What is the good of this judgement?
In about 150 AD, a Christian named Ptolemy counseled a woman who had been dragged into various perversions by her husband. She became a Christian and began to live an upright and honest life. Her angry husband reacted by suing Ptolemy. When the case came to the Roman court, the Roman judge asked only one question. Was Ptolemy a Christian? When he answered that he was, the Roman judge immediately sentenced him to death.
Hearing this, a man in the courtroom named Lucias challenged the judge:
What is the good of this judgment? Why have you punished this man, not as an adulterer, nor a fornicator, nor thief, nor robber, nor convicted of any crime at all, but one who has confessed that he is called by the name of Christian?
Justin Martyr, 150 AD. Second Apology Letter written to the Roman Senate
The judge replied only, "You also seem to be one." And when Lucias said "Indeed I am", the judge condemned him - and a second protester in the audience - to follow Ptolemy to death. (A few years after writing this appeal to the Roman Senate, Justin himself was denounced as a Christian and executed in Rome).
Did Birtukan Mideksa kill anyone? Did she bash anyone in the head with a gun? Did she engage in corrupt activities? Did she take bribes? Did she encourage violence? Did she commit ballot fraud? Did she promote ethnic hatred?
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On the contrary. She counseled peace and restraint. She advocated reconciliation and calm. She rejected violence. She was a beacon of impartiality during her brief career as a judge. Is such a person a danger to the people of Addis Abeba? Oromia? Tigray? Can the people of Ethiopia sleep easier at night now that this dangerous person has been put in a cage and will never be let out?
Why Fill Jails With Honest, Upright People?
Why fill the jails with good people? This was the question that troubled Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor of the province of Bithynia on the Black Sea during 111-113 AD. Pliny had been sent out from Rome and had never encountered Christians before. He knew the general rule: anyone who did not worship the Roman gods, and the Emperor, in particular was liable to be executed.
Pliny investigated the local Christian community but after torturing two Christian slave girls he found nothing more dangerous than what he called 'superstition':
Excerpt of letter from Pliny to Emperor Trajan:
They [the Christians] asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you.
Pliny's Letter to Emperor Trajan (reigned. 98-117 AD)
Two aspects of the Christian experience in the Roman Empire lend themselves to analysis of the political struggles against totalitarian regimes in the 20th and 21st centuries, and help explain why unjust regimes fill their jails with good people:
-- 1) The boundaries of state power
-- 2) Radical asymmetrical challenges to state power
The Boundaries of State Power
The 1974 Ethiopian revolution removed the land-based aristocracy and left a huge gap in the social structure of Ethiopian society. This gap should have been left to the people to spontaneously organize their own structures and associations for self-government. Instead within a few years, the Derg created new, extensive structures of top-down control that penetrated far deeper into society than ever before. Tens of thousands of political cadres and other bureaucrats now occupied the place previously held by the aristocracy. State power arrived at the doorstep of every Ethiopian and invaded their daily lives. The state inserted rituals of submission into normal acts of everyday life.
In 1991, the TPLF/EPRDF rolled back some of these Derg structures, but in the wake of the 2005 election, these Derg networks have been recreated. Politically-controlled mass associations (youth, women, peasants, urban residents etc... are being organized into tools for extending the boundaries of TPLF/EPRDF power to the level of the individual household. Business groups can no longer form associations like elsewhere in the world - the TPLF/EPRDF passed a law requiring them to reorganize and include government-controlled "sectoral associations." Microcredit institutions derived from the non-governmental Grameen Bank model of Bangladesh, are dominated in Ethiopia by party-affiliated institutions. Many other examples could be cited.
The extension of these politicized networks vastly expands the arena for conflict between the people and the TPLF/EPRDF. Normal, everyday activities now become symbolic of either submission or resistance.
The Christians of the first few centuries were explicitly non-political. Yet just by trying to live their peaceful religion, they came into conflict with the Roman state because the Roman state had chosen to invade the arena of religion and put down markers of Roman supremacy in the religious lives of the people.
In the same way, the TPLF/EPRDF is generating challenges. Its extension of Derg-like networks is self-destructive in that it forces people to resist. As the boundaries of the state are pushed deeper into the everyday public life of the people, "the aims of the system begin to generate conflict with the aims of life" (paraphrasing Vaclav Havel).
Humans are social animals. One of the aims of life for humans is to freely engage in associations with each other for various purposes. This is now highly constrained in Ethiopia. Any association of Ethiopians will quickly bump against markers of TPLF/EPRDF control. At these intersections the state demands submission. Some will resist. Some of these resistors, by chance or by a conversion of events, become symbols of the larger conflict. Birtukan Mideksa is one of these.
What is this larger conflict? The example of the early Christians provides a way of looking at the deeper Ethiopian revolution of which the TPLF/EPRDF and Birtukan Mideksa are only an outward manifestation.
Radical Asymmetrical Challenges to the State
Characteristics of TPLF/EPRDF rule are force, top-down control, propaganda, glorification of the state, and an end-justifies-the-means morality. When identifying these characteristics, however, it is important to recognize that they are wrapped within a cohesive ideology, variously referred to as "hibretesebawinett" or "abiyotawi demokrasi" or "the developmental state". This ideology has deep meaning and is persuasive to many, but it is a false consciousness.
As an example of what these TPLF/EPRDF characteristics mean in practical terms, we can review what happened in the remote Omo Valley in 1999:
Several speakers alluded to the tactics of 'exemplary terror' that had been employed in recent years by the EPRDF's 'Rapid Response Force', against neighbouring groups whose members were accused of raiding highland villages for cattle and grain. If a man was seen carrying a rifle, for example, he would be told to stop and place his rifle on the ground. He would then be shot dead, even if he was accompanied by a woman or child, and the rifle left lying across the corpse. In mid-1999 an elaborate subterfuge was used in a co-ordinated operation against groups living north of the Mursi, on both sides of the Omo. Two camps were established, one to the east and one to the west of the Omo and the local people were encouraged to bring milk and honey to sell to the troops. The next day, after a number of people had gathered with these items, they were shot down in a hail of bullets, the same action being taken simultaneously in both locations, by means of radio communication.
- The Politician, the Priest and the Anthropologist: Living Beyond Conflict in Southwestern Ethiopia - David Turton, 2002
As a disciplined, top-down party organized on the Leninist model, the "exemplary terror" that the TPLF/EPRDF conducted in the Omo valley could only have been authorized from the top. It is strange then to hear these TPLF/EPRDF leaders talk about rule of the law and human rights. In reality what this episode demonstrates is that there is no rule of law - only rule of TPLF/EPRDF.
"Rule of TPLF/EPRDF" means large-scale brute force campaigns for outlying areas such as the Omo River Valley, Gambella, and the Ogaden. The TPLF/EPRDF is quite willing and capable of using force in an unscupulous and morally reprehensible manner. But An Ogaden-style campaign in Addis Abeba would cost the government its vital foreign aid subsidy, and would lead to harsh economic sanctions (e.g. Darfur and Sudan) that would threaten the viability of the TPLF/EPRDF. Instead in Addis Abeba, aside from the 2005 killings (which did cost the TPLF/EPRDF financially), we have imprisonment of targeted individuals.
The Romans had forbidden political associations, but the Christians did not have a political program. Their religion posed a political challenge to Rome because the Romans had decided to politicize religion by making the conquered peoples of the empire worship their gods. One of the most important gods was the Roman emperor.
But the challenge of the Christians went far beyond their refusal to publicly worship Roman gods. The values the Christians promoted and their egalitarian way of life was a radical contrast and challenge to the heirarchical, patrimonial, slave-holding Roman society.
By contrast the TPLF/EPRDF allows political associations, but only if these associations remain too weak to implement a political program.
The following table provides a contrast between the features of the TPLF/EPRDF and the potential of the May 15 2005 Ethiopian citizen's revolution, which was interrupted by a what essentially amounts to a coup-de-etat led by Meles Zenawi on May 16.
Derg and TPLF/EPRDF 1974-2005
dominance
top-down
armed force
propaganda
insignificance of individual humans
end justifies means
Ethiopian citizen revolution, 2005-
equality
grassroots
moral force
truth/dialogue
dignity of each individual human
means determine the end
What is the Ethiopian citizen's revolution of 2005? Simply put, it is a social movement that has no other legitimacy than the expressed will of the people. It is a social movement that has the potential to transform Ethiopia and create a permanent change in the way government relates to the people. It is a social movement that can remove the intractable roadblocks to 'development'.
Political self-organization is only one aspect of this revolution, which is necessarily influenced by, and tied to historical and global human movements that have changed the face of the rest of the world. The book: Blessed Unrest: How the largest social movement in history is restoring grace, justice, and beauty to the world, provides a glimpse of the global aspect of this movement. The common denominator in these movements is that they are not led by vanguardist-type ideologies and are not created by governments. They are grassroots movements of the people and because they are close to the people, their values reflect the common, decent human values listed in the above table.
Of course, the above reflects our hopes and the potential outcomes, but Birtukan Mideksa is a symbol of those hopes and that potential for a truly radical Ethiopian revolution.
Conclusion
In 64 AD, the great fire of Rome destroyed a large section of the city. Emperor Nero is widely suspected of setting the fire, although no conclusive proof is available. After the fire, Emperor Nero 'developed' the burned areas (which were previously 'slums' that blocked the expansion of the Emperors palace complex), creating planned, attractive buildings some of which are still visible today.
Emperor Nero blamed the fire on the Christian community. Based on this false accusation, most were rounded up and executed or torn apart by beasts or gladiators. The apostle Paul (sent to Rome as a prisoner two years earlier), and Peter, were among those killed. We have no details on what happened - basically all the Christians were killed and there was no one left to write the story. Yet Christianity did not die. The Roman Empire and its worst excesses are either gone (e.g. slavery) or fading fast from human life. The revolution of Paul and Peter continues to reverberate through human consciousness, and though much abused by usurpers, continues to be an inspiration for social justice,
The Ethiopian revolution of 2005 is aligned with the great, liberating human social movements of our era. Contrasted against this, the TPLF/EPRDF is a reactionary organization, dependent on force, and exhibiting a historical solidarity with all the oppressive structures that have preceded it in Ethiopian history.
Birtukan Mideksa is one symbol of this new revolution. Imprisoning her based on false accusations will do little to stop the revolution (in fact it is her accuser, Meles Zenawi who used force to overthrow the expressed will of the people). Her liberation will be a symbol for the liberation of the Ethiopian people and the success of their new revolution.
