The following is a statement from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)
A claim made by Ethiopian Prime Minister, Melez Zenawi at his most recent press conference that his regime will “soon sign an agreement” with the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has no basis in reality and is intended to mislead the international community in general and foreign oil firms in particular. The ONLF wishes to make clear that we have not been, and currently are not, in discussions with this regime. The ONLF has maintained a principled position that any negotiations with this regime can only take place under the auspices of the international community in a neutral venue with a third neutral party mediator. This regime has consistently refused neutral third party mediation under the auspices of the international community. Melez Zenawi clearly seeks to create the impression that he is on the verge of reaching a political settlement to the Ogaden conflict in a bid to convince oil companies that Ogaden is no longer a war zone and divert attention from Ethiopia’s recent so-called “‘election” results confirming that dissent will not be tolerated by this regime, even if it is through the ballot box.
The ONLF wishes to affirm that the resolve of our people and armed forces has only strengthened as a result this regimes continued acts of collective punishment and war crimes in Ogaden. Continued extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, forced displacement of civilians, rape, torture and use of international humanitarian aid for political purposes in Ogaden by this regime can not be concealed by misleading statements and a media blockade preventing international journalists from entering Ogaden to witness for themselves this regimes atrocities and military losses at the hands of our forces.
Ethiopia’s government ruling junta has detained about 1,000 opposition activists in the country’s Oromia region since May 22, the day before national elections, a leader of the Medrek opposition alliance said.
While most of those held have been released, supporter intimidation hasn’t stopped, Merara Gudina, a leader of the ethnic Oromo wing of Medrek, said in a phone interview today.
“Beatings have continued, people are still being arrested and receiving instant sentences of five or six months,” said Merara. “Including the eve of election day, about 1,000 of our party poll watchers have been detained.”
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and its allies won 545 of 547 parliamentary seats in the May 23 poll, according to provisional results posted to the website of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia. A European Union observer mission declared the campaign failed to meet certain “international commitments.”
Ethiopia’s government denied the opposition claims. “This is an outrageous allegation,” said Shimeles Kemal, a government spokesman, in a phone interview today. “The government doesn’twish to pursue the perpetrators of any infringements or irregularities.”
Medrek filed a complaint with the country’s electoral board yesterday, calling for the elections to be re-run. Both Medrek and the smaller All Ethiopia Unity Party have accused the ruling party of a widespread campaign of rigging and voter intimidation, including withholding food aid from opposition supporters.
Negasso Gidada, a leader of Medrek, says that four people were arrested in western Ethiopia in the days following the election after they reported finding ballots marked for Medrek stuffed in a latrine. He also said a Medrek activist had been “disappeared” near the eastern city of Harar. “The relatives don’t know where he is, whether he lives or not,” Negasso said in a phone interview from Addis Ababa. Shimeles said he was unaware of the incidents and would look into the allegations.
On May 23, Ethiopia’s incumbent Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was reelected in a landslide. Despite claims of fraud and coercion, Zenawi said: “We have no regrets and we offer no apologies.”
Ethiopian journalist and democracy activist Abebe Gellaw has worked for the Ethiopian Herald, the only English daily in the country, and is a founding editor of Addis Voice, an online journal in English and Amharic that focuses on Ethiopia. The visiting scholar at Stanford is currently working on a book, Ethiopia Under Meles: Why the Transition from Military Rule to Democracy Failed.
He has an op-ed piece, “Ethiopia’s Embarrassing Elections,” in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.
He spoke to the Stanford News Service about the election.
What are the implications of Meles Zenawi’s win for human rights in Ethiopia?
It is a serious setback. The reason why this 99.6 percent election victory is outrageously ludicrous is due to the fact that it can simply be interpreted as if Ethiopians have unanimously endorsed their suffering and abuse under the Meles regime. This can’t happen anywhere.
Supporters of Ethiopia’s opposition coalition have been beaten, harassed and jailed, and one of the country’s last independent newspapers closed in December after its senior staff fled the country for fear of arrest. One opposition parliamentary candidate was stabbed to death, although the government denied involvement. A candidate was arrested while campaigning and sentenced to six months in prison on a contempt charge. Despite government claims, isn’t that evidence of fraud?
The whole situation is even worse than that. There is no question that the elections have been fraudulent. No repressive regime that kills, muffles, harasses and jails innocent citizens can win free and fair elections.
Yet the United States doesn’t seem prepared to put pressure on a stable government in an otherwise war-torn region. Why?
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is considered a key U.S. ally in the war on terror despite his appalling human rights record and making matters worse in Somalia. It appears that the chaos in Somalia, the turbulence in the Sudan and the anti-American stance of Eritrea has bought U.S. silence in exchange for security and military cooperation.
Many Ethiopians see the reactions from Washington as a lip service, a kind of “rest in peace” for democracy.
The U.S. State Department expressed “concern” and urged Meles’ administration to strengthen its democratic institutions and offer a “level playing field” to electoral candidates free from intimidation and favoritism in order to ensure “more inclusive results.” Is that going to mean anything?
Not really. This call should have come five years ago. The process of killing any hope for democracy started in earnest in the aftermath the 2005 disputed elections.
When the Meles regime realized the danger of allowing relatively contested elections, it launched a series of measures that derailed any democratic gains in the last years.
Over 13 popular newspapers were closed down, critical websites were blocked, civic society organizations were crippled as they were forbidden from raising funding from foreign sources. The Voice of America was jammed, peaceful assembly was almost totally banned, freedom of expression was criminalized and serious dissidents like “Ethiopia’s Aung San Suu Kyi,” Birtukan Mideksa, were locked up. Where was the U.S. during that time? Almost nowhere.
The Bush administration even blocked the passage of HR2003, the Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007, which was aimed at consolidating respect for human rights, democracy and economic freedom in Ethiopia. After the bill passed the House of Representatives, it died in the Senate. The Ethiopian government had hired DLA Piper, which received $50,000 per month to lobby against the bill, and was threatening that the Ethio-U.S. alliance would be over.
What can and should the U.S. government do?
The Meles regime has received tens of billions of dollars from the United States since it came to power in 1991. The financial, military and diplomatic support of the United States has undoubtedly consolidated the regime. Meles continues to pretend that his regime can survive without America’s support, but he knows full well that he still needs a lot of propping up. Over 30 percent of the national budget comes from foreign aid.
The future of Ethiopia is now more uncertain and it can potentially join Somalia if serous conflicts break out. What makes Ethiopia a ticking time bomb is that the regime has fragmented the country along ethnic lines in pursuit of its divide-and-rule tactics.
Advocates of armed struggle as the only viable option to bring about change are likely to get serious listeners.
The warlords in Somalia and the regimes in Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea are part of the problem, as their tyrannies and irresponsible style of governance will continue to make the sub-region more unstable and violent.
The U.S. can actually send stronger messages to Zenawi, who has been convinced that he is indispensable and irreplaceable. It should not turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against the people of Ethiopia. President Obama should also live up to his promise of standing by the bitter struggles of oppressed people to end tyranny. There must be no exceptions.
A few months ago, you said expressing your views can be “extremely dangerous” in Ethiopia.
The majority of Ethiopian journalists who dared to do their jobs honestly suffered immensely. The reason why hundreds of journalists live in exile is due to the fact that the regime jails, tortures and harasses journalists. In Ethiopia, the regime has been engaged in the business of closing down so many serious newspapers and attacking journalists without any consequences for the last 15 years.
As an example let me mention the difficulties even the Voice of America is facing in Ethiopia. In 2005, four VOA broadcasters and reporters as well as one manager, all naturalized U.S. citizens and permanent residents, were accused of fictitious treason and genocide charges – charges later dropped under international pressure.
Since earlier this year, the Voice of America has been jammed. When reporters asked Zenawi why his government was jamming VOA, he said the station “copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda” and he accused it of instigating genocide.
An Ethiopian journalist, who declined to give his name for fear of retribution, told the Wall Street Journal that many Ethiopians expected the United States to do more than send food. “People are starving for freedom, not just for food.” Would you agree?
Food aid is starving Ethiopia. Food aid has made the regime think that feeding the starving millions is the responsibility of the West. Earlier this month, I had a chance to raise a question to Meles Zenawi at the World Economic Forum on Africa, which was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
He was a panelist on vision for African agriculture. I plucked up my courage and asked him why millions of Ethiopians are still starving under his leadership while the country has huge water resources and unutilized virgin land. I asked him why he is giving away hundreds of thousands of hectares of land to Saudi Arabia and China to grow food for their own people. I also wanted to know why he is not privatizing land instead of using it as a means of control for the ruling party.
He was visibly unhappy about the questions. According to him, distributing food aid was an achievement. It is very unfortunate that Ethiopia is being led by people who lack creative thinking and courage to take responsibility.
The hunger for freedom is something that cannot be addressed with food aid from America and Canada. Credible research indicates that democracies and free countries never suffer from extreme food insecurity and famine. The Nobel Prize winner economist Amartya Sen, for instance, theorized that in countries where there is relative freedom and democratic governance famine can hardly occur. Unfortunately, food aid has now been institutionalized in Ethiopia. That is a disaster for Ethiopia, which is a very proud nation.
Asmara — President Isaias Afwerki is attending the Franco-African Summit that is being held in the City of Nice, France, this week.
More than 50 Heads of State and Government, as well as representatives of a number of international and regional organizations and associations are taking part in the Summit.
In the course of the Summit that would continue until tomorrow, various agenda items are under discussion, including international peace and stability, climate and development, as well as global governance, among others.
One of the big African stories of the last eight days or so has been the holding of key parliamentary elections in one of the continent’s most populous countries. Ethiopia has been such a major player in not just regional politics, but, equally world affairs, not least since it openly chose to back the United States and other Western governments in their global against terror.
So, when, only last weekend, 32 million Ethiopian flocked polling-stations across the country, several interested parties around the world waited anxiously to see how the exercise was going to pan out. Was it going to be better than the parliamentary elections of five years ago, after which all hell went loose? Would it be fair, free and transparent? Was their any chance that the ruling EPRDF would be voted out of office, after running the country for nearly two decades? And what was the Ethiopian opposition, as well as the international community, going to make of the outcome of this vote?
Well, since the outcome of some 500-plus contested parliamentary seats became public earlier in the week, criticism of the election process has only grown. People find it astonishing that a mere three parliamentary sets went to the opposition combined.
Merdrek and the All Ethiopia’s Unity Party are Ethiopia’s two largest political parties. They received a crushing defeat in last weekend’s national polls. They are saying, however, that the contest is not over yet, and have called for new elections. They accuse the ruling party of intimidation, fraud, harassment and violence. Early results showed the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi leading in every single corner of the country, including the capital, Addis Ababa, where opposition to the ruling E.P.R.D.F. has traditionally been fierce.
The opposition also say they do not expect the courts to grant their request for the holding of a fresh vote. Even Ethiopia’s conventional courts, along side the elections board, are not known to be independent of the ruling party.
The victorious party in these elections has also been hitting back at its critics, and none other than Prime Minster Meles himself has been leading he way. Reacting to opposition demands for himself has been leading the way. Reacting to opposition demands for a new vote, Meles told journalists, last week, that the law in Ethiopia allows for parties to demand a new vote; but, as he said, the petitioners must first be able to prove in court that the ballot, whose legitimacy they were disputing, was fraudulent.
The Prime Minister’s take on the disputed vote was that it had panned out successfully, because, as he saw it, voters were able to choose candidates without intimidation or coercion. To claims by the twenty seven-member European Union that the exercise was marred by lack of level-playing field, Meles described those as “pure opinion base on rumors.
The EU represent a big-time provider of aid to Ethiopia, and their views on the vote certainly cannot be taken lightly. Apart from the EU, as well as the Ethiopians opposition, who say the poll was less than fair, US-based Human Rights watch also has been speaking out. As the human rights body put it, the May 23 elections were “an orderly facade”.
Ethiopia happens to be the staunchest ally of the United States in the entire region of East Africa. Despite that, Washington has felt compelled to take a swipe at the current EPRDE government in Addis Ababa. Condemning the manner the vote was conducted, a U.S. government spokesman accused the Ethiopian authorities of repression, fraud and intimidation. He attacked the election process — saying it didn’t create an environment of free and fair elections. The official, P.J. Crowley, who is the leading spokesman in he U.S. State Department complained that while the U.S. has commended the Ethiopians for the co-operation on security and other issues, the Obama Administration was “disappointed with the conduct of the election”. He warned that bilateral ties between their two countries will be affected by whether or not the government in Addis addresses elections concerns.
According to Mr. Crowley, the freedom of choice for Ethiopian voters was constrained throughout the electoral process by actions of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government, the National Elections Board and the ruling party and its supporters. He said election laws and procedures enacted after Ethiopia’s last polls back in 2005 created a “clear and decisive advantage” to the ruling EPRDF alliance.
“It is important that steps be taken to level the playing field, and to allow all factions to take part in the process,” Crowley said. “Whether that occurs, he went on, “will influence the future direction of U.S.-Ethiopia relations.”
If Ethiopia valued its relationship with Africa, Crowley said, then, it could not ignore “this strong message “. Again, he said: “We value the co-operation we have with he Ethiopian government on a range of issues, including regional security, climate change, for example. So, we will continue to engage this government. But, we will make clear that there are steps they need to take to improve their democratic institutions.”
Clearly, the Americans were incensed by the refusal of the Ethiopian authorities to allow an American embassy official, who wanted to observe the voting, to travel outside Addis Ababa to visit polling places.
Did the vote fall short of international standards? “Most definitely,” has been the answer from both the U.S. government and E.U.
But, in an equally combative manner, Meles has been responding to the criticism, as well as the veiled threats. On Wednesday, the embattled Meles told reporters in Addis that U.S. criticism “is politically motivated.” He said, “…if the outcome of our elections are such that they cannot continue our partnership, then, permit me to say we’ve been very grateful for the assistance they have rendered so far.”
Meles said, in effect, that his government will not allow itself to be “bossed around” just because it receives aid. The U.S. is the single largest donor to Ethiopia, a country that is no stranger to famine, drought, mass starvation and civil conflict. Every year, the U.S. delivers roughly a billion dollars in financial assistance the country.
Following the last election in 2005, opposition protesters, who were alleging fraud, took to the streets. The resultant crackdown by the government killed over 200 people. Another 100 or so leaders of the opposition, journalist and protesters were arrested. Most of them were pardoned and released within two years. However, many opposition leaders now live in exile or are still holed up in jail.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) — Girma Seifu was at home hosting a dinner party to celebrate what looked like a sure parliamentary seat win when he got the phone call that would force him into the spotlight.
Ethiopia’s opposition coalition, the eight-party Medrek, had won only one seat in the 547-seat parliament — his.
“The secretary general of the party called,” says the newly elected MP, in his Addis Ababa office. “He said, ‘you could be the only one’. I didn’t expect that.”
The almost complete wipeout of opposition in the Horn of Africa country’s parliament was a shock. Analysts had expected the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to win but not by that margin.
Aside from Girma and one independent parliamentarian, every winning MP is either a member of the EPRDF or from one of several closely allied parties.
The European Union and the United States have said the poll did not meet international standards. The country’s main opposition parties are calling for a rerun, citing pre-poll intimidation and even the stuffing of ballot boxes.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says his government won on its development record and he has offered an olive branch to the defeated opposition with the possible setting up of inter-party forums outside parliament to discuss major legislation.
Girma may also be given extra time to speak in the house.
“I think they are going to give me more time because otherwise they could have the parliamentary discussions at the EPRDF headquarters,” he said.
Girma won his seat in Addis Ababa’s Mercato district, seen as Africa’s biggest open-air market and one of the city’s poorer areas.
“PENALTY SHOOT-OUT”
“I won because a lot of my voters were merchants who are economically independent,” he said. “They weren’t civil servants or unemployed and subject to the same forms of intimidation as a lot of other people. I was lucky.”
Girma’s victory was slim, however, and he only beat his ruling party opponent by a margin of 114 votes in a constituency where both he and his father were born.
“If it was a game of football, you could say I won in a penalty shoot-out,” he says.
The father of two has been involved in politics since the last elections in 2005 but this will be his first time in parliament, where he will be without a leader.
The 2005 elections ended with the then opposition disputing the government’s victory. Riots broke out in Addis Ababa in which 193 protestors and seven policemen were killed. The top opposition leaders were jailed until 2007.
The leader of Girma’s party, the Unity for Democracy and Justice, which is part of Medrek, was sent back to jail, however, for violating the terms of her pardon.
For Girma, the reason Birtukan Mideksa is in jail is clear.
“It’s part of the game the government plays,” he says. “She was jailed because she’s a strong lady. If she had been free, the result might have been different.”
Despite the fact the opposition is set to challenge the result in court, Girma doesn’t hold out much hope for a rerun and is resolved to going it alone.
And the novice politician is putting on a brave face ahead of the challenge.
Meles is famously sharp and well known for his sometimes humiliating putdowns.
But Girma says he will not let that worry him.
“If I have a question, I have to ask,” he says. “I know he is a strong opponent. But I won’t be intimidated because of that. I will simply put my issues forward.” (Editing by Richard Lough and Diana Abdallah)
