Honorable chair, and distinguished members of the European parliament
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Allow me to first express my sincere condolences to the families of
the victims, to the People of France and the European Community in
general for the most recent senseless and barbaric terrorist crime
committed against innocent people in Paris on the evening of November 6.
In my view, such acts are not only contrary to the basic norms of
civilized behavior and devoid of rudimentary moral principles, they can
never be an acceptable instrument to achieve any objective, no matter
how noble the cause.
Madam Chair,
Let me also thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my
thoughts about the current situation in Ethiopia and its potential
implications for the stability of the Horn of Africa.
Madam Chair,
Currently, the livelihood and peace of the people in the horn of
Africa and its surrounding region are in a very precarious condition.
This situation is caused by long simmering conflicts and crises. Among
the openly known major crises are:
- The havoc being created by the terrorist group Al-Shabaab
- The conflict in Southern Sudan
- The Ethio-Eritrean no-war, no-peace stand off
- The increasing and incessant migration of the youth
- The exposure of people to recurrent famine
Even as the international community and the people of the region make
efforts to manage some of these crises, close observers of the
situation see more latent internal dynamics in some of the major
countries of the region that can perpetuate and worsen these crises.
The current situation in Syria and Libya demonstrates the
consequences of ignoring the underlying causes and drivers of
instability for a long time while only focusing on the symptoms as
episodes of bursts of crises in societies that are dominated by
dictatorial and sectarian regimes. Crises in such situations can easily
degenerate into a conflict between narrow-based repressive regimes and
simmering extreme societal forces that harbor uncompromising religious
or ethnic dispositions. We all know now in conflicts like this, the
search for a durable solution becomes extremely difficult as the
internal middle ground and moderate forces would be supplanted by
extreme forces. As an Ethiopian, I would like to focus the attention of
this audience and the international community in general on the internal
conditions of Ethiopia which are the sources of instability and civil
strife with impending grave consequences to the peace and stability of
the country and the region.
Ethiopia was a Monarchy until 1974. The inability of the monarchy to
effect desperately needed reforms led to the 1974 popular apprising.
From 1974 to 1991 the country was ruled by a military junta called
Dergue that refused to find a peaceful negotiated solution to the
country’s various problems and conflicts choosing instead brute force to
deal with essentially manageable political problems. As a result the
country went through a traumatic experience of civil wars in different
parts of the country. The single minority ethnic-based Tigray Peoples
Liberation Front (TPLF) that later took power after the Dergue has been
in power for the past 24 years. Since 1991, the country is ruled as a
one-party state under a facade of multi-party system. Ethiopians are
once again faced with a regime that is led by a group of people who deny
them basic human and political rights and who are determined to block a
democratic process. In addition to denying people their fundamental
freedoms, the regime is determined to perpetuate it’s monopoly of
political power in order to transfer the country’s economic resources to
a handful of people from a minority ethnic group and those politically
connected to the ruling party. For illustration purposes I will
enumerate below only five of the major manifestations of the tyrannical
rule of the narrow-based TPLF/EPDRF regime in order to help you
appreciate why the people of Ethiopia from all major ethnic and
religious groups have started to resist it in an open rebellion:
- Ethiopians are suffering under an entrenched ethnic minority rule:
The TPLF ethnocratic regime, under the guise of a coalition known as
the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), controls
all aspects of life in the country by installing its ethnic
representatives as heads of major institutions across the entire state
apparatus. Ethiopians and international observers including those who
bend backwards to “apologize” for the regime know very well that ethnic
Tigrayans who are members of the TPLF control the army, security
apparatus, telecoms , foreign affairs, and other nerve centers of the
Ethiopian state machinery. The TPLF party pits different ethnic and
religious groups against one another simply to perpetuate its minority
rule and monopoly on resources. The regime has no respect for religious
freedom. It has created havoc in both the Orthodox Christian church and
the Muslim mosques by interfering in the internal administration of
purely religious institutions through its political cadres. Religious
leaders who resist this interference are exiled (as the Orthodox
Christian leaders) and imprisoned (as the Muslim community leaders).
Ethnic minority domination is damaging the harmony of the people. In a
diverse multi-ethnic and multi-religious country like Ethiopia, the
harmony of the people is essential for their peaceful co-existence. When
a handful of elites from a single minority ethnic group control
political power, economic resources and social institutions of a
country; it’s a sure thing that a disenfranchised and powerless majority
will use all means at its disposal to be free. In the case of my
country, Ethiopia, unless something is done by all stakeholders, and
very soon, the struggle for freedom may take the country and the region
to civil strife, instability, and even worse scenarios.
- Ethiopians are subjected to oppression with impunity:
In the last twenty four years, the people have been appealing to the
regime to respect the fundamental political and civil liberties of the
citizenry. The response by the government has been more repression and
more violence. Today, there is no independent media and freedom of
expression to speak of in the country due to the wide spread practice of
jailing and forcing publishers and reporters in to exile. Today, there
are no functioning independent political parties due to the practice of
systematic disruption of their normal day-to-day activities, jailing of
opposition leaders or forcing them out of their country. Currently,
major prisons in Ethiopia are filled with hundreds of well-known
political, civic organization and religious leaders as well as
journalists under trumped-up terrorism charges. These prisoners are
tortured to falsely confess and incriminate themselves and their
colleagues. Victims of the regime have no recourse to justice since the
judiciary is made subservient to the political manipulation of the
ruling TPLF/EPRDF Coalition.
Independent media is not tolerated in Ethiopia. The International
Federation of Journalists has declared the regime to be one of the worst
offenders of press freedom. Television, Internet, and major print media
are owned and operated by the government. The state is the only
Internet Service Provider and uses Chinese, Italian and British Internet
hacking and intercepting technology vendors that are contracted to spy,
trap and intimidate the regime’s critics and opponents not only at home
but abroad including in Europe and the US. The regime also spends
precious resources on signal jamming technology to stop the free flow of
satellite and short wave radio broadcasts from abroad. Foreign based
and independently operated radio and TV broadcasts by the Ethiopian
Diaspora such as Ethiopian Satellite Television and Radio are jammed on
regular basis as are broadcasts in Ethiopian languages by Voice of
America and Deutsche Welle Radio.
- The livelihood of Ethiopians is at the mercy of the corrupt economic grip of the regime:
Like in all totalitarian regimes, the Ethiopian government owns all
land in the country, including urban land, and thus through land
allocation determines who builds residential and commercial real estate
in towns and cities. The industrial and service sector of the economy is
also heavily controlled by the state. What is left of the state’s
economic holdings is dominated by the Endowment Fund for the
Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT), a conglomerate serving as a front
economic organization for the ruling TPLF party while other allied
parties engage in relatively smaller but equally corrupt and disruptive
activities in their domain regions. Key beneficiaries from this economy
are the well placed military and political leaders and their cronies
while the millions of ruling party members and the alarmingly expanding
security personnel get the crumbs left from the ruling elites. Urban
poverty as well as income inequality has been increasing dramatically
and the relatively small “middle class” is all but wiped out through a
policy induced inflation. What we have in urban Ethiopia now is a small
fabulously wealthy and corrupt class of government and ruling party
officials along with their crony “business partners” on the one hand,
and the great majority of the destitute urban population on the other.
While these corrupt elites send roughly 3 billion dollars a year in the
form of capital flight (partly money sent from western taxpayers in the
form of foreign aid) the honest and unconnected business people see
their businesses slowly die for lack of capital and foreign exchange as
well as corruption induced red tape. The inability to generate jobs for
the urban population including those who supposedly graduate from
universities along with the suffocating political environment is one of
the main reasons for the massive influx of migrants from Ethiopia to all
corners of the world including Europe.
- Despite the regime’s claims to political legitimacy through its
“developmental” achievements, particularly in the rural economy where
over 80% of the population reside (which by the way has always been
supported by dubious and manufactured statistics, and unfortunately
uncritically endorsed by western governments and institutions), the
economy’s deep structural weaknesses and the failed economic policies
pursued by the regime over the past 24 years are now exposed for all to
see by the tragic ongoing famine in the country. An economic policy
centered around a suffocating land and agrarian policy whose primary
objective is control of the peasantry and leaves no room for human
creativity and imagination, combined with drought has led to the
potential starvation of over 15 million Ethiopians unless the west
urgently delivers massive food aid. According to recent media reports,
(of course denied by the regime) children have already started dying in
some of the affected regions.
Madam Chair,
As you well know, drought does not kill people, bad policy and
unaccountable governance does. As the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen in his
study of famines around the world amply demonstrated, people die of
starvation in periods of drought in countries that are not free, where
there is no free media and where there is no government accountable to
the public. During the 2005 elections, the only period where there was a
meaningful political debate in the country, the party I belonged to
then, the CUD, warned against the futility of the ADLI policy pursued by
the ruling party. Our argument was that the rural population, whose
means of livelihood stems from an increasingly unsustainable traditional
small holder farming whose land size and fertility of land is
diminishing every year owing to a suffocating land policy that provides
no security of tenure along with demographic pressure and
environmentally unsustainable practices cannot support the population in
periods of environmental distress. We argued instead for a revision of
the land policy as well as a deliberate policy to transform the
agricultural economy. We also suggested that no government that sees its
people starve to death on its watch deserve to be in power even for a
day. Of course, this ruling party never listens to anything that it
feels would loosen its stranglehold over political power. What is
sickening to watch in this most tragic period in our country is the
total incompetence and irresponsible nature of the regime in its
response to this tragedy. More interested in saving face rather than
saving lives, the regime is still in denial about the human suffering
that is caused by the famine declaring that they have everything under
control and don’t even need outside help to avert an incoming disaster.
“We are food self-sufficient” declared the Prime Minister only a few
months ago. Even worse, it is forcing people to contribute money to the
tune of 300 million birr to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the
founding of one of the parties in the ruling coalition after spending an
inordinate amount of money earlier in the year to celebrate the birth
day of the real ruling party the TPLF. The sheer obliviousness of the
regime and their complete detachment from reality is manifested in a
recent interview by an official who proudly informs its subjects on
local radio that the government is now building a number of luxury
villas (with swimming pools and all) costing an average of 25 million
birr per villa to house retiring government officials. This, Madam
chair, is happening in a country where 15 million of its citizens are
facing death from starvation and in one of the supposed miracle
economies of the continent!
- Ethiopians have given up on elections as they have become meaningless rituals:
There have been five national elections under the TPLF. The first
election in 1995 resulted in 3 opposition members being elected to a
parliament that has a total of 548 MPs. In the second election of 2000,
the number for the opposition members rose to 27. In the 2005 general
election, the only election that was meaningfully contested, which was
monitored by the Carter Center, European Union (led by you, Madam Gomes)
and other observers, Ethiopians turned out in a record numbers and
voted for their representatives. The results were rigged; and when
voters protested the blatant usurpation of their power peacefully, they
were gunned down in broad daylight (the government’s official count was
193 dead). Following this election, opposition party leaders, (including
myself, as you know) civic society leaders, journalists and ordinary
citizens were thrown in jail for almost two years along with some 40,000
young people deemed to be opponents of the regime. The government
appointed election commission ruled the ruling party a winner. In 2010,
in the fourth national election, only 1 opposition member was able to
slip in to the parliament. In the most recent election that was held in
May 2015, the regime claimed to have won 100% of the parliamentary
seats. No outside observers other than from the African Union were
allowed to monitor the election. The paradox here is that, in a nation
where a very large majority of the population opposes the government, no
single member of the opposition is elected to the parliament. In short,
the so-called multi-party system and democracy paraded by the regime to
hoodwink the international community is a mockery of a democratic
system as we know it. The Obama administration’s cynical and disgraceful
attempt to render legitimacy to its temporary military ally against Al
Shabaab in Somalia, will not alter the illegitimacy of the regime one
bit in the eyes of the Ethiopian people, in the same way as putting a
lipstick on a pig will not alter the nature of the pig.
Currently, despite their deep desire to lead a peaceful life, the
existence of the Ethiopian people is almost on the verge of total
collapse because of the low intensity rebellions and resistance bursting
in various parts of the country. These rebellions are caused none other
than by the tyrannical rule of the ethnocratic regime that is
shattering the social fabric of the country. The predicament the
Ethiopian people find themselves today is not unique in history. People
in many countries, who were living under similar conditions have
rightfully revolted against tyranny and are now living examples of
peaceful and stable democracies.
This universal truth and natural response of the Ethiopian people
against their oppressors is best captured by the founding fathers of one
of the Western democracies; the American Declaration of Independence
from Great Britain, it says:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness –
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness.”
Unless otherwise one maintains an inherently racist belief that we
Ethiopians or Africans in general are less of human to deserve or
possess this “natural endowment,” these words ring true today for the
people of Ethiopia who are rising against an egregious tyrant as they
were over two hundred years ago to the people of the 13 Colonies.
Madam Chair,
At this critical juncture, to facilitate the Ethiopian people’s
struggle with able, responsible and effective leadership, the democratic
forces in the country are coalescing under the newly formed United
Movement for the Salvation of Ethiopia through Democracy (UMSED) as a
beginning towards the formation of a broad movement for democracy in
Ethiopia. It is not lost on the part of these democratic forces that one
of the potential obstacles on the road to the Ethiopian people’s
struggle for freedom and democracy is the international community’s
multifaceted collaboration with the TPLF led government with cruel
indifference to the prevailing corrupt and repressive political as well
as the abysmal economic conditions in the country.
Following their new goal of making inroads into Africa, some
countries have become major financiers of the TPLF repressive regime.
This may be an expected behavior from these governments, given the
nature of their political systems. However, the West’s support for the
rogue dictatorial regime in Ethiopia is inconsistent with the values of
freedom, justice, and democracy the West practices at home and its vital
importance for a stable world order. The West led by the US has
understandably declared terrorism as a menace to global peace while in a
typical short-term calculus have also decided to consider dictatorial
and sectarian regimes like that of Ethiopia to be “allies” in its
anti-terrorism effort. As a result, the West has made the Ethiopian
regime a beneficiary of its substantial financial, political, diplomatic
and even military support directly emboldening it to continue its human
rights abuse and repression of its own people with impunity. This
policy on the part of the Western countries is short sighted, not
constructive and certainly immoral.
Once again, I would like to emphasize that establishing and
entrenching the Ethiopian regime by force on very narrow ethnic and
exclusionary line is one of the main causes of instability in the
region. Such a regime driven by its constant desire to monopolize the
political power and resources of the country for a narrow-group interest
and its deep insecurity is internally in continuous conflict with its
citizens composed of different ethnic and religious groups. To
perpetuate its rule beyond the already intolerably long 24 years, the
regime continues to use scorch-earth military expeditions in the Ogaden
region to the east and occasional incursions into Kenyan territory
pursuing resisters from the Oromia region. Human rights groups have many
times reported that ethnic minorities in the Gambella, Omo and Afar
regions are being displaced from their fertile farm lands to make way
for new landlords from abroad and the regime’s ethnically affiliated
retired military officers. This has triggered armed resistance in these
regions. The regime has also continued to pit different ethnic groups
against the Amharic speaking people in the south and western parts of
the country thereby driving them out from places where they have lived
for generations. As the recent and ongoing bloody conflict in Northern
Gonder shows, the Amhara region is in an almost open and armed
rebellion. As we speak Universities in Oromia region are looking like
combat zones as the government uses brute force to suppress the peaceful
demands of students to stop land grab in Addis Ababa and surrounding
regions.
As the international community is well aware, the regime is also
externally locked in constant conflict with Eritrea in the north. This
is the reason why the TPLF/EPDRF government has one of the biggest
standing armies in Sub-Saharan Africa thus spending large portion of the
poor country’s budget on the military while the danger of famine and
lack of resources for basic needs of its population are always lurking
around. While this is the true reason for the TPLF regime to build an
army that is beyond the country’s legitimate security needs, it
cynically uses a fraction of this army in international peace keeping
missions in order to get acquiescence from the West for its nefarious
repression at home as well as use these missions as a source of hard
currency income for its corrupt highest military brass. Recently, the
Ethiopian government is even seen scheming to leverage its security
cooperation with the West, hopefully in vain, for extending its
repressive hand abroad by invoking the legitimate rebellion and
resistance of Ethiopians as a terrorist act. The truth is that the
Ethiopian people’s resistance is a very disciplined and well organized
struggle that is focused only on a political goal of making Ethiopia a
democratic country either by forcing the government to come to the table
for a peaceful resolution or removing it if the government persists in
blocking the natural right of the Ethiopian people for self-government.
The people’s resistance movement is also very much aware of its
responsibilities for the Ethiopian people, the people of the region and
the international community. It is a resistance movement which is
informed from the rich multi-ethnic and multi-religious tradition of
Ethiopian history, international laws, morality, and norms.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that the sure and least expensive
way to avert a pending crises in the largest country in the Horn of
Africa is to change the political situation in Ethiopia from the
narrow-based repressive and corrupt regime of TPLF/EPDRF to that of an
all-inclusive and broad-based transitional order that can lead towards a
truly democratic political dispensation, stability and peace in the
country and consequently in the region. The TPLF/EPDRF regime must be
pressured to accept this transition, and very soon, unless it wishes to
lead the county and itself into unfathomably catastrophic conditions of
strife and conflict in Ethiopia.
Towards this goal, I appeal to this august body, the European
parliament, and of the international community to stand in solidarity
with the Ethiopian people and make all possible efforts to avert the
impending conflict in Ethiopia by advocating and working for broad-based
and all-inclusive transitional government instead of emboldening the
tyrannical and sectarian dictatorship of TPLF/EPDRF for short term gains
that is neither durable nor sustainable. If you can’t help our people’s
aspirations for liberty and to be ruled by a government of their
choice, please, please, don’t support and finance their tormentors!
Madam Chair,
I am here to tell you in no uncertain terms that the people of
Ethiopia are simply tired of this situation and will rather fight for
their freedom by whatever means necessary than accept to live under such
a brutalizing tyranny in the 21st Century.
It is only by having a broad based national reconciliation process,
an all-inclusive transitional process, and a real and meaningful
democratization of Ethiopia that the specter of conflict, instability
and, yes, terrorism can be averted effectively and durably. It is only
through such policy shift on the part of the European, American and
other powers that lasting stability can be achieved in one of the most
volatile regions of the world. Anything less, will surely serve the
destabilization of Ethiopia with catastrophic consequences of turning
the Horn of Africa into a hot bed of conflict, terrorism, and a plethora
of human suffering and tragedies including massive forced migration.
But, Madam Chair, time is of the essence here. It is much easier to
avert a catastrophe if you catch it before it happens. I believe that is
the painful lesson we should be learning from Syria!!
Thank You
This
morning, on my way to work, 4 men in civilian clothes greeted me by my
name; identified themselves as ‘police’ and asked me to get in a car
parked next to where they stopped me. When I refused, they grabbed me by
my arms left and right; forced me into the backseat of their car and
started driving. Once the car started moving, they started to hit me:
the two guys in my left and right continued to punch me while the one
sitting in the front-seat kept touching my face with his gun.
