Yekatit 12/2002 Ethiopian Calender 19/02/2010
“If the Covenant of the League of Nations be law, then in law Ethiopia and Haile Sellassie are right and Italy and Benito Mussolini are wrong. The only trouble is that that portion of the white race represented by 44.000.000 Italians has opened hostilities and in the sphere of law Italy contends — much too late for popular acceptance — that under the League Covenant, membership in the League of Nations is barred to states in which slavery still flourishes, as it unquestionably does in Ethiopia. Therefore, argues Italy, the original mistake of admitting Ethiopia to the League should be corrected by ousting Ethiopia, after which Italy would have exactly as good a right there as Britain has in Egypt.” (Time 1935)
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At the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war in October 1935, 41 States were party to the Protocol, including Italy and Ethiopia. However, few in the so-called civilized world really believed in the sole protection of the law, at a time when the rule of force was becoming an increasingly threatening feature of international relations. In the absence of the abolition of war itself, the only realistic protection was thought to come from the capacity to retaliate in kind towards an enemy. This form of Realpolitik was more likely than a convention or the ailing collective security system of the League of Nations to guarantee protection against the threat of gas warfare. A serious problem would, in turn, arise for those who did not possess a credible capacity for retaliation. Ethiopia would learn this lesson the hard way in seven months of bitter war.
This the Trinitrian Order that Mussolini’s Justification for his war against Ethiopia , which scntified by the pope himself.
The one standing to Christ’s right is light-skinned; at ease, he holds a staff surmounted by the distinctive cross of red and blue. He represents the Christian. The one standing to Christ’s left is dark-skinned; he appears rigid and armed with a bow. He represents the unbeliever, the enemy of the Cross of Christ. Inscribed around this image are the words Signum Ordinis Sanctae Trinitatis et Captivorum. Indeed, this is the portrait of the Order of the Holy Trinity and of Captives. Through Trinitarian commitment to and involvement in the ransom of Christian captives, the Christian returns to Christendom. Christ reclaims his own. In a striking way, this mosaic seals the early Trinitarian story of charity amidst arms
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In his Pastoral Letter of the 19th October [1935], the Bishop of Udine [Italy] wrote, ‘It is neither timely nor fitting for us to pronounce on the rights and wrongs of the case. Our duty as Italians, and still more as Christians is to contribute to the success of our arms.’ The Bishop of Padua wrote on the 21st October, ‘In the difficult hours through which we are passing, we ask you to have faith in our statesmen and armed forces.’ On the 24th October, the Bishop of Cremona consecrated a number of regimental flags and said: ‘The blessing of God be upon these soldiers who, on African soil, will conquer new and fertile lands for the Italian genius, thereby bringing to them Roman and Christian culture. May Italy stand once again as the Christian mentor to the whole world.
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On 9 May, 1935, Mussolini again stood on the balcony of Palazzo Venezia in Rome and proclaimed that the defeat of Adowa(1896) had been avenged with victory in Ethiopia. This marked the peak of Mussolini’s popularity with his countrymen. He eventually merged Ethiopia, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland into one state; the Italian East Africa (AOI – Africa Orientale Italiana).
The Yekatit 12 Square (Sidist Kilo) monument stands in tribute to the thousands of innocent martyrs butchered by the Fascist Italian Occupiers on that date in in the Ethiopian Calender year of 1929 (1936 Gregorian Calender). The massacre took place at the order of the Italian Vice-Roy Marshal Grazziani in response to an assasination attempt against him carried out by two pro-Ethiopia Eritreans. The monument is shown here during a religious procession of priests of the Orthodox Church, probably at Timkat (Epiphany). Wreaths were laid here by the Emperor to commemorate the massacre every year. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam continued this practice during his rule, but for a time after the fall of the Dergue regime, only the Mayor of Addis carried out this practice. Recently, the President of the Federal Republic has taken over this task. The monument is in the form of a white obelisk with black bas reliefs of scenes of the massacre as well as scenes of the Imperial funeral accorded to the remains of the victims in the presence of the Emperor following the liberation around it. A Lion of Judah also decorates the face of the obelisk. Even though the image of the Lion of Judah and the Emperor Haile Selassie were removed from all over the city during the reign of the Dergue, they suprisingly did not touch this monument. The monument stands in the Sidist Kilo square infront of the Yekatit 12 Hospital (formerly Emperor Haile Selassie Hospital and known before that as the Beite Saida Hospital). Also facing the square are the southern gates of the Guenete Leul Palace, which today is the main campus of the Addis Ababa University (formerly Haile Selassie I University). Another major attraction adjoining the square is the old Imperial Lion Zoo, where many of the old Imperial lions and their decendents live. The Churches of Menbere Leul Kidus Markos (Altar of Princes St. Marks Church) and the Meskia Hazunan Medhane Alem are both nearby, as are the former palaces of the Crown Prince (later the Political Cadre’s College during the Dergue Era), the Duke of Harrar (later the Headquarters of the Womens wing of the Workers Party of Ethiopia), and Princess Tenagnework (later the headquarters of the Ethiopian Navy), as well as the American and Greek Embassies.
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Abune Petros, the Ethiopian Orthodox Bishop of Wello who was executed by the Italians at the edge of this very square. Abune Petros was one of the four first native Ethiopians who were anointed as bishops by the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria to serve under the Coptic born Archbishop Abune Kerllos of Ethiopia in 1932. Abune Petros was given the province of Wello as his diocese. In 1936, the Fascist armies of Benito Mussolini occupied much of Ethiopia, and Abune Petros traveled to the northern Shewan district of Menz to join the sons of Ras Kassa, Dejazmatches Wondwossen, Abera and Asfa Wossen Kassa and other resistance leaders to plan an attack on the Italians to drive them out of Addis Ababa. The attack failed in 1937, and the Bishop was captured. Defiantly refusing to submit to Italian rule, he was condemned to death. Shortly before his execution Abune Petros Bishop of Wello, dressed in his clerical robes, held up his hand cross and pronounced his anathema on the people and on the very earth of Ethiopia itself, if they were ever to submit to the invader. He was then shot to death in front of a horrified audience. Emperor Haile Selassie had the statue erected in the memory of this great Bishop upon his restoration to the throne. The spot of his execution on the western edge of this sqare is also marked by a memorial slab. Sadly, during the brutal rule of the Dergue regime, the bodies of many victims of the “Red Terror” were displayed in this square.
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Hoare-Laval
The proposed division of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) under the pact
The proposed division of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) under the pact
In early December 1935, the Hoare-Laval Pact was proposed by Britain and France. Under this pact, Italy would gain the best parts of Ogaden and Tigray. Italy would also gain economic influence over all the southern part of Abyssinia. Abyssinia would have a guaranteed corridor to the sea at the port of Assab; however, the corridor was a poor one and known as a “corridor for camels”.[31] Mussolini was ready to agree to the pact, but he waited some days to make his opinion public. On December 13, details of the pact were leaked by a French newspaper and denounced as a sell-out of the Abyssinians. The British government disassociated itself from the pact and both the British and the French representatives associated with the pact were forced to resign.
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Poison gas
The Ethiopian offensive was ultimately stopped due to the superiority in modern weapons like machine guns and heavy artillery of the Italian forces. More importantly, on December 26 Badoglio asked for and was given permission to use chemical warfare agents like mustard gas. The Italians delivered the poison gas by special artillery canisters and with bombers of the Italian Royal Air Force. While the poorly equipped Ethiopians experienced some success against modern weaponry, they did not understand the “terrible rain that burned and killed.”[32]
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Vatican Apology for Complicities in the Ethiopian Genocide 1935-1941
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1882 Signatures |
During its 1935-’41 occupation of Ethiopia, Fascist Italy, supported by the Vatican, committed the crime of genocide against the Ethiopian people with poisonous gas sprayed from airplanes and other horrific atrocities, while the Vatican remained “conspicuously silent.”
Emperor Haile Selassie I, the King of Kings of Ethiopia, provided the following eyewitness account to the League of Nations on June 30, 1936; but sadly, His Majesty’s plea “fell upon deaf ears”:
“A mechanism spraying yperite liquid was installed in the aircraft and it was arranged that a fine rain bringing death should descend over vast tracts of country. At one time, nine, fifteen or eighteen Italian aeroplanes were going to and fro bringing down an unceasing rain of yperite. From the end of January 1936 onwards, this death-dealing rain descended uninterruptedly upon our soldiers, upon women, children, cattle, streams, stagnant waters as well as pastures. The Italian army commander made the aeroplanes repeat this work of theirs, in order to extinguish completely all living creatures and to turn into poison the waters and grazing grounds. He made this the principal means of warfare. This work of cruelty, carried out with some finesse, annihilated people in places far removed from the battlefield and made their country into a desert. The plan was to spread terror and death over the greater part of Ethiopia. This most deplorable scheme was eventually accomplished. Man and beast perished completely. The deadly downpour that descended from the aircraft made anyone who touched it fly with torment. Those who drank the water upon which this poisonous rain had settled or ate the food which the poison had touched died in dreadful agony. The people who died as a result of the Italian yperite must be reckoned in many thousands (the reader is reminded that this observation was made at the onset of the aerial gassing campaign, in January 1936). It was to make known to the civilized world the torment inflicted upon the Ethiopian people that I decided to come to Geneva.”
On May 5, 1941, the Ethiopian government reported that, “…provisional estimates of the slaughter of Ethiopians, from the evidence thus far investigated, is 760,000;” however, the report concluded that “these figures are not final,” however, based on interviews with surviving Ethiopian Patriots, in Addis Ababa and America between 2000 and 2004, a more conservative estimate of Ethiopian causalities would be “no less than one million.”
Despite the fact that the British Foreign Office formally established a War Crimes Commission in 1943, and the United Nations and the International World Court at the Hague were established in the United States in 1945, and the International Genocide Convention and the Declaration of Human Rights were adopted in 1948, each one of these international human rights organs and instruments excluded any mention of the genocide of the Ethiopian people; as such, no fascist Italian has ever been held accountable for war crimes against humanity in Ethiopia from 1935-1941, though this atrocity occurred within the same timeframe as the one that took place in Europe.
In 1998, the UN celebrated its 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights in Rome by returning to the issue of international genocide and once again, the Ethiopian genocide of 1935-1941 was ignored. Mysteriously, the details of this horrific atrocity continue to be stricken from the annals of the world’s history books and United Nations genocide archives and related documents, until this very day. Such historical omissions make it appear as if the fascist genocide of the Ethiopian people never happened; consequently, justice for Ethiopia has remained “a fleeting illusion” for the past seventy-three years.
We, the undersigned, appeal to the international community…all Governments, the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, Amnesty International, non-governmental institutions, World Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, other regional organizations, and all people of right action and goodwill throughout the world to call upon the Vatican to acknowledge and apologize to Ethiopians for its complicity with the Fascists who perpetrated unspeakable war crimes against humanity in Ethiopia during the Fascist Italian occupation of that country from1935-1941.
Vatican officials and clergy, under the spiritual leadership of Pope Pius XI, blessed Mussolini’s Fascist army on its way to carry out a systematic mass extermination campaign in Ethiopia that claimed the lives of no less than one million people, including the entire monastic community at the Debre Libanos Monastery, the destruction of 2,000 churches, 525,000 homes and the perpetration of havoc upon the environment. Human beings and animals who relied on the environment for air, water and food died in great numbers from horrific atrocities including poison gas sprayed from Fascist airplanes, over battlefields and remote rural areas, while the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, and 52 world governments and The Vatican stood by silently and watched.
Though Mussolini’s systematic genocide of the Ethiopian people from 1935-1941 occurred virtually within the same timeframe as Hitler’s Nazi holocaust against the Jews from 1933-1941, nevertheless, the Fascist genocide in Ethiopia is excluded from the annals of the world’s history books and from historical genocide documents at the United Nations. While the Vatican has graciously apologized to Jews for its silence during the Nazi holocaust, it has never extended the same Christian courtesy to Ethiopians although, in their case, the Vatican was directly complicit in Fascist atrocities in Ethiopia. The Vatican’s silence and the United Nations disregard of the genocide against the Ethiopian people is counter to the principles of human rights and justice and continues to have a negative impact on every generation of all peace loving people including those of African origin.
Discrete efforts to elicit a Vatican apology have so far remained unanswered. We, therefore, have to appeal to the international community to demand a full, public apology by the Vatican for its complicity with the Fascists who perpetrated untold war crimes against humanity in Ethiopia.
On behalf of the innocent victims of Fascist atrocities in Ethiopia from 1935-1941, we thank you for your support.
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© 2010, Prof. Muse Tegegne. All rights reserved. info@ethiopianism.net
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Martin Luther
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