Discovery of mass grave rocked TPLF warlords and shocked Ethiopians
January 1, 2014
The Horn Times Newsletter January 1, 2014
Report compiled by Getahune Bekele-South Africa
*Number of exhumed remains rising…
On Tuesday morning 31 December 2013, mortified Army chief-of-staff Gen Samora and Deputy PM D. Mekonen were spotted leaving the third battalion barracks, TPLF’s secret execution site for many years.
Despite the regime’s massive cover up campaign, intimidation and open threat of secondary mass grave for the accidentally exhumed corpses in order to avoid investigation or to conceal evidence of the mass murder; Ethiopians winced in terror when the news of the discovery of mass grave in Addis Ababa travelled across the vast nation exposing the savagery; atrocities and duplicity of the current ruling minority junta, – largely of Tigre coterie.
The gruesome discovery was made on Friday 27 December and Saturday 28 December 2013, between Sidist- Kilo and Ferensay- legasion areas at Jan-Meda, inside the barracks of the third army battalion when an excavator working for road expansion project pulled out two corpses wrapped in same color blankets and again another four corpses each wrapped in blankets of identical colors.
Eyewitnesses who got to the area and took the photos before the federal police cordoned off the vicinity told reporters that two of the corpses were still in hand-cuffs and one of the victims had his hands tied behind his back.
“I jumped into the ditch driven by emotion and although the remains were dismembered and co-mingled, I have counted four corpses on Saturday, all shot to the base of the skull. That is, as we all know a Bolshevik style execution practiced by the Stalinist TPLF warlords for years. These remains are undoubtedly victims of 22 years of TPLF repression and terror. The blankets, manufactured by the Debre Birhan blanket factory did not lose their original colors and labels. That indicates the executions were not carried out that long ago. ” A retired medical doctor living in Jan-Meda area of Addis Ababa told reporters, sobbing silently.
When contacted by an undercover reporter on January 1, 2014, the Debre Birhan blanket factory’s sales and customer service manager who gave his first name as Negasi, admitted supplying the correctional service authority of Ethiopia with more than 200,000 blankets similar both in color and design to those found in the mass grave in 2005, 2006 and 2007 financial years.
According to Negasi, the factory did so after legally won tenders.
The sales clerk’s admission is a damning proof beyond any reasonable doubt to journalists that the dead tyrant Meles Zenawi’s homicide squad known as the Agazit executed detainees and committed the war crime during the 2005 nation-wide anti TPLF insurrection.
“Well, grim reminders of the Meles Zenawi era, but how many more mass graves are we going to uncover in the coming years in this city purged by Tigre People Liberation Front with unparalleled audacity? It would be the biggest flagrant miscarriage of justice if the ICC chief prosecutor Madam Fatou B let the panicking TPLF warlords off the hook. It is incumbent up on her to send a team of investigators to Addis Ababa without any delay.
“ This blood curdling discovery has exposed the nation’s festering wounds and further complicated the dreadful ethnic fault line created by the ruling Tigre People Liberation Front/TPLF in May 1991. I personally know that then federal police boss; the snarling evil Workeneh Gebeyhu used the third infantry battalion compound as the headquarters of operations in 2005. He quit the post last year and where is he today? The nation is crying for justice.” A political analyst who is following events for the Horn Times from Addis Ababa explained.
“TPLF warlords thought they found a safe spot to store remains of the barbarically executed non-combatant, peaceful protesters. Mass grave right under the nose of the international community and the people of Ethiopia. This crime scene is full of the telltale fingerprints of the dead former ruler Meles Zenawi….” The political analyst added.
In addition, after getting fresh reports about the exhumation of more skeletons on Monday 30 December 2013, the Horn Times’ attempt to get comment from the junta’s top spin-doctor Shimeles Kemal regrettably proved unsuccessful. Moreover, as it is a norm in a totalitarian regime where the flow of information is government controlled, dreading being indicted for war crimes and extermination, not even ordinary federal police officials were willing to comment on this very sensitive matter with far- reaching consequences.
Currently, the army, using corrugated sheet has fenced off the killing spot. The public no longer observes the exhumation; hence, no one knows the exact numbers of corpuses recovered up to so far. According to a journalist the Horn times spoke to minutes before posting this piece, the Jan-Meda neighborhood remains tense with heavily armed federal police and the military manning several roadblocks in the area.
Shell-shocked residents nonetheless, are unanimous in their call on the ICC, the International Criminal Court to investigate the senseless genocide, a result of two decades of tempestuous minority junta rule in Ethiopia.
“Members of IAGS, International Association of Genocide Scholars, must rush to the crime scene to help with recovery and identification of the remains of possibly the 2005 election massacre victims, a dark chapter in our history.” Another resident of the area told the Horn Times reporter asking not to be named for security reasons.
Democracy has been a conglomeration of violence and brutal repression to the long-suffering people of Ethiopia. According to the opinions of several prominent Ethiopians, for the nation to move forward, western powers must disown the genocidal minority junta now and let justice take its course.
ethiopiantimes 