From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu Oct 29 2009 - 07:50:46 EST
http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/65255-washington-can-foster-solutions-for-ethiopia
Washington
can foster solutions for Ethiopia
By Mesfin Mekonen - 10/28/09 05:06 PM ET
As America and the international community scramble to prevent a repetition
of the famine that killed a million Ethiopians 25 years ago, the Obama
administration must hasten an ongoing review of U.S. policy toward Ethiopia.
And as it responds to the Ethiopian government’s recent report that over 6
million lives are at risk if more food isn’t sent quickly, Congress should
hold hearings and enact legislation to help Ethiopians create the conditions
that are necessary to ensure that food aid is never needed again.
In the short term the U.S. must and will help prevent another humanitarian
disaster. But it should also help create the kind of civil society that is
necessary to prevent it from recurring, for Ethiopia’s misery is rooted in a
dictatorial government that respects neither human rights nor the rule of
law.
Ethiopia’s famine is the result of deliberate government policies that tie
the majority of the population to landholdings that are barely able to
provide sustenance in good times, as well as corruption and ineptitude.
Food shortages are the terrible face of deeper problems: a government that
commits flagrant human rights abuses with impunity, steals elections and
suppresses dissent. Although the threat of famine is horrible, it could be
merely the tip of the iceberg if these underlying issues are not addressed.
Frustration with rigged elections might bring the kind of violence that
recently afflicted Kenya, and repression of minorities could lead to the
kind of anarchy that has plagued Ethiopia’s neighbor, Somalia, for a
generation.
The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi blames drought for the food
crisis, but Martin Plaut, Africa analyst at the BBC, recently wrote that
“large parts of the country have not been hit by drought” and the crisis “is
in part the result of policies designed to keep farmers on the land, which
belongs to the state and cannot be sold.” Plaut reported that as a result of
the government’s policies, farms are “so small and the land so overworked
that it could not provide for the families that work it even with normal
rainfall.” He noted that keeping people impoverished in the countryside “is
a way of preventing large-scale unemployment and the unrest that this might
cause.”
Meles Zenawi has found it difficult enough to keep control of the 17 percent
of Ethiopians who live in cities. The U.S. State Department’s 2008 Human
Rights report contains a chilling inventory of the Ethiopian government’s
practices. The list of abuses is too long to repeat here. Highlights
include: “limitations on citizens’ right to change their government in local
and by-elections; unlawful killings, torture, beating, abuse, and
mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces,
usually with impunity; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and
detention, particularly of suspected sympathizers or members of opposition
or insurgent groups; police and judicial corruption; detention without
charge and lengthy pretrial detention.”
The State Department also reported “societal discrimination against persons
with disabilities and religious and ethnic minorities, and government
interference in union activities, including harassment of union leaders,” as
well as “restrictions on freedom of the press [and the] arrest, detention,
and harassment of journalists.”
The Bush administration hailed Meles Zenawi as a partner in the war on
terrorism. In fact, the terror he has inflicted on his own people threatens
to turn a firm U.S. ally into a failed state and a haven for terrorists.
Despite the constant fear of violence and systematic government repression,
Ethiopians have come together to form opposition political parties dedicated
to a peaceful transition to democracy. They realize that Ethiopians must
organize to save their country.
Ethiopians also know that in the absence of outside pressure, Meles Zenawi
and his cronies will not change. It is essential that the international
community, especially the United States, press the Ethiopian government to
allow its people to exercise the most basic human and democratic rights.
With elections coming in seven months, the deadline for action is short.
The U.S. government should align its rhetoric with its policies by
enacting legislation making non-humanitarian aid to Ethiopia contingent on
Meles Zenawi and the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic
Front allowing the creation of an independent electoral commission and
permitting international election monitors to travel throughout the country
during both the campaign and the voting. Other conditions should include
removing restrictions on foreign assistance to non-governmental
organizations and giving opposition parties access to the media.
By helping Ethiopians gain the kinds of democratic freedoms and human rights
that Americans take for granted, the United States will ensure that
humanitarian disasters become only a memory, and it will find a stable,
strong partner in a troubled, strategically important corner of the globe.
*Mekonen is chairman of the All Ethiopia Unity Party International Advisory
Board, Foreign Relations.*
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