4 – 14 – 2022
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The crude and brute reality of life was articulated by Aristotle millennia ago and sadly, it also holds true to this day. Am I my brother’s keeper? Cain retorted back when he was asked the whereabouts of his brother Abel. Cain the stronger owned the day when Abel the weaker couldn’t see the light of the day. Guilty conscience however, haunted Cain the rest of his life when a mark on his forehead remained to be a reminder to any onlooker that he was a sibling’s killer.
What if the stain is not visible but marked on the conscience instead? What if the weak are left to their fate when the civic, religious including international agencies forsake them due to abject indifference and on account of political expediency as well? That’s where great men and women of an extraordinary moral courage rise to the occasion and offer the weak a shoulder to lean on and a voice to channel their perennial predicament. Dr. Adhanom is not an exception either when he talks truth to power that Tigreans, Yemenis, Syrians including Afganis among others are not the children of the lesser gods. They are members of the human race through and through no more no less.
The so conspicuous moral disparity was there for anyone to see but not everyone had the courage to say and address it, not so much because one can afford to say it but when silence is taken for an option, time consumes the famished and kills the bed ridden due to either chronic illnesses or infectious diseases.
The sense of urgency is measured against in seconds when the dire predicament of Tigray is shrugged off with churned out “concerns”, “very concerned” and “gravely concerned” twitter feeds by the power be which don’t mean much at all. However, if the geography was somewhere else, the response would’ve been swift and the lives of many Tigreans would’ve been averted. Let’s face it, the reality is that Tigray—far from the center of interest traverses oceans and it is black. And that is precisely where Dr. Adhanom mustered the courage and pointed out the pink Elephant in the room where everyone lacked the moral clarity to acknowledge.
Tigray is under siege and has been for over five hundred days. When the Eritrean and Ethiopian forces failed to subdue Tigray to submission, they resorted into using starvation as a weapon when they finished in light of the frightening report by AI and HRW particularly in Western Tigray. If the international community balances the atrocities with moral equivalence, history will remember the said agencies as much as it will remember Dr. Adhanom as the man who shoulder the weak and who torched light in Tigray’s darkest moment.
Personal Note: I met Dr. Adhanom first and last time back in Asmara in the 80s when I had just started high school and he was already in college. As it happened, my cousin came from Tigray to join Asmara University and as she would come to visit us after exams, one day, she took me to the campus to get a feel of it and Tedros was one of her groupies. I remember getting excited about university life and asking them a barrage of questions. Life and fate have led everyone of them into their predestined spot and one of them is not only fighting for the neglected and forgotten but presiding over one of the largest and powerful international agencies—WHO. A monumental achievement. And we are all proud of him!