Following its 4th regular session early this month, the OLF National Council issued a communiqué wherein it calls upon “all the forces opposed to the dictatorial regime of the TPLF to struggle for liberation, freedom, democracy, the rule of law, peace, and prosperity.” The communiqué states that there is “no more option left except to rise up in unison and struggle to get rid of the tyrannical minority rule.”
To this end, the Council instructs to “set our priorities in order and forge a meaningful alliance against the TPLF rule.” Then the Communiqué states that OLF is ready for “a meaningful cooperation and alliance with serious political organizations fighting and struggling for liberation democracy, the rule of law, and human rights and human dignity for all the peoples in Ethiopia.”
Is there anything new or grand about the above pronouncement? Does one see any change in form or substance that could make this communiqué a different read from what one can glean from OLF’s mission and policy statements on the OLF website? Nope. The So-called Council is still singing from the same old song book. OLF still maintains that the Oromo people are a people in Ethiopia, not a people of Ethiopia. The not so-subtle difference between the notions of “peoples in Ethiopia” and the “people of Ethiopia” actually makes all the difference between OLF and other opposition forces that are fighting to build a better Ethiopia for everyone. The fact that the Council listed liberation along with democracy, the rule of law and human rights does not camouflage the true color of OLF or its mission which remains to be the “liberation of Oromia from the Colonial empire of Abysinnia.”
So the natural question is why on earth should other opposition forces, which consider themselves Ethiopian and want to see a united, democratic and strong Ethiopia get into an alliance with an organization that doesn’t see itself or the Oromo people as Ethiopian? Why should Ethiopians who stand against TPLF’s ethnocentric policies form an alliance with an organization whose stated mission is dismembering their country? At a time when coalitions such as Medrek are declaring the advent of a new form of alliance where respect of both individual and group rights can be pursued and achieved within a united and democratic Ethiopia, why should one entangle itself with an organization such as the OLF that clearly pictures a different Ethiopia post TPLF rule?
Now one may argue that OLF doesn’t mean what it has put in black and white on its website, which is the liberation of Oromia from Abyssinia. One may say that the leadership needs to continue to use same liberation message (i.e., lying about it) to keep their rank and file intact. If this is how the OLF leadership handles openness with its rank and file regarding a major policy shift , that in itself should be highly disconcerting to anyone who contemplates to enter into any form of alliance with this organization. At any rate, sorting out OLF’s rank and file issues is OLF’s own responsibility. What other organizations should demand from OLF from the outset is to come clean and openly clear on where it stands on such a fundamental question as the unity and integrity of Ethiopia. With anything less, OLF would be a liability to any coalition it might enter into even if one were to believe that OLF has moved from its historical stance on the issue of unity.
The option for OLF has been very clear since it left or was kicked out of the coalition government back in the early 1990s: to either align its struggle with the rest of Ethiopians who are victimized under the same regime to bring about a political system that would allow nationalities or ethnic groups to exercise their legitimate rights within a united Ethiopia, or to remain an exile secessionist organization, forever giving false claims and hopes to its ever fracturing membership. For close two decades, OLF’s choice has been the latter. Three regimes have changed hands in Ethiopia since OLF came into existence. As an organization, OLF is the same age as, if not older than, TPLF. But look where TPLF is now and where OLF is. Even when one may say that TPLF no longer represents the people of Tigray, it has perhaps done more to the people of Tigray from the Minilik Palace than what OLF could dream all night for the Oromo people from the capitals of Western nations.
After close to four decades of existence, OLF is not closer to, indeed is further away from achieving its stated goal. Each day it is not getting stronger but weaker and less relevant. So, at this point, it has neither the moral nor the material leverage to entice anyone to enter into an alliance with it as long as it sticks with the same old political agenda. The future is more unlikely to reward OLF with better results if it stays on the same track.
One wonders why OLF is not doing the one right thing once for its life, namely, come up with true and realistic goals and aspirations for the Oromo people and for Ethiopia in general, close ranks with other opposition organizations in a truly new and lasting alliance, and fight to get the country rid of the TPLF repressive and regressive regime to build a free, democratic and prosperous Ethiopia where all people of Ethiopia will live in harmony and economic prosperity?
One plausible explanation could be OLF’s utterly exaggerated, if not entirely false, sense of exclusive tenure to the cause of the Oromo people and consequently its misplaced pride in the purity of its stance, namely the “liberation of Oromia from the Colonial Empire of Abysinnia.” Otherwise, why should OLF still maintain the colonial theory and liberation objective when other Oromo political organizations are fighting for the cause of the Oromo people within a united Ethiopia?
When the current regime took power in 1991, it declared that Ethiopia would no longer be a prison of nations and nationalities. Forget that this was a preposterous notion, but even if one were to believe this notion in 1991, 19 years is too long a period of time not to re-evaluate this notion against the reality now on the ground. The unquestionable reality is that it is actually now or over the last 19 years that Ethiopia has been made a prison of Oromo activists, students, and elders. Previous regimes have not arrested a fraction of the number of Oromos that have now congested the Kaliti Prison. However, it would be a gross misperception, once again, to think that only Oromos are languishing in TPLF’s prisons. Equal, if not more, numbers of non-Oromos are sharing those same prisons. Their common enemy is the authoritarian regime that wields power not by the will of the people but by its military and security might.
Looking forward, what the Oromo people want is to become makers of the Ethiopian destiny, not just their own destiny as an ethnic group. One is not complete without the other. What the Wollega Oromo wants in life is not fundamentally different from what an Amhara in Gojjam wants. Both want equality and a fair opportunity to take part and derive benefits from the economies of their regions and their country at large. Both wants to promote and exercise their culture, to preserve and share the good of their identity, which together with the culture of other people of Ethiopia makes Ethiopia a mosaic of cultures. Each wants, democracy, unfettered participation in the political life of their respective regions and their country. Each wants peace and prosperity to raise children and leave them a better legacy and opportunity. This is the kind of vision on which a meaningful alliance should be built up on among Ethiopian opposition forces.
Many Ethiopians would like to see OLF playing a constructive part in the political struggle to build a better Ethiopia for all. Many Ethiopian opposition organizations have in the past responded generously to OLF’s slightest gestures of moving away from its longstanding stance. The recent, now defunct, Alliance for Freedom and Democracy is one example. But OLF has proved to be incapable of extricating itself from the past and formulate a realistic and functional political program for the future. Until it does so, its call for any form of alliance will not and should not get a sympathetic ear. The ball is still in OLF’s court.
Tagay Gebremedhin (aka Aba Diabilos), who claims to be the patriarch in Ethiopia, has erected a bronze statue for himself in Addis Ababa at the cost of 3 million birr. It is reported that the Gun-totting, self-proclaimed patriarch is planning to erect more statues of himself inside Ethiopian church compounds in Kenya, South Africa and Israel. Deutsche Welle Radio has been gathering public opinion on Gebremedhin’s statue. Listen below:
‘I really feel totally betrayed by the system,’ confessed Beyene Petros, one of the most respected leaders of the Ethiopian opposition, a few days after its crushing defeat in the general elections on 23 May 2010. ‘I thought that, if we competed in the elections, there would be a door ajar that could be made use of by competing parties. This assumption of mine was totally misplaced.’
But how could he have been so mistaken? Like most of the opposition, how could he have expected that the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the ruling party since 1991, would faithfully play the electoral game and run the risk of repeating the surprise scenario of the 2005 elections, where the opposition made such spectacular progress? How could he even imply, a few days later, that the voters voted for the opposition in the election and that cheating only defeated it? And what a defeat! 99.6% of the vote, just one opposition representative out of 547 elected members of the federal Parliament and just one out of the 1900 regional assembly representatives. In a nutshell: how and why did the Ethiopian opposition make such a mistake about its electoral chances, as if it had not fully realized that the EPRDF had systematically and implacably started immediately after its 2005 electoral blow to make sure it would win in 2010, at any price?
‘Whatever policy differences there might be among the opposition, I think we agree on the minimum issues of democracy and rule of law.’ This appeal from opposition leader, Seye Abraha, calls on the opposition to unite in order to recover from its defeat. Most commentators credit it with its disarray, which they see as aggravated by internal conflict and the lack of coherence in its policies but these explanations do not stand up to scrutiny.
In 2005, apart from its common hostility to those in power since 1991 and a shared desire for democratic change, the opposition was divided into two main camps: the Coalition for Unity and Democracy and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces. They also differed on some essential points, left-overs of a persistent divide, inherited from the conquests of the Abyssinian Empire in the second half of the 19th century. Schematically, the electoral base of the Coalition was urban, led by Addis-Ababa, and northern, with the Amhara (26% of the population), the epicentre of the old imperial power. The UEDF found its support in the former conquered territories, among the Oromos (37% of the population) and the peoples of the South. The CUD and the UEDF both criticised the EPRDF’s policies on the two main problems confronting Ethiopia for decades – the ‘national question’ or how the 80 ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ of Ethiopia could agree on a modus vivendi and poverty issues – but they disagreed on the solutions. The ruling Party has set up a federal system, with equal rights for all ‘ethnic groups’ as the basis for the “revolutionary democracy” it advocates, with individual rights taking a back seat. But this federalism is a smokescreen behind which Tigreans (6% of the population) held the reins of power, even in all the ‘non traditional’ sectors of the economy. The Coalition advocated a form of recentralisation borne by an ‘Ethiopianism’ that was supposed transcend ethnic differences while the UEDF advocated a genuine ethnic federalism to be implemented. The economic strategy of the EPRDF focused on the land which is the economic base of Ethiopia and public property, in which peasants – 83% of the population – have only temporary usage rights and more precisely, on the masses of subsistence farmers. The CUD quite simply wanted to privatise the land, to ‘liberate’ the peasantry from Party-State’s grip; the UEDF, however, was radically opposed, fearing that it would open the door to northern investors to corner the market of southern land once again.
In 2010, the main opposition force, the Medrek (Forum), had a support base extending over almost all the country, with the notable exception of the Amhara region. On paper at least, its eight components had reached a common position on the ‘national question’ and on the issue of land. Thus, the gulf that separated 2005 when the opposition had drawn with the governing party in the elections with the extent that the governing party was forced to cheat to ensure a comfortable official victory, the 2010 defeat cannot be explained by an intrinsic weakening of the opposition.
The second reason most often put forward to explain the ‘landslide victory’ of the EPRDF is the undeniable intensification of its authoritarianism. This led to ‘the lack of a level playing field for all contesting parties,’ according to the European Union Observation Mission. But several opposition leaders and commentators have only taken this into account within certain limits, i.e. when and where they themselves or their own milieu were directly affected by it. In social terms this means urban dwellers and more precisely the thin slice of them that makes up ‘civil society’. In temporal terms, it means during the two years in the run-up to the elections and during the electoral campaign, when the government stepped up its control even further. Once again, the opposition succumbed to that almost systematic tropism of the Ethiopian elite – navel-gazing, which led it to distance itself from the ‘real country,’ for which it has a kind of ‘blind spot’, starting with the rural areas, where 83% of the population and therefore 83% of voters live.
So, it was on the three recent ‘villainous’ laws on information, NGOs and the fight against terrorism that they concentrated their denunciation of the regime’s shift towards increased authoritarianism. The media have almost no direct influence in the rural areas as there are no circulating newspapers. Very few people have a radio that works and those who do shamelessly confess that ‘political debates are not for us, we don’t understand what they are talking about.’ The only local NGOs are traditional community organisations run on age-old lines. So the anti-terrorist law has no effect here. Since time immemorial an official can punish any of those under his authority, even throwing him in jail, unless he has some form of special protection.
Similarly, while opposition campaigners were undeniably harassed during the elections, this had little real effect in rural areas, for the simple reason that, even if they had tried to campaign there, no-one would have listened to them, to the point of trying to avoid them altogether.
For at least two thirds of the peasant population, an election simply has no meaning. They have a vision of the world where absolutely everything is determined by divine will, including who is in power. They feel they have no right to choose. As they often say: ‘God only decides who rules,’ so an election is futile. Above all, it presents one major danger: voting for the loser. The winner will find out even though the ballot is secret, the election winner has mysterious ways of knowing how each person voted. It could then take revenge on the ‘culprits’ which means putting no less than their survival at risk. This is because all public services, from education to fertiliser, from health care to loans, depend on the good will of local officials of the Party-State, up to and including access to the peasant farmer’s only means of production – land. The only electoral challenge, then, is to try to figure out who is going to win and to slide the ‘right’ ballot into the box. To find this out, one can only turn to the ‘opinion leaders’ of the peasant community, in other words, its elite and then all vote the same way. That way, even if they get it wrong, there is safety in numbers – ‘it’s easier to punish one individual than a whole community.’
The elite have generally developed a more secular vision and therefore have started to claim for citizen’s rights. Thus it feels entitled in choosing the country’s leaders. In 2005, where these elite’s members opposed the ruling regime for many and several reasons – in most rural areas at least – they were easily able to persuade people to vote against it, especially given that they could put forward tangible arguments for forecasting its defeat.
But just a few months after the elections, they were already disenchanted. The most visible opposition members were arrested while other opposition representatives were either totally powerless or even simply physically absent. ‘We voted for the opposition in 2005 and we got nothing from it,’ said these opinion leaders. ‘On the contrary, we suffered the wrath of the authorities.’ For them, ‘the 2005 elections taught us, above all, that however we vote, in the end the ruling power always wins.’ On the evidence that they had nothing to gain from joining the opposition except from being targets of harassment, these elite confided that ‘we remain strong opponents, but only in the remotest corner of our backyard.’ And the measures that the ruling party were to take in the following years, particularly 2006 to 2008, such as forced enrolment of this elite into the Party (see below), would only confirm this position. They repeatedly said it years before the electoral campaigns started – ‘we will not be campaigning for the opposition and will not even vote for them.’ Even supposing that the opposition had more ways and the elbow room to make itself heard, the ‘lesson’ of the 2005 elections as well as an omnipresent fear, would, in any event, have deprived it of the rural activists it needed to capture a decent share of the vote in the countryside.
Given the weight of the peasant vote, defeat was inevitable from as early as Autumn 2005. But the debacle only started to emerge in the last two years before the elections especially during the electoral campaign, when the urban voters, traditionally the bastion of the opposition, progressively adopted the same reasoning as those living in the countryside – that is, that they would have nothing to gain by voting for the opposition but a great deal to lose. The repression of criticism, muffling of civil society and finally, the incredible pressure that the EPRDF put on voters, all had an effect. But the opposition seems also to have underestimated a decisive factor that led to the loss of its urban support: the political shift in the ruling Party, intensified after 2005 and the concomitant multiplication by seven in its membership (from 700,000 in 2005 to 5 million today or around one in seven of the adult population).
Very schematically and in line with its original Marxist-Leninist leanings, it saw itself as the small elite – the self-proclaimed avant-garde – with the right and duty to direct the ‘development’ of the ‘broad masses’, which meant the mass of peasant farmers to lead them out of their incredible misery. In the same ‘socialist’ vein, it reined in private businesses. But some years ago, this ‘pro-poor policy’ gradually disappeared in the face of a form of development where the ‘developmentalist state’ continues to play a central role but essentially to benefit the ‘constructive investors’ to order to promote their entry into a ‘market economy’. It is these people that the Party has enrolled en masse, be it urban small entrepreneurs, intellectuals or especially, those very same, more dynamic farmers, all those who had provided the vast battalions for the opposition by rejecting the authoritarianism of the ruling party and its obstruction to their economic and social advancement. This membership is either purely utilitarian – ‘I am joining the Party because it will reward me in return’ or more often obligatory, where the Party forces the leading social and economic players to join. In a few words, the hard core of the EPRDF which once focused on the “toiling masses,” is now formulating its new political basis on an emerging middle class by promoting its advancement and by enrolling its members at the Party’s periphery. As a result, these former opponents have either actually been rallied round or at least politically neutralised. The opposition, therefore, lost most of its fighting forces and its ‘opinion leaders’, who brought with them the bulk of the electorate.
While it was, then, inevitable that the opposition would be heavily defeated, no-one expected it to be wiped out. This provoked just as much surprise as its massive push in 2005. When the Prime-Minister, Meles Zenawi declared that he expected to get ‘50% to 75% of the vote” and that “we neither projected nor expected to get 99%,’ they confirmed their vision of the electoral challenge facing them. This translated as a clear win over the opposition as well as making up for their humiliation in 2005, but via a sufficiently ‘clean’ election, at least on the surface, to avoid violent reaction by the people, as in 2005, to get the opposition to ratify the results and finally and above all to provide donors with the argument they had been lacking up until then, to justify their full backing of the regime: it would finally have gained a democratic legitimacy through the ballot box.
If, for the time being there is nothing to indicate that troubles like those of 2005 might break out – people have not forgotten the 200 demonstrators who lost their lives and the 30,000 members of the opposition who were arrested – the electoral plan of Meles Zenawi is in 2010 a failure just as it was in 2005. The reason is, once again, the disconnect between the party leaders and its apparatus, despite its rigid, ‘Leninist’ form of hierarchical management. In 2005, the local ‘cadres’ had tried in vain to alert the top leadership of the growing opposition in order to contain its push and to this end to throw the EPRDF in the electoral battle. But these appeals never reached the ears of the leadership, not least because of its blind confidence in victory. They only realised the danger a month before Election Day and the Party-State’s counter-offensive, from top to bottom, and from one day to the next, came too late not to have to resort to vote-rigging in order to win. In 2010, the party’s apparatus went much beyond the original intentions of its leadership. They set out on a frenetic local campaign of one-upmanship, probably motivated by their humiliating defeat in 2005 and with the particular aim of showing their superiors that they were even more zealous than their colleagues next door. They therefore over-reacted by over-pressuring the voters, which European Union observers did not fail to note and even with flagrant vote rigging, which could be noticed in the EU final report. Hence the 99.6% return which is so improbable that it makes the regime look ridiculous, even, it seems, discrediting the Party in the eyes of some of its own core members and once and for all negates any ambition it may have had of being seen as ‘democratising.’ As a result, the EPRDF did not have a ‘landslide victory’ so much as a serious defeat.
Despite the pressure and event threats from the government, the main opposition force continues to contest the election results. It also wonders whether their single representative should join Parliament or not, so as to refuse to legitimise the de facto reign of a single party. The USA, stalwart ally of Ethiopia, went further than ever by declaring that the elections did not meet ‘international standards’. The foreign press is of one voice in its judgement that the regime is authoritarian, if not totalitarian and even goes as far as comparing it to that of Mengistu Haile Mariam, leader of the communist-military junta overthrown by Meles – in both cases, ‘the state and the ruling party are one and the same’ (Wall Street Journal). The setback is so obvious that the demonstration held in Addis-Ababa by the EPRDF to celebrate its ‘victory’ aimed in fact to demonstrate that Ethiopians ‘have rejected election meddling by western powers under the guise of human rights.’
But all the signs are that this cooling in relations with the donors will not have a long-term impact. While they are openly critical of the elections, they have never put into question the pursuit of their aid. Following the 2005 elections they had suspended part of it, only to reinstate it and even increase it a few months later, with just a change to its distribution network. Ethiopia is the perfect illustration that those receiving aid are not necessarily obliged to those giving it but rather the reverse. They would find it hard to justify to their public opinion a suppression of aid on political grounds, while Meles, on the contrary, can reject any imposed conditions in the name of the ‘sovereignty’ of the country. Finally, and above all, he knows that the West see him as the sole guarantee of stability in Ethiopia, which is at the core of a Horn of Africa in the throes of innumerable conflicts, as well as being their inescapable ally in the ‘fight against terrorism,’ which is their strategic priority for the entire region.
Nevertheless, this forced electoral takeover will weigh heavily on the country’s internal development. The extra-parliamentary opposition sees in the 2010 election one more proof that any form of democratic contest would be meaningless, the only remaining option being the armed struggle. But the chances of such an uprising being successful are still as slight as ever, either because of the persistent weakness of its leadership (Oromo Liberation Front), or because a core leadership still has not found the leverage to mobilise a peasant army (Ethiopian Peoples Patriotic Front), the juncture between the former and the latter being the sine qua non of an armed struggle in Ethiopia. The legal opposition, which saw not a single one of its leaders re-elected, is out for the count with very few chances of getting back on its feet not least because the ruling party will not allow them an inch of room to rebuild.
The hypothesis of a brutal breakdown cannot be totally excluded, with an unexpected event such as some insignificant incident that flares up into urban riots, stirred up by ethnic tensions and/or a sudden rage against the regime that the police and the army would be unable to contain. But, any internal changes could most probably only come through developments within the ruling party itself, given the impotence of the opposition and aid donors’ support of the regime. The political shift by the EPRDF and the multiplication of its membership has already started a process of change. Added to this is a generation change in the leadership, which is inevitable given the advanced age of the present incumbents. The profile of the newcomers is quite different to that of their elders in two fundamental ways: they did not rise out of the Ethiopian student movement of the 1970s, which was the strongest and most radically Marxist in all of black Africa; they came to the party out of self-interest, or were forced to do so.
So, what will be the position adopted by the new leadership? Will they stick together, or will the old guard keep control from the sidelines? How, within the Party, will the old hardcore deal with this mixed mass of newcomers and if they do manage to have a say within this heavily hierarchic Party, what will be their political stance? The future depends very much on the answers to these questions.
Given that the deepest sense of hierarchy runs through Ethiopian society as a whole, and given that the emerging middle class largely overlaps with the traditional elites, who have always been the opinion leaders, the neo-patrimonial system under construction could become sustainable, in other words, could offer the Party a wide enough and attractive base to be legitimised through (at least superficially) ‘clean’ elections. But on one condition: that everyone can benefit from this system on equal terms, i.e. that an end is put to the privileges accorded to the Tigreans. But will the present beneficiaries accept it?
Maintaining Tigrean domination, which has prevented any real democratic opening, was and still is the main factor of instability in Ethiopia. And it will continue if ethnic inequalities are perpetuated under this new, neo-patrimonial Party. The ‘national question’ remains the key of Ethiopia’s future.
(The above article is originally posted on openDemocracy.net. 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.)
OTTAWA, CANADA — Ottawa police have charged a 35-year-old man who is an immigrant from Ethiopia with second-degree murder after a woman named Aster Kassa was fatally stabbed Saturday during a domestic dispute in a Riverside Drive apartment building.
Tamrat Gebere, the man who stands accused of stabbing the mother to death, will appear in court on Monday.
The victim’s baby girl was taken away by the Children’s Aid Society after a police officer held her under the shade of a tree as her mother’s death was investigated as Ottawa’s seventh homicide of the year.
Abdul Awad, the owner of a convenience store in the apartment building, said he saw the victim and her baby just half an hour before police officers came rushing into the building.
He said he will never forget the young mother, who he described as being in her mid to late 20s, and her baby.
“Never in my whole life have I seen someone so concentrated on just their child like that: not 99-per-cent concentrated; she was 100-per-cent concentrated on her baby,” he said. “She held her so close.”
Awad said he was taking a break from work when he sat down across from the victim and her baby in a lounge area in the apartment’s lobby.
He told the victim he thought her daughter was cute, but, he said, the victim didn’t respond.
She just continued to hug and kiss her baby, he said Sunday night.
“It looked like she knew something was going to happen to her and she wanted to spend all her time holding and loving her daughter.”
Awad said he saw police bring the baby, who he said looked to be about four to six months old, outside after they responded to her mother’s stabbing. He said he gave them water for the girl.
He said he is shocked and saddened by what happened.
“It’s a tragic thing. She obviously loved that baby so much and now she is gone,” he said. “If I remember one thing from my entire life, I will remember this, the first and last time I saw her.”
Awad said he had seen Gebere “once or twice” in the building before and that he seemed like a “quiet” guy.
Police could not say whether Gebere is the father of the baby, but said the victim and the accused were in a relationship.
“We’re not talking about a hitman situation here,” said Staff Sgt. Randy Wisker with the major crime unit. “It’s a very specific thing between these people.”
Police said Sunday they will not release the victim’s age or identity until they have notified her family. It is believed the victim had previously lived in Toronto, but her family lives outside of Canada.
An autopsy will be conducted today to officially confirm the cause of the woman’s death.
Police were called to the
24-storey building at 1541 Riverside Dr. about 4:15 p.m. Saturday receiving a 911 call from someone who does not live in the building.
Police said the woman was stabbed shortly before they received the call.
Police said the accused was arrested in the victim’s seventh-floor apartment without incident.
The day before the woman was killed, Sandy Medeiros said she heard yelling from what she believes was the victim’s apartment directly below.
“I’m sitting here feeling very, very guilty,” Medeiros said. “I was home the whole time as someone beneath us got (killed).”
Medeiros said she heard the baby girl crying off and on all day Friday after the arguing had stopped, but she didn’t hear any adults.
Note: This is the first installment in a series of commentaries I intend to offer on U.S. foreign policy (or lack thereof as some would argue) in Ethiopia. In this piece, I explore the human rights rhetoric in U.S. foreign policy and argue that lofty talk without action has emboldened Ethiopia’s dictators to ply their usual trade with greater audacity and made the U.S. a silent partner and a deaf-mute witness to their crimes. I urge the U.S. to back up its big human rights talk with big human rights action in Ethiopia.
Has the Mighty Eagle Turned Clucking Chicken?
Teddy “The Rough Rider” Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president of the United States, had many faults, but one of them was not inability to distinguish between talk and action. The old warhorse understood that “Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.” Roosevelt believed the U.S. should “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Exactly a century later, appeasement seems to be the hallmark of U.S. foreign policy, at least in dealing with the world’s thugs operating gangsterdoms disguised as governments. The new American slogan appears to be: “Talk big about human rights and watch from the sidelines with folded arms as thugs and gangsters clamp their peoples’ heads in steel vises, punch them in the gut with clenched fists and hang, draw and quarter them behind closed prison walls.” Has the mighty eagle turned clucking chicken?
Steel Vises, Clenched Fists and Closing Walls
In his inaugural speech, President Barack Obama extended an open hand to the world’s thugs clad in the robes of state: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” In July 2009, in Ghana, President Obama told Africa’s “strongmen” artfully that they have been driving on the wrong side of history for so long that they are headed straight for history’s dustbin:
Development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa’s potential…. History offers a clear verdict: governments that respect the will of their own people are more prosperous, more stable, and more successful than governments that do not…. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end… Make no mistake: history is on the side of these brave Africans [citizens and their communities driving change], and not with those who use coups or change Constitutions to stay in power. Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.
In July 2010, almost exactly a year to the week of President Obama’s Ghana speech, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a speech in Poland on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Community of Democracies (an intergovernmental organization of democracies and democratizing countries with a stated commitment to strengthening and deepening democratic norms and practices worldwide) and singled out Ethiopia along with Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and others to warn the world that “we must be wary of the steel vise in which governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit.” She cautioned that the “walls are closing in” on civic organizations, human rights advocates and other nongovernmental organizations that press for social change and shine a light on governments’ shortcomings. She pointed out: “Last year, Ethiopia imposed a series of strict new rules on NGOs. Very few groups have been able to re-register under this new framework, particularly organizations working on sensitive issues like human rights.”
In December 2009, Secretary Clinton delivered a speech in which she set out the basic human rights principles undergirding U.S. foreign policy in the age of thugs and gangsters masquerading as political leaders:
Throughout history and in our own time, there have been those who violently deny that truth. Our mission is to embrace it, to work for lasting peace through a principled human rights agenda, and a practical strategy to implement it…. [There are] many who hold power and who construct their position against an “other” – another tribe or religion or race or gender or political party. Standing up against that false sense of identity and expanding the circle of rights and opportunities to all people – advancing their freedoms and possibilities – is why we do what we do…. We stand for democracy not because we want other countries to be like us, but because we want all people to enjoy the consistent protection of the rights that are naturally theirs… But it is crucial that we clarify what we mean when we talk about democracy, because democracy means not only elections to choose leaders, but also active citizens and a free press and an independent judiciary and transparent and responsive institutions that are accountable to all citizens and protect their rights equally and fairly… Human rights, democracy, and development are not three separate goals with three separate agendas…. We have to tackle all three simultaneously with a commitment that is smart, strategic, determined, and long-term. We should measure our success by asking this question: Are more people in more places better able to exercise their universal rights and live up to their potential because of our actions? (Emphasis added.)
Secretary Clinton outlined the four pillars of the Obama Administration’s approach to “putting our principles into action”. She declared that U.S. policy is founded on “a commitment to human rights [which] starts with universal standards and with holding everyone accountable to those standards, including ourselves.” Accountability means “that governments take responsibility by putting human rights into law and embedding them in government institutions; by building strong, independent courts, competent and disciplined police and law enforcement.” Second, “we must be pragmatic and agile in pursuit of our human rights agenda – not compromising on our principles, but doing what is most likely to make them real. And we will use all the tools at our disposal, and when we run up against a wall, we will not retreat with resignation or recriminations, or repeatedly run up against the same well, but respond with strategic resolve…” Third, Clinton pledged to “support change driven by citizens and their communities. The project of making human rights a human reality cannot be just one for governments. It requires cooperation among individuals and organizations within communities and across borders.” Finally, she announced the U.S. “will widen [its] focus. We will not forget that positive change must be reinforced and strengthened where hope is on the rise, and we will not ignore or overlook places of seemingly intractable tragedy and despair.”
“Are more Ethiopians Better Able to Exercise Their Universal Rights and Live Up to Their Potential Because of U.S. Actions?”
Secretary Clinton said the acid test for the success or failure of U.S. foreign policy is whether “more people in more places are better able to exercise their universal rights and live up to their potential because of our actions?” By this measure, U.S. policy in Ethiopia has been a total, unmitigated and dismal failure. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable. Meles Zenawi, the poster child of African dictatorships, has not only “closed the walls”, he has also sealed the roof and nailed shut the doors and windows on Ethiopian society. Opposition leaders are threatened, intimidated, jailed and killed. Civic society organizations are criminalized, decertified and cutoff from funding sources. Political prisoners fill the country’s jails. The country’s first and only female political party leader in history, Birtukan Midekssa, remains imprisoned for life on the ridiculous charge that she denied receiving a pardon in 2007 for her kangaroo court conviction on trumped up charges the year before. Ethiopia ranks at the top of the most corrupt countries in the world despite billions in U.S. and Western aid. In the 2010 Failed States Index, Ethiopia is ranked 17 out of 177 countries (Somalia is ranked #1 failed state). There is no freedom of speech or of the press. Journalists and human rights advocates are harassed and arrested. Independent newspapers are shuttered. Even the one-hour daily radio broadcasting service of the Voice of America (VOA) has been jammed by Zenawi’s explicit orders for the past several months in a flagrantly provocative act. Zenawi accused the VOA (the official international radio and television broadcasting service of the United States government broadcasting in 44 languages), and by implication the United States Government, as the voice of hate and genocide in Ethiopia. Zenawi said the VOA has “copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda.” According to Zenawi, the VOA has become the VOI (Voice of Interhamwe)
As to the third pillar of American foreign policy (“change driven by citizens, civic society organizations and their communities”), the evidence is flabbergasting. According to a recent report of the “Ministry of Justice” of Ethiopia, there were a “total of 3,522 NGOs (non-governmental organizations) registered before the country introduced the new law, [and] only 1,655 have so far been able to reregister while the rest (nearly 50%) vanished.”[1] The “Ministry” further reported that “out of the total 1,655 NGOs, which so far are able to be reregistered, 218 have changed their names while 17 shifted from their previous objectives to other objectives.”
Did U.S. actions help promote free and fair elections? Zenawi’s allied-party won 99.6 percent of the parliamentary seats in May 2010. Zenawi chafed publicly at the loss of the 0.4 percent and pledged resolutely: “I would like to confirm to those who did not vote for us that we will work hard to look into your reasons for not voting for us with the view to learning from them and correcting any shortcomings on our part. We will work day and night to obtain your support in the next election.” No doubt, in 2015, the vote will be 100 percent for Zenawi and his party! The European Union Elections Observation Mission, The White House and the U.S. State Department were aghast at the results and bleated: “The elections fell short of international commitments.” They could not quite bring themselves to say the “R” word. Rigged!
Are more Ethiopians today better able to exercise their universal rights and live up to their potential because of U.S. actions? (Just a rhetorical question.)
Talk is Cheap When a Toothless (Paper) Tiger Talks?
Some people cynically and pejoratively characterize U.S. human rights declarations in its foreign policy as hypocritical “cheap talk.” They argue that the U.S. would rather cluck about democracy, freedom and human rights in the abstract than do something concrete to help protect it in societies suffering under dictatorships. I disagree. American talk is not cheap because America talks with its taxpayers’ hard earned dollars. Since 1991, American taxpayers have shelled out $3.2 billion in humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia.[2] Zenawi’s regime has received $26 billion in development aid from the West during the same time, the lion’s share coming from the wallets and purses of hard working American taxpayers.[3] Without American tax dollars bankrolling the dictatorship in Ethiopia, it could not last even a single day.
I will concede that American talk is cheap for the dictators in Ethiopia. For them, America is all bark, and no bite. The lofty words of President Obama and Secretary Clinton go in one ear and exit clean through the other. The U.S. can moan and groan, gripe and grouse about human rights violations in Ethiopia, but its bark is no more threatening than the growl of a toothless and clawless (paper) tiger. “They ain’t gonna do diddley-squat. Let the Americans talk until they turn blue in the face,” the dictators cackle. But America’s color is not just blue; it is also red and white. Ethiopia’s dictators see only the blue which signifies American vigilance, patience and perseverance against injustice. They don’t know what the red and white signify. It time to let them know the real meaning of the colors in the stars and stripes, President Obama! And if I may add, Sir, it is more effective to “speak softly and carry a big stick” when dealing with Africa’s tin pot dictators.
FREE BIRTUKAN MIDEKSSA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS IN ETHIOPIA
Sara Al-Amoudi, the allegedly estranged daughter of Ethiopian billionaire businessman Mohammed Al Amoudi, is back in the news on British media after her 30-year-old boyfriend, Patrick Ribbsaeter, tried to attack her and stabbed her driver with a broken wine glass. Ribbsaeter appeared in court yesterday where the prosecutor called him a “gold-digger.”
A ‘gold-digging’ male model dumped by a Saudi Arabian princess after she caught him with two other women attacked her chauffeur in a rage, a court heard yesterday.
The fracas unfolded at the princess’s London flat after a night of drink and drugs, jurors were told.
Swedish model Patrick Ribbsaeter had met Sara Al-Amoudi on holiday in Thailand and the pair became lovers.
The relationship offered the promise of unimaginable wealth to Ribbsaeter, 30, who has modelled for a host of household names, including Calvin Klein, Armani, Gucci and Christian Dior.
But his hopes of a gilded future promptly disappeared when she caught him with the other women in her flat in Victoria, Central London, the court heard.
And after she dumped him, Ribbsaeter, 30, is alleged to have lunged at Miss Al-Amoudi as she slept. At this point her driver Sarkis Tokatlian stepped in to stop him, giving him a bloody nose, but Ribbsaeter smashed a wine glass and stabbed the driver six times in his face before beginning to strangle him, a jury was told.
Prosecutor Martin Whitehouse said the trial showed a world that was a far cry from the ‘idyllic, perhaps artificial’ image painted of the rich by Hello! magazine.
It was a life of ‘drinks, drugs and clubs’, he said, that was ‘in some respects, rather seedy and, of course, there’s violence’.
Pony-tailed Ribbsaeter sat in the dock at Southwark Crown Court wearing an open white shirt exposing his chest as the case against him was outlined.
Mr Whitehouse called him a ‘gold-digger’ and said that while he may appear charming and good-looking, there was another side to him.
‘He’s violent, he’s vain, he’s egocentric,’ the prosecutor said. ‘He’s also, I suggest, a liar and prone to exaggeration.’
The alleged assaults happened after Miss Al-Amoudi and Ribbsaeter went to dinner on a Saturday in September last year following her discovery of the two women.
Mr Tokatlian then drove Miss Al-Amoudi and Ribbsaeter in a Rolls-Royce to dinner, then on to a series of nightclubs, including the Ministry of Sound, before the couple returned to her flat in the early hours of Sunday. It was then that she talked about her future with Ribbsaeter and ‘realised that Patrick was, after all, not the man for her’, the prosecutor said.
Mr Tokatlian returned to the flat after dropping off the car and it became apparent that Ribbsaeter and Miss Al-Amoudi had split up.
The trio talked until Miss Al-Amoudi fell asleep. But Ribbsaeter is then said to have lunged at her, prompting the chauffeur to respond.
After the alleged glass attack, the pair struggled on the floor by the dining table until Ribbsaeter climbed on top of the victim. He grabbed his throat with both hands, and began to strangle him, stopping only when Mr Tokatlian pushed his thumbs into his attacker’s eyes, the court heard.
Mr Whitehouse said: ‘Ribbsaeter intended to cause him really serious harm and he was not acting in self-defence.
‘By the time it had got round to the strangling, Patrick Ribbsaeter had lost it. He wasn’t thinking about her. He was thinking about his future prosperity.
‘When he was found out, and realised he could not charm his way out, he reverted to his other character type – violence.’
The jury was told Ribbsaeter has a previous conviction in Sweden for strangling a different ex-girlfriend.
Ribbsaeter told the jury that Mr Tokatlian was the aggressor and that he had only defended himself.
He said he had been drinking and had taken a tiny quantity of ketamine and an ecstasy tablet while the two others had taken much more.
In interview, Ribbsaeter told police he had seen red, had ‘the strength of ten men’ and added it was a case of ‘kill or be killed’.
Ribbsaeter, of no fixed address, denies causing Mr Tokatlian grievous bodily harm with intent, the alternative charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm, and unlawfully wounding Miss Al-Amoudi during the struggle.
