By Yilma Bekele
Let just say it is painful to hear that a prestigious University like Columbia has invited Ethiopia’s tyrannical leader Meles Zenawi to speak at the annual World Leaders Forum. As an Ethiopian I feel insulted and mocked upon.
Then again we Ethiopians are used to having our country and people judged with different sets of values and standards than what is applied to others. The cowardly stand taken by the League of Nations that failed to condemn Italy’s aggression against a member state served a severe blow to the Organization. Emperor Haile Selassie’s prophetic words ‘”It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” Still rings true today.
We will always remember former President Jimmy Carter’s retreat from telling the truth on the aftermath of the 2005 general elections. When the PM declared state of emergency this is what Mr. Cater said, “We believe collectively that the decision of the prime minister was not excessive in preventing any possible arousal of animosity or violence among his own supporters or the opposition.” Such endorsement of an illegal action emboldened the tyrant to let loose his private Agazi force and specially trained sharpshooters on unarmed civilian protesters and the world ignored our cry.
Columbia University is not ‘just another’ institution. It is the fifth oldest in the US (1754) and is credited with affiliation with the most Noble Prize winners in the world. The World Leaders Forum that extended the invitation has the following regarding its guest:
Under the seasoned governmental leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, now in his fourth term, and vision of the Tigrai Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Ethiopia has made and continues to make progresses in many areas including in education, transportation, health and energy.
Does that statement reflect facts on the ground, as we Ethiopians know it? For such a prestigious research University the statement seems to have been written by a freshman that is not yet clued on the importance of fact check and adherence to higher academic standard of proof before publishing. TPLF is neither visionary (student of Albania’s Enver Hoxha) EPDRF is a subsidiary of TPLF and the progress is a mirage concocted for donors and enablers and we can prove that without much fanfare.
Here is your ‘visionary’ leader undressed as seen by his poverty stricken subjects that pray daily to all the Gods for his quick departure from the land of Abeshas.
His visionary policies include:
Land: The State owns all of Ethiopia and the people lease the land and pay rent. The State uses its ownership to reward or punish the citizen depending on ethnic and political affiliation.
Business and Industry: All key industries and private businesses are owned by the TPLF party and it affiliates. EFFORT is a super conglomerate owned and controlled by the party. It owns Banks, Cement factory, Brewery, Insurance, Transportation, Tannery, Engineering etc. EFFORT is bigger than Ethiopia and is not accountable to the State.
Communications. Telephone service both land and cellular is owned by the state. It is a cash cow for TPLF that uses the income for its own survival (on security, bribing Bantustan chiefs, and buying individuals loyalty) instead of upgrading and modernizing the system, Thus in this day of explosion of cellular technology Ethiopia is next to last in Africa.
Media: The state controls the single Television and short wave radio transmission services. ESAT (Ethiopian Satellite Television) that is trying to level the playing field by offering independent news and entertainment service from abroad is being subjected to jamming using sophisticated Chinese technology. The print media has been decimated and at the moment on life support with no chance of survival. Publishers, editors and reporters are victims of secret service death squads and forced exile from their homeland. Internet when available is still slow dial up service with all ‘independent’ sites blocked.
Politics: TPLF divided our country into ethnic Bantustans called ‘Kilils’ like as in South Africa during Apartheid rule. This is your basic ‘divide and rule’ policy pursued by colonialists to have the natives fight for the limited resources. In theory although the Kilils supposedly have their own people in charge, in practice it is TPLF cadres that are running the show.
The so-called EPDRF is a Hollywood style façade for show. The different Party’s are the brainchild of TPLF and nothing more than puppets on a string. Any opposition that dares to challenge the mighty TPLF is subjected to intimidation, harassment and cooption. No viable opposition is tolerated. The Chairman of Andenet Party Bertukan Mideksa is solitary confinement and denied visitors, Red Cross and medical attention. As for the four elections they were nothing but a farce. The recent one in May of 2010 was the ultimate joke played on the world where the single ethnic based party garnered 99% of the vote. So much for participatory democracy.
Dear organizers, if you have only talked to Ethiopians at home you would have found out that famine is a fact of life in TPLF’s Ethiopia. ‘According to estimates by the United Nations World Food Program, 14.3 million people in Ethiopia are threatened with starvation—every fifth person in the country http://www.wfp.org/
When we say your ‘visionary’ leader is a murder it is not some kind of metaphor rather a statement with verifiable facts. Ask Addis Abeba University students that have been recipient of Woyane justice. Unlike Columbia University, AAU has become a cadre training institutions with most of its able and seasoned professors dismissed by the PM (1991) students murdered (1993, 2001) and independent associations banned.
We Ethiopians are a little confused when you claim ‘progress’ that is being made by the regime under the PM. On the other hand we are perfectly aware of the fact that our country ranks 171 on the UN Human Development Index. I doubt being ahead of nine countries is a source of pride. I am sure the PM will mention stability and peace as one of his legacy. That is not rue either. Since his assumption of power there has been inter ethnic clashes in Gambella, Awasa, Jimma, Ogaden, Afar, Arsi and all university campuses including the TPLF capital Mekele. Today’s Ethiopia is a police state with security personnel in every government office, neighborhood control centers (Kebeles) and so called Kilils or Ethiopian Bantustans.
With all due respect your invitation of a dictator whose crime has been recorded by such credible organizations as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors without Boarders, International Federation of Journalists and your own State Department Human Rights Report is very perplexing for his victims. I very much doubt you will sleep easy after reading any of the above organizations reports.
You can talk all you want about ‘freedom of speech’ but the fact of the matter is that your honored guest does not believe in that. It also makes one wonder if you will accord the same right to Osama Bin laden or how you would feel if the shoe is on the other feet and Addis Ababa University invites Mr. Bin laden to expound on the his ‘seasoned leadership’ of a terrorist organization and the progress he is making in extending his tentacles all over the world.
I assure you with or without your help Ethiopia will be free. Your honored guest will be tried by the Ethiopian people for his crimes and our country will rise up one day to usher liberty and the rule of law in our ancient land. After over thirty years of civil war, dictatorship, famine we are one tired people. Your ill advised action makes us sad but not despondent because we know we are capable of overcoming any hurdle and rebuild our country to join the international community as free and equal.
Alemayehu G. Mariam
September 17, 2010
President Lee C. Bollinger
Office of the President
Columbia University
202 Low Library
535 West 116th Street
New York, NY 10027
By Fax: (212) 854-9973 and
Email: [email protected]
Dear President Bollinger:
On September 22, 2010, Mr. Meles Zenawi is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at an event sponsored by Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought. There is widespread belief among Ethiopian Americans that Mr. Zenawi’s invitation to speak at this event necessarily implies the University’s endorsement and support of Mr. Zenawi’s views, policies and actions in Ethiopia. I am writing to request your office to issue an official statement clarifying your position concerning Mr. Zenawi as you so eloquently did when Mahmood Ahmadinejad of Iran spoke on your campus on September 24, 2007.
Let me say at the outset that I believe Mr. Zenawi has a “right” to speak at your university, though he is not a United States citizen or lawful resident. I firmly believe, though others may reasonably disagree with me, that any individual who is present in this great country has the right to free expression under the protective umbrella of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. I make no exceptions for Mr. Zenawi.
In your prefatory remarks preceding Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech in 2007, you offered an exposition on free speech that is instructive to all who believe in freedom of expression.[1] You said that the “genius of the American idea of free speech” is to empower us not “to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear” and “to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil.” Nowhere is your statement true than in a university where the denizens “have a deep and almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth.” I believe, as you do, that there must be no obstruction to the free exchange of ideas in the university setting. . As you correctly pointed out to Mr. Ahmadinejad, open inquiry, debate and dialogue are “required by existing norms of free speech in the American university.”
In your remarks you specified five substantive issue areas for which Mr. Ahmadinejad deserved just condemnation and censure. One of them was Mr. Ahmadinejad’s “brutal crackdown on scholars, journalists and human rights advocates” in Iran. Citing Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports, you deplored the execution of more than 200 persons in Iran in 2007, including at least two children. You also expressed just outrage over his denials and mockery of irrefutable facts about the Holocaust, his failure to adhere to international regimes on nuclear power and his support for terrorism. In righteous indignation, you told Mr. Ahmadinejad: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”
Petty and cruel dictators, Mr. President, have also infested the African continent and threaten the lives of African peoples on a daily basis. In Ethiopia, for nearly two decades, Mr. Zenawi has lorded over one of the cruelest dictatorships in the modern world. Let the facts speak for themselves:
In 2005, security forces under the personal command and control of Mr. Zenawi massacred 193 unarmed protesters and inflicted severe gunshot wounds on 763 others.[2] Today, the murderers walk the streets free.
In May 2010, Mr. Zenawi made a travesty of democracy by claiming that his party won the parliamentary election by 99.6 percent. The European Union Election Observation Mission described the same election in its preliminary report as “marred by a narrowing of political space and an uneven playing field.”[3]
In December 2008, Mr. Zenawi arrested and reinstated a life sentence on Birtukan Midekssa, the only woman political party leader in Ethiopian history. He kept her under extreme conditions in prison. In describing Birtukan’s situation, the most recent U.S. State Department Human Rights Report stated: “She was held in solitary confinement until June [2009], despite a court ruling that indicated it was a violation of her constitutional rights. She was also denied access to visitors except for a few close family members, despite a court order granting visitor access without restrictions.”[4] Birtukan is considered to be a political prisoner by the various international human rights organizations. “Amnesty International considers her a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned for peacefully exercising her right to freedom of expression and association.”[5]
A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Zenawi shut down all distance education programs in the country, including those providing higher education and technical training to over 75,000 students in flagrant violation of the applicable laws of the country on the pretext that such programs were interested “only in collecting money.”[6]
For the past several years, Mr. Zenawi has misused the legislative process in Ethiopia to institutionalize repression and legitimize gross human rights violations. According to Human Rights Watch[7]:
In 2009 the government passed two pieces of legislation that codify some of the worst aspects of the slide towards deeper repression and political intolerance. A civil society law passed in January is one of the most restrictive of its kind, and its provisions will make most independent human rights work impossible. A new counterterrorism law passed in July permits the government and security forces to prosecute political protesters and non-violent expressions of dissent as acts of terrorism.
Mr. Zenawi has shuttered private newspaper in Ethiopia and effectively eliminated the independent press. The Committee to Protect Journalists in its recent report stated[8]:
The government enacted harsh legislation that criminalized coverage of vaguely defined “terrorist” activities, and used administrative restrictions, criminal prosecutions, and imprisonments to induce self-censorship… The government has had a longstanding practice of bringing trumped-up criminal cases against critical journalists, leaving the charges unresolved for years as a means of intimidating the defendants… Ethiopia as the only country in sub-Saharan Africa with ‘consistent’ and ‘substantial’ filtering of web sites…
In your remarks, you challenged Mr. Ahmadinejad on his abuse of the Press Law to ban writers for criticizing the ruling system and rhetorically asked: “Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?” You need to pose the same question to Mr. Zenawi: “Why are you so afraid of Ethiopian citizens expressing their opinions for change?”
Mr. Zenawi has jammed the Voice of America, the official external radio and television broadcasting service of the United States Government, claiming that the 68 year-old service is the equivalent of the Radio Mille Collines, which coordinated the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Mr. Zenawi said: “We have been convinced for many years that in many respects, the VOA Amharic Service has copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda in its wanton disregard of minimum ethics of journalism and engaging in destabilizing propaganda.”[9]
When Mr. Ahmadinejad outrageously denied the occurrence of the Holocaust, you told him without mincing words: “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.” Mr. Zenawi needs to be similarly rebuked for equating the Voice of America with the wicked and loathsome Radio Mille Collines.
Mr. Zenawi runs one of the most repressive regimes in Africa. Human Rights Watch in its recent report stated[10]: “Ethiopia’s citizens are unable to speak freely, organize political activities, and challenge their government’s policies–through peaceful protest, voting, or publishing their views–without fear of reprisal.” The report described Mr. Zenawi’s regime as one masquerading in “a veneer of democratic pretension hiding a repressive state apparatus.”
Since 2006, a number of bills have been introduced in the United States Congress to restrain Mr. Zenawi from engaging in gross and sustained human rights violations, and to help him move towards democracy. H.R. 2003[11] (“Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007”) co-sponsored by 85 members passed the House of Representatives in 2007, but failed to clear the Senate. That bill sought to
support human rights, democracy, independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press, peacekeeping capacity building, and economic development in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia; strengthen U.S. collaboration with Ethiopia in the Global War on Terror; secure the release of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Ethiopia; foster stability, democracy, and economic development in the region; support humanitarian assistance efforts, especially in the Ogaden region; and strengthen U.S.-Ethiopian relations.
Just last month, Senators Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy introduced S.B. 3757[12] (“Support for Democracy and Human Rights in Ethiopia Act of 2010”) to
to ensure the autonomy and fundamental freedoms of civil society organizations, to respect the rights of and permit non-violent political parties to operate free from intimidation and harassment, including releasing opposition political leaders currently imprisoned; to strengthen the independence of its judiciary, and to allow Voice of America and other independent media to operate and broadcast without interference in Ethiopia [and] to promote respect for human rights and accountability.
It is vitally important for academics to speak truth to power. When you stood up and spoke truth to Ahmadinejad on September 24, 2007, you proved to the world the value of “hav[ing] the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil.” On September 22, 2010, you have another golden opportunity to show the world that you and Columbia University will “confront the mind of evil” regardless of its origin on the planet. As millions of Iranians and others rejoiced hearing your words on September 24, 2007, so now millions of Ethiopians eagerly await your statement on September 22, 2010 that Columbia University condemns all violations of human rights, repression and theft of elections in Ethiopia by Mr. Zenawi and his regime.
Permit me to conclude my letter by paraphrasing your eloquent words when you expressed your disgust for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s actions: “I am only a professor and a lawyer, and today I feel all the weight of the Ethiopian people yearning to express their revulsion for what Mr. Zenawi has done to them over the past two decades.”
Sincerely,
Alemayehu G. Mariam, Ph.D., J.D.
Professor and Attorney at Law
Department of Political Science
California State University, San Bernardino
Cc: Profs. Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, William Easterly (NYU)
Columbia Daily Spectator
[1] http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/07/09/lcbopeningremarks.html
[2] http://ethiomedia.com/carepress/yared_testimony.pdf
[3] http://www.eueom.eu/files/pressreleases/english/eu-eom-ethiopia-preliminary-statement-25052010_en.pdf
[4] http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/af/135953.htm
[5] http://www.amnesty.org/en/individuals-at-risk/write-for-rights/birtukan-mideksa
[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ethiopia-indoctri-nation_b_706199.html
[7] http://www.hrw.org/en/node/87604
[8] http://cpj.org/2010/02/attacks-on-the-press-2009-ethiopia.php
[9] http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/east/Ethiopian-PM-Says-He-Will-Authorize-Jamming-VOA-88480397.html
[10] http://www.hrw.org/en/node/89126/section/1 (Human Rights Watch, “One Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure, Violations of Freedom of Expression and Association in Ethiopia (2010)), pp. 2,3
[11] http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h2003rfs.txt.pdf
[12] http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:s3757is.txt.pdf
Dictator Meles Zenawi said his country is expected to achieve the World Banks’s (WB) lower-middle income level classification by 2015, under the recently launched development and transformation plan – a new strategy aimed at creating an ambitious 15% growth in the Ethiopian economy over the next five years.
By his country what Meles refers to is Tigray, not Ethiopia. To Meles Ethiopia is a country to be looted, not developed.
Also it is to be remembered that 15 years ago he promised that Ethiopians will eat 3 times a day in 10 years. (watch the video on the right) Now, 15 years later, millions of Ethiopians face starvation, while Meles and his TPLF mafia are amassing enormous wealth, most of which are being invested in the U.S. and other developed countries.
Conveying good wishes for the Ethiopian New Year 2003, which was celebrated on 11 September, Meles said that his country will join the lower-middle income category, provided that the nation successfully implements the five year growth and transformation plan set by the government.
He went on to say that – “Ethiopia will then be among the upper-middle income countries in the world in ten years from now.”
Columbia Spectator, a daily paper produced by Columbia University students, investigates how the university came up with the statement that described Ethiopia’s tyrant as a “seasoned” leader.
We just told you about how the website for the World Leaders Forum, as of yesterday, contained an oddly laudatory bio page for Ethiopian Prime Minister (and alleged tyrant) Meles Zenawi. In a statement, the University said it obtained some of that information “from the [Ethiopian] government’s Mission.” But did it really?
We weren’t sure what the University meant by “the government’s Mission.” Did Ethiopian ambassadors—or some sort of official statement from the Ethiopian government—somehow inspire the WLF staff to describe Prime Minister Zenawi as a “seasoned” leader on the WLF’s website? That seems to be what the University was implying with its statement, but when pressed, a Columbia spokesperson refused to comment further.
So we did some googling, and we found that the World Leaders Forum website probably drew heavily not from Ethiopian diplomats, but from a random Internet comment (the first one on this page, from user “shewit1″) when they drafted the original bio page for Zenawi.
Shewit1 is a well-known TPLF cadres whose full time job is to write positive things on the web about his boss Meles Zenawi. He is active in EthiopianReview.com‘s own forum. Read the full text here
