A social media campaign for justices is raging on amongst Ethiopians online after a CNN journalist, Dan Rivers on Sunday revealed the horrifying abuse of Shweye Mullah, who was brutally injured after wife of Gaddafi’s son Hannibal, poured boiled water on her whole body for allegedly failing to keep a crying child quiet, when she was working as a nanny.
A virtual discussion forum was created on facebook on Friday, September 2 2011 to protest the atrocious act of the Gaddafi family and to inquire about the possibility of getting justices for the abused Ethiopian. The case has been a great disappointment for Ethiopian online community so that they formed groups and web pages dedicated to Shweye’s justice.
This shocking news also comes as an opportunity to draw attention to many abused Ethiopian woman who are working as house maids in many of Middle East countries. Ethiopians from different countries, on social networking sites voiced their concerns for many other Shweyga’s who are currently being abused.
The Ethiopian government media also cover the story. Ethiopian television reported the government first received information about Shweye on Wednesday but that government has contacted her family and they will make every necessary effort to return her home from Libya and will assist her in getting due compensation. Actually this involvement of the Ethiopian government with Shweye’s incident had barely hit the airwaves of the social media. People were sharing the link of the news on their page looking for personal opinions and, of course, were venting anger against the government as more information was revealed; discussions and debates began to emerge. There were groups that accused the government of everything from propaganda to lack of opportunity for citizens like Shweye in the country. At the same time, many supported the government too. This group of people believed Ethiopian government involvement was a wise decision to protect its citizens.
As the comments, tweets and messages were not enough; I got a short of snapshots of Shweyga, her profile and her repeated trips to the Middle East to work as a house maid. In short, the entire case history of Shweye from Addis Neger online.
In some of the groups in fact, after a while, Shweye was practically forgotten – the debate now centered on ‘anti-government vs. pro-government’, ‘justice vs. Partiality’, the ‘elite vs. the poor’, and the need for revolution