By Jenny Higgins

Lalibela, Ethiopia – On the afternoon Feb. 21, I was catching up on some work in the office, when I was distracted by a man dressed in white rushing past the window, closely followed by Hafte, the guard’s son. I thought he was coming into the office, but when he didn’t, I didn’t think anything of it and simply carried on with my work.

A few minutes later he did come into the office – a tall Ethiopian man wrapped in a gabi, wearing a hat, and carrying a ‘cow tail’ stick which people swish around to get rid of the flies. He came over, shook my hand and said a lot of things to me in Amharic, while Hafte sniggered behind him. I’m used to random people coming up and speaking to me as if I am fluent in Amharic, so I went along with it, shaking his hand, saying hello etc. A totally normal part of my day!

Then he grabbed me and tried to pull me out of my chair, which is not so normal. I managed to rip my tee shirt out of his grip, and I pushed him away, more shocked that anything, while Hafte tried to guide him out of the office, telling me he’s got mental health problems (I believe the phrase was ‘he’s crazy’). Okay, I can deal with mental health stuff, no problem. So when he refused to leave the office and instead sat down at the desk opposite me, chattering all the while, I just got on with my work and left Hafte to deal with him.

Then he started to grab things – my bottle of water, my roll of tissue paper, and then my bag …

This is when it started getting a little silly. Hafte was holding my bag, stopping him from running off with it, and the man had stuck the bottle of water between his legs so we couldn’t get it (well, we could, but this man has thighs like a vice!). Hafte had stopped him running off with my bag, but the man was now refusing to leave the office, just sitting at the desk causing as much havoc as he could considering Hafte was pinning him to the chair.

Now, this was a bit of an inconvenience for me, in the sense that I wanted to get on with my work and the mad man sitting opposite me wasn’t helping, but I didn’t fear for my life or my things. He’d hurt me a bit when he grabbed me, but I guessed Hafte would stop him from disappearing with all my stuff, and other than that he was just annoying. I managed to move my laptop out of his reach and take my passport, money and phone out of my bag, though, just in case.

However, he didn’t leave (with or without my bag) and he started to get more and more aggressive, throwing a punch at Hafte and screaming about ‘faranjis’ – I didn’t ask for translation. So I went to get some help from my project manager’s house, thinking a few men would be able to lift him out of the office. Unfortunately, only H, his girlfriend was there. She went to get the police, while a merry band of people gathered around my office – the female teachers from our school, who had just come back from market, Yeshimembit, the woman who bakes injera for me, and a little girl who simply appeared from nowhere.

A little while later, as Hafte continued to hold this man and stop him from stealing my things, one of A’s friends arrived, closely followed by a policeman. Okay, I thought, they’ll get him out. I mean, all they have to do is lift him out of the office – there are two of them and one of him, right?

I moved out of the way, while the policeman asked the man to move out of the office. He obviously didn’t particularly want to go, and a few minutes later I saw him thrown out of the office by the two of them.I thought it was over, then the policeman smacked him round the head and pushed him so hard he fell to the floor. In a split second before it happened, I saw what was coming – the policeman kicked the man, hard, in the head. Then he did it again. I cried out – the man was out of the office, he was lying on the floor, he wasn’t doing anything. Stop it!

Nobody else thought this was a problem. They all stood there and watched as the policeman kicked and beat the man who was lying on the floor, posing no threat to anyone. I tried to stop the policeman myself, but Aman’s friend pulled me back, telling me to leave it. The policeman took two seconds to tell me ‘it’s no problem’, then pulled the man to his feet and started to push him down the stone stairs.

What could I do? I didn’t want the man hurt, I just wanted him out of the office and to stop trying to hurt me and Hafte, or trying to take my stuff. The man is sick, not bad. Instead, I stood by, helpless (apart from the noise I made), while he was beaten and then dragged off to a prison, where he is likely to be beaten again.

As everyone stood around, totally unconcerned, telling me ‘it’s normal in Ethiopia’ and ‘it’s no problem’, I shut myself in my office and sobbed.

It’s not seeing the physical violence that upsets me; I’ve seen dead children lying in the road in Addis Ababa, and I was there as a man drowned in front of his devastated daughter in Blackpool. What really affects me is the casual cruelty that Ethiopians are capable of inflicting on anyone who doesn’t conform.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this here. I now refuse to go to John Café in Lalibela (which is a considerable sacrifice considering the size of this town!) after I saw the way the owner treated another mentally disabled man. My loud protests stopped her from hitting him in this instance, but she humiliated and treated him worse than a dog, and I refuse to give my money to someone who does that.

Objectively, these are isolated instances where two people have been cruel and violent towards someone they see is worth less than them. It’s not unusual in any country. The thing that distresses me, though, is how ‘mainstream’ this attitude is. This afternoon, educated people who would tell you that they believe everyone is equal, and human rights apply to all, stood around and watched as a policeman kicked a man in the head simply for being mentally ill — and more than that, thought it was the right thing to do. In the café, a crowd of people which included the town’s bank manager and members of local government, sat around and laughed at the spectacle. All of these people call themselves committed Christians. Didn’t Jesus say ‘what you do to the least of my people, you do to me‘?

‘He’s not normal’ is often offered by way of explanation. Anyone who is different is not considered a human being and not worthy of the protection everyone else expects. To be honest, it’s not usual here to argue against a policeman – I can get away with it, because they know I’m protected by my British Passport in ways the average Ethiopian is not. But even after the policeman had gone, my tears were seen as something bewildering. He’s not normal, you see, the policeman did what anyone would have done.

I know I am tired and shocked, but it is afternoons like these that make me want to pack up and head home. Why on earth should I have given up all my home comforts, my friends, my life and my job to come and help people who treat others this way?

(Click here for more on Jenny Higgins work in Ethiopia)

By Peter Greste | BBC News, Ethiopia

Deep in the gorge country that falls off the Ethiopian plateau, workers in boots and hard hats are hammering, drilling, blasting and digging their way into the mountainside for the foundations of the vast wall that will, when finished, create the second largest hydroelectricity dam in sub-Saharan Africa.

Teams of workers are blasting out the “keyhole” – the slot in the side of the valley that will hold the dam wall in place.

Others are finishing the concrete lining to the last of three 1,000m long tunnels that have already begun diverting the Omo River waters around the main construction site.

According to the engineers, they are now about a third of the way through the project, and on schedule to finish the Gilgel Gibe III hydroelectricity project sometime in 2012.

By then, the wall will soar 240 metres high – the tallest of its type anywhere in the world; holding back a reservoir 150 kilometres long.

The dam will provide 1800 megawatts of electricity. That will more than double the country’s current generating capacity in one hit, and according to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, solve a national energy crisis.

“We cannot afford not to have Gilgel Gibe III,” he said.

“We need that type of mega-project given the increased domestic demand and the requirements of export.

“And secondly, it enables us to store water and regulate the flooding [downstream in the Omo River].”

Tall order

But the dam will also produce far more electricity than the country is capable of consuming. The vast bulk of it has been earmarked for export to neighbours like Sudan and Kenya.

“That would provide us with valuable foreign currency that will help with our balance of payments,” said the prime minister.

So urgent was the need to get the dam built quickly that the government short-circuited the usual internationally accepted procedures for these kinds of massive infrastructure projects.

Usually, a government will first conduct a feasibility study followed by an environmental and social impact assessment to decide whether it really is wise to go ahead with the plan.

Then, it will raise the finance, call for competitive tenders and award the construction contract.

Instead, the government first negotiated the contract directly with Italian civil engineering giant Salini Costruttori.

It then went looking for the finance – a procedure that has left the government with a massive hole in its budget.

The two financial institutions that the government had hoped would back the project – the World Bank and the European Investment Bank – have both refused to get involved because the government broke international and domestic transparency rules by dealing directly with Salini.

“I think quite rightly, we have an obligation not only to do the right thing but to demonstrate very clearly that we are doing the right thing,” said Greg Toulmin, the World Bank’s country director for Ethiopia.

“In order to do that, we have to go through all these very meticulous processes to check all the aspects of any operation that we provide loan or guarantee to. That’s something that takes time.”

Standing firm

It’s a luxury that Mihert Debeba, head of the Electricity Corporation, said Ethiopia simply can’t afford.

He said: “Africa is in the dark. If we have to use very luxurious preconditions we wouldn’t develop any hydro-power.

“Give us a choice. Should we stay in darkness? Should we avoid all this development?”

The corporation also short-circuited the environmental and social impact assessment (EIA) process. Instead the study – which gave the project a clean bill of health – was published two years after construction began.

One of the project’s staunchest critics, Kenyan ecologist Richard Leakey, suspects the study was produced with one aim in mind.

He said: “The scientists that I’ve shown [the EIA] to – some of whom have worked in Ethiopia for years and may have even advised the Ethiopian government at some point – suggest it is fatally flawed in terms of its logic, in terms of its thoroughness, in terms of its conclusions.

“And it looks like an inside job that has come up with the results that they were looking for to get the initial funding for this dam.”

Before any large project can go ahead, Ethiopia’s Environmental Protection Agency first has to give its approval.

TewoldeBerhan Gebre heads the agency, and he dismisses critics like Mr Leakey as misguided.

“Leakey’s a big name but I don’t know what he’s based his arguments on. I don’t think he’s right,” he said.

“My experts have also examined it. They have studied the environmental impact statements. They have visited the site and I know them.

“I don’t know you. I trust them and I don’t care for what you say.”

Still, Mr Leakey’s criticism echoes that of another collection of European, American and East African academics calling themselves the “African Resources Working Group”, headed by University of Montana Geography Professor Jeff Gritzner.

The group has released a commentary on the environmental research, which asserts: “The document rests on a series of faulty premises and it is further compromised by pervasive omissions, distortions and obfuscation.

“The downstream EIA is laced with tables and figures with multiple types of ‘quantitative data’, creating the illusion of a scientific work.

“While this practice is well known to increase the likelihood of approval by development, finance and oversight agencies, it is fully unacceptable.

“The quantitative [and qualitative] data included in virtually all major sections of the report were clearly selected for their consistence with the predetermined objective of validating the completion of the Gibe III hydro-dam.”

The commentary goes on to insist that rather than being beneficial to the river valley as the government insists, the dam will “produce a broad range of negative effects, some of which would be catastrophic” to both the environment and the indigenous communities living downstream.

The science is still very much in dispute – a factor that Mr Leakey believes is reason enough to invoke the precautionary principle and stop the project before it is too late.

For if the Ethiopian government is wrong, those communities living along the lower Omo River Valley all the way down into neighbouring Kenya will pay a heavy price.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi ordered the confiscation of 17,000 tonnes of coffee from exporters on Wednesday and revoked the licenses of six companies accused of hoarding their stocks.

“They refused to comply with government orders to export the beans,” Agriculture Minister Tefera Derebew told Reuters.

“It was time for the government to take action.”

Tefera said the licenses of 88 independent traders had also been canceled for failing to heed the authorities.

Ethiopia, Africa’s biggest coffee producer, prides itself as the birthplace of the bean.

Some 15 million smallholder farmers grow coffee, mostly in the misty forested highlands of its west and southwest regions.

But some exporters have been reluctant to sell stocks through the new electronic Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), which was set up to replace a murky auction system often abused by market players. The ECX began trading coffee in December.

In January, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned exporters, threatening to “cut off their hands” if they did not sell stocks they were holding in the hope of better prices.

Coffee accounted for about 60 percent of the Horn of Africa nation’s hard currency revenue in the 2007/2008 (June/July) season, when it earned more than $525 million from exports of 170,888 tonnes of mostly high quality arabica beans.

Tefera, the agriculture minister, accused some export firms of selling coffee meant for export on the domestic market.

“It is a serious offense,” he said, adding the seized stocks would now be offered on the international market.

“Whether the money generated through the sales will be given back to the traders will be decided in the courts,” Tefera said.

By René Lefort

Millions of Ethiopians once again face misery and famine. Addis Ababa’s desire to project an image of a new dynamic country has led to callous denial of the reality.

In 2008 famine struck Ethiopia. Now, at the start of 2009 it is looming again. According to the “Humanitarian Requirements” released on 30 January 2009 by the government in Addis Ababa and their “Humanitarian Partners”, 13 million Ethiopians – one-sixth of the population – are in need of aid. For over 10 million of them the need is urgent. But food allocations have already been “tentatively cancelled” or reduced. Relief is inadequate, as it has continued to be since the food crisis began in early 2008. The effects of its initial denial and then its consistent underestimation, which turned local production shortages into humanitarian catastrophes, are still being felt.

But, exactly a year ago, there was an atmosphere of euphoria. Almost all international experts and the Ethiopian authorities were announcing that the autumn harvest (95% of the annual harvest) was 7% to 10% above the previous year’s. In 2008, it would therefore be possible, simultaneously, “to cover all the cereal requirements at the aggregate level,” increase Ethiopians’ average food ration by 20%, double food reserves, including the Emergency Food Security Reserve, and even export 800,000 tonnes. Simon Mechale, head of the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA), confirmed that the regime’s main promise was still on track. “Ethiopia will soon fully ensure its food security,” he said.

To meet their promise, on top of the agricultural ‘boom’, the government and international donor organizations were convinced they also had a key weapon: the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) – “the biggest social protection instrument in Africa”, which would break the “cycle of dependence on food aid”. Food aid offered temporary, one-off relief: providing its beneficiaries with the minimum to survive a shock, such as a poor harvest, but not enough to protect them from the next shock. Instead, the Safety Net targets the medium term development of eight million Ethiopians, the most chronically food insecure. By guaranteeing them a given amount of money or food for five years, in exchange for public works, they were supposed to build up enough productive assets in order to be able to overcome the shocks themselves.

But this arrangement was to collapse like a house of cards. On 9 April 2008, the Ethiopian government finally launched an appeal for emergency food assistance for 3.2 million Ethiopians. In less than three months, the number of those in need rose to over 12 million, swelled by the poor ‘lesser’ harvest, following the failure of the ‘little’ Spring rains of 2008. Officially.

The government endlessly repeated that it was facing a “minor problem” that would “be soon brought under control.” In reality it was completely overwhelmed, and its donors too. The Emergency Food Security Reserve, which was supposed to contain 400,000 tonnes, was almost empty. Three quarters of the beneficiaries of the Safety Net required emergency relief because they could not survive with their regular welfare assistance. There was a rush to raise funds and import food, but it would take at least three months to arrive. Reserves in the warehouses fell to a quarter of what was needed. In July 2008, the food ration was reduced by a third, then by half, for October and November. Despite a quadrupling in the value of humanitarian aid in 2008 compared to 2007, the emergency importation of 1.3 million tonnes of food in the first ten months of 2008, and the multiplication by seven of the number of Therapeutic Feeding Centers between the start of the crisis and September 2008, to service the world’s largest ever medical operation to save children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, the relief came too late and was too little to offset the largest human catastrophe since the famine of 1984/5, with its hundreds of thousands of deaths.

This failure was a result, first of all, of weaknesses in the early warning systems. For example, given Ethiopia’s rain-fed agriculture, failed rains forecast a poor harvest. But disruptions to the “main” summer rains of 2007 in the Highlands were not detected, notably along the Rift Valley, south-west of Addis Ababa, which would become the epicentre of the crisis. The same was true for the total absence of “lesser” rains at the end of 2007, specific to this area, with even more dramatic consequences. But, worse than neglecting these warning signs, which were visible since the end of the Summer of 2007, was the subsequent denial of increasingly serious signs of hunger.

“Famines do not occur in functioning democracies”, argues the Indian Nobel laureate in economics, Amartya Sen. The Ethiopian regime is diabolically good at cultivating appearances, while draining away any substance they may have had. The single party, which controls the State, is in the hands of the Tigrean minority, who make up 6% of the population. This ‘ethnicism’ undermines the regime’s legitimacy and obstructs any opening towards democracy, which might end this monopoly, as shown by the repression of the opposition after its breakthrough in the 2005 elections. This is one of the factors that rendered it incapable of playing its role as an opposing force, by sounding the alarm on a crisis that it saw coming, but was never able to quantify exactly. Since the international, and especially the national press, and even the ‘free press’, operate under strict surveillance, it cannot risk covering ‘sensitive’ subjects. The first reports of the drought in the Highlands only appeared in April 2008. No investigation has ever been published on the government’s reaction to the situation.

The regime’s authoritarianism also stems from a dual inheritance. The heritage of the ancestral Abyssinian identity, which is founded on a sense of respect for hierarchical authority. And also ‘democratic centralism’, which has remained the Party-State’s mode of organisation, a continuation of the Marxist-Maoist ideology that was the current leadership’s religion until it took power in 1991.

Any hope of popular political support for the regime is therefore dead in the water. And the regime knows it. Its survival strategy can be summed up as attempting to compensate for its rejection by dazzling economic success, the famous “double digit growth” that it parades at every opportunity. This growth is supposed to validate the “Renaissance” of Ethiopia, which the regime celebrated with great pomp and ceremony as it entered the first year of the third millennium of its calendar, from September 2007 to September 2008. Destined to “become a middle income country in about 20 years”, Ethiopia would “never stretch our hands to beg for what we need, ever again.” To recognise the drought would therefore mean asking for aid, and to admit, with donors, that the Safety Net was failing, would be to admit that the economy was not performing quite as well as the regime was telling everyone. This was out of the question. Addissu Legesse, Deputy Prime Minister and in charge of rural development, said as much himself. When the international media and humanitarian organisations began to sound the alarm at the deepening crisis, he reproached them less for trying “to get huge assistance” than for being “intent on belittling the economic growth of the country.”

By culture as much as because of the system, in order to avoid being sanctioned for incompetence, every civil servant must therefore demonstrate that he is translating this dogma of growth into deeds, at his level, even if this means dressing up, or even denying reality.

This subservience of the civil service has effectively barred it from being among the first to sound the alarm at local level, even though it has outposts in every tiny hamlet in each of the 17,000 communes. When they realised that their harvest was bad, delegations of farmers called on the authorities for aid, as is customary. With one voice, local officials replied, “we don’t want to know. Sort it out yourselves!”

This same local government provides figures on food production, which are then “processed” and compiled by those higher up the hierarchy, forming the basis for most estimates of the size of the harvest and therefore of the humanitarian needs. The better-known estimates are put together at the end of every year by several Ethiopian departments and, among others, the FAO, WFP, European Union, and USAID. But, as underlined by a FAO/WFP report, “the agricultural officers are rewarded for (reported) increases in production.” This initial bias is then further exacerbated by two others – the political imperatives of those at the top of the Ethiopian political ladder and those of the donor organisations. Dressed up in a technical format that is supposed to make them look ‘scientific’, these assessments are more a translation of these forms of distortion, bitterly negotiated between the various imperatives, than they are a reflection of reality.

Proof of this was the announcement, in December 2007, of this “bumper harvest”, just as the country stood on the brink of famine. This led to an estimate of ‘only’ 2.4 million Ethiopians who would need emergency food relief, and became the figure that donor agencies agreed on, even though they knew it was an underestimate. But, for the first time, their final negotiations with the DPPA foundered: it refused to accept this figure. According to the negotiators, it put forward a single argument, a pure imposition of authority: “there cannot be so many people in need,” implying that it was not politically acceptable. As a result, the “Humanitarian Appeal”, traditionally launched a few weeks later by the government and donor organisations to set the humanitarian machine in motion, stayed on the desk. It continued to be blocked for the next four months. The main alarm signal had been stifled.

The DPPA stuck to its position. At the end of February 2008, slyly and alone, it published a document stating that 1.7 million people were in need of emergency aid, a figure barely above that of early 2007, and so politically acceptable. Above all, the DDPA was implying that Ethiopia could deal with the situation on its own, without international help.

Finally, in mid-March 2008, the Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, consecrated this denial, when he reported to Parliament on the economic situation. He only mentioned the drought in passing, saying that “rumours” about it were “false” and that it was “not a serious threat”. It only affected the Lowland pastures in the South, without causing any humans or cattle to die, even though local officials had just declared the opposite. There was nothing on the Highlands and, in particular, the Rift Valley. But officials knew full well that the rate of ‘severe acute malnutrition’ of children, a stage where the risk of mortality is very high without immediate medical intervention, was five times higher than the rate that triggers an emergency food relief operation, according to international standards. “When figures like this are reached,” say nutrition experts, “the harm has already been done, and children have long been dying of hunger.”

What exactly did Meles know then? Because of the regime’s lack of transparency, observers disagree. For some, he knew all about the crisis. Others are more circumspect: Meles was late in learning about the real scale of the famine because officials had been more or less hiding the facts. But, these observers emphasise, Meles was ultimately to blame, because he had been solely in charge for the past 17 years. However, his reading of one of the main effects of the drought – the highest rate of inflation in Africa after Zimbabwe – can only be deliberately false.

This, he said, only affected “low income urban dwellers”. Those living in rural areas, “85% of the population… [are] not affected by the price rise”. Yet everyone knows that half of the farmers have to buy food, because their own production does not cover all their needs, and a fifth of these have to purchase more than half of their food. From March 2007 to March 2008, the price of basic foodstuffs increased by about 50%, only to double in the following four months. In particular, at least four million beneficiaries of the Safety Net are paid in cash, but their daily payment was, in the end, only enough to provide a third of their family’s daily needs. Meles, with his administration behind him, left tens of millions of Ethiopians to fend for themselves, no longer able to afford the most common foods.

“Three or four months have been lost,” humanitarians and diplomats now say, in good faith and always off the record. But why was nothing said about it? “The situation was becoming serious,” some of them were to say later, “even if we didn’t size it up exactly. But there reigned a conspiracy of silence, whether tacit or deliberate”. Sometimes, even connivance. Visiting Addis Ababa a few days before the release of the first Humanitarian Requirements of 9 April 2008, Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the WFP, whose local office knows the attitude of the Ethiopian authorities only too well, declared that “the government move in addressing the current food shortage… serves as a model.” It was necessary to wait for needs to be assessed, to decide “if it is appropriate or inappropriate to issue an (humanitarian) appeal,” even though these needs had been known for four months and had not stopped growing.

The Ethiopian government wielded an iron hand over humanitarian organisations and donor agencies, ensuring that they only acted within the official or tacit limits imposed upon them, following the whims of the current political agenda, even if this meant restricting, even distorting their activities, to the point of breaking with their own ethical principles; if not they could risk expulsion. Hence, among other things, an extreme form of self-censorship in order to remain always publicly in step with the official Ethiopian line, no matter how far from reality it may be, and, even more so, to refrain from any form of advocacy. Hence, also, the absolute refusal to go on the record. The International Red Cross was thrown out of one part of the Somali region in July 2007, accused, without evidence, of having waged a “smear campaign against the regional government” by feeding, off the record, English-language media with information on the government’s demands.

With one exception, all the aid organisations, governmental or not, decided to stay on, whatever the price to be paid. Following an institutional logic, they felt they had to be present in one of the principal fields of humanitarian action on the planet. Out of responsibility for the people they were helping, and only too aware that the Ethiopian government would know how to make them appear responsible for “abandoning them”, if they were to leave. And for some major UK and American NGOs and most of the United Nations agencies, to align themselves with the diplomats. “If they are going hand in hand with the regime,” said members of these agencies, “it is above all to fit in with a political agenda.” The major powers, led by the USA, refrained from any substantial criticism and, above all, any tangible sanctions against a regime that they credit with ensuring the country’s stability – an exception in a highly tormented Horn of Africa. Mainly, in a mainly Islamic region, traversed by currents of extremism, Ethiopia, where nearly half of the population are Christians, is their “strategic ally” in the “war on terror”. Finally, in early 2008, these leading countries felt themselves all the more indebted to this regime, given that they were not providing the support it had counted on for its intervention in Somalia, even when that turned into a disaster. So, the expected relationship between donors and recipients is inverted, and the former become obliged to the latter.

Only Douglas Alexander, the British Minister for International Development, dared publicly to condemn the attitude of the Ethiopian regime vis-à-vis the food crisis, by calling it one of “deny and delay”. But it drew absolutely no response outside or inside the country. For example, five months later, Gordon Brown has invited Meles Zenawi to participate in the G20 London meeting next month, albeit in his capacity as Chairman of NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development). Inside the country, if an Ethiopian elite knew about this condemnation, it lacked any precise supporting information. If investigations into the mortality rate were carried out, they were never published. We have no idea of the number of victims claimed by this famine. Tens of thousands?

Rightly or wrongly, Emperor Haile Selassie personifies the disdain of his regime for the famine of 1973/4, which claimed 200,000 deaths. He was overthrown a few months later. By deliberately ignoring the famine of 1984/5, in case it took away the sheen of the tenth anniversary of the socialist Derg junta’s accession to power and the concomitant creation of the Worker’s Party of Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam signed the beginning of its end. But there is no sign that the famine of 2008 will trigger a similar movement.

Whatever the arguments, the number of victims is out of all proportion to the previous two famines. Those responsible are harder to identify because its origins are more systemic and more diffuse. The silence of international organisations and diplomats, if not their connivance, are also contributing factors. But, by exposing the flaws of economic development, and by plunging millions of Ethiopians into famine, this crisis is further discrediting the regime in the eyes of the people. And above all, the international community, which finally recognises that, day by day, the facts refute the regime’s claim that Ethiopia is an “emerging democracy”, is also beginning to doubt what it considered the country’s major achievement: the economic success the regime is endlessly boasting of.

(The above article is reprinted from opendemocracy.net. The author, René Lefort, has been writing about sub-saharan Africa since the 1970s and has reported on the region for Le Monde, Le Monde diplomatique, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur. He is the author of “Ethiopia. An heretical revolution?” (1982, Zed books). His email is [email protected])

By Professor Adugnaw Worku

Have you ever wondered why dictators such as those in Ethiopia spend sleepless nights scheming and conniving on how to keep their people in the dark and go all out to censor magazines and newspapers, block websites, and jam radio broadcasts? The short answer is that they do so because they know the power of information and they fear their people to have such power. Dictators do two things simultaneously; they block out alternative sources of information and then engage in misinformation and disseminate pure propaganda. They exercise zero tolerance for diverse viewpoints and inconvenient truths and persecute those who bear such truths. The Bible says, “You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free”. When people are well informed and have knowledge at their disposal, they become difficult to control. And it is not by accident that dictatorial regimes target their educated citizens and harass and persecute them mercilessly until they submit, or kill them outright if they continue to resist.

I was once watching a whale and dolphin show and I heard the trainer say, “the more intelligent the animal the harder it is to train”. Animal training relies on control and behavior modification and some animals are too intelligent to submit to mindless and repetitive orders. So, the trainer resorts to tricks, bribes, and brain washing. Eventually, the animal submits and follows its trainer’s orders. Dictators use exactly the same tactics to control their citizens and add considerable coercive power to their arsenal to force compliance and submission. When tricks, bribery, and brain washing don’t work, dictators resort to blackmail, harassment, intimidation, and relentless persecution to break the individual’s God-given free will. Sadly, they often succeed and herd human beings like sheep with an iron fist.

The free flow of information and the dissemination of knowledge pose imminent danger to the power of dictators. Hence, they exercise strict monopoly of the mass media and ensure that their subjects hear and read only the officially pre-filtered propaganda. This practice is an old trick in politics and it is as if all dictators attend the same school to learn it. The technology of censorship has evolved through the years but its philosophy and practice have remained remarkably constant.

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Napoleon Bonaparte feared the power of the pen much more than the power of the gun. Napoleon is reported to have said, “If I were to give the liberty of the press, my power could not last three days”. Matthew Lesro said, “Those who control information are the most powerful people on the planet”. Yes indeed! People who monitor, manage, and censor the contents of information have the most potent power in their hands.

My interest in this subject was triggered by a recent report in Ethiopian Review, Ethiomedia, and Ethioforum regarding the unblocking of previously blocked websites in Ethiopia. The report was too good to be true and in fact it was. Websites considered critical of the Ethiopian government were apparently blocked once again within a few days of the original report. And the information blackout in continues unabated. But if there is a will, there is a way. There is at least one technology dictators in third world countries have not been able to control yet. And that technology is television broadcasting via satellite downlink. It is estimated that there are millions of satellite dishes in Ethiopia today. And these satellite dishes are found not only in Addis Ababa but also in other cities around the country.

Apparently, our people in Ethiopia are able to watch BBC, CNN, and even Eritrean Television in the privacy of their homes. If the Ethiopian government had the capability to block satellite downlinks, they most definitely would have blocked Eritrean Television. But the simple fact is that the Ethiopian government can’t block such systems. And this brings me to the most important point of this article.

For those who may not know, there is an Ethiopian television service called Ethiopian Television Network, ETN for short. This television service is poised to play a critical role in broadcasting its programs directly to Ethiopia via satellite downlink and will do so free of charge to those in Ethiopia. It also has the capability to broadcast to a world wide Ethiopian audience using streaming technology. And anyone living anywhere can access ETN’s current and archived programs 24 hours and seven days a week using high speed Internet. This ambitious television network has multiple channels covering business news, current affairs, religious programs, documentaries, entertainment, diet and health, children’s programs, society and culture, sport, and much more. For those in the Diaspora, it is a home away from home. And for those in Ethiopia, it will be source of reliable information at no cost.

Visitors form Ethiopia and elderly parents and relatives who stay at home all alone and all day will love watching Ethiopian Television Network. They can choose the channel they want to watch and listen to the programs in their own language as well as enjoy the company of their people on TV. You have no idea what this means to them. When my aunt came to the United States, I turned ETN on for her and she was absolutely delighted. She watched the religious channels more than any other, but she also enjoyed watching drama, comedy, documentary, and music. For just US$10 a month, this is the best gift you can give to those Ethiopians in the Diaspora who stay at home alone.

As far as broadcasting to Ethiopia is concerned, here is the deal and the punch line. In order to broadcast to Ethiopia, ETN needs a minimum of 5,000 subscribers. It costs only US$10 a month to subscribe and anyone from anywhere in the world can subscribe if they have high speed Internet access. It is that simple. The technology is ready to go and the program is already in place. For further information, you may go to ouretn.com and check it out for yourself. You may also ask all the questions you have and they will be answered to your satisfaction. And the best way to do that is to contact ETN directly.

Ethiopian Television Network is an independent entity with no affiliation to any other organization, political or otherwise. Its mission is to serve Ethiopians at home and abroad by providing fair, truthful, and balanced programs. And its guiding principles are Ethiopia’s unity and the well being of all her citizens. ETN is committed to promote equality, justice, the rule of law, freedom, human rights, development, education, and much more. It will be a voice for the voiceless and a vanguard for truth against misinformation and censorship.

Finally, I would like to end with a personal note. I have subscribed to Ethiopian Television Network and I am enjoying its programs. I also contribute programs for broadcast every week and find great satisfaction in doing what I can to further the cause of our proud history, our rich culture, and enduring values. In addition, I have agreed to serve on ETN’s governing board. Before I agreed to serve on this board, I made sure that it is free from hidden agendas and divisive tactics. And to the best of my knowledge, I am glad to say that ETN is independent and transparent and has no strings attached to a third party behind the scene. I joined the board determined to contribute to the fulfillment of its lofty and worthy goals.

I would like to invite you to subscribe and make it a robust television service for us and for our children. This television network relies primarily on subscriptions and advertisements and the Diaspora Ethiopian community can play a pivotal role to make it successful and accessible to our people in Ethiopia. I and other board members are willing to answer any questions from anyone and answer them truthfully and completely. The bottom line is this: There is no hidden agenda or mysterious motive other than the desire to provide badly needed service whose time has come. Television is a powerful tool and we have it now. No human organization is perfect and ETN is no exception. But it is an organization that is willing to learn and grow. And together, we can make it strong and vibrant to make a difference.

Let us empower our people with free, fair, and reliable information and stand with them in their fight for freedom and justice. Two hundred years ago, the founders of the United States of America encapsulated what every human being feels and believes deep in his/her heart by saying, “We take these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” May God grasp Ethiopia’s outstretched hand and grant her better days ahead so that all her children will be able to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (APA) – Ethiopia’s dictatorial regime led by accused war criminal Meles Zenawi on Wednesday revoked the coffee export licenses for six major export companies and shut down another 88 coffee supplier unions with warehouses stocked with coffee.

The decision was made after the government accused a number of exporters and coffee suppliers of hoarding.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development also revoked the international coffee standard certification for the six companies.

“These companies cause big economic damage to the country which has resulted in the decline of the country’s coffee earnings this year,” said the ministry.

The major exporters of Ethiopian coffee affected by the decision are Mulege, S. Sara, Legesse Sherefa and Kemal Abdela.

The dispute between the government and the coffee exporters started when Ethiopia introduced last year a new electronic commodity exchange.

The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange was set up to replace a murky auction system that was often abused by market players.

Some exporters have been reluctant to sell their beans through the country\’s new electronic commodity exchange which began trading in December, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told parliament last week where he urged the exporters to immediately start selling their stocks. The ministry accused the exporters and coffee suppliers union of creating the coffee shortage in the local market, resulting in price increase in the country in the past few weeks.

Coffee accounted for about 60 percent of Ethiopia’s foreign exchange revenue in the 2007/2008 season when Ethiopia earned more than $525 million from exporting 170,888 tones of Arabica coffee.

Ethiopia, the birth place of coffee, is Africa\’s biggest coffee producer.

Some 15 million smallholder farmers grow coffee in Ethiopia, mostly in the misty forested highlands of its western and southwestern regions.