Ethiopian girls as young as thirteen are being trafficked to the Middle East. The situation is so out of control that an otherwise pro-government publication has felt compelled to speak up.
This is not a small rogue operation. It is human trafficking on an industrial scale, with a wink and a nod from the Ethiopian government. According to various news reports, up to 45,000 Ethiopian women are trafficked each month to Saudi Arabia alone.
Ethiopia’s ruling group is only interested in the foreign exchange earnings generated on the backs of these vulnerable women. The Obama administration remains silent on this issue because the war on terror and alliance with an African tyrant is deemed more important than the lives of millions of poor Ethiopian women.
A blind date with destiny
By Ethiopianreporter.com
June 9, 2012
Presently thousands of Ethiopians in their youth are flocking to the Middle East. A person who happens to be at the immigration authority or at the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs here in Addis Ababa is bound to be surprised by the throng of young women they witness teeming in and around the offices of these institutions.
For an onlooker the women seem to be gathered to stage a protest or to celebrate some kind of event, and not to obtain the documents needed to leave the country for work.
Nobody, including us, is arguing that Ethiopians should not be allowed to go abroad and earn their living by selling their labour. This is a right they enjoy.
This said, we are of the firm belief that when Ethiopian citizens travel overseas in search of a job they must do so in compliance with all requirements and their rights and dignity must be protected; they should not be subjected to any degrading treatment that brings shame and dishonor both on themselves and their country. It’s only when the benefits far outweigh the downsides that they should work abroad.
The reality, however, is far from this. The majority of the young women that embark on completing the formalities required to go overseas for work are underage girls recruited by crooked dealers from the rural parts of the country who lie about their ages to obtain a passport. Some are as young as thirteen or fourteen. This is disheartening, to say the least.
Though these young women are informed that they will work as maids in Middle Eastern countries, most of them have no knowledge about the cultures and traditions of the countries they will travel to and are unskilled in the tasks they are expected to perform; they do not receive any training or orientation. This compounds the problem.
Given that they have no clue about urban life, they encounter all sorts of difficulties from the moment they arrive at the capital. They do not know what time to come to the airport for departure or where to go to once they get there, making them liable to various forms of ill-treatment. They begin to experience humiliation right at home.
The indignity does not end there, though. It follows them to their country of destination as well. They are not provided with adequate shelter upon arrival. And as they are compelled to surrender their passports, they cannot return home whenever they wish. Aside from this they endure both physical and mental abuse, which result in the untimely death of some and forces others to resort to crime.
To make matters worse there are reports that Ethiopian workers are being abducted and threatened with death if their families do not pay a ransom. Families that expect their daughters to send some money are on the contrary selling their cattle and other prized possessions to save the lives of their beloved ones and becoming even poorer than they already are.
Reports also abound of Ethiopian refuges being misled about where they are migrating to and ending up as forced labourers, prostitutes or victims of organ harvesting. As a result they are suffering from a nervous breakdown, committing suicide or turning to crime.
All in all Ethiopian workers overseas or refugees who flee in search of a better life are subjected to egregious abuses that have terrible consequences and are a source of utter shame for them, their families and their country.
Why is this happening to us? Isn’t there something we can do about it?
There is and there should be. The responsibility of finding a holistic and prompt solution, understandably, rests on the shoulders of the government. This calls for it to conduct an in-depth analysis of the nature and cause of the problem as well as the policies and procedures currently in place and come up with a comprehensive solution.
On our part we believe the centerpiece of the government’s obligation in this regard should be to formulate and execute policies and plans aimed at enabling the youth in Ethiopia to improve their livelihood right at home without having to go abroad.
Alongside this the government needs to ensure that when it is determined that citizens and the country stand to benefit from the migration of labour it properly regulates the whole process so that unscrupulous human traffickers do not cause the harm they are inflicting on citizens and the nation. Issuing a statement declaring that such and such number of Ethiopians have left the country for work does not amount to discharging one’s duties as a government. Accordingly it is important to establish in addition to and independent of the immigration authority and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs a government agency tasked with ascertaining that citizens desirous to go abroad for work have attained minimum age, are healthy and receive the requisite training as well as with monitoring whether their rights and benefits are respected and, when necessary, facilitating their return home in a dignified manner.
Generally speaking we should not be blinded by the hard currency Ethiopian workers or refugees remit. We need to remind ourselves of the physical, emotional and financial toll it takes on the workers/refugees and their families as well as the humiliation and indignity it subjects Ethiopians and their country to.
Let’s not sell out our citizens’ dignity for the sake of the income derived from selling their labour.
GOVERNMENT STEPS UP CONTROL OF NEWS AND INFORMATION
By Reporters sans Frontieres
May 7, 2012
Ethiopia’s only ISP, state-owned Ethio-Telecom, has just installed a system for blocking access to the Tor network, which lets users browse anonymously and access blocked websites. At the same time, the state-owned printing presses are demanding the right to censor the newspapers they print. Reporters Without Borders is very worried by these attempts to reinforce government control of news and information.
Danger that printers will censor newspaper content
Reporters Without Borders accuses the biggest state printer, Berhanena Selam, which almost has a monopoly on newspaper and magazine printing in Ethiopia, and other state owned printers, of trying to impose political censorship on media content before publication.
In a proposed “standard contract for printing” recently circulated by state printers, they assume the right to vet and reject articles prior to printing.
“This contract could drag Ethiopia back more than two decades as regards media freedom, to the time of Mengistu’s brutal dictatorship in pre 1991 Ethiopia,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Allowing printers to control editorial content is tantamount to give them court powers. On what basis do these state-owned companies assume the right and independence to interpret the law? Does this reflect a government desire to suppress all criticism before it is voiced?
“If this standard contract is adopted, we fear it could lead to widespread self-censorship, which is already very common, and to media subservience towards the government. Criticism, independence and media diversity would all suffer, and the vitality of Ethiopian democracy would suffer as well.”
Article 10 of the proposed contract is evocatively entitled “Declining to print content violating the law.” It says the printer has the right to refuse to print any text if he has “adequate reason” to think it breaks the law. It goes on to say that the printer reserves the right to terminate or cancel the contract at any time if he has “adequate reason” to think that the publisher “has a propensity to publish a content which entails liability.”
This article openly contravenes article 29 of the 1994 federal constitution, which guarantees press freedom and bans “censorship in any form.” Reporters Without Borders points out that only an independent and impartial judge should have the power to impose any kind of sanction or prohibition affecting media freedom.
Ethiopia’s privately-owned newspaper and magazine publishers reacted to the proposed contract by addressing a joint petition to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi urging him to recognize that it violates the constitution and to have it withdrawn. The response from a government official was to insist that it was “a strictly business-based decision” and to deny any desire to censor.
The printers are keeping up the pressure on the publishers, saying they will refuse to print any newspapers or magazines and, under an unlawful contract that is an extension of the new press law that has put liabilities on printers for print media content.
“We call on all media professionals – publishers, editors and journalists – to be brought into the process of negotiation and drafting of this printing contract,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The possibility that printers could be held liable for printed content must not be used as grounds for reintroducing prior censorship.”
As it stands, the proposed contract would add to the repressive legislative edifice that the Ethiopian government has built over the past three years. It includes the 2009 anti-terrorism law under which two journalists have been charged and sentenced to long jail terms. It is also liable to exacerbate the already poor climate between the privately-owned media and government.
More information about freedom of information in Ethiopia
Government steps up control of Internet, uses sophisticated technology
Government-owned Internet Service Provider Ethio-Telecom, the country’s only ISP, has for the past two weeks been blocking access to the Tor network, an online tool that allows users to browse anonymously and access blocked websites. To do this kind of selective blocking, Ethio-Telecom must be using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), an advanced network filtering method.
DPI is widely used by countries that are “Enemies of the Internet” such as China and Iran. Blocking access to porn sites is usually the official reason given for installing and using it, but in practice it allows governments to easily target politically sensitive websites and quickly censor any expression of opposition views.
In installing DPI and blocking access to Tor, the Ethiopian government is probably taking a first step towards installing a sophisticated filtering system that will eventually enable it to intercept emails, messages posted on social networks and Internet voice conversations using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software such as Skype.
Use of VoIP hardware and software has just been made a crime by the new Ethiopian Telecom Service legislation, which was ratified on 24 May. Anyone violating this provision could be sentenced to up 15 years in prison.
The authorities say the ban was needed on national security grounds and because VoIP posed a threat to the state’s monopoly of telephone communications.
The new law also gives the ministry of communications and information technology the power to supervise and issue licences to all privately-owned companies that import equipment used for the communication of information.
The OpenNet Initiative has already reported cases of Internet censorship in Ethiopia, including the blocking of blogs, news sites and opposition sites. So far there have been relatively few cases, above all because of the low level of Internet use in Ethiopia.
“This new law and the possibility that a Deep Packet Inspection system has been installed mark a turning point in the Ethiopian government’s control of the Internet,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We fear that DPI will be misused for surveillance purposes by a government that already subjects the political opposition and privately-owned media to a great deal of harassment.
“We urge the Ethiopian authorities not to install this filtering system and, as we already said when The Reporter news website was blocked, we share the view of the United Nations special rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, who recommended in a June 2011 report that restrictions to the flow of information online should be limited to ‘few, exceptional, and limited circumstances prescribed by international human rights law’.”
It should be noted that, a few days after spotting that access to the Tor network was being blocked in Ethiopia, the Tor Project posted a message on its blog explaining how to circumvent the blocking.
At the recent 2012 G8 Food Security Summit in Washington, D.C., Abebe Gellaw, a young Washington-based Ethiopian journalist, stood up in the gallery and thunderously proclaimed to dictator Meles Zenawi, “… Food is nothing without freedom…” Is he right?
When President Obama invited the leaders of Ghana, Tanzania, Benin and Zenawi to the Summit on May 18, few expected any meaningful outcomes. A White House statement on the Summit declared: “The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is a shared commitment to achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years by aligning the commitments of Africa’s leadership to drive effective country plans and policies for food security; the commitments of private sector partners to increase investments where the conditions are right; and the commitments of the G-8 to expand Africa’s potential for rapid and sustainable agricultural growth.” To implement the “New Alliance” and spark a Green Revolution in Africa, dozens of global food companies, including multinational giants Cargill, Dupont, Monsanto, Kraft, Unilever, Syngenta AG, have signed a “Private Sector Declaration of Support for African Agricultural Development”.
The vast majority of Ethiopians eke out a living as smallholder farmers. According to a 2010 USAID report, eight of every ten Ethiopians live in rural areas with average land holdings of 0.93 hectare. A 2011 report by the Oakland Institute(OI) stated that Zenawi’s regime has “transferred at least 3,619,509 ha of land to investors, although the actual number may be higher.” These “lease” transfers (for 99 years) are handed out to companies from India, China, Saudi Arabia and 36 other countries for pennies per hectare. The OI further reported that “displacement from farmland is widespread, and the vast majority of locals receive no compensation.” The displaced farmers who have lost their ancestral lands to “leases” are mostly indigenous minority peoples.
In 2011, Africa imported $50 billion worth of food from the U.S. and Europe. Food prices in Africa are 200-300 percent higher than global prices, which means higher profit margins for multinationals that produce and distribute food. With a steady growth in global population, the prospect of transforming Africa into vast commercialized farms is mouthwatering for global agribusinesses. The “New Alliance for Food Security” will accelerate at warp speed the “transfer” of hundreds of millions of hectares of arable African land to Cargill, Dupont, Monsanto, Kraft, Unilever, Syngenta AG and the dozens of other signatory multinationals. Working jointly with Africa’s corrupt dictators, these multinationals will “liberate” the land from Africans just like the 19th Century scramble for Africa; but will they liberate Africa from the scourge of hunger, famine, starvation and poverty?
A Brief Lesson in African History
In 1894, fourteen European and other countries including the U.S. (the “G-14” of the era) held a land grab conference in Berlin to “save” the Dark Continent. The publicity cover for the conference was the liberation of Africa from the slave trade and the need to undertake a civilizing mission. To that end, the Berlin Conference passed hollow resolutions. But the real agenda was to carve up Africa between the European powers peacefully and without the need for internecine imperialistic wars. The Scramble for Africa gave Britain a nice slice of Africa stretching from Cape-to-Cairo. France gobbled up much of western Africa. King Leopold II of Belgium took personal possession of the Congo. Portugal grabbed Mozambique and Angola. Italy snagged Somalia and laid claim to parts of Ethiopia.
Ironically, the G-8’s “New Alliance” smacks of the old Scramble for Africa. The G-8 wants to liberate Africa from hunger, famine and starvation by facilitating the handover of millions of hectares of Africa’s best land to global multinationals in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania, Sudan, Nigeria and Ghana, among others. Is history repeating itself in Africa? Only the people of Madagascar have been able to successfully fight back and rescue their country from the clutches of the international land grabbers by dumping their president.
Ethiopian Hunger Games
When it comes to famine and starvation in Ethiopia, the standard response by the ruling regime and its international donors is to deny, evade and sugarcoat the whole thing in clever euphemisms (calling it “severe malnutrition, “food insecurity”, etc.; see my commentary, African Hunger Games at Camp David ), blame droughts and natural forces and endlessly supply food handouts. Bad governance, dictatorships and corruption are rarely blamed for the predictable and recurrent famines and starvation in Ethiopia.
Last week, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Ethiopia announced that “3.2 million people are food insecure in Ethiopia” and that it needs an additional US$183 million to provide emergency assistance. At the same time, Mitiku Kassa, Zenawi’s official responsible for agriculture, blamed the “food insecurity” on drought: “Irregularity in rainfall seasons resulting in problems of such a kind is not a new thing to us. We faced it last year and a year before that and we are managing it so far… The country has enough resources and mechanisms in place to deal with it this time, though.” The mechanism in place is beggary proficiently practiced as a high art form by Zenawi’s regime over the past two decades. A little over a month ago, the U.S. pledged to provide nearly $200 million in additional humanitarian aid to Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. In 2011, the U.S. provided more than $1.1 billion in humanitarian aid. Ethiopia received more than US$3 billion in 2008, making that country the largest recipient of development aid in Africa.
To say that Ethiopia will continue to face chronic “food insecurity” is like predicting the sun will rise tomorrow. “Food insecurity” (a/k/a famine) in Ethiopia is expected to reach biblical proportions by 2050. In 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau made the catastrophic prediction that Ethiopia’s population by 2050 will more than triple to 278 million. That did not stop Zenawi from declaring a crushing victory on famine in 2011: “We have devised a plan which will enable us to produce surplus and be able to feed ourselves by 2015 without the need for food aid.” Zenawi’s plan to “produce surplus” is to stretch out cupped palms for handouts of crumbs left over from exports by Karuturi Global, Saudi Star, Cargill, Monsanto… and the rest.
It is manifest that with the “New Alliance”, the U.S. and the other G8 countries have willfully blinded themselves to the moral hazard of endlessly aiding famine victims in Africa and unashamedly accepted the moral bankruptcy of endlessly aiding African dictators. It is axiomatic for them that providing endless handouts to impoverished and famished Africans is their divinely ordained “burden”, to borrow a word from the poet Rudyard Kipling who romanticized British colonialism. But they are now playing a far more sophisticated and deadly “hunger game” in Africa. They want to use multinational food conglomerates to “save” Africa from starvation by 1) subsidizing these giant agribusinesses to dump their agricultural surpluses in famine-stricken African countries, and 2) by greasing the hands of Africa’s corrupt dictators so that these multinationals could “lease” hundreds of millions of acres of Africa’s most arable land to cultivate export crops that command high prices on the global commodities markets, without contributing much to the domestic African market to alleviate endemic hunger. The “New Alliance” is a brilliant strategy that will sustain the decades long vicious cycle of dependence and food aid addiction in Africa while displacing and severely undercutting the productive capacity of the African smallholder farmers to deal with famine on their own.
Keeping Them Honest!
It is noteworthy that few in the mainstream U.S. or international media paid any attention to the proceedings of the “New Alliance” food Summit. Even the international humanitarian organizations thought it was a publicity stunt. Oxfam was dismissive: “The New Alliance is neither new nor a true alliance. The rhetoric invokes small-scale producers, particularly women, but the plan must do more to bring them to the table.” ActionAid was instructive: “While the New Alliance touts the role of the private sector, as President Obama said, this must include even the smallest African cooperatives. The real innovators in African agriculture are women smallholder farmers. Any private sector partnership to improve food security must place them and African civil society at the center.”
What needs special attention is the basic approach to “food security” that was discussed and not discussed at the summit. Rajiv SHAH, the USAID Administrator and moderator of the food security Summit directing his remarks to Zenawi said:
… So many people have associated a mental image of hunger with Ethiopia and at the same time because of actions in the public sector maintaining strong public investment in agriculture you were able to protect millions of Ethiopians during the recent drought from needing food aid and food assistance. Could you speak to, even as we are launching a new food alliance, to engage the private sector, could you speak to some of the comments you have shared with us privately how important it is we live to our commitments to invest in public investment, in public institutions?
Zenawi responded:
Ultimately, agricultural transformation in Africa is going to be a partnership between the smallholder farmer and the private sector. But the most important actor here is the smallholder farmer that 70 percent of [interruption by Abebe Gellaw calling Zenawi “a dictator…”] 70 percent of the population in Africa is smallholder farmers, so without transforming their livelihoods there is no future for agriculture in Africa. So at this stage the role of the private sector can only be to supplement the small scale farmer. There is the issue of rural roads, water supply systems, irrigation infrastructure. All of these require public investment; and yes, we need more of it. But we also need public investment. We in Africa are doing all we can, as I said, most of our countries are moving towards 10 percent of their budgets invested in agriculture; but we need partnerships. This morning the President [Obama] was talking about the L’Aquila Initiative with $22 billion of money promised. We want the money promised delivered as the President was saying. We need that for public investment in infrastructure. We also need the developed countries to do something about trade because when you subsidize your farmers, our farmers who cannot be subsidized by our poor governments cannot compete. In the European Union, for example, every cow earns about $2 per day. Now that is more than the average African farmer gets and so if the subsidies were to be dealt with, we could have a better way of trading out of poverty.
Khan’s assertion that Zenawi by “maintaining strong public investment in agriculture [was] able to protect millions of Ethiopians during the recent drought from needing food aid and food assistance” is simply a statement made in reckless disregard for the truth, and arguably borders on a patent falsehood. The fact of the matter is that USAID is clueless about its agricultural programs in Ethiopia, according to the audit report of the Office of the Inspector General of USAID (March 2010, at p. 1):
The audit was unable to determine whether the results reported in USAID/Ethiopia’s Performance Plan and Report were valid because agricultural program staff could neither explain how the results were derived nor provide support for those results. Indeed, when the audit team attempted to validate the reported results by tracing from the summary amounts to the supporting detail, it was unable to do so at either the mission or its implementing partners… In the absence of a complete and current performance management plan, USAID/Ethiopia is lacking an important tool for monitoring and managing the implementation of its agricultural program.
In cases where USAID has been served with credible allegations of misuse of humanitarian and development aid for political purposes, it has turned a blind eye, deaf ears and muted lips. In 2009, the U.S. State Department, under which the USAID operates as the agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid, promised to investigate allegations that “$850 million in food and anti-poverty aid from the U.S. is being distributed on the basis of political favoritism by the current prime minister’s party.” No report has been issued.
Khan and Zenawi can talk about “public investment” and the “smallholder farmer” until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is that neither Ethiopia nor the rest of Africa can achieve food sufficiency by tethering predatory multinational corporations with corrupt African dictators in a new “alliance for food security” and and strapping them around the necks of Africa’s smallholder farmers. A joint venture between jackals and hyenas will never benefit the gazelles.
There are some simple questions that need to be asked about Ethiopia’s hunger games: Could Ethiopia reasonably expect to achieve food security when its citizens are prohibited by law from owning agricultural (for that matter all) land? Does it make sense to hand out the country’s most arable land to “foreign investors” to produce food for export and ensure food security in other countries when Ethiopians are dying from starvation? Could Ethiopia reasonably expect to be saved from famine, starvation or “chronic food insecurity” by Karuturi, Saudi Star, Cargill, Dupont and the rest of the vampiric leeches? Does the smallholder Ethiopian farmer scratching out a living on 0.93 hectare stand a snowball’s chance in hell against Karuturi, Saudi Star, Cargill, Dupont…? Is the ultimate destiny of the smallholder African farmer to be a consumer of food produced by global agricultural multinationals instead of being a local producer and harvester of his/her own food?
Zenawi has adamantly opposed private ownership of land, which by all expert accounts is the single most important factor in ensuring food security in any nation. In 2000, Zenawi said (and has repeatedly taken similar positions since):
I have not heard of any truly convincing reason as to why we should privatize land ownership at this stage. I have not heard of any economic rationale for doing so. If there were to be an overwhelming economic rationale to do it and ultimately that would be the best way of securing the interests of our peasant farmer and therefore politically that would be our agenda… But at the same time we do not have any illusions as to what land ownership can do to the peasant farmer over the long-term. We do not believe that the long-term future and destiny of our peasant farmers is to be stuck in the mud, so to speak. We feel that ultimately there has to be industrialization,ultimately these people have to find to get employment outside agriculture.
In 2012, Zenawi pontificates about the need to “transform the livelihoods Africa’s smallholder farmers” through “public investment” and predicts “there is no future for agriculture in Africa.” He just does not get it! There can be no smallholder farmer when there is no land to have and to hold. The smallholder Ethiopian farmer that Zenawi talks about is no better than the sharecropper or the tenant farmer. When the smallholder farmer is arbitrarily evicted from his land because he refuses to support Zenawi’s regime, denied fertilizer because he voted for the opposition or is put on the blacklist and watched day and night by hordes of informants because he wants to remain politically independent, he is no longer a smallholder farmer. He becomes a landless, hopeless, helpless, restless, hapless, rootless, voiceless and powerless panhandler of international food aid. Without the small holder farmer, not only is there not a future for agriculture in Africa, there is no future for Africa itself!
USAID, Ethiopia’s largest donor, in its 2010 report (perhaps unread by Khan), makes the simple point that effective agricultural development and long-term food security requires “100% ownership and buy-in by the Ethiopian people”. But instead of a “buy in”, Zenawi has pursued a relentless and ruthless policy of kick out, resulting in the displacement and confiscation of ancestral lands from countless small holder farmers. Now, Zenawi rubs his hands with glee to swipe his cut of the $22 billion promised in the L’Aquila Initiative. That is all he cares about!
Food is Nothing Without Freedom!
Ethiopia’s four-decade old dependence on humanitarian food aid will continue and worsen. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child provide that it is the natural right of all people to have access to food. But under Zenawi, Ethiopians face a double whammy: A insatiable hunger for food and an unquenchable thirst for freedom, democracy and human rights. Ethiopians suffer from hunger and thirst because they are victims of a ruthless dictatorship!
In 2007, speaking at the World Food Day, President Horst Köhler of Germany made the following extraordinarily insightful statement:
Hunger is not an inescapable destiny, but can be eliminated by wise policies. This requires first and foremost that the governments of the developing countries make food security for their populace a priority goal…. Democratic participation by the people is the best guarantee that governments will genuinely understand people’s basic needs and will take these into account. As the Indian Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has so aptly said, in countries where there are no elections and there is no opposition, governments do not need to worry about political fallout from their failure to eradicate poverty…. Good governance and a functioning executive are absolutely crucial for an economic policy that is geared to the needs of the people and will help to eradicate poverty…
Who can seriously expect a smallholder to invest his savings in his farm and machinery if he fears he may be thrown off the land at any time?… Excessive long-term help from outside can stifle the recipients’ initiative and frequently even results in aid-dependency. …Hunger is above all the result of political mistakes – in the developing countries as in the industrialized nations. To conquer hunger in our globalized world we need an honest, reliable and partnership-based development policy that spans the entire planet…
Perhaps President Obama could begin a new alliance for food security based on honesty and a genuine commitment to fundamental democratic principles that could help alter permanently Africa’s destiny as the beggar continent. The real solution to famine in Ethiopia lies in nourishing the emaciated Ethiopian body politic with clean elections, accountability, transparency, open political space and robust human rights protections. In 2009, he lamented, “There is no reason why Africa cannot be self-sufficient when it comes to food. I have family members who live in villages — they themselves are not going hungry — but live in villages where hunger is real.” President Obama should remind Zenawi and the rest of the African gang of dictators that though man does not live by bread alone, a hungry man in the village is an angry man!
Amharic translations of recent commentaries by the author may be found at:
http://www.ethiopianreview.com/amharic/?author=57
Previous commentaries by the author are available at:
Ethiopia’s spy agency – the Information Network Security Agency (INSA) — has stepped up surveillance and internet censorship. INSA has adopted Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology to eavesdrop, data mine, censor and intercept communications, according to the TOR Project.
Repressive governments such as China, Iran and Kazakhstan routinely employ DPI technology. Ethiopia’s spy agency conducts much of its surveillance through Ethio Telecom, the government monopoly that controls telephone and internet communications.
According to information security experts, Deep Packet Inspection allows a spy agency to “ look inside all traffic from a specific IP address, pick out the HTTP traffic, then drill even further down to capture only traffic headed to and from Gmail, and can even reassemble e-mails as they are typed out by the user.”
TOR promotes an open network that helps users defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy. TOR stopped working in Ethiopia on or around May 24, 2012.
June 3. A few days ago, we published a blog post exposing the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to filter all Internet traffic in Ethiopia, including connections to the Tor network. We concluded that they are doing some sort of TLS fingerprinting, but had not been able to figure out exactly what they are fingerprinting on. Since then, we have managed to determine exactly how Ethiopia blocks Tor and we have developed a workaround. We will publish a full technical analysis very soon.
The long-term solution for Tor users in Ethiopia is to use the Obfsproxy Tor Browser Bundle. The bundles are, unfortunately, not up to date at the moment, but this is something we are working on (see #5937 for details). In the meantime, try using one of the following three bridges:
Ethiopia under the boots of the Tigrai Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) is a two-faced country. Foreign alms givers and the ruling party pat each other on the back for a job well done. For the average Ethiopian, the country is an oppressive virtual prison without opportunities — a sad, hopeless place that forces many frustrated citizens to migrate to an abusive Middle East. Ethiopia’s rulers are addicted to the foreign exchange earnings that are created on the backs of these women. There is much dissonance between imaginary growth figures bandied about and the depressing reality of the average Ethiopian on the ground. It is hard to think of any other country in the world many of whose citizens are willing to risk life and limb to get away from an oppressive system that has denied them a living.
Ethiopia to export half a million maids annually to Saudi Arabia
By zehabesha.com
May 16, 2012 (Durame) — Ethiopia commenced sending 45,000 Ethiopian housemaids per month to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), an Ethiopian official said by phone today.
The controversial recruitment strategy will send 500,000 Ethiopian women annually to a country long known for abusing housemaids and foreign nationals in the strict Sharia-governed Kingdom.
Amid tougher restrictions for housemaids working in KSA by the Philippines, Indian, Sri Lankan, Indonesian and Kenyan governments, Ethiopian housemaids have been in high demand by families in Saudi Arabia.
With little to no support from the Government of Ethiopia, many Ethiopian women are often exploited by Saudi families, working grueling 16-hour days and having their passports and earnings withheld to prevent them from running away.
Poverty and high unemployment in Ethiopia continues to be the leading factor that drives young women towards the Middle East.
“There are no opportunities in Ethiopia for employment. I either become a prostitute in Addis or a housemaid in Saudi Arabia. I have chosen the latter to support my family,” said 23-year-old Asamenech Alemu by phone.
Earning up to SR4,000 (USD $1,060) a month for legal housemaids, nearly a year’s salary in Ethiopia, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian women will continue to flock to the Kingdom in search of employments, despite the risks of abuse.
Ethiopia: ‘Special Police’ Execute 10: Human Rights Watch
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (Nairobi) – An Ethiopian government-backed paramilitary force summarily executed 10 men during a March 2012 operation in Ethiopia’s eastern Somali region. Detailed information on the killings and other abuses by the force known as the “Liyu police” only came to light after a Human Rights Watch fact-finding mission to neighboring Somaliland in April.
On March 16 a Liyu police member fatally shot a resident of Raqda village, in the Gashaamo district of Somali region, who was trying to protect a fellow villager. That day, men from Raqda retaliated by killing seven Liyu police members, prompting a reprisal operation by dozens of Liyu police in four villages on March 16 and 17. During this operation the Liyu police force summarily executed at least 10 men who were in their custody, killed at least 9 residents in ensuing gunfights, abducted at least 24 men, and looted dozens of shops and houses.
“The killing of several Liyu police members doesn’t justify the force’s brutal retaliation against the local population,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The Liyu police abuses in Somali region show the urgent need for the Ethiopian government to rein in this lawless force.”
The Ethiopian government should hold those responsible for the killings and other abuses to account and prevent future abuses by the force.
Ethiopian authorities created the Liyu (“special” in Amharic) police in the Somali region in 2007 when an armed conflict between the insurgent Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and the government escalated. By 2008 the Liyu police became a prominent counterinsurgency force recruited and led by the regional security chief at that time, Abdi Mohammed Omar (known as “Abdi Illey”), who is now the president of Somali Regional State.
The Liyu police have been implicated in numerous serious abuses against civilians throughout the Somali region in the context of counterinsurgency operations. The legal status of the force is unclear, but credible sources have informed Human Rights Watch that members have received training, uniforms, arms, and salaries from the Ethiopian government via the regional authorities.
Human Rights Watch spoke to 30 victims, relatives of victims, and witnesses to the March incidents from four villages who had fled across the border to Somaliland and who gave detailed accounts of the events.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that on the evening of March 16 the Liyu police returned to Raqda following the clashes with the community earlier in the day that left seven police force members dead. The next morning, March 17, the Liyu police rounded up 23 men in Raqda and put them into a truck heading towards Galka, a neighboringvillage. Along the way the Liyu police stopped the truck, ordered five randomly selected men to descend, and shot them by the roadside. “It was three police who shot them,” a detainee told Human Rights Watch. “They shot them in the forehead and shoulder: three bullets per person.”
Also on March 17, at about 6 a.m., Liyu police in two vehicles opened an assault on the nearby village of Adaada. Survivors of the attack and victims’ relatives described Liyu police members going house to house searching for firearms and dragging men from their homes. The Liyu police also started shooting in the air. Local residents with arms and the Liyu police began fighting and at least four villagers were killed. Many civilians fled the village.
After several hours the Liyu police left but later returned when villagers came back to the village to bury those killed earlier that day. Fighting resumed in the afternoon and at least another five villagers were killed. The Liyu police took another four men from their homes and summarily executed them. A woman whose brother was a veterinarian told Human Rights Watch: “They caught my brother and took him outside. They shot him in the head and then slit his throat.”
For five days Liyu police also deployed outside Langeita, another village in the district, and restricted people’s movement. The Liyu police carried out widespread looting of shops and houses in at least two of the villages, residents said.
Human Rights Watch received an unconfirmed report that following the incidents local authorities arrested three Liyu police members. However it is unclear whether the members have been charged or whether further investigations have taken place.
The Ethiopian government’s response to reports of abuses in the Somali region has been to severely restrict or control access for journalists, aid organizations, human rights groups, and other independent monitors. Ethiopia’s regional and federal government should urgently facilitate access for independent investigations of the events by independent media and human rights investigators, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial and summary executions.
“For years the Ethiopian government has jailed and deported journalists for reporting on the Somali region,” Lefkow said. “Donor countries should call on Ethiopia to allow access to the media and rights groups so abuses can’t be hidden away.”
Liyu Police Abuses, March 2012
Summary Executions and Killings
Human Rights Watch interviewed witnesses and relatives of the victims who described witnessing at least 10 summary executions by the Liyu police on March 16 and 17. The actual number may be higher.
On March 16 in Raqda, a Liyu police member shot dead Abdiqani Abdillahi Abdi after he intervened to stop the paramilitary from harassing and beating another villager. Several villagers heard the Liyu police member saying to Abdiqani, “What can you do for him?” and then heard the shot.
The shooting ignited a confrontation between the Liyu police and the local community. The nine Liyu police who were deployed in Raqda then left via the road to the neighboring village of Adaada. A number of Raqda residents, including members of Abdiqani’s family, took their weapons, went after the Liyu police, and reportedly killed seven of them in a confrontation that followed.
The next morning, on March 17 at around 11 a.m., the Liyu police selected five men from a group of 23 men they had detained in Raqda and were taking towards Galka village in a truck. The Liyu police forced the five men to sit by the roadside and then shot them. Another detainee described what happened:
In between Galka and Raqda they stopped the truck. There were four other Liyu police vehicles accompanying the truck. This was around 11 a.m. They told five of us to get out of the lorry. They [randomly] ordered five out – none in particular. The man standing near the lorry ordered them to “Kill them, shoot them.” It was three police who shot them. They shot them in the forehead and shoulder: three bullets per person.
Another detainee saw the five being shot in the head and said the Liyu police threatened the remaining detainees, saying, “We will kill you all like this.”
The same day the Liyu police summarily executed four men in Adaada, where they had carried out house-to-house searches that morning. In all four cases multiple witnesses described the victims as unarmed and in custody when they were shot, either in the neck or head, shortly after having been dragged from their homes.
Witnesses described the summary execution of a veterinarian. The Liyu police dragged him from his home and shot him in the head, but when they realized that he was not dead, they slit his throat. The veterinarian’s middle-aged sister told Human Rights Watch:
They entered the home and asked where the man responsible for the home was. There were seven of them. They caught my brother and took him outside. They shot him in the head and then slit his throat. After killing him, they asked my niece where her father’s rifle was, but she could not find the keys and they hit her on the back of the shoulder with the butt of a gun.
Witnesses also told Human Rights Watch that a teenage boy was dragged from his uncle’s home, taken nearby, momentarily interrogated, and then shot. One witness heard him reciting a prayer before being killed. His body was left on the ground near a trash dump. A third victim, an elderly man, was taken from outside his home, interrogated for a short time, and then shot while standing. Several witnesses heard him pleading with the police to spare his life. The fourth victim was also taken from his home and shot shortly after.
At least nine other men were killed by the Liyu police in Adaada, but the circumstances of their deaths are unclear. There was armed resistance to the Liyu police attack, and some of the nine may have been armed. However, according to witnesses, the Liyu police shot several men, in the upper body and head, who were trying to escape. Two men fleeing were reportedly run over by Liyu police vehicles.
Abductions, Torture, and Ill-Treatment
During the house searches in Adaada, the Liyu police abducted a number of village men and tortured and mistreated several people, including at least three women.
An Adaada resident, one of the first to be taken from his home on the morning of March 17, described to Human Rights Watch his treatment by the Liyu police:
They entered and told my wife to shut up. Four men entered the house with four waiting outside. They came over to me and took me. They also took the gun from my house. They hit me with the butt of a gun and took me to a small river near my home. They tied a belt around my neck. I lost consciousness. They threw me in a berket [small water hole] that was 15 meters deep and then they threw branches over me. There was mud in the berket. I managed to climb up when I woke up.
The Liyu police seriously beat at least three women during house searches in Adaada. A young woman said that Liyu police members who had entered her home beat her after she told them that her husband was absent: “They said I was lying, they kicked me and crushed my head with the back of the gun. I had some injuries in my kidney. I lost a tooth.”
Three men who had been abducted in Raqda on March 17 told Human Rights Watch they were each detained for nine days. During the first 24 hours they were without water. For four days the Liyu police drove them around in an open truck between villages and towns in an apparent attempt to hide them from local residents, and possibly also from federal authorities.
During the first four days of their detention they were beaten by the police with sticks and gun butts. On at least two occasions the paramilitaries guarding them threatened to execute them. However, disagreements among the Liyu police on how to proceed apparently saved the men’s lives. One former detainee told Human Rights Watch:
We were driving around different villages and some of the police said they should release us because the federal government will give them problems, they will discipline us, as we have committed a crime. Others said, “Let us kill all 24.” There were different ideas among the police.
After four days in the truck they were detained for at least another four days out in the sun near the village of Langeita, where they received only minimal food and water. After that the Liyu police took them to Gashaamo, where they were released on March 25 as a result of negotiations between the regional government and clan elders.
Looting
Residents of Adaada and Langeita described widespread looting of property, food, and money from shops and houses by the Liyu police. Six villagers who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that their own houses, belongings, and property had been looted on March 17.
A 45-year-old woman from Langeita said that the Liyu police moved around the village in groups of five to seven and entered 10 stores. Two or three would enter a shop and steal shoes, clothes, drinks, and food. Two women said they could not return to their villages because they had lost all their property.
Reports from local authorities in neighbouring Somaliland suggest that discussions have taken place between clan elders from the affected villages and the regional authorities to negotiate a solution to the situation. None of the local residents who spoke with Human Rights Watch had current plans to return to their homes.
Background
Ethiopia’s Somali region has been the site of a low-level insurgency by the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) for more than a decade. The ONLF, an ethnic Somali armed movement largely supported by members of the Ogaden clan, has sought greater political autonomy for the region. Following the ONLF’s April 2007 attack on the oil installation in Obole, which resulted in the deaths of 70 civilians and the capture of several Chinese oil workers, the Ethiopian government carried out a major counterinsurgency campaign in the five zones of the region primarily affected by the conflict.
Human Rights Watch’s June 2008 report of its investigation into abuses in the conflict found that the Ethiopian National Defense Force and the ONLF had committed war crimes between mid-2007 and early 2008, and that the Ethiopian armed forces could be responsible for crimes against humanity based on the patterns of executions, torture, rape, and forced displacement.
These abuses have never been independently investigated. Ethiopia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry initiated an inquiry in late 2008 in response to the Human Rights Watch report, but that inquiry failed to meet the basic requirements of independence, timeliness, and confidentiality that credible investigations require. The government has repeatedly ignored calls for an independent inquiry into the abuses in the region.
Since the escalation of fighting in 2007 the Ethiopian government has imposed tight controls on access to Somali region for independent journalists and human rights monitors. In July 2011 two Swedish journalists who entered the region to report on the conflict were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 11 years in prison under Ethiopia’s vague and overbroad anti-terrorism law.
Gashaamo district, where the March 2012 events took place, is in Dhagabhur zone, one of the five affected by the conflict. However, it was not an area directly affected by fighting in previous years, and is largely populated by members of the ethnic Somali Isaaq clan, who are not generally perceived to be a source of support for the ONLF.
At the recent 2012 G8 Food Security Summit in Washington, D.C., Abebe Gellaw, a young Washington-based Ethiopian journalist, stood up in the gallery and thunderously proclaimed to dictator Meles Zenawi, “… Food is nothing without freedom…” Is he right?
In 1894, fourteen European and other countries including the U.S. (the “G-14” of the era) held a land grab conference in Berlin to “save” the Dark Continent. The publicity cover for the conference was the liberation of Africa from the slave trade and the need to undertake a civilizing mission. To that end, the Berlin Conference passed hollow resolutions. But the real agenda was to carve up Africa between the European powers peacefully and without the need for internecine imperialistic wars. The Scramble for Africa gave Britain a nice slice of Africa stretching from Cape-to-Cairo. France gobbled up much of western Africa. King Leopold II of Belgium took personal possession of the Congo. Portugal grabbed Mozambique and Angola. Italy snagged Somalia and laid claim to parts of Ethiopia.
It is noteworthy that few in the mainstream U.S. or international media paid any attention to the proceedings of the “New Alliance” food Summit. Even the international humanitarian organizations thought it was a publicity stunt. Oxfam was dismissive: “The New Alliance is neither new nor a true alliance. The rhetoric invokes small-scale producers, particularly women, but the plan must do more to bring them to the table.” ActionAid was instructive: “While the New Alliance touts the role of the private sector, as President Obama said, this must include even the smallest African cooperatives. The real innovators in African agriculture are women smallholder farmers. Any private sector partnership to improve food security must place them and African civil society at the center.”