By Prof. Adugnaw Worku
The month was October and the year was 1971. And my life was about to take a sharp turn with unintended long term consequences. That month and that year, I received two important documents I was eagerly waiting for. I received an acceptance letter and financial clearance from Avondale College, Australia, and I was truly excited! In those days, only a select few had the opportunity and privilege to go abroad for higher education. And to be among that elite group was in deed a special privilege.
When young Ethiopians completed their course of study abroad and returned home, they were held in high esteem. They were considered well traveled, well educated, well informed, and sophisticated. And a lot was expected of them because they were considered the key to the country’s development and modernization. This poor peasant boy was suddenly a member of a highly privileged and elite group and what a privilege and responsibility that was.
Before I left for Australia, I went home to say good-bye to family and friends and it was a very difficult and emotional moment. After a lot of hugs and kisses mingled with tears, I was about to break away when my father asked me a question that has haunted me ever since. “When are you coming back? When will we see you again?” he asked. I responded by saying that I would be back in 8 years and would not stay a day longer after I completed my studies. And I meant what I said. I heard a collective gasp around me followed by, “8 years! That is too long!”
Well, that was 36 years ago, and I have obviously failed to fulfill my promise. I am sad to say that it is unlikely I will fulfill that promise at all. Three years after I left Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam’s extremely cruel and murderously vicious regime came to power and shook that fervently religious and thoroughly traditional country to its foundation causing a lot of grief, death, destruction, and displacement. In less than two decades, hundreds and thousands of Ethiopians lost their lives in the cruelest and most degrading manner. And about that many fled the country. Those of us already out of the country let our promises to family and friends expire and never returned. Not returning home from abroad was simply unthinkable in those days. We never ever imagined that our promises would have an expiration date but they did, under duress.
When Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime trampled under foot basic freedoms of conscience, worship, expression, choice, and movement, we felt it across the oceans. That regime had total control of everyone and everything and we felt our people’s gripping fear and their pain and suffering. We also found ourselves between a rock and a hard place. We were stranded both physically and emotionally in a foreign land not knowing what to do next and totally unprepared to handle the realities that confronted us. We could not return home and we were not prepared for a life of exile. To return or not to return, that was our question collectively. Those of us who left Ethiopia during Haile Selassie’s reign never imagined and had absolutely no desire or plan to live outside Ethiopia. The love of country and the love of family among us was rock solid and the urge to return home was equally intense. We were proud of our heritage and conscious of our place in history to make a difference in Ethiopia. We were separated from our parents, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends still living in Ethiopia. And what a traumatic experience that was. But here we are many years later living with broken promises to family, friends, and country. In my case, it has been thirty six years since I left Ethiopia and I am still moaning and groaning about the difficult decisions I have had to make. My promise to return home has long expired and I very much doubt at this point that it will ever be renewed at all
The account I have related above is very familiar to many of us, but it needs to be formally told for the record. Practically all of us believed that the political upheaval of the Derg era would come to a close sooner or later and that it would be possible to return home. But meanwhile, we had to survive in our respective host countries. That meant getting work permits to find a job to pay rent, buy grocery and other necessities. So, we were introduced to political asylum to secure work permits and permission to live and work in our host country.
Applying for political asylum was depressing and traumatic. We felt that we were betraying our family and our country but life must go on and we did what we had to do rather reluctantly. So, we applied for political asylum in droves. But none of us viewed it as a permanent arrangement. The desire to return home still burned brightly within us. There were no weddings and hardly anyone bought property or made long term investments. We were simply buying time until the political situation at home improved so we could return at the first signal of peace and stability.
Unfortunately, our dreams to return home were dashed when the TPLF came to power in 1991 with cynical and sinister ethnic politics. The TPLF touched the national nerve by ushering in more confusion, division, instability, ethnic hatred, and bloodshed. Everyone had hoped that seventeen years of blood and tears, pain and suffering, starvation and death, and imprisonment and torture would finally be over leaving behind an indelible lesson to do better. Sadly, that is not what has happened since 1991. The TPLF never learned the lesson of the past and it has been very busy doing more of the same. And Ethiopians in the Diaspora finally saw the hand writing on the wall and began to make long term decisions to settle down in their host countries. Those of us who applied for political asylum during Mengistu Haile Mariam’s era began applying for citizenship during Meles Zenawi’s reign and effectively became permanent immigrants.
Furthermore, refugees began streaming out of Ethiopia in much greater numbers than before hoping to leave behind Meles Zenawi’s legacy of oppression and poverty. Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia has become so inhospitable to its citizens that the majority of Ethiopia’s youth now want to leave the country with no intention to look back. That indeed is the sad state of affairs in today’s Ethiopia. Our numbers in the Diaspora are growing by leaps and bounds. According to anecdotal stories, there are more Ethiopian professionals in the Diaspora than in Ethiopia itself subjecting the country to the worst brain drain ever.
In 1996, I myself finally came to the inescapable realization that I was not returning to Ethiopia any time soon and I made the most difficult and painful decision in my entire life; I renounced my Ethiopian citizenship and became an American. Unfortunately, neither the United States nor Ethiopia allows dual citizenship. I am grateful to the United States of America for allowing me to enjoy freedom and the pursuit of happiness that my country of birth denied me. Freedom is a precious gift from God and no one has a right to take it away from us. And those who deny their citizens basic human rights and freedoms must be confronted by persistent and determined struggle until justice and freedom for all prevail.
The year I became an American citizen was also an election year and I voted for the first time in my life as a citizen of a truly free and democratic country. It was an awesome experience and I was impressed by what I saw at the voting station. I was greeted by friendly volunteers upon arrival and I saw no armed guards around. The whole experience was simple, peaceful, and yet profound. It was as simple as renting a couple of movies from a video store or buying a gallon of milk from the local market. That is how simple it was! And how is that possible? It is possible because the government of the United States of America is subordinate to civil society. Such a government is expected to respect the law and be accountable for its action.
Dictatorial regimes conduct elections to fool the international community by claiming and even bragging that they too have elections. But they predetermine the conditions and predict the outcome in their favor by engaging in institutional manipulation, fraud, intimidation, and violence. They harass voters, imprison political opponents on trumped up charges, and even kill them in broad daylight. They control the flow of information, monopolize the use of the media, rig elections, and declare landslide victories shamelessly. They acquire power by the barrel of the gun and hang on to it by whatever means necessary until they ran out of tricks. Eventually, they ran out of tricks and more powerful forces overthrow them. And the cycle of violence continues. More often than not, dictators end up dead, imprisoned, or they flee the country.
The two fundamental principles of an open society are respect for the individual citizen and the limitation of political power and the people are the intended guardians. “Democracy is that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole”. In a democracy, the people have the power to vote their leaders into office and to recall them. Leaders can be impeached if they break the law and be removed from office kicking and screaming. Citizens in a democracy insist on due process and assume the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. Citizens have a constitutional right to remain silent under police questioning if they so desire and they are protected by law against torture.
Law enforcement officers in countries like the United States remind citizens under their custody about this constitutional right by saying, “You have a right to remain silent and anything you say will be used against you in the court of law.” This is real power, and these are luxuries millions of oppressed people around the world can only dream about.
A story is told about an Ethiopian police officer who arrested a citizen without any explanation or warrant. When the arrested citizen protested and asked the arresting officer for his ID, the officer allegedly pulled out a gun, pointed it at the victim’s head, and apparently responded by saying, “this is my ID”. Such acts of violence and violations of individual rights are the rule in dictatorial regimes, including today’s Ethioipia. This kind of arbitrary behavior demonstrates an outright contempt for the rule of law and for due process. In such systems, retribution for alleged and real opposition comes fast and furious. And it is deadly! Dictators are accountable to no one because they are the law unto themselves. And they take quick actions against their opponents with no apparent fear of consequences. That is because they cannot afford to let their guards down and they survive by taking preventive measures and preemptive actions. It is true after all that those “who kill by the sword die by the sword”. And dictators often die that way sooner or later, leaving behind a legacy of chaos, destruction, and more violence.
It is well overdue for Ethiopia and Ethiopians to embrace democracy and make their government subordinate to civil society. Elections must be fair and free and the people must decide the winner. That is the only way to achieve lasting peace. Sociologist Seymour Lipset observes that “a society of nonvoters is potentially more explosive than one in which most citizens are regularly involved in activities which give them some sense of participation in the decisions which affect their lives”. Research also suggests that “voting deepens community involvement and good citizenship. People who vote are generally more attentive and better informed, and they become share holders in good and responsible governance.
To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, an arbitrary government that expects legitimacy expects what never was and never will be. Ethiopians want to return home and thousands would indeed return home if political peace and stability prevails. Furthermore, Ethiopians in the Diaspora have accumulated wealth and expertise that Ethiopia can greatly benefit from. Meles Zenawi missed a historic chance when he blinked after the 2005 election. But it is not too late. The Ethiopian Millennium is around the corner and it provides a context for a new beginning. To begin the new millennium without new beginnings and new directions will be foolhardy.
In closing, let me quote the following lines from the American Declaration of Independence which outlines the core values of a democratic society:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”