I read Professor Tecola Hagos’ post entitled “Attempted Blackmail by United States Congress” and found his deliberate misrepresentation of the facts to be misleading and criminal for a man of his academic stature. From his comfortable place in the US, he lashed out at anything and everything in a futile attempt to rally innocent Ethiopians behind him in his illegal campaign to thwart the demarcation process and with it plunge the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea into a perpetual state of war and destruction. His personal attacks on the US Congressmen, Mr. Lantos and Mr. Payne, for sponsoring the Bill, H.R. 2760-Resolution of the Ethiopia-Eritrea Border Dispute Act of 2003 is equally reprehensible.

Not only will his self serving pronouncements plunge Ethiopia into further poverty and economic and political abyss, as he well knows, but his irresponsible campaign cannot change the independent Eritrean Ethiopian Border Commission final and binding verdict. Whether or not TPLF remains in power is irrelevant, and the ruling will stand for generations to come. That is the current international order.

H.R. 2760, the Bill in question by Tecola, was introduced by Representatives Lantos and Payne to the US Congress and it calls on BOTH Eritrea and Ethiopia to abide by the April 13th, 2001 final and binding decision delivered by the Eritrea Ethiopia Border Commission (EBBC). In addition, the Bill calls on Ethiopia’s leaders to stop maligning the EEBC and to implement their final and binding decision expeditiously. The Tigrayan dominated Ethiopian officials are singled out here because it is this minority clique that have gone on record stating their refusal to accept the final and binding decision. There is not a single Eritrean official, administrator or otherwise that is appealing or revisiting the final and binding decision.

If the confused and war mongering Tecola wants to address human rights such as “citizenship, territorial integrity and respect of the heritages of culture and history”, it would behoove him and other like minded Ethiopian elite, to acknowledge the hard to swallow and painful fact that Eritreans are equally entitled to those rights. Eritrean rights are not and will never be subordinate to Ethiopian rights-royal history or not. Professor Tecola, as have successive Ethiopian regimes, attempts to project Eritrea’s ports as indispensable to Ethiopian pride, dignity and security, but conveniently neglects to mention the fact that Eritrea is an independent nation today, a fact neither him nor any other expansionist Ethiopian can change.

Professor! There are more than 14 African states that are landlocked today but none are invading neighboring countries and declaring war to own “coastal territories”. We are in the 21st century, not the 18th or 19th century. Ethiopia’s history is no greater than that of any other African country and peoples or any others in this world. Of the many trials and tribulations of the worlds’ greatest Empires (Roman, Turkish, Ottoman, Russian etc.) that have filled volumes over the last century, Ethiopia’s history is just one of them.

If Tecola had any academic honesty and decency, he would have also admitted that Ethiopia’s history is replete with equally illegal and internationally condemnable acts as those he mentions in his article. Not only that, Ethiopia stands today as the most backward, famine prone, and poorest of all African nations and has been labeled by many as The Shame of Africa”. That is not history professor, that is Ethiopia’s sad reality today. Don’t get me wring, I have nothing against Ethiopia and its people. I have absolutely no doubt that Ethiopians can be the bread basket of Africa, provided the war mongering expansionist and power hungry Tigrayan minority regime in Addis is replaced by broadminded, visionary and peace loving sons and daughters of Ethiopia.

By the way, for those of you who do not know Tecola, he is a Tigrayan and was a member of the communist party under the brutal Menghistu regime. He pretends to be anti-TPLF but the truth of the matter is that he is the secret recruit of Melles Zenawi who after 10 years in hibernation, has mysteriously appeared to play his role. He in the Eritrea-Ethiopia border conflict and today he is campaigning on behalf of Melles Zenawi to thwart the Border Commissions final and binding verdict.

Tecola, as his name aptly implies is “tokla” as in wolf. A wolf parading in sheep skin. After all the arrogant and pompous advise this spineless and gutless wolf gave the Tigrayan clique in Addis, to walk out of the final and binding verdict; after making empty threats against the United States and Britain, it must have dawned on him that 65% of the minority regime’s national budget was covered by the international donors he was insulting, he concluded his absurd and stupid article by saying: