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The growing child prostitution and human trafficking in Ethiopia should put all Ethiopians to shame

Posted on , Updated on by Negash

EDITOR’S NOTE: While Ethiopia’s regime cooks up fantastic numbers to show double digit growth, the realities on the ground are more sobering and depressing.  The political elite is addicted to foreign handouts and human trafficking. In an economy where unemployment runs as high as 50% and foreign exchange is continuously in short supply, the regime has embarked on a major initiative to export young women for profit. Within Ethiopia itself, poverty, bad cultural practices and the presence of so many alms givers in a destitute country is exposing poor and vulnerable children to exploitation.

Stolen Childhoods: Child Prostitution And Trafficking In Ethiopia

By Graham Peebles

Prostitution, perhaps the most distressing form of child abuse, is an epidemic throughout Ethiopia. The innocence of a childhood shattered, causing a deep feeling of shame, poisoning the sense of self and excluding the child from education, friends and the broader society. A society, which stands idly by whilst children suffer, speaking not in the face of extreme exploitation, denying the truth of extensive child exploitation and acts not, is a society in collusion.

In the capital, prostitution abounds, “It is difficult to give an exact figure for the prevalence of child prostitution in Addis Ababa but observation reveals that the numbers are increasing at an alarming rate in the city”1 The joint Save the Children Denmark and Addis Ababa City administration (SCD) study states: “Interviewing children revealed that over 50% started engaging in prostitution below 16 years of age. The majority work more than six hours per day”

There are many grades or levels of prostitution, “Some children engage in commercial sex in nightclubs, bars and brothels, while others simply stand on street corners waiting for men to pick them up.” (CPAA)

The SCD study “identified types of child prostitution: working on the streets; working in small bars; working in local arki or alcohol houses; working in rented houses/beds and; working in rent places for khat/drugs use. Each location exposes the children to different risks and hazards.”

“The major problems that have been faced by children engaged in prostitution include: rape, beating, hunger, etc. Based on the responses of children engaged in prostitution, about 45% of them have been raped before they engaged in the activity”. (CPAA)

The dangers associated with child prostitution affect the girls physical and mental/emotional health. Violent physical abuse, being hit and raped is common, Birtuken a 17 year old child sex worker (CSW), “prostitution is disastrous to the physical and social wellbeing of a person.” (CPAA)

The impact on the long-term mental health of a child working in prostitution, can often cause chronic psychological problems, “the emotional health consequences of prostitution include severe trauma, stress, depression, anxiety, self-medication through alcohol and drug abuse; and eating disorders.2

The risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) and HIV/Aids is great, so too the chances of unwanted pregnancies, as men, immersed in selfishness and ignorance, refuse to wear condoms. Their arrogance and macho bravado is a major cause in the spread of HIV/Aids in Ethiopia USAID3 suggests, “1.3million people are now living with the virus in the country”. It is estimated that “70 per cent of female infertility is caused by sexually transmitted diseases that can be traced back to their husbands or partners.”4 “Women in prostitution have been blamed for this epidemic of STDs when, in reality, studies confirm that it is men who buy sex in the process of migration who carry the disease from one prostituted woman to another and ultimately back to their wives and girlfriends.” (EoP)

There are various causes for the growth in child prostitution in urban and rural areas as well as Addis Ababa, arranged marriages, illegal under Federal Law is cited as a key factor, “Research carried out in 2005 established that most victims of commercial sexual exploitation found in the streets of Addis Ababa had been married when they were below 15 years of age” (SAACSEC) In highlighting the factors that drive children away from their homes and into commercial sex work, the CPAA study found that “Most of the child prostitutes came from regions to look for a job, due to conflicts at home, early marriage and divorce.

Poverty, death of one or both parents, child trafficking, high repetition rates and drop out from school and lack of awareness about the consequence of being engaged in prostitution are key factors that push young girls to be involved in commercial sex work”. (CPAA)

In addition to arranged marriage, which is a significant cause, the study found that “the major reasons identified by the children themselves for engaging in commercial sex work are: poverty (34%), dispute in family (35%), and death of mother and/or father. 40% joined prostitution either to support themselves or their parents. Quite a large number of girls (35%) have joined prostitution due to violence within the home. Thus violence within the family is the main cause for children fleeing from home.”

The causes listed are complex and interrelated. At the epicenter of these diverse reasons though sits the family. Conflict at home is for many girls (and boys) the force driving them away from family and onto the streets of Addis Ababa, or one of the provincial towns and cities. Division and conflict grow from many seeds, repeated physical abuse at the hands of a parent or stepparent, rape at the hands of a Father, stepfather or extended family member, physical and verbal abuse, all are factors that force girls to leave the home and seek release from what has become a prison like existence of servitude, intimidation and fear. “When physical and psychological punishment becomes intolerable, it may lead to the child running away from home. Girls tend to become prostitutes when they run away from home.” (VACE2)

Another burgeoning group from which many children fall into the net of prostitution is that resulting from HIV-orphans who have lost their parents to the virus. “Ethiopia has one of the largest populations of orphans in the world: 13 per cent of Ethiopian children have lost one or both parents…the number of children orphaned solely by HIV/AIDS has reached over 1.2 million. These children find themselves at a very high risk of entering commercial sex to survive, yet there is very limited support available for them either from government [emphasis mine}.”(AACSE)

Coherent or dysfunctional, the social fabric is a tapestry of interrelated, interconnected strands. Neglect by the Ethiopian Government in areas diverse, and fundamental is the glue that is binding together a polluted stream of suffering and pain.

Bussed in Married off

In 2006/7, I worked with the Forum for Street Children Ethiopia (FSCE), running education projects for the children in their care. Girls living and working on the streets, mainly the hectic cobbled broken pathways around the Mercato Bus station. “This extremely poor neighborhood in the city has become ‘the epicentre of the capital’s illegal [emphasis mine] industry of child prostitution’5

The children at FSCE ranged in age, although many did not even know their date of birth; most the children do not have documentation “the problem is further aggravated by a widespread lack of birth registration” (CPAA). Some were as young as 11 years old, “over 50% started engaging in prostitution below 16 years of age” the study states. “In almost every case the girls come to the city from the countryside, their families cast many out, others sent to Addis to work”.

Arriving at the city’s main bus-station, shrouded in naivety and fear, with little or no education, the girls make easy pickings for the men that greet them, with a warm smile, and a cunning mind only to mistreat, use and exploit them. With nowhere else to go, and no alternatives, the girls find themselves working the street and the journey into the painful, destructive prison of prostitution has begun.

Many, according to Save the Children Denmark (STCD), come from the Amhara region, the second most populated region, with a population of over 20 million. These children arrive in the capital knowing nobody, with (probably) no money and no contacts.”Enforced child marriages, abuse, and the prospects of ending their days in the grip of poverty are factors pushing Ethiopian girls as young as nine years of age’” (VACE), to risk their childhood and their lives in the city.

According to (CPAA) “There are many factors pushing the girls away from the region, (Amhara) including poverty, peer pressure and abuse. But child marriage is one of the most common explanations we hear when interviewing the girls,” Arranged marriages are widespread in the (Amhara) region in the north of Ethiopia, where young girls, children are forced to marry adult men, all too often this ‘union’ results in rape, abuse and violence, from which the innocent child is forced to flee, only into the clutches of exploitation, violence and abuse. And do they recover, is there healing and release, is a childhood stolen, a childhood lost, let us pray it is not so.

Marriages entered into unwillingly by extremely young girls, some as young as seven years old usually in exchange for reparations of some kind, money, cattle, land, lead all too often to abuse and violence, “traditional practices like female genital mutilation (FGM) and early marriage, are causes for the increased violence against children.” 14-year-old boy 6 “in Wolmera Woreda, the practice of FGM is nearly universal since girls must be circumcised before marriage.” (VACE2) Once committed to a marriage, by parents who often regard the child as no more than an object to be traded, the girl is frequently raped and mistreated and treated as a servant. “Abduction, rape and early marriage may ultimately lead many girls to prostitution. Early marriage and abduction seldom produce successful marriages. In fact, such relationships are short-lived. As a result, most of these young girls run far away from their husbands in an attempt to start a new and happier life elsewhere. Unfortunately, many of them end up as prostitutes.’ (VACE2)

“Early marriage is illegal (except under particular circumstances), weak law enforcement [Emphasis mine] allows this practice to be widely followed throughout Ethiopia; the phenomenon is reported in almost every region of the country.

Nationwide, 19 per cent of girls were married by the age of 15 and about half were married by the age of 19; in Amhara region, 50 per cent of girls were married by the age of 15. “When the marriage finally collapses, the girls usually migrate to urban areas since breaking a marriage arranged by their relatives is considered a shameful act and they are no longer welcome within their families and communities.

Once in larger towns they end up living in the streets given their lack of skills to find employment. Such dire circumstances lead many girls to be exploited in commercial sex.” (CPAA)

To break free of a forced marriage entered into against the child’s will, and be punished by banishment from the family home, is a form of social injustice based on traditions, which have long failed to serve the children, the family or the community at large. It is time long since past that these practice’s where changed. Education, cultivating tolerance and understanding of the Human Rights of the Child are keys to undoing such outdated destructive sociological patterns, together with the enforcement of the law to deter parents and prospective ‘husbands’.

No options, no hope

No child enters into prostitution when they have a choice, “prostitution is seen as a social ill that is unaccepted, prohibited and fought in most parts of our continent. Prostitution is not only a question of morality but a human problem, a problem of human exploitation, a problem of societal failure in providing equal opportunities.” (CPAA) “At the end (of the interview) Belaynesh said that no girl/woman would like to be a prostitute but the problems force them to be in such a situation.” The circumstances that lead a young girl away from the games and innocence of childhood and what should be, the love and gentle kindness of her family, into the shadows of prostitution, may vary and circumstances differ, suffering though is common to all those forced into such a lifestyle, the impact long lasting and severe, the consequences dire, destroying many lives.

The children at FSCE in Mercato told us their stories, often with shame, through tears and embarrassment, always with pain. A thread connected them all, yes poverty, was a major issue, so too poor education however, the stream that united the group of wonderful 11 to 18 year olds, was a breakdown in human relationships, of one kind or another.

Once outside the family, and society, young girls desperate to survive have little choice but to work as CSW. For those recruiting and selling girls It is a business, for the children on the streets it a torture. “Almost all respondents do not like prostitution (99%). Almost all the girls are involved in prostitution not because they like what they are doing but due to other factors, to support themselves or their families.” (CPAA) “Child prostitution [is] a big business involving a whole series of actors from abductors at bus stations, to blue taxis and bar/hotel owners who tend to see children as the spices of their trade. The business actors, oblivious to pervasive taboos, have long abandoned recruiting adult prostitutes.” (CPAA)

Trafficking lives

Child prostitution and trafficking of children are inextricably linked. They are of course both illegal. All international conventions, from The Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to International Labor Organisation (IL0), as one would expect, outlaw them. So too do Ethiopia’s Federal laws, “The 1993 Labor Proclamation forbids employment of young persons under the age of 14 years.

Employment in hazardous work is also forbidden for those under 18. The Penal Code provides means for prosecuting persons sexually or physically abusing children and persons engaging in child trafficking including juveniles into prostitution. Federal Proclamation no.42/93 protects children less than 14 years not to engage in any kind of formal employment.” (CPAA) And yet both child prostitution and the trafficking of minors goes on, and on and on. “The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that girls are trafficked both within the country and abroad to countries in the Middle East and to South Africa.”7

Children are brought from rural areas of Ethiopia to the capital city by brokers, “ttraffickers, who feed on parent’s low awareness with false promises of work and education for their offspring.” The numbers are staggering, the money tiny, the damage unimaginable “up to 20,000 children, some 10 years old, are sold each year [for around $1.20 to $2.40] by their parents and trafficked by unscrupulous brokers to work in cities across Ethiopia.”8 And who would do such a thing. Who would ‘sell’ an innocent child; condemn a child to slavery and brutal exploitation, pain and acute distress? “These traffickers are ‘typically local brokers, relatives, family members or friends of the victims. Many returnees are also involved in trafficking by working in collaboration with tour operators and travel agencies.”9

“The Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism has not been signed by any travel and tourism company in Ethiopia.” (CPAA) The Ethiopian Government acting in the interest of the children upon their homeland, and their responsibilities under international law, should rightly and immediately make all tour operators sign the afore mentioned treaty, or face closure, and criminal prosecution.

“The International Organization for Migration (IOM) stated that Ethiopian children are being sold for as little as US$ 1.20 to work as domestic servants or to be exploited in prostitution.” The Middle East is the major international destination of choice for traffickers, “Many Ethiopian women working in domestic service in the Middle East face severe abuses indicative of forced labor, including physical and sexual assault, denial of salary, sleep deprivation, and confinement. Many are driven to despair and mental illness, with some committing suicide. Ethiopian women are also exploited in the sex trade after migrating for labour purposes – particularly in brothels, mining camps, and near oil fields in Sudan – or after escaping abusive employers in the Middle East.”10 “At least 10,000 have been sent to the Gulf States to work as prostitutes.”(CTE)

Let us not even begin to look at the complicity of such states in the destruction of the lives of these children and women, the ‘little ones’ that dance upon the waters of life, seeking only a gentle heart to trust, finding the dark days of Rome, and in despair we cry “Men’s wretchedness in soothe I so deplore,”11

Meles Zenawi loves to ‘talk the talk’ to his western allies, the US, Britain, the European Union and the like, whilst turning a blind eye, a deaf ear to the cries of the child being beaten, the young girl being raped and traded for sex and the teenager separated from her family, her friends and her childhood, sold into servitude and abuse within Ethiopia and across the Red Sea in the oil rich ‘Gulf States’.

(This article is part of a series).

Notes:
1. Addis Ababa City Admin Social & NGO Affairs Office (SNGOA), Save the Children Denmark (SCD) and ANNPPCAN-Ethiopian. Child Labor in Ethiopia with special focus on Child Prostitution Study. ‘Child Prostitution in Addis Ababa 2006 (CPAA)
2. Health Effects of Prostitution (EOP), Janice G. Raymond
3. http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/aids/Countries/africa/ethiopia.html
4. Jodi L. Jacobson, The Other Epidemic
5. Sofie Loumann Nielsen. The Reporter 10 September 2010
6. Violence against children in Ethiopia (VACE). Africa Child Policy Forum
7. http://www.childtrafficking.org/cgi-bin/ct/main.sql?ID=2067&file=view_document.sql
8. ILO. http://www.childtrafficking.org/cgi-bin/ct/main.sql?file=view_document.sql&TITLE=-1&AUTHOR=-1&THESAURO=-1&ORGANIZATION=-1&TOPIC=-1&GEOG=-1&YEAR=-1&LISTA=No&COUNTRY=-1&FULL_DETAIL=Yes&ID=2067. (CTE)
9. Ecpat Global Monitoring report status of action against commercial sexual exploitation of children, Ethiopia. (AACSE)
10. http://ovcs.blogspot.com/2008/01/ethiopia-is-source-country-for-human.html
11. Faust Part One, Mephistopheles.

(About the author: Graham Peebles is Director of The Create Trust, a UK registered charity, supporting fundamental social change and the human rights of individuals in acute need. He may be reached at [email protected])

BOOK REVIEW: The Great Land Giveaway

Posted on , Updated on by EthiopianReview.com

Review by Lisanu Betaw

The recently released book by Dr. Aklog Birara (hereafter referred to as the author) on Ethiopia titled “The Great Land Giveaway” is a phenomenal piece of work reflecting the {www:culmination} of a dedicated research effort by an economic pundit with a hallmark of professional excellence and {www:experiential} richness. It goes into great depth of analysis of the socio-economic and political realities of Ethiopia today and, predicated on the outcome of the analysis, foresees a looming misfortune befalling Ethiopia if the present anomaly of land giveaway and socio-economic mismanagement are to be allowed to continue to prevail in the times to come. Summarized in broad terms, uncontrolled access, by invitation, to fertile farm land by outsiders with no veritable returns to Ethiopia, corruption and nepotism at all levels of the system, insatiable greed at the highest level, ethnic and political considerations for entitlement to economic assets including land and, in total, unbounded control of the economic and social life of the people are the troubling features that the author brings out in the book. Towards the end the author highlights painstaking measures to be taken in unity if the travesty of development and the menacing trend are to be reversed. Mirrored in the book are the arbitrariness of socio-economic management and the looming dangers facing Ethiopia not just vis-a-vis the generation today but also as a recorded history for posterity.

What are the salient issues that the author underscores in his intensive and extensive analysis of Ethiopia’s socio-economic disorder? Are there other authoritative Africa-wide and other findings of studies and established experiences that underpin the author’s findings and arguments about Ethiopia?

1. Issues that have taken centre stage in the book

1.1 Giving away fertile farm land (at nominal fees) to foreign companies and individuals (with a select few of local elites also having some share) in the name of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

The foreign investors are given an unprecedented carte blanche. With no binding and enforceable conditions included in the grant the foreign investors use the farm lands to grow products of their choices, use technologies to maximize production and export the produce to their countries of origin and, what are left there-from, to the highest external bidders. The continued wellbeing of the communities they displace and the growth and development of Ethiopia at large as well as the protections of environmental resources including wildlife do not go into their calculations. What is left for the displaced communities is the chance of seasonally selling their labour for meagre compensations.

The official arguments of (i) promoting growth and development through the land grant and (ii) the grant being only of unoccupied or unutilized land are a travesty. First, the author convincingly argues that the nation’s genuine and sustainable growth and development can occur only when Ethiopians own economic assets including land, produce what they consider are possible and economical, process their raw outputs into final use products and finally offer the fruits of their labour to the markets within and without. Second, there is no unoccupied or unutilized land except those lying fallow or are grazing areas left to regenerate. Further, the highlands of Ethiopia constituting areas above 1500 metres above sea level and representing 40 percent of the nation’s land mass are home for over 80 percent (87 percent to be exact) of the population and correspondingly of the farming households. The farming households are in dire need of farm lands. Contrary to the land use master plan of the 1980s (jointly produced with FAO and UNDP) which prevents cultivation of land with inclination of 30 percent and above, small holding farmers continue to expand their cultivation of hillsides thereby degrading the vitality of the soil on them.

In the context of these vivid lines of the author’s arguments, the role of the Government should have been one of creating enabling conditions through distribution of land with the right of ownership, building of farm and market infrastructure and provision of inputs (including fertilizers) in the types and magnitudes required.

In a rare occurrence and providing the validity of the author’s argument the new Head of FAO and a Kenyan prominent businessman (the latter taking Ethiopia as a case in point) in an interview with Aljazeera, call land grant a complete failure.

1.2 Development for the author, as for others, means improvement of the lives of Ethiopians across the land. Fundamental in this argument is that when Ethiopians are not empowered to be active role players in their own development and continue to be side spectators development in the nation’s context becomes a misnomer. Growth can occur without development but only to raise the fortunes of a select group of elites and to improve income for the state treasury.

1.3 A misconceived view of the regime in power that the author brings to light in his researched findings is that development is faster and impacting when it is state-led. This, of course, is antithesis to the recorded experiences of development. The lessons from the defunct command economies of the past did not seem to have made a dent in the understanding of the power controlling the economy. Present day Vietnam, according to Greg Mills (Greg Mills, 2010) raised itself from a net importer of agricultural commodities including rice to the world’s second largest exporter of rice and coffee only after its land reform in which private ownership created a stake for those working on the farms.

1.4 The private sector, normally considered as the engine of development has been, according to the researched findings of the author, wantonly weakened principally through monopoly of the major business and industry sectors by the state-cum-party enterprises but also through discouraging policies, tax burdens and bureaucratic machineries to reduce the level playing field. Evidenced by the findings is that there is a void in the enabling environment for the sector to function with freedom, fairness and unfettered drive.

A researched revelation by Greg Mills about private sector in Africa in his book “Why Africa is Poor” shows great similarities to the fate of private sector in Ethiopia. The following is what Greg Mills writes:

“Africa’s people are poverty stricken not because the private sector does not exist or was unwilling to work in sometimes difficult settings. These people and companies do exist, though the private sector is often not private at all, but rather an elite-linked system of rent seeking. Even where there is a degree of independence, government attitudes towards private businesses range from suspicion to outright hostility.

1.5 Ethiopia, as truly and convincingly explained in the book, possesses bountiful supply of natural and human resources. The troubling reality, however, is that there is a web of man-made factors that continue to militate against the deployment of these resources to its growth and development: They included distorted policies, divisive and non-inclusive governance, state and party control of the economy, nepotism, rampant corruption, weakening of the private sector, absence of fair and impartial access to opportunities and declining relevance of education to growth and development. The regime in power preaches about agro-based industrialization which is a travesty in the absence of Ethiopians owning economic assets, playing the roles of producers, processors, exporters, importers and, in general, participants in their nation’s growth and development. The concept and practice of what the author calls “virtuous cycle” take root only when the latter conditions prevail.

1.6 Finally, the book makes extensive coverage of small holder farms and the inherent economic benefits they create. In particular, the following superior values of the farms are articulated:

– Intensive use of land

– Capacity for rural labour absorption

– Crop-livestock integration

– High labour input per unit of area

– High responsiveness to incentives

– Great opportunity for land augmenting

Some living examples reinforcing the author’s down-to-earth analysis and convincing conclusions are the pathway to development followed by South Asian countries in the past and the remarkable development performance of Vietnam today which placed emphasis on small-scale agriculture.

To the deserved credit of the author, he does not underestimate the significance of large-scale farming. In fact, he reminisces about graduates of the then Alemaya agricultural college and retired citizens of the nation going into operating large-size farms with impressive successes. His prime contention is that that ought to be left to native Ethiopians.

2. “The primary reason why Africa’s people are poor is because

their leaders make this choice” (Greg Mills, 2010).

A few statements are quoted from Greg Mills in some of the preceding paragraphs to support the arguments of the author about some of the issues on Ethiopia. Greg Mills, in fact, highlights many more retarding factors regarding the development of Africa which have astounding similarities to those that the author discusses on Ethiopia. The following are some of them:

– Reliance on primary commodities for exports and incorrect policies and procedures to facilitate trade

– Inefficient land use

– Ruinous and self-interested decisions taken by single parties and with no bottom up pressure

– A system thriving on corruption and nepotism

– Land holding structure in which it is distributed on the basis of political allegiances thereby impeding ownership and entrepreneurship

– Top down imposition of the will of governments and resulting institutionalization of weak governance

– Bad choices in place of better ones in the broader public interest because the latter is not in the leaders’ personal and often financial self-interests.

– Leaders externalizing their problems making them the responsibility of others.

An interesting conclusion comes out visibly from the research outputs by Greg Mills about Africa and by the author on Ethiopia: The issues highlighted for Africa as a whole and for Ethiopia as part of Africa greatly coincide. This certainly is not because the two authors came together and shared or reconciled findings but rather each independently carrying out his own research supported by his own vast experiences led him to the conclusion that happened to be similar to that of the other. This is a telling evidence that the book by the author on Ethiopia is the outcome of a dedicated research by one who has his country at heart. The regime in power opted for almost all the failing strategies that stunted and still continue to stunt the development of Africa. The book deserves not only to be read but also owned by all Ethiopians and by those whose hearts go out to Ethiopia.

Final Point:

A considered suggestion to the author is to produce an abridged version of the book both in English and Amharic to serve as handbooks of this historic work. This, of course, implies more in terms of effort, time and material resources but the potential rewarding impact will outweigh all of these.

Israel reportedly engaged in racist sterilization of Ethiopian women

Posted on , Updated on by Negash

By Talila Nesher | Haaretz

Women say that while waiting in transit camps in Ethiopia they were coaxed into agreeing to injections of long-acting birth control drugs.

Women who immigrated from Ethiopia eight years ago say they were told they would not be allowed into Israel unless they agreed to be injected with the long-acting birth control drug Depo Provera, according to an investigative report aired yesterday on the Israel Educational Television program “Vacuum.”

The women say that while waiting in transit camps in Ethiopia prior to immigration they were placed in family planning workshops where they were coaxed into agreeing to the injection – a charge denied by both the Joint Distribution Committee, which ran the clinics, and the Health Ministry.

“We said we won’t have the shot. They told us, if you don’t you won’t go to Israel And also you won’t be allowed into the Joint (American Joint Distribution Committee ) office, you won’t get aid or medical care. We were afraid… We didn’t have a choice. Without them and their aid we couldn’t leave there. So we accepted the injection. It was only with their permission that we were allowed to leave,”

recounted Emawayish, who immigrated from Ethiopia eight years ago. She was one of 35 women, whose stories were recorded by Sebba Reuven, that relate how they were coaxed and threatened into agreeing to receive the injectable birth control drug.

The birth rate among Israel’s Ethiopian immigrant population has dropped nearly 20 percent in 10 years.

According to the report, the women were given the Depo Provera injections in the family planning workshops in transit camps, a practice that continued once they reached Israel. The women who were interviewed for the investigation reported that they were told at the transit camps that having many children would make their lives more difficult in Ethiopia and in Israel, and even that they would be barred from coming to Israel if they refused.

The Joint said in a response to “Vacuum” that its family planning workshops are among the services it provides to immigrants, who learn about spacing out their children’s birth, “but we do not advise them to have small families. It is a matter of personal choice, but we tell them it is possible. The claims by the women according to which ‘refusal to have the injection will bar them from medical care [and] economic aid and threaten their chances to immigrate to Israel are nonsense. The medical team does not intervene directly or indirectly in economic aid and the Joint is not involved in the aliyah procedures. With regard to the use of Depo Provera, studies indicate that is the most popular form of birth control among women in Ethiopia,” the Joint said.

In its response to “Vacuum,” the Health Ministry said it did not “recommend or try to encourage the use of Depo Provera, and that if these injections were used it was against our position. The Health Ministry provides individual family counseling in the framework of its well baby clincs and this advice is also provided by the physicians of the health maintenance organizations.”

The Jewish Agency, which is responsible for Jewish immigration from abroad, said in response that it takes a harsh view of any effort to interfere in the family planning processes of Ethiopian immigrants, adding that “while the JA has never held family planning workshops for this group in Ethiopia or at immigrant absorption centers in Israel, the immigrant transit camp in Gondar, as the investigation noted, was previously operated by other agencies.”

Susan Rice and Africa’s Despots

Posted on , Updated on by Negash

By Salem Solomon | New York Times

ON Sept. 2, Ambassador Susan E. Rice delivered a eulogy for a man she called “a true friend to me.” Before thousands of mourners and more than 20 African heads of state in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Ms. Rice, the United States’ representative to the United Nations, lauded the country’s late prime minister, Meles Zenawi. She called him “brilliant” — “a son of Ethiopia and a father to its rebirth.”

Few eulogies give a nuanced account of the decedent’s life, but the speech was part of a disturbing pattern for an official who could become President Obama’s next secretary of state. During her career, she has shown a surprising and unsettling sympathy for Africa’s despots.

This record dates from Ms. Rice’s service as assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Bill Clinton, who in 1998 celebrated a “new generation” of African leaders, many of whom were ex-rebel commanders; among these leaders were Mr. Meles, Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Jerry J. Rawlings of Ghana, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Yoweri K. Museveni of Uganda.

“One hundred years from now your grandchildren and mine will look back and say this was the beginning of an African renaissance,” Mr. Clinton said in Accra, Ghana, in March 1998.

In remarks to a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that year, Ms. Rice was equally breathless about the continent’s future. “There is a new interest in individual freedom and a movement away from repressive, one-party systems,” she said. “It is with this new generation of Africans that we seek a dynamic, long-term partnership for the 21st century.”

Her optimism was misplaced. In the 14 years since, many of these leaders have tried on the strongman’s cloak and found that it fit nicely. Mr. Meles dismantled the rule of law, silenced political opponents and forged a single-party state. Mr. Isaias, Mr. Kagame and Mr. Museveni cling to their autocratic power. Only Mr. Rawlings and Mr. Mbeki left office willingly.

Ms. Rice’s enthusiasm for these leaders might have blinded her to some of their more questionable activities. Critics, including Howard W. French, a former correspondent for The New York Times, say that in the late 1990s, Ms. Rice tacitly approved of an invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo that was orchestrated by Mr. Kagame of Rwanda and supported by Mr. Museveni of Uganda. In The New York Review of Books in 2009, Mr. French reported that witnesses had heard Ms. Rice describe the two men as the best insurance against genocide in the region. “They know how to deal with that,” he reported her as having said. “The only thing we have to do is look the other way.” Ms. Rice has denied supporting the invasion.

More recently, according to Jason K. Stearns, a scholar of the region, Ms. Rice temporarily blocked a United Nations report documenting Rwanda’s support for the M23 rebel group now operating in eastern Congo, and later moved to delete language critical of Rwanda and Uganda from a Security Council resolution. “According to former colleagues, she feels that more can be achieved by constructive engagement, not public censure,” Mr. Stearns wrote recently on Foreign Policy’s Web site.

Ms. Rice’s relationship with Mr. Meles — which dates from 1998, when she was a mediator in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent war between Eritrea and Ethiopia — also calls her judgment into question.

In fairness, in her eulogy, Ms. Rice said she differed with Mr. Meles on questions like democracy and human rights. But if so, the message did not get through; under Mr. Meles during the past 15 years, democracy and the rule of law in Ethiopia steadily deteriorated. Ethiopia imprisoned dissidents and journalists, used food aid as a political tool, appropriated vast sections of land from its citizens and prevented the United Nations from demarcating its border with Eritrea.

Meanwhile, across multiple administrations, the United States has favored Ethiopia as an ally and a perceived bulwark against extremism in the region. In 2012 the nation received $580 million in American foreign aid.

Eritrea is no innocent. It has closed itself off, stifled dissent and forced its young people to choose between endless military service at home and seeking asylum abroad. But I believe that the Security Council, with Ms. Rice’s support, went too far in imposing sanctions on Eritrea in 2009 for supporting extremists.

President Obama has visited sub-Saharan Africa just once in his first term — a brief stop in Ghana. One signal that he plans to focus more on Africa — and on human rights and democracy, not only economic development and geopolitics — in his next term would be to nominate someone other than Susan Rice as America’s top diplomat.

Salem Solomon is an Eritrean-American journalist who runs Africa Talks, a news and opinion Web site covering Africa and the global African diaspora.

Susan Rice’s dalliance with dictators coming back to haunt her: The Atlantic Wire

Posted on , Updated on by Negash

This New Susan Rice Charge May Stick

By Dashiel Bennett | The Atlantic Wire

December 10, 2012

Republican Senators have gotten little traction trying to pin the Benghazi disaster on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, but new details about the role she’s played in the ongoing Congolese war might be more damaging to her possible nomination for Secretary of State. The New York Times has a damning report today on the relationship between Rice and the government of Rwanda, which was a client of hers when she worked for a Washington consulting firm a decade ago.

Since being appointed U.N. ambassador in 2008, Rice has frequently intervened to protect Rwandan president Paul Kagame from criticism and condemnation for his support for the rebel group M23. The militant army has been accused of gross human rights violations, including mass rape, executions, and the use of child soldiers in the conflict in the Congo, which is Rwanda’s neighbor. Rwanda’s backing of M23 is seen as a major factor in prolonging the decade-long conflict that has been filled with horrific brutality and violence.

On more than one occasion Rice has stepped in to soften the language of Security Council resolutions and blocked attempts to publicly shame and criticize Kagame. Last week, Foreign Policy reported that two months ago, during a private meeting with her French and British counterparts, Rice objected to the idea of “naming and shaming” Kagame, saying, “This is the D.R.C. [Democratic Republic of Congo.] If it weren’t the M23 doing this, it would be some other group.”

Rice’s relationship with Kagame goes all the way back to her days in the Clinton Administration, when she was one of the leading members in the administration on African affairs. She served on the National Security Council during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, which ended when Kagame’s party took over the government. After leaving the White House in 2000, Rice became a managing director at Intellibridge, a “security analysis” firm that had Kagame government’s as a client.

Rice and other American diplomats have argued that silent diplomacy is the best course of action in the Congo, and that publicly attacking Kagame or Rwanda would undermine ongoing peace negotiations. However, with the Congolese war so far from being resolved—and over three million dead in the last decade—its hard to see the wisdom of that approach. The failure of U.S. and U.N. to take more decisive action against the Rwandan genocide is still seen as a major black mark on the Clinton administration’s legacy. (“Bystanders to Genocide” is what Samantha Power called them in The Atlantic in 2001.) There are many who feel those same mistakes are being repeated in the Congo today.

As a purely political matter, however, the stories are resurfacing at the worst time for Rice. The ties between her and Rwanda are not a secret, and have been reported in depth elsewhere. But as with any previously under-the-radar issue, a banner headline on The New York Times website goes a long way toward turning a footnote into a scandal. It’s clear that should Rice be nominated to be the next Secretary of State, she’s going to face a lot of tough questions beyond just her statements on the Benghazi mess. It’s also clear that those who are opposed to her nomination are going to play up any and all angles that might reflect negatively on her foreign affairs credentials. Rather than a petty squabble over a harmless set of talking points, Rice’s actual conduct in the halls of the United Nations should have a much bigger impact on whether or not she gets the big promotion she’s been waiting for.

Rice herself said back in 2001 that, “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.” Even if she doesn’t stop the war in the Congo, the going down in flames part could still happen.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at [email protected]

Susan Rice and Africa’s Unholy Trinity

Posted on , Updated on by Alemayehu G. Mariam

Matriarch of the Unholy Trinity

Susan Rice, the current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., has been waltzing (or should I say do-se-do-ing) with Africa’s slyest, slickest and meanest dictators for nearly two decades. More cynical commentators have said she has been in bed with them, as it were. No doubt, international politics does make for strange bedfellows.

Rice’s favorite dictators in Africa are the “Unholy Trinity” — Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and the late Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia — all former rebel leaders who seized power through the barrel of the gun and were later baptized to become the “new breed of  African leaders” (a phrase of endearment coined by Bill Clinton to celebrate the “Three African Amigos” and memorialize their professed commitment to democracy and  economic development). She has been best friend for life and the acknowledged Guardian Angel, champion, apologist, promoter, advocate, grand dame and matriarch of the trio. She has shielded the “Fearsome, Threesome” from legal and political accountability, deflected from them much deserved criticism and thwarted national and international scrutiny and sanctions against the.

Rice, Rwanda and the Genocide That Was Not

In April 1994, when the Clinton Administration pretended to be ignorant of the unspeakable terror and massacres in Rwanda, Susan Rice — who by her own description “was a young Director on the National Security Council staff at the White House, accompanying the then-National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake” — and currently the putative heir apparent to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, was unconcerned about taking immediate action to stop the killings. Rather, she was fretting about the political consequences of calling the Rwandan tragedy a “genocide”. In a monument to utter moral depravity and conscience-bending callous indifference, Rice casually inquired of her colleagues, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?” Rice later shed crocodile tears for having made her senseless statement while simultaneously claiming she does not quite remember making it,  but regretted “if I said it.” Lt. Colonel Tony Marley, the U.S. military liaison to the Arusha peace process (the Arusha Peace Accords which resulted in the 1993 agreement for power sharing between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda) was so baffled by Rice’s statement, he observed, “We could believe that people would wonder that, but not that they would actually voice it.”

In less than 100 days, 800 thousand Rwandans by U.N. estimate had been killed in the genocidal madness. For weeks, Rice, her boss Lake and other top U.S. officials labored and agonized not to call the monstrous Rwandan genocide, a genocide. They continued to play their sinister semantic bureaucratic games to make sure there were no official references to “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, “extermination” and the like in connection with the Rwandan tragedy. But far from regretting her role in underrating the Rwandan genocide and the massive and gross violations of human rights, over the past decade and half Rice has turned a blind eye, deaf ears and muted lips to extrajudicial killings, suppression of the press, decimation of opposition parties and imprisonment of large numbers of dissidents in Africa and aided and abetted Africa’s dictatorial trio. She has coddled, pampered, nurtured, protected and sang praises for these ruthless dictators.

U.S. policy in the 1994 Rwandan genocide will remain a testament to shame, diplomatic duplicity, bureaucratic sophistry and plain old fashioned callous deceitfulness. On April 6, 1994, the plane transporting Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, Burindian President Cyprien Ntaryamira and other officials was shot down as it returned from Tanzania. The prime suspects in the assassination are believed to be elements of the Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) who had rejected a power sharing agreement Habyarimana had reached with the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) a year earlier. Immediately following Habyarimana’s assassination, RAF members aided by extremist militia elements known as the Interahamwe (which in Kinyarwanda means “those who stand/work/fight/attack together”) went on a rampage indiscriminately killing government officials, ordinary Tutsis and other moderate Hutus.

Rice and other top U.S. officials knew or should have known a genocide was underway or in the making once RAF and interahamwe militia began killing people in the streets and neighborhoods on April 6. They were receiving reports from the U.N. mission in Rwanda; and their own intelligence pointed to unspeakable massacres taking place in Kigali and elsewhere in the country. In a Memorandum dated April 6, 1994, the day of the Habyiarimana assassination, Deputy Assistant Secretary Prudence Bushnell, the State Department’s number two official for Africa matters, predicted:

If, as it appears, both Presidents have been killed, there is a strong likelihood that widespread violence could breakout in either or both countries, particularly if it is confirmed that the plane was shot down. Our strategy is to appeal for calm in both countries, both through public statements and in other ways…

On April 11, 1994, in a Talking Points Memorandum prepared for the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Africa concluded:

Unless both sides can be convinced to return to the peace process, a massive (hundreds of thousands of deaths) bloodbath will ensue that would likely spill over into Burundi. In addition, millions of refugees will flee into neighboring Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire…Since neither the French nor the Belgians have the trust of both sides…, there will be a role to play for the U.S. as the “honest broker.”

But Rice and company intentionally chose to minimize the extreme nature of the violence and kept on issuing empty declarations, pleas for a cease fire and calls to the parties to come to the negotiating table.

Two weeks into the genocide on April 22, presidential National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, Rice’s boss, issued a statement “expressing deep concern over the violence that continues to rage in Rwanda following the tragic deaths of Rwandan President Habyarimana and Burindian President Ntaryamira two weeks ago.” Lake called on “all responsible officials and military officers” to bring the “offending troops under control” and implement a “cease fire and return to negotiations.” By late April, the U.S. was still playing a “see no genocide, hear no genocide and speak no genocide” public relations game. On April 28, Bushnell “telephoned Rwandan Ministry of Defense Cabinet  Director Col. Bagasora to urge an end to the killings.” Bushnell told Bagasora that in the “eyes of the world, the Rwanda military engaged in criminal acts, aiding and abetting civilians massacres” and demanded that the Rwandan “Government make every effort to implement the peace accords.” Three weeks into the genocide, Bushnell was still talking about “massacres” as others “expressed deep concern over the violence.

On May 1, the central issue facing the Defense Department intra-agency group established to generate proposals on what to do in Rwanda was how to characterize the mindboggling genocidal carnage (excuse me, “massacre”). According to the “Discussion Paper” of this group, participants were warned not to use the “G” word because using that label could result in U.S. taking preventing action, exactly the same kind of concern explicitly raised by Rice:

1.      Genocide Investigation: Language that calls for an international investigation of human rights abuses and possible violations of the genocide convention. Be careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday– Genocide finding could commit USG to actually “do something”.

By May 5, the U.S. had considered jamming Rwandan radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines which was coordinating attacks and broadcasting highly inflammatory ethnic propaganda against Tutsis, moderate Hutus, Belgians, and the United Nations mission in Rwanda resulting in thousands of deaths. That idea was discarded as “ineffective” and  “expensive costing approximately $8,500 per flight hour”.

A little over one month into the genocide, a Defense Intelligence Report dated May 9, 1994, concluded:

… In addition to the random massacre of Tutsis by Hutu militias and individuals, there is an organized, parallel effort of genocide being implemented by the army to destroy the leadership of the Tutsi community. The original intent was to kill only the political elite  supporting reconciliation; however, the government lost control of the militias, and the massacre spread like wildfire. It continues to rage out of control.

By May 21, six weeks into the genocide, incredibly, U.S. officials were still debating whether they should call the carnage a “genocide” despite the open and notorious fact that tens of thousands of Rwandans were being slaughtered. In a May 21 “Action Memorandum” sent to Secretary of State Warren Christopher the question presented was “Has Genocide Occurred in Rwanda?” under the heading “Issue for Decision”, the Memorandum formulated the policy question as follows:

Whether (1) to authorize Department officials to state publicly that “acts of genocide have occurred” in Rwanda and (2) to authorize U.S. delegations to international meetings to agree to resolutions and other instruments that refer to “acts of genocide” in Rwanda, state that “genocide had occurred.

Of course, there was no question genocide was taking place in Rwanda. The Legal Analysis drafted on May 16, five days preceding the “Action Memorandum”, left no doubt about the occurrence of genocide. After citing the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which the U.S. is a party, the Legal Analysis concluded:

The Existence of Genocide in Rwanda

There can be little question that the specific listed acts have taken place in Rwanda. There have been numerous acts of killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm to persons. As INR [Bureau of Intelligence and Research] notes, international humanitarian organizations estimate the killings since April 6 have claimed from 200,000 to 500,000 lives. (INR also notes that this upper figure maybe exaggerated, but that is not critical to the analysis.).

[The UN estimated the number killed in Rwanda in less than 100 beginning on April 6, 1994 as 800,000; the Rwandan Government estimated 1,071,000 were killed in the genocide.]

Despite public protestations of ignorance of the Rwandan genocide, rivers of crocodile tears of not having done  something to prevent it and moral expiations about Clinton’s “worst mistake of my presidency”, Rice, Lake, Christopher and others high in the Clinton Administration knew beyond a shadow of doubt that genocide was in the planning or underway from the day Habarymana was assassinated.

Rice, Kagame,  Museveni, M23 and “Looking the Other Way”

In 1996, two years after the end of the genocide, on the pretext of pursuing Hutu insurgents and militia who were responsible for the Rwandan genocide and to prevent their incursions into Rwanda from bases in the Congo (at the time Zaire), Kagame began arming ethnic Tutsis  in the eastern part of that country. He also sent Rwandan troops to support them. The so-called Congo Wars were underway and continue to rage to the present day resulting in millions of lost lives.

The First Congo War lasted from November 1996 to May 1997. Congolese rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila overthrew long ruling dictator Mobutu Sésé Seko. The Rwandan-created destabilization in eastern Congo was the decisive factor in the fall of Mobutu’s regime. Kabila seized power in May 1997 and was assassinated by one of his bodyguards in January 2001. In March 2012, former Kagame right hand man and secretary general of the RPF, Theogene Rudasingwa made the shocking revelation that “it’s Paul Kagame who assassinated the Congolese President, Laurent Desire Kabila;  Kagame is the murderer of the Congolese President Kabila.” The Second Congo War began shortly after Kabila took power and continued until 2003. Eight African countries and dozens of armed groups were involved in the conflict.

The government of the Democratic Republic of the CongoIn March 2009, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) signed a peace accord with National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) (an armed militia established by Laurent Nkunda in the eastern  Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in December 2006) making the CNDP a political party. In April 2012, several hundred ethnic Tutsi members of the CNDP  turned against the DRC government over alleged lack of implementation of the March 2009 Accords and formed the M23 Movement [a/k/a Mouvement du 23-Mars] under the leadership of the notorious war criminal General Bosco Ntaganda, (a/k/a “The Terminator”). Ntaganda was initially indicted by the International Criminal Court on August 22, 2006 for recruiting child soldiers and committing atrocities. He was indicted by the ICC for the second time on July 13, 2012 on three counts of crimes against humanity and four counts of war crimes including murder, rape, attacks on civilians and slavery. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Ntaganda’s boss and co-defendant, was  the first person ever convicted by the International Criminal Court in July 2012. Last month, Ntaganda’s M23 rebels took control of Goma, a provincial capital with a population of one million people causing some 140,000 people to flee their homes. They were “persuaded” to leave mineral-rich Goma in early December under international pressure although they presumably rejected similar calls by Kagame and Museveni.

Kagame and Museveni of Uganda have been the prime supporters of M23. Various U.N. and other international human rights organization have documented Rwanda’s and Uganda’s ongoing support for M23. According to a recent U.N. Report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (October 2012),

Rwanda officials coordinated the creation of the [M23] rebel movement as well as its major military operations… Senior Government of Uganda officials (GoU) have also provided support to M23 in the form of direct troop reinforcements in DRC territory, weapons deliveries, technical assistance, joint planning, political advice and facilitation of external relations. Units of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and the Rwandan Defesse Forces (RDF) jointly supported M23 in a series of attacks in July 2012 to take over the major towns of Rutshuru territory, and the forces armees de la RDC (FARDC) base of Rumangabo. Both governments have also cooperated to support the creation and expansion of M23’s political branch and have consistently advocated on behalf of the rebels. The M23 and its allies includes six sanctioned individuals, some of whom reside in or regularly travel to Uganda and Rwanda.

Museveni secretly met with NtagandaThis past August, Museveni secretly  met with Ntaganda and M23 rebels. Prof. Howard French of Columbia University, in his NY Times article “Kagame’s Secret War in the Congo”   described the conflict in the Great Lakes Region (the seven great lakes in the Rift Valley region) since 1996 in which six million people have died in the from armed conflict, starvation and disease as an epochal event of the Twentieth Century. He argued:

Few realize that a main force driving this conflict has been the largely Tutsi army of neighboring Rwanda, along with several Congolese groups supported by Rwanda…. Until now, the US and other Western powers have generally supported Kagame diplomatically. Observers note that Rwandan-backed forces have themselves been responsible for much of the violence in eastern Congo over the years… The Rwandan Patriotic Front was directly operating mining businesses in Congo, according to UN investigators; more recently, Rwanda has attempted to maintain control of regions of eastern Congo through various proxy armies.

Rice has been shielding Kagame and Museveni from scrutiny and sanctions in their role in the DRC. She has made every effort to suppress U.N. investigative reports showing Kagame’s role in supplying and financing  M23. According to the National Journal, Rice “has even wrangled with Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs, and others in the department, who all have been more critical of the Rwandans.” The Journal reported that Rice was dismissive of the French ambassador to the U.N. who advised her of the need for the U.N. to do more to intervene in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She reportedly told the French Ambassador, “It’s the eastern DRC. If it’s not M23, it’s going to be some other group.” The Journal quoting Prof. Gerard Prunier of the University of Paris reported:

When Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice came back from her first trip to the Great Lakes region [of East Africa], a member of her staff said, “Museveni [of Uganda] and Kagame agree that the basic problem in the Great Lakes is the danger of a resurgence of genocide and they know how to deal with that. The only thing we [i.e., the US] have to do is look the other way.”

Such is the true nature of Rice’s crocodile contrition for the Rwanda genocide. Simply stated, Rice’s attitude towards Africa’s Unholy Trinity can be summed up as “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil” of genocidal dictators.

Susan Rice and the Adoration of Meles Zenawi

Susan Rice and the Adoration of Meles ZenawiOn September 2, 2012, Rice sent three tweets to her followers in Twitter-dom as she prepared to deliver her funeral (ad)oration for Meles Zenawi:

“Palpable sorrow felt here in Addis Ababa. We extend our condolences & best wishes to the Ethiopian people.” “Meles leaves an indelible legacy for the people of #Ethiopia, from opposition to extremism to support for the poor.” “I am honored to represent the United States at the funeral of late PM Meles Zenawi of #Ethiopia.”

Rice may have believed she “represented the United States” in her appearance, but her funeral oration for Meles Zenawi was personal and bordered on beatification. She described Meles as “an uncommon leader, a rare visionary, and a true friend to me and many.” She said he “was disarmingly regular, unpretentious, and direct. He was selfless, tireless and totally dedicated to his work and family.” Rice reminisced about her close familial ties and deep friendship with Meles:

Whenever we met, no matter how beset he was, he would always begin by asking me about my children. His inquiries were never superficial. He wanted detailed reports on their development. Then satisfied, he would eagerly update me on his own children. Meles was a proud father and a devoted husband. As he laughed about his children’s exploits and bragged about their achievements, a face sometimes creased by worry, would glow with simple joy. In his children and all children, Meles saw the promise of renewal and the power of hope.

She said Meles “retained that twinkle in his eye, his ready smile, his roiling laugh and his wicked sense of humor.” In an incredibly insensitive and callous manner, she related how Meles “was tough, unsentimental and sometimes unyielding.” She announced that Meles “of course had little patience for fools, or idiots, as he liked to call them.” (These “fools” and “idiots” are, of course, Ethiopian opposition leaders, dissidents, independent journalists, human rights advocates and regime critics.)

But Rice’s adoration of Meles would put the Three Magi who followed the star to Bethlehem to shame:

For, among Prime Minister Meles’ many admirable qualities, above all was his world-class mind. A life-long student, he taught himself and many others so much. But he wasn’t just brilliant. He wasn’t just a relentless negotiator and a formidable debater. He wasn’t just a thirsty consumer of knowledge. He was uncommonly wise – able to see the big picture and the long game, even when others would allow immediate pressures to overwhelm sound judgment. Those rare traits were the foundation of his greatest contributions.

Still, there was no shortage of occasions when, as governments and friends, we simply, sometimes profoundly, disagreed. But even as we argued – whether about economics, democracy, human rights, regional security or our respective foreign policies – I was always struck by two things: Meles was consistently reasoned in his judgments and thoughtful in his decisions; and, he was driven not by ideology but by his vision of a better future for this land he loved. I will deeply miss the challenge and the insights I gained from our discussions and debates.

In her “Adoration”, Rice was completely blinded to Meles’ atrocious human rights record. She was willfully ignorant of the findings of her own State Department U.S. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in Ethiopia issued in May 2012, which stated:

The most significant human rights problems [in Ethiopia] included the government’s arrest of more than 100 opposition political figures, activists, journalists, and bloggers… The government restricted freedom of the press, and fear of harassment and arrest led journalists to practice self-censorship. The Charities and Societies Proclamation (CSO law) continued to impose severe restrictions on civil society and nongovernmental organization (NGO) activities… Other human rights problems included torture, beating, abuse, and mistreatment of detainees by security forces; harsh and at times life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; detention without charge and lengthy pretrial detention; infringement on citizens’ privacy rights, including illegal searches; allegations of abuses in connection with the continued low-level conflict in parts of the Somali region; restrictions on freedom of assembly, association, and movement; police, administrative, and judicial corruption; violence and societal discrimination against women and abuse of children; female genital mutilation (FGM); exploitation of children for economic and sexual purposes; trafficking in persons; societal discrimination against persons with disabilities; clashes between ethnic minorities; discrimination against persons based on their sexual orientation and against persons with HIV/AIDS; limits on worker rights; forced labor; and child labor, including forced child labor.

On October 27, 2012, Rice attended a “Memorial Service for Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi” at Abyssinian Baptist Church and gave a second eulogy:

I come again both as a representative of the U.S. government and as a friend of a man I truly miss… The Meles I knew was profoundly human and down to earth. He probably often figured he was the smartest person in the room, and most of the time Meles was right – at least about that. His legacy is one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies. He laid the foundations for Ethiopia’s sustainable development. He gave new momentum to Africa’s struggle to address climate change. He spurred his nation to double its food production and redouble its commitment to forestall another famine that could snuff out so many innocent lives. He played mid-wife to the birth of South Sudan and worked energetically to help South Sudan and Sudan resolve their differences peacefully. Last month’s accords, though fragile, are a monument to his unyielding efforts. Meles helped build the African Union. He sent peacekeepers to the world’s hottest spots and countered terrorists such as al-Shabab who target the innocent….

May the spirit of Meles Zenawi spur us all to work ever harder, together, for a better Ethiopia, a better Africa, and a better world.

Rice completely ignored the fact that 200 unarmed protesters were massacred in the streets and nearly 800 seriously wounded by police and security forces under the personal command and control of Meles following the 2005 elections. She turned a blind eye to crimes against humanity committed in Gambella in 2004 and war crimes committed in the Ogaden in 2008 . She had forgotten the stolen election of 2010 and fact that Meles’ party won 99.6 percent of the seats in parliament. She was completely oblivious of the thousands of political prisoners, including opposition leaders, dissidents and journalists,  rotting in Ethiopian prisons as she was waxing eloquent in her emotional eulogy. She could see Meles’ “brilliance” but not his arrogance. She could see his “world-class mind” but not his black heart. She said he was “uncommonly wise”, but could not see his common folly. She “profoundly disagreed with him on democracy and human rights”, but she would ignore all his crimes against humanity because he was “a true friend” of hers.

The words of contrition Rice gave when she visited Kigali on November 23, 2011 could have been incorporated in her eulogy in Addis Ababa on September 2:

Today, I am here as an American ambassador. But I also will speak for myself, from my heart. I visited Rwanda for the very first time in December 1994, six months after the genocide ended. I was a young Director on the National Security Council staff at the White House, accompanying the then-National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake. I was responsible then for issues relating to the United Nations and peacekeeping. And needless to say, we saw first-hand the spectacular consequences of the poor decisions taken by those countries, including my own and yours, that were then serving on the United Nations Security Council.

I will never forget the horror of walking through a church and an adjacent schoolyard where one of the massacres had occurred. Six months later, the decomposing bodies of those who had been so cruelly murdered still lay strewn around what should have been a place of peace. For me, the memory of stepping around and over those corpses will remain the most searing reminder imaginable of what humans can do to one another. Those images stay with me in the work I do today, ensuring that I can never forget how important it is for all of us to prevent genocide from recurring. 

How important is it for all of us, particularly Susan Rice, to prevent extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, detention without charge and lengthy pretrial detention, infringement on citizens’ privacy rights, illegal searches, restrictions on freedom of assembly, association, and movement… on the African continent?

Susan Rice and the Ghosts of Ethiopia

On September 2 and October 27, 2012, Rice had no idea, no recollection, no remembrance of the hundreds of unarmed protesting Ethiopians who were massacred in the streets, the thousands of political prisoners and  hundreds of dissidents and journalists languishing in jail in Ethiopia today. In 1994, Rice was willfully blind to the genocide in Rwanda. In 2012, she was willfully blind to the long train of human rights abuses and atrocities in Ethiopia. America does not need a friend and a buddy to African dictators as its Secretary of State. America does not need a Secretary of State with a heart of stone and tears of a crocodile. America does not need a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” Secretary of State.  America needs a Secretary of State who can tell the difference between human rights and  government wrongs!

Is it not true that one can judge a (wo)man by his/her friends?

Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer.

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