The Ethiopian National Transitional Council (ENTC) has released the video of the consultative conference that was held July 2-3. The conference was focusing on the process of removal of the brutal dictatorial regime in Ethiopia and replacing it with an all-inclusive transitional government. The conference jump started the critical issue of the process of the formation of an all-inclusive transitional government with all the stake holders participation.
Is Huawei wiring Africa for surveillance? Or just for money?
By John Reed | Foreign Policy
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei may have been all-but-barred from doing business in the U.S. over allegations that it’s basically an intelligence agency masquerading as a tech business. In Africa, however, Huawei is thriving.
From Cairo to Johannesburg, the Chinese telecom has offices in 18 countries and has invested billions of dollars in building African communications networks since the late 1990s. The company’s cheap cellular phones today dominate many of Africa’s most important markets — and that was before Huawei teamed up with Microsoft earlier this year to launch a low-cost smartphone on the continent. Just in the past few months, the firm closed a pair of telecommunications deals in Africa each worth more than $700 million, part of an African business that brings in more than $3.5 billion annually for the Chinese firm. According to Huawei’s marketing materials, the projects are all part of a mission of “Enriching [African] Lives through Communication.” But current and former U.S. officials — as well as outside security analysts — worry there could be another agenda behind Huawei’s penetration into Africa. They suspect that the Chinese telecom could be wiring the continent for surveillance.
“There’s a great deal of concern about Huawei acting to advance the interests of the Chinese government in a strategic sense, which includes not only traditional espionage but as a vehicle for economic espionage,” former Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff told FP. “If you build the network on which all the data flows, you’re in a perfect position to populate it with backdoors or vulnerabilities that only you know about, you’re upgrading it, each time you upgrade the network or service it, that’s an opportunity” to install spyware.
“That’s a strategic issue for the countries in Africa and a strategic issue for us,” added Chertoff.
Huawei spokesman William Plummer called such concerns “silliness,” noting that the company “did $35 billion in business last year, 70 percent outside of China. We will not compromise our commercial success for any government.”
China has made no secret of its interest in Africa, investing more than $67 billion into large-scale projects on the continent from 2006 to 2012. Hundreds of Chinese troops are helping keep the peace in Mali, while Beijing’s warships have contributed to the fight against pirates off the coast of Somalia for years. And no wonder: China is becoming increasingly dependent on Africa’s farms to feed its people, on Africa’s minerals to run its industries, and on Africa’s oil to fuel its cars. China needs Africa as a partner — the closer, the better.
Enter Huawei.
“Across Africa — but especially in demographically large or resource-rich nations — Huawei is offering exceptionally competitive prices, generous financing, and fully managed systems to governments that otherwise have grave difficulty expanding into broadband (and the internet in general),” Chris Demchak, co-director of the Center for Cyber Conflict Studies at the U.S. Naval War College, told Foreign Policy in an email.
Huawei isn’t just providing cell phones, towers and fiber-optic cable and then turning them over to local businesses. The telecom giant — and sometimes its Chinese rival ZTE — is often running these networks for the local communications providers and the government.
“Generally, most of the employees operating these systems are Chinese and the arrangements usually include delegating maintenance and decisions about future updates to Huawei as well, thus ensuring the Chinese firm’s control of the basic technological architecture’s foundation, evolution, and operations,” Demchak noted.
In June 1966, Senator Robert Kennedy (RFK) visited South Africa and delivered a speech at the University of Cape Town on the occasion of the annual Day of Affirmation organized by the National Union of South African Students. RFK’s “Day of Affirmation” speech was uplifting, inspiring and emboldening especially considered against the backdrop of the trial and conviction of Nelson Mandela and 10 other African National Congress leaders two years earlier (audio here). Facing the death penalty in the Rivonia trial in 1964, Mandela defiantly declared: “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” In May 1968, RFK spoke to the Voice of America and predicted that “in the next 40 years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother [President John Kennedy] has…” A month later, he was felled by an assassin’s bullet after he won the California presidential primary.
RFK’s Cape Town speech was prescient, prophetic and infused with youthful idealism. His message sought to mobilize and engage youth in South Africa and throughout the world. He spoke of youth as the “only true international community”. He spoke of a “new idealism” and urged young people to stand up for their ideals. He vigorously defended the individual’s right to free speech and religion and the right of the free press. He talked about how to create change, which he said comes “from numberless diverse acts of courage” taken when “each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…” RFK’s speech was for the ages and generations yet unborn.
During his visit, RFK challenged white South African university students. He asked them why blacks weren’t allowed to vote or to worship in their churches. “What the hell would you do if you found out that God is black?”, he challenged one student. When a white student asserted that blacks were too uncivilized to be given political power, RFK shot back: “It was not the black man in Africa who invented and used poison gas and the atomic bomb, who sent six million men and women and children to the gas ovens, and used their bodies as fertilizer.” RFK went to Soweto, despite the strong disapproval of the Apartheid government and without a security detail, and spoke to ordinary people. On one occasion, he spoke to a large group of black South Africans from the rooftop of his car (see picture above). He sang “We Shall Overcome” with the people everywhere he went in South Africa.
I present excerpts of RFK’s speech because I believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” RFK stood with young black and white men and women in the darkest and bleakest days of Apartheid and urged them to send out “tiny ripples of hope”. He believed in the power and promise of young people. He saw them as the only true revolutionaries. He saw them as the fountainhead of hope for humanity.
The great human rights activist, singer and entertainer Harry Belafonte – the man who transported the first planeload of aid to Ethiopia during the massive 1985 famine — said of RFK, “When Bobby Kennedy lay dead on a Los Angeles pavement, there was no greater friend to the civil rights movement. There was no one we owed more of our progress to than that man.” I wonder if Africa would have had no greater friend than RFK had he become president.
Here are excerpts from the “Day of Affirmation” speech (audio here):
…This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. It is a revolutionary world we live in [and] young people who must take the lead. Thus you, and your young compatriots everywhere, have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived…
…Our answer is the world’s hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress…
…It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a currentwhich can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
…This is a Day of Affirmation, a celebration of liberty. We stand here in the name of freedom. At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western society…
…The first element of this individual liberty is the freedom of speech: the right to express and communicate ideas, to set oneself apart from the dumb beasts of field and forest; to recall governments to their duties and obligations; above all, the right to affirm one’s membership and allegiance to the body politic-to society-to the men with whom we share our land, our heritage, and our children’s future…
…Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men’s lives. Everything that makes man’s life worthwhile-family, work, education, a place to rear one’s children and a place to rest one’s head -all this depends on decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government must answer- not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people…
…And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people; so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, or with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties by officials high or low; no restrictions on the freedom of men to seek education or work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all he is capable of becoming.
….Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all its own people, and a world of immense and dizzying change.
…As I talk to young people around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their hope for the future… It is these qualities which make of youth today the only true international community…
Senator Kennedy warned South African youth and youth throughout the world against four dangers:
…First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills-against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s greatest movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. A young Italian explorer discovered the New World…
…The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities… But if there was one thing President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feelings of young people around the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs-that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems…
… A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change… I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world…
… The fourth danger is comfort, the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us… And everyone here will ultimately be judged– will ultimately judge himself- on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.
… I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and difficulties. But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and the effort you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but for men and women everywhere. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and of every country I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older generations of any of these nations; and that you are determined to build a better future.
Audacity of Hope?Mendacity of Hope?
In his book The Audacity of Hope (p. 314), then Senator Obama quoted President John F. Kennedy on the aims of U.S. foreign policy:
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required, not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
In his prescriptions for change, Senator Obama said, “In almost every successful movement of the last century, from Gandhi’s campaign against British rule to the Solidarity Movement in Poland to the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, democracy was the result of local awakening.We can inspire and invite other people to assert their freedoms… we can speak out on behalf of local leaders whose rights are violated; and we can apply economic and diplomatic pressure to those who repeatedly violate the rights of their own people…
Over the past five years, there have been many “local awakenings” in the Middle East and in the “huts and villages” of Africa. I am hard-pressed to recall those instances when President Obama spoke on behalf of local leaders in Africa whose rights continue to be violated every day. While the U.S. has selectively imposed economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure against the brutal regimes of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Omar al-Bashir in the Sudan, it has turned a blind eye, deaf ear and muted lips to the equally brutal regime in Ethiopia that has been engaged in the most egregious and flagrant human rights violations in recent African history. President Obama follows a double standard in dealing with African dictators. To paraphrase President Franklin Roosevelt, there are African dictators who are S.O.B.s and they get hammered with economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure. Then there are African dictators who are our S.O.B.s. They get rewarded with billions of American taxpayer dollars.
A couple of weeks ago, in his New York Times opinion piece, Eskinder Nega, the symbol of press freedom in Ethiopia and Africa, made a compelling case formulated straight out of The Audacity of Hope to the Obama Adminsistration: “I propose that the United States impose economic sanctions on Ethiopia (while continuing to extend humanitarian aid without precondition) and impose travel bans on Ethiopian officials implicated in human rights violations.” If President Obama cannot act on a recommendation straight out of his own book, Africans will have a difficult time knowing the difference between the audacity of hope and mendacity of hope.
As for “speaking out on behalf of local leaders whose rights are violated”, President Obama should speak out on behalf of Eskinder Nega, Reeyot Alemu, Woubshet Taye, Andualem Aragie, Olbana Lelisa, Bekele Gerba, Abubekar Ahmed, Ahmedin Jebel and many thousands of Ethiopian political prisoners.President Obama could also say a few words to “inspire and invite” African youth “to assert their freedoms”.
“Each time a man (and a woman) stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he (she) sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…”
(Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer.)
Previous commentaries by the author are available at:
Gebremedhin Araya, a former top leader of the Tigrai People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), details the violence this rogue group directed in its early days against Ethiopia’s two prominent religions, Christianity and Islam. Ignorance, greed and the lust for power sprinkled with shallow Albanian Marxism, were behind the TPLF’s assault on Ethiopia’s spiritual and cultural heritage.
The combination of ignorance and arrogance continues to this day. The legitimate Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church has been exiled. The TPLF is now threatening to tear down Waldeba Monastery, one of the most revered places in Ethiopian Christendom. The regime is also waging a relentless war of propaganda, imprisonment and murder against Ethiopian Muslims. Their only fault is demanding the government to stay out of religious affairs.
Please click on link below to read the English translation of Ato Gebremdhin Araya’s expose.
At a time when patriotic Ethiopians like Eskinder Nega are languishing in Gulag-style prisons for exercising their rights to express their opinions, those of us living beyond Woyane’s reach are blessed with the freedom to read books that stimulate the mind, shed light on our rich heritage, expose the treasonous policies of the Woyane regime in power, and, above all, enlighten us on the triumphs of those luminous sons and daughters of Ethiopia who built a country that was once Africa’s beacon of hope but is now being torn asunder by the treacherous TPLF cadres.
One such book is “Republicans on the Throne: A Personal Account of Ethiopia’s Modernization and Painful Quest for Democracy” by Tekalign Gedamu (Tsehai Publishers, 2011). To read the book is to go on a journey through time filled with traumatic events, dashed hopes, lost opportunities and excessive greed on one side, and patriotism, optimism, Ethiopian ingenuity and love of country on the other. The memoir, which has the mark of an unusual flare of literary brilliance and unmatched elegance, is punctuated with ubiquitous gems of trivia only an essayist of the author’s experience and intellect can muster and encapsulate in mesmerizing prose. More importantly, it offers a pragmatic roadmap for a democratic Ethiopia in which the philosophy of ethnocentrism will have no place, individual rights will be respected, and lasting peace and stability for the region will be secured.
As we read in this magnificently written book the gripping account of the journey Ethiopia has undertaken over the past several decades, we can’t help but wonder how from a land that had once produced such great leaders as Aklilu Habte-Wold, Yilma Diressa, Ketema Yifru and numerous others, including the author himself, could emerge tyrants and traitors in the likes of Mengistu Haile-Mariam, Meles Zenawi and his TPLF cadres, whose deviant policies have led the country to a path of destruction. Today’s Ethiopia is a country where ethnic politics is the official ruling party platform; corruption, nepotism and greed are instruments of anti-Ethiopianism; reading pro-democracy Websites is criminalized; and speaking truth to power is a certain ticket to the country’s Gulag. Nothing captures the sense of totalitarianism and hopelessness reigning in the country today better than the recent posting by Eskinder Nega in The New York Times (July 24, 2013):
‘I was arrested in September 2011 and detained for nine months before I was found guilty in June 2012 under Ethiopia’s overly broad Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, which ostensibly covers the “planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt” of terrorist acts. In reality, the law has been used as a pretext to detain journalists who criticize the government. Last July, I was sentenced to 18 years in prison. … all I did was report on the Arab Spring and suggest that something similar might happen in Ethiopia if the authoritarian regime didn’t reform. … I also dared to question the government’s ludicrous claim that jailed journalists were terrorists.’
It is in the backdrop of such a horrendous and uncertain condition in the country that we are presented with Republicans on the Throne. This is a book that will put to shame our generation for ignorance of our heritage, and enlighten current and future generations about the heroic achievements of their forefathers and their obligation to fight and die for their proud and precious legacy.
In the early chapters of the memoir, the author reminiscences about his youth in Gore, one of the remotest provincial cities during Emperor Haile Selassie’s reign, and takes the reader back to an age of innocence when citizens were not categorized by their ethnicity but by the social bond that tied them closely together, and when leaders and followers revered the sanctity of our tricolor and the inviolability of our sovereignty. In contrast, the treasonous tyrants “on the throne” today denigrate the flag that countless generations protected with blood and sweat, parcel out precious land to foreigners at dirt cheap prices, aggressively promote inter-ethnic strives, and loot the cherished wealth of the country.
The subsequent chapters that depict Gedamu’s early life as a student in the US and the ensuing decades of career in the United Nations, successive governments in Ethiopia and eventually the African Development Bank, paint the picture of a man who epitomizes all the qualities of that unique Ethiopian we all grew up to venerate — one who values hard work over leisure, esteems public service over personal wealth, relishes integrity over treachery, and, above all, reveres love of country over caustic ethnic politics. In due course, the memoir elucidates the strengths and weaknesses of the Imperial system, the chaos that followed the 1974 revolution, and the emergence of successive brutal dictatorships.
The book is also a treasure trove of anecdotal accounts of important events and personalities that shed further light on the modus operandi of the time and the lives and moral fibers of some of the extraordinary leaders that ran the day-to-day business of the nation. As one flips through the pages one is frequently reminded of how little did most of us know about those leaders, not to mention the foibles of Aman Andom, the remarkable professionalism of Haddis Alemayehu, the statesmanship of Aklilu Habte-Wold or the gumption of Michael Imru.
As the writer transitions his focus to the post-Derg era, he momentarily leaves the reader with a sense of puzzlement as to why he would choose to return to Ethiopia and embark on major entrepreneurial projects under the tyrannical rule of Zenawi. In light of the stellar background of the author as an accomplished technocrat who had served under or lived through disparate systems of government, the reason for such seemingly foolhardy decision is hard to justify, and even more difficult to attribute to a manifestation of plain naiveté. However, a perceptive reader would soon be sympathetic on the knowledge that the sinister and elusive propaganda Zenawi perfected has hoodwinked many seasoned technocrats of Gedamu’s caliber and eventually landed them in prison. Even today, it is with a sense of unfathomable astonishment and compunction that we witness the tragic transfer of hard-earned Diaspora money into Woyane’s coffers, in the name of investing in the home country, by credulous Ethiopian émigrés in the West, who have yet to fully appreciate the true nature of the regime and the cancerous ethnic agenda it has espoused to irreparably harm the long-term viability of the nation.
While the book by and large abounds with a wealth of information about the recent past and present history of the country, some of the most significant contributions come in the last few chapters, in which breaking from tradition, the author tackles head on Woyane’s totalitarianism and duplicity, and masterfully analyzes the internal and external challenges that must be confronted to build a “promising future”. Unlike most writers of the same genre whose pens are woefully timid when it comes to underscoring the true nature of Woyane, Gedamu boldly exposes the most dangerous aspect of the regime, viz, its anti-Ethiopianism. “Closely wedded to ideology, perhaps even its principal raison d’être, is TPLF’s commitment to the politics of ethnic identity,” he affirms. He goes on to caution: “A one-dimensional perception of identity puts greater emphasis on the rights of groups and correspondingly less on the rights of the individuals that make up these groups; and lesser still on those outside the group.” He then reminds us of Amy Gutman’s wise words: “Subordinating individual [rights] to group [rights] is another name for tyranny.”
In debunking the anti-Ethiopia agenda that “extremist TPLF members” espouse, Gedamu warns them of the “… tragic backlash that is bound to ensue if they persist in their policy,” and notes:
“An independent Tigrai built on assets plundered from Ethiopia is the surest prescription for a potent reprisal that would be an unending source of conflict for the new state. More menacingly, Tigreans living in Ethiopia would be exposed to vengeful acts of violence too fearful to contemplate. The silent majority of Tigreans is doubtless conscious of this and will hopefully prevail upon the party fanatics to pursue a policy of multiethnic collaboration and accommodation.”
To those who try to find answers to the present predicament of Ethiopia, where totalitarianism, corruption and anti-Ethiopianism define the Woyane leadership, the author candidly expounds Woyane’s barricade against the struggle for democracy, fundamental freedoms, national cohesion and the fight against poverty. He authoritatively declares that “[N]either Marxism nor identity politics is likely to respond to the challenges facing Ethiopians today: autocracy, poverty, and communal antagonisms,” and boldly charts a pragmatic roadmap that can inform genuine dialogue to extricate the country from the current quagmire of ethnocentric rule, naked tyranny and gloomy prospects of national collapse.
Admittedly, Gedamu’s roadmap is only one of many admirable ideas put forth by many genuine Ethiopians to accelerate the victory for democracy and national salvation that has proved so elusive so far. Such a victory, however, can only be possible through the discreet activities of a strong organization that enjoys the participation of a well-informed membership about their heritage and the true nature of the regime. While the works of writers like Gedamu are a good start, it is the responsibility of every legitimate Ethiopian to ensure the messages are spread far and wide.
The enemy is well armed, superbly organized and lavishly financed, and has controlled the population through a Soviet- style security system and sinfully alluring entitlements that may make the tasks of pro-democracy forces exceedingly onerous. However, as the recent history of the Arab Spring has shown, no power can pent up the rage of an oppressed people for much too long.
