By Thor Halvorssen and Alex Gladstein | Forbes
With the dust beginning to settle on yesterday’s death of Meles Zenawi—ruler of Ethiopia since 1991—Western leaders have been quick to lavish praise on his legacy. A darling of the national security and international development industries, Zenawi was applauded for cooperating with the U.S. government on counter-terrorism and for spurring economic growth in Ethiopia—an impoverished, land-locked African nation of 85 million people. In truth, democratic leaders who praise Zenawi do a huge injustice to the struggle for human rights and individual dignity in Ethiopia.
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said Zenawi “leaves behind an indelible legacy of major contributions to Ethiopia, Africa, and the world.” Gordon Brown called Zenawi’s demise “a tragedy for the Ethiopian people,” while David Cameron remembered him as an “inspirational spokesman for Africa.” Bill Gates tweeted that he “was a visionary leader who brought real benefits to Ethiopia’s poor.” Abdul Mohammed and Alex de Waal took to the New York Times op-ed pages today in perhaps the most unspeakably sycophantic eulogy of Zenawi, declaring that the dictator’s death “deprives Ethiopia — and Africa as a whole — of an exceptional leader.”
For years, the diminutive Zenawi had been a fixture on the Davos circuit, charming Western leaders with statistics of human development and business expansion. Under his control, Ethiopia’s average annual GDP growth rate more than doubled to a gaudy 8.8 percent over the past decade, and trade and investment with the West boomed. He worked with the U.S. to capture terrorists—even invading Somalia to help oust an Islamist government—in return netting roughly a billion dollars a year in American aid. Ethiopia had been to hell and back in the 1970s and 1980s with famine, war, and genocide. For someone who came to power as a freedom fighter and liberator, who gave one of the poorest countries on earth China-esque economic growth, and who became a key ally of the U.S., what was not to like?
First off, many of the rosy development statistics given out by the Ethiopian government are simply fraudulent; independent sources still rank Ethiopia at the very bottom of poverty indexes. Second, what genuine economic and public health transformations Zenawi did bring to Ethiopia were achieved with a top-down model that mirrored the statist command he implemented over all other aspects of Ethiopian life.
Zenawi built a totalitarian state, guided by Marxist-Leninism, complete with a cult of personality and zero tolerance for dissent. Like Saddam Hussein or Bashar al-Assad, he filled the country’s top political and economic positions with men from his own Tigaray ethnicity. When elections did occur, he won them with Saddam-like numbers, most recently, 99 percent of the vote. Civil society organizations were harassed into submission or banned. His government only allowed one television station, one radio station, one internet-service provider, one telecom, one national daily, and one English daily—all churning out government propaganda. Zenawi used this information hegemony to heavily censor news available to Ethiopians, taking special delight in preventing them from hearing news from exile groups outside the country.
Zenawi’s critics were jailed, killed or chased out of the country: in fact, more journalists were exiled from Ethiopia in the last decade than any other country on earth. Let’s restate that: Zenawi kicked out more journalists than any other tyrant on the planet, thereby monopolizing control over information. His favorite tactic was labeling dissidents as terrorists. Journalists risked up to 20 years in prison if they even reported about opposition groups classified by the government as terrorists. The most emblematic case is that of Eskinder Nega, a PEN-award-winning author sentenced to 18 years in prison this July for questioning the government’s new anti-terrorism laws.
Many in the West like to credit Zenawi with “keeping Ethiopia together” despite ethnic differences, war, famine and regional instability. Dissidents, however, maintain that Zenawi was always at war with his own people. When towns and villages rose up against Zenawi’s military regime, they were put down brutally. There was, and still is, a climate of fear. With 85 million Ethiopians suffering under his thrall, Meles Zenawi constructed one of history’s most depraved states in terms of numerical human suffering.
So why is this monster being celebrated? Some, like Bill Gates and Ambassador Rice, choose to remain blind to Zenawi’s systemic human rights abuses. He was, undoubtedly, charming. Others, perhaps more worryingly, excuse his tyranny for his development and economic acumen. Foreign Policy’s managing editor illustrated this point of view while tweeting that “Meles Zenawi was a dictator but was better for his country than many democratically elected leaders.”
This kind of mentality is a dangerous one. There is no such thing as a benign dictator. Only those with a fascist mindset—who want to cut corners, who complain how messy and inefficient democracy can be, and who overlook two thousand years of political history—can believe in this chimera. From Cuba to Kazakhstan, the story is the same.
For instance, Pinochet took Chile from being a run-of-the-mill right-wing statist dictatorship to an economic success story with the same liberalization principles that the Chinese tyranny has employed to transform itself into a world power. Is the Pinochet-Beijing model of a police state with economic freedom, attempted by Zenawi for Ethiopia, an acceptable one in this day and age? The New York Review of Books reminds us that this sort of ideology brought Ethiopia “appalling cruelty in the name of social progress.” Anyone stating that they “like” the economic results from the Pinochet-Beijing model must accept thousands of tortured and disappeared in Chile and tens of millions dead in China (and 8 million political prisoners languishing in the Laogai as of today). Perhaps those admiring a strongman can accept such a condition with a John Rawls-type veil of ignorance without knowing what it is like to live under a dictatorship. It is easy to tolerate torture and disappearances if it isn’t happening to your daughter, your brother, your mother, or you.
Those in the West heaping praise on Zenawi—all living in societies that suffered so much to achieve individual liberty—are engaging in dramatic hypocrisy by praising this thug. Would Bill Gates live in a country that denies people basic political freedoms? Whose government arrests and kills its critics en masse? Would he trade places with an Ethiopian university student who believes in free expression and whose stance will lead to certain prison and possible execution?
Any arguments that Zenawi was mellowing (after 21 years in power!) are false. The past few years saw new sweeping “anti-terrorism” laws and stronger Internet censorship. In 2005, Ethiopia even saw its own Tiananmen Square. That year, Zenawi decided to hold freer elections, but the opposition won a record number of parliamentary seats, including all those in the capital, Addis Ababa. Throngs took to the streets to celebrate. In response, Zenawi lashed out brutally, arresting the opposition’s entire leadership and sentencing them to life in prison for treason; shuttering five newspapers and imprisoning their editors; murdering 193 protestors, injuring 800, and arbitrarily jailing 40,000 other men, women, and teenagers in a show of raw tyranny. According to The Telegraph’s David Blair, who was reporting from the scene, “a crackdown on this scale has not been seen in Africa for 20 years and the repression exceeds anything by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for the past decade at least. Apartheid-era South Africa’s onslaught against the black townships in the 1980s provides the only recent comparison.”
It is startling that so many consider Zenawi an “intellectual” leader, when he needed such bloody policy to enforce his rule. When Western leaders consider this dictator—who rapaciously treated Africa’s second-largest nation as his personal property—worthy of not just condolences, but pure adulation, something is very wrong with their value systems.
One politician, the Norwegian foreign minister, made a slight nod toward individual rights in his obligatory comments about Zenawi’s passing: “Norway and Ethiopia have an open and frank dialogue on political and social issues, including areas, such as human rights, where we have diverging views.”
Amen!
(ThorHalvorssen is the founder and president of the New York–based Human Rights Foundation. Alex Gladstein is HRF’s Director of Institutional Affairs.)
8 thoughts on “The West’s dramatic hypocrisy in praising Ethiopian tyrant – Forbes”
When your lap dog dies, I kind of expect some kind words about the dog from you. This shouldn’t come as a surprise at all.
I have no words, ….
Thank you for telling the Truth,… Truth never dies.
God bless the Victims of all this tragedy.
Thank you.
Thanks Thor Halvorssen and Alex Gladstein you are the honest people who disclosed the true picture of tyrant Meles Zenawi, Western government are doing the denying the reality. Will western government tolerate if someone praise Hitler for what he did on Jew people, will anyone forget Holocaust massacre? that is what happening in Ethiopia for 21 years in relatively small scale !!! Have you ask why millions migrate their country? Have you asked why farmers land given for the foreign invaders not inverters given their land against the people will. Do you know the so called economic growth 100% monopolized by Meles minority ethnic group if you appreciate Meles economic success why didn’t you praise S. African’s Apartheid economic success? All westerners you are just spreading salt on Ethiopian people fresh wound. Shame on Most political leaders in west. Mr. Bill gate you consider yourself as some one who work against poverty do you know £8.6 billion stolen by Meles mafia group from Ethiopian people. We don’t need your money just don’t support tyrants to kill and loot the countries resources. Can you guys check the banks in western country from families from Meles mafia group then you will get the answer. I hope if someone translate this article to Amharic language to let the people of Ethiopia read and comment on it. This is the best article which shows the fact on the ground. Thank you again God bless Thor Halvorssen and Alex Gladstein
As an expat who’s fled Ethiopia under the tyrannical Meles, it was really disturbing to see official statements of “condolence” by heads of state from around the world (including Africans) being offered to Ethiopians on Meles’ death. An overwhelming majority of people in Ethiopia probably feel relived that he’s gone and are anxious about what the future holds. But hearing these “well wishes” makes it difficult not to feel as if we’re not really considered as human beings by these foreign politicians just like people in their own countries (albeit perhaps with a different skin color, religion, or language). It is, however, good to see that people like Thor and Alex exist and give voice to the unspoken absurdity of today’s political (and perhaps economic) expediency which trump everything.
To Thor Halvorssen and Alex Gladstein;
Thank you both for your truthful and magnificent article. Indeed, by lionizing Mellesse, the democratic leaders of the west do a huge injustice to the majority of Ethiopians who fight and struggle for human rights, the rules of laws, and democratic governance. In fact, western leaders are being hypocritical and disingenuous for the sacrifices and aspirations of Ethiopians who fight to have a country where democracy and rules of law prevails over dictatorship, state sponsored terror, kidnapping, and murders by the state. Yes, by admiring Mellesse the chief instigator and coordinator of ethnic cleansings, crimes against humanity, tramped up crimes, false charges, and unlawful imprisonments of opposition party members, journalists, and millions of innocent Ethiopians western leaders are undermining and contradicting the rules of laws and constitutions of their own countries. Ethiopians have been fighting for twenty years the dark and destructive dictatorial rule of Mellesse and his Woyane/TPLF mafia group and will continue to fight until everyone is equal, respected, protected, and rules of laws prevail in the country.
As far as Ethiopians are concerned Mellesse’s legacies was a total failure. He failed as a leader. He chose to become not a leader of all Ethiopians but a chieftain for the Tigray ethnic group, a leader of the terrorist Woyane/TPLF mafia organization. He committed repeated treasons against Ethiopia, terrorized and murdered Ethiopians, and coordinated crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansings. Mellesse did all these in the last thirty eight years since he joined the EPLF created TPLF. Zenawi chose to divide Ethiopians into ethnic groups and setup ethnic Bantustans (Kilils), planned and coordinated kidnappings, tortures, murders, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Ethiopians. Instead of fighting for and protecting the economic, security, and national interests of the country he chose to fight Ethiopians in support of the secession of Eritrea. He, personally championed to land lock Ethiopia and giving the inherent Ethiopian territories committing the greatest of treasons against Ethiopia.
There no freedom of the press, rule of law, personal and human rights, and democratic governance in today’s Ethiopia. Mellesse’s regime has been a dictatorship known for stolen elections, accusing journalists and opposition party members with fictitious and tramp up crimes, selling fertile lands, and displacing millions of Ethiopians. Mellesse and his TPLF/EPRDF thugs talks about democracy and legislate laws but at the same time ignores and undermines the same laws and constitutional provisions they enacted. Mellesse and his Woyane/TPLF have been and will always be hard liners and lawless terrorists. Mellesse hold a very divisive, hateful, and revengeful inhibitions and disregarded everything lawful, respectful, and Ethiopian. Indeed, he should have been gone a long time ago. Woyane/TPLF with Mellesse’s leadership was locked in a dark, narrow, and repressive ideology and destroyed millions of Ethiopians.
Unlike what Mellesse, his Woyane/TPLF terrorists, and EPRDF thugs would have us believe and what the western countries tell us (without objectively analyzing) his track records of economic development is based on fake and fraudulent figures and un substantiated outcomes. Currently, more than forty percent of Ethiopians are unemployed or under employed. Three quarters of Ethiopians cannot even afford two meals a day. More than sixty percent of Ethiopians live in sub standard housing, huts, and shanties. More than eighty percent of all investments (other than roads and power) are minor and insignificant support industries not related to manufacturing and productive economy. As it is the economy is unable to create real and productive jobs. There is no heavy industry, no transfer of technologies, and no expansion of secondary industries that sustain heavy industries. In short, Mellesse’s economic development is more of pretentions than substance.
Mellesse and his Woyane/TPLF/EPRDF thugs still continue with dark and destructive mission of destroying Ethiopia and Ethiopians. They still continue their crimes of kidnappings, tortures, murders, and imprisonment of Ethiopians without cause. They still plan, coordinate, and perpetuate ethnic cleansings and genocides. As far as Ethiopians are concerned Mellesse, his Woyane/TPLF, and all EPRDF thugs have failed Ethiopians and they all must go. Ethiopians from Tigray to Borena and from Ogaden to Gambella do not have any other choice except to work for the total demise of Mellesse’s legacies including his Woyane/TPLF terrorists, and EPRDF. The very survival and continuous progress of Ethiopians’ social, economic, and political lives and the establishment of real and genuine democratic governance, rules of law, individual rights, citizens’ power over affairs of their government, and policies of their country depends on the total demise of Mellesse and his Woyane/TPLF regime.
Yes, the vast majority of Ethiopians will rejoice to be free from the state sponsored terrorism, extreme repression, and die-hard dictatorship of Mellesse and his Woyane/TPLF thugs. Yes, Ethiopians will be free and build a just, democratic, law abiding, and progressive society. With Mellesse out of the picture the aspirations of Ethiopians for freedom, democratic governance, rules of laws, and respect for the individual person is very near and will be realized.
Only when he dies, why didn’t they reported all this few years back.
The reaction of the so called ‘western leaders’is shameful and disrespect to the great people of Ethiopia.Ethiopia is better off without the TPLF gang leader.Well written thank you writter for speaking the truth.
At times the truth is buried by western leaders for un knowen reason,and lecturing us HOW GREAT WAS MELES,Insult to Ethiopian people and Africa,We saw a light at the end of the tunnel by you guys.Keep doing the good and morally right job.The ethiopian people are watching and a lot of truth will come out very soon. Rape is Rape. and a dictator is a dictator. you can not sliced it.