Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
December 30, 2006
Open Letter to UN Secretary Kofi Annan- African Union headquarters must be removed from Addis Ababa now!
A few hours before being replaced by his elected successor, Kofi Annan should live a memory flash back, and remembering his African identity, utterly pronounce the African name that became synonym for “Hope of the Oppressed”, the name of the Oromo Capital: Finfinne
By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
Your Excellency,
Your tenure as first Black African UN Secretary General was not what many Africans had hoped!
You know that very well, as in your Farewell Address (September 19) explicitly declared that “widespread contempt for Human Rights and the rule of law” can be identified as a major threat for the future of the mankind. Your frank attitude suggests that you are able to take criticism, and eventually ponder on significant issues without being tied to preconceived schemes, falsifying theories, colonial biases and demented tyrants' political agendas.
You identified problems in a correct way, but many would expect you to be more sensitive – or more involved – when it comes to African issues.
I am writing to you as a European scholar, who rejected colonial theories made in Europe, and published for long scholarly articles, books, features and other contributions to the world mass media, promoting thoroughly balanced, Afro-centric interpretations.
Many things could have been done about Africa during your 10-year tenure, but actually were not! Before setting a plan for an African future, the utmost denunciation of the shameful past must be solemnly performed. How could one expect the Black African progress, if not by adopting the frank attitude that you, Excellency, have made yours?
Colonialism must be denounced as a Criminal Act Against the Mankind. Yet, as you know, the Durban Conference failed to speak as openly as you would have eventually wished. The condemnation of the two cruelest colonial empires, the French and the British, was averted because of disreputable work carried out by the bogus-humanist diplomats of France and England. With America, India, Mexico and Brazil having not yet risen to full national adulthood, the world should wait some more years until the correct anti-colonial alliance be made. Perhaps, one should interpret the September 11th events as an Omen Ominous for a devious international society that falls short of all basic humanist expectations and obligations.
What has been the most criminal part within the entire construction of colonial powers is the colonial theoretical background and system; as such it emanates from an aberration of purely racist character, namely the false assumption that the European past (Greek and Roman, mainly) was superior to that of the colonized peoples of Africa and Asia. No other academic conclusion could be more distorted than this one! There is nothing more erroneous than the European falsehood that Ancient Greece and Rome, Achaean Mycenae and Minoan Crete were formed without the determinant and decisive contribution and involvement of the great ancient Oriental civilizations, Hittite Anatolian, Canaanite – Phoenician, Assyrian – Babylonian, and Egyptian.
Denying historical truth for the sake of racist concepts cannot be tolerated anymore; it consists in a real prelude to cultural racism, political discrimination, tyranny.
As this nefarious situation cannot be maintained anymore from the part of European colonials, the isolated case of the only African colonial power must be dealt with immediately.
When Europeans see Africans adopting your frank attitude, Excellency, among themselves, then they will realize that the extent and the importance of the event; only then, esteem and consideration for Africans will lead the colonial powers to ultimate regret and public acceptance of past mistakes and wrong policies. It will happen naturally, without anyone demanding them to proceed so anymore!
Yet, you have a possible means of triggering events and developments that will go to the correct direction in this regard. One day before leaving your office, you can address a solemn Speech for Justice and Equity throughout Africa.
Say that if Respect for the other's right is not duly paid, there is no future for Africa!
Say that if Africans are left to colonize and preserve colonial rule over Africans, there is no hope for any African!
Say that if Cultural Colonialism is practiced by an African Nation against another African Nation, there will be no peace throughout the Black Continent!
Denounce the Worst African Theft of All Times: the usurpation of the name of Ethiopia by the Abyssinian Amhara/Tigray tyrants.
Stigmatize the Worst African Crime of All Times; the abolition of the Historical Name of Finfinne, Capital of the Ethiopian Oromos, and its replacement by the false and shameful name 'addis ababa' that was imposed by the Abyssinian Amhara/Tigray tyrants.
Criticize as openly and frankly as you truly know, Excellency, the Abyssinian Amhara/Tigray Colonial propaganda, and urge its immediate dismantlement.
The Absolute Clash between Ethiopian Oromos and Abyssinian Amhara/Tigray
The cultural clash between the Kushitic Oromos and the Semitic Amhara is so deep that the Amhara tyrannical minority of Abyssinia has to reinvent every now and then myths, bogus-historical interpretations, and desperate, ill-fated dogmas of official versions of Abyssinian History that are imposed at the level of Primary and Secondary education of this highly analphabetic country. In reality, there is not a single bond – be it ethnic, linguistic, historical, social-behavioral or cultural – to keep the Kushitic Oromos and the Semitic Amhara together in a country called either Abyssinia or Ethiopia.
Abyssinian – Amhara – culture is the expression of the Semitic people that dwells in the limited, marginal, mountainous area of Gondar around Lake Tana. The Christian Abyssinian kingdom of Axum pursued expansionist policies in the very beginning, invaded Ethiopia, that is present day Sudan, in 370 CE and destroyed its capital Meroe, where still today one finds many dozens of pyramids and mortuary temples for the 'Qore' and the 'Kandake", the Ethiopian kings and Queens.
Later and within the context of an alliance with the Eastern Roman Empire, Axumite Abyssinia attacked Yemen and attempted to find a way for its ally at Constantinople to contravene the Sassanid Iranian control of the Eastern trade (with India, Eastern Africa, and China). Of course, the Iranian supremacy was such that they kicked the Abyssinians out of Yemen, the Abyssinians’ original land to which they had returned as invaders, and annexed Yemen, strangling therefore the Eastern Roman Empire with heavy taxes and customs. Soon after that came the Islamic explosion. Not only Axum lost all its chances to come back to Yemen, but the Eritrean coast was permanently cut off, and the Abyssinian state was isolated from its derailed ally at Constantinople that had lost all its provinces in Africa and all its Asiatic possessions at the east of Taurus mountains (that separate Anatolia, present day Turkey, from Syria) and the upper flow of Euphrates.
To address the situation, the also isolated Christian kingdoms of the Sudan, Nobatia, at the North with capital at Faras near Wadi Halfa, and Makkuria at the center with capital at Old Dongola, 600 km in the south of Faras, merged. They were able to survive without many contacts with the Caliphate that controlled Egypt – first, in the 7th c., not further than Assiut in the south, and without any control of the Red Sea; the Saharan roads of trade with the Western Africa world around river Niger permitted unified Nobatia /Makkuria to stand until the 12th century. Contrarily to the Sudanese Christian state, Axum collapsed, since the vicinity of the coast, the Islamic supremacy in the coast, and the lack of connection with other parts of Africa predestined it to be doomed for many long centuries.
The transfer of the capital at Gondar, and the medieval rise of the Abyssinian kingdom came after a long period of decay. Even then the feeling of having lost to Islam, and of having been defeated and isolated, as the Western legend of the 'kingdom of Priest John' lets us surmise, created a cultural, behavioral system that has nothing to do with imperial behavior, abundance, knowledge, science, exploration, expansion, research, culture, wealthy life, spectacles, grandeur of art and of royal manners, and all the ensuing majestic environment.
Axum and Gondar Abyssinia was focused on a mere survival, a hard effort to preserve as a hysterical opposition to Islam the monophysitic perception of Christianity that was rejected by Constantinople and Rome with the same vigor by which also Nestorianism (the diametrically opposed to Monophysitism Christian theology) was denounced.
The conversion of numerous Abyssinians into Islam brought a long period of obscurantism and backward situation in the country. Most probably the outright majority of the intellectuals and artists, erudite scholars and learned wise men adhered to Islam early. It is quite indicative that, when the illustrious Caliph Maamun contacted kings throughout the world in the second half of the 8th century, in his particular effort to collect manuscripts and parchmins, and to make of Abbasid Baghdad the universal epicenter of the learned world, he did not contact anyone in Abyssinia. There was nothing important left there! By saying this, one does not imply that Gueze literature is insignificant, but asserts that the most representative specimens had already been taken away from Axum by the Abyssinian intellectuals who were converted to Islam.
There was no domain of knowledge left in the tiny state of Abyssinia after the rise of Islam. What were left there were a limited political continuity, and an insistence on religious traditions that had been shaken by the explosion of Islam, and by the conversion of many Abyssinians to the faith that challenged Christianity.
It is obvious that the state of Abyssinia, controlled by the Semitic Amhara and Tigray, needs to end up this cultural clash, and on this purpose they permanently come up with confusing interpretational schemes according to which the Kushitic Oromos and the Semitic Amharas may be …. 'one people'!
Typical propaganda and bogus-historical dogma stipulate that "few Amharas have no trace of Oromo or other African people", insist on that "the Amhara 16th century emperors in Gondar are rumored to have Oromo trace". Funny theories – tools of anti-Oromo colonization – go that the Amhara people were formed from Oromo and Tigray armies of the ruling class in the late 13th century as a result of Oromo rebellions against the latter.
An Amhara propaganda story goes that the Amharic language was created to confuse the ruling class in this rebellion. In the early 1990s, some Amhara scholars including Professor Mesfin Woldemariam argued that there are no people called Amhara! This is a worldwide unique case of a people's self-abdication from its historical past and true identity in the effort to preserve its colonial rule over another people!
According to unbiased modern scholarship, there is no proof for an artificial construction of the Amharic language. Both, Tigrinya and Amharinya (Amharic) emanate from Gueze but with several differences due to diverse intermingling, and to the isolation phenomenon. Tigrinya and Amharic are as equidistant one from another as Portuguese and Spanish are; yet before 1000 years there was neither Portuguese nor Spanish in the Iberian Peninsula. In the same way, before 1000 years there were neither Tigrinya nor Amharic in the Abyssinian plateau, but the earlier stage of both Gueze was evolving to take the linguistic forms of these two languages. There was certainly an intermingling with other people, Afar, Oromo, etc. But it was very limited, and we have so little information about this eventuality that we cannot deduce concrete, imperative conclusions.
Needless to say it, Prof. Woldemariam is a fully accredited member of the Amhara ruling class. As such, he expresses – through his papers and contributions – the Amhara political, cultural, ideological and financial interests.
To pretend that Amhara and Tigray peoples are Kushitic, so therefore Khammitic and not Semitic, is an aberration. There is no case to convince any serious specialized scholar in the world by saying this. What happened to these supposedly Kushitic peoples and they speak suddenly today totally Semitic languages as Amharic and Tigrinya? Who semitized them linguistically and later … disappeared? None, of course! It would be even worse error to say that Axumite Abyssinians and Gueze speaking people were Kushitic as well!
All this testifies to Amhara ruling class paranoia and incommensurable fear of losing the political – financial – ideological control over a country that apparently is not theirs, and a vast area of which they have been 150-year occupying tyrants. It is a provocative alteration of History that all specialists and scholars have to denounce as a colonial scheme. This Amhara Abyssinian scheme can be briefly presented as follows:
A) The name 'Ethiopia' represents an older, greater, more enlightening, more appealing, more meaningful to Westerners, and better documented past than the name 'Abyssinia'.
B) The real rightful users of such a name are the oppressed Kushitic peoples of Abyssinia, the Oromo, the Sidama and others
C) So, ‘we’ (: Amhara ruling class of bogus-Ethiopia) will eradicate the name of Abyssinia, and we will diffuse the theory that Amhara are Ethiopians as well, renaming the country as 'Ethiopia'.
Amhara Abyssinian political and 'academic' class is not to be accredited with the originality of this thought! This colonial perversion belongs exclusively to French, English and Italian historians, in their efforts to address demands of their colonial diplomats and politicians. But the Amhara people’s uncultured and uneducated political rulers fell victims to such a trap!
This led them to hate themselves and their own identity, the Abyssinian identity from which they – by themselves – have been stripped off! To western rationalistic eyes, this would look as a terrible case of self-inflicted disaster.
There is an essential question one may advance at this point; why did the invading Abyssinians of the 19th century not try to expand Amhara culture, Abyssinian culture, among the people they invaded? Well, they attempted it through the imposition of Amharic as the only official language in the country, but they failed and they realized their failure. This phenomenon is due to the fact that Oromo culture and Sidama culture are more original and authentic than the Amhara culture that has been preserved until now.
Truly speaking, Amhara – Abyssinian – Axumite culture is dead; what one may see among Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians is the permanence of some stereotypic elements of the Abyssinian culture that are the 'crumbs' of Axum. In the case of Oromo, the traditional pastoral system that was formed after this Kushitic people settled in the pasturelands of the Oromo country survived to far greater extent.
On the other hand, the Oromos were not fooled by this ludicrous argumentation! Because the Amhara rulers are besotted enough to think that it is possible to press a button and become Chinese, or Kushitic, this does not imply that they have the right to rule a country of which they do not represent more than a sectarian 20%!
Your Excellency,
The moment you welcome your successor, an Appeal to all Africans will outweigh all the controversies related to your tenure.
Deny to the most hated African tyrant Meles Zenawi the right to idiocy! The Amhara / Tigray claim to the historical name of Ethiopia – to which they have always been alien – is as unprecedentedly erratic as it would be for 1 million Mongolians to announce "we are Chinese" and to demand to rule 1 billion Chinese in a totalitarian way!
Demand the Immediate Removal of the African Union headquarters from the Cenotaph of Addis Ababa, and utterly request that no tyranny be ever a place for African leaders to meet and deliberate!
Postulate that Africans should give priority to Human Rights, Democracy and Freedom over political realism, governmental prerequisites and amoral choices.
Explain that by virtue of their valuable and painful historical experience Africans should definitely and unquestionably castigate all acts of political dictatorship, ethnic racism, cultural discrimination, usurpation of ethnic names, and renaming of places and cities following invasions.
Leave therefore your name to the posterity as that of a Great African who had the courage to say:
- African Union headquarters must be removed from Addis Ababa now, and they should return to Finfinne, only when the Amhara / Tigray invaders be expelled!
