The lack of democracy and the large-scale human rights violations in Ethiopia were condemned by MEPs on Tuesday at a hearing held by the EP’s Development Committee and the Human Rights Subcommittee. The Ethiopian Government’s refusal to send a representative to speak to MEPs was also criticised.
“The human rights situation has deteriorated since 2005 with the imprisonment of members of the opposition and human rights defenders who still await trial”, said Josep Borrell (PES, ES), chair of the Development Committee, at the start of the meeting.
The former President of the European Parliament expressed disappointment at the refusal to attend the meeting by the ambassador of Ethiopia to the EU, Ato Berhane Gebre-Christos. In a letter addressed to MEPs, the Ethiopian foreign minister stated that the invitation could not be accepted, partly because “the list of invited speakers to this hearing does not indicate any intention to try and reach a balanced or accurate assessment of the stage of democratisation in Ethiopia today”.
Referring to the parliamentary elections of May 2005, which were marred by fraud, the chair of the Human Rights Subcommittee, Hélène Flautre (Greens/EFA, FR), emphasised “the importance of envisaging follow-ups to election observations”. “By acting as if there was nothing wrong, we strip the European Union’s policy in this area of all credibility”, she said.
Judge Woldemichael Meshesha Damtto, former vice-chair of the commission of inquiry set up following the protests which took place in June and October 2005 against the election results, said the members of the commission had been pressed by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to alter their findings. “The civilians used no weapons, the forces used excessive violence, 193 people were killed, 760 were injured and 20,000 were arrested and held in military camps”, he said. These claims were backed up by Mulualem Tarekegn, an opposition figure and former member of the Ethiopian Parliament, who today lives under international protection in Sweden.
In an urgent resolution adopted in November 2006 in Strasbourg, the EP called on the Ethiopian Government “to publish unamended and in its entirety, and without any further delay, the final report of the Commission of Inquiry”.
Ana Gomes (PES, PT), who led the EP election monitoring mission for the 2005 parliamentary elections and is attacked by name in the letter from the Ethiopian foreign ministry, said she was accustomed to the attitude of the Ethiopian authorities, who attacked her personally instead of taking notice of the EU observers’ findings. “The attitude of the present government, which is violating the human rights and the aspirations to democracy of its people, and the behaviour of the Ethiopians in Somalia, who are committing atrocities, are a disgrace”, she said.
“Droits de l’homme et démocratisation en Ethiopie: situation actuelle et perspectives “, audition conjointe de la commission du développement et de la sous-commission des droits de l’homme
05/06/2007
Committee on Development
Chair : Josep Borrell Fontelles (PES, ES)
05/06/2007
Subcommittee on Human Rights
Hélène Flautre (Greens/EFA, FR)
Mogadishu June 6, 2007 — Shabelle Media Network has received a government decree from the prime minister’s office, ordering the closure of the station.
The Somali government has issued the decree to close down three main FM stations in the capital. The decree orders Shabelle Media Network, Horn Afrik and IQK (The holy Quran Media) to shut down.
The transitional government accused the three stations of backing what it called terrorists and their actions.
The decree said the stations were creating hostilities and supporting terrorism.
“They have breached the rules of the free media, confused the Somali population and opposed the existence of the Somalia government,” the decree said.
These three radios have been ordered to shut down twice in the past as the Somali government accused them of exaggerating the government and Ethiopian military operations in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
Horn Afrik and IQK went off air soon after they received the decree.
Shabelle Media Network has been on air for awhile before the decree arrived, but it was shut down soon after it arrived.
Radio Warsan in Baidoa was closed two days ago after the government administration in the farming town issued the decree to shut the FM down.
Abdi Qeybded, the head of the Somali national police force, said he hopes that the stations would abide by the government orders.
“They can contact government officials assigned for this, but they have been accused off all articles in the decree,” he said.
Micheal ranneberger, the US ambassador to Kenya, said the US government was concerned about the closure of the three radio stations in the capital.
“The freedom of the media is absolutely essential in Somalia and everywhere else in the world and it is important that the Somali media be allowed to inform the Somali people the developments in an objective way,” he said.
Micheal ranneberger, the US ambassador to Kenya
“We are very concerned about the closure of these radio stations and we are pursuing that,” he added.
The US ambassador was interviewed by a local radio in Mogadishu.
Asmara, 5 June 2007 – Opposing the TPLF regime’s policy of ethnic discrimination, five Ethiopian soldiers arrived in Asmara seeking asylum.
The soldiers disclosed that the regime recruited 8,000 youths under the guise of offering them computer application and other types of training and deployed them in the Army following forced military training.
The soldiers also pointed out that the regime has imprisoned and killed individuals who opposed its open invasion of Somalia, and the ones who could are escaping.
The soldiers are Misaw Tabo Biru, Andargachew Tilahun Temtime, Welelaw Tegene Desse, Yohannes Melku Demisew, and Abebe Memru Terfasa .
Meles Zenawi visits his former home and future grave yard, Mogadishu
Meles makes landmark visit to Somalia, where his troops are protecting the government
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
MOGADISHU, Somalia: Ethiopia’s prime monster made a surprise trip to Mogadishu on Tuesday and promised that if peace were consolidated in Somalia, he would withdraw troops sent to help the government put down an Islamic insurgency.
Meles has not set foot in Mogadishu for years, but he does have a history here. Under the protection of Barre, Meles organized the rebellion that brought him to power from a base in Mogadishu.
Meles Zenawi “is paying a friendly visit to Somalia” and meeting with the president and prime minister, Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon told The Associated Press. Security for him was extremely tight in a city where insurgents have launched frequent mortar attacks and suicide bombs.
Meles also visited Mogadishu’s highly influential clan elders.
“He told them, ‘If you make peace, I will withdraw my troops as soon as possible,'” Gobdon said.
The Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops here come under regular insurgent attacks. On Monday, Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops fired at a would-be suicide bomber speeding toward their base, blowing up the car and killing the bomber and a civilian standing nearby.
African Union peacekeepers who began arriving in March also have come under attack. The peacekeepers, from Uganda, are the first here in more than a decade.
Ted Dagne, a specialist in African Affairs at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the U.S. Congress, said Meles’ visit “doesn’t really represent a new era in Ethiopian-Somali relations.”
“For many Somalis, they see the presence of Ethiopian troops as an occupation force,” he said.
Ethiopian Crime Minister Meles Zenawi [known by Ethiopians as the butcher of Addis Ababa] on Tuesday paid a surprise visit to Mogadishu, becoming the first foreign head of state to visit the lawless Somali capital in recent years, officials said. [Mogadishu was peaceful and life was returning to normal under the ICU leadership until Woyanne invaded Somalia].
“Meles Zenawi has arrived in Mogadishu and is having talks with Somali top officials,” Abdi Ali Godon, an Ethiopian [Woyanne] government official, told AFP.
Hopes for a peaceful political resolution to the crisis in Somalia are dimming, as a power struggle between the Ethiopian [Woyanne]-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and clan-based and Islamist militias continues to wrack Mogadishu.
A brutal crackdown by Ethiopian [the ruling Tigrean People Liberation Front] and Somali government troops in early May has done little to end an incipient insurgency, and disaffected clan militias and remnants of the vanquished Islamic Courts Union (ICU) have resorted to increasingly guerrilla-like tactics, including suicide bombings and a series of remote-controlled car bombs detonated in the last several weeks.
An African Union peacekeeping force—initially envisaged as a multinational 8,000-strong deployment, but currently comprising only 1,400 Ugandan troops—has been largely ineffective, predictably so, since it deployed into a chaotic, anarchic situation, with no clear mandate and no real peace to keep. Four Ugandan soldiers have been killed to date, and other African countries, which initially expressed some interest in contributing troops, appear increasingly reluctant to send their personnel into a sharply deteriorating security environment.
The TFG, which is internally divided and deeply unpopular in Mogadishu, has failed to take the necessary measures to broaden its support base and expand the governing coalition. A national reconciliation conference has been postponed twice and is now slated for June 15. Rather than seizing the opportunity early on in its tenure to reach out in a genuine way to disaffected groups and moderate remnants of the Islamic Courts Union, the TFG has instead chosen to rely on Ethiopian military force and the support of the international community to consolidate its position in Mogadishu. This is not a sustainable tack: Ethiopia will not remain in Mogadishu indefinitely: it is taking hits in Somalia, it has been accused by human rights groups of perpetrating war crimes, and it cannot long sustain a costly occupation given other domestic and regional security preoccupations. Further, having achieved its immediate objective of dispersing an increasing radicalized ICU leadership, it has much less compelling interest in the long hard slog of building Somali governing institutions or pushing the TFG to expand its base.
This task will likely fall to the broader international community. There is a risk that international attention will move on from Somalia; the world has lived with a chaotic vacuum in that country for 14 years. But for humanitarian reasons, for the stability of the region, and for the long-term fight to curb international terror, this would be a mistake. The conditions that led to the rise of the ICU’s more radical leadership remain intact, and the possibility that those elements regroup, bolstered by external funding, is real.
The United States has a particular responsibility in Somalia: a narrow U.S. focus on counter-terror imperatives has contributed to the current impasse. The United States secretly funded an alliance of unpopular warlords in 2005-2006 to root out al-Qaeda affiliates allegedly sheltered by the Islamic courts, a move that may ultimately have helped unify and empower the more radical elements of the ICU. The ICU’s defeat of these warlords in spring of 2006 added to the union’s popularity and legitimacy, as they established a modicum of security and basic services in Mogadishu for the first time in over a decade.
Further, U.S. air strikes against fleeing ICU leaders and al Qaeda suspects in southern Somalia, with cooperation from Ethiopia, have led to the widespread perception (both in Somalia and Ethiopia) that the United States fully endorsed and supported the Ethiopian invasion and subsequent occupation. In January, the United States knowingly allowed Ethiopia to secretly purchase arms from North Korea in violation of UN sanctions that the U.S. had been instrumental in passing. Human rights groups have accused the United States of cooperating with Ethiopia, Kenya, and the TFG in a secret detention program for individuals fleeing Somalia, with U.S. intelligence agents interrogating detainees in Kenya, who were denied access to legal counsel and consular representatives. All these factors will make it difficult for the United States to disentangle itself, in perception and fact, from Ethiopian policy, which is a source of deep resentment among many Somalis.
The appointment on May 17 of retired ambassador John Yates as Special Envoy to Somalia is a positive step. But it comes late in the game, as U.S. leverage in the situation declines. Congress should revisit legislation on U.S. engagement in Somalia to ensure that the administration remains adequately seized with the current crisis and the need for a longer-term comprehensive approach.
The U.S. strategy now should be to put forward in no uncertain terms a set of expectations and benchmarks for the TFG, in terms of reconciliation, inclusivity, power-sharing, and humanitarian access, backed by a credible package of incentives and pressures. Unqualified support for the TFG will only reinforce their current approach, and U.S. assistance should be more stringently conditioned on demonstrable progress. The reconciliation conference slated for June 15 will be one benchmark, but the process will need to be more enduring and pervasive than a one-off public conference, which at this point appears unlikely to succeed.
The U.S. also needs to prepare for the possibility that the reconciliation process is not credible and that the situation in Mogadishu deteriorates further. In that case, it will need to look beyond the TFG to identify Somali partners within civil society with whom it can engage in revitalizing basic governing structures and strengthening basic services like education and health.
The U.S. should also distance itself from the perceived strategic alliance with Ethiopia (which is damaging to U.S. credibility both in Somalia and more broadly in Africa), and should push Ethiopia to use its considerable leverage to move the TFG toward genuine powersharing. The U.S. should work with the international community and regional states on building a comprehensive approach toward Somalia that goes beyond narrow counter-terrorism concerns.
The outcome of the struggle in Somalia will hinge on a political solution, and at present, the onus is on the TFG to create a credible process. It will also require that those excluded groups engage in that process (if indeed it is credible), that hard-core spoilers are sidelined, and that damage by those groups who have learned to profit from continuing chaos is minimized. The United State should use its dwindling leverage toward these ends.
