If you define election to mean what it means – freely choosing between choices, and tell me that there was an election in Ethiopia on May 23, 2010, you must either be crazy or think I am crazy to believe you. The whole charade, people going to the polls, the choreographed celebration and condemnation of Human rights Watch and “foreign forces” and the craftily worded statements of the election monitors and the “concern” expressed by donor country officials about the uneven playing field, is therefore simply a massive pile of joke on a captive population. The praise profusely showered on the Ethiopian people by the officials of donor countries about holding a peaceful election, as if election day under dictatorships is always a day of violence, is an insulting patronization to people who have been mugged of their basic rights. That there was no violence on Election Day is proof of the level of control by the regime more than anything else and has little to do with the fairness or unfairness of the election. How often do elections under Saddam Hussein, Mengistu Hailemariam or Castro turn violent? In fact, a record of some protest may be an indication that there is some level of freedom and free organizing.
That dictators are often delusional is known. At some point they end up believing their own lies. But the willful ignorance of our Western friends is dumbfounding. We all have seen it in broad daylight when the Ethiopian people were herded like cattle and driven to polling places to vote for their tormentors. I am disappointed that the EU-Election observers couldn’t go a little further and blunter on their assessment and call it a piece of crappy joke on democracy. I only hope they will say this in their final report if they are honest. I mean, this doesn’t even deserve any diplomatic lingo and finessing. As to the AU observation group, I can only say that a few trained chimpanzees from the Congo would have produced better reports. These buffoons make me hate that I am an African, frankly. In fact, they show me the reason why Africa finds itself at the tail of human progress on this planet. This election is a violence committed against the Ethiopian people in order to steal their free will and their aspirations to join the community of civilized nations.
Let me share with you a snippet of an email I received a few days ago from an old friend living in Addis Ababa. Read it and tell me if it shows you a people at peace with the election or the regime:
I envy you for not being here and watching this farce my dear. I just came back from the Meles’s victory parade where my blood was boiling all day. …My dear, we are reliving Mengistu’s darkest days. The demonstration today is a picture perfect copy of what Mengistu used to do. I hope you will see the video. It was organized by the kebele and the “Ternnafi” and the government officials before any vote was cast. The only difference is that Meles is now Mengistu. Another difference you see is Meles is standing in a bulletproof glass booth and does not throw blood filled bottles on the stage. This coward does know that the people he gathered there all hate him.
It was on government time and since I have to save my job I had to be there. You see in this country you are forced to celebrate something that even disgusts you. Not only they steal your vote, they make sure they also humiliate and dehumanize you. If that was their intention, they succeeded in doing that to me today. I am burning inside out and don’t exactly know what to do. … Fear is everywhere, even the fear of appearing unhappy about the results of the election….. I hope you people living outside can be our voices. You can at least freely cry on our behalf.”
I know my friend is speaking for many. This flame burning inside millions of people may not be visible to the naked eye, particularly to the casual observer. If history hasn’t stopped to be a lesson, we will soon see it raging in the open. Spin it all you want, there was no election conducted on May 23. It was a ritual held for the coronation of Meles Zenwi’s one man rule. Now that he has began hanging his pictures where Mengistu’s were once hung and even employed Azmaris to sing how handsome he looks (don’t laugh), Meles has fully joined the club of Africa’s legendary delusional dictators. Those who died fighting to get rid of the dergue thinking that they were doing it to bring democracy to their people must be rolling in their graves.
Everything that happened on May 23 and the run up to the day, the five years of intense repression since the May 2005 debacle, is so public and on record for anyone willing to see. If you think Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups have axes to grind because their plan of colonizing Ethiopia is thwarted by Meles Zenawi and Bereket Simon, just have a quick look at the annual Human Rights Reports of the US State Department, the most important friend of Zenawi’s government. It is replete with accounts of gruesome repression, terror, killing and torture, many of which amount to crimes against humanity. I sometimes wonder why our Western friends are often heard condemning Issayas Afeworki of Eritrea for not holding this periodic ritual they call election. It appears that they are accusing him for being honest and refusing to spend millions of dollars for a useless ritual. I am sure he can hold similar elections and get himself easily elected. Look at the difference with Ethiopia now. Why does Meles destroy the lives of thousands of Ethiopians over conflicts with these fake elections and spend millions of dollars that could have been used to feed hungry children only to arrive at the same result as his former idol. Oh, I forgot, our lords of poverty want this shameless ritual to hoodwink their own tax payers to dole out their handouts that perpetuate our dependency on them.
The Facts:
During the run up to the election, Meles has been locking down on all space for the exercise of democracy while at the same time suppressing democratic expressions and oiling his machine of repression with western aid. The lockdown on all civic society and the already feeble institutions that could at least grow into some pillars for democracy were being systematically dismantled one by one through decree after decree. The Civil Societies Law, the so called Anti-terrorism Law, that defined even minor civil disobedience as an act of terror, the draconian press law and the closure of independent newspapers that silenced journalists and sent many of them to exile, the jamming of prodemocracy radio stations including the Voice of America, critical websites, the complete blurring and then merger between the TPLF/EPRDF and the government, the use and establishment of neighborhood party watchers already experimented and pilot tested on the people of Tigrai, Meles Zenawi’s ethnic homeland, for nineteen years etc , were not done for fun. The imprisonment of Birtukan Mideksa, the Chairwoman of UDJ and a rising young political star was not because she broke any law? She has to get out of the way and suffer so that Meles and his cronies get their way. All of this was done for 99% control and 99% result.
According to sources from inside the government, the order was given out to local authorities that they will lose their livelihood if any opposition wins and that they will be rewarded if they deliver victory. Cadres worked their butts off, killing and imprisoning political opponents when they can, chasing opposition election observers, filling out voting cards and stuffing them, telling a terrorized people that it was easy to find out who they voted for from finger prints and hidden cameras in voting booths and that they will be a heavy price to pay latter if they vote for any opposition. If this is not a mafia like muggery then tell me what it is.
The 99.6% Surprise:
Many people seem to be surprised about the 99.6% “victory” margin. Some may have believed the well oiled repressive machine Meles Zenawi built was not as extensive. But many are surprised that Meles, the clever politician they know, failed to donate some “votes” to the opposition to make the ritual look like there was an election. Meles is a coward person even by standards of other dictators, as many of his former comrades testify. A slight opening of the door for democratic election five years ago has scared the living daylight out of him. That is one reason he chose calculated a zero risk and came up with this embarrassing result.
The surprise over the 99.6% margin also comes from some level of ignorance. This farce is not the only 90+% achieved by the regime. According to researchers, over the last five years Meles has purged the leadership of the national defense forces of all other ethnic groups and put 95% of it under the leadership of loyal members of his own ethnic party. For the first time since Emperor Menilik, there is no a single Oromo, holding a single key position in the national army. Of 61 key military positions identified by the researchers, 58 are from Meles Zenawi’s ethnic party. Now, that would be surprising. It is even more surprising when you think that the Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia that provide nearly 90+% of the export earnings and most of the food produced in the country. Researchers have also found out that some 90+% of the chiefs of the Ministry of National Security (the spy agency) are people from Meles Zenawi’s loyal ethnic clique? We are now told that 99% of young people who are allowed to attend graduate studies are members of the party, many recruited outside of their will. With the requirement for higher education becoming membership to Zenawi’s party and preference for government employment being given to party members, 99% of people with graduate degree in the country and all civil servants will soon be members of Zenawi’s party. These things should surprise all descent people much more than the 99.6% “vote margin.
What is perhaps even more surprising is this endless ritual of election observers and officials of the donor countries, the enablers of the suffering of the millions, issuing carefully worded reports and statements telling us that they are “concerned’ about the undemocratic practices, but that they love us and our country so much that they will continue to extend their helping hand. This is what the EU Chief foreign officer Anita Ashton did minutes after the she was told that her election observers have issued a preliminary report that angered Meles Zenawi. Her disregard for the facts and the speed with which she swung to whitewash the mild criticism was an expression of her bigotry towards Africans. She was actually saying, “You are Africans and the ritual is enough for you”.
The Net results:
Nearly everybody including Meles has lost this election. Peaceniks like me and many Ethiopians who have been sitting on the fences have also lost the argument that there is hope in democratizing Ethiopia though a peaceful process. In a perverse way they have made it easier on all of us now. The unnecessarily fragmented Ethiopian opposition should cease this opportunity to rethink its tactics and strategies, find its voice, and mount a vigorous common resistance to this inhuman system. Will the donors of Meles Zenawi who oil his machine of repression continue to help him after fully knowing that they are accomplices in the crimes being committed against an entire people? We will see. If history is any lesson they would. But they will soon see that they have achieved neither democracy nor stability in that part of the region. They will have a smaller mouth to open against a people who are left with the devils alternatives. Meles Zenawi and the house of cards he is built has peaked and can go nowhere but downhill from here on.
Meles and gang are committing such crimes with impunity. Some times they are even rewarded by the World Bank and others. The U.S. Government alone gives Meles over a billion dollars per year. Most of this money goes to buy weapons that are used to oppress and brutalize the people of Ethiopia.
ADDIS ABABA (IRIN) – After harvesting just 50kg of grain last year from his tiny plot in an arid corner of Ethiopia’s Amhara region, Asmenaw Keflegn knew he would have to ask for help. But when the 44-year-old member of the opposition All Ethiopia Unity Party asked his village chairman to put him on a list of those eligible for emergency food aid from foreign donors, he was refused. The chairman told him, “Let the party that you belong to give you aid.”
Prime Minister Genocidal dictator Meles Zenawi’s ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and its allies won 545 out of 547 seats in the parliament in May elections, amid opposition charges – dismissed by the government – that it employed a broad-based campaign of harassment, intimidation and coercion, including the systematic denial of food aid to opposition supporters. Despite annual economic growth of over 7 percent in the past five years, about 13 million Ethiopians – nearly one-sixth of the population – receive some form of foreign aid.
The ruling party vigorously denied the reports and said the opposition was fabricating such evidence to discredit the elections and undermine the government. The accusations are “outrageous and stupid”, Meles told reporters. “There is no such system. There will never be such a system.”
“The government at this level of development doesn’t need any coercive measures [in order] to be elected,” says Bereket Simon, Minister of Communication Affairs. “Regarding governance, regarding social development, the people of Ethiopia know for sure the future of Ethiopia lies with this government and so we have no need to compete in an undemocratic way.”
However, a March report from New York-based Human Rights Watch, A Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure, states that government services, including food aid distributions, are “tools used to discourage opposition to government policies, deny the opposition political space, and punish those who do not follow the party line”.
Food for votes
In the district of Tembien in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Seeye Abreha, a losing candidate from the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) party of jailed opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa, said the two main donor-funded relief programmes were manipulated by the ruling party before the election.
From 17 May, farmers who were owed three months of relief payments under the Productive Safety Net Program, a western-funded food-for-work scheme, were given one month’s payment and told by local government officials they would receive the remainder after the election “provided they let down Seeye and vote for the EPRDF candidate”, says Seeye, a former minister of defence under Meles.
“Emergency food aid and Safety Net were very much employed as a tool for influencing the result of the election,” he added. “I am not against the distribution of food aid because there are a lot of people who need it very badly. My point is that the food provision should be independent of politics.”
Donors say they have no evidence to prove their aid has been used as a campaign tool. The US, which gave Ethiopia US$937 million in aid last year, sent a team to southern Ethiopia accompanied by government officials in December to investigate the allegations. US efforts have found “no evidence that food aid is being denied to supporters of the opposition”, wrote Alyson Grunder, a spokeswoman for the US embassy, in an e-mail to IRIN.
A team led by the World Bank analyzed data on aid distortion from the PSNP and found no widespread pattern of aid misuse, said Kenichi Ohashi, the World Bank’s country director for Ethiopia.
Paying the price
Noting that Ethiopia is a major ally in western counter-terrorism efforts in Somalia and one of the largest aid recipients on the African continent, rights groups and opposition leaders suggest such investigations have been half-hearted.
“When all of their development programmes are being administered by the Ethiopian government, there is a structural incentive to underplay the human rights situation and to believe what the Ethiopian government tells them,” says Ben Rawlence, an HRW researcher. “This becomes a particularly difficult and embarrassing contradiction when faced with a more than 90 percent election victory.”
“The US can launch an investigation and it may work if it’s done independently, but if it goes around accompanied by government officials it’s not going to find out anything,” says Hailu Araaya, a leader of the UDJ opposition party.
The Bank’s Ohashi says donor efforts to investigate the issue have not been designed to uncover such problems. “These mechanisms are essentially not able to catch the kinds of things Human Rights Watch alleged to be happening,” he said. “Unless you go and do some undercover investigation you’re not likely to find it.”
In December, the government detained seven farmers from northern Ethiopia who travelled to the capital Addis Ababa to testify about aid politicization to foreign donors and human rights groups.
Rawlence was expelled from the country, and a foreign journalist who later travelled to northern Ethiopia to meet the farmers was detained for two days and threatened with expulsion, according to HRW.
The government has criticized HRW for what it views as the organization’s flawed methodology in reporting about human rights violations in Ethiopia. “Basically it is the same old junk,” says Bereket. “It has nothing to do with human rights or any discrimination or intimidation whatsoever. It’s a report that intends to punish the image of Ethiopia and try if possible to derail the peaceful and democratic election process.”
Protests
But opposition supporters in the countryside say the denial of food aid has proven to be a potent political weapon in a famine-prone country. Yimer Ahmed, 45, an opposition candidate for the regional council in the central Amhara region, said his wife recently divorced him because his membership of an opposition party had kept their family from receiving US food aid.
“Because life is hard, people are saying that being a member of the opposition will invite hunger,” he says. “This aid is coming through the government and without this aid they will starve, so they don’t want to have any problems with the government.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is business as usual. Woyanne conducts unfair elections, arrests and murders opposition members, jams radio programs, blocks access to web sites… and as a reward it gets $100 million from the poverty-monger organization.
ADDIS ABABA (APA) The Ethiopian government Woyanne and the World Bank on Thursday signed in Addis Ababa a $100 million loan agreement to support road construction projects in the country to continue oppressing and tormenting the people of Ethiopia.
According to the agreement, the money will be utilized for the government’s 10-year road construction development projects. Ethiopia is currently undertaking a multi-billion dollar road construction throughout the country since the past five years.
Thursday’s loan agreement is expected to help Ethiopia to finalize all ongoing road projects in the country, according to Ahmed Shidena, the Ethiopian Minister of State for Finance and Economic Development.
He said that the government was undertaking various road construction projects to expand the country’s road network, which said was in a poor state in the past few years.
ADDIS ABABA (The Economist) — THERE are two colours I associate with Ethiopia. Grey for the dust, the bare hills, stony soil and donkeys. Grey for the Soviet-era buildings in the towns and the fumes of ancient Lada cars. Then there is gold, in the fields at harvest time, in the sunshine at that lung-busting altitude, and the heavy jewellery worn by women. Gold especially for the churches, the icons, the luminous curls in the crosses and staves, and in the golden plumage of archangels who many Ethiopians believe overlook the inner workings of their lives.
Religion is central to life in Ethiopia, as it is in the rest of Africa. But it is of a very different type. Neighbouring Kenya became Christian just over a century ago. Its Christianity still has a stripped-down missionary flavour. The Amhara and Tigray regions of Ethiopia, by contrast, were Christian long before St Augustine of Canterbury landed in England. The Band Aid anthem to raise money for Ethiopian famine victims in 1984 was in some ways ill-judged: of course they knew it was Christmastime.
Yet Ethiopia is also a country of revolutionary zeal. It is ruled by an inner circle of former Marxist guerrillas who are not evidently religious. That sets up a tension in the country. After this week’s election victory by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), I ask Ethiopians what they would like to ask their long-serving prime minister, Meles Zenawi. Most often they say they would like to quiz him about God. “I want to know if he is a believer,” says my driver in Addis Ababa. Teddy—his name changed to protect his identity—is critical of the government. They have done many good things. But they like to control us.” Even in heavy traffic Teddy takes his hands off the steering wheel and crosses himself when passing one of the many churches. He gently recounts his own story of last week’s elections. The organisers of the taxi fleet he drives for are card-carrying members of the EPRDF. “We are not talking about many people. Maybe 20 out of a couple of hundred cabs. But they decide on a lot of things, including the renewal of licences. They told the rest of us we had to attend government rallies in a procession during the election campaign. Most of us refused. After the election they will come for us.” What will he do then? Teddy shrugs. He is close to retirement, but has two small children. “A man cannot live on his knees.”
The fear among Ethiopians like Teddy is similar to that of citizens in the Soviet bloc in the 1970s. Those who prove themselves to the party will be awarded promotions and sinecures, however modest. Those who refuse to join in risk losing the privileges they have. And for the few who openly challenge the way in which the EPRDF muddles its own interest with the national interest there is the prospect of censorship, harassment and prison.
Ethiopia is an authoritarian state, not a totalitarian one. The choice is difficult, but it remains a choice. The situation is in some ways harder than in the Soviet Union though. There is no barbed wire holding the Ethiopians in, rather an overwhelming indifference in the rest of the world. Nor is there much of an alternative to the EPRDF. Whatever criticism is made of Mr Zenawi, he is more cogent and measured than the opposition. Its heroes include Birtukan Mideksa, a single mother who is serving a life sentence in solitary confinement for standing up to the government. But her heroics are undercut by the failure of the opposition to unite around a sensible manifesto for the future of Ethiopia.
Over the next five years critics of the EPRDF can expect to be further marginalised. Western donors are largely happy with this state of affairs. They hope for something like an African version of Yugoslavia under Tito. Stability is indeed a precious prize, if your goal is to eradicate extreme poverty. The danger though is that progress at the bottom will mean suffocation of a an independent-minded middle class. Lackeys seldom make the creative leaps a country like Ethiopia needs as its population swells to perhaps as much 30m in the coming decades (up from 40m in the days of Band Aid). At present a tenth of the country would perish without foreign food aid. The EPRDF is unwilling to give up control of farmland, telecoms, and the internet. Ethiopia’s banks, stocks, and insurance markets are far behind other big African countries. None of that bodes well. Ethiopians have historically always attacked the centre from the periphery. If the country cannot run ahead of its poverty, the risk of a Yugoslav-style denouement grows. Religion plays into the fatalism. Many Ethiopians believe that the opposition is incidental. Only God can change their government.
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.
