopped, negative ethnicity can engender and increase black apartheid across Africa, the way racism entrenched white apartheid in South Africa.

A glaring failure in academic studies of Africa today is rushing to write doctoral theses and postmortem analyses of genocide after it happens, showing absolutely no interest in these tragedies while they incubate. The genius of medicine does not lie in writing postmortem reports but in preventing human beings from dying. Equally, the challenge of scholar¬ ship should not be to write polished analyses of human tragedies like genocide but to understand and prevent a force like negative ethnicity before it strikes.

An old man once told me a story to teach me how the British colonialists sabotaged Kenya's struggle for independence: Among animals of many colors in the country of Olduvai, there were three bulls that always grazed together to avoid being attacked by lions. These three bulls were called Mr. Red, Mr. Black, and Mr. White. In the field where they grazed, there was a lion king called Mr. Sly. Mr. Sly, who lived alone, wanted to eat the three bulls but did not know how to kill them because they were always together. Then an idea came to him. Though they were all cattle, maybe he could use their differences in color to separate them. The first bulls he approached were Mr. Black and Mr. White:

How are you, Mr. Black and Mr. White}
We are absolutely fine, and you?

Equally fine, but I am very worried about your safety.
What do you mean?

Well, the other day, I visited some cousins of mine who revealed to me that they were thinking of eating you. They said they did not want to do this but were provoked to do so by Mr. Red.

How could Mr. Red possibly provoke your cousins to eat us?

They said that each time they see him, his red color reminds them of blood and when they remember blood they of course think of eating you. I suggest you stay away from Mr. Red, who is now a source of danger to both of you. This is just my friendly advice to you. But you do not have to take it.

Thank you, Mr. Sly. We appreciate your warning.

Thinking about this later, Mr. White and Mr. Black concluded that it was after all a good idea to keep Mr. Red away to avoid getting into trouble with the lions. And so they did.

The next day, Mr. Sly found Mr. Red alone and had no problem killing and eating him. When Mr. Black and Mr. White found out that Mr. Red had been killed by lions, they had no idea that it was Mr. Sly who was responsible.

Two days later, Mr. Sly paid Mr. White a visit when he was alone, several meters away from Mr. Black. When Mr. White saw Mr. Sly, the first thing he did was to thank him for the advice that had saved him from being eaten by lions. Mr. Sly said the advice was nothing he needed to be thanked for—it was the least a friend could do for another. Without raising his voice for Mr. Black to hear, Mr. Sly then told Mr. White:

And now I must give you another piece of useful advice that could save you from lions—if you agree to take it. I just overheard my cousins talking about how easy it is for them to spot you both during the day Because of the most conspicuous black color of Mr. Black, lions can see you from ten miles away during the day. If you want to be safe from my cousins, please separate yourself from Mr. Black. Graze alone and let him be eaten alone.
Mr. White thanked Mr. Sly as he walked away. From that moment on, Mr. White grazed away from Mr. Black. And soon, Mr. Sly found Mr. Black alone, and killed and ate him, leaving Mr. White all alone.

Two days after he had eaten Mr. Black, Mr. Sly found Mr. White and pounced, killed, and devoured him too, musing, One who eats alone dies alone.
I was born in 1949, in Kenya. Growing up, there was nothing I wanted more than to have a happy life. Subjugated by the discrimination and humiliation of British colonial racism, I dreamed of freedom, equality, justice, and happiness. Indeed, throughout my life, I have considered anyone who has stood in the way of my vision of a happy life an enemy, and anyone who has helped me come closer to the realization of a free happy life a friend. My dream has been the prayer as well of Kenya and all of Africa.

To attain our dream, Kenya had to fight for independence from the British in the Mau Mau war of national liberation from 1952 to 1958. The British had come to Kenya in 1885 and had been profiting ever since. They struck back with every weapon in their arsenal—including the well-known divide-and-rule tactic that took advantage of negative eth¬ nicity among the tribal communities that made up Kenya.

To defeat the British, Kenyans had to fight hard to main¬ tain unity among themselves. When we won our independence in 1963, this negative ethnicity had not been eliminat¬ ed. The arrival of the first president, Jomo Kenyatta, herald¬ ed neither freedom, nor justice, nor an end to oppression and exploitation. The struggle for total liberation continued, led by Kenyatta's vice president, Oginga Odinga, who was sup¬ ported by a large portion of our population.

As the opposition grew, it did not take long for Kenyatta to act as the British had before him. He resorted to negative ethnicity to divide and rule, and to prevent Kenyans of all ethnic communities from coming together against his dictatorship.

When I came of age, I had no doubt that Kenyatta's dictatorship and its ally, negative ethnicity, were harmful to our collective dream of a better Kenya. It did not take long for me to join the movement against both when I returned to Kenya after attending Cornell University in the United States. In 1974 I published an article in the Sunday Post of Kenya that castigated Kenyatta, who lashed back by throwing me into indefinite detention—imprisonment without charge or trial—where I stayed until he died, in 1978.

Kenyatta was hardly alone in perpetrating negative eth¬ nicity in Kenya. Before I was detained in 1975, the National Council of Churches of Kenya had denied me employment because I was a Mugikuyu (a Gikuyu person). In detention, non-Gikuyu detainees would accuse me of being a spy for Kenyatta, who was also a Mugikuyu, even though he had persecuted me exactly as he did them.

In 1978, Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin, became president and released many political prisoners. But he did not end dictatorship. To consolidate his rule and scatter his enemies, Moi pushed negative ethnicity to extremes that exceeded Kenyatta's. His form of ethnic apartheid peaked with the mass killing and eviction of opposition ethnic communities in the Rift Valley, in 1993 and 1998.

As Moi intensified negative ethnicity, I was called a foreigner in my home district of Nakuru in the Rift Valley Province. I had been elected to represent my district in Parliament, but for my personal security I was urged to surrender my political rights and the right to own a home. When I resisted in 1982, I was taken out of Parliament and detained, again indefinitely, without charge or trial. I was released in 1984, but because I was a Mugikuyu, elections were rigged against me in 1986 and I was threatened with death. That same year, I was driven into exile in Norway. In 1990, on a trip to Uganda, I was kidnapped by Kenyan security agents, brought back to Kenya and charged with treason. During my imprisonment, in the ethnic cleansing of 1992, my land was taken. After my release in 1993, I was rearrest¬ ed and imprisoned until the end of 1996 on a fabricated charge of robbery with violence. In 1998, I was once again driven into exile.

Meanwhile, negative ethnicity had instigated the genocide of one million Tutsis in Rwanda, ethnic apartheid against the majority Hutu in neighboring Burundi, and the collapse of Somalia under the weight and brutality of an ethnic war fought by the country's clans.

My childhood dream of a happy life in tatters, I wondered why we in Kenya could not stop gravitating toward ethnic genocide, apartheid, and state collapse despite the destruction that we had seen elsewhere in Africa. Were we stupid, bewitched, mad, or simply completely ignorant of our negative ethnicity, the deadly enemy that has repeatedly ham¬ strung us in our struggle against dictatorship? Was there absolutely nothing we could do to stop this killer ideology?

I decided to study how negative ethnicity works. I began to look at the most advanced cases of negative ethnicity in Africa to better understand what it could become in Kenya, and how it could destroy Kenya as well as other countries where it is escalating.

In writing this book I did not want to follow in the footsteps of those who had written about negative ethnicity as ethnicity, tribalism, or nationalism. Those particular studies look at the destruction, perpetrators, and victims of negative ethnicity from the outside. I wanted to write about the problem as an insider, a victim, someone else's ethnic enemy—indeed, sometimes my own community's ethnic traitor—one who lives, wrestles, and battles with negative ethnicity daily.

In this book, I deal with negative ethnicity not with cold academic neutrality and distance, but with hot anger at its savagery.