Letter from AEPatriots to National Association Partisans of Italy

National Association Partisans of Italy
Rome
 
Your Excellency Mr. Gianfranco Pagliarulo, President of ANPI
Your Excellency Mr. Fabrizio De Santis, ANPI President of the Province of Rome
 
Ladies and Gentlemen,
 
 
On this historical occasion which demonstrates commitment of the National Association            Partisans of Italy (ANPI), to its objective of continued defense against historical revisionism' I like to recall the 2010 ANPI slogan which reads "I am a member of ANPI because the resistance is not only part of the past but is still present in current times."

On  this  day I like to express in  person  and as  President  of  the  "Ethiopian Patriots Association”, which was established 83 years ago, during ·the fascist occupation for coordinating the armed resistance within Ethiopia with the Government in exile, my rapport in absentia.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen,
 
Italy in its long history had illustrious children who had excelled in arts, science and battles. Italy has also pioneered and lived a glorious tradition of democracy. We are all indebted to Italy for all these and more.
 
Italy and Ethiopia, both members of the League of Nations, went to war in 1935. Ethiopia was the first victim of fascist occupation and the first country to be liberated  from the yoke of fascism. The Ethiopian memories of the 5-year fascist t occupation demonstrate how barbaric and callous fascism was, to the value and tradition of Italy and  the  whole  of  humanity.  The  unleashing  of  chemical  warfare,   on  poorly  armed soldiers and civilians, the massacre or 30,000 Addis Ababa residents in three days, the demolition of the centuries old Debre Libanos Monastery and hundreds of its priests, the numerous photographs sent by the Black Shirt fascist soldiers to their families showing them playing football with severed heads of dead Ethiopian patriots. photographs of brutalizing men, women and children are well documented. Marshall Graziani was the culprit in all these. He is also remembered as the butcher of Libya.
 
A recent document, acquired by the Library of Congress., testifies that Marshall Graziani was the  one  who  oversaw the preparation  of a chemical agent  he  dubbed  as the “special liquid” (different from mustard, chlorine and phosgene gas), in Italian Somaliland, that annihilates combatants civilians and animals engulfing in fire, when it is sprayed from airplanes. He was the first to use it in the Ogaden, then in northern Ethiopia and later civilian communities throughout Ethiopia for terrorizing the population to deter support to the partisan warriors.
 
Marshall Rodolfo Graziani and friends have evaded international justice and those who built a monument for Graziani were acquitted for charges of “Apology for Fascism”. At this juncture, I like to recall what President Roosevelt said when Mussolini  and henchmen had tried to escape justice by resignation during the last year of the war and prior to the Nuremberg Trial.
 
"Mussolini came to the reluctant conclusion that the Jig was up. He could see the shadow of the long arm of justice; but he and his fascist gangs will be· brought to book and punished for their crimes against humanity. No criminal will be allowed to escape by the expedient of resignation . So, our terms to Italy are still the same as our terms to Germany and Japan; unconditional surrender."
 
Suffice it to say the  Ethiopian patriots Association position is still in the same thinking.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen,
 
We proudly remember one of our late association members, Colonel Abdissa Aga, who as partisan was captured in Ethiopia and taken to Italy, broke prison and joined the Italian partisans and fought with them. The depth of relationships between our two organizations is written in blood and sweat.
 
Please allow me to repeat with you, ANPI’s 2010 slogan, “ I am a member of ANPI because the resistance is not only part of the past but still present in current times.”
 
 
Lidj Daniel Jote Mesfin
President of Ethiopian Patriots Association