"This story is also about you": Letter from an aid-financed jail

UPDATE 12:10pm 5/7/2013: The reference on Twitter to "Hollywood celebrity..." is an experiment in fake link bait described at the end of this post.

This is a letter just released from Eskinder Nega, a peaceful blogger and democracy activist serving an 18-year sentence in Kaliti jail in Addis Ababa, courtesy of the Ethiopian government supported by World Bank, US, and UK aid:

Individuals can be penalised, made to suffer (oh, how I miss my child) and even killed. But democracy is a destiny of humanity which can not be averted. It can be delayed but not defeated.

...I accept my fate, even embrace it as serendipitous. I sleep in peace, even if only in the company of lice, behind bars. The same could not be said of my incarcerator though they sleep in warm beds, next to their wives, in their home.

Why should the rest of the world care? Horace said it best: mutate nomine de te tabula narratur. "Change only the name and this story is also about you." Where ever justice suffers our common humanity suffers, too.

I will live to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It may or may not be a long wait. Whichever way events may go, I shall persevere.

UPDATE 12:10 pm 5/7/2013 "BREAKING: Hollywood celebrity charged with embezzling funds from global poverty NGO" This is a fake story that links you to this true story on Eskinder Nega.

The experiment is about why do we care about some misuses of aid an awful lot, but aid misused to finance violations of rights of brave individuals in poor countries is not amongst them?