SaveOgaden | Feb 2010
As a part of this blogging project, I was asking some friends of mine who I know are very active when it comes to issues of injustice. One of my good friends has many topics of interest (which I will slowly incorporate into my blogs), but the first one she spoke about was the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.Some info from my friend: “More death, more tortures, rapes and body mutilation has been happening here than it has in Darfur. The Ogaden people are of Somali origin who reside in Ethiopia because the European colonial “awarded” that part of Somalia to the Ethiopians. When Somalia had government they tried to get back the land numerous times, however the Ethiopians always had the support of the west. Ethiopia, as you know, as never been colonialist mainly because it adopted Christianity way before many Western countries.”
From what I know about Ethiopia, aside from it being the land from where many of you caffeine-junkies should be grateful for since it is where coffee originated from (the word coffee came from “kafa” and they realized its potential as a stimulant when the goats that were eating the kafa got “really excited” when they got it), it is the only country in Africa that was never colonized by any colonist (okay, there was a five-year occupation by Italy, but 5 yrs is nothing compared to the hundred years that the other colonies were under colonist rule). Therefore, it is the pride of Africa in many ways. However, I think it is unfortunate when a country who is supported by the West continues to wage a war that has gone on for years and years and no one in the West gives a damn about who it is affecting.
Here’s are videos about Ogaden:
The way that the ongoing war is being hidden from the public reminds me of how it was with the Holocaust, the Ukrainian famine or the Rwandan genocide.
I’ve never heard of the conflict before, but this is because of the lack of media. Even my friend who proposed this topic admits that she didn’t know about it even though she herself lived in Somalia. It is frightening that because there is no media covering the event (all forms of media have been expunged), no one knows what is going on and the people living there are living in fear, violence and authentic daily threats to their lives.
