Open Letter to the UN

Subject: Open Letter to the UN
From: Fanuel
Date: 14 Apr 2022

I'm sleeping on the side of an asphalt road near a round about where I could see and hear heavy gun shots. Instinctively, I believe everyone slept flat on the spot. But then a bunch of government soldiers reached upon us along with the sound of heavy gun fire. Out of the blue, they started hacking people with machetes. Some who thought of running were met with brutal machine gun shots or several soldiers striking at them. Others who kept on their stomach were checked for their breath with a stab on their back and involuntary reactions were met with repeated hacks or bullets. I kind of put a slit through my sleeping position to see what was happening from my behind so that i could make of what to do next. As they neared my spot, I could see no one was spared. But my legs froze and chose to meet my fate. They would probably pass by me for noticing the back of an innocent civilian? It was all fast. Two of them approached me. One threw a machete across my back. The next kind of poked me rather generously. I held my pain deep down and kept quiet. I didn't know I had it in me to withhold so much pain. As I felt a hot fluid pouring from my back, I woke up from a frenzy but very detailed experience of being butchered on the streets of Addis draining with sweat.
I couldn't blame no one but me as I have been reading international outlets with gruesome details of atrocities for the past scores of months. Apart from being a human being, I am from parents which originate from Tigray, hence the curiosity. Having a lot of connections back in Tigray which I worry for constantly, paying for my freedom from detention at my workplace to keep out of mass detention, spending the night at the back of my car to elude the security forces knocking at my door late night and fleeing my home abandoning my wife and infant kid are some of the rather lavish ordeal I have passed through recently. This keeps the hair on the back of my neck raised and it is an awful way to live in for an elongated term. As I have read through a sorrowful stories of people being murdered, burnt alive, mass raped in front of families, made to starve, infants passing away at the hands of their parents for hunger few hundred kilometers away, it is imperative that I still live to be.
What's life worth?! I have came across how the world defines dignified life which is worth living in the compound of UNECA during some internal renovation I was able to avail my service for. Across the lawn in front of Niger building there used to be a huge poster of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals inscribed in creative icons for all to understand. Working on the lawn for months facing the huge poster, I believe I have memorized most of them. And I have kept the idea that this is what this monstrous compound is all about - swarms of locals and foreigners running around to keep these goals alive.
Fast forward to reality, current conditions in Tigray couldn't be worse. Rest of Ethiopia is also following in close pursuit to achieve the bottomless spiralling decay in human living conditions. One can clearly see that all 17 goals are irrelevant in Tigray right now. They don't mean a lot rather than a decorative poster adding visuals to the dull parking lot ramp in side the UNECA compound. What's life worth to such assembly of the world if none are met at a corner of an east African country where all are invited to watch? With all major news outlets and human right campaigners reporting from inside and outside with multiple details of atrocities where all the worldly wrong deeds have been performed on civilians are out there, where does the heart of the UN lay?!
As I woke up and wrote this from my brief moment of hysteria, it came to my mind how much the staff overlooking my renovation work worried about what the grass on the lawn in front of the Niger building would look like after the work was done. Some staff took picture of the gaping ditch across the lawn, some approached me with concerns on how the looks might never be the same. People were worried. I took their concerns in to mind and toiled so as not to dash their expectations. Lawn was restored.
Is life in Ethiopia worth less than the grass patch in UNECA compound?! I will be wondering well through my rest of life.

Category: