As winter begins, an African Spring heats up

By John Lloyd, Reuters

The Arab Spring’s effects continue to ripple outward. As Tahrir Square fills once more, it gains new momentum. For months now, the autocrats of Africa have feared it would move south, infecting their youth in often-unemployed, restless areas.

That fear has come to the ancient civilization of Ethiopia, the second-most populous state (after Nigeria) in Africa. There, since June, the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has cracked down hard on dissidents, opposition groups and, above all, journalists, imprisoning some and forcing others into exile.

The latest refugee is Dawit Kebede, managing editor of one of the few remaining independent papers, the Awramba Times. Kebede, who won an award for freedom from the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists last year, fled to the U.S. last month after he received a tip off that he was about to be arrested.

Also in the past month, apparently reliable reports have circulated of a teacher in his late twenties, Yenesew Gebre, who burnt himself alive in protest against political repression in his home town of Dawra, in the south of the country. It has also been reported, by sources who spoke to the opposition satellite station, ESAT, based in the US, that Gebre had been dismissed from his teaching post because of his political views.

The move recalls the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi – another young man in his twenties – in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia in January this year, a catalyst for the protests there and elsewhere in the spring. The parallel is being widely made in oppositionist sites and media.

One of the oppositionists in exile is a journalist who, with others, founded a newspaper in October 2007, named Addis Neger. It was tolerated for two years, then closed down in December 2009. The founders, fearing arrest, left the country: Abiye Teklemariam came to the UK, where I spoke with him.

“The self immolation of Yenesew Gebre is an extraordinary thing,” he said. “The more so since it’s absolutely not in the tradition of Ethiopia to take one’s own life like this. It is an expression of how far people are prepared to go, how frustrated they are. Part of the problem is that the foreign states who give aid – like the United States and the United Kingdom – don’t seem to care. The government now says that because it has strong growth, civil rights must suffer. And the foreign donors have accepted that: so there is no pressure on the regime.”

Ethiopia isn’t, for the most part, like the Arab states who rose in different kind of revolts this past year. It’s bigger than most – with a population of some 82 million it’s slightly bigger than Egypt – and though still poor, it’s been growing strongly in the past decade. It also has a parliament with elections and opposition parties, which have had seats in the parliament.

In the 2005 elections, the opposition groups won about one third of the parliament’s 546 seats. After that, however, oppositionists say there was a massive crackdown on the opposition, who engaged in widespread protests against what they saw as rigged elections. Some 200 people died in these protests, mostly at the hands of the security forces.

Among the biggest political victims of the crackdown was Dr. Berhanu Nega, an academic and businessman, who was elected mayor of the capital, Addis Ababa, and whose party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, achieved just under 20 percent of the vote in the national election. With other leaders of his party, he was imprisoned, released in 2007 and fled to the US. There he has created an opposition party in exile, Ginbot 7, which calls for a revolutionary overthrow of the government of Prime Minister Zenawi, who has led the country since August 1995.

In the last elections, in May 2010, the government claimed over 99 percent of the parliamentary seats for its main party, the Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front, and its allies. Zenawi, in a public address after the poll, said any repeat of the 2005 protests would not be tolerated. Ginbot 7, and other oppositionist groups, have been labeled as terrorists: Nega has been sentenced to death in absentia.

The Ethiopian government was asked, through its embassy in London, for a response to charges of repression, but they declined to comment.

I called Ephraim Madebo, spokesman for Ginbot 7, who is based in New York, to ask him if there was any possibility of a rapprochement between the many oppositionist groups and the government, so that open elections might take place. He said that “there is no chance whatsoever. They are using laws, especially the media law and the anti-terrorist law introduced after 2005 to put their enemies in jail or drive them to exile. You cannot win democratically against the government. People must rise against it. And the government knows something is coming. They just don’t know when”.

One of the outstanding opponents of the regime is Eskinder Nega (no relation to Dr. Nega), a US-educated journalist and newspaper publisher, who was imprisoned with his wife after the 2005 elections. His wife gave birth to his son in prison, though she and the child were later released. Eskinder, however, remains in prison. According to Madebo in New York, he has issued calls for Ethiopians to “fight like the people have done in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Libya”.

In London, Teklemariam has also been labeled as a terrorist – though unlike Ginbot 7, he opposes any use of violence against the regime – and he has been told that Ethiopia will ask the UK to extradite him (the two countries have no extradition treaty, so that is unlikely to happen). He’s less optimistic than Madebo: he says that “the space for collective action is very limited – even though it is growing, if slowly.”

Teklemariam thinks that, as in the Arab states, the internet and the social media networks are crucial to the development of a widespread movement – but Ethiopia lacks both. The net is largely confined to the capital, and social media users are few: in large part, he says, because the government ensures that connections are very slow and often dysfunctional.

The Ethiopian elite is small and badly served by communication, but Teklemariam says that “it really matters in Ethiopia. So the government has to make it hard for them to communicate. There was very little access to news about the Arab Spring.”

You can see why some African governments want to suppress news of the revolts in the north. Their transplantation south, and their even partial success, means loss of power, loss of wealth – or even, if it comes to outright conflict, loss of life (the jerky videos of the last minutes of Gadaffi’s life are a hideous toxin for all autocrats). Ethiopia’s rulers have sought a prophylactic against such radicalism in preventative arrests, seeking to neutralize all those who might lead or give shape to dissent.

But Gaddaffi’s end spells a lesson other than suppression. It is to allow and encourage the growth of democratic habits and freer speech. For one of the few hopeful signs in this doom-laden world is that suppression now works badly, for shorter periods, and that a democratic opening may find men and women willing to make it work. As we enter winter, spring may come again.
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Photo: The shadow of a supporter of Ethiopia’s Unity for Democracy and Justice party (UDJ) is seen through an Ethiopian flag during a demonstration in the capital Addis Ababa, April 16, 2009. REUTERS/Irada Humbatova
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Ethiopian Court Mulls Journalists' Role in Conflict Zones

By Peter Heinlein, VOA
The trial of two Swedish journalists charged with supporting terrorism in Ethiopia has ended with a discussion of the role of reporters in conflict zones.

The defense wrapped up its case by calling two veteran foreign correspondents as witnesses.

A three-judge Ethiopian federal court panel is to hand down a verdict December 21 in the case of freelance journalists Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson. The pair are charged with offering support to the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), a rebel group Ethiopia has labeled a terrorist organization.

Schibbye and Persson were arrested June 30 in the company of ONLF fighters, after a gunbattle between the rebels and Ethiopian troops, who are engaged in a counter-insurgency operation in the region. A video recorded a day after the clash and played in court Wednesday shows the two men wearing bandages from minor wounds suffered in the exchange of fire.

ONLF communiques sent by email tell of frequent clashes in the mostly Muslim region, which borders Somalia. The claims cannot be independently confirmed because the region is off-limits to most outsiders, but government officials have described the reports as “exaggerated."

The case of the two Swedes gained notoriety after Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi publicly commented on the charges against them. In an interview with a Norwegian newspaper, Meles said they were “at the least messenger boys for a terrorist organization."

At the trial, Schibbye and Persson admitted illegally crossing the border from Somalia into Ethiopia, but denied supporting the ONLF. They said they were in the Ogaden to investigate the activities of a Swedish oil firm with interests in the region.

As they closed their case Wednesday, defense attorneys called two veteran foreign correspondents to testify about how journalists operate in conflict zones.

Adrian Blomfield, the Middle East correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, said reporters must sometimes travel to off-limits areas and meet what some would call unsavory characters in search of stories that governments would prefer are not told. He summarized his testimony for VOA.

"People who have reported in conflict zones often for various reasons may cross a border unofficially or with a particular group, and I just wanted to get across the point there is nothing untoward, there is nothing sinister about this. This is just how journalists operate, and sometimes we get caught, but we don't expect to be charged with terrorism as a result," said Blomfield.

Blomfield said he explained to the court that what Schibbye and Persson did is standard procedure for reporters covering conflicts.

"This is not an unusual case. This is what journalists do all over the world for whatever reasons," said Blomfield.

Schibbye and Persson were charged under a recently enacted anti-terrorism law criticized as “overly vague” by human rights and press freedom groups. The statute criminalizes any reporting deemed to encourage or provide moral support to groups that the government considers terrorists.

If convicted, the two Swedes could face up to 15 years in prison.

Sweden's ambassador to Ethiopia, Jens Odlander, told reporters after the trial the Stockholm government remains steadfast in its contention that Schibbye and Persson are bona fide journalists. He expressed optimism for a favorable verdict.

"I'm expecting a good outcome. I don't want to elaborate too much on it, but I expect a very good outcome from this," said Odlander.

Attorneys say final arguments in the case are to be submitted in writing within the week. The court is scheduled to hand down its verdict in the final 10 days of the year.

Intimidation or imprisonment by 'democratic instruments'

By Mesfin Negash/CPJ Guest Blogger
Three years ago, I met Minister Bereket Simon at his office at the center of Addis Ababa. I was with my colleague Abiye Teklemariam -- who was recently charged with terrorism, treason and espionage along with five other journalists, including myself.

Our purpose in meeting Bereket was to make our position clear regarding the government's wasteful animosity toward us, and express our concerns surrounding press freedom in Ethiopia.  The period was a tense and confrontational one for staff members of our newspaper, Addis Neger. Many observers had begun to predict the imminentclosure of Addis Neger and our inevitable arrest. As became evident later, the government was suspicious of us and had already decided our fate. Of what were they suspicious? That depends on whether you want the public version of their suspicion, or the other version, relating to politics and power. The public version is a cover up for the latter version.

The biggest worry for any autocrat stems from individuals and institutions that appear to be independent and attractive to one or more sections of society. The Ethiopian government's real suspicion -- more appropriate to call it fear -- was that Addis Neger or people gathering around its ideals could be turned into a political force. This may have taken different forms, the government assumed -- including forming a new political party as a solid group; joining one of the oppositions; endorsing or actively supporting opposition parties; or challenging the legitimacy of the regime by forming critical opinions.
No intelligent leader can declare this panic in public. The creative capacity of any autocrat reveals itself in his ability to formulate a public suspicion that can conceal the primary concern, which is to stay in power.
Bereket is the right-hand man of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, and has handled the government's media affairs for 20 years. In our meeting with him, we highlighted the public's fear of a sudden and blanket closure of independent newspapers, as had happened in 2005. Bereket was articulate in addressing our concern: "Have no worry about that; we won't repeat that kind of measure. Instead, the government is determined to handle both the media and journalists using democratic instruments."
By "democratic instruments," Bereket meant lawsand government organs - each being an appendix of the ruling party. Instead of closing a newspaper by ordering the printing house not to print, the law made the printer responsible for the content of what he is printing. Instead of telling reporters to stop writing about a particular political group or view, such reporting is criminalized by the outlawing of the party (as well as any discussion regarding its view). The government no more issues an order to arrest activists or close an independent NGO working to empower citizens or expose human rights abuses. It simply makes life impossible for such groups by requiring them by law to cover 90% of their budget from local sources.
Thus, the public suspicion is aimed at sensitizing the public, or at least ruling party members, about the legal action the government is going to take using "democratic instruments." It is often based on fabricated or half-baked conspiracy plots. Some of the allegations against independent newspapers and journalists in Ethiopia paint them as dangerous elements posing a threat to the country: the agents of foreign forces or enemy states; operatives of the CIA; members or supporters of opposition or extremist groups; advocates of anti-ethnic or religious groups; advocates of anti-state ideas, and more.
Such allegations are used the world over to silence and intimidate independent voices. Such instruments are used to jail journalists, not just by the Ethiopian government but also by the worst offenders, the governments of Iran and China.
When my colleague Abiye and I met with Bereket, we were bold enough to explain our fundamental positions as an independent media institution and responsible journalists. He was also honest enough to admit the government's fear, saying, "You have a political agenda." What does this mean, where anything from an editorial to a cartoon can be considered political and entail an agenda?
Today, my colleague, journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega, has been imprisoned since September 14 in Maekelawi Federal Detention Center. Note that the government is holding him using a "democratic instrument" called the "Anti-Terrorism Law." The same instrument put journalists Woubshet Taye and Re'eyot Alemu behind bars. The two Swedish journalists, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, are also in prison defending their professional activities, which are criminalizedin Ethiopia..

The journalist as terrorist: an Ethiopian story

By Abiye Teklemariam Megenta (Open Democracy)
The Ethiopian government led by prime minister Meles Zenawi uses charges of terrorism to silence and intimidate its domestic critics. The political technique is now being extended by accusing independent journalists of conspiracy. One of his targets, Abiye Teklemariam Megenta, responds.  

I couldn't say that nothing prepared me for the morning of 8 November 2011. Over the past year, Ethiopians have become accustomed to our country's prime minister's ex-cathedra declarations that most of his opponents and dissidents are "terrorists" who belong in prison - and are saved from only by his benignity and patience. Meles Zenawi's declarations, to be fair to him, were also given a legal basis in 2009, when the Ethiopian parliament passed a law that criminalises almost all acts of dissent as terrorism. If that law had been implemented to its fullest extent, no critic of Zenawi would have been left standing. It is that stifling.

But even Zenawi's kindness has its limits. Since June 2011, terrorism trials have increased steadily. Human Rights Watch reports that in these five months, the Ethiopian government has charged at least thirty-three people under the 2009 proclamation. Even during the Ethiopian new year, which falls in September, Ethiopian dissidents were given no respite from these attacks.   

The world barely noticed these politico-criminal dramas in one of the west's closest African allies - until the unfortunate arrest and trial of two Swedish journalists. Good news? Well, a useful rule of thumb is that if the Ethiopian government treats foreigners from donor countries badly, it treats locals even worse. And the calculated anti-west outbursts of Ethiopian officials, which are usually interpreted by some hapless foreign journalists and diplomats in Addis Ababa as a general hostility to westerners, are less than they seem: reminiscent of Hamid Karzai's grandstanding. To paraphrase the senior United States military commander Peter Fuller, who resigned following his criticism of Afghan leaders, Ethiopian officials have a fit when they want to replace cod with swordfish in the menu.

But with all this in mind, the charges were still upsetting. They allege, first, that I have promoted the views of diverse Ethiopian "terrorist groups", both on the online newspaper I co-founded and on some (unnamed) social-media networks. In fact, these groups have only one thing in common, namely the overthrow of Meles Zenawi's rule and the establishment of a democratic system in Ethiopia. My "promotion" of them in various reports consisted in nothing more than quoting their statements: the sort of thing that journalists do every day, and for which many journalists in Ethiopia are already in jail.

The second, graver, charge alleges that I am a member of a conspiracy network that has caused or tried to cause acts of terrorism in Ethiopia with the help of foreign governments. So bereft of details is the accusation that it might as well have been copied from a Muammar Gaddafi speech. Indeed, to the misfortune of his victims, Zenawi shares with Gaddafi (at least in the penultimate phase of the latter's career) the experience of being feted by many of these foreign governments as a transformative leader and worthy ally.

Behind the image
Meles Zenawi’s greatest trick has been to convince a lot of people in the west that he is an intelligent and prudent leader. The basis for such an image is ever-shifting. In the 1990s, it was based on his ability to stabilise a war-ravaged country. When the Ethiopia-Eritrea war undermined his claim to be a peacemaker, he adopted the guise of a pro-western and pro-democracy reformer, advising Tony Blair on how to nurture civil society and free media in Africa and using Bushisms such as "enemy of freedom" to attack "jihadists". During the Iraq war, he quickly joined the "coalition of the willing". Yet his status among some prominent members of the anti-war intelligentsia was unaffected; leading American economists Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs and Dani Rodrik were among the regular travellers to Addis Ababa.

It took the controversial elections of 2005, and the brutal crackdown of dissent that followed, to begin to erode the illusion of Meles Zenawi's democratic credentials. Yet even from the ashes of that debacle a new image emerged: of the leader as a technocratic, if dictatorial, leader who had been able to crack the code of east Asia's rise and download it into an Ethiopian hardware. This latest identity cohered well with the emerging discourse about the gap between responsible and responsive government, and the paralysis of decision-making in democracies. It was also fuelled by the World Bank’s unquestioning endorsement - against the well-founded scepticism of some economists - of Ethiopia's official, spectacular growth numbers. There is not even a single independent institution in Ethiopia able to assess and verify the government's claims.

It is not difficult to comprehend why many intellectuals and policymakers in the west find Meles Zenawi alluring. He is an articulate and fluent man known to to read the books of scholars he is about to meet and convey the impression that he finds their work profound. This eloquent mirroring of the ideas of visitors, including wonkish politicians and policy-makers, is a sure route to the latter's servility. Some of this effect is owed to a contrast made by western observers between Zenawi and other African leaders, which leads to the conclusion that he is "different": the soft bigotry of lowered expectations.

A matter of justice
There is nothing intrinsically deplorable about admiring the intellect of a tyrant. The grievous mistake is to let such a judgment cloud the imperative of evaluating fairly the regime's nature and designing policy on the ground of solid evidence. If the mountain of well-documented reports of international human-rights groups and the experiences of people like me are to be believed, Zenawi’s Ethiopia has become one of the most despotic places in the world. Dissent is criminalised. Most members of the non-state media have either left the country or are locked in the country's abusive prisons. Opposition parties operate in an extremely constrained political space.

The tactics of divide and rule, co-option and repression have eviscerated Ethiopia's social trust, destroyed political institutions and decimated independent voices - and it seems that Zenawi is intent on intensifying such tactics rather than reversing them. The economy is beset by very high inflation, high unemployment and a foreign-exchange crunch; the private sector, dominated by rentier cronies of the prime minister's ruling party, is one of the least competitive and the most stagnant in Africa. There is precious little here that justifies the respect that the architect of this system is internationally accorded.

As I await my extradition hearing, Meles Zenawi continues to hobnob with the world's most powerful politicians in meetings which are organised to solve our planet's major problems. Neither his very long tyrannical rule nor my life as a liberal journalist with an unwavering commitment to justice and non-violent struggle suggests that we deserve our respective places. Real life can indeed be stranger than fiction..

Ethiopian Illicit Outflows Doubled In 2009, New Report Says

By Christopher Matthews
Ethiopia lost $11.7 billion to outflows of ill-gotten gains between 2000 and 2009, according to a coming report by Global Financial Integrity.

That’s a lot of money to lose to corruption for a country that has a per-capita GDP of just $365. In 2009, illicit money leaving the country totaled $3.26 billion, double the amount in each of the two previous years. The capital flight is also disturbing because the country received $829 million in development aid in 2008.

According to GFI economist Sarah Freitas, who co-authored the report, corruption, kickbacks and bribery accounted for the vast majority of the increase in illicit outflows.

“The scope of Ethiopia’s capital flight is so severe that our conservative US$3.26 billion estimate greatly exceeds the US$2 billion value of Ethiopia’s total exports in 2009,” Freitas wrote in a blog post on the website of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development.

The report, titled “Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries over the Decade Ending 2009,” drew on data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on external debt and trade mis-pricing to calculate illicit capital leakage. The study, which will be released later this month, measures the illicit financial flows out of 160 different developing nations.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries on earth as 38.9% of Ethiopians live in poverty, and life expectancy in 2009 was just 58 years.

“The people of Ethiopia are being bled dry,” Freitas wrote. “No matter how hard they try to fight their way out of absolute destitution and poverty, they will be swimming upstream against the current of illicit capital leakage.”