(Reuters) – A U.S. panel on religious freedom accused the Ethiopian government of trying to tighten control of its Muslim minority amid mass protests, saying it is risking greater destabilization of the Horn of Africa region.
Ethiopia, which has long been seen by the West as a bulwark against Muslim rebels in neighboring Somalia, says it fears militant Islam is taking root in the country.
However, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) accused the government of arresting peaceful Muslim protesters, noting that 29 of them had been charged last month with what the authorities said was “planning to commit terrorist acts”.
Ethiopian Muslims, who make up about a third of the population in the majority Christian country, accuse the government of interfering in the highest Muslim affairs body, the Ethiopia Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (EIASC). Thousands of Muslims have staged weekly mosque sit-ins and street protests in Addis Ababa over the past year.
“The arrests, terrorism charges and takeover of EIASC signify a troubling escalation in the government’s attempts to control Ethiopia’s Muslim community and provide further evidence of a decline in religious freedom in Ethiopia,” the Commission said in a statement issued on Thursday.
Ethiopian officials were unavailable for comment on the statement from the Commission, whose members are appointed by President Barack Obama and senior Congressional Democrats and Republicans.
Commission Chairwoman Katrina Lantos Swett called on the U.S. government to raise the issue with Addis Ababa.
“USCIRF has found that repressing religious communities in the name of countering extremism leads to more extremism, greater instability, and possibly violence,” she said.
“Given Ethiopia’s strategic importance in the Horn of Africa … it is vital that the Ethiopian government end its religious freedom abuses and allow Muslims to practice peacefully their faith as they see fit,” she added. “Otherwise the government’s current policies and practices will lead to greater destabilization of an already volatile region.”
Over the past six years Ethiopia has twice sent troops into Somalia to battle Islamist rebels, including al Shaabab militants, and officials say some of the protesters are bankrolled by Islamist groups in the Middle East.
The Commission backed the protesters’ complaints that the government had been trying since last year to impose the apolitical Al Ahbash sect on Ethiopian Muslims. The government has denied this but dozens of Muslims have been arrested since the demonstrations started in 2011.
Ethiopia is 63 percent Christian and 34 percent Muslim, according to official figures, with the vast majority of Muslims adhering to the moderate, Sufi version of Islam.
After Meles: Implications for Ethiopia’s Development
BY Handino, M., Lind, J. and Mesfin, B |UK Institute of Development Studies
October 2012
Meles Zenawi, the long-serving Ethiopian Prime Minister since 1995 and leader of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition, passed away in August. His death sparked considerable concern and debate internationally. The political stability of Ethiopia – the largest recipient of overseas development assistance in Africa – was put into question. Would the loss of Zenawi upend a decade of staggering official economic growth? Would it halt the transformation of Ethiopia from a famine-plagued country to a regional hegemon in the Horn of Africa?
The late Ethiopian dictator
Meles sought to replicate the Chinese growth ‘miracle’ and to craft a distinctly Ethiopian version of this that has been labelled ‘developmental authoritarianism’ by outsiders. He dismissed human rights critiques from many directions and squeezed the space for opposition and civic society to organise around governance and rights-based concerns – unless part of officially sanctioned institutions.
Foreign donors quietly criticised his policies – more vocally after the post 2005 elections – yet maintained substantial aid commitments to the country in the long term. With his death, some western critics have sought to cast the transition as an opportunity for Ethiopia’s development partners to press governance and human rights concerns yet again. However, the implications of the transition to a new PM and leadership at the top of the EPRDF are far from certain.
The first issue of a new policy briefing series from IDS explores the implications of Meles’ death for Ethiopia’s political stability, geo-political relations and development pathways. The IDS Rapid Response Briefings are published by the Institute of Development Studies and aim to provide high level analysis of rapidly emerging and unexpected global events and their impact on global development policy and practice. The briefings provide expert perspectives, opinions and commentary from around the world drawing on the experience and expertise of IDS’s 1000 alumni and 250 partners.
So, what are the implications of Meles’ death?
Politics
Meles’ successor, Hailemariam Dessalegn, Foreign Minister and Vice Premier since 2010, from the EPRDF, became acting PM under party rules in September. Crucially, Hailemariam is from the southern part of the country – Wolaita more specifically – and was not a member of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that holds ultimate power in the coalition.
While Hailemariam’s appointment has been welcomed by Southerners within Ethiopia, representation of SNNPR in the military and federal command structure is minimal or absent altogether. The TPLF maintains control over the National Intelligence and Security Services, as well as the all-powerful federal police. A majority of recent key military appointments were from Meles’ home Tigray region, which has led some to speculate that Hailemariam’s appointment is a calculated political move by and for the TPLF, allowing them to maintain de facto political authority behind a cloak of ethnic pluralism.
Meles’ death exposes the dangers of a state built around one man, but he also leaves behind a formidable political machine. For Hailemariam the challenge is whether and how he can manage the machine. Members of competing elites may fight for control of this machine and ethnic movements on the periphery could be emboldened to exploit a perceived power vacuum. Eritrea might also sense an opportunity to destabilise its neighbour. The question is whether perceived economic development and prosperity will willingly be traded for political instability – even by those at loggerheads with the central state.
Geo-politics
Ethiopia’s presence and capacity for global influence may well diminish. Meles courted Chinese largesse and trade and investment deals with other non-conventional donors such as Turkey, Brazil and India. He was an astute political game-player and realised that many more strategic issues could be used to assist western powers and, therefore, ensure their eventual quiescence when human rights abuses were carried out.
Ethiopia is a key strategic ally in counter-terrorism efforts by the US and its allies in the Horn. Meles opened Ethiopia’s doors to U.S. geostrategic interests, through positioning drones at Arba Minch in the south of the country, which enables greater U.S. geostrategic reach in and around Somalia, and providing proxy forces for the U.S.-backed invasion of southern Somalia in 2006.
Meles deftly negotiated the intricacies of regional diplomacy in the Horn, cultivating close ties with both Sudans. He championed regional economic integration and was deeply engaged in the Lamu-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport project (LAPSSET) as well as several hydroelectric schemes under which Ethiopia sought to position itself as a regional energy exporter.
Economy
In spite of significant economic growth over the past decade and important gains in reducing poverty, Hailemariam inherits formidable economic challenges. These are dominated by the need to find secure livelihoods for a large and growing population and the acute vulnerability of its major economic sector – rainfed agriculture which is dominated by small plots that are leased by the government. Two thirds of the economy is controlled by government through nationalised and ‘para-statal’ enterprises, many of which fall under the control of TPLF figures.
The current picture is mixed: economic vibrancy is apparent in Addis Ababa and other major cities as construction booms and the consumption economy grows. Yet unemployment is rising – particularly in urban areas, inequality is widening and inflation has surged in recent years. Balancing the complex interrelations between transformations in agriculture, urbanisation, employment generation and maintaining a reasonable cost of living is the challenge facing the new Prime Minister.
Effective nonviolent UNITY of action has little to do with shouting slogans. It has everything to do with separating tyrants from their means of control… [read more]
President Barack Obama has been a terrible disappointment for many Ethiopians and freedom loving people who supported him and voted for him in 2008. It is unforgivable that the Obama Administration had befriended, supported and praised the late Ethiopian dictator, Meles Zenawi, a genocidal tyrant whose hands were soaked with the blood of thousands innocent Ethiopians. Obama’s own State Department accused Meles of gross human rights violations. And yet Obama’s envoy referred to him as a ‘dear friend’ and a wise man. How can any Ethiopian who cares for Ethiopia and stands for freedom supports such an administration that financed and encouraged a genocidal dictator and a thief?
It is said that people deserve their government. In Ethiopia, we do not have the freedom to elect our government. The country is ruled by blood thirsty tyranny that is bankrolled by the Obama Administration and European Union to the tune of $3 billion per year. What excuse do those of us in the U.S. have for supporting Obama, a “dear friend” of the dictator who spilled the blood of so many of our brothers and sisters? By supporting Obama, we are encouraging him and other presidents after him to continue bankrolling tyrants in Ethiopia and other countries around the world.
The Obama foreign policy is one of the many areas where he didn’t keep his promise. He betrayed freedom loving people around the world by keeping in place the U.S. foreign policy that supported some of the most brutal and corrupt tyrants around the world. In fact, Obama took it the next level. Other U.S. presidents before him were holding their noses when they dealt with dictators. Obama made them his ‘dear’ friends. In the case of Ethiopia, dictator Meles Zenawi was accused by international human rights groups of committing genocide and war crimes. Let me ask you this: Would the Jewish community in the U.S. support a president who is friendly toward Nazi Germany. Meles is our Hitler. If we support Obama, we deserve to be ruled by a Hitlerian like Meles.
Another reason not to vote for Obama is not to repeat the mistake of the African-American community. For the past 40 yeas, the overwhelming majority of the African-American community has been supporting the Democratic Party. What have they benefited from such loyalty? Nothing. The African-American community is the most neglected voting group in the United States because of its loyalty to one party, even though the social values of a large majority of African-Americans are contrary to the Democratic Party. When Obama went on a ‘job tour’ in October last ear, he didn’t visit any African-American neighborhood. But the jobless rate among blacks (14.3%) is almost double that of the national rate (7.9%). When Obama won the presidency in 2008, the jobless rate among blacks was 9.1%, according to the Department of Labor.
Unlike the Jewish, Asian and other communities, the African-Americans relegated themselves to irrelevancy in the U.S. elections by blindly supporting one party. If the growing Ethiopian-American community wants to have voice, it must not allow itself to be taken for granted like the African-Americans. Vote for candidates who share your values, and you will see both parties competing for your votes.
Tomorrow, vote for Romney because many of his values are closer to ours, and if we support him, we may have a leverage with him when it comes to the U.S. policy toward Ethiopia. (What we want the U.S. to do is to stop funding murderous dictators.) Right now we have zero leverage because our vote is taken for granted by Obama.
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