By Shiferaw Abebe

As incredible as it may seem, Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) – the entity that has ruled Ethiopia for 26 years to date – has the international community in its bag with its claim of achieving a year-to-year double-digit economic growth and phenomenal poverty reduction for longer than a decade now. This dubious claim is one of the two atonements with which TPLF appeases the powers that be for the horrific human right sins it commits year round.

The powers that be – the U.S. and Europe in particular – have time and again accepted this claim as a worthy offering and looked the other way as TPLF kills, jails, tortures and dehumanizes its political opponents, journalists, human right activists, and peaceful protesters. If, from time to time, these major funders of the regime condemn its atrocities, they do it in the mildest form possible. Worse still, they undermine any effect their condemnation may have by, with the same breath, lauding the regime for its economic achievements and contribution to the war on terrorism, the other ploy with which the regime fools the world.

Very few Ethiopians fall for the regime’s anti-terrorism posturing, but sadly a significant number of them appear to be willing to give the regime the benefit of the doubt on its economic claims. A slice of them goes to the extent of consciously overlooking or downplaying the regime’s human right violations altogether.

No amount of economic growth can justify the death, arrest or torture of a single individual. Those who think Ethiopians should endure abject injustice, lack of freedom, routine indignity and dehumanization in exchange for economic wellbeing are either associated with the regime, are in some way profiting under the current system, or lack empathy to those who suffered and are suffering the brunt of the regime’s unjust imprisonment, torture, and killings.

That aside, the economic achievement the regime claims to have materialized because of its policies and actions has to be challenged in its own right because the claim, far from being accurate, is a work of deliberate exaggerations and deceptions. More importantly, this alleged growth, even if true, comes at a much higher opportunity cost as will be discussed later.

To begin with, no one can deny that there has been some economic growth in Ethiopia particularly in the last decade. Anyone visiting the country will immediately notice the buzzing construction activity in Addis and other major cities. The life style of some has also changed, for example with more Ethiopians owning a family car, a house or condominium. How much one would be impressed with these and other changes depends on their reference point. For many Ethiopians, their reference point is the Ethiopia they knew decades ago, which naturally magnifies the change they see now. If, however, one uses the rest of the world as the reference point, one would most likely have a much lower excitement if not disappointment about the economic progress in Ethiopia.

Comparative analysis – comparing Ethiopia’s economic performance with others – is important because it will tell us what Ethiopians have potentially missed for what they have gotten under the TPLF regime. But let’s first start with the basic claim the TPLF regime makes in its economic argument, namely Ethiopia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown annually by more than ten per cent for more than ten years. As the Economist, citing prominent international economic experts pointed out, this claim is partly a hoax; Ethiopia’s GDP growth at best is half what the regime claims it to be. One need not to believe the statistics, but make note of the several real life indicators, including the very high unemployment rate the regime itself has come to admit in recent times. Given Ethiopia’s population growth rate at around 2.5 percent, had the economy grown by double-digits for over a decade, there would be a much lower level of unemployment in the country today given also the fact that the few key areas of current economic activity such as agriculture, services and public infrastructure are labor intensive.

In Asia and elsewhere, a double-digit economic growth has uniformly generated expanding and well-rewarding jobs for the younger and better-educated generation in particular. Those opportunities almost universally created a great and infectious sense of optimism and confidence about the future of their country. What has happened in Ethiopia since TPLF took power – more so in the last ten years – is quite the opposite. Seeing little opportunity in the hyped domestic economy, tens of thousands of youth are forced to leave their country each year for a precarious life in the Middle East and neighboring Africa countries. The dissatisfaction and discontentment of those who stayed behind meanwhile boiled to the surface, escalating into a widespread popular uprising in the last one-year and a half and panicking the regime into declaring a Martial Law, which is still in place eight months later.

Secondly, the much touted double-digit growth, even if it were true, amounts to much less when measured in per capita terms. For a poor country like Ethiopia, a GDP growth that is not measured in per capita terms is quite deceptive because it does not tell how much it amounts to when divided into one hundred million parts. That is why a recent media coverage about Ethiopia overtaking Kenya to become the largest economy in East Africa is pretty much meaningless. For all that matters, Kenya’s GDP, which when divided among its population is double that of Ethiopia, affords Kenyans a much better living standard financially, with better access to education, healthcare, clean water and reliable electricity.

Likewise, the nominal GDP the TPLF regime reports, even if true, is much less in terms of real goods and services because Ethiopia’s inflation for most part of the last decade and longer has been in double-digits. So much so that the livelihood of salaried people, for example, has not changed much, if at all, despite the pay raises they might have received over the years. The vast majority of the Ethiopian poor and fixed income earners such as retirees actually fare worse today than ten years ago because their purchasing power has declined with the rise in the prices of goods and services. Families that receive remittances from relatives abroad may have weathered the brunt of the inflation, but their relative wellbeing has nothing to do with the alleged domestic economic growth.

Thirdly, one also has to remember that, whatever growth there is, it is mainly financed by other people’s money. The country’s main production sectors – agriculture, manufacturing, and mining are nowhere near generating the level of real economic value and tax base to finance the infrastructure development that is behind much of the GDP growth. The public infrastructure projects – dams, roads, health and education facilities, waste management, you name it – are therefore largely funded by donations and borrowed money. As of March 2016, the TPLF regime had borrowed $21.7 billion (or over 30 percent of the country’s GDP) from external lenders. Including domestic borrowing, this figure rises to close to $40 billion (or over 54 percent of GDP). Ethiopia is one of 36 poor countries whose international debts reached unmanageable and unsustainable levels that the World Bank, IMF, and other lenders had to put together a debt reduction program under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.

If the swelling debt is worrisome, corruption is a bigger problem in Ethiopia today. The absence of transparency, independent audit, and accountability means a good portion of the borrowed and donated money is siphoned off directly or indirectly by the endemic corruption and thievery at the top level of the TPLF regime. According to the UN’s Global Financial Integrity, an average of $2-$3 billion is leaked out of the country each year through various forms of illicit financial flows. The total amount illicitly leaked out of the national economy estimated to be $30 billion is equal to the total donations the regime received from the United States since it came to power.

Corruption is a common phenomenon anywhere there is a lack of democracy and rule of law, but TPLF has elevated it into a politically sanctioned crime. Ccorruption and rent-seeking activities are systematically instituted to result in an inequitable distribution of income and wealth in a manner that reinforces TPLF’s political hegemony. There is no clearer indicator of this than the fact that Ethiopia is perhaps the only country where a ruling party owns a business empire as big as the so-called Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT). Started with stolen and robbed resources from TPLF’s rebel days and later boosted by hundreds of millions of uncollectable loans from Ethiopia’s commercial and development banks, this conglomerate currently owns two dozen companies collectively worth over $3 billion. If this is not enough, TPLF also runs the Tigray Development Association (TDA) and Relief Society of Tigray (REST) each of which owns several thriving business companies.

Fourthly, whatever growth has been achieved, it has not moved the needle, so to speak. Ethiopia is still one of the poorest countries in the world, 172nd in GDP per capita, only ahead of 13 largely war ravaged African countries. It fares worse on the multidimensional poverty index that measures the percentage of people impacted by an array of poverty factors. It is at the bottom of a list of 102 developing countries only besting Niger, South Sudan and Chad. In 2014, a third of Ethiopians lived under the global poverty line, i.e., with under $1.25 a day.

To this day, Ethiopia relies on global donations to feed millions of starved people (about 8 million this year; 10 million the previous year). At the best of times, a third of Ethiopians are malnourished. TPLF brags about improving the logistics of begging and distributing international food aid, forgetting most every other nation on the globe is either food self-sufficient or has the economic and financial capacity to procure food from anywhere in the world to meet domestic needs and demands without much fanfare.

While such is the grim reality, the TPLF regime sells the promise of moving the country into the middle-income group by 2025, something that amounts to not much even if it were genuine. Currently there are only 31 countries in the entire world, which the World Bank categorizes as low income. The rest of 181 countries are either middle (102) or high-income (79) countries.

Moving out of the low-income category is not therefore something to brag about not only because the vast majority of the countries in the world don’t belong there anyway, but also many of the lower-middle-income countries are themselves poor. The middle-income category is so wide (ranging from $1026 to $12, 475 GNI per capita) that one has to move into the upper middle-income category to be out of abject poverty in a decisive way. Ethiopia will have to almost double its current GNI per capita ($590) to barely reach the threshold of the lower-middle income group – a tall feat for a corrupt and inept regime like TPLF to deliver – let alone reach middle of the way in that income bracket.

Finally, as a minority repressive regime, TPLF will never guarantee political stability, which is a necessary condition for economic security that is in turn a prerequisite for a sustained growth. There more economic insecurity today than at any time in the past. A small segment of the population, who are ethnically and politically connected to the regime, are doing fantastically well. However, since the regime cannot guarantee the security of their economic fortunes, they fear they can lose it all as fast as they gained it. This is a reasonable fear because any wealth or asset built through political favoritism can be an easy target for destruction during a popular uprising or nationalization when a new political system is established. This fear will exacerbate the capital flight that has already begun and is bound to slow down investment and growth in the country.

The opportunity cost of TPLF’s alleged growth

To argue that TPLF’s economic growth is exaggerated, inequitable, debt-ridden, etc., is to tell only half the economic story. The other half that needs more attention is the opportunity cost of this alleged growth. In economics, the opportunity cost of a given choice or action is defined as the value or the benefit that could be had if the resources committed to that choice or action were used to accomplish the best alternative choice or action there is. In other words, opportunity cost is the best alternative we gave up in order to pursue a given choice or action.

Given the rampant corruption, political favoritism, and economic incompetence and mismanagement under the TPLF regime, it will not be hard to find examples of major public projects where the opportunity costs were higher than the benefits from those projects. A good example could be the Abay hydro dam which TPLF hopes to use as a source of foreign exchange by selling the electricity generated to neighboring countries. In the absence of accountability and the entrenched corruption and thievery within this regime, there is a justifiable fear that the full amount of the proceeds from the export of electricity will not accrue to the public coffer.

Even if the country were to capture the full benefit of the Abay dam, a better alternative would be to invest the resources now committed to the Abay Dam for generating a stable and affordable electricity supply for the tens of millions of Ethiopian households who currently live in the dark and the countless small and medium size manufacturing businesses whose production capacity is hamstrung by the endemic power shortage. Access to electricity, like access to education, clean water, and healthcare would be a great equalizer across economic, social and political classes. The combined social, environmental, and economic benefit of this alternative would far outweigh the uncertain benefit of the Abay Dam.

At a macro (national) level, the aggregate opportunity cost of TPLF’s economic performance can be assessed indirectly and roughly by comparing Ethiopia’s key economic indicators with those of comparable countries in Africa and elsewhere in the world. Twenty-six years later, TPLF is often heard measuring itself against the Derg, which is an idiotic comparison, not only because the times and the circumstances are far apart, but also because the Derg, far from being the best alternative, is one of the worst regimes in Ethiopia’s history. Even then, if one had to compare the two regimes, TPLF would likely not be a clear winner; in fact, one could argue the Derg would have done better had it have the massive international financial support and relative political stability TPLF has enjoyed. Anyhow, this is not a point to dwell on here.

Instead, in what follows TPLF’s performance is compared with that of other contemporary regimes. First, Ethiopia’s GDP per capita is contrasted with five other comparable (low and lower-middle income) African countries (Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya) using World Bank data. None of these countries make frequent economic headlines as Ethiopia does, yet, except for Uganda – incidentally a country that is ruled by longstanding tyrannical regime akin to TPLF – the other four countries outperform Ethiopia, not just in absolute terms but in their year-to-year GDP per capita growth too. This is evident from the widening gaps between Ethiopia’s GDP per capita and those of the other four countries as one moves from 1993 – when TPLF took total state control in Ethiopia – to 2015.

GDP per capita, PPP (Constant 2011 International $)

TPLF’s mediocre economic performance is more revealing when one compares Ethiopia’s GDP per capita growth with five developing Asian countries whose economic performance is seldom a headline, not as much as that of Ethiopia anyway. Ethiopia’s GDP per capita growth trails those of these countries by a widening margin over TPLF’s reign.

GDP per capita, PPP (Constant 2011 International $)

It is important to note that almost all of the above African and Asian countries were able to achieve higher economic growth, some of them moving to the middle-income category, in less time frame than TPLF has been in power.

Finally, Ethiopia’ is one of 48 countries the United Nations labels as Least Developed. Ethiopia is also one of 60-plus countries whose lack creditworthiness only makes them eligible for concessional credits and grants from the International Development Association (IDA). As mentioned above, Ethiopia is also one of three dozen, Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).

Comparing Ethiopia’s GDP per capita growth with these groups and Sub-Sahara Africa reveals the same story. Not only is Ethiopia’s GDP per capita significantly lower than the average for anyone of the four groups, except for the HIPC group, Ethiopia is not catching up with the economic performance of the other three groups over time. In fact, the gaps are wider in 2015 than they were in 1993, a resounding verdict for TPLF’s poor performance.

GDP per capita, PPP (Constant 2011 International $)

A political solution for a poor economic performance

Politics and economics are intertwined in any organized society. In Ethiopia, today, the two are almost inseparable on so many levels: The TPLF regime controls all the real estate in the country, urban and rural land included; it is the largest employer; the largest procurer and the largest borrower. TPLF owns many of the biggest corporations that are major players in the national economy. Contrary to its pretense, the regime is fundamentally anti free enterprise. Politics rules every inch of economics.

The regime uses its political power to punish its opponents economically – individuals, groups, regions alike. It discriminates against regions that put up political resistance or support opposition parties in the allocations of public infrastructure; systematically undermining investments by certain private businesses in certain areas; and even by withholding medical and humanitarian support to “unfriendly” regions.

The ethnic political system has created a lack of security to private property, severely limiting inter-regional investment, trade, and tourism, hence also inter-regional transfer of entrepreneurial skills and business knowhow, all of which are essential for a sustained national economic growth. These economic opportunities have been lost over the past 26 years because they do not fit TPLF’s divide and conquer political paradigm.

Worse, the economic consequences of TPLF’s politics will outlast its life span. For example, the best resource any nation can have for economic growth is its human capital, a resource that is lost the fastest in a political system that stifles freedom of thought, creativity, entrepreneurship, and human development. Under TPLF’s tenure, Ethiopia has lost and continues to lose the cream of its educated and skilled manpower in all disciplines without exception. TPLF has systematically robbed Ethiopians the pride, security, and ownership of their country and have turned them into migrants and exiles. One cannot put enough economic value to this massive brain drain that will take a very long time to turn around.

There are bigger socio-political damages TPLF has inflicted on Ethiopia and Ethiopians. Their costs are incalculable. But on economic grounds alone, TPLF is not qualified to rule Ethiopia for a single day. Fundamentally, Ethiopia cannot prosper economically under a regime that is anti-Ethiopian politically. The solution is to remove it from power. Ideally, this would take place peacefully through the free will of the people, something TPLF will not allow to happen. The Ethiopian people are hence left with the only other choice – to remove it forcefully.

The writer can be reached at shiferawabebe1@gmail.com

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Lencho Leta

The founder and former leader of OLF and the chairman of the new Oromo Democratic Front (ODF) Mr Lencho Letta has been actively involved in uniting his Oromo movement with various Ethiopian opposition groups. His recent speech at the Ethiopian National Movement (ENM) conference in Oslo, Norway was filled with brutal honesty about our differences and the high stakes of ignoring the ongoing political crisis in Ethiopia. His steadfast efforts to bring diverse Ethiopians together and to create consensus among us should be applauded by all peace loving Ethiopians.

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By Prof. Messay Kebede

Prof. Messay-Kebede

A leitmotiv of ethnic politics in Ethiopia is the use of retrospective logic as an essential argument to justify its ideological stand. By this I mean the view that Menelik’s southern march, which is responsible for the creation of modern Ethiopia, was nothing else but a violent destruction of preexisting nations. Such statements as “Ethiopian colonization” and “the invention of Ethiopia” as well as the description of Ethiopia as “prison of nations and nationalities” all signify that modern Ethiopia has emerged on the ashes of annihilated preexisting nations.

Far from me to deny the violent and annexing character of the southern expansion. But it is one thing to point out conquest and domination, quite another to speak of eradication of existing nations. The present ethnonationalist discourse is a product of the derailment of modern Ethiopia. It does not predate modern Ethiopia; rather, it is what modern Ethiopia has given birth owing to its socioeconomic failures. What is in play here is a thinking that throws back into the past what is but a product, thereby transfiguring the effect into a cause.

Unsurprisingly, objections proliferate. The Eritrean insurgency, peasant uprising in Bale, the Oromo mutiny of 1966 led by General Tadesse Birru, etc., are events that not only occurred prior to the Ethiopian revolution of 1974, but were also eminently part of the general discontent that brought down the imperial regime. Agreed, but the whole question is to know whether these uprisings, including the Eritrean one, were really triggered by nationalism or whether they were part of the general demands of the Ethiopian people for equality, justice, and economic development. The fact that the forces that destroyed the imperial regime were inspired by the then prevailing Marxist-Leninist ideology suggests that social divides and subsequent confrontations were more based on class alignments than on identity politics. The debate within the Ethiopian student movement over the question of knowing whether the primary contradiction is the contradiction between classes or nationalities is proof enough that the issue of the primacy of identity politics was by no means a settled matter.

To be sure, groups promoting ethnonationalist ideologies were present, but their presence was marginal for quite some time. Precisely, their influence started to grow as a result of the Derg’s repressive policy and its utter inability to respond to the demands of equality and economic development. Stated otherwise, what was an issue of equality progressively grew into ethnic alignments as the new regime not only dashed all the hopes raised by the Revolution, but also aggravated all the ills of the imperial regime. Last but not least, the revolutionary regime could not even defend the integrity of the country: its shameful military defeat against armed ethnonationalist forces announced the beginning of the downward trend of Ethiopian nationhood in favor of ethnonationalist movements under the hegemonic control of the TPLF. Once in control of Ethiopia, the TPLF launched an active and deep-going ethnicization of the country, which is essentially a policy of divide and rule by which alone it could sustain its hegemonic position.

This is to say that ethnonationalism in Ethiopia is a product of all the above prior developments and occurrences, and not, as the retrospective logic claims, a fact that existed prior to the formation of modern Ethiopia. The correct expression is not “the invention of Ethiopia,” but the invention of ethnonationalist movements in Ethiopia. In so saying, my purpose is not so much to demean such movements as to assert that, as any ideologically driven movement, ethnonationalism is a construct by which elites vying for the control of power mobilize people. Still less am I implying that its posteriority to modern Ethiopia turns ethnonationalism into a negligible political nuisance. On the contrary, I am stressing the undeniable fact of changed Ethiopia to the point that any viable and lasting remedy for the ills of the country must include the ethnic factor.

Understanding ethnonationalism as a byproduct of modern Ethiopia is a theoretical position that has a great beneficial outomce. It views ethnonationalism as a protest rather than as a clash between incompatible or alien cultures. Protest is manageable being but a demand for reforms, however far-reaching the reforms may be. By contrast, the view that modern Ethiopia resulted from the sequestration of already existing nations has nothing to offer but the dismemberment of Ethiopia or, as the TPLF’s solution demonstrates, the preservation of a political unity so structured as to ensure the hegemonic position of one ethnic group. Obviously, this last solution does nothing more than defer the inevitable dislocation of the country.

To sum up, the retrospective reconstruction of Ethiopian history puts us neither in the path of peace and stability nor of democracy. Stability and democracy demand concessions and compromises, neither of which is possible with the claim that today’s Ethiopians actually belong to different nations.

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Massimo Calabresi

Time

 

The hacking of state and local election databases in 2016 was more extensive than previously reported, including at least one successful attempt to alter voter information, and the theft of thousands of voter records that contain private information like partial Social Security numbers, current and former officials tell TIME.

In one case, investigators found there had been a manipulation of voter data in a county database but the alterations were discovered and rectified, two sources familiar with the matter tell TIME. Investigators have not identified whether the hackers in that case were Russian agents.

The fact that private data was stolen from states is separately providing investigators a previously unreported line of inquiry in the probes into Russian attempts to influence the election. In Illinois, more than 90% of the nearly 90,000 records stolen by Russian state actors contained drivers license numbers, and a quarter contained the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, according to Ken Menzel, the General Counsel of the State Board of Elections.

Congressional investigators are probing whether any of this stolen private information made its way to the Trump campaign, two sources familiar with the investigations tell TIME.

“If any campaign, Trump or otherwise, used inappropriate data the questions are, How did they get it? From whom? And with what level of knowledge?” the former top Democratic staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, Michael Bahar, tells TIME. “That is a crux of the investigation.”

Spokesmen for the House and Senate Intelligence committees declined to comment on the search for stolen data. No one contacted for this story said they had seen evidence that the stolen, private, data had actually made its way to the Trump campaign.

The House Intelligence Committee plans to seek testimony this summer from Brad Parscale, the digital director of the Trump campaign, CNN reported last week. Hill investigators in February asked the White House and law enforcement agencies to ensure that all materials relating to contacts between the Trump administration, transition team and campaign had with the Russians had been preserved. Parscale did not return messages requesting comment for this story. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, referred questions regarding the investigations to Trump’s legal team, which did not respond to requests for comment.

Both intelligence committees are looking at whether and how the intrusions could have furthered Russia’s larger strategic goals of undermining U.S. democracy, hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Donald Trump. During the run up to the vote, Obama Administration cyber-security officials took steps to prepare for widespread voter registration manipulation, fearing Russia might seek to cause chaos at polling places to undermine the credibility of the election. Current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials say Russia could also have tried to use stolen voter data to gain leverage over witting or unwitting accomplices in the Trump camp, by involving them in a broader conspiracy.

The House and Senate Intelligence committees held hearings on June 22 to highlight the ongoing vulnerability of the U.S. election systems. “I’m deeply concerned,” said North Carolina Republican Senator Richard Burr who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, that “we could be here in two or four years talking about a much worse crisis.”

A hacker at work (Shutterstock)

Cyber-security officials testifying at the Senate hearing acknowledged for the first time the extent of the Russian effort to interfere with the election. Twenty-one states saw such intrusions last year, a senior official from the Department of Homeland Security, Jeanette Manfra, said. None of the intrusions affected the vote count itself, all the officials testified.

That has not reassured some Hill leaders. “There’s no evidence they were able to affect the counting within the machines,” says the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, Congressman Adam Schiff of California. But, he added, “the effect on the election is quite a different matter.”

The Russian efforts against state and local databases were so widespread that top Obama administration cyber-security officials assumed that by Election Day Moscow’s agents had probed all 50 states. “At first it was one state, then three, then five, then a dozen,” says Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI cybersecurity official and member of the White House team charged with preparedness and response to the cyber intrusion. At that point, says Michael Daniel, who led the White House effort to secure the vote against the Russian intrusions, “We had to assume that they actually tried to at least rattle the doorknobs on all 50, and we just happened to find them in a few of them.”

Many hackers, including state-sponsored ones, use automated programs to target hundreds or even thousands of computers to check for vulnerabilities. But confirming intrusions is hard. As far as officials have been able to determine, the number of actual successful intrusions, where Russian agents gained sufficient access to attempt to alter, delete or download any information, was “less than a dozen,” current and former officials say. But that wasn’t the only worry.

“In addition to the threat to the vote we were also very concerned about the public confidence in the integrity of the electoral system,” says Ferrante.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether any laws were broken in relation to the Russian attack. The Congressional intelligence probes also seek to determine the nature and scope of the Russian espionage operation in order to protect future elections.

“The integrity of the entire system is in question,” says Bahar, “So you need the system to push back and find out what happened and why, so it never happens again.”

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ESAT Latest Ethiopian News June 22, 2017

The post ESAT Latest Ethiopian News June 22, 2017 appeared first on Satenaw: Ethiopian News|Breaking News: Your right to know!.

OPEN LETTER OF APPEAL TO: His Majesty Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
The King of Saudi Arabia.

Re: Urgent Relief Needed from Saudi Arabia by Ethiopians whose Nation had welcomed Prophet Mohamed’s Family

Your Majesty,

Please permit me, first of all, to express my compliments and respectful greetings to Your Majesty and to appeal for your kind consideration of the urgent action needed regarding the desperate predicament being encountered by Ethiopians residing in Saudi Arabia.

I have no doubt that Your Majesty is aware of the fact that some 400,000 (some estimate over 700,000) Ethiopians residing peacefully in Saudi Arabia have been required to exit from the country within a time that is so short that it is bound to cause abuses of human rights unless your government takes an urgent action to avoid such a tragedy.

Please allow me to remind Your Majesty that Ethiopia is a country that welcomed Arab Muslims including Prophet Mohamed’s daughter and her husband to Ethiopia when they were persecuted in Mecca. It is a well-known historic fact that some 100 refugees from Mecca had been allowed to live in Ethiopia for as long as they wished despite an appeal by the Meccan authorities to repatriate them. It is also well known that due to the current peaceful relations, Saudi Arabia is benefiting from certain advantageous arrangements with Ethiopia. Therefore, I wonder, Your Majesty, if it is appropriate for Saudi Arabia to place such a heavy burden on Ethiopians who are engaged in peaceful work and life in your country.

I, therefore, appeal to Your Majesty to lift the sanctions imposed on Ethiopians to exit Saudi Arabia in a manner that is logically not feasible to achieve. Your Majesty’s concern for the respect of human rights and rule of law should be applied by ensuring that Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia are treated with the respect due to people from a country that has a mutually beneficial, historic partnership.

With the assurances of my most respectful regards to Your Majesty,

Yours sincerely,

Kidane Alemayehu

CC: The Honorable Donald Trump, President of USA;                                      CC: UN Secretary-General;

CC: H.E. Mr. Hailemariam Dessalegn, Prime Minister of Ethiopia;               CC: The European Union;

CC: UNHCR.

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• Local authority wants mining assets to be run by youth workers
• Order violates Dangote’s rights, executive director says

Alikote Dangote (b. on April 10,1957), is the Nigerian founder and president of Dangote Group

(Bloomberg) — Dangote Cement Plc, controlled by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, said it may shut its operations in Ethiopia if authorities in the central state of Oromia don’t reverse an order to cement makers to hand over control of some parts of their businesses to local young people.

Oromia state’s East Shewa Zone administration wants the Nigerian company to outsource its pumice, sand and clay mines to youth groups or be responsible for “any problems” that may arise, according to a letter from the authority to Dangote that was seen by Bloomberg and verified with a representative of East Shewa’s administration. The regional government sees the transfer of jobs in pumice production as a way to ease youth unemployment and quell unrest, according to the document.

Any mismanagement of mining infrastructure including buildings and excavators could “lead to total breakdown of our business,” Dangote Executive Director Edwin Devakumar said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, last week. The cement maker will write to the federal government this week to ask for intervention in the matter and will consider shutting the plant in Mugher, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of Addis Ababa, as a “last option” if this fails, he said.

There’s “no intention to displace any investment,” so long as Dangote is “working by the laws and regulations in our region and country,” Tekele Uma, head of Oromia’s transport authority, said by phone. “If anyone’s complaining about Oromia regional state, we’re ready to talk with them. Any investment can come. Any investment can go.”

Motuma Mekassa, Ethiopia’s minister of mining, petroleum and natural gas, said by phone he wasn’t aware of an attempt by Dangote to reach his office. An official at the federal ministry said Dangote should make an approach through “appropriate channels,” as opposed to through the media, asking for his name to be withheld, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

The Ethiopian government is searching for ways to reduce youth unemployment after violent protests by Oromo communities over alleged land dispossession, political marginalization and repression led the government to declare a state of emergency last year. Dangote Cement was among several businesses attacked during the unrest. The protests triggered a 20 percent slump in foreign investment to $1.2 billion in the six months through December compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the government.

The order to outsource mining is “a violation of our rights because the government has given us a mining license,’’ said Devakumar, who was Dangote’s chief executive officer until 2015. “If I don’t have limestone and additives my cement plant is useless.”

Although the disputes haven’t forced Nigeria’s biggest listed company to halt production, it will miss targets if the impasse isn’t broken, the executive director said. Disruption in pumice flows will reduce output and trigger job cuts, Devakumar said. Dangote employs about 1,500 workers directly in the country, while an estimated 15,000 people earn a living indirectly through the firm’s cement and mining facilities, he said.

The disagreement is also hampering Dangote’s Ethiopian expansion plans. The company has stopped an advance payment on a contract to double production capacity of the 2.5 million metric-ton per year plant after signing an agreement, Devakumar said.

The company has spent more than $700 million in the country and is “discouraged from investing more,” he said.

Ethiopia’s government said in February it’s only likely to attract $3.2 billion of foreign direct investment this year, compared with a target of $3.5 billion.

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My Story- Fitawrari Mekonnen Dori – Pt 1 -SBS Amharic

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By Kaleab Tessema

Dawit W Giorgis

I happened to listen to the speech of Major Dawit at Ethiopian National Unity Convention in Seattle, with great interest and attention. I found myself somehow sharing some of his ideas, in particular, the Amharas being reclusive and targeted by the TPLF and its cronies for the last 26 years.

Major Dawit is absolutely right when he says that the Amhara needs to be organized to defend itself. However, some people start to squeal like pigs unfairly against the Amhara, but when the Amharas are massively killed for no reason by the TPLF,  they stay silent. No ethnic group has been haunted and killed by the TPLF regime like the Amharas have been cruelly terrorized and slaughtered.

It is true, as Major Dawit has stated correctly that the Amharas are targeted by the TPLF, it is not because the Amharas are from Gondar, Gojam, Wello, and Shewa; it is merely because they are Amharas.

As it is known, the Woyanne-Tigre seized Addis Ababa, and immediately started aiding and abetting the OLF to slaughter pregnant women and children in Arbagugu and Bedeno, where the worst crimes in Ethiopian history were seen.

For that matter, Shabia did the same thing to the Amhara troops before this horrendous crime took place in Arbagugu and Bedeno. While Shabia was advancing to control Asmara, the Ethiopian armies already surrendered peacefully to the EPLF guerrillas.

The exact number of soldiers who surrendered was not known. The information disseminated from those who managed to escape the executions, and surprisingly, the Shabia selected only the higher ranking Amhara officers. This included many wounded soldiers to be brutally murdered, which is an unforgivable, unforgettable, and horrendous crime.

I am unsure if Major Dawit would agree with Shabia’s brutal murder of the Amhara soldiers in Asmara in the early 90s. If I recall correctly, Major Dawit and Isayas collaborated on an ad hoc basis to topple the Colonel Mengistu Hailemariam government. I also read an article written by Major Dawit, which stated that Isayas was in favor of a federation with Ethiopia. I heard the same rhetoric from different Ethiopians and I could not believe it.

Of course, Isayas could say anything to any Ethiopians who can fight for him with the TPLF in order to achieve his goals. Even his recent interview with the OLF folks was a gimmick and was perplexing, when he said that the ordinary Amharas are not responsible for what their leader did in the past. Funny enough, he continued by saying Ethiopia being a country for 3,000 years is a “myth.”  This is not a new decry, what Isayas was trying to say, but Isayas’ interview seemed to have a lack of candor.

If Isayas had any empathy for the Amhara, he would not have such a kind heart shooting the peacefully surrendered troops. It was crystal clear, both Shabia and Woyanne had the same stance against Amhara when they were close alliances, but now it is a different story. Anyway at this point, Isayas is not as nearly as dangerous to the Amharas as TPLF and its surrogates.

I know for sure that some folks will not be happy when I try to divulge what should be revealed about the Amhara’s soldiers ordeal in Eritrea. However, it is a reality.

Leaving this aside, I was enthralled with Major Dawit’s encouraging speech about the unfairness of some people when the Amharas come together to defend itself from the extremists. However, I was perturbed by the allegation made by Major Dawit about Moresh Wegene saying that “the Oromos are not Ethiopians, they emigrated to Ethiopia from Madagascar.”

I thoroughly spent countless hours on the internet to find out the veracity of what Major has said, and I found no documents that support Major Dawit’s speech about Moresh Wegenie.

Beside my efforts, I read a rejoinder from Moresh Wegene to Major Dawit’s inaccurate speech which inquired to produce evidence. If it was an unintentional speech, it needs an apology.

I was a little bemused when Major Dawit spoke publicly about Moresh which is not on the surface, unless to pleased the TPLF and the OLF.  I have been following the chairman of the Moresh Wegenie speeches, which strongly condemns the TPLF and the OLF deliberately killing the Amharas. The chairman always speaks about the Amhara’s contribution to the Ethiopian history.

To that extent, Moresh Wegene has tirelessly been vocal for the Amharas indiscriminately killing by the TPLF regime for no apparent reasons, and there is no doubt that the TPLF’s and the OLF’s diabolical action to the Amharas was not covert for Major Dawit. It is very strange why Major Dawit chooses to accuse Moresh Wegene of being against Oromos; if Major Dawit wants the Amharas and the Oromos to come together, he would have done his speech in a circumspect manner.

I also read some articles of Major Dawit, which were insightful with measured approach, but compared to his recent speech about Moresh seemed a vindictive and personalized speech that degrades his credibility.

As I mentioned above, I agree with Major Dawit’s partial speech that he touched the indispensable issue about the Amhara’s participation in any political party or organization is vital and effective. The same thing is true that, not only the Amhara, its land is geographically and politically strategic. Otherwise, it would be a daunting task for any political party who excludes the Amhara.

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Andargachew Tsige

Today marks three years since British Father Andy Tsege was first illegally kidnapped from an international airport and rendered to Ethiopia’s death row. Andy’s partner, Yemi Hailemariam, has written to the Prime Minister asking her to negotiate his return home to her and their three children Helawit (17) Yilak and Menabe (both 10) in London.

The children haven’t spoken to their father since December 2014, six months after he was abducted on 23rd June 2014. Andy is a democracy activist and political opponent of Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and was convicted of trumped-up charges in his absence in 2009 while living in London with his family.

In her letter, Yemi writes about their children, saying “I am still at a loss about how to explain to them why their dad can’t come home. How can I tell them that their own country, their own Prime Minister has not called for his return? Instead of fighting the Ethiopian government on this together with you, I am still stuck fighting for the UK government to do the right thing.”

Yemi, who stood against Theresa May in her Maidenhead constituency during the recent general election in order to bring Andy’s case to her attention, also asks the Prime Minister to meet with her so she can explain Andy’s desperate situation.

Commenting, Maya Foa, Director of Reprieve, said

“Theresa May needs show she has the strength to stand up to the Ethiopian Prime Minister and negotiate Andy’s return home to his family. Three years is already too long for Helawit, Yilak and Menabe to have been without their father. There is no excuse for the Prime Minister abandoning one of her citizens. At the very least she owes Yemi an hour of her time to explain why there has been no progress in Andy’s case and what she intends to do about it.”

Source: Reprive.com

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By Dominic Omondi | Updated Sat, June 24th 2017

As the world woke up to news that Ethiopia had overtaken Kenya to become Eastern Africa’s largest economy, a number of conflicting developments were also taking place in Addis Ababa. An article carried by the Weekend Business on June 11, 2017 showed that Ethiopia’s economy had outpaced Kenya’s to become the largest economy in Eastern Africa.

This was happening at a time Ethiopia when was finding it difficult to adequately feed its population. The United Nations has noted that about 7.8 million Ethiopians who had been receiving food aid are in danger of sliding into hunger with relief food expected to run out next month.

It was an embarrassing indictment of a country that had just achieved seminal economic success. Even as millions went without food, Ethiopia, which was the first to launch an electric cross-border railway line in Africa, continued with its signature growth of investing in eye-popping projects, achieving yet another first. It introduced the first smart parking system at a cost of $2.2 million (Sh220 million).

Meanwhile, analysts say Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s administration does not want to admit that things are going wrong.  “There is the making of a real potential disaster here … because the government will simply not acknowledge the number of people who need help,” an aid worker told the Financial Times.

Living standards for Ethiopians continue to trail those of Kenyans, with the latter enjoying a higher per capita income. Ethiopia, with one of the fastest economic growths in the world, is also, ironically, one of the poorest countries. According to the World Bank, Ethiopia’s per capita income of $619 (Sh63,757) is lower than the regional average. Kenya’s per capita at $1,376 (Sh141,728) is more than twice that of Ethiopia.

We should not worry over our GDP being overtaken, let us focus on living standards,” said XN Iraki, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi. There have been claims that Ethiopia’s fast gross domestic product (GDP) growth is masking the ugly reality of poverty in the country. GDP is monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific period, usually a year.

Although GDP remains the main measure of a country’s well-being, it has its faults. “But there’s a big, elephant-like problem with that: GDP only accounts for a country’s economic performance, not the happiness or well-being of its citizens. With GDP, if your richest 100 people get richer, your GDP rises, but most of your citizens are just as badly off as they were before,” said Micheal Green, the man who invented the social progress index which tries to go beyond the use of GDP to measure a country’s well-being. The index looks at three factors: Basic human needs including nutrition, water and sanitation, shelter and personal safety; foundations of well-being including access to basic knowledge, information and communication, environmental quality, and; opportunity which includes personal rights, freedom and choice, tolerance and inclusion and access to advanced education. Although Kenya (99th) and Ethiopia (126th) are both ranked low in the Social Progress Index 2016, Kenya outshines Ethiopia in all of the three measures of basic human needs, foundations of well-being and opportunity.

Relative to the country with similar per capita income, Ethiopia is doing badly in undernourishment, depth of food deficit, upper secondary school enrollment and rural access to improved water, and basic freedoms such as of speech and movement.

The country also has low mobile subscriptions and press freedom is constrained. No wonder, even as news came out that Ethiopia had overtaken Kenya to become the largest economy in the region, a lot of Ethiopians did not get the news as the government had blocked all access to Internet as students sat for their national exams. Kenya, on the other hand, is doing well in most of these areas relative to countries with the same per capita income. It has high performance compared to countries in the same income band in areas such as access to basic knowledge, lower secondary school enrollment, internet use and life expectancy. The country is also doing well in electricity supply, outdoor air pollution, waste-water treatment, access to advanced education and contraception. Notably, Kenya is doing badly in areas of corruption, access to electricity (not to be confused with access to ‘quality’ electricity), violent crime, perceived criminality, political terror and traffic deaths. Another way of looking at the well-being of a people of a country is through the United Nation’s Human Development Index which “focuses on the richness of human lives rather than on the richness of economies,” according to the 2016 report. Human development emphasises such values as self-determination, decent standard of living, human rights, access to knowledge, good health, dignity and non-discrimination, which the report thinks are universal. On this front, again, Kenya ranks ahead of Ethiopia. It is ranked in position 146 while Ethiopia is ranked 174. Kenya might have better living standards than those of its neighbour, but that does not mean Kenyans should rest on their laurels. Ethiopia’s fast-paced economic growth has not been vain. The high and consistent economic growth has seen the share of people living in poverty decline by 33 per cent from 44 per cent in 2000 to 30 per cent in 2011, according to a 2015 World Bank report.

Dr Martyn Davies, Managing Director of Emerging Markets & Africa at Deloitte Africa, notes that Ethiopia’s stellar growth will soon be felt widely in Ethiopia. “The magic growth number is ‘seven per cent’ because at this rate, GDP doubles every 10 years,” he said. “Of course, Kenya has a far stronger business sector but is losing out to Ethiopia in attracting foreign direct investment and, in particular, into the value-adding manufacturing sector. Ethiopia has created an ‘effective state’ which is able to drive growth,” said Davies. “Kenya’s challenge is to restructure and reduce the cost of its public sector bureaucracy and increase efficiency.”

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My Story- Fitawrari Mekonnen Dori – Pt 2 – SBS Amharic

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Patriotic Ginbot 7 ‘Adera Band’ New Afaan Oromo Song (Hinkaature – Adera)

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Best Gojjam dramatic song- Belay Zeleke

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The hustle and bustle at the Awodai khat market highlights the importance of this slow-growing shrub to Harar. Ethiopia is the world’s largest producer of khat and most of it comes from this region. About a third of the production is exported to neighbouring countries like Djibouti and Somalia. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

The abstinence observed by Muslims in Harar during Ramadan is compensated by a long night of khat chewing. The crop can be harvested year-round and is an important source of revenue for many in the region. The leaf is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite and euphoria. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

Women rest in the shade outside a mosque within the walled city. Harar is often referred to as the fourth-holiest city in Islam. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

A distinct architectural feature in Harar, the traditional Adare house is a two-storey structure with a flat roof. The main living room always consists of five raised platforms of differing levels, where guests and household members sit befitting their status. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

Shoa Gate, known to locals as Asmaddin Bari, is one of the five original 16th-century gates leading into the city. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

Erer Gate is also commonly referred to as the Richard Burton gate in Harar. In 1854, the British explorer, disguised as an Arab merchant, became the first non-Muslim to enter the city through this entrance. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

Renowned French poet Arthur Rimbaud lived like a local in a small house in Harar while working as a coffee trader and gun-runner between 1875 and 1884. Often mistakenly called Rimbaud’s Home, this Indian merchant house was built on the site where Rimbaud was said to have lived. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

This narrow street came to be called ‘Sewing-Machine Sound Street,’ for the numerous tailors busily working outside their shops. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

Oromo women walk to Harar from the surrounding countryside to sell firewood. Afterwards, they spend their earnings on food and household goods, before returning home. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

A seasonal mango market takes place right outside the city gates. Despite the heat and Ramadan fasting for the majority of locals, markets remain busy. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

Mujahid Gature leads zikri at the Sheikh Gatur Mosque, a Sufi exercise which consists of the repetition of God’s name all through the night. The cult of saints in Harar developed the zikri rituals considered to be one of the unique elements of the culture of this town. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

Locals repaint the walls of the old town in vibrant colours in advance of the holy month of Ramadan. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

The fortified historic town of Harar, known as Harar Jugol, was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

The city of Harar is located on a hilltop in the eastern extension of the Ethiopian Highlands. [Jenna Belhumeur/Al Jazeera]

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‘We are Ethiopians’: Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie

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ኢሳት (ሰኔ 19 ፥ 2009)
በአዲ አበባ ታላቁ አንዋር መስጊድና በሌሎች የኢትዮጵያ አካባቢዎች የተከበረው የኢድ አልፈጥር በአል ኢትዮጵያውያን በከፍተኛ ቁጥር በተገኙበት ዩ ኤስ አሜሪካ በተለይም በዋሽንግተን ዲሲ በደማቅ ስነ-ስርዓት መከበሩን ዜናው ያስረዳል።
የፈርስት ሂጂራ ፋውንዴሽን ኢማም ሼህ ካሊድ ኡመር እና የፋውንዴሽኑ ፕሬዝዳንት ሃጂነጂብ መሃመድ በተገኙበት በዋሽንግተን ዲሲ አቅራቢያ ቨርጂኒያ ግዛት በተከበረው የኢድ አልፈጥር በአል ሙስሊሙ ማህበረሰብ በብዛት መገኘቱም ታውቋል።
በከፍተኛ ሃይማኖታዊ ስርአት በአሉ መከበሩና ሃይማኖታዊ እንዲሁም ሃገራዊ መልዕክቶች መተላለፋቸውም ታውቋል።

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Hiber Radio Weekly News – June 25, 2017

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Muslims gather to perform Eid al-Fitr prayer at areas surrounding the Addis Ababa Stadium on June 25, 2017 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Eid al-Fitr is a religious holiday celebrated by Muslims around the world that marks the end of Ramadan, Islamic holy month of fasting. ( Minasse Wondimu Hailu – Anadolu Agency )

By Addis Getachew

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia

Tens of millions of Ethiopian Muslims on Sunday celebrated Eid-al Fitr marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

In the capital Addis Ababa huge crowds arrived at and around the Addis Ababa stadium for Eid prayers early in the morning.

Addis Ababa Islamic Affairs President Sheikh Muhammed Nur Sheikh Ahmed Shafi, Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council President Hajj Mohammed Amin Jemal and high officials of the city administration joined the joyous crowd.

Speaking on the occasion Sheikh Mohammed said “our country Ethiopia is characterized by religious plurality and the people live in harmony for ages. “

“Muslims in the country should stand vigilant against extremist elements,” he said.

For his part Hajj Mohammed said the month of Ramadan was marked by intense prayers, compassion, and generosity which will remain the mark of Islam.

City Mayor Diriba Kuma said religious freedom has been guaranteed in Ethiopian federal constitution.

“Indeed religious co-existence has been an age old tradition,” he said.

Ethiopia which has the second most populous muslim community in Sub-Saharan Africa had hosted the companions of Prophet Mohammed who fled persecution at the hands of the Quraish in the 4th century.

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by: Alemayehu G. Mariam

“No Political Prisoners in Ethiopia” and “Negotiating With the Opposition”

The Voice of America (Amharic) last week reported “16 Ethiopian opposition political parties agreed to discuss the anti-terrorism and other proclamations and 13 other agenda points including communications, press and charities and civic organizations” with the ruling regime in Ethiopia. However, the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF) “made it clear” the issue of political prisoners is off the table because there “there are no political prisoners in Ethiopia”.

Shiferaw Shigute, T-TPLF apparatchik and negotiator with “opposition parties” (the  infamous ethnic cleanser of tens of thousands of  “ethnic Amharas” from the Guraferda district of the Bench Maji Zone in Southern Ethiopia (see my April 2012 commentary “Green Justice or Ethnic Injustice?”) declared:

Regarding political prisoners, the big pillar of democracy is the supremacy of the rule of law. If there are political leaders who have been jailed on an individual basis, it is because they have violated the law.  For instance, participating in a terrorist activity, encouraging terrorism, aiding and abetting in terrorism, is a mistake, prohibited and subject to penalty. A political leader must first respect the law, and if the law needs to be changed, then work to change the law but not act in disregard of the law and claim to be a political prisoner. The person is then a prisoner of the law and not a political prisoner. Just because the person is a political leader, a journalist or something else, no one is above the law, all of us are under the law. That’s is why we have no political prisoners in Ethiopia.

The mantra of “no political prisoners in Ethiopia” has been chanted by T-TPLF leaders since at least 2007. In February of that year, the late thugmaster Meles Zenawi declared in a Financial Times interview, “Nobody has been imprisoned in Ethiopia for criticising the government. No one.”

In 2007, in a memo sent to members of Congress, T-TPLF lobbyist DLA Piper “argued the terms ‘political prisoners’ and ‘prisoners of conscience’ are undefined and mischaracterize the situation in Ethiopia’ and should be removed from a bill that condemned the Ethiopian regime for detaining opposition activists.” I had an opportunity to engage DLA Piper in a lengthy letter challenging the public relations narrative and lobbying advocacy on the non-existence of political prisoners in Ethiopia and other issues.In December 2006, Zenawi explained that the opposition leaders he jailed were engaged in “overthrowing the duly constituted government by unconstitutional means” and “pushing the country towards chaos”. By jailing them, Zenawi said he was upholding the “rule of law [which] is the basis for any democracy. And without the rule of law in democracy, you have chaos. And we had to enforce the rule of law. And they have had their day in court. That is as it should be. There are no regrets here.”

In 2012, T-TPLF Puppet Prime Minster (PPM) Hailemariam Desalegn in an Al Jazeera interview said (forward clip to 7:53):

There are no political opposition that are languishing in prison, number one. And there are no other, you know, political activists that are languishing in place. We are very clear in our mind and in our policy that anyone who trespasses the law of the land, whether he is a politician or is in government is under the law, below the rule of law. So the rule of law has to work in the country…

In July 2013, Getachew Reda, T-TPLF mouthpiece, similarly declared:

We don’t have any single political prisoner in the country.We do have, like any other country, people who were convicted of crimes including terrorism who are currently serving their sentence. They would only be freed when either they complete their sentence or probation on good behavior. We are not going to do release anyone just because some European Union members said so.

The T-TPLF party line is simply all prisoners in Ethiopia are street criminals or terrorists.

The T-TPLF disinformation campaign on the non-existence of political prisoners is not only a brazen denial of the plain truth, but also idiotic and ludicrous. It is a witless campaign based on the Gobbelian propaganda precept that if you repeat a big lie often enough to the public, it will eventually become a public truth.

What is fascinating to me is the T-TPLF leaders’ Orwellian newspeak and doublespeak about the rule of law and political prisoners.

Orwell wrote in “1984”,  “The key-word here is blackwhite. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.” It also means “telling deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed….”

The key-word with the T-TPLF is liestruth.  Applied to T-TPLF’s opponents in “1984 Ethiopia”, it means the habit of impudently claiming lies are truth, political prisoners are ordinary street criminals in contradiction of the plain facts. It is about ignoring an inconvenient truth. Thus, dictatorship is democracy. War is peace. Corruption is integrity. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. State terrorism is rule of law. State of emergency is state of peace.

What a cruel joke!

T-TPLF leaders speak reverentially about the rule of law and how their laws are exemplars of the ultimate expression of that principle.

As I discussed this issue in my April 2012 commentary, “The Rule of Law in Ethiopia’s Democratic Transition”, the T-TPLF leaders claim rule by diktat is rule of law. They scribble down their diktats (arbitrary decrees issued by command of the dictator), ram them through their rubber stamp parliament and try to palm them off as “laws” (legislation enacted by a legitimately elected body engaged in deliberative process). They  use their diktats to play policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.

Under rule by diktat, the T-TPLF uses the “law” as a bludgeon — a sledgehammer — to vanquish their opposition.

There is no better example of this distorted and warped notion of the “rule of law” than the so-called anti-terrorism proclamation of the T-TPLF. In February 2012, Zenawi offered the following mind-boggling and mindless explanation to his rubber stamp parliament to give moral legitimacy and legal respectability to his anti-terrorism law :

In drafting our anti-terrorism law, we copied word-for-word the very best anti-terrorism laws in the world. We took from America, England and the European model anti-terrorism laws. It is from these three sources that we have drafted our anti-terrorism law. From these, we have chosen the better ones.  For instance, in all of these laws, an organization is deemed to be terrorist by the executive branch. We improved it by saying it is not good for the executive to make that determination. We took the definition of terrorism word-by-word. Not one word was changed. Not even a comma. It is taken word-by-word. There is a reason why we took it word-by-word. First, these people have experience in democratic governance. Because they have experience, there is no shame  if we learn or take from them. Learning from a good teacher is useful not harmful. Nothing embarrassing about it. The [anti-terrorism] proclamation in every respect is flawless. It is better than the best anti-terrorism laws [in the world] but not less than any one of them in any way…

For the T-TPLF, cutting and pasting words and phrases from the laws of other countries is what makes the rule of law.

I cringed in total embarrassment when I heard Zenawi proclaiming with pride his shameless plagiarism of American and British anti-terrorism laws “word-by-word” without changing “not even a comma”.

Such stunningly abysmal ignorance and shallow understanding of jurisprudence (and economics and politics and culture…) and glib talk about the rule of law is the hallmark of the T-TPLF. But that is how the T-TPLF rolls, copy and paste, imitate and impersonate, duplicate and replicate and plain old monkey see, monkey do.

The logic of Zenawi’s  argument is that America and Britain are democratic countries with a high degree of adherence to the rule of law principle; and they have anti-terrorism laws that are the “best” in the world. Since the T-TPLF has “copied word for word” their laws, it must necessarily mean they have the ultimate rule of law.

At the time, I tried to educate Zenawi with a metaphor of sorts. One cannot create a lion by piecing together the sturdy long neck of the giraffe with the strong  jaws of a hyena, the fast limbs of the cheetah and the massive trunk of the elephant. The king of the jungle is an altogether different beast. In the same vein, one cannot clone pieces of anti-terrorism laws from everywhere onto a diktat and sanctify it as “the rule of law”. For years, I have been saying that preaching the rule of law to the T-TPLF is like preaching Scripture to a gathering of Heathen or pouring water over a slab of granite.

The fact of the matter is that the T-TPLF is inherently incapable of functioning under the rule of law because they understand and practice only the rule of the bush/jungle.  In Kipling’s verse: “NOW this is the law of the jungle–,/ as old and as true as the sky;/ And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, / but the wolf that shall break it must die./As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk,/ the law runneth forward and back;/ For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack…

Such are the ways of the T-TPLF wolf pack !

John Dugard in his book “Human Rights and the South African Legal Order” (1978, p. 136), perfectly summarized the use of the “law” to maintain a vast system of repression: “Although designed to combat terrorism, the Terrorism Act [of 1967] has itself become an instrument of terror and a symbol of repression.” Such indeed is the T-TPLF’s Proclamation No. 652/2009 of 2009 (Anti-Terrorism Proclamation). (See my May 2016 commentary, The “Law” as State Terrorism in Apartheid Ethiopia.)

As for the existence of political prisoners, there are hundreds of thousands of them in Ethiopia today; and the T-TPLF has filled the prisons since the day they swarmed the capital in May 1991.

In November 2016, the T-TPLF itself announced the “arrest of 11,607 people, including 347 women.” Zadig Abraha, T-TPLF spokesman, said,“[The detainees] have been given lots of trainings that were meant to give them lessons so that they won’t be part of the destructive trend that we have seen in the past.” The 11,607 people, including 347 women are simpley street criminals according to the T-TPLF.

A partial list of T-TPLF political prisoners and torture victims serving long prison  sentences handed down by T-TPLF kangaroo (monkey) courts is available HERE.

In May 2017, the European Parliament issued a resolution demanding release of political prisoners in Ethiopia.

“Afterthought”: While we are on the subject of the rule of law, why is it that the T-TPLF leaders have failed to investigate and prosecute the “security officers” and all of the leaders who authorized the massacre of nearly 800 innocent protesters following the 2005 election?

Why has the T-TPLF  failed to investigate and prosecute  “security officers” and all of the leaders who authorized the Irrecha massacre which resulted in the massacre of over 500 peaceful religious celebrants in October 2016?

Why has the T-TPLF refused ALL requests for investigations of human rights violations by the U.N. Human Rights Council?

Discussions (negotiation) with 16 opposition parties

The VOA (Amharic) reported “16 Ethiopian opposition political parties agreed to discuss the anti-terrorism and other proclamations and 13 other agenda points including communications, press and charities and civic organizations”.

Another T-TPLF newspeak and doublethink? A cruel joke indeed.

According to the “National Electoral Board of Ethiopia”, there are 79 political parties in the country, including the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRDF), the front organization, for the T-TPLF.

Seventy-eight of the seventy-nine are ghost make-believe political parties. They exist in name only. They are licensed and regulated by the T-TPLF. The T-TPLF maintains agent provocateurs to spy, divide and disrupt opposition parties. The T-TPLF funds and even distributes U.S. and other aid money to “opposition parties” that support it. T-TPLF poaches members from opposition parties by giving out fertilizer and other agricultural services, food relief, jobs, university admissions  and other benefits.

The real opposition leaders are arrested on trumped up  terrorism charges and languish in official and secret T-TPLF prisons without due process of law for years. All of them are prosecuted and handed long sentences in T-TPLF  kangaroo (monkey) courts.

Ethiopia is a one-party dictatorship controlled by a secretive cabal of ruthless thugs.

In May 2010, the T-TPLF “won” only 99.6 percent of the seats in “parliament”.

In May 2015, the T-TPLF bested its 2010 record by “winning” 100% of the seats in “parliament”.

In 2008, according to the U.S. Human Rights Report, “In simultaneous elections for regional parliaments, the EPRDF and its affiliates won 1,903 of 1,904 seats. In local and by-elections held in 2008, the EPRDF and its affiliates won all but four of 3.4 million contested seats.

For the last nine years, the T-TPLF has been “winning” elections by virtually 100 percent, and in 2017 shamelessly claims to be negotiating with “opposition parties”.

What a cruel joke!

What “opposition parties” are in discussions with the T-TPLF? Opposition parties and leaders the T-TPLF has created in its own image? Opposition leaders the T-TPLF bought and sold ten times over? Opposition leaders who do not oppose the T-TPLF? Self-appointed opposition leaders who want to get along with the T-TPLF and line their pockets with thirty pieces of silver?

The T-TPLF has its opposition stooges babbling, “We believe that disagreements could easily be resolved through discussion and negotiation.”

The T-TPLF wants to “discuss/negotiate” issues with “opposition parties” after ramming through their so-called state of emergency decree and holding tens of thousands of innocent citizens in their jails.

Are the “opposition parties” the T-TPLF speaks of part of the T-TPLF newspeak/doublethink?

The T-TPLF has decimated all genuine opposition political parties, jailed their leaders and members and put the rest out into exile. Now it is in negotiations with make-believe” opposition parties”?

What a cruel joke!

The European Parliament in its May 2017 resolution noted, “the negotiation between the government and the opposition lacks credibility since opposition groups have been systematically decimated since 2010, leaving few truly independent voices left to negotiate with; whereas most political parties who are genuinely representative of broad communities have their senior members in prison on politically motivated charges.”

Mandela said, “Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.” Only on Planet T-TPLF can prisoners negotiate and enter into contracts with their captors.

In a democracy the people make jokes on their politicians. In a dictatorship, thugtators play cruel jokes on the people.

A cruel joke is an inside joke a group of people play on a person they hate for their own amusement.

The Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF) has been playing a cruel joke on the Ethiopian people since 1991.

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