Naomi Klein guardian.co.uk
On the ninth day of the Copenhagen climate summit, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3–3.5C increase in Africa. That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, “an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger”, and “water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people”.
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Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it like this: “We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale … A global goal of about 2C is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development.”
And yet that is precisely what Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, proposed to do when he stopped off in Paris on his way to Copenhagen: standing with President Nicolas Sarkozy, and claiming to speak on behalf of all of Africa (he is the head of the African climate-negotiating group), he unveiled a plan that includes the dreaded 2C increase and offers developing countries just $10bn a year to help pay for everything climate related, from sea walls to malaria treatment to fighting deforestation.
It’s hard to believe this is the same man who only three months ago was saying this: “We will use our numbers to delegitimise any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position … If need be, we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent … What we are not prepared to live with is global warming above the minimum avoidable level.”And this: “We will participate in the upcoming negotiations not as supplicants pleading for our case but as negotiators defending our views and interests.”
We don’t yet know what Zenawi got in exchange for so radically changing his tune or how, exactly, you go from a position calling for $400bn a year in financing (the Africa group’s position) to a mere $10bn. Similarly, we do not know what happened when secretary of state Hillary Clinton met Philippine president Gloria Arroyo just weeks before the summit and all of a sudden the toughest Filipino negotiators were kicked off their delegation and the country, which had been demanding deep cuts from the rich world, suddenly fell in line.
We do know, from witnessing a series of these jarring about-faces, that the G8 powers are willing to do just about anything to get a deal in Copenhagen. The urgency does not flow from a burning desire to avert cataclysmic climate change, since the negotiators know full well that the paltry emissions cuts they are proposing are a guarantee that temperatures will rise a “Dantesque” 3.9C, as Bill McKibben puts it.
Matthew Stilwell of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development – one of the most influential advisers in these talks – says the negotiations are not really about averting climate change but are a pitched battle over a profoundly valuable resource: the right to the sky. There is a limited amount of carbon that can be emitted into the atmosphere. If the rich countries fail to radically cut their emissions, then they are actively gobbling up the already insufficient share available to the south. What is at stake, Stilwell argues, is nothing less than “the importance of sharing the sky”.
Europe, he says, fully understands how much money will be made from carbon trading, since it has been using the mechanism for years. Developing countries, on the other hand, have never dealt with carbon restrictions, so many governments don’t really grasp what they are losing. Contrasting the value of the carbon market – $1.2 trillion a year, according to leading British economist Nicholas Stern – with the paltry $10bn on the table for developing countries for the next three years, Stilwell says that rich countries are trying to exchange “beads and blankets for Manhattan”. He adds: “This is a colonial moment. That’s why no stone has been left unturned in getting heads of state here to sign off on this kind of deal … Then there’s no going back. You’ve carved up the last remaining unowned resource and allocated it to the wealthy.”
For months now NGOs have got behind a message that the goal of Copenhagen is to “seal the deal”. Everywhere we look in the Bella Centre, clocks are ticking. But any old deal isn’t good enough, especially because the only deal on offer won’t solve the climate crisis and might make things much worse, taking current inequalities between north and south and locking them in indefinitely.
Augustine Njamnshi of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance puts the 2C proposal in harsh terms: “You cannot say you are proposing a ’solution’ to climate change if your solution will see millions of Africans die and if the poor not the polluters keep paying for climate change.”
Stilwell says that the wrong kind of deal would “lock in the wrong approach all the way to 2020″ – well past the deadline for peak emissions. But he insists that it’s not too late to avert this worst-case scenario. “I’d rather wait six months or a year and get it right because the science is growing, the political will is growing, the understanding of civil society and affected communities is growing, and they’ll be ready to hold their leaders to account to the right kind of a deal.”
At the start of these negotiations the mere notion of delay was environmental heresy. But now many are seeing the value of slowing down and getting it right. Most significant, after describing what 2C would mean for Africa, Archbishop Tutu pronounced that it is “better to have no deal than to have a bad deal”. That may well be the best we can hope for in Copenhagen. It would be a political disaster for some heads of state – but it could be one last chance to avert the real disaster for everyone else.
Friday, December 18, 2009
"Addis Neger": Addis Tiwuld
By Derese Getachew
Alan Paton once called his country - South Africa - ‘bewitchingly lovable’. I think Ethiopia deserves to be called one, looking at the consuming passion of her citizens – of all political dispensation - yearning for a just, democratic and developed nation. We have never agreed on how to reach at that much desired stage, but we all dream of it. No generation represents that quest for social justice and democratic transition than the generation of the 60. That generation, which many acclaim as “the generation”, pioneered the cause for the end of feudalism, the cultural and linguistic oppression of various ethnic groups, and proposed a ‘people’s democratic republic’ very much in the lines of the Marxist Leninism. Not only did the generation upheld these lofty ideals, it also fought for them, both from within and without over the last 40 years. Its tenacity and resolve border puritan asceticism. While it radically transformed the political landscape of Ethiopia from 1974 on, it never rested on its laurels. Almost all of the leaders of the incumbent regime - EPRDF and its opponents - are from that generation. Their persistence makes us question whether theirs is a cause that is eternal (ad infinitum) or a failure (moribund political practice).
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The recent closure of the Addis Neger and the discussion it raised about the status of the media in Ethiopia is one opportune moment to consider the ‘generational problem’ in the Ethiopian context. As Karl Manheim once argued, it is time to reflect on ‘the generational problem’. Many have already remarked that Addis Neger (unlike many of its predecessors) offered its readers credible and researched viewpoints quite independently. But more importantly, Addis Neger represented the coming of age of a generation with useful ideas and youthful enthusiasm. I would like to take this last point and expand on the notion of generational transition. In so doing I touch upon the ‘dialogical cultures’ that have profoundly influenced the generation of the 60s in Ethiopia indicating the need to move beyond that ‘field of discourse’. I will then discuss the role of Addis Neger in pioneering this task.
The Pedagogy of “The Generation”
Alan Paton once called his country - South Africa - ‘bewitchingly lovable’. I think Ethiopia deserves to be called one, looking at the consuming passion of her citizens – of all political dispensation - yearning for a just, democratic and developed nation. We have never agreed on how to reach at that much desired stage, but we all dream of it. No generation represents that quest for social justice and democratic transition than the generation of the 60. That generation, which many acclaim as “the generation”, pioneered the cause for the end of feudalism, the cultural and linguistic oppression of various ethnic groups, and proposed a ‘people’s democratic republic’ very much in the lines of the Marxist Leninism. Not only did the generation upheld these lofty ideals, it also fought for them, both from within and without over the last 40 years. Its tenacity and resolve border puritan asceticism. While it radically transformed the political landscape of Ethiopia from 1974 on, it never rested on its laurels. Almost all of the leaders of the incumbent regime - EPRDF and its opponents - are from that generation. Their persistence makes us question whether theirs is a cause that is eternal (ad infinitum) or a failure (moribund political practice).
Click on 'Read More' for the rest of the article.
The recent closure of the Addis Neger and the discussion it raised about the status of the media in Ethiopia is one opportune moment to consider the ‘generational problem’ in the Ethiopian context. As Karl Manheim once argued, it is time to reflect on ‘the generational problem’. Many have already remarked that Addis Neger (unlike many of its predecessors) offered its readers credible and researched viewpoints quite independently. But more importantly, Addis Neger represented the coming of age of a generation with useful ideas and youthful enthusiasm. I would like to take this last point and expand on the notion of generational transition. In so doing I touch upon the ‘dialogical cultures’ that have profoundly influenced the generation of the 60s in Ethiopia indicating the need to move beyond that ‘field of discourse’. I will then discuss the role of Addis Neger in pioneering this task.
The Pedagogy of “The Generation”
The record is clear. Ethiopia is not faring better than it was forty years ago. What factors would explain the apparent failure of the ‘trailblazing’ generation? I believe three domains of analysis are worth looking at to find an answer for this question. First is the world view of Ethiopians themselves which is featured by a stark duality of two forces that explain social change: dark and light, evil and right, good and bad, upright and corrupt. Even before the introduction of modern Education, traditional church and koranic education explain social change as an inevitable outcome of supernatural forces (good and bad) who battle it out in the heavens and impose their will on the natural or created world order. This prism of thinking is linear since it only assumes a single explanan for a single outcome (note the repeated use of the term ‘ye tigil mesmer’). It also has Manichean proclivities since the solution to a problem lies in eliminating the evil/wrong doer. Last but not least, it is dogmatic since belief becomes shorthand for “right”- unfalsifiable, and hence unreformable( note the frequent use of an oxymoron ‘bichejna amarach’).
Second, is the apparent introduction of Marxism Leninism and its dualist class-oriented approach of explaining social conflict. Allow me to quote Dr Yacob Hailmeariam, to explain the impact of Marxism Leninism on the world view of ‘the generation’. In his articles posted on Ethiomedia, he stated:
It is well known that Marxism-Leninism is alien or has little tolerance for civility and compromise. Being civil is a bourgeois nonsense which seeks to blur the real issues and blunt the sharp edges of class conflict thus inhibiting decisive class struggle. It is enough to recall Lenin’s reference to his opponents as scoundrels and vermin to know that Marxists do not mince their words when they deal with their adversaries. Since old habits do not die easily this modus operandi unfortunately informs political discourse in Ethiopia today both on the side of the opposition and more so with the ruling party even after the demise of Marxism-Leninism.
Finally, let us look at the ‘dialogic turn’ that ‘the generation’ made since the end of the Cold War. Today, the debates on the political trajectory of the country revolve around one major issue: nationalism. Two particular signposts are readable on that spectrum. There are many who espouse Ethiopian nationalism and others who rally under ethno-nationalism reacting to the former as hegemonic, exploitative and exclusive. Attempts to form ‘ center right’ or ‘center left perspectives’ always foundered mainly because in a political arena where nationalism is the only common denominator- polar viewpoints become the most celebrated ones.
Let me flesh out why the discourse on ‘nationalism’ seems to have entered an impasse in all its versions. First of all, nationalist narratives are difficult to work with since they posit one’s interpretation of identity, history, injustice and claims in a very subjective manner. Secondly, nationalism is an ideological project which attempts to conflate political and cultural boundaries of diverse community/communities through homogenization. This was the case for Ethiopian Nationalism that followers of Walelijn criticized as the imposition of Abyssinian culture and institutions over the rest of Ethiopia- hence attempting to homogenize the historic-cultural artifacts of such a diverse multi-ethnic state.. The same holds true for ethno-nationalisms. For example, much of the political agenda of Oromo nationalists draws from the history of dispossession, disenfranchisement and exploitation the Oromo people have experienced following Melelik II’s expansion. While I agree that there is a case for historic injustice against the Oromo people, I believe this history faces fundamental problems when turned to become a political project of decolonization. First, much of the emphasis in this political history has been only about the 19th century Oromo relations with the ‘colonizing’ Amharas and Tigrayans. The role of Oromo principalities in the politics of Abyssinia as early as the 16th century and in places like Gondar, the southern edges of Tigray and Wollo are sidelined. Oromo intermarriage, trade and political ties with their neighboring ‘colonizers’ are seldom discussed. Hence insurgent ethno-nationalisms repeat the same homogenizing tendencies. They harp on an “us- against- them” category and are not easily malleable to the working of a democratic system – one that recognizes plurality, compromises and cooperation.
‘Addis Neger’: ‘Addis Tiwulid’
What did Addis neger represent? An upcoming generation of Ethiopians who are convinced that much of the learning this far done by the political elite of Ethiopia needs to be unlearned. Addis Neger represents the quest for a subaltern generational discourse, struggling to break out of the homogenizing and hegemonizing molds of ‘the generation’. Right from the outset, it set the bar high. It became the most popular, credible and independent voice in Ethiopia. True to the conviction of its founders, Addis Neger represented public reasoning at its best. It featured researched and extensive articles on issues of national and regional importance. Not only the relevance of the issues but the sheer latitude of the coverage was astounding ranging from foreign policy to economic growth and development, from arts and music to culture and society, from celebrating national heroes to covering regional and continental events. Even more, the opinion corners invited civil yet critical and engaging debates between citizens of all political colors and dispensations. Needless to state that, EPRDF members and symphatizers also argued their case on the weekly. This sealed the independence of the newspaper and its conviction that no one idea, ideology or party deserves to be a meta- narrative, a ‘hegemony’, as Addis Neger editors usually refer to it.
In my opinion, dictatorships begin not when ‘liberators’ assume the helm of power but when they begin to convince themselves and others that theirs is an idea that solves everything under the sun!! If thinking is dominated by hegemonic indoctrination then practice would self-evidently follow. That is why the freedom of thinking and expression constitute the core of any democratic franchise. Simply put, democracies cannot operate unless there is a difference of opinions and viewpoints. Addis Neger fought hard to send that message home, sometimes at the cost of being bashed as ‘government supporters’ and other times regarded as “ people who endanger the very existence of the nation and the constitution!”. It was walking on a knife edge path, trying to show all parties concerned that the case for Ethiopia goes beyond party allegiance and acrimonious debates bent on settling short term political scores. Last but not the least, Addis neger represented a break away from the Marxist Leninist litany about class contradictions, the national question and socialist liberation in the literal sense of the term. The feature articles consulted the philosophical works of the Right( the writings of Mills, Rawls, Hume and Kant were household names), African American writers and intellectuals in the Civil Rights movement(Du Bois, ML King), and contemporary writers ( Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz etc). For the teeming youth of Ethiopia, Addis Neger was an introduction to multiple intellectual traditions and perspectives that would help it frame and understand the country’s predicament in more ways than one.
Being a closer friend of the writers, I witnessed how feature articles and opinion pieces emerge out of exciting, enriched, critical but constructive debates in Sheger’s coffee shops and restaurants. Addis Neger represented the public space where the youth of Ethiopia begun to toy with novel and youthful ideas of a brighter future. In other words, Addis Neger represented the birth pangs of an attempt to go beyond the shackles of polarized political viewpoints at logger heads with each other. It represented a broad church of ideas where such competing ideologies could speak to each other and learn to appreciate each other’s viewpoints. This was difficult since all nationalist discourses gravitate towards the us-against-them pattern. They also have very little room to tolerate dissenting opinions, ideologies, or narratives from within or without. The overriding urge is to ‘unite’ against the ‘other’. Addis Neger took up the challenge to domesticate them through encouraging a civil and democratic exchange of ideas. This was a tall order but impeccably undertaken.
________
The writer can be reached at derese@gmail.com
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Politics and the Press in Ethiopia: An Interview with Journalist Abiye Teklemariam
Ron Singer, The Faster Times
DECEMBER 8, 2009: ADDIS NEGER ANNOUNCES ITS IMMEDIATE CLOSURE, CITING PERSECUTION OF ITS EDITORS.
Abiye Teklemariam (b. 1978) is a founding editor of Addis Neger (”New Addis”), Ethiopia’s leading dissident newspaper. I was introduced to Abiye by the Committee to Protect Journalists, and took the opportunity to interview him on May 25, 2009 at Ledig House in Omi, New York, where he was in residence working on a book about the prospects for Ethiopian democracy. Currently, he is doing a media and democracy project as a researcher at the University of Oxford. A follow-up interview is anticipated for early 2011 in Addis. These interviews will form the basis for a chapter in my book, Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with African Pro-Democracy Leaders (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press). -Ron Singer
[Note: all material in square brackets has been added by the author -RS]
RS: Tell me about your early life and motives for becoming a dissident journalist. [Abiye was raised in Addis, where he was educated and got his first degree, in Law.]
AT: I formed a lot of my opinions in later years, in university. The poverty, etc. a lot of things that were happening, led me to sympathize with the fate of others. I did not think at that time that my path was journalism. I turned to journalism in 1999, eight years after the Derg left power. [The Derg, a Marxist dictatorship mostly under Mengistu Halle Mariam, b. 1937, ruled Ethiopia from 1974-1991.] When I was working on my Masters, it gave me time for reflection. I realized we can’t practice law without the context of society-culture, the political regime, and so on. I decided I could best serve my country by working in either politics or political aspects of my country. [In 1999, still a lawyer, he started writing for newspapers about human rights and the law.]
RS: What is the relationship between Ethiopia’s two most recent governments?
AT: The Zenawi government [Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, b.1955, head of the Ethiopian People's Democratic Revolutionary Front, in power since 1995] is not like the Derg, which tortured and terrorized people. The Zenawi government sees itself as modern, democratic … but there is a gap between what it says it is and what it really is. It uses very systematic ways of harassing people. Despite the dramatic differences in style, both are, yes, dictatorships. Zenawi is one of the most educated guys in Ethiopia, has the best intellect and best understanding of the world even among the new breed of African leaders. He got his Ph.D. from Columbia -after seventeen years of leading the war against the Derg. There is none of that cult business, with pictures in public. He’s now fifty-four, knows how to trick the West. For example, he characterizes the press as “extremists,” but also cites the press as evidence that Ethiopia is a democratic country. Like all our leaders recently, he is very short! But no Napoleon complex, more of a self-effacing, thoughtful, measured manner that he assumes internationally, when he speaks English. He claims at conferences, and so forth, to be a mere spokesman for his party and people, and doesn’t go out of his way to demonize the opposition. But at home he is crude, a menacing bully and dictator. All the so-called independent elements in the Ethiopian government do what he says. He sounds a lot different in Amharic, arrogant and snarky. In Parliament, he demonizes the opposition. His command of language is excellent.
[I mentioned a panel discussion which I had attended at the 92nd Street Y, in New York, where Abebe Zegeye, an academic who studies human rights, was outspoken until asked a question by someone who identified himself as representing the Ethiopian Consulate. After that, Zegeye visibly clammed up. Abiye said that, yes, Zegeye, who works out of South Africa, would want to be able to get back into Ethiopia. He must have realized the man from the Consulate had been sent to spy on him.]
RS: What about the roles of well-known pro-democratic activists, Mesfin Wolde-Marriam [b.1930] and Adam Melaku [b.?]?
AT: They’re both teachers. Wolde-Marriam is a very principled man, he’s stood up for rights for years. I don’t consider him as a person who can forge a democratic way for Ethiopia. But his ideas have influenced a lot of the younger generation.
RS: What of the changes the Derg made: to redress long-standing ethnic and gender inequalities? Can’t those be characterized as “progressive”?
AT: The Derg was kind of a pseudo-Marxist organization, emulating eastern Europe and Russia. Some of their courses of action do make them appear “progressive,” but I don’t think they were, not at all. Women’s rights were pushed by the Derg, yes, but they had already been pushed by Haile Selassie [1892-1975]. “Equality” under the Derg was Robespierrean equality -everyone was poor, equal opportunity killing, equal opportunity torture. So, no, they were not progressive. The Derg was a reaction to Haile Selassie and to feudal systems. In their first few years, they redressed ethnic imbalances of power
RS: Isn’t that a good thing?
AT: Well, yes. But ethnic politics brought other problems, problems of national identity. The ethnic politics genie left the bottle and destroyed the raison d’etre of the state. Now the government is a weak confederation [although, on paper, a Federation], but also a dictatorship. In practice, it is a unitary government with Zenawi exercising all real power through his personal brilliance, brutality and tactics. As the years passed after the 2005 election, they became like all groups that stay in power too long. After seventeen years, a quagmire of corruption. And after all their sacrifices before that … . Even Mugabe [Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, b.1924] once had a vision for his country. What happened after he got in power was completely contrary to what he was before. The new Ethiopian government also had a vision, and they tried hard, at first. Now they’re interested in staying in power -that’s all.
RS: What type of journalist are you? Do you cover events?
AT: I’m a political analyst. Others on my paper cover; I analyze, afterward.
RS: How is the press in Ethiopia controlled?
AT: A predecessor paper to Addis Neger, called Meznagna, was shut down just after the 2005 election. Now they don’t shut you down, they harass and harangue and use trick tactics to scare you. You don’t know when they act, and when they don’t act. You write something very critical and important, expecting the worst. Nothing happens. But a month later, you write this innocuous, silly article, and suddenly you’re arrested and thrown in jail for ten days, released just before the CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists] can get involved. That has a chilling effect. You try to be as cautious as possible. They are very careful, very systematic.
RS: Has the diaspora played a role?
AT: Yes, the internet has enabled the diaspora to play a role in Ethiopian affairs. In 2005, at their long-distance urging, when it became apparent the election had been rigged, elected opposition legislators decided not to take their seats. This triggered an anomalous reaction by the President, who put the protesters, as well as their vocal press supporters and lawyers, in jail for eighteen to twenty-four months. In effect, this spelled the end of the Ethiopian opposition, at least until today.
RS: What role does ethnicity play in Ethiopian politics today?
AT: Zenawi’s base is very narrow, his own ethnic group, the Tigray [6.2% of the population], at the northern tip of Ethiopia. The Derg tried to eradicate this group and to give power to groups from the traditionally oppressed south. Haile Selassie’s dynasty was Amharic. The Tigray and Amhara are similar, two historically dominant groups, not numerically, but in terms of power. They also have had a serious, long-term power rivalry. In recent times, the Amaharic had ruled for a hundred years, then the Derg, so Tigreans had been out of power a long time before Zenawi.
RS: Can’t he expand his power base, get beyond ethnic support.
AT: Once ethnicity is injected into politics, as it has been, it is very difficult to get away from it. Even if you deliver important services to a region, they’ll still vote for their own. The same thing happened after the recent Kenyan elections [2007]. Once ethnic politics is out of the bottle, there is great trouble putting it back. Meles understands that, always tries to rally his base.
RS: What has Addis Neger said about Somalia?
AT: We think Ethiopia has exacerbated Somalia’s problems, which are very serious and complex. Our intervention there was mistimed, mismanaged, and there was a lot of bad calculation. They went in again last week [May 21, 2009], just after Susan Rice [Obama appointee as Permanent Representative to the U.N.] visited Ethiopia. Most Ethiopians have been in favor of the policy of weakening Somalia, continuously since the Derg, because of territorial issues raised since the independence of Somalia in 1960, with the subsequent attempt to unify all ethnic Somalis -including Ogaden [Ethiopian province]-into “greater Somalia.” Ethiopian governments have wanted to destabilize, to fragment, Somalia. In 2005, the Islamists looked like unifying and controlling Somalia, so Ethiopia stepped up interference. Neither did the U.S. want Islamist rule, but Ethiopia feared it more. The Ethiopian government has also used the Somalian scare to divert people’s attention from their own domestic failings.
RS: What approach does Addis Neger take to the Federation issue?
AT: We certainly don’t go out of our way to say we are ruled by a majority regime! There are groups in Ethiopia who say that the country is one nation, and there are groups in Ethiopia who say that it is not one nation. So what we say to them all is, okay, but we have to agree on a system, we have to come up with a solution in-between. Some think the second camp [those who say Ethiopia isn't one nation] is just a fake creation of the elite of some groups. But the hegemonic government is also the creation of an elite. Ethiopian politics is elite politics. No mass participation at all. The claim by elite groups that “the people want this or that” is just a claim. Nobody knows what the Ethiopian people really want, as Ethiopia has never had a grain of democracy. All these ideas are created by the elite, so the elite have to sit down and come up with a solution.
RS: So you favor more federalism and more democracy?
AT: Yes, we favor that., some kind of stronger federalism which incorporates the ideas of both groups and much more democracy, much more individual freedom and equality.
RS: Who is your paper’s audience? your readers? Are you elitists?
AT: We are criticized for this. Given literacy, education, and the structure of Ethiopian society, yes, we write for the elite. Even the figure 39% given for literacy is not for the kind of literacy needed for these arguments, for which functional literacy is more like 14%. The educated have a lot of influence, get a lot of respect, in a country like ours. If I go to my father and tell him to vote for an opposition candidate, he will do it. So we write for those who have this influence. Our paper is very analytic, like The Guardian.
RS: Tell me about your book.
AT: I’m dealing with the possibility of democracy in Ethiopia. Not the approach of looking for broad elements of Ethiopian history and culture as beacons for the future. But looking at how the progressive movements in Ethiopian history, where national identity was forged, like those in the history of Europe, can be seen as bases for future democracy.
RS: Are there any questions you’d like to ask me?
AT (laughs): No.
RS: Then we should stop. Thank you so much. What will you do now?
AT: Wait for my dinner.
DECEMBER 8, 2009: ADDIS NEGER ANNOUNCES ITS IMMEDIATE CLOSURE, CITING PERSECUTION OF ITS EDITORS.
Abiye Teklemariam (b. 1978) is a founding editor of Addis Neger (”New Addis”), Ethiopia’s leading dissident newspaper. I was introduced to Abiye by the Committee to Protect Journalists, and took the opportunity to interview him on May 25, 2009 at Ledig House in Omi, New York, where he was in residence working on a book about the prospects for Ethiopian democracy. Currently, he is doing a media and democracy project as a researcher at the University of Oxford. A follow-up interview is anticipated for early 2011 in Addis. These interviews will form the basis for a chapter in my book, Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with African Pro-Democracy Leaders (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press). -Ron Singer
[Note: all material in square brackets has been added by the author -RS]
RS: Tell me about your early life and motives for becoming a dissident journalist. [Abiye was raised in Addis, where he was educated and got his first degree, in Law.]
AT: I formed a lot of my opinions in later years, in university. The poverty, etc. a lot of things that were happening, led me to sympathize with the fate of others. I did not think at that time that my path was journalism. I turned to journalism in 1999, eight years after the Derg left power. [The Derg, a Marxist dictatorship mostly under Mengistu Halle Mariam, b. 1937, ruled Ethiopia from 1974-1991.] When I was working on my Masters, it gave me time for reflection. I realized we can’t practice law without the context of society-culture, the political regime, and so on. I decided I could best serve my country by working in either politics or political aspects of my country. [In 1999, still a lawyer, he started writing for newspapers about human rights and the law.]
RS: What is the relationship between Ethiopia’s two most recent governments?
AT: The Zenawi government [Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, b.1955, head of the Ethiopian People's Democratic Revolutionary Front, in power since 1995] is not like the Derg, which tortured and terrorized people. The Zenawi government sees itself as modern, democratic … but there is a gap between what it says it is and what it really is. It uses very systematic ways of harassing people. Despite the dramatic differences in style, both are, yes, dictatorships. Zenawi is one of the most educated guys in Ethiopia, has the best intellect and best understanding of the world even among the new breed of African leaders. He got his Ph.D. from Columbia -after seventeen years of leading the war against the Derg. There is none of that cult business, with pictures in public. He’s now fifty-four, knows how to trick the West. For example, he characterizes the press as “extremists,” but also cites the press as evidence that Ethiopia is a democratic country. Like all our leaders recently, he is very short! But no Napoleon complex, more of a self-effacing, thoughtful, measured manner that he assumes internationally, when he speaks English. He claims at conferences, and so forth, to be a mere spokesman for his party and people, and doesn’t go out of his way to demonize the opposition. But at home he is crude, a menacing bully and dictator. All the so-called independent elements in the Ethiopian government do what he says. He sounds a lot different in Amharic, arrogant and snarky. In Parliament, he demonizes the opposition. His command of language is excellent.
[I mentioned a panel discussion which I had attended at the 92nd Street Y, in New York, where Abebe Zegeye, an academic who studies human rights, was outspoken until asked a question by someone who identified himself as representing the Ethiopian Consulate. After that, Zegeye visibly clammed up. Abiye said that, yes, Zegeye, who works out of South Africa, would want to be able to get back into Ethiopia. He must have realized the man from the Consulate had been sent to spy on him.]
RS: What about the roles of well-known pro-democratic activists, Mesfin Wolde-Marriam [b.1930] and Adam Melaku [b.?]?
AT: They’re both teachers. Wolde-Marriam is a very principled man, he’s stood up for rights for years. I don’t consider him as a person who can forge a democratic way for Ethiopia. But his ideas have influenced a lot of the younger generation.
RS: What of the changes the Derg made: to redress long-standing ethnic and gender inequalities? Can’t those be characterized as “progressive”?
AT: The Derg was kind of a pseudo-Marxist organization, emulating eastern Europe and Russia. Some of their courses of action do make them appear “progressive,” but I don’t think they were, not at all. Women’s rights were pushed by the Derg, yes, but they had already been pushed by Haile Selassie [1892-1975]. “Equality” under the Derg was Robespierrean equality -everyone was poor, equal opportunity killing, equal opportunity torture. So, no, they were not progressive. The Derg was a reaction to Haile Selassie and to feudal systems. In their first few years, they redressed ethnic imbalances of power
RS: Isn’t that a good thing?
AT: Well, yes. But ethnic politics brought other problems, problems of national identity. The ethnic politics genie left the bottle and destroyed the raison d’etre of the state. Now the government is a weak confederation [although, on paper, a Federation], but also a dictatorship. In practice, it is a unitary government with Zenawi exercising all real power through his personal brilliance, brutality and tactics. As the years passed after the 2005 election, they became like all groups that stay in power too long. After seventeen years, a quagmire of corruption. And after all their sacrifices before that … . Even Mugabe [Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, b.1924] once had a vision for his country. What happened after he got in power was completely contrary to what he was before. The new Ethiopian government also had a vision, and they tried hard, at first. Now they’re interested in staying in power -that’s all.
RS: What type of journalist are you? Do you cover events?
AT: I’m a political analyst. Others on my paper cover; I analyze, afterward.
RS: How is the press in Ethiopia controlled?
AT: A predecessor paper to Addis Neger, called Meznagna, was shut down just after the 2005 election. Now they don’t shut you down, they harass and harangue and use trick tactics to scare you. You don’t know when they act, and when they don’t act. You write something very critical and important, expecting the worst. Nothing happens. But a month later, you write this innocuous, silly article, and suddenly you’re arrested and thrown in jail for ten days, released just before the CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists] can get involved. That has a chilling effect. You try to be as cautious as possible. They are very careful, very systematic.
RS: Has the diaspora played a role?
AT: Yes, the internet has enabled the diaspora to play a role in Ethiopian affairs. In 2005, at their long-distance urging, when it became apparent the election had been rigged, elected opposition legislators decided not to take their seats. This triggered an anomalous reaction by the President, who put the protesters, as well as their vocal press supporters and lawyers, in jail for eighteen to twenty-four months. In effect, this spelled the end of the Ethiopian opposition, at least until today.
RS: What role does ethnicity play in Ethiopian politics today?
AT: Zenawi’s base is very narrow, his own ethnic group, the Tigray [6.2% of the population], at the northern tip of Ethiopia. The Derg tried to eradicate this group and to give power to groups from the traditionally oppressed south. Haile Selassie’s dynasty was Amharic. The Tigray and Amhara are similar, two historically dominant groups, not numerically, but in terms of power. They also have had a serious, long-term power rivalry. In recent times, the Amaharic had ruled for a hundred years, then the Derg, so Tigreans had been out of power a long time before Zenawi.
RS: Can’t he expand his power base, get beyond ethnic support.
AT: Once ethnicity is injected into politics, as it has been, it is very difficult to get away from it. Even if you deliver important services to a region, they’ll still vote for their own. The same thing happened after the recent Kenyan elections [2007]. Once ethnic politics is out of the bottle, there is great trouble putting it back. Meles understands that, always tries to rally his base.
RS: What has Addis Neger said about Somalia?
AT: We think Ethiopia has exacerbated Somalia’s problems, which are very serious and complex. Our intervention there was mistimed, mismanaged, and there was a lot of bad calculation. They went in again last week [May 21, 2009], just after Susan Rice [Obama appointee as Permanent Representative to the U.N.] visited Ethiopia. Most Ethiopians have been in favor of the policy of weakening Somalia, continuously since the Derg, because of territorial issues raised since the independence of Somalia in 1960, with the subsequent attempt to unify all ethnic Somalis -including Ogaden [Ethiopian province]-into “greater Somalia.” Ethiopian governments have wanted to destabilize, to fragment, Somalia. In 2005, the Islamists looked like unifying and controlling Somalia, so Ethiopia stepped up interference. Neither did the U.S. want Islamist rule, but Ethiopia feared it more. The Ethiopian government has also used the Somalian scare to divert people’s attention from their own domestic failings.
RS: What approach does Addis Neger take to the Federation issue?
AT: We certainly don’t go out of our way to say we are ruled by a majority regime! There are groups in Ethiopia who say that the country is one nation, and there are groups in Ethiopia who say that it is not one nation. So what we say to them all is, okay, but we have to agree on a system, we have to come up with a solution in-between. Some think the second camp [those who say Ethiopia isn't one nation] is just a fake creation of the elite of some groups. But the hegemonic government is also the creation of an elite. Ethiopian politics is elite politics. No mass participation at all. The claim by elite groups that “the people want this or that” is just a claim. Nobody knows what the Ethiopian people really want, as Ethiopia has never had a grain of democracy. All these ideas are created by the elite, so the elite have to sit down and come up with a solution.
RS: So you favor more federalism and more democracy?
AT: Yes, we favor that., some kind of stronger federalism which incorporates the ideas of both groups and much more democracy, much more individual freedom and equality.
RS: Who is your paper’s audience? your readers? Are you elitists?
AT: We are criticized for this. Given literacy, education, and the structure of Ethiopian society, yes, we write for the elite. Even the figure 39% given for literacy is not for the kind of literacy needed for these arguments, for which functional literacy is more like 14%. The educated have a lot of influence, get a lot of respect, in a country like ours. If I go to my father and tell him to vote for an opposition candidate, he will do it. So we write for those who have this influence. Our paper is very analytic, like The Guardian.
RS: Tell me about your book.
AT: I’m dealing with the possibility of democracy in Ethiopia. Not the approach of looking for broad elements of Ethiopian history and culture as beacons for the future. But looking at how the progressive movements in Ethiopian history, where national identity was forged, like those in the history of Europe, can be seen as bases for future democracy.
RS: Are there any questions you’d like to ask me?
AT (laughs): No.
RS: Then we should stop. Thank you so much. What will you do now?
AT: Wait for my dinner.
Africans slam Zenawi-Sarkozy appeal
Radio France International
African NGOs at the Copenhagen Climate Conference on Wednesday accused Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is selling out Africa after he backed a joint statement with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance say that Zenawi, whom African countries named their "chief negotiator" at Copenhagen, is "undermining" his fellow negotiators and endangering Africa's future.
They are furious that the joint statement called for a global warming limit a 2°C above pre-industrial levels - compared to the 1.5°C that poorer countries earlier said was the highest figure they were prepared to accept.
A 2°C rise would mean a 3.5°C rise for the African continent, the campaigners claim, "threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people, including the Ethiopian people".
And they point out that promises of aid to vulnerable countries at the moment seem to be no higher than ten billion dollars (seven billion euros) over three years, starting in 2010, which they consider a derisory sum.
Meanwhile Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt declared Wednesday that he is unsure that the conference will even agree the 2°C target. Reinfeldt was speaking at the European parliament in Brussels, before travelling to Copenhagen where he will represent the European Union along with Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso.
In what officials are describing as a protocol formality, the Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen is taking over as chairman of the climate tlalks, replacing Coni Hedegaard who will lead informal talks.
Danish police on Wednesday fired tear gas and arrested more than 100 activists, who were among 1,500 who tried to march on the Copenhagen conference centre.
The protesters accuse the politicians from 194 countries of preparing an inadequate response to global warming.
NGOs are also angry that thousands of their members have been refused entry to the Bella Conference Center, despite having badges.
Organisers have accepted the blame for the problem, saying that 46,000 people want to attend but that the centre has only a 15,000 capacity. The NGOs say the politicians do not want to hear their voices.
African NGOs at the Copenhagen Climate Conference on Wednesday accused Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is selling out Africa after he backed a joint statement with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance say that Zenawi, whom African countries named their "chief negotiator" at Copenhagen, is "undermining" his fellow negotiators and endangering Africa's future.
They are furious that the joint statement called for a global warming limit a 2°C above pre-industrial levels - compared to the 1.5°C that poorer countries earlier said was the highest figure they were prepared to accept.
A 2°C rise would mean a 3.5°C rise for the African continent, the campaigners claim, "threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people, including the Ethiopian people".
And they point out that promises of aid to vulnerable countries at the moment seem to be no higher than ten billion dollars (seven billion euros) over three years, starting in 2010, which they consider a derisory sum.
Meanwhile Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt declared Wednesday that he is unsure that the conference will even agree the 2°C target. Reinfeldt was speaking at the European parliament in Brussels, before travelling to Copenhagen where he will represent the European Union along with Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso.
In what officials are describing as a protocol formality, the Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen is taking over as chairman of the climate tlalks, replacing Coni Hedegaard who will lead informal talks.
Danish police on Wednesday fired tear gas and arrested more than 100 activists, who were among 1,500 who tried to march on the Copenhagen conference centre.
The protesters accuse the politicians from 194 countries of preparing an inadequate response to global warming.
NGOs are also angry that thousands of their members have been refused entry to the Bella Conference Center, despite having badges.
Organisers have accepted the blame for the problem, saying that 46,000 people want to attend but that the centre has only a 15,000 capacity. The NGOs say the politicians do not want to hear their voices.
Why have they locked Birtukan in jail?
By Abiye Teklemariam
One blazing hot Sunday afternoon in December, I drove my old BMW 316i to Ferensay Legacion, an area in northeast Addis Ababa dotted with clusters of shanties. The roads were layered with unevenly carved cobble stones and red sand which made driving nearly impossible. Outside most of the small hovels, which were made of mud walls and corrugated tin roofs, stood people--mostly women, talking to each other and fetching water from public spigots. Most of them were dressed in threadbare clothes and dust-covered sandals. A young woman with a baby tied on her back waved her right hand as I drove by. Birtukan Mideksa, the young, charismatic leader of Ethiopia’s biggest opposition, had lived in the village all her life except when she was in Kaliti, the notorious Ethiopian jail. “This is who I am. Ferensay is not just a village to me. It represents the ethos of solidarity, self-sacrifice and fighting to succeed in spite of adversity,” she told the crowd of adoring villagers, who gathered to celebrate her courage and leadership in late August 2007.
Birtukan, who is 35, lived in a three-room house set behind a crumbling tin fence with her three-year -ld daughter, her mom and niece. She met me just outside of the house where I parked my car and led me to her room. She was dressed ordinarily; tight jeans and blue linen shirt. No make-up. Her hair was pulled back tightly, and her high cheek bones and soft facial features were fully exposed. Her eyes were wet and lined in red. “Sleepless nights?” I asked her. She proffered an inscrutable smile in response. A neatly organized shelf lined by books with broad ranging themes occupied the left corner of the room. There were Jean P. Sarte’s Being and Nothingness, Messay Kebede’s Survival and Modernization, and John Austin’s The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. “Most of them were sent to me when I was in prison by friends and people I don’t even know,” she said, pointing to the shelf. The right side of the room was dominated by a big poster of Aung San Suu Kyi, her idol. She directed me to her bed and said, “You can sit there if you don’t mind, or I will ask them to bring you a stool.” She sat on the opposite end of the bed.
This was one day before a re-arrest which would condemn her to life in prison, and she knew what was coming. Did she think they would put her in jail? “You have to know that they are paper tigers. They are weak, but want to appear strong. They would think caging a woman with a three year old daughter who lives under their firm surveillance every day demonstrates their toughness.” She smiled nervously. “I don’t want to go to jail. It is terrible, but defiance is the only way to beat them.” Birtukan has a well-earned reputation of fearlessness, but here she seemed shaken. She folded her arms over her stomach, and disappeared into herself for a few minutes. “I am apprehensive of prison,” she said as her daughter poked her head in and looked playfully at her mother. “I have a daughter who needs me, a mother who is old.” Then her passion flares. Her hands unfold; her face frowns. “They forcefully make people hostage to their family and social commitments. They compel you to choose between freedom and family.”
Over the past 15 years, Ethiopians have become accustomed to politico-criminal arrests and trials. Journalists accused of threatening the national security of the country, opposition politicians put in trial for treason and attempted genocide, regime-opponent artists jailed for crimes petty and serious, and government officials charged with corruption - coincidentally, most of them after they started raising their voices against Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. But no affair has befuddled and stunned as many as the Birtukan case. Why have they imprisoned her?
A month earlier, Birtukan arrived in London in a driving downpour, hustling through umbrella-wielding political friends to reach the car awaiting her. This was the start of her two-week trip to Europe. She would visit supporters of her party, raise funds, explain her party’s political objectives and strategic choices, and meet officials of different countries. She had delayed her trip for weeks because she wanted to follow the US elections from home. “Obama dazzled her. She read his two books, listened to his speeches and, like millions, thought he was the real deal,” said journalist Tamerat Negera. “She saw herself in him. Her political ambition has always been to seek a common ground in a country which is polarized by ethnicity, conflict and ideology.”
The trip to Europe was one of the biggest challenges to this ambition. After the internal feud which tore apart the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) apart, a party on which numerous Ethiopians pinned their hopes, many Diaspora Ethiopians had become frosty and suspicious towards opposition politicians. Her newly- minted party’s claim of the mantle of a CUD successor had serious doubters. In the ten months since the split of the CUD, even her ardent supporters questioned whether she had the necessary leadership skills and toughness to revive the opposition movement. Critics accused her of “surrender” to the EPRDF when she declared that her party had chosen “peaceful struggle”. Ethiopianreview, an influential website published in America, declared that the “Lady Liberty became Lady Surrender.” Europe was experiencing one of its coldest autumns in history; Birtukan hoped her political trip didn’t mirror the weather.
She also knew she had to walk a tightrope. Critics of the Meles government would blow horns in support if she made high-pitched, passionate anti-government remarks. But she cared about the consequences of her actions. She thought she was in a long-term political game and there was no reason to endanger her new party.
Generally, the Europe tour went well. Her critics were polite; her unenthusiastic supporters were galvanized. There were a few spats with activists, but they were all behind the screen. But a statement she uttered at a meeting in Sweden would trip her up. She told an audience of not more than 30 Ethiopians that the pardon she and other opposition leaders signed as a condition for their release from prison was the result of a political process and had no formal legal force.
On December 12, 2008, Birtukan was summoned by Workneh Gebeyehu, Ethiopia’s Federal Police Commissioner, and asked to issue an apology for the statement she made in Sweden. Workneh, a man of considerable bulk, is regarded by his colleagues as “a small time boss with big title.” The real power behind the curtain at the Federal Police is the lesser known Tesfaye Aberha, the assistant commissioner. Workineh is, however, the force’s public face. “He does all the dirty laundry and the floor-sweeping as Tesfaye makes decisions out of public and media sights,” said one of Workine’s close friends. He also has a reputation for ruthlessness and Byzantine intrigue, so atypical of the place he came from, the swinging Shashemene.
With him was one of the Prime Minister’s trusted men, Hashim Tewfeik, former State Minister of Justice, now working as a legal advisor to the Federal Police. I first met Hashim in December 2005 at his office in the green and white boxy building which housed the Ministry of Justice. The newspaper I edited was closed by the government and I had submitted a complaint to the Ministry of Justice. Hashim’s secretary arranged the meeting. He was skinny with tapered fingers and thin lips. He wore a blue suit and white shirt. Soft-spoken, articulate and with owlish visage, there was nothing to hint about him the EPRDF official who deliberated in decisions to terrorize the press and opposition leaders and supporters.
Hashim, a close relative of former Supreme Court Chief Justice and Election Board President, Kemal Bedri, was a popular lecturer of law at the Civil Service College before he left for Australia to study constitutional law at the Melbourne Law School. His doctoral dissertation, Ethiopia: the challenge of many nationalities, was a rather unabashed defense of EPRDF’s system of ethnic federalism. In 2004, he returned to Ethiopia; a year later, he was appointed State Minister of Justice, and quickly transformed into one of the regime’s most ardent political operatives.
“I am a student of this constitution and I defend it with all my capacities,” he spoke to me in modest whisper. It was a concealed suggestion that my newspaper had gone over the constitutionally prescribed limits of free speech. When I met Hashim again two years later in a barber shop around Sar Bet, he was already on the verge of leaving the Ministry of Justice to the Federal Police. Befitting such transfer, he was reading At the Center of the Storm: My Ten Years at the CIA, a book by former CIA boss, George Tenet.
Birtukan sat in the room, listening patiently to the two talking about her transgression of the law as they delivered the ultimatum: retract her Stockholm statement within three days, or she would face life imprisonment. She didn’t interrupt them, but her demeanor suggested that she was unfazed. When she spoke, her statement was a question packaged in mischievous brevity. “By what authority are you giving me this ultimatum?”
Two days later, she wrote her last word on the issue in Addis Neger, a weekly newspaper. This was Birtukan in her defiant and fearless mode. “Lawlessness and arrogance are things that I will never get used to, nor will cooperate with,” she penned. “…For them, a peaceful struggle can only be conducted within the limits the ruling party and individual officials set, and not according to the provisions of the constitution. For me, this is hard to accept.” In less than 72 hours, her pardon was revoked and she was dragged to Kaliti federal prison to serve a life sentence.
Why have they arrested her? For many Ethiopians, the entire Stockholm controversy was a grand ruse. Other opposition politicians, including former CUD leader Hailu Shawel, had questioned the credibility of the process of pardon even more forcefully. But not a finger was raised against them. Her accruing days in prison reinforced that suspicion. Even by Ethiopian standards, her treatment has been harsh. She spent more than two months in solitary confinement; she was denied access to books, newspapers and radio. The only people who are permitted to visit her are her mother and daughter; her lawyers have been refused to see her several times. “She is not a normal political prisoner. I have never seen the prime minister so infuriated as when he is asked about her arrest,” says Tamrat Negera. “The notion that her arrest is related to the pardon stuff was hogwash.”
In mid-January, two lawyers appeared on State TV to defend the decision of the government to re-arrest Birtukan. One of them was Shimeles Kemal, a tall man with a narrow face and long chin. Shimeles is such a complex and contradictory character that if he didn’t exist, someone would be obliged to invent him.
At the end of 1970s, Shimeles was a radical, rebellious teenager who dreamed of the formation of an Ethiopian socialist republic. He distributed propaganda leaflets of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party, a Marxist group which was battling a powerful military junta, and agitated his friends for struggle. But like most of his compatriots, he paid dearly for his views and actions. In 1991, the same year armed rebels toppled the junta, the former teenage idealist added a law degree to a CV which included seven years of prison life. His relationship with the new leaders was a roller coaster. As a judge, Shimeles convicted and sentenced the famous dissident Professor Asrat Woldayes, who died of a debilitating disease he acquired in prison. Then he was disgracefully removed from his judgeship while he was presiding over the case of another prominent dissident, Taye Woldesemait.
At the end of 1990s, he turned himself into a defender of free speech, writing brilliant legal and philosophical articles in the weekly newspaper, The Reporter. His friends claimed that the new image he tried to cultivate was so contrary to the decisions he made while in black robe that people stopped taking him seriously. With no allies, he ran into the embrace of Bereket Simon, the ruling party’s powerful propaganda man, and effortlessly turned back the clock. By 2006, he had already started drafting laws which would unduly constrain free speech and freedom of the press, prosecuted political detractors, journalists and human rights activists and overseen the expulsion of foreign journalists. His victims included his best friends and ex-girlfriends. Commingled in his brilliant mind are the ideas of the law as an instrument of political power and an utter contempt for political opposition. He has turned into the quintessential lawyer who has no moral qualms, the Jacques Vergas of the Ethiopian government.
In the TV appearance, Shimeles shook his fists threateningly and declared that the members of the press who tried to “patriotize and beatify” her would face criminal prosecution. After the interview, he rushed to his office to prepare a propaganda manual for political discussion. The right side of the first page of the manual was marked in black ink with these words: Attn: to all federal civil servants and regional public relations bureaus. The manual served as a document of discussions which were held in government offices, public corporations and regional public relation offices in February and March. The main theme of the discussions was: Why was Birukan rearrested? The answer was unlikely to emerge either from Shimeles’ TV interview or the manual he had prepared. Both doggedly stuck to the official line. In Addis Ababa, a city given to conspiracy theories, the discussions inflamed speculations and questions: why would they force civil servants to discuss Birtukan’s arrest?
Saturday, March 14, 2009, was the day of off-putting tasks. I had to clear my office desk, pack my bags, and call my friends to say goodbye. A day later, I would board an Ethiopian airlines plane leaving for the US. I put my books and some documents in the trunk of my car and went back to the second floor of my newspaper’s building to fetch old newspapers. Before I left the documentation room, my phone rang. It was my informant, Ashu – name changed to protect his security – who had close contacts with people high up in the EPRDF’s power hierarchy. He wanted to meet me before I left Ethiopia. “Can I see you at Chinkelo Butchery in 30 minutes?” he asked.
When I arrived 15 minutes late, Ashu was already half way through his raw meat, cutting the meet systematically with falcate-shaped knives and eating the slices with injera and spicy awaze sauce. When I told him I couldn’t cut meat, he rolled his eyes in disbelief. Ashu is a plump, moon-faced man with a proclivity for sybaritic life. His “business”, never clearly defined, gave him access to many of the country’s corrupt elite, including some of the biggest officials of the ruling party. As he sat in the butchery wearing a brown Aston Nappa leather jacket and track pants, drinking a bottle of Gouder wine and eating raw meat, many people going in and out of the butchery stopped to greet him, or at least waved at him. His reactions revealed that he loved the attention. In January, I asked Ashu to find out the real reason behind Birtukan’s arrest and he was here to tell me what he discovered. “If you want to know why Birtukan was arrested, follow Siye,” he said.
Birtukan had a gibe she used often in her conversations about politics. “Ethiopia,” she would say, “is the country of the future.” Demographically, her statement makes sense. More than 70% of Ethiopians are less than 30 years old. Politically, young Ethiopians wonder when the supposed generational power shift would occur. “Our politics is all the continuation of the psychodrama of the '60s and '70s,” said Dagnenet Mekonnen, a journalist. “Birtukan is one of the very few exceptions.”
Siye Abraha is among those old political elites. Before the split within the ruling party’s core political group, the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF), Siye was one of the most powerful Ethiopian politicians, known for his dismissive political statements. In 2001, his opposition to Prime Minister Meles landed him in jail. After six years in jail, he came back to the country’s political scene a changed man, both physically and mentally.
His hair was buzzed to a gray stubble; his forehead furrowed with deep lines. He speaks with the calmness and patience of a Scandinavian scholar. Over tea and biscuits in his house in early January 2008, he confided in me that he thought the way forward for Ethiopian politics was consociationalism. A former defense minister and the leader of the military wing of TPLF during its days of armed struggle, talk was cheap for him. He started plotting the creation of a consociational party immediately.
Birtukan was integral to his plans. She was young, energetic, articulate and charismatic. She was the de facto leader of the integrationist movement in Ethiopian politics. But more than anything else, she was regarded as authentic, a person who could rally people. Even after the daily flogging in the headlines, there were few who questioned her integrity. The two started a long political discussion. He wanted to unite all major opposition parties, regardless of their ideologies, based on common minimal principles. She wasn’t entirely convinced of its practicality, but wanted to listen. “I like this guy. Although he may not be telling me all what I want to know, I will patiently listen,” she told me in June 2008. Siye helped create a coalition of some of the major political groups under an umbrella called Medrek, but by the time Birtukan was arrested, the coalition was sorely missing the membership of an important group--Andinet, Birtukan’s party. “It is very close to happening. I don’t know in which form we join Medrek, but we will join them eventually,” she told me a week before her arrest.
“They knew that. They were worried about the two forming a political partnership. He would appeal to members of the EPRDF. She would appeal to a lot of Ethiopians, and with all major groups in it, they thought Medrek would be a formidable coalition,” Ashu said. “I heard that from a top official.” I was skeptical. “So they arrested her just to thwart the formation of a strong political alliance?” His answer was firm. “Yes!”
“But why her? Why not him?” I asked.
He shook his head in irritated disbelief. “You seem to have no clue about the internal dynamics of the TPLF, and I am not going to recite the alphabet with you.”
On April 28, 2009, Washington presented me with a contrary hypothesis. Addis Neger asked me to write about the government’s allegation of a “Ginbot 7” orchestrated attempt to topple it. I rang a Horn of Africa expert whom I met while reporting the 2008 US elections. Sitting at the Thai Coast restaurant near Foggy Bottom, we walked through Ethiopian politics. “Do you think Meles will leave office?” “No.” “What is the perception of Birhanu at Foggy Bottom?” “Mixed, but not enough information.”….And then Birtukan “I think Birtukan grew too big too quickly. She was turning into a darling of foreign diplomats,” he said. “Meles might have wanted to show who was in charge.”
Among the foreign diplomats, nobody loved Birtukan more than Stephane Gompertz, the articulate, ex-French Ambassador in Addis Ababa. Gompertz is an Ethiopia-enthusiast. A skinny man in his late 50s with a retreating hairline, he collected Ethiopian art even before he became his country’s ambassador in Addis. For a person who just served as a Minister Counselor at the French embassy in London, an ambassadorship to Ethiopia might not feel like a promotion, but Gompertz tried hard to get the post. In late 2005, a few months after his arrival in Addis Ababa, he found himself in the middle of one of the country’s worst political problems. Diplomatic efforts to solve the stand-off between the government and the CUD failed, opposition leaders were jailed and the democratic space narrowed significantly. Gompertz continued to push the Meles government to relent. At the same time, he was also making visits to Kaliti prison to meet with Birtukan.. A strong bond developed. “Birtukan could be a great leader of the country in the future. She has some great qualities. She just needs to be a smart political player,” he told me during a lunch at Hotel de Leopol in Kazanchis in April 2008.
And then there was Donald Yamamoto, the diminutive, soft-spoken ex-US ambassador in Addis Ababa who was the classic citizen of the deceptively smooth diplomatic world. But when it came to Birtukan, Yamamoto occasionally meandered off script. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said to politicians in one of the US embassy’s famous cocktail receptions, “I am proud to introduce you to the rock star of Ethiopian politics.” At the time when the media buzz about the rock star appeal of Barack Obama, the ambassador’s statement was interpreted by most guests as a masked comparison of the then Illinois Senator and Birtukan. Similar sentiments were echoing throughout other diplomatic offices in Addis Ababa. Even Vicki Huddelston, the former US chargé d'affaires, who had no sympathy for the Ethiopian opposition was said to be in awe of Birtukan.
But Birtukan never let the soft air kisses touch her face. One evening, I watched her talk to a group of young activists from her party at their office in Meshualekiya, a village in southeast Addis Ababa. Her clear, distinctive voice flowed at a consistent volume with varying pitch; her hands sliced angular patches through the air. There was no prepared text; rather, a stream of passionate, flowery words gushing from the lips and heart of a politician who was living her life on a dramatic scale.
“When I was at the beginning of my political career,” she began and then paused.
“When did I begin politics? Was it last week?” she said, poking fun at herself and her short political career and provoking laughter from her audience. “I thought that diplomatic battle was a major part of the non-violent struggle. In politics, as they say, a week is too long. I have learnt my lessons. This is our fight. We ask them to join the fight for freedom and justice. We ask them to live up to their rhetoric and supposed creed. But we don’t beg them. This is our fight, not theirs. They would come running when they think that we have won it.”
Later in her office, she was drinking strong coffee, one demitasse after another. I asked her about the speech. “We have to stop overemphasizing their value,” she answered. “They like winners. They have strategic objectives which only winners can help them achieve. We should show them that we are winners, not beggars.” If Birtukan had, in talks to activists and private conversations, discounted the role of western countries and their diplomats in Ethiopia, she nonetheless did sometimes flirt with them. They had to be seduced, not trusted.
But are words of affection from diplomats enough to be Birtukan’s ‘La Brea Tar Pits’? In February this year, Meles seemed to lay out the terms. In a characteristic outburst, he contemptuously suggested that Birtukan had thought deliverance would come from “powerful people in powerful positions.” It was a clear finger pointing towards Western diplomats and politicians. “Had we indulged her assumptions, the message that we would have conveyed would be ‘nothing happens to you no matter what you do. If you have friends in higher places, you can ride roughshod with everything. That message I think is a very dangerous political message to convey in an emerging democracy. The rule of law and equality involves everyone.”
Scratch the surface and his statement might not be as significant as it seemed. The Ethiopian prime minister had used explosive accusations against Western nations when he arrested dissidents at home to preempt them from pressuring him to release the jailed. In truth, Meles had given the diplomats an opportunity for that deliverance. Days before her arrest, some asked Birtukan if they could help her escape the country - no doubt on Meles’ nod. Her emphatic “nay” to the offer brought much disappointment. Meles had told them ‘what’ was to come. He had used them as a conduit for communicating his intention to Birtukan, and these actions spoke louder than his calculated outbursts. Birtukan is as far removed from Melesian political values and behavior, but in the understanding of the actions and objectives of the West and its diplomats, they shared the same hemisphere.
“It was never more than ‘she is a decent woman; we like her’ stuff,’ said a political analyst in Addis Ababa, in reference to the statements of the diplomats. “Look, this is about tough-minded realism. No sentiments. While they were blowing kisses to Birtukan, these guys were bedwetting with the thought that Meles was going to resign. Meles knew that. So hopefully did Birtukan. There was no reason for him to arrest her owing to their comments. There must have been other factors. ”
At the beginning of the year, Birtukan’s name was on the lips of many people and the pages of international newspapers. With only days remaining before the first anniversary of her arrest, the outcries have quieted and the ink has dried up. Meanwhile, robbed of Birtukan’s leadership, the opposition coalition is struggling to gain attention and credibility. Western diplomats have also hit the refresh button. The political consequences of her arrest are becoming clearer. The question is: Were they designed?
_________
Abiye Teklemariam Megenta was the Executive Editor of Addis Neger newspaper which announced its closure owing to harassment last week. He can be reached at abiye.megenta@gtc.ox.ac.uk
Birtukan, who is 35, lived in a three-room house set behind a crumbling tin fence with her three-year -ld daughter, her mom and niece. She met me just outside of the house where I parked my car and led me to her room. She was dressed ordinarily; tight jeans and blue linen shirt. No make-up. Her hair was pulled back tightly, and her high cheek bones and soft facial features were fully exposed. Her eyes were wet and lined in red. “Sleepless nights?” I asked her. She proffered an inscrutable smile in response. A neatly organized shelf lined by books with broad ranging themes occupied the left corner of the room. There were Jean P. Sarte’s Being and Nothingness, Messay Kebede’s Survival and Modernization, and John Austin’s The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. “Most of them were sent to me when I was in prison by friends and people I don’t even know,” she said, pointing to the shelf. The right side of the room was dominated by a big poster of Aung San Suu Kyi, her idol. She directed me to her bed and said, “You can sit there if you don’t mind, or I will ask them to bring you a stool.” She sat on the opposite end of the bed.
This was one day before a re-arrest which would condemn her to life in prison, and she knew what was coming. Did she think they would put her in jail? “You have to know that they are paper tigers. They are weak, but want to appear strong. They would think caging a woman with a three year old daughter who lives under their firm surveillance every day demonstrates their toughness.” She smiled nervously. “I don’t want to go to jail. It is terrible, but defiance is the only way to beat them.” Birtukan has a well-earned reputation of fearlessness, but here she seemed shaken. She folded her arms over her stomach, and disappeared into herself for a few minutes. “I am apprehensive of prison,” she said as her daughter poked her head in and looked playfully at her mother. “I have a daughter who needs me, a mother who is old.” Then her passion flares. Her hands unfold; her face frowns. “They forcefully make people hostage to their family and social commitments. They compel you to choose between freedom and family.”
Over the past 15 years, Ethiopians have become accustomed to politico-criminal arrests and trials. Journalists accused of threatening the national security of the country, opposition politicians put in trial for treason and attempted genocide, regime-opponent artists jailed for crimes petty and serious, and government officials charged with corruption - coincidentally, most of them after they started raising their voices against Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. But no affair has befuddled and stunned as many as the Birtukan case. Why have they imprisoned her?
A month earlier, Birtukan arrived in London in a driving downpour, hustling through umbrella-wielding political friends to reach the car awaiting her. This was the start of her two-week trip to Europe. She would visit supporters of her party, raise funds, explain her party’s political objectives and strategic choices, and meet officials of different countries. She had delayed her trip for weeks because she wanted to follow the US elections from home. “Obama dazzled her. She read his two books, listened to his speeches and, like millions, thought he was the real deal,” said journalist Tamerat Negera. “She saw herself in him. Her political ambition has always been to seek a common ground in a country which is polarized by ethnicity, conflict and ideology.”
The trip to Europe was one of the biggest challenges to this ambition. After the internal feud which tore apart the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) apart, a party on which numerous Ethiopians pinned their hopes, many Diaspora Ethiopians had become frosty and suspicious towards opposition politicians. Her newly- minted party’s claim of the mantle of a CUD successor had serious doubters. In the ten months since the split of the CUD, even her ardent supporters questioned whether she had the necessary leadership skills and toughness to revive the opposition movement. Critics accused her of “surrender” to the EPRDF when she declared that her party had chosen “peaceful struggle”. Ethiopianreview, an influential website published in America, declared that the “Lady Liberty became Lady Surrender.” Europe was experiencing one of its coldest autumns in history; Birtukan hoped her political trip didn’t mirror the weather.
She also knew she had to walk a tightrope. Critics of the Meles government would blow horns in support if she made high-pitched, passionate anti-government remarks. But she cared about the consequences of her actions. She thought she was in a long-term political game and there was no reason to endanger her new party.
Generally, the Europe tour went well. Her critics were polite; her unenthusiastic supporters were galvanized. There were a few spats with activists, but they were all behind the screen. But a statement she uttered at a meeting in Sweden would trip her up. She told an audience of not more than 30 Ethiopians that the pardon she and other opposition leaders signed as a condition for their release from prison was the result of a political process and had no formal legal force.
On December 12, 2008, Birtukan was summoned by Workneh Gebeyehu, Ethiopia’s Federal Police Commissioner, and asked to issue an apology for the statement she made in Sweden. Workneh, a man of considerable bulk, is regarded by his colleagues as “a small time boss with big title.” The real power behind the curtain at the Federal Police is the lesser known Tesfaye Aberha, the assistant commissioner. Workineh is, however, the force’s public face. “He does all the dirty laundry and the floor-sweeping as Tesfaye makes decisions out of public and media sights,” said one of Workine’s close friends. He also has a reputation for ruthlessness and Byzantine intrigue, so atypical of the place he came from, the swinging Shashemene.
With him was one of the Prime Minister’s trusted men, Hashim Tewfeik, former State Minister of Justice, now working as a legal advisor to the Federal Police. I first met Hashim in December 2005 at his office in the green and white boxy building which housed the Ministry of Justice. The newspaper I edited was closed by the government and I had submitted a complaint to the Ministry of Justice. Hashim’s secretary arranged the meeting. He was skinny with tapered fingers and thin lips. He wore a blue suit and white shirt. Soft-spoken, articulate and with owlish visage, there was nothing to hint about him the EPRDF official who deliberated in decisions to terrorize the press and opposition leaders and supporters.
Hashim, a close relative of former Supreme Court Chief Justice and Election Board President, Kemal Bedri, was a popular lecturer of law at the Civil Service College before he left for Australia to study constitutional law at the Melbourne Law School. His doctoral dissertation, Ethiopia: the challenge of many nationalities, was a rather unabashed defense of EPRDF’s system of ethnic federalism. In 2004, he returned to Ethiopia; a year later, he was appointed State Minister of Justice, and quickly transformed into one of the regime’s most ardent political operatives.
“I am a student of this constitution and I defend it with all my capacities,” he spoke to me in modest whisper. It was a concealed suggestion that my newspaper had gone over the constitutionally prescribed limits of free speech. When I met Hashim again two years later in a barber shop around Sar Bet, he was already on the verge of leaving the Ministry of Justice to the Federal Police. Befitting such transfer, he was reading At the Center of the Storm: My Ten Years at the CIA, a book by former CIA boss, George Tenet.
Birtukan sat in the room, listening patiently to the two talking about her transgression of the law as they delivered the ultimatum: retract her Stockholm statement within three days, or she would face life imprisonment. She didn’t interrupt them, but her demeanor suggested that she was unfazed. When she spoke, her statement was a question packaged in mischievous brevity. “By what authority are you giving me this ultimatum?”
Two days later, she wrote her last word on the issue in Addis Neger, a weekly newspaper. This was Birtukan in her defiant and fearless mode. “Lawlessness and arrogance are things that I will never get used to, nor will cooperate with,” she penned. “…For them, a peaceful struggle can only be conducted within the limits the ruling party and individual officials set, and not according to the provisions of the constitution. For me, this is hard to accept.” In less than 72 hours, her pardon was revoked and she was dragged to Kaliti federal prison to serve a life sentence.
Why have they arrested her? For many Ethiopians, the entire Stockholm controversy was a grand ruse. Other opposition politicians, including former CUD leader Hailu Shawel, had questioned the credibility of the process of pardon even more forcefully. But not a finger was raised against them. Her accruing days in prison reinforced that suspicion. Even by Ethiopian standards, her treatment has been harsh. She spent more than two months in solitary confinement; she was denied access to books, newspapers and radio. The only people who are permitted to visit her are her mother and daughter; her lawyers have been refused to see her several times. “She is not a normal political prisoner. I have never seen the prime minister so infuriated as when he is asked about her arrest,” says Tamrat Negera. “The notion that her arrest is related to the pardon stuff was hogwash.”
In mid-January, two lawyers appeared on State TV to defend the decision of the government to re-arrest Birtukan. One of them was Shimeles Kemal, a tall man with a narrow face and long chin. Shimeles is such a complex and contradictory character that if he didn’t exist, someone would be obliged to invent him.
At the end of 1970s, Shimeles was a radical, rebellious teenager who dreamed of the formation of an Ethiopian socialist republic. He distributed propaganda leaflets of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party, a Marxist group which was battling a powerful military junta, and agitated his friends for struggle. But like most of his compatriots, he paid dearly for his views and actions. In 1991, the same year armed rebels toppled the junta, the former teenage idealist added a law degree to a CV which included seven years of prison life. His relationship with the new leaders was a roller coaster. As a judge, Shimeles convicted and sentenced the famous dissident Professor Asrat Woldayes, who died of a debilitating disease he acquired in prison. Then he was disgracefully removed from his judgeship while he was presiding over the case of another prominent dissident, Taye Woldesemait.
At the end of 1990s, he turned himself into a defender of free speech, writing brilliant legal and philosophical articles in the weekly newspaper, The Reporter. His friends claimed that the new image he tried to cultivate was so contrary to the decisions he made while in black robe that people stopped taking him seriously. With no allies, he ran into the embrace of Bereket Simon, the ruling party’s powerful propaganda man, and effortlessly turned back the clock. By 2006, he had already started drafting laws which would unduly constrain free speech and freedom of the press, prosecuted political detractors, journalists and human rights activists and overseen the expulsion of foreign journalists. His victims included his best friends and ex-girlfriends. Commingled in his brilliant mind are the ideas of the law as an instrument of political power and an utter contempt for political opposition. He has turned into the quintessential lawyer who has no moral qualms, the Jacques Vergas of the Ethiopian government.
In the TV appearance, Shimeles shook his fists threateningly and declared that the members of the press who tried to “patriotize and beatify” her would face criminal prosecution. After the interview, he rushed to his office to prepare a propaganda manual for political discussion. The right side of the first page of the manual was marked in black ink with these words: Attn: to all federal civil servants and regional public relations bureaus. The manual served as a document of discussions which were held in government offices, public corporations and regional public relation offices in February and March. The main theme of the discussions was: Why was Birukan rearrested? The answer was unlikely to emerge either from Shimeles’ TV interview or the manual he had prepared. Both doggedly stuck to the official line. In Addis Ababa, a city given to conspiracy theories, the discussions inflamed speculations and questions: why would they force civil servants to discuss Birtukan’s arrest?
Saturday, March 14, 2009, was the day of off-putting tasks. I had to clear my office desk, pack my bags, and call my friends to say goodbye. A day later, I would board an Ethiopian airlines plane leaving for the US. I put my books and some documents in the trunk of my car and went back to the second floor of my newspaper’s building to fetch old newspapers. Before I left the documentation room, my phone rang. It was my informant, Ashu – name changed to protect his security – who had close contacts with people high up in the EPRDF’s power hierarchy. He wanted to meet me before I left Ethiopia. “Can I see you at Chinkelo Butchery in 30 minutes?” he asked.
When I arrived 15 minutes late, Ashu was already half way through his raw meat, cutting the meet systematically with falcate-shaped knives and eating the slices with injera and spicy awaze sauce. When I told him I couldn’t cut meat, he rolled his eyes in disbelief. Ashu is a plump, moon-faced man with a proclivity for sybaritic life. His “business”, never clearly defined, gave him access to many of the country’s corrupt elite, including some of the biggest officials of the ruling party. As he sat in the butchery wearing a brown Aston Nappa leather jacket and track pants, drinking a bottle of Gouder wine and eating raw meat, many people going in and out of the butchery stopped to greet him, or at least waved at him. His reactions revealed that he loved the attention. In January, I asked Ashu to find out the real reason behind Birtukan’s arrest and he was here to tell me what he discovered. “If you want to know why Birtukan was arrested, follow Siye,” he said.
Birtukan had a gibe she used often in her conversations about politics. “Ethiopia,” she would say, “is the country of the future.” Demographically, her statement makes sense. More than 70% of Ethiopians are less than 30 years old. Politically, young Ethiopians wonder when the supposed generational power shift would occur. “Our politics is all the continuation of the psychodrama of the '60s and '70s,” said Dagnenet Mekonnen, a journalist. “Birtukan is one of the very few exceptions.”
Siye Abraha is among those old political elites. Before the split within the ruling party’s core political group, the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF), Siye was one of the most powerful Ethiopian politicians, known for his dismissive political statements. In 2001, his opposition to Prime Minister Meles landed him in jail. After six years in jail, he came back to the country’s political scene a changed man, both physically and mentally.
His hair was buzzed to a gray stubble; his forehead furrowed with deep lines. He speaks with the calmness and patience of a Scandinavian scholar. Over tea and biscuits in his house in early January 2008, he confided in me that he thought the way forward for Ethiopian politics was consociationalism. A former defense minister and the leader of the military wing of TPLF during its days of armed struggle, talk was cheap for him. He started plotting the creation of a consociational party immediately.
Birtukan was integral to his plans. She was young, energetic, articulate and charismatic. She was the de facto leader of the integrationist movement in Ethiopian politics. But more than anything else, she was regarded as authentic, a person who could rally people. Even after the daily flogging in the headlines, there were few who questioned her integrity. The two started a long political discussion. He wanted to unite all major opposition parties, regardless of their ideologies, based on common minimal principles. She wasn’t entirely convinced of its practicality, but wanted to listen. “I like this guy. Although he may not be telling me all what I want to know, I will patiently listen,” she told me in June 2008. Siye helped create a coalition of some of the major political groups under an umbrella called Medrek, but by the time Birtukan was arrested, the coalition was sorely missing the membership of an important group--Andinet, Birtukan’s party. “It is very close to happening. I don’t know in which form we join Medrek, but we will join them eventually,” she told me a week before her arrest.
“They knew that. They were worried about the two forming a political partnership. He would appeal to members of the EPRDF. She would appeal to a lot of Ethiopians, and with all major groups in it, they thought Medrek would be a formidable coalition,” Ashu said. “I heard that from a top official.” I was skeptical. “So they arrested her just to thwart the formation of a strong political alliance?” His answer was firm. “Yes!”
“But why her? Why not him?” I asked.
He shook his head in irritated disbelief. “You seem to have no clue about the internal dynamics of the TPLF, and I am not going to recite the alphabet with you.”
On April 28, 2009, Washington presented me with a contrary hypothesis. Addis Neger asked me to write about the government’s allegation of a “Ginbot 7” orchestrated attempt to topple it. I rang a Horn of Africa expert whom I met while reporting the 2008 US elections. Sitting at the Thai Coast restaurant near Foggy Bottom, we walked through Ethiopian politics. “Do you think Meles will leave office?” “No.” “What is the perception of Birhanu at Foggy Bottom?” “Mixed, but not enough information.”….And then Birtukan “I think Birtukan grew too big too quickly. She was turning into a darling of foreign diplomats,” he said. “Meles might have wanted to show who was in charge.”
Among the foreign diplomats, nobody loved Birtukan more than Stephane Gompertz, the articulate, ex-French Ambassador in Addis Ababa. Gompertz is an Ethiopia-enthusiast. A skinny man in his late 50s with a retreating hairline, he collected Ethiopian art even before he became his country’s ambassador in Addis. For a person who just served as a Minister Counselor at the French embassy in London, an ambassadorship to Ethiopia might not feel like a promotion, but Gompertz tried hard to get the post. In late 2005, a few months after his arrival in Addis Ababa, he found himself in the middle of one of the country’s worst political problems. Diplomatic efforts to solve the stand-off between the government and the CUD failed, opposition leaders were jailed and the democratic space narrowed significantly. Gompertz continued to push the Meles government to relent. At the same time, he was also making visits to Kaliti prison to meet with Birtukan.. A strong bond developed. “Birtukan could be a great leader of the country in the future. She has some great qualities. She just needs to be a smart political player,” he told me during a lunch at Hotel de Leopol in Kazanchis in April 2008.
And then there was Donald Yamamoto, the diminutive, soft-spoken ex-US ambassador in Addis Ababa who was the classic citizen of the deceptively smooth diplomatic world. But when it came to Birtukan, Yamamoto occasionally meandered off script. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said to politicians in one of the US embassy’s famous cocktail receptions, “I am proud to introduce you to the rock star of Ethiopian politics.” At the time when the media buzz about the rock star appeal of Barack Obama, the ambassador’s statement was interpreted by most guests as a masked comparison of the then Illinois Senator and Birtukan. Similar sentiments were echoing throughout other diplomatic offices in Addis Ababa. Even Vicki Huddelston, the former US chargé d'affaires, who had no sympathy for the Ethiopian opposition was said to be in awe of Birtukan.
But Birtukan never let the soft air kisses touch her face. One evening, I watched her talk to a group of young activists from her party at their office in Meshualekiya, a village in southeast Addis Ababa. Her clear, distinctive voice flowed at a consistent volume with varying pitch; her hands sliced angular patches through the air. There was no prepared text; rather, a stream of passionate, flowery words gushing from the lips and heart of a politician who was living her life on a dramatic scale.
“When I was at the beginning of my political career,” she began and then paused.
“When did I begin politics? Was it last week?” she said, poking fun at herself and her short political career and provoking laughter from her audience. “I thought that diplomatic battle was a major part of the non-violent struggle. In politics, as they say, a week is too long. I have learnt my lessons. This is our fight. We ask them to join the fight for freedom and justice. We ask them to live up to their rhetoric and supposed creed. But we don’t beg them. This is our fight, not theirs. They would come running when they think that we have won it.”
Later in her office, she was drinking strong coffee, one demitasse after another. I asked her about the speech. “We have to stop overemphasizing their value,” she answered. “They like winners. They have strategic objectives which only winners can help them achieve. We should show them that we are winners, not beggars.” If Birtukan had, in talks to activists and private conversations, discounted the role of western countries and their diplomats in Ethiopia, she nonetheless did sometimes flirt with them. They had to be seduced, not trusted.
But are words of affection from diplomats enough to be Birtukan’s ‘La Brea Tar Pits’? In February this year, Meles seemed to lay out the terms. In a characteristic outburst, he contemptuously suggested that Birtukan had thought deliverance would come from “powerful people in powerful positions.” It was a clear finger pointing towards Western diplomats and politicians. “Had we indulged her assumptions, the message that we would have conveyed would be ‘nothing happens to you no matter what you do. If you have friends in higher places, you can ride roughshod with everything. That message I think is a very dangerous political message to convey in an emerging democracy. The rule of law and equality involves everyone.”
Scratch the surface and his statement might not be as significant as it seemed. The Ethiopian prime minister had used explosive accusations against Western nations when he arrested dissidents at home to preempt them from pressuring him to release the jailed. In truth, Meles had given the diplomats an opportunity for that deliverance. Days before her arrest, some asked Birtukan if they could help her escape the country - no doubt on Meles’ nod. Her emphatic “nay” to the offer brought much disappointment. Meles had told them ‘what’ was to come. He had used them as a conduit for communicating his intention to Birtukan, and these actions spoke louder than his calculated outbursts. Birtukan is as far removed from Melesian political values and behavior, but in the understanding of the actions and objectives of the West and its diplomats, they shared the same hemisphere.
“It was never more than ‘she is a decent woman; we like her’ stuff,’ said a political analyst in Addis Ababa, in reference to the statements of the diplomats. “Look, this is about tough-minded realism. No sentiments. While they were blowing kisses to Birtukan, these guys were bedwetting with the thought that Meles was going to resign. Meles knew that. So hopefully did Birtukan. There was no reason for him to arrest her owing to their comments. There must have been other factors. ”
At the beginning of the year, Birtukan’s name was on the lips of many people and the pages of international newspapers. With only days remaining before the first anniversary of her arrest, the outcries have quieted and the ink has dried up. Meanwhile, robbed of Birtukan’s leadership, the opposition coalition is struggling to gain attention and credibility. Western diplomats have also hit the refresh button. The political consequences of her arrest are becoming clearer. The question is: Were they designed?
_________
Abiye Teklemariam Megenta was the Executive Editor of Addis Neger newspaper which announced its closure owing to harassment last week. He can be reached at abiye.megenta@gtc.ox.ac.uk
Sunday, November 1, 2009
New Rules for Ethiopia's 2010 Elections Reportedly Agreed On
VOA- By James Butty
Opposition groups in Ethiopia and the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi have reportedly agreed to new rules for next year’s elections.
The new electoral laws reportedly outline campaigning, voting and party symbol guidelines and how to deal with intimidation and violence and call for the establishment of a panel to handle election disputes.
Berhanu Nega, a former leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and now a member of the Ginbot 7 said Ethiopia is not a conducive country for democracy.
“All the issues that make a democratic election do not exist in Ethiopia at this time, starting from the independence of the election board, the independence of the military and the police, judiciary all are in the pocket of the ruling class. And in the absence of a fair and leveled playing ground there is no meaning in an election,” he said.
Nega said the 2010 election will most likely be similar to the 2008 local election when he said Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party won 99 point nine percent of the vote. Click on 'Read More.'
He said two of the opposition parties that reportedly agreed on the new rules for next year’s election were created by the government.
“You know there are three parties who participated in this. Two of them are the parties created by the ruling party. So these are not serious parties. This is just simply to show to the gullible international community that there is some election taking place. But nobody in Ethiopia is taking it seriously at all,” he said.
Nega said his party would not take part in what he described as a sham election in 2010 election.
“I think by now Africans are aware what actually is going on in the name of elections. Elections are supposed to be mechanisms through which popular will would be reflected. But in our continent in most countries, especially in Ethiopia, it has become an exercise in futility,” he said.
Nega was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in the 2005 election, but he and other opposition leaders were later jail after the government charged them with genocide and treason.
He said since 2005 Ethiopia has turned into a totalitarian state and that the only option for most Ethiopians is to remove the government.
“Even by African standards, this is a suffocating dictatorship that has completely the life out of Ethiopian politics and for most Ethiopians now the only way out of this political quagmire is to get rid of this government by one means or another,” he said.
Nega concord his comments would be interpreted as seeking the overthrow of the Meles Zenawi government.
“I am very, very clear and ardent than this. Unless otherwise people are free they cannot solve their basic economic problems...we have a very unpopular government, despotic government. Unless otherwise people start to take responsibility for their lives, I don’t think you’re going to make significant change in the economic wellbeing of the people,” Nega said.
He said the recent famine in Ethiopia is the result of the Meles Zenawi government being much more interested in staying in power rather than developing the country and saving the people.
Opposition groups in Ethiopia and the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi have reportedly agreed to new rules for next year’s elections.
The new electoral laws reportedly outline campaigning, voting and party symbol guidelines and how to deal with intimidation and violence and call for the establishment of a panel to handle election disputes.
Berhanu Nega, a former leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and now a member of the Ginbot 7 said Ethiopia is not a conducive country for democracy.
“All the issues that make a democratic election do not exist in Ethiopia at this time, starting from the independence of the election board, the independence of the military and the police, judiciary all are in the pocket of the ruling class. And in the absence of a fair and leveled playing ground there is no meaning in an election,” he said.
Nega said the 2010 election will most likely be similar to the 2008 local election when he said Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party won 99 point nine percent of the vote. Click on 'Read More.'
He said two of the opposition parties that reportedly agreed on the new rules for next year’s election were created by the government.
“You know there are three parties who participated in this. Two of them are the parties created by the ruling party. So these are not serious parties. This is just simply to show to the gullible international community that there is some election taking place. But nobody in Ethiopia is taking it seriously at all,” he said.
Nega said his party would not take part in what he described as a sham election in 2010 election.
“I think by now Africans are aware what actually is going on in the name of elections. Elections are supposed to be mechanisms through which popular will would be reflected. But in our continent in most countries, especially in Ethiopia, it has become an exercise in futility,” he said.
Nega was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in the 2005 election, but he and other opposition leaders were later jail after the government charged them with genocide and treason.
He said since 2005 Ethiopia has turned into a totalitarian state and that the only option for most Ethiopians is to remove the government.
“Even by African standards, this is a suffocating dictatorship that has completely the life out of Ethiopian politics and for most Ethiopians now the only way out of this political quagmire is to get rid of this government by one means or another,” he said.
Nega concord his comments would be interpreted as seeking the overthrow of the Meles Zenawi government.
“I am very, very clear and ardent than this. Unless otherwise people are free they cannot solve their basic economic problems...we have a very unpopular government, despotic government. Unless otherwise people start to take responsibility for their lives, I don’t think you’re going to make significant change in the economic wellbeing of the people,” Nega said.
He said the recent famine in Ethiopia is the result of the Meles Zenawi government being much more interested in staying in power rather than developing the country and saving the people.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Why is the West still feeding Ethiopia?
By Barry Malone, Reuters
October 24, 2009
25 years since more than 1 million Ethiopians died as those of us lucky enough to live in the rich world sat transfixed in front of our television screens. The horrible suffering brought with it the biggest outpouring of charity ever seen as governments and ordinary people dug deep to stop it.
But a quarter of a century on foreigners are still feeding a huge number of Ethiopians. The Ethiopian government says poor rains mean 6.2 million of its people need food aid this year and has asked the international community to provide it.
Another 7 million hungry people are on a government-run but foreign-funded scheme that gives food in exchange for work, which means more than 13 million of the country’s 83 million people rely on foreign handouts to survive.
Aid agency Oxfam is now saying that food aid is trapping Ethiopia in a cycle of dependence on the West and that donations could be better spent.
In the valleys of northern Ethiopia much has changed since 1984 when hundreds of thousands of dying people streamed down from the hills desperate for food.
Chinese engineers in huge trucks hurtle down newly built roads financed by their government and children now flow from the hills on the way to school.
Ethiopians say they are sick of their image as a people beset by famine and war and point to foreign investors showing growing interest in their country.
This week I travelled to a small village called Abay where Oxfam and Ethiopian NGO Orda are trying to help the locals become independent of food aid so that, when a drought hits, they will be able to survive without charity.
Men worked fields rich with wheat, young boys threshed barley for a local brewery and women had set up self-help groups and were giving out loans so their members could buy the five sheep necessary to start a breeding business.
The area looked prosperous and the people said they felt more pride now.
A growing number of aid experts — many of them African — say that if more money was spent on schemes like this, rather than on food, then Ethiopians and other Africans dependent on food aid could eventually wean themselves off it.
“I am 100 percent confident that day will come,” one farmer told me, standing in his impressive field of wheat. “Begging is a shameful practice for Ethiopia.”
So is food aid making Africans dependent? Is it time donor countries cut back on it? Should more money be spent on helping people become self-sufficient? Could foreign direct investment improve things? Or is there another answer?
October 24, 2009
25 years since more than 1 million Ethiopians died as those of us lucky enough to live in the rich world sat transfixed in front of our television screens. The horrible suffering brought with it the biggest outpouring of charity ever seen as governments and ordinary people dug deep to stop it.
But a quarter of a century on foreigners are still feeding a huge number of Ethiopians. The Ethiopian government says poor rains mean 6.2 million of its people need food aid this year and has asked the international community to provide it.
Another 7 million hungry people are on a government-run but foreign-funded scheme that gives food in exchange for work, which means more than 13 million of the country’s 83 million people rely on foreign handouts to survive.
Aid agency Oxfam is now saying that food aid is trapping Ethiopia in a cycle of dependence on the West and that donations could be better spent.
In the valleys of northern Ethiopia much has changed since 1984 when hundreds of thousands of dying people streamed down from the hills desperate for food.
Chinese engineers in huge trucks hurtle down newly built roads financed by their government and children now flow from the hills on the way to school.
Ethiopians say they are sick of their image as a people beset by famine and war and point to foreign investors showing growing interest in their country.
This week I travelled to a small village called Abay where Oxfam and Ethiopian NGO Orda are trying to help the locals become independent of food aid so that, when a drought hits, they will be able to survive without charity.
Men worked fields rich with wheat, young boys threshed barley for a local brewery and women had set up self-help groups and were giving out loans so their members could buy the five sheep necessary to start a breeding business.
The area looked prosperous and the people said they felt more pride now.
A growing number of aid experts — many of them African — say that if more money was spent on schemes like this, rather than on food, then Ethiopians and other Africans dependent on food aid could eventually wean themselves off it.
“I am 100 percent confident that day will come,” one farmer told me, standing in his impressive field of wheat. “Begging is a shameful practice for Ethiopia.”
So is food aid making Africans dependent? Is it time donor countries cut back on it? Should more money be spent on helping people become self-sufficient? Could foreign direct investment improve things? Or is there another answer?
Ethiopian Opposition Says It May Boycott Elections (Update1)
By Jason McLure(Bloomberg) -- An alliance of Ethiopian opposition parties may boycott elections scheduled for May 2010 unless the government releases imprisoned opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa and others they say are political prisoners.
“Birtukan is the spearhead of these political prisoners,” Gizachew Shiferaw, a member of the Unity for Democracy and Justice party and vice-chairman of the eight-party Forum for Democratic Dialogue opposition alliance, said today in Addis Ababa. “Unless we take some sort of remedy toward these political prisoners, it will be difficult to look at the upcoming elections as free and fair.”
Birtukan, 35, was given a life sentence last December after the government accused her violating an agreement that freed her in 2007.
Members of the alliance called on Western countries to pressure Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front by threatening to withhold foreign aid. Speaking at a press conference, they demanded negotiations on issues such as the establishment of an independent electoral board, harassment of opposition candidates and supporters and the presence of international election observers.
“We appeal to the international community that what we want is a fair game,” said Merara Gudina, chairman of the FDD.
‘Invited to Dialogue’
Bereket Simon, the government’s main spokesman, said in a mobile phone interview: “Yesterday, we invited them to a dialogue in the presence of the British and German embassies. We invited them to join negotiations. They declined. The party who walks away from the negotiating table doesn’t have a moral right to accuse us of closing political space.”
Government officials including Prime Minister Meles have repeatedly said that the jailing of Birtukan is a legal matter unrelated to politics and have defended the country’s electoral record.
“The intent of some of these individuals is not to contest the elections in a serious manner,” Meles said at a Sept. 16 press conference. “The intent of these individuals is to try and discredit the election process from day one.”
Birtukan was first jailed in November 2005 for attempting to overthrow the constitutional order after the country’s disputed 2005 elections led to street demonstrations in which 193 people were killed. She was released in 2007 under a pardon agreement brokered by the U.S. and a group of Ethiopian elders.
Opposition candidates won just three of 3.6 million seats in local and by-elections in 2008, after major parties boycotted citing harassment and intimidation, according to a tally by the U.S. State Department.
Ethiopia received $2.4 billion in official foreign aid in 2007, the last year for which data are available, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Meles’ EPRDF has ruled Ethiopia since ousting the country’s former military regime in 1991.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg on pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
“Birtukan is the spearhead of these political prisoners,” Gizachew Shiferaw, a member of the Unity for Democracy and Justice party and vice-chairman of the eight-party Forum for Democratic Dialogue opposition alliance, said today in Addis Ababa. “Unless we take some sort of remedy toward these political prisoners, it will be difficult to look at the upcoming elections as free and fair.”
Birtukan, 35, was given a life sentence last December after the government accused her violating an agreement that freed her in 2007.
Members of the alliance called on Western countries to pressure Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front by threatening to withhold foreign aid. Speaking at a press conference, they demanded negotiations on issues such as the establishment of an independent electoral board, harassment of opposition candidates and supporters and the presence of international election observers.
“We appeal to the international community that what we want is a fair game,” said Merara Gudina, chairman of the FDD.
‘Invited to Dialogue’
Bereket Simon, the government’s main spokesman, said in a mobile phone interview: “Yesterday, we invited them to a dialogue in the presence of the British and German embassies. We invited them to join negotiations. They declined. The party who walks away from the negotiating table doesn’t have a moral right to accuse us of closing political space.”
Government officials including Prime Minister Meles have repeatedly said that the jailing of Birtukan is a legal matter unrelated to politics and have defended the country’s electoral record.
“The intent of some of these individuals is not to contest the elections in a serious manner,” Meles said at a Sept. 16 press conference. “The intent of these individuals is to try and discredit the election process from day one.”
Birtukan was first jailed in November 2005 for attempting to overthrow the constitutional order after the country’s disputed 2005 elections led to street demonstrations in which 193 people were killed. She was released in 2007 under a pardon agreement brokered by the U.S. and a group of Ethiopian elders.
Opposition candidates won just three of 3.6 million seats in local and by-elections in 2008, after major parties boycotted citing harassment and intimidation, according to a tally by the U.S. State Department.
Ethiopia received $2.4 billion in official foreign aid in 2007, the last year for which data are available, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Meles’ EPRDF has ruled Ethiopia since ousting the country’s former military regime in 1991.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg on pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
Message to the International Criminal Court: “It’s Time to Hold Meles Zenawi Accountable for His Crimes!”
Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia
October 23, 2009
It is time for Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to be held accountable for his many crimes he has committed against the people of Ethiopia and Somalia! He and others in his government should be the next targets of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The “free pass” extended to this criminal administration, one that has allowed them to avoid having to face up to the consequences of their crimes, should have expired long ago.
The patience of Ethiopians is wearing down as our people face the looming food crisis that could break into a full-blown humanitarian disaster in the next coming months; something that when combined with the expected electoral fiasco resulting from the repression of all political space in the upcoming election, could break out into chaos and violence in Ethiopia and spill over into the greater Horn of Africa. Those holding up this regime would share responsibility should it happen. No one can claim ignorance to the risks at hand if nothing is done. Food aid and money alone will not be enough! Meaningful action must be taken before it is too late!
If the TPLF government collapses or if violence erupts in Ethiopia, the people who will be responsible will not only be Meles or the top people with him, but also the many opportunistic Ethiopians who are deeply involved in sustaining this regime. These are the “puppets” and “lifeblood” of this regime from every ethnicity who carry out the dirty deeds of the regime in every region of the country. They have been given power and impunity to exploit and repress their own people, profiting from their misery. Every one of them will be held accountable as most names are already known by others within their ethnic groups. These people should not expect to escape to the west either, as the groundwork has already been put into place through new western laws, which deny entry to those complicit not only with human rights crimes, but with money laundering and corruption. If these people want to save themselves, now is the time to speak out and stand on the side of morality.
This is the first of a three-part report on the recent trip I made to Europe. The topics I will be covering include the following: Part One- ICC: the meeting in the Hague with officials from the International Criminal Court (ICC), Part Two- Sweden: the meeting with the Ethiopian community in Stockholm, followed by meetings with government officials from the Swedish government, and Part Three- Norway: the meetings with members of the Ethiopian community in Oslo, followed by meetings with Norwegian government leaders as well as with other key leaders of various organizations. I will summarize what I learned from these meetings including how we might regroup or come up with new strategies that could re-ignite the struggle, in some cases by some shifts in direction.
The original Ethiopian flag—
This is the third time in the last few months I have crossed the Atlantic Ocean to meet with Ethiopians in various countries in Europe—the UK, Germany, Sweden and Norway—as well as with their respective government officials. The invitation for my most recent trip came in August while I was in Germany. I received an email from sister. Mekades Worku, a wonderful Ethiopian from Stockholm who expressed her support for the SMNE. She told me she believed in the principles of “humanity before ethnicity” and that “no one will be free until all are free;” stating that following such principles could bring “a genuine change among our people.”
She invited me to come to Sweden to talk about the principles of the SMNE, to hold a rally and to meet with government officials there. She had already begun preparations to hold a protest rally focusing on the Meles government’s reaction to those having the original Ethiopian flag—a plain green, yellow and red flag with no symbol on it—where possession of it in Ethiopia today could lead to being jailed.
Before agreeing to come, I shared with her a basic requirement—that this event would be open to people of every ethnicity, political belief, regional background, language and religion; something that was of critical importance to me. Because of this, I contacted the people I knew in Sweden to tell them that this sister invited me and explained that if they would help and all become part of it, I would come. They all talked and agreed to work together to organize an event where no one would be excluded. All of these arrangements were being made at the same time as the most intensive work for the March to Stop Genocide and Dictatorship was going on.
It was during this buildup to the march when we also became aware that Meles was coming to Pittsburgh for the G-20 meetings. Some tried to convince me to cancel my trip to Europe so I could participate, but I felt there were well-qualified people available who could organize a protest rally. A few days after the march finished, I left for Sweden, taking with me some of the printed slogans we had used for the march in order to use them for the rally in Sweden. A last-minute change to my flight created a ten-hour layover in Amsterdam; opening up the opportunity to meet with officials at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Our lawyers in Washington, DC, who are working on the genocide case, helped arrange such a meeting.
During a layover in Minneapolis, I decided to contact Mr. Mesfin, an Ethiopian man who lives in Amsterdam with whom I have been in contact for over a year. He is 26 years old and was a freshman at Addis Ababa University during the 2005 election. He was very politically active during this time; ending up to become one of the thousands of Ethiopians who was arrested, beaten, tortured and held without trial until 2006. Sometime later, he was the recipient of a scholarship in the Netherlands, enabling him to go there to pursue his Masters’ degree. It was from Amsterdam that he contacted me through an email. What he said really touched me.
He had written, “I’m one of the Ethiopians who was very active during the last election. I wanted change, but the change I was seeking; for which I was beaten and tortured, has never come. Until it does, I will never stop struggling to bring true justice.” He told me, “I read about the SMNE and would like to be part of it because the SMNE principles give me the only way I can truly define myself. I am of mixed ethnicity— Tigrayan, Oromo, Gurage and Amhara. I cannot belong to any one of these ethnicities, even though I am proud of every one of these groups. Instead, I am human first; that is my identity. Now, when people ask me my tribe, I am more likely to say I am a human and this falls exactly into the principle of putting humanity before ethnicity and that no one ethnic group is free until all are free.”
His email really touched me and I knew there were many more Ethiopians that could speak of the same confusing mixture of identities that makes one wonder where to fit in and belong in a culture like Ethiopia that is “fixated” on tribal identities, divisions and loyalties. For my friend Mesfin and others like him, being a human first and above all, is very freeing. Mingling with others, without regard to these “ethnic rules;” is even more freeing. Not only is it freeing to people of mixed ethnicity, but it tears down the walls between all of us.
I responded to his email and since that time, we have regularly talked on the phone and emailed. He became one of the many, many Ethiopians I have met through an email who has enriched my life. This ten-hour layover gave me the chance not only to meet him in person, but to take him along with me to the meeting at the ICC.
Five years later I was still in The Hague searching for that same justice; but not just for the Anuak, but for all Ethiopians.
When I arrived at Schipol Airport in the Netherlands, he was there and together we took a train to go to the Hague. It was my second meeting with the ICC because I had been there in July of 2004, seeking justice for the Anuak. Five years later I was still searching for that same justice; but not just for the Anuak, but for all Ethiopians.
Our meeting with officials at the ICC was very productive. I was given the opportunity to give a presentation, which included showing a video clip of the evidence pertaining to the Anuak case and a slide show of the human rights atrocities that showed the widespread perpetration of such crimes throughout Ethiopia. These are not isolated incidents; but together, show a continuing pattern of serial violations by the Meles regime.
We have no reason to believe they will stop until they are forced to do so. I really thank the Ethiopians from different places who provided this evidence. By the reaction of these officials, I could tell they were shocked that these kinds of atrocities had repeatedly taken place in Ethiopia and that essentially nothing had been done about it; especially when some of the evidence dated back to incidents perpetrated in the northern regions of Ethiopia in 1992.
After the presentation, they had questions, which I answered to the best of my knowledge. I also gave an opportunity to my fellow Ethiopian brother to give an eyewitness account of what had happened to him in Ethiopia during the post-election violence and his detention. I was very proud of him for the outstanding presentation he gave as he became a powerful and effective voice for those who gave their lives in the streets of their capital city and who can never again speak. It gave me much hope that with voices like his, justice would eventually be served for those who died.
As I listened, my mind was racing as I wondered about how many more Ethiopians were “out there,” just like Mesfin, waiting to emerge from the dark corners of Ethiopia to reveal the truth of what happened to them. These are the heroes of Ethiopia who will bring down the walls of deceit, denial, cover-up and impunity with their personal testimonies when they finally have “their day in court.”
After his testimony, I handed over the names of 193 Ethiopians who the Commission of Inquiry had determined to have died during the 2005 Ethiopian National Election shooting of civilian protestors. We only have this evidence due to the courage of some of those who sat on that Meles-appointed commission. Their sense of moral right and courage rose up against the dictates of this regime who expected them to cover-up any findings that faulted the government. These men refused to comply.
One of the truly remarkable men on that commission, who now lives in Amsterdam, had given this list to me. He had fled the country with the documented findings, believing the truth had to get out. Another remarkable man on the commission, who now lives in Washington DC, had provided me with numerous other documents, which gave many specific details about who did what. In addition to these documents, I also gave the ICC officials more evidentiary information on the Anuak massacre as well as documentation pertaining to the serious human rights violations in other regions such as the Amhara, Ogaden, Oromia, Awassa, Benishangul-Gumuz and Afar.
My closing statement
I will summarize my closing statement to them:
“With all this evidence that I am giving to you, we believe a thorough investigation would easily reveal that Meles and his government has committed crimes against humanity. I know some will say that the case cannot be investigated unless it is referred by the UN or a country, but the evidence itself should be the impetus to take the moral initiative to open up an investigation; bringing the guilty to accountability. The preliminary evidence clearly substantiates human rights crimes; yet with a full investigation, Meles would fit in with Charles Taylor, Slobodan Milosevic or Omar al- Bashir.
The Anuak case alone is very well documented and undeniably points to the fact that crimes against humanity have been committed. Even the charges of genocide cannot be denied because over 400 innocent people were killed in their homes. One ethnic group was targeted; something that fits the definition of genocide; whether it is in whole or in part. The same thing happened in Arba Gugu and Bedeno where Amhara were ethnically targeted. You can also consider the case of the innocent civilians killed in Awassa or the 193 protestors in Addis and cannot deny the evidence that crimes against humanity have been committed.
In February 2004, following the massacre of the Anuak, we sent a letter to the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, asking for an investigation. I received a response which said that the investigation would not be done unless it was requested by the UN or by another government. This was five years ago. Today, I am in this room talking about the same thing. Since that time, many more people have been killed and the killing is continuing.
My question to you is: do we have a double standard? Are we truly seeking genuine justice against anyone who has committed a crime against humanity or are we not? By not delivering, African dictators are emboldened to defy and to condemn the courts because many of them are not innocent and want to undermine the authority of the ICC as white organization continuing to try to colonize Africa.
An example is how Meles recently gave Omar al-Bashir such a warm welcome in Addis Ababa because he knows by de-legitimizing the ICC he is less likely to be held accountable for the same kinds of crimes. It is the reason why the “gang of African dictators” who make up part of the Africa Union, join together not to condemn the human rights crimes in Darfur, Ethiopia or the Congo, but instead to condemn the ICC. They are reluctant to condemn the crimes against humanity but swift to condemn the court.
I am not just here to try to advance some political agenda, but I am here to call on the court to follow your important mission. People in remote areas of Africa, with little education, still have heard about this court and when great numbers of them are killed, they grasp onto the hope and expectation that this court will hold the perpetrators responsible. If the ICC is truly seeking genuine justice, Meles and those beneath him who were complicit in the killings, should be investigated and tried under the ICC.
Ethiopians cannot hope for justice in Ethiopia as the justice system cannot be separated from the political leader and his party. There is ample evidence that past investigations have been biased and reports whitewashed leaving no hope for a fair and impartial tribunal to be set up in Ethiopia. For example, in the Commission of Inquiry into the Anuak massacre, evidence exists of tampering with the evidence and intimidating witnesses, prosecutors and judges to suppress the truth.
Meles, himself, instructed the Commission of Inquiry into the Addis Ababa shooting of the protestors to follow the example of the Gambella investigation. In other words, the justice system in Ethiopia will never deliver because they are the ones who have committed the crimes. Asking them to investigate their own crimes is like asking a robber to investigate his own burglary or a serial killer to investigate one of their murders.
I have heard that the US government had sent a letter to the US Ambassador to Kenya recommending that a tribunal be set up in the country, but that Kenyan officials had missed the deadlines on more than one occasion. Reportedly, the Obama administration then called on the ICC to try these people under the ICC because of the failure of the Kenyan government to hold their own transparent and fair tribunal. I was told that within the letter, government officials were told that any of those who were found to have been involved with the killings, including government officials, would not be allowed to enter the US and that this would include their family members and children. This idea was supported by Canada and the EU. This is exactly what is needed in Ethiopia, but instead what is happening is that those who have committed crimes against humanity in Ethiopia (and their families) continue to travel or live in luxury in free western countries.
I was encouraged to hear that Chief Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo and some twenty-two of his staff will now go to Nairobi to meet with the local human rights organizations so as to investigate the post-election killings. Additionally, I had heard that Kofi Annan handed over a letter with the names of twenty influential people who were key in making the decisions related to the killing of the people. Now, I hear that the ICC is not limiting this number to these twenty, but will be doing further investigation that may lead to others being added to this list. This is very encouraging, but it should not only be limited to Kenya, but for Ethiopia and anywhere else that crimes against humanity have been committed.
Now we hear that the ICC is considering opening up an investigation into the recent a military crackdown on demonstrators in the capital Conakry, Guinea that killed 157 people? What are Ethiopians supposed to think when the many egregious acts committed in Ethiopia are overlooked? The Ethiopian people want justice; justice that is long overdue.
I do acknowledge that the ICC is already working on issues in Ethiopia, going back to the submission of the Anuak case in 2004. This is excellent, but we hope you will take a stronger role by sending an investigation team to Ethiopia. If the ICC fails to do it, the Ethiopians will do it; it is just a matter of time.
Why am I in this world and why am I doing what I am doing
After this summary, there was further discussion before the meeting ended. On my way back to the airport, my Ethiopian brother and I reflected on what happened. He asked me some personal questions, like, “Why are you doing this?” I told him that I felt it was the right thing to do. I told him that Ethiopia was a country where there was no accountability; where its leaders could commit any crime and get away with it. I explained that we cannot wait for someone else to take the initiative, but at some point, we must do something ourselves to set some limits on Ethiopia’s oppressive and corrupt leaders.
I explained my belief that in order for Ethiopians to be respected, they have to respect themselves and that “we” Ethiopians are in a mess because few of us really care enough to change the future for those who come after us. I told him that if Ethiopians before us had done more, we would not be where we are today. After learning that I had been to the ICC five years ago and was now back, still not finding justice, he asked me why I had not quit the work, considering all the difficulties. He asked me where I found hope when things back in Ethiopia look so hopeless. I told him that people like him gave me hope and that another source of hope and strength was that God had given me life, breath and health
When he was seeing me off, he gave me a CD of some music. As my plane took off for Stockholm, I inserted the CD in my computer and listened. It was Teddy Afro. This man who went to jail under what most of us believe were trumped up charges for killing a homeless man, was singing passionately about caring about the homeless. He expressed his disappointment with a world that ignored those whose only covering was the sunlight. He spoke of life as an opportunity for some to become wealthy, while others remained poor; yet that we were all the same; we came into this world with nothing and leave with nothing but our souls.
His song reflected on some of the same topics we had just talked about and made me ask myself, “Why am I in this world and why am I doing what I am doing,” the same questions I was just asked by my friend. My questions were directed to God because I believe it was He who brought me to this world to do the work He wants me to do. Listening to this music was so emotional that it almost brought tears to my eyes. My mind was in Ethiopia and I was thinking of the 400 people I knew who were killed in Gambella nearly six years ago.
I was thinking of the many Ethiopians who have been killed by this government all over the country since they came into power. I then thought about the many heartbreaking images of malnourished Ethiopians. Many of these struggling Ethiopians are dying daily, with many more at great risk. Some will die because of the famine, but many will die because of the actions or lack of actions of their own government. It made me think that, maybe, if I do what God wants me to do—in twenty, forty or a hundred years from now-- another Ethiopian or African child will not feel this same kind of pain I am feeling.
Without a dance?, ሳንችሃፍር? Sanchafer?
When I arrived in Stockholm, it was after midnight, but my mind was still occupied with the pain of Africa mingled with the sadness Teddy had sung about regarding the indifference of the world to the suffering. As I was walking out from the baggage claim, there was a young African woman with a baby who was really struggling with her bags, so I asked her if I could help her carry them until she got to the taxi. She said, “Sure, thank you,” so I started lugging three of her bags. She walked right behind me, rolling a stroller with her baby in it.
As the door opened up to the outside, the first thing I faced was a group of Ethiopians standing there, ready to greet me. All of a sudden, I could only see flashes of light from their cameras as they took pictures; not just of me, but of the woman and the baby as well! When I could see again, I saw the surprise on the faces of my greeters as one Ethiopian said to another, “Oh, I did not know he was bringing his wife and his kid with him!”Another guy said, “I did not even know he had a wife!”
I began to laugh and explained in Amharic, “No, she is not my wife! I just met her in the baggage claim and said I would help carry some of her bags!” The African girl looked shocked, not understanding what was going on and why these people were taking our picture. Seeing that the African woman was still very puzzled, I had to explain it to her in English. When she understood, we all started laughing together.
I asked my Ethiopian brothers and sisters why they assumed she was my wife and they told me it was because she was tall, dark beautiful girl and looked like an Anuak woman! I told them no, she is not an Anuak. Her name is Achta Chassagne from Eastern Chad. Her and her ten months old son Matthew were coming from France to Sweden to visit her family. When in the car, one brother said: “I thought you got a wife, ሳንችሃፍር? or Sanchafer? (Without Ethiopian wedding dance), we could not stop laughing about it.
“- If You Wait for Perfect Conditions, You Will Never Get Anything Done -"
When we finally arrived at Samuel’s house where I was going to stay, it was nearly 2:00 AM. Before I went to bed, I received an emailed I-report on my Blackberry of the Ethiopian rally in Pittsburgh. It was a short video clip of an older Ethiopian woman, walking and waving her Ethiopian flag. She was standing in the middle, with a very few Ethiopians in the background who were shouting, “Shame on the G20 or western governments.”
In my mind, I started wondering about where the rest of the Ethiopians were and why there were so few who were active in this struggle. After a long and fatiguing day, with many ups and downs in my emotions, I felt disappointed that I did not see more Ethiopians protesting against the injustice and suffering of Ethiopians caused by the Meles regime. Later, I did learn that there were a number of other Ethiopians in Pittsburgh, but not many. I greatly appreciate all of those who participated. They did an outstanding job for Ethiopia despite the lack of involvement from many thousands more of Ethiopians who chose to stay home.
Although I felt very tired, as I often do before I go to sleep, I opened up my Bible to read some verses. In there I found the healing and uplifting words that matched my need. I read a verses that says, "- If You Wait for Perfect Conditions, You Will Never Get Anything Done - " " -One Action is More Valuable Than a Thousand Good Intentions - ". I read about how Jesus’ disciples were not thousands or millions but were only a very few in number—twelve! I thought about how God’s work; including His caring about the oppressed, the poor and the hungry, is not limited by numbers, as it was those twelve ordinary men who carried the message to others that changed the world.
I was so upset with what Teddy Afro said about the failure of the world to respond to the homeless, coupled with the image of one woman, nearly alone, waving her Ethiopian flag against a dictator with great resources; but, my perspective was changed and my spirit lifted with these few inspiring verses. It was the answer to the questions, challenges and frustrations of my day. God is the answer to all the formidable challenges and obstacles ahead. Let us not be fearful of any government, power or force as long as God is with us. With God, nothing is impossible!
The next report will cover what happened in Sweden.
October 23, 2009
It is time for Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to be held accountable for his many crimes he has committed against the people of Ethiopia and Somalia! He and others in his government should be the next targets of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The “free pass” extended to this criminal administration, one that has allowed them to avoid having to face up to the consequences of their crimes, should have expired long ago.
The patience of Ethiopians is wearing down as our people face the looming food crisis that could break into a full-blown humanitarian disaster in the next coming months; something that when combined with the expected electoral fiasco resulting from the repression of all political space in the upcoming election, could break out into chaos and violence in Ethiopia and spill over into the greater Horn of Africa. Those holding up this regime would share responsibility should it happen. No one can claim ignorance to the risks at hand if nothing is done. Food aid and money alone will not be enough! Meaningful action must be taken before it is too late!
If the TPLF government collapses or if violence erupts in Ethiopia, the people who will be responsible will not only be Meles or the top people with him, but also the many opportunistic Ethiopians who are deeply involved in sustaining this regime. These are the “puppets” and “lifeblood” of this regime from every ethnicity who carry out the dirty deeds of the regime in every region of the country. They have been given power and impunity to exploit and repress their own people, profiting from their misery. Every one of them will be held accountable as most names are already known by others within their ethnic groups. These people should not expect to escape to the west either, as the groundwork has already been put into place through new western laws, which deny entry to those complicit not only with human rights crimes, but with money laundering and corruption. If these people want to save themselves, now is the time to speak out and stand on the side of morality.
This is the first of a three-part report on the recent trip I made to Europe. The topics I will be covering include the following: Part One- ICC: the meeting in the Hague with officials from the International Criminal Court (ICC), Part Two- Sweden: the meeting with the Ethiopian community in Stockholm, followed by meetings with government officials from the Swedish government, and Part Three- Norway: the meetings with members of the Ethiopian community in Oslo, followed by meetings with Norwegian government leaders as well as with other key leaders of various organizations. I will summarize what I learned from these meetings including how we might regroup or come up with new strategies that could re-ignite the struggle, in some cases by some shifts in direction.
The original Ethiopian flag—
This is the third time in the last few months I have crossed the Atlantic Ocean to meet with Ethiopians in various countries in Europe—the UK, Germany, Sweden and Norway—as well as with their respective government officials. The invitation for my most recent trip came in August while I was in Germany. I received an email from sister. Mekades Worku, a wonderful Ethiopian from Stockholm who expressed her support for the SMNE. She told me she believed in the principles of “humanity before ethnicity” and that “no one will be free until all are free;” stating that following such principles could bring “a genuine change among our people.”
She invited me to come to Sweden to talk about the principles of the SMNE, to hold a rally and to meet with government officials there. She had already begun preparations to hold a protest rally focusing on the Meles government’s reaction to those having the original Ethiopian flag—a plain green, yellow and red flag with no symbol on it—where possession of it in Ethiopia today could lead to being jailed.
Before agreeing to come, I shared with her a basic requirement—that this event would be open to people of every ethnicity, political belief, regional background, language and religion; something that was of critical importance to me. Because of this, I contacted the people I knew in Sweden to tell them that this sister invited me and explained that if they would help and all become part of it, I would come. They all talked and agreed to work together to organize an event where no one would be excluded. All of these arrangements were being made at the same time as the most intensive work for the March to Stop Genocide and Dictatorship was going on.
It was during this buildup to the march when we also became aware that Meles was coming to Pittsburgh for the G-20 meetings. Some tried to convince me to cancel my trip to Europe so I could participate, but I felt there were well-qualified people available who could organize a protest rally. A few days after the march finished, I left for Sweden, taking with me some of the printed slogans we had used for the march in order to use them for the rally in Sweden. A last-minute change to my flight created a ten-hour layover in Amsterdam; opening up the opportunity to meet with officials at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Our lawyers in Washington, DC, who are working on the genocide case, helped arrange such a meeting.
During a layover in Minneapolis, I decided to contact Mr. Mesfin, an Ethiopian man who lives in Amsterdam with whom I have been in contact for over a year. He is 26 years old and was a freshman at Addis Ababa University during the 2005 election. He was very politically active during this time; ending up to become one of the thousands of Ethiopians who was arrested, beaten, tortured and held without trial until 2006. Sometime later, he was the recipient of a scholarship in the Netherlands, enabling him to go there to pursue his Masters’ degree. It was from Amsterdam that he contacted me through an email. What he said really touched me.
He had written, “I’m one of the Ethiopians who was very active during the last election. I wanted change, but the change I was seeking; for which I was beaten and tortured, has never come. Until it does, I will never stop struggling to bring true justice.” He told me, “I read about the SMNE and would like to be part of it because the SMNE principles give me the only way I can truly define myself. I am of mixed ethnicity— Tigrayan, Oromo, Gurage and Amhara. I cannot belong to any one of these ethnicities, even though I am proud of every one of these groups. Instead, I am human first; that is my identity. Now, when people ask me my tribe, I am more likely to say I am a human and this falls exactly into the principle of putting humanity before ethnicity and that no one ethnic group is free until all are free.”
His email really touched me and I knew there were many more Ethiopians that could speak of the same confusing mixture of identities that makes one wonder where to fit in and belong in a culture like Ethiopia that is “fixated” on tribal identities, divisions and loyalties. For my friend Mesfin and others like him, being a human first and above all, is very freeing. Mingling with others, without regard to these “ethnic rules;” is even more freeing. Not only is it freeing to people of mixed ethnicity, but it tears down the walls between all of us.
I responded to his email and since that time, we have regularly talked on the phone and emailed. He became one of the many, many Ethiopians I have met through an email who has enriched my life. This ten-hour layover gave me the chance not only to meet him in person, but to take him along with me to the meeting at the ICC.
Five years later I was still in The Hague searching for that same justice; but not just for the Anuak, but for all Ethiopians.
When I arrived at Schipol Airport in the Netherlands, he was there and together we took a train to go to the Hague. It was my second meeting with the ICC because I had been there in July of 2004, seeking justice for the Anuak. Five years later I was still searching for that same justice; but not just for the Anuak, but for all Ethiopians.
Our meeting with officials at the ICC was very productive. I was given the opportunity to give a presentation, which included showing a video clip of the evidence pertaining to the Anuak case and a slide show of the human rights atrocities that showed the widespread perpetration of such crimes throughout Ethiopia. These are not isolated incidents; but together, show a continuing pattern of serial violations by the Meles regime.
We have no reason to believe they will stop until they are forced to do so. I really thank the Ethiopians from different places who provided this evidence. By the reaction of these officials, I could tell they were shocked that these kinds of atrocities had repeatedly taken place in Ethiopia and that essentially nothing had been done about it; especially when some of the evidence dated back to incidents perpetrated in the northern regions of Ethiopia in 1992.
After the presentation, they had questions, which I answered to the best of my knowledge. I also gave an opportunity to my fellow Ethiopian brother to give an eyewitness account of what had happened to him in Ethiopia during the post-election violence and his detention. I was very proud of him for the outstanding presentation he gave as he became a powerful and effective voice for those who gave their lives in the streets of their capital city and who can never again speak. It gave me much hope that with voices like his, justice would eventually be served for those who died.
As I listened, my mind was racing as I wondered about how many more Ethiopians were “out there,” just like Mesfin, waiting to emerge from the dark corners of Ethiopia to reveal the truth of what happened to them. These are the heroes of Ethiopia who will bring down the walls of deceit, denial, cover-up and impunity with their personal testimonies when they finally have “their day in court.”
After his testimony, I handed over the names of 193 Ethiopians who the Commission of Inquiry had determined to have died during the 2005 Ethiopian National Election shooting of civilian protestors. We only have this evidence due to the courage of some of those who sat on that Meles-appointed commission. Their sense of moral right and courage rose up against the dictates of this regime who expected them to cover-up any findings that faulted the government. These men refused to comply.
One of the truly remarkable men on that commission, who now lives in Amsterdam, had given this list to me. He had fled the country with the documented findings, believing the truth had to get out. Another remarkable man on the commission, who now lives in Washington DC, had provided me with numerous other documents, which gave many specific details about who did what. In addition to these documents, I also gave the ICC officials more evidentiary information on the Anuak massacre as well as documentation pertaining to the serious human rights violations in other regions such as the Amhara, Ogaden, Oromia, Awassa, Benishangul-Gumuz and Afar.
My closing statement
I will summarize my closing statement to them:
“With all this evidence that I am giving to you, we believe a thorough investigation would easily reveal that Meles and his government has committed crimes against humanity. I know some will say that the case cannot be investigated unless it is referred by the UN or a country, but the evidence itself should be the impetus to take the moral initiative to open up an investigation; bringing the guilty to accountability. The preliminary evidence clearly substantiates human rights crimes; yet with a full investigation, Meles would fit in with Charles Taylor, Slobodan Milosevic or Omar al- Bashir.
The Anuak case alone is very well documented and undeniably points to the fact that crimes against humanity have been committed. Even the charges of genocide cannot be denied because over 400 innocent people were killed in their homes. One ethnic group was targeted; something that fits the definition of genocide; whether it is in whole or in part. The same thing happened in Arba Gugu and Bedeno where Amhara were ethnically targeted. You can also consider the case of the innocent civilians killed in Awassa or the 193 protestors in Addis and cannot deny the evidence that crimes against humanity have been committed.
In February 2004, following the massacre of the Anuak, we sent a letter to the Chief Prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, asking for an investigation. I received a response which said that the investigation would not be done unless it was requested by the UN or by another government. This was five years ago. Today, I am in this room talking about the same thing. Since that time, many more people have been killed and the killing is continuing.
My question to you is: do we have a double standard? Are we truly seeking genuine justice against anyone who has committed a crime against humanity or are we not? By not delivering, African dictators are emboldened to defy and to condemn the courts because many of them are not innocent and want to undermine the authority of the ICC as white organization continuing to try to colonize Africa.
An example is how Meles recently gave Omar al-Bashir such a warm welcome in Addis Ababa because he knows by de-legitimizing the ICC he is less likely to be held accountable for the same kinds of crimes. It is the reason why the “gang of African dictators” who make up part of the Africa Union, join together not to condemn the human rights crimes in Darfur, Ethiopia or the Congo, but instead to condemn the ICC. They are reluctant to condemn the crimes against humanity but swift to condemn the court.
I am not just here to try to advance some political agenda, but I am here to call on the court to follow your important mission. People in remote areas of Africa, with little education, still have heard about this court and when great numbers of them are killed, they grasp onto the hope and expectation that this court will hold the perpetrators responsible. If the ICC is truly seeking genuine justice, Meles and those beneath him who were complicit in the killings, should be investigated and tried under the ICC.
Ethiopians cannot hope for justice in Ethiopia as the justice system cannot be separated from the political leader and his party. There is ample evidence that past investigations have been biased and reports whitewashed leaving no hope for a fair and impartial tribunal to be set up in Ethiopia. For example, in the Commission of Inquiry into the Anuak massacre, evidence exists of tampering with the evidence and intimidating witnesses, prosecutors and judges to suppress the truth.
Meles, himself, instructed the Commission of Inquiry into the Addis Ababa shooting of the protestors to follow the example of the Gambella investigation. In other words, the justice system in Ethiopia will never deliver because they are the ones who have committed the crimes. Asking them to investigate their own crimes is like asking a robber to investigate his own burglary or a serial killer to investigate one of their murders.
I have heard that the US government had sent a letter to the US Ambassador to Kenya recommending that a tribunal be set up in the country, but that Kenyan officials had missed the deadlines on more than one occasion. Reportedly, the Obama administration then called on the ICC to try these people under the ICC because of the failure of the Kenyan government to hold their own transparent and fair tribunal. I was told that within the letter, government officials were told that any of those who were found to have been involved with the killings, including government officials, would not be allowed to enter the US and that this would include their family members and children. This idea was supported by Canada and the EU. This is exactly what is needed in Ethiopia, but instead what is happening is that those who have committed crimes against humanity in Ethiopia (and their families) continue to travel or live in luxury in free western countries.
I was encouraged to hear that Chief Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo and some twenty-two of his staff will now go to Nairobi to meet with the local human rights organizations so as to investigate the post-election killings. Additionally, I had heard that Kofi Annan handed over a letter with the names of twenty influential people who were key in making the decisions related to the killing of the people. Now, I hear that the ICC is not limiting this number to these twenty, but will be doing further investigation that may lead to others being added to this list. This is very encouraging, but it should not only be limited to Kenya, but for Ethiopia and anywhere else that crimes against humanity have been committed.
Now we hear that the ICC is considering opening up an investigation into the recent a military crackdown on demonstrators in the capital Conakry, Guinea that killed 157 people? What are Ethiopians supposed to think when the many egregious acts committed in Ethiopia are overlooked? The Ethiopian people want justice; justice that is long overdue.
I do acknowledge that the ICC is already working on issues in Ethiopia, going back to the submission of the Anuak case in 2004. This is excellent, but we hope you will take a stronger role by sending an investigation team to Ethiopia. If the ICC fails to do it, the Ethiopians will do it; it is just a matter of time.
Why am I in this world and why am I doing what I am doing
After this summary, there was further discussion before the meeting ended. On my way back to the airport, my Ethiopian brother and I reflected on what happened. He asked me some personal questions, like, “Why are you doing this?” I told him that I felt it was the right thing to do. I told him that Ethiopia was a country where there was no accountability; where its leaders could commit any crime and get away with it. I explained that we cannot wait for someone else to take the initiative, but at some point, we must do something ourselves to set some limits on Ethiopia’s oppressive and corrupt leaders.
I explained my belief that in order for Ethiopians to be respected, they have to respect themselves and that “we” Ethiopians are in a mess because few of us really care enough to change the future for those who come after us. I told him that if Ethiopians before us had done more, we would not be where we are today. After learning that I had been to the ICC five years ago and was now back, still not finding justice, he asked me why I had not quit the work, considering all the difficulties. He asked me where I found hope when things back in Ethiopia look so hopeless. I told him that people like him gave me hope and that another source of hope and strength was that God had given me life, breath and health
When he was seeing me off, he gave me a CD of some music. As my plane took off for Stockholm, I inserted the CD in my computer and listened. It was Teddy Afro. This man who went to jail under what most of us believe were trumped up charges for killing a homeless man, was singing passionately about caring about the homeless. He expressed his disappointment with a world that ignored those whose only covering was the sunlight. He spoke of life as an opportunity for some to become wealthy, while others remained poor; yet that we were all the same; we came into this world with nothing and leave with nothing but our souls.
His song reflected on some of the same topics we had just talked about and made me ask myself, “Why am I in this world and why am I doing what I am doing,” the same questions I was just asked by my friend. My questions were directed to God because I believe it was He who brought me to this world to do the work He wants me to do. Listening to this music was so emotional that it almost brought tears to my eyes. My mind was in Ethiopia and I was thinking of the 400 people I knew who were killed in Gambella nearly six years ago.
I was thinking of the many Ethiopians who have been killed by this government all over the country since they came into power. I then thought about the many heartbreaking images of malnourished Ethiopians. Many of these struggling Ethiopians are dying daily, with many more at great risk. Some will die because of the famine, but many will die because of the actions or lack of actions of their own government. It made me think that, maybe, if I do what God wants me to do—in twenty, forty or a hundred years from now-- another Ethiopian or African child will not feel this same kind of pain I am feeling.
Without a dance?, ሳንችሃፍር? Sanchafer?
When I arrived in Stockholm, it was after midnight, but my mind was still occupied with the pain of Africa mingled with the sadness Teddy had sung about regarding the indifference of the world to the suffering. As I was walking out from the baggage claim, there was a young African woman with a baby who was really struggling with her bags, so I asked her if I could help her carry them until she got to the taxi. She said, “Sure, thank you,” so I started lugging three of her bags. She walked right behind me, rolling a stroller with her baby in it.
As the door opened up to the outside, the first thing I faced was a group of Ethiopians standing there, ready to greet me. All of a sudden, I could only see flashes of light from their cameras as they took pictures; not just of me, but of the woman and the baby as well! When I could see again, I saw the surprise on the faces of my greeters as one Ethiopian said to another, “Oh, I did not know he was bringing his wife and his kid with him!”Another guy said, “I did not even know he had a wife!”
I began to laugh and explained in Amharic, “No, she is not my wife! I just met her in the baggage claim and said I would help carry some of her bags!” The African girl looked shocked, not understanding what was going on and why these people were taking our picture. Seeing that the African woman was still very puzzled, I had to explain it to her in English. When she understood, we all started laughing together.
I asked my Ethiopian brothers and sisters why they assumed she was my wife and they told me it was because she was tall, dark beautiful girl and looked like an Anuak woman! I told them no, she is not an Anuak. Her name is Achta Chassagne from Eastern Chad. Her and her ten months old son Matthew were coming from France to Sweden to visit her family. When in the car, one brother said: “I thought you got a wife, ሳንችሃፍር? or Sanchafer? (Without Ethiopian wedding dance), we could not stop laughing about it.
“- If You Wait for Perfect Conditions, You Will Never Get Anything Done -"
When we finally arrived at Samuel’s house where I was going to stay, it was nearly 2:00 AM. Before I went to bed, I received an emailed I-report on my Blackberry of the Ethiopian rally in Pittsburgh. It was a short video clip of an older Ethiopian woman, walking and waving her Ethiopian flag. She was standing in the middle, with a very few Ethiopians in the background who were shouting, “Shame on the G20 or western governments.”
In my mind, I started wondering about where the rest of the Ethiopians were and why there were so few who were active in this struggle. After a long and fatiguing day, with many ups and downs in my emotions, I felt disappointed that I did not see more Ethiopians protesting against the injustice and suffering of Ethiopians caused by the Meles regime. Later, I did learn that there were a number of other Ethiopians in Pittsburgh, but not many. I greatly appreciate all of those who participated. They did an outstanding job for Ethiopia despite the lack of involvement from many thousands more of Ethiopians who chose to stay home.
Although I felt very tired, as I often do before I go to sleep, I opened up my Bible to read some verses. In there I found the healing and uplifting words that matched my need. I read a verses that says, "- If You Wait for Perfect Conditions, You Will Never Get Anything Done - " " -One Action is More Valuable Than a Thousand Good Intentions - ". I read about how Jesus’ disciples were not thousands or millions but were only a very few in number—twelve! I thought about how God’s work; including His caring about the oppressed, the poor and the hungry, is not limited by numbers, as it was those twelve ordinary men who carried the message to others that changed the world.
I was so upset with what Teddy Afro said about the failure of the world to respond to the homeless, coupled with the image of one woman, nearly alone, waving her Ethiopian flag against a dictator with great resources; but, my perspective was changed and my spirit lifted with these few inspiring verses. It was the answer to the questions, challenges and frustrations of my day. God is the answer to all the formidable challenges and obstacles ahead. Let us not be fearful of any government, power or force as long as God is with us. With God, nothing is impossible!
The next report will cover what happened in Sweden.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Ethiopia’s Business Climate Worsening, Chamber of Commerce Says
By Jason McLure
Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Power outages, shortages of foreign exchange and limits on bank lending resulted in Ethiopia’s business climate deteriorating over the past four months, the chairman of the country’s largest business association said.
The Horn of Africa nation’s manufacturing industry has probably contracted during the past year and profit at banks and insurance companies has been hampered by inflation and government restrictions on lending, said Eyessus Work Zafu, president of the Addis Ababa Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association.
“The private sector definitely is in a very sad state,” Work Zafu, said in an interview today at his office in the capital, Addis Ababa. “Manufacturing is already on its knees. Small as it may be I would say it would have shrunk because of the power outages.”
Manufacturing accounts for about 5 percent of Ethiopia’s output, according to the World Bank.
Supply shortages led the state-run Ethiopian Electric Power Co. to begin blackouts in February and since June, the utility has provided power to customers only every second day. At the same time, Ethiopia’s central bank has been rationing foreign exchange in an effort to defend its currency, the birr. The resulting shortage of foreign currency has cause delays in imports of raw materials and consumer goods.
The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has also capped lending and increased reserve requirements for banks in an effort to slow inflation, which peaked at 64.2 percent in July 2008. Consumer prices declined by 3.7 percent last month, the country’s Central Statistical Agency said Aug. 11.
Tax Collections
A government initiative in the past year to collect more tax from the business community has also hurt growth of the country’s private industry, Work Zafu said.
While government and business leaders had initially believed the global financial crisis would have little impact on Ethiopia’s “relatively isolated” economy, “experience has shown that we were not entirely correct in that,” he said.
Remittances from Ethiopians living abroad and aid from foreign donors has been affected by the economic crisis, he said.
Ethiopia’s economy may be strengthened if the government negotiates a financing deal with the IMF, Work Zafu said. The IMF and Meles’ government are currently discussing a package to help the country cope with the global economic crisis.
A deal would improve Ethiopia’s foreign currency reserves and encourage other international lenders to provide financing to the country, Work Zafu said.
The IMF projected Ethiopia’s economy would grow by 6.5 percent or less in the fiscal year ending July 7, 2009.
Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Power outages, shortages of foreign exchange and limits on bank lending resulted in Ethiopia’s business climate deteriorating over the past four months, the chairman of the country’s largest business association said.
The Horn of Africa nation’s manufacturing industry has probably contracted during the past year and profit at banks and insurance companies has been hampered by inflation and government restrictions on lending, said Eyessus Work Zafu, president of the Addis Ababa Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association.
“The private sector definitely is in a very sad state,” Work Zafu, said in an interview today at his office in the capital, Addis Ababa. “Manufacturing is already on its knees. Small as it may be I would say it would have shrunk because of the power outages.”
Manufacturing accounts for about 5 percent of Ethiopia’s output, according to the World Bank.
Supply shortages led the state-run Ethiopian Electric Power Co. to begin blackouts in February and since June, the utility has provided power to customers only every second day. At the same time, Ethiopia’s central bank has been rationing foreign exchange in an effort to defend its currency, the birr. The resulting shortage of foreign currency has cause delays in imports of raw materials and consumer goods.
The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has also capped lending and increased reserve requirements for banks in an effort to slow inflation, which peaked at 64.2 percent in July 2008. Consumer prices declined by 3.7 percent last month, the country’s Central Statistical Agency said Aug. 11.
Tax Collections
A government initiative in the past year to collect more tax from the business community has also hurt growth of the country’s private industry, Work Zafu said.
While government and business leaders had initially believed the global financial crisis would have little impact on Ethiopia’s “relatively isolated” economy, “experience has shown that we were not entirely correct in that,” he said.
Remittances from Ethiopians living abroad and aid from foreign donors has been affected by the economic crisis, he said.
Ethiopia’s economy may be strengthened if the government negotiates a financing deal with the IMF, Work Zafu said. The IMF and Meles’ government are currently discussing a package to help the country cope with the global economic crisis.
A deal would improve Ethiopia’s foreign currency reserves and encourage other international lenders to provide financing to the country, Work Zafu said.
The IMF projected Ethiopia’s economy would grow by 6.5 percent or less in the fiscal year ending July 7, 2009.
Panel awards cash war damages to Ethiopia, Eritrea
AMSTERDAM(AP) – An international panel has awarded hefty damages to both Ethiopia and Eritrea for deaths, ill treatment of prisoners and civilians and the destruction of property during their 1998-2000 war.
The commission set up by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague awarded Ethiopia slightly more than Eritrea, and blamed the breakaway nation for invading Ethiopian-held territory and starting the conflict.
Ethiopia won damages totaling $174 million. Eritrea is to receive more than $161 million and $2 million to individuals.
Both sides accepted the awards published Tuesday. Ethiopia says Eritrea must pay it the $10 million difference.
The two countries agreed to arbitration as part of a 2000 peace agreement.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Ethiopia's resilient prime minister: The two sides of Meles Zenawi
The Economist: HE HAS run Ethiopia as prime minister since 1991, but Meles Zenawi, still only 54, has two faces. One belongs to a leader battling poverty. In this mode he is praised by Western governments, with Britain to the fore, for improving the miserable conditions in the countryside, where 85% of Ethiopia’s 80m-plus people live. Mr Meles takes credit for building new roads, clinics and primary schools, and for an array of agricultural initiatives. He also wins plaudits for his country’s low crime rate and for keeping its parliamentarians more or less on the straight and narrow, especially in terms of wealth. They get paid only about $3,240 a year compared with the $120,000 earned by Kenya’s fat-cat MPs. Moreover, in the past few years Ethiopia’s economy has grown fast. Mr Meles says it will grow this year by 10%, though the IMF’s figure is about half as big.
Click on 'Read More.' His mind is sharp, his memory elephantine, and he bristles with energy and vigour. In a rare interview, he speaks for two hours without notes. With his polished English, full of arcane turns of phrase from his days at a private English school in Addis Ababa, the capital, he captivates foreign donors. Though he avoids mentioning famine because the spectre of it may be looming again, he uses the memory of past debacles to prick Western consciences. Last month he suggested that the famine of 1984, which stirred Band Aid to come to Ethiopia’s help, may have been worsened by the pollution in Europe. He says he fully expects the West to pay $40 billion a year to Africa to compensate it for the damage caused by climate change. But then there is the harsher side of Mr Meles, the Marxist fighter turned political strongman with a dismal human-rights record who is intolerant of dissent. In 2005, after a disputed general election, his police shot dead some 200 civilians. An independent inquiry ended up with several of its judges fleeing the country. Mr Meles sprinkles spies through the universities to intimidate and control the students; he was once a student agitator himself. He closes down independent newspapers and meddles in aid projects, banning agencies that annoy him. Last month he suspended the activities of about 40 of them from the Somali-populated parts of the country.
Many of Ethiopia’s opposition leaders were imprisoned after the election of 2005 on trumped-up treason charges; after a year or more, they were freed. But several have been rearrested. A new catch-all law that has just been passed could make peaceful opposition liable to the charge of inciting terrorism.
In any case, the economic story is not quite as rosy as Mr Meles suggests. Ethiopia may have only a few weeks of foreign reserves left. On the business front, the country remains very backward. Ethiopians have one of the lowest rates of mobile-phone ownership in Africa. Banking is rudimentary at best. Farming is still mostly for subsistence.
And famine looms once more. At that suggestion, Mr Meles narrows his eyes and growls, “That is a lie, an absolute lie.” There is more than enough food in government warehouses to feed the people, he says. But others say stockpiled grain has already been earmarked for handing out to people in the towns. The UN and foreign charities are predicting a large-scale famine in Tigray, Mr Meles’s home region, by November. At least 6m people may need food handouts unless more supplies can be found locally.
Mr Meles’s officials, most of them still working in gloomy Soviet-built offices, often sound almost paranoid in their sensitivity to criticism. The prime minister is quick to talk up threats to his country, whether from malcontents in the army or disgruntled ethnic groups among Ethiopia’s mosaic of peoples. Radical Oromos, a southern group that makes up about a third of Ethiopia’s people, often fall under suspicion. A bunch arrested earlier this year after an alleged attack on a dam under construction were paraded on state television as members of the secessionist Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). The government also regularly publicises threats by the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a Somali separatist group in the east, which has murdered foreigners and Ethiopians exploring for oil in that area.
Mr Meles is understandably worried by events in the wider region. Ethiopia’s relations with Eritrea, his mother’s birthplace, remain lousy. He accuses it of backing jihadists bent on hurting Ethiopia. He also accuses Eritrea of egging on Oromo rebels in the south and Somali separatists in the Ogaden region. “Eritrea is hellbent on destabilising Ethiopia,” he says. “It does not care who it sleeps with.”
And he remains edgy about the continuing strife in Somalia. In late 2006, with American encouragement, he sent his army there to topple an Islamist government that had declared a holy war on Ethiopia. Earlier this year he withdrew his troops after it became apparent they could not impose peace. But now the jihadists are gaining ground there again, bringing in al-Qaeda types—just what Mr Meles wanted to prevent.
So Mr Meles is up against it, at home and abroad, but apparently relishing the challenges. A general election is due next year. He had previously hinted he might step down after it. More recently, he has sounded less sure, dismissing such speculation as “boring”. Some say he may leave his prime ministerial post but stay on to chair his ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. He seems likely, in whatever guise, to call the shots—with decreasing dissent.
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