Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 23:21:54 +0200
Ethiopia, 30 years after the famine
Three decades after images that shocked the world, country has become
darling of the global development community – and the scourge of the human
rights lobby
<http://www.theguardian.com/profile/davidsmith> David Smith in Addis Ababa
Friday 24 October 2014 16.03 BST
With an Einsteinian shock of hair and a wise man’s beard, Mulugeta
Tesfakiros, just off a flight from Washington, settled into an office of
glass walls and vibrant artworks in Addis Ababa. The millionaire magnate,
who has gone into the
<http://addisfortune.net/articles/bob-geldof-gives-ethiopian-wine-a-boost>
local wine business with Bob Geldof, mused on the new Ethiopia: “Most of the
people need first security, second food … and democracy after that.”
An hour’s drive away stand the corrugated iron watchtowers of a prison. The
inmates include nine bloggers and journalists charged with terrorism.
Standing in a bleak courtyard on a family visit day, they talked about how
they had been tortured.
“I feel like I don’t know <http://www.theguardian.com/world/ethiopia>
Ethiopia,” one said. “It’s a totally different country for me.”
This is the Janus-faced society that is the second most populous country in
Africa. A generation after the famine that pierced the conscience of the
world, Ethiopia is both a darling of the international development community
and a scourge of the human rights lobby. Even as investment conferences
praise it as a trailblazer the entire continent should emulate,
organisations such as
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/05/ethiopia-un-review-should-condemn-crackd
own> Human Rights Watch (HRW) describe it as “one of the most repressive
media environments in the world”.
To be in Ethiopia is to witness an economic miracle. The country has enjoyed
close to double-digit growth for a decade. One study found it was
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/ethiopia-faster-rate-millionai
res-michael-buerk> creating millionaires faster than anywhere else on the
continent. The streets of Addis Ababa reverberate with hammering from
construction workers as the concrete skeletons of new towers and a monorail
project rise into the crane-dotted sky. Ethiopia’s government says it is on
course to meet most of the
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/millennium-development-goals>
millennium development goals and, by 2025, to be a middle-income country.
Yet the frenetic urban expansion has uprooted thousands of farmers while,
critics say, those who speak out against it are rounded up and jailed. Of
547 MPs,
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/ethiopia-lone-opposition-mp>
only one belongs to an opposition party. Activists and journalists describe
an Orwellian surveillance state, breathtaking in scale and scope, in which
phone conversations are recorded and emails monitored by thousands of
bureaucrats reminiscent of the Stasi in East Berlin. The few who dare to
take to the streets in protest are crushed with deadly force. Amnesty
International has called it an
<http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/ethiopia-end-onslaught-dissent-arrests-conti
nue-2014-07-10> “onslaught on dissent” in the runup to elections next year.
The architect of this ostensibly Chinese model of development – or
“authoritarian developmentalism” – in east Africa was the late prime
minister Meles Zenawi, who appeared to set the
<http://africanarguments.org/2012/05/21/how-meles-rules-ethiopia-by-richard-
dowden> blueprint with his remark: “There is no connection between democracy
and development.” When Meles
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/21/meles-zenawi-death-fears-turmo
il> died in 2012 after 21 years in power, the UK prime minister, David
Cameron, described him as an inspirational spokesman for Africa, while the
former PM Tony Blair, whose autographed photo adorns the five-star Sheraton
Addis hotel, spoke of his “great sadness”.
Among the winners of the Meles legacy is Tesfakiros, the head of the
<http://www.muller-realestate.com> Muller Real Estate company with a
business empire that includes logistics, transport, food manufacturing and
the wine venture with Geldof, which last year made a profit of $5m (£3m).
“We’re trying to put Ethiopia as a wine-producing country like California or
South Africa,” he said.
Ethiopia also imports about 10m litres of wine a year to serve a growing
middle class, a concept that would have been unthinkable to viewers of the
images of helplessness and starvation that spurred
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjQzJAKxTrE> Band Aid in 1984.
“People would be surprised. It’s very hard for them to believe,” Tesfakiros
reflected. “There has been amazing growth in the last 15 years. People have
got the work ethic and are investing. The real estates market is booming and
will boom for a time.”
He praised prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s government for ensuring
peace, encouraging domestic entrepreneurs and attracting investment from
China, India and the west. Asked if all this was at the sacrifice of
democracy, Tesfakiros replied: “What’s democracy? The opposition needs
support by the middle class. When we have a middle class, we will have a
stronger democracy. Until then, we have a nanny for the democracy. Democracy
is a matter of education and civilisation – 85% of our population is
farmers; we don’t know how to read and write. When you have a middle class,
you push for your rights.”
If progress means surrendering civil liberties, including his phone calls
being tapped, that is a price Tesfakiros is willing to pay. “If they listen
and make the country safer, I don’t care. In America they do it, in Europe
they do it.”
Independent journalists have described telephone conversations they had
years ago being played back to them during interrogations. This year an
<ttp://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/25/ethiopia-telecom-surveillance-chills-righ
ts> investigation by HRW noted the government had complete control over the
telecoms system and virtually unlimited access to the call records of all
phone users. Most of the technologies were provided by the Chinese telecoms
firm ZTE, it said, while Ethiopia also appears to have used tools made by
UK, German and Italian companies in the UK, Germany and Italy.
Some believe the spying programme is so sophisticated that it must have
western support at government level. Ethiopia is seen as a reliable police
officer in the region,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-drone-base-in-ethi
opia-is-operational/2011/10/27/gIQAznKwMM_story.html> hosting a US military
base and sending troops to fight the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab in
neighbouring Somalia. Advocates of its hardline security approach – patrons
of the leading coffee shop chain are patted down on entry – point out that
it has not suffered atrocities like Kenya, which is also engaged in Somalia.
The three journalists and six bloggers arrested in April and
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/ethiopian-bloggers-journalists
-zone-nine-charged-terrorism-ginbot-7> charged with terrorism in July are
accused of planning attacks in Ethiopia and working in collusion with Ginbot
7, the US-based opposition group labelled by authorities as a terrorist
organisation. They deny the charge and say they have been tortured. During
the visit by the Guardian to the prison on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, one
said he had been locked in a 20 sq metre room with 100 inmates.
“It’s not just the slapping you or beating you on the feet, it’s the way
they wake you in the middle of the night in that shitty room where you’ve
tried so hard to sleep,” the prisoner said above the noise of fellow inmates
and their relatives. “It’s mental as well as physical torture. For a person
who followed the world and was on the internet 24 hours, I feel like I’m
shut down here. The only freedom I have here is thinking. They can’t stop me
thinking, but even that is distorted.”
Hope is fading for the group as they get caught in the cogs of the court
system. “We feel this is our new life. We know from the past experience of
others that we have started a prison life already. There’s not going to be
any bail; it’s going to be waiting day after day. Even though we know we are
innocent, we know we have to accept it. The only choice we have is to smile
or cry – and we want to cry about it.”
They are not the only journalists and activists behind bars. In June,
Andargachew Tsige, a Briton of Ethiopian origin and secretary general of
Ginbot 7, was seized at a Yemeni airport and illegally extradited to
Ethiopia, where he could face the death penalty. Opposition parties, who
boycotted parliament after the last election, say their members have been
incarcerated, or worse.
The
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/07/oromo-nationalism-rise-et
hiopia-201472981456841809.html> Oromo Federalist Congress, representing
Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group, is resisting the government’s “masterplan”
for expanding Addis Ababa, claiming it has forced 150,000 Oromo farmers off
their land without compensation. Witnesses say police killed at least 17
protesters, including children and students, during
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/may/22/e
thiopia-crackdown-student-protest-education> demonstrations this year and
hundreds more are being detained without charge.
While tycoons such as Tesfakiros are showered in money from the property
boom, Bekele Nega, general secretary of the congress, which has more than
10,000 members, has a different perspective. “This we don’t consider
‘development’,” he said. “This we consider the uprooting of the indigenous
people, who will lose their culture and identity. The government say they
are expanding Addis Ababa but the reality is they are getting rid of the
people who don’t support the EPRDF [the ruling Ethiopian People’s
Revolutionary Democratic Front].”
He challenged the west’s perceptions of positive change in the country.
“Foreigners who see these tall buildings will say Ethiopia is developing.
The reality is we are not developing. We are not having three meals a day.
People like Bob Geldof and others consider they have helped our people and
of course they have. But they didn’t come to the kernel of the matter. The
EPRDF used the money from that time to build the empire they are in control
of. Somebody hijacked the money from that hunger. It’s written in black and
white.”
Ethiopia is still one of the
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/06/britain-supporting-dictatorshi
p-in-ethiopia> biggest recipients of UK development aid, getting about £300m
a year.
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/jul/17/ethiopia-rights-a
buses-us-uk-aid-agencies> Money also pours in from the US. Nega believes it
is
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/aug/05/ethiopia-aid-poli
tical-tool-opposition> misspent: “The west has left us, left the people. The
US is aiding dictators and turning a blind eye to us. Why? The same with
Britain, which has democratic values. They give the taxpayers money for
buying weapons or for the police station to handcuff people.”
Donor aid is also helping the government to spy on its citizens and even
turn family members against each other, he alleged. “For any five family
members, one will be reporting to the police. Your brother or your sister or
your mother.
Ethiopia has turned its back on the concept of western liberal democracy,
Nega said. “Whether we like it or not, we are in the Chinese developmental
state. The west wants us to be democrats and build a democracy. This
question is not comfortable for our leaders. According to them, we need only
food. They don’t understand that poor people need democracy. They fact we
are poor does not mean we are not human beings. We cannot be uprooted and
tormented.
“As human beings we deserve democracy, human rights, rule of law. Until we
get it, we’ll go on demanding it, even at the cost of our own lives. We are
demanding it for the sake of our children. Maybe tomorrow, maybe today, any
day I could be in prison. But I have my tongue and my pen and they cannot
drive me back from telling what I know and believe. I hope the world will
know what the reality is.”
Similar
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/10/paul-kagame-rwanda-success-aut
horitarian> criticism of the disjunction between economic progress and
political freedom have been made of Rwanda under Paul Kagame. But Ethiopia
is much bigger. Its government is unrepentant and convinced of its mission.
Any hint of doubt would seem like weakness. One senior official said: “The
most basic human right is food on the table. If we’re doing that, why would
we violate other human rights? This is a safe, secure place and we want to
keep it that way. We’ll do anything to keep it that way. We have 90 million
people – you try to control them.”
Ethiopian children in a refugee camp during the famineEthiopian children in
a refugee camp during the famine. Photograph: William Campbell/Sygma/Corbis
(image/jpeg attachment: image003.jpg)