Reject the Ethno-Fascist Foot Soldiers of Melese Zenawi
A message from the Ethiopian Embassies in the US and Canada is urging all persons of Ethiopian origin to meet a high level delegation of Melese Zenawi’s regime in 14 cities of North America. The delegation will hold its meeting in Ottawa and Toronto on April 9 and 10. The purpose of all these coordinated meetings, we are told, is to invite {www:diaspora} Ethiopians to participate in the so called “Development and Transformation Plan” of the regime. In other words we are being invited to invest in the economic plan of Melese Zenawi and his ethno-fascist regime. We are writing to request all Ethiopians to come out in force and reject the maneuvers of the regime for the following reasons:
Based on its record we can not trust this regime
EFFORT owns and controls every sector of the Ethiopian economy; the ruling party (the TPLF) is at the same time a trading company
TPLF/EPDRF is a one party dictatorship in which political power, military leadership, and economic ownership has firmly come under the control of Melese Zenawi
The ethno-fascist regime has wiped out the free press and independent media and Ethiopians are forced to lead a life of untold oppression and misery
Inflation is soaring at 10% every month and corruption of government officers is completely out of control; to get a permit or a stamp of approval citizens must pay tens of thousands of Birr or abandon their project
Ethiopians from North America who went back to their country to invest in good faith have been robbed by corrupt officials, cheated out of their money by the cronies of the state and returned bankrupt. We can site a number of cases, including some from our own city. A number of people have come back with broken health and empty pockets after losing millions of Canadian dollars.
o Melese and his band of traitors have sold away our land inch by inch, plot by plot there by uprooting Ethiopians from their land and destroying the natural environment. And now they are coming for our bank books.
Why now and what is the real objective of the regime
The dictator is jittery about the popular uprising in North Africa and his messengers are going around the world to divert attention
After having weakened the legal opposition, this is a follow-up strategy to divide and conquer and ultimately silence the diaspora opposition.
Melese Zenawi and his band of robbers would like to see the flow of dollars to increase in order to fatten up their Swiss bank accounts.
If they are lucky the errand boys of the regime would like to recruit agents among us by handing out some sugar cubes.
What must be our response to the messengers of the despot
Our response to tyrants, criminals and traitors could be just one and only one: that is rejection. It is our duty as sons and daughters of a glorious country to shame and frustrate the foot soldiers of this ethno-fascist regime. It is our duty to speak up and fight for the rights and liberties of our people. It is our duty to reject the futile maneuvers of the despot to divide and conquer us. Finally we would like to give this band of traitors a very bold and unmistakable message to take to Melese Zenawi: “Sorry pal, Mission Impossible.”
Economist Intelligence Unit Country Report – Ethiopia
Monthly Review: April 2011
• Opposition parties claimed that more than 200 members were arrested during March to prevent attempts at organising demonstrations against the government.
• There are crucial differences between Ethiopia and the African countries that have overthrown their long-time rulers in 2011; Ethiopia has a much smaller middle-class, inferior levels of education and much lower Internet penetration.
• The government adopted a more aggressive stance against Eritrea in March by calling for the removal of the regime of the president, Isaias Afewerki, although the motives behind the increase in rhetoric are not yet clear.
• The state-owned Development Bank of Ethiopia has started to sell new government bonds, but with an inflation rate of 16.5% in February, the real interest rate on the bonds is negative and demand will probably be low.
• UK state aid for Ethiopia is planned to rise to an annual average of £331m (US$533m) up to 2015, making the country the biggest recipient of British aid.
• Interventionist policies such as the limit on bank lending, currency devaluation and price ceilings have created market distortions, leading to shortages of staple products, and may eventually cause more pain than gain.
Global Civic Movement for Change in Ethiopia, a group of pro-Ethiopian activist around the word, has written a letter to Howard University president Sidney A. Ribeau asking him to cancel a meeting that is organized at the university’s campus next weekend by cadres of the brutal dictatorship in Ethiopia. Read below:
President Sidney A. Ribeau
Howard University Office of the Secretary
2400 Sixth Street, NW, Suite 440
Washington, DC 20059
(202) 806-2250 [email protected]
Re: Request of cancellation of the April 9th event organized by the dictatorial regime in Ethiopia.
Dear President Ribeau:
The Ethiopian-American community in the Diaspora and human rights activists, in particular, is stunned that Howard University is willing to give its space to the agents and messengers of the criminal and repressive regime of Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia. Providing a meeting venue to a regime known for egregious human rights violations, extra-judicial killings, torture and the use of rape as a weapon of war to undermine the movement for freedom and democracy is very disheartening. It casts a blemish on the reputation of this great institution of higher learning and an affront to all people, especially those of African descent. It also makes Howard University — a living symbol of the determination of the people of African descent to free themselves of oppression and enjoy the fruits of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and prosperity as responsible citizens in a free and egalitarian society —appear to be a tacit supporter of social injustice and gross human rights abuses in Africa.
Under the regime of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia suffers from the absence of the rule of law, independent judiciary, free press, strong civil society, a strong opposition and a vibrant private sector. The United States Department of State 2010 Country Report on Human Rights and Practices documented that Mr. Meles Zenawi’s government continued to carry out “unlawful killings, torture, beating, abuse and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces, often acting with impunity; poor prison conditions ; arbitrary arrest and detention, particularly of sympathizers of members of opposition groups detention without charge and lengthy pretrial detention; use of excessive force by security services..” International rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Genocide Watch have repeatedly documented and condemned the gross violation of human rights, war crimes and even genocide perpetrated in Gambela and the Ogaden regions by the regime of Meles Zenawi.
These gross human rights violations are an affront to humanity and we believe the American people will not remain silent about these abuses, especially since the Zenawi regime is funded by taxpayer money. In the 2010 parliamentary elections, violation of human rights and the absence of a fair and free election process in Ethiopia allowed the ruling minority clique to claim that it won by 99.6%. In 2005, Mr. Meles Zenawi’s government rigged the relatively free and fair election, imprisoned thousands of innocent Ethiopians and the entire leadership of the major opposition party; and killed more than 200 peaceful protestors.
Despite massive foreign aid estimated at $30 billion since 1991, and $3 billion per year fro the U.S. government alone, the latest Oxford University Multi-Dimensional Index (MDI) showed that Ethiopia is the second poorest country, behind Niger in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ninety (90) percent of the population is poor; there are 5 million orphans; 70 percent of Ethiopian youth is unemployed and an estimated 7 million Ethiopians depend on international emergency food aid to survive.
The national economy is dominated by party owned and endowed enterprises. Endemic corruption is rampant at the highest levels of the regime. Inequality is on the rise. Ethiopian economists estimate that growing inequality is a consequence of economic and other asset concentration into the hands of a few government officials and their cronies at the expense of the majority. Land, the primary source of livelihood for the vast majority of the Ethiopian people, is owned by the state. The ruling party has used its power to illegally lease millions of acres of ancestral farmlands to foreign investors engaged in a neo-colonial land grab. These foreign agri-business companies are investing millions to produce food in Ethiopia to feed their own population and the rest to export to rich countries.
Under Meles Zenawi’s single party rule, Ethiopia continues to be ruled with an iron fist and suffer from incalculable “brain drain” Howard University as the alma mater of pioneer Ethiopians, such as Dr. Melaku Beyan stands to suffer irreparable damage to its reputation by allowing a brutal regime to hold a political meeting in its prestigious ground.
We, a coalition of civic organizations, advocacy and human rights activists, strongly urge you to cancel this embarrassing event that is due to be held at Cramton Auditorium on April 9, 2011. We would be very happy to meet with you and discuss our concerns further, and we can be reached by email: [email protected]
Sincerely,
Neamin Zelleke
Coordinator
Global Civic Movement for Change in Ethiopiaa
CC:
Provost and Chief Academic Officer
James H. Wyche, Ph.D. [email protected]
202-806-2550
Executive Vice President and
Chief Operating Officer
Troy A. Stovall [email protected]
202-806-2050
If the Ivory Coast, one of the most prosperous African countries, can be considered a template for political change on the continent, democracy can replace dictatorship only by means of a civil war. For the past 5 months, Laurent Gbagbo, the loser of the November 2010 Ivory Coast presidential race has been holed up in his palace defiantly clinging to power. He claims to have won the election by order of his handpicked “Constitutional Council”, even though the Ivorian Electoral Commission declared his challenger Alassane Ouattara the winner.
Underlying Gbagbo’s electoral shenanigans to cling to power at any cost is a lingering and recurrent problem in African politics: Rigged, stolen and shell-gamed elections. African dictators set up elections just like the streetwise scammer sets up a shell game. African dictators know they will “win” the elections they set up by hook or crook. But they go through elaborate ceremonies to make the phony elections look real. They set up shills and call them “opposition parties”. They jail the real opposition leaders and intimidate their supporters. They trot out their handpicked “elections commissions” and put them on public display as independent observers to bless and legitimize the rigged elections. To please and hoodwink their Western donor benefactors, they being in international elections observers, adopt “election codes of conduct” and stage make-believe public debates. The outcome never changes: The African con artist dictators always win!
Well, maybe not always. On the rarest occasions, by some fluke an incumbent African dictator is defeated by a challenger despite massive election rigging and fraud. Even more incredibly, the whole world sides with the challenger winner. Then all hell breaks loose as it is happening today in the Ivory Coast. Gbagbo lost despite ballot-stuffing, ballot-shredding, ballot-stealing, voter intimidation and voting fraud.
For all African dictators, elections are an intolerable nuisance on their permanent clutch on power. They play the elections game because the international donors and multilateral banks make it a precondition for handouts and loans. Truth be told, neither the dictators nor the donors/banks are interested in genuine democratic elections as evidenced in many Wikileaks cablegrams. They want an election show to justify their immoral support for the criminal thugs. The dictators, donors and multilateral banks agree on one unitary principle so plainly and honestly articulated by former French President Jacques Chirac: “Africa is not ready for democracy” (a government of the people, by the people for the people). That is why so many African countries wallow in thugtatorships (a government of thieves, by thieves for thieves).
Democracy by Civil War
The manifest implications of this electoral shell game for the people of Africa are frigtening. There can be no peaceful transfer of power through a democratic election. If a challenger wins an election against an incumbent dictator fair and square, the challenger must be prepared to use force to remove the incumbent. Strange as it may sound, it may even be necessary to fight a full blown civil war to replace African dictatorships with African democracy. That seems to be the seminal lesson of the Ivory Coast which finds itself in a creeping civil war because Gbagbo has made peaceful transition impossible.
Over the past week, Ouattara’s “Republican Forces” have swept southwards from their bases in the north and seized the capital Yamoussoukro and the major port of San Pedro. They have now encircling the commercial capital Abidjan. Gbagbo’s army and civilian supporters have been fighting it out in the streets of Abidjan for months. Gbagbo has recruited an army of unemployed and illiterate youths in Abidjan to “defend the country, which is under attack from foreigners”, namely Ivorians from the north.
The ordinary people of the Ivory Coast are paying the price for a democracy betrayed. The number of innocent civilians killed increases by the dozens each day. The International Committee of the Red Cross recently reported the massacre of over 1,000 people in the western town of Duekoue. The perpetrators are alleged to be retreating Gbagbo soldiers who shot or hacked their victims to death with machetes. Since the elections in December 2010, over a million Ivorians have been internally displaced and over one hundred thousand have fled to Liberia. The great commercial city of Abidjan with over four million people is said to be a virtual ghost town. Street thugs are pillaging the city as Gbagbo blames the U.N. and the West for the bloodshed and civil war in the country.
Playing the Shell Game of African Democracy
Africa’s incumbent dictators will always win the elections they manufacture. They will win by hook or crook, and by incredibly absurd percentages. Meles Zenawi, the capricious dictator in Ethiopia, declared that his party won the May 2010 parliamentary election by 99.6. Such a claim may sound laughable and absurd to the reasonable mind, but it has a Gobellian logic to it. The Nazi propaganda minister said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Goebbels’ boss said, “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.” To claim 100 percent or 99.6 percent of the people voted for one party is absurd, but repeated many times, the sheer audacity of such a bold-faced lie renders the listener speechless, dumbfounded and numb. Similarly, Gbagbo says he won the presidential election despite unannimous international opinion to the contrary. Elections are window-dressing exercises for thugtatorships.
When African dictators lose by some strange fluke, they will demonize a segment of their citizens and embark on a campaign to denigrate their critics and opponents just to cling to power. History Professor Gbagbo declared Ivorians from the northern part of that country “foreigners”, including Ouattara, and rejected the outcome of the election as invalid. Gbagbo has also targeted the large population of migrant workers in the country with xenophobic and hateful rhetoric. When the European Election Observer Mission declared that the May 2010 election in Ethiopia “fell below international standards”, Zenawi attacked the Mission with a torrent of insult straight from the gutter. He described the EU report as a “pack of lies and innuendoes” and “garbage”. He dismissively added that the EU report was “just the view of some Western neo-liberals who are unhappy about the strength of the ruling party.”
African dictators will exploit ethnic, religious and regional divisions to cling to power. Gbagbo has been promoting a nasty ideology called “Ivoirité” to exclude and marginalize northern Muslims from national political office. The ideology is based on the notion that there are “real” Ivorians (‘indigenous Ivorians’) and foreigners who pretend to be Ivorians by immigration or ancestry (false Ivorians). By creating such insidious classifications, Ivorians from the north have been denied basic citizenship rights.
Africa’s dictators have a love-hate relationship with the West. They are quick to blame the West for their political problems. Yet, they are always standing at the gate begging for handouts. It is a case of the dog that bites the hand that feeds it. Gbagbo blames France, the U.N. and the U.S. for his country’s civil war. Zenawi blames the EU “neoliberals” for his bogus election victory. Mugabe blames Britain and the U.S. for his country’s political and economic woes.
In all of the political turmoil and election-related violence, African organizations have failed to take any meaningful action. Prof. George Ayittey, the internationally renowned Ghanaian economist and “one of the top 100 public intellectuals” who is “shaping the tenor of our time” said that the African Union is a “useless continental organization” that “can’t even define ‘democracy’”. Today, the AU stands on the sidelines twiddling its thumbs as thousands of Ivorians are slaughtered and Gbagbo steals the election in broad daylight. The other equally comatose organization is ECOWAS (Economic Community Of West African States). For months it has been threatening to remove Gbagbo by force if a peaceful solution could not be found. The Ivory Coast is in a virtual state of civil war and the AU and ECOWAS keep on talking with little action.
The U.S. says the AU and ECOWAS will find solutions to the stalemate in the Ivory Coast. David Wharton, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of African Affairs, said “what matters is not US view, but the African view”.Wharton was merely towing the party line. President Obama said, “the ideal is African solutions to African problems” and “what US thinks is really less important than what the neighborhood feels”. Recently, the President said “It is time for former President Gbagbo to heed the will of his people, and to complete a peaceful transition of power to President Ouattara. The eyes of the world are on Cote d’Ivoire.” Should we expect Gbagbo to un-cling from power terrified by the Evil Eye of the world?!?
The Wrath of Gbagbo on the Ivory Coast
African dictators think themselves to be African gods the longer they cling to power. They demand to be worshipped and adored as living legends. For the poor and illiterate Africans, they do become the gods of fire, war, chaos, terror, anger and revenge. They become life-givers and life-takers. When they lose power — lose elections they have rigged to win — they visit their wrath upon their citizens. Today we witness the Wrath of Gbagbo on the Ivory Coast. If Gbagbo cannot have Cote d’Ivoire, no one can have Cote d’Ivoire. Apre moi, le deluge!
Ethiopia’s khat-addicted dictator has offered Egypt a co-ownership of the planned Nile River dam, according to the VOA (read here). Meles Zenawi said: “If there is a reconsideration, there will be time to consider many issues, including possibly joint ownership of the project itself. We are open to such ideas,” said Meles.
Ethiopia has several others rivers that can be used for hydroelectric power. Meles is going after Nile River and picks fight with Sudan and Egypt to divert attention from his domestic crisis, including an impending uprising. What is even more sinister is that he is offering a joint ownership of the dam to Egypt and Sudan, which could threaten Ethiopia’s sovereignty in the long-term.
We have been informed that distinguished Ethiopian historian and political science scholar Professor Aleme Eshete has passed away. Prof. Aleme has been living in Italy for the past several years. He has published several influential papers on Ethiopian history, including The Cultural Situation in Socialist Ethiopia (1982); The Role and Position of Foreign-Educated Interpreters in Ethiopia – 1880-1889; European Political Adventurers in Ethiopia at the Turn of the 20th Century; A Page in the History of Posts and Telegraphs in Ethiopia: 1899-1903; La Cia in Africa.
The Ethiopian Review staff extends its condolences to the family of Prof. Aleme Eshete.
