http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/20223-repression-in-ethiopia.html
Donor Dollars aiding political repression in Ethiopia
Monday, 16 July 2012 11:52
By Graham Peebles
An ideological poison is polluting all life within Ethiopia, flowing
into every area of civil society. Local governance, urban and rural
neighbourhoods, farming, education and the judiciary all are washed in
Revolutionary Democracy’, the doctrine of the ruling party. Human
Rights Watch (HRW) in their detailed report ‘Development without
Freedom’ (DWF) quote Ethiopia’s Prime Minister for the last twenty
years Meles Zenawi explaining that “when Revolutionary Democracy
permeates the entire society, individuals will start to think alike
and all persons will cease having their own independent outlook. In
this order, individual thinking becomes simply part of collective
thinking because the individual will not be in a position to reflect
on concepts that have not been prescribed by Revolutionary Democracy.”
A society of automatons is the EPRDF vision, The Borg Collective in
the Horn of Africa, men women and children of the seventy or so tribal
groups of Ethiopia all dancing to one repressive tune sung by the
ruling EPRDF.
Dollars and nonsense
Ethiopia receives around $3 billion dollars in long-term development
aid each year (second only to Indonesia); this is more than a third of
the country’s total annual budget. Funds and resources donated to
support the needy, in the hands of the Zenawi regime are being
employed as a means of manipulating the Ethiopian people along
partisan ideological lines. HRW states in DWF, “the Ethiopian
government is using development aid as a tool of political repression
by conditioning access to essential government services on support for
the ruling party.”
The EPRDF has complete control of funds donated to Ethiopia by the
Development Assistance Group (DAG), a consortium of the main donors,
including the World Bank, USA, the European Commission and Britain.
The government holds the purse strings of every dollar and cent
allocated for the four major areas of development work: Protection of
Basic Services (PBS), the Productive Safety Net Programme, Public
Sector Capacity Building and the General Education Quality
Improvement.
The largest single donor is the USA, which in 2011 according to US
state department figures “provided $847 million in assistance,
including more than $323 million in food aid.” The European Commission
gives 400 million and Britain, via the Department Foreign Investment
and Development (DFID) has committed £331million ($516million) per
year until 2015. The British taxpayers’ pounds according to DFID “will
meet the needs of the very poorest and support proven results-driven
programmes that will bring healthcare, education and water to millions
of people.” Well intentioned perhaps, however in attempting to ‘meet
the needs of the very poorest’, as DFID claim, HRW research found that
all international development aid, “flows through, and directly
supports, a virtual one-party state with a deplorable human rights
record, [whose] practices include jailing and silencing critics and
media, enacting laws to undermine human rights activity, and hobbling
the political opposition.” Facts well known to donors, who are content
it seems to allow, indeed support the politicization of aid, a
catalogue of human rights violations and the widespread suppression of
the people,forced to live in an ideological straight jacket fastened
tight by agents of the Zenawi government, at national, regional and
community level.
Conditional support
The EPRDF government controls all areas of government and civil
society in Ethiopia, from the judiciary to the classroom, the media to
the farm, telecommunication and the banks.
The EPRDF controls all areas of government and civil society in
Ethiopia, from the judiciary to the classroom, the media to the farm,
telecommunication and the banks. Its reach into urban neighborhoods
and rural communities was greatly increased before the 2008 elections,
when the number of seats in the woreda and kebele were expanded from
15 to 300. Only the EPRDF was able to field candidates in all councils
and with opposition parties largely boycotting the unfair elections,
the EPRDF ‘won’ over 99.9% of the seats, meaning as HRW state “the
ruling party had total control of the rural majority of the Ethiopian
population.”
Through the regional offices of the woreda and kebele the government
exercises its ability to control ordinary rural and urban Ethiopians;
it is here that the administration of daily life takes place. Local
offices approve or reject, applications from farmers for seeds and
fertilizer, decide on micro credit support, distribute food to the
needy (10 – 20 million rely on food aid), allocate education and
employment opportunities, issue business permits and ID cards. The
result, as HRW state is “state/party officials have significant
influence over the livelihoods of citizens.” An understatement, in
fact they govern all aspects of life, within the city or the village,
for the teacher or the judge, the women seeking to start a small
business, or the Mother desperate to feed her family. All are at the
mercy of government officials.
Emergency food relief is given as part of the PBS program, a highly
expensive complex development scheme, which assigns around $1 billion
a year reports HRW, in a “block grant to the federal government,” they
disperse the funds through their kebele’s and woreda offices.
Distribution is based not on need, but on political association,
support the opposition groups in Ethiopia and find your name scratched
from the food aid list and go hungry, HRW found “the partisan
allocation of food aid, [is] a problem that has been anecdotally
reported in many areas and over many years in Ethiopia, especially in
recent years in Somali region.” Such political discrimination of food
aid distribution is not only immoral; it is in violation of
international law. Farmers who Express dissent towards the government
have the agricultural seeds and fertilizer needed to grow crops for
their family and community withheld, voice concern over local
governance as a teacher and find your career destroyed and your job
taken away. HRW found “the EPRDF controls every woreda in the country,
and can discriminate against any household or kebele within these
administrative areas.” Given such repressive illegal actions it is
inexplicable that the DFID in its Plan For Ethiopia (PFE) state the
government shows “a strong commitment to fight corruption.” What the
EPRDF shows is a strong commitment to suppress dissent, silence all
critical voices and control the people utterly.
Big Ethiopian brother
Ethiopia is a one party state, with no freedom of speech, or assembly
nor freedom of the media and where opposition forces critical of the
government are silenced in the most brutal fashion. It is puzzling
then, that the DFID (PFE) states, “Ethiopia has also made some
progress toward establishing a functioning democracy,” It is certainly
not an image of democracy recognizable to anyone who holds human
rights and freedom of expression central to such an ideal and is
contradicted by USAID’s statement in its Strategy Plan for Ethiopia
where they acknowledge the“$13 million+ that USAID/Ethiopia invested
between 2006 and 2010 specifically to promote democratic transition
produced little in the way of tangible results, and specific programs
have been the subject of stalling and even outright hostility.” The
DFID however, go on to compound the misrepresentation asserting,
“Ethiopia has achieved a strong degree of political stability through
decentralized regional government.” If by ‘stability’ the DFID mean
lack of popular resistance to imposed governance, through the fearful
subjugation of the people, then yes this the EPRDF has succeeded in
doing.
Opposition to the government is not tolerated nor is there
decentralized governance, as Thomas Staal, USAID Mission Director to
Ethiopia recently stated, and “the [Ethiopian] government wants to be
able to control political space very carefully The kebele, woreda and
sub kebele’s are extensions of central government, carrying out the
divisive partisan policies of the EPRDF, the sole expression of
democratic principles in Ethiopia are those found within
constitutional articles, that sit neatly filed upon ministerial
shelves, collecting dust, as HRW make clear “democracy [is] a hollow
concept in a country steered by a powerful party-driven government in
which the distinction between party and state is almost impossible to
define.” And In their report “One Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure
Violations of Freedom of Expression and Association in Ethiopia“ HRW
echo USAID’s comment, observing that “despite the lip service given to
democracy and human rights, respect for core civil and political
rights such as freedom of expression and association in Ethiopia is
deteriorating.” DFID officials it seems have been duped by a plethora
of conformist federal laws and signatures to multiple international
treatises, into accepting the word of a government that terrifies its
people and tramples on international human rights law.
Partisan monitoring
Not only are all key development programs implemented by the EPRDF,
but also monitoring is also undertaken in partnership with government
agencies. Objective accurate monitoring is essential in determining
the effectiveness of development programs; it is difficult to see how
unbiased data can be collected under such highly restrictive
circumstances. HRW makes the point that “donors should recognize that
Ethiopia’s own accountability systems are moribund, and that the
principal barrier to detecting distortion is the Ethiopian
government.” Their view that independent monitoring “is needed
(without the participation of the Ethiopian Government)” is clearly
correct and the bare minimum donors should insist on.
In its wisdom however, the DFID – a key donor, whilst recognizing the
importance of monitoring appears happy to rely on the Ethiopian
government, in which they naively invest such trust. They plan to
“continue to monitor progress using national data drawn from
administrative and survey sources,” i.e. the Ethiopian government.
This demonstration of neglect by the DFID is an abdication of duty not
only to British taxpayers, but also to the people of Ethiopia, who the
EPRDF, with the help of international donors, continue to suppress and
intimidate. They cannot and should not be trusted, HRW Deputy Director
Jan England’s Open Letter to DFID Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell
makes this plain, “the Ethiopian government is extremely resistant to
scrutiny the British government and other donors to Ethiopia should
not allow the Ethiopian government to dictate the terms on which
British public money is monitored, and every effort should be made to
prevent British development aid from strengthening authoritarian rule
and repression.”
Ideological imposition
At the core of the EPRDF’s suppression and disregard for human rights
is an ideological obsession. Revolutionary Democracy. Evangelical
party political indoctrination takes place in within schools, teacher
training institutions, the civil service and the judiciary. All
contrary to international law, the Ethiopian constitution and federal
laws, composed to conform to universal legal standards, conveniently
cited by politician and diplomats, ignored and unenforced they mean
nothing to the people.
School children above grade 10 (aged 15/16 years) are required to
attend training sessions in the party ideology, policies on economic
development, land sales and education. Admission to university,
although not legally the case is implicitly dependent upon membership
of the party, HRW found “students were under the impression that they
needed party membership cards to gain admission to university.” The
EPRDF stamp is also required to secure government jobs after
graduation. All teachers, civil servants and judges are under pressure
to tow the party line, to join the EPRDF and follow its doctrine,
failure to do so impacts on employment and career prospects.
Ethiopia’s largest donor, the USA, in the State Department human
rights country report for 2011 notes, “Students in schools and
universities were indoctrinated in the core precepts of the ruling
EPDRF party’s concept of “revolutionary democracy…. the ruling party
“stacks” student enrolment at Addis Ababa University… Authorities did
not permit teachers at any level to deviate from official lesson plans
and actively prohibited partisan political activity and association of
any kind.”
Educational brainwashing of course contravenes the Ethiopian
constitution, which clearly states in Article 90/2 “Education shall be
provided in a manner that is free from any religious influence,
political partisanship or cultural prejudice.” Words, righteous and
legally binding are of no concern to Zenawi, his ministers, foreign
diplomats and the cadres or spies who patrol the city neighbourhoods,
university campus and civil service offices, infiltrate villages and
towns of rural Ethiopia intimidating and blackmailing the people.
International donors however, should be deeply concerned and take
urgent actions to stop such violations of national and international
law and the politicisation of aid distribution including emergency
food relief.
Mixed Motives distorted action
Western governments reasons for providing development aid to Ethiopia
are both humanitarian and strategic, USAID in its country plan, calls
Ethiopia “the most strategically important partner in the region,” and
the DFID states, “Ethiopia matters to the UK for a range of
development, foreign policy and security reasons.”
Regional stability and the ‘fight against terrorism’ is cited as
justification for continuing to support the EPRDF, in spite of
extensive human rights abuses, the partisan distribution of aid and
state terrorism. In fact, far from bringing stability to the area, the
Zenawi regime is a cause of instability, this Anna Gomez makes plain
“the Al-Shabab militia [Islamist group in Somalia] have only grown
stronger [emphasis mine] and survival has been made more difficult
since Ethiopian troops invaded in 2006, at the behest of George W.
Bush.”
With conflicting interests, some might say corrupt and corrupting,
donor countries find themselves funding a deeply repressive violent
regime, enabling a coordinated policy of ideological indoctrination to
take place, as HRW found “the government has used donor-supported
programs, salaries, and training opportunities as political weapons to
control the population, punish dissent, and undermine political
opponents” Western donors silence and complicity in the face of such
violations of international law is as Anna Gomez rightly says in the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism 4th August 2011 “letting down all
those who fight for justice and democracy and increasing the potential
for conflict in Ethiopia and in Africa.”
The politicization and manipulation of aid distribution by the EPRDF
violates international law and all standards of moral decency. Those
providing aid must take urgent action to ensure this illegal practice
comes to an end. Donors are well aware of the human rights abuses
taking place, but have turned a blind eye to the repression of civil
and political rights and a deaf ear to the cries of the many for
justice and freedom. Western governments silence amounts to collusion;
it is a gross misuse of taxpayer’s money and a betrayal, of
international human rights laws and the Ethiopian people.
Graham is Director of The Create Trust, a UK registered charity,
supporting fundamental social change and the human rights of
individuals in acute need.
Received on Mon Jul 16 2012 - 23:32:25 EDT
