New daughter melts Wright State coach’s heart

HEBRON, Ky. — They stood at the end of a long concourse at the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport — just beyond the security checkpoint — and waited anxiously for the arrival of passengers off a late-afternoon Delta flight out of Washington.

Mike Bradbury was wearing a green Wright State polo shirt beneath his black Raiders jacket. The new women’s basketball coach at WSU had just come from campus where he’d spent several distracted hours trying to put together a schedule.

His wife, Christy, who had driven with Mike’s aunt, Jana Sturm, from Morehead, Ky. — where Mike had been the women’s coach at Morehead State — had a bag filled with baby bottles, diapers and clothes draped over her shoulder. In her hand was a red cell phone that soon delivered the text message that made her beam:

“I am here Mommy!”

The Bradburys had been waiting to hear that for nearly a year.

The couple — whose 4-year-old son Alex was back at their Morehead home with his grandma on Tuesday, April 27 — were adopting an 11-month old daughter from Ethiopia. After months of social worker visits, paper work, court hearings and visa snafus, the day was finally here.

Sena Nicole — escorted from Ethiopia by Sue Hedberg, executive director of the Florida-based Celebrate Children International adoption agency — arrived after a 35-hour, four-flight trip from an orphanage’s transition house in Addis Ababa.

The Bradburys had only seen photos and a few video clips of her, but now there she was in a stroller far down the concourse.

Christy and Jana began to cry.

Mike’s nerves melted into pure love when Sue lifted up his new daughter — dressed in a pink outfit and wearing little white socks adorned with pink ribbon — and helped her wave.

He’d been unsure how Sena would react, but those fears dissolved when the little girl went easily into Christy’s arms.

And when he approached, Sena reached out for him, nuzzled into his embrace, touched his cheeks and smiled until you saw her tiny front teeth.

'What a beautiful little girl'
After they had their son Alex — who, Christy said, “is a caring, tender-hearted little boy,” a trait she thinks will make him a perfect big brother — they thought about adoption.

“After we had our own child, we felt there are so many children in the world who need families, why have more children when you can adopt someone who really needs someone,” Christy said.

They eventually found Celebrate Children International, which, Hedberg said, has done “approximately 2,000 adoptions from nine countries over the past 10 to 12 years.”

Currently, most of those adopted children come from Ethiopia, where, Hedberg said, the entire process might cost $20,000.

“This year Ethiopia will be the No. 1 country in the world” for adoptees coming to the U.S.,” Hedberg said. “The U.S. has cracked down on country after country. It shut down Cambodia, Vietnam, Guatemala. And the wait for a child from China has grown to about seven years.

“But Ethiopia — where they say there are about four million orphans — is one of the countries where adoption is smooth and the children who come are relatively young and healthy.”

Hedberg said Sena comes from the town of Woliso, a town 2 ½ hours from Addis Ababa: “Basically, she was abandoned at the orphanage.”

When the Bradburys saw pictures of her, they were smitten. That Sena is black and they are white didn’t matter. Christy said: “We want that diversity for Alex and Sena, too.”

Initially, the Bradburys were told they could come to Ethiopia for Sena in February, but that was in the heat of Mike’s basketball season.

So they arranged the escort instead.

The process got pushed into April, but it’s still a busy time.

Mike was named the new WSU coach one week ago. But Tuesday, he and Christy had only Sena on their minds.

“New arrival?” a lady waiting for an incoming passenger warmly asked. When Christy nodded, the woman gushed: “Congratulations.”

The woman who ran the Delta baggage claim office walked over, watched Sena explore her new world and nodded: “What a beautiful little girl.”

As he readied for their trip back to Morehead, Mike took a moment to watch his daughter play:

“She’s so precious. As I watch her, I just hope her life is going to be so much better now.”

As the little girl gurgled and giggled with her new mom, you sensed it was.

Ethiopia: Information Without Interference

By Alemayehu G. Mariam

"Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets," fretted Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, as he summed up the informative powers of an independent press. All dictators and tyrants in history have feared the enlightening powers of the independent press because, as Napoleon explained, "A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns and a tutor of nations." It was the fact of "tutoring nations" -- teaching, informing, enlightening and empowering the people with knowledge-- that was Napoleon's greatest fears of a free press. He understood the power of the press to effectively countercheck his tyrannical rule, and he used censorship relentlessly to muzzle it. He harassed, jailed and persecuted journalists for criticizing his use of a vast network of spies that penetrated every nook and cranny of French society, exposing his military failures, condemning his indiscriminate massacres of unarmed citizen protesters in the streets and for killing, jailing and persecuting large numbers of his political opponents. Total control of the media remains the wicked obsession of modern day dictators who believe that by controlling the flow of information, they can control the hearts and minds of their citizens.

The importance of an independent free press (media) in any society, including Ethiopia[1], can hardly be overstated. Thomas Jefferson, one of the chief architects of the American Republic was unrestrained in extolling the virtues of a free press: "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. Jefferson became singularly instrumental in the inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution which provided for sweeping and uncompromising protections of expressive freedoms: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of the press." The free press is so vital to American democracy that the government is absolutely prohibited("no law") from passing laws that censor, regulate, restrict or suppress its functions and operations.

Press freedom, along with other expressive freedoms, is now a core value of all humanity. The U.N. General Assembly in its very first session in 1946 adopted resolution 59 (I) which declared: "Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and ... the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated." In 1948, freedom of the press became a core human right principle when the U.N. enshrined it in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers." This universal right is today acknowledged robustly and expansively in Article 29 of the Ethiopian Constitution:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression without interference. This right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds,regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through other media of his choice. Freedom of the press and mass media as well as freedom of artistic creation is guaranteed... [and] censorship in any form is prohibited.
In the past few years, Ethiopia has been ranked at the bottom of the list of nations with the worst records on press freedom. In the 2009 Freedom House's "Press Freedom Rankings", Ethiopia came in at a dismal 165/195 countries. Reporters Without Borders ranked Ethiopia at 140/175 countries in 2009. The Committee to Protect Journalists on May 2, 2007 ranked Ethiopia as number 1 among the "top 10 backslider" countries "worldwide where press freedom has deteriorated the most over the last five years." When Zenawi ordered the jamming of Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts recently, the International Federation of Journalists (world's largest organization of journalists) on April 1, 2010 vehemently denounced his actions: "We condemn jamming of broadcasts. It is unprofessional, intolerant and flies in the face of promises that the Ethiopian Government is committed to press freedom."

The recent history of the independent press in Ethiopia is a chronicle of brutal crackdowns, arbitrary imprisonments and harassments of local and international journalists, shuttering of newspapers and jamming of external radio transmissions. Meles Zenawi's regime declared an open war on the independent press in Ethiopia in November 2005, following parliamentary elections in May of that year. He concocted a bizarre set of excuses and justifications to decimate the country's small but growing independent press. He publicly alleged that the editors and reporters of the independent newspapers were engaged in a conspiracy with the opposition parties to overthrow the "constitutional order." He claimed they had incited violence and spread information that led to violence and genocidal acts. Zenawi told the Committee to Protect Journalists that "They [independent press] went beyond their normal bias and went for the jugular. They became part and parcel of the day-to-day preparation for the insurrection after the elections." But he has failed to produce a shred -- a single speck -- of evidence to link the occurrence of a single piece of any published material in the independent press to the occurrence of any violence or illegal acts in 2005 or at any other time.

Today Zenawi uses the same unhinged logic and the same old stale, discredited and patently absurd argument to justify jamming the VOA:

We have been convinced for many years that in many respects, the VOA Amharic Service has copied the worst practices of radio stations such as Radio Mille Collines of Rwanda in its wanton disregard of minimum ethics of journalism and engaging in destabilizing propaganda.
As usual, he has been unable to give a single example of a VOA broadcast that even faintly resembles the "worst practices" of the genocide-promoting radio station in Rwanda. The best he has been able to do is point to a dubious catalogue of complaints his regime has lodged with the VOA alleging overly critical reporting on his regime by the VOA's Amharic service. Criticism of policies and leaders is a standard practice of an independent press in a democracy, but it must seem totally unnatural in dictatorships. Regardless of the irrefutable fact that there is not a single instance of independent press-caused violence or act of illegality, Zenawi's regime for the past 5 years has used bogus and absurd justifications to jail, harass and intimidate Ethiopian and foreign journalists and close the vast majority of the independent newspapers in the country.

Why is freedom of the press so important that it has become one of the universal benchmarks of a free society?

Few have given a more definitive answer to this question than James Madison, the father of the American Constitution: "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." A free and independent press serves as the eyes, ears and mouths of citizens in any society. It plays many important roles. As a watchdog, the independent press keeps those in power honest. Where there is a fully functioning free press, leaders no longer become untouchable gods sitting high on a pedestal to be worshipped, but ordinary men and women who are accountable to their citizens for their actions and omissions; and government institutions operate with transparency and openness. A well-functioning independent press will toil vigorously to expose the corruption, abuse of power, misuse and theft of taxpayer money and scandal among those exercising power and their supporting cast of invisible power brokers, influence peddlers and fixers.

When it informs, a free press educates citizens on public policies, choices and decisions. Citizens are informed on societal issues and problems, and are exposed to the range of competing potential solutions. An informed citizenry is better positioned to more effectively participate in public life and help shape its structure of governance and economic development. By informing, the free media becomes the lynchpin that connects citizens for collective action, and effective interaction with their leaders and institutions. Without free access to information and ideas, citizens are unable to participate meaningfully in the political life of their nation by exercising their right to vote or by taking part in shaping the process of public decision-making.

The free press is also plays a vital role in equitable and sustainable economic development as articulated by the former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn:

A free press is at the absolute core of equitable development. If you cannot enfranchise poor people, if they do not have a right to expression, if there is no searchlight on corruption and inequitable practices, you cannot build the public consensus needed to bring about change. A free press is not a luxury.
A society without a robust free press is a society condemned to live in darkness. Hate, like mushrooms, thrives in the hearts of those who live in the dark; fear grips the minds of those trapped in the darkness of ignorance; anger becomes the light at the end of the tunnel of darkness; corruption, like cancer, spreads in the dark corners of state and abuse of power roils the people in the dark vortex of despair and hopelessness. Without a vigorous free press in Ethiopia today, it is darkness at noon!

The functions of the independent press must be viewed in a broader context, and not only as a source of negative criticism. Leaders benefit from heeding the independent press and correcting their mistakes when it is pointed out to them. They can use the press to communicate with the people they govern and become more accountable, transparent and responsive to their citizens. Governance is not a private affair. When kings ruled by divine right, they claimed to be accountable only to divine authority. Thankfully, those days are long gone. At the dawn of the 21st Century, those who lead and govern must accountable to the people; but a citizenry intentionally kept ignorant does not have the means to demand accountability. That is why an independent media is a vital civic organ in society. President John Kennedy captured the essential role of a vigorous press when he said that the media's role is not just to entertain but more importantly "to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold educate and sometimes even anger public opinion."

An independent free press is not the enemy of good government. It is its strongest ally. It is through the press that leaders keep their fingers on the pulse of the people - learn about what ails them, angers them, pleases them, confuses and concerns them. When rumors and falsehoods spread and unfair criticisms are leveled, leaders have the opportunity to answer their critics and challenge them using the independent media itself. A government that persecutes the independent press and remains willfully ignorant of what its citizens think and feel, and refuses to acknowledge and redress their grievances is like the proverbial ostrich that buries its head in the sand while a rumbling volcano cascades behind it. An independent press is ultimately a mirror for leaders and governments; sometimes the face in the mirror is the face of a monster. Breaking the mirror does not make the monster an angel.

The right of the Ethiopian people to receive and give information regardless of frontiers is their inalienable right to have the information they need to make informed decisions about their form of government, leaders and lives. Journalists can not be made criminals because they speak truth to power, reveal the truth about those who wield power or because those in power abhor the truth. Civil and criminal defamation laws can not be excuses to censor criticism and debate concerning public issues.

For any one who truly believes in the rule of law, it is impossible to understand how any leader or government could possibly fear public scrutiny and criticism in the press. A real leader is willing, able and ready to stand up and defend his/her policies, action and omissions in full public view. A real leader understands that criticism is a natural part of political and public life. The chief of state like the chef must get out of the "state kitchen" if he can not stand the heat.

Freedom of the press and media in general in Ethiopia is not about protecting the rights of newspapers, editors, journalists, reporters or foreign correspondents and radio broadcasters. It is fundamentally about the constitutional and internationally-guaranteed legal rights of every Ethiopian citizen "to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers and without interference, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through other media of his choice and without censorship in any form." It is emphatically the duty of every Ethiopian who believes in the rule of law and freedom of expression to help deliver "information and ideas of all kinds" to Ethiopians "regardless of frontiers." Let us all as Ethiopians join hands and resolve in our hearts and minds to become a thousand points of light shining brightly like the stars on the curtain of darkness that has enveloped Ethiopia today.

U.S. Should Reject the Outcome of May 2010 Ethiopian Election

“… history offers a clear verdict: Governments that respect the will of their own people, that govern by consent and not coercion, are more prosperous, they are more stable, and more successful than governments that do not. … In the 21st century, capable, reliable, and transparent institutions are the key to success -- strong parliaments; honest police forces; independent judges; an independent press; a vibrant private sector; a civil society. Those are the things that give life to democracy, because that is what matters in people’s everyday lives,” President Barack Obama’s Speech in Ghana, July 11, 2009.

The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party will surely declare a landslide victory in the upcoming May 2010 local elections. The victory will come about because since the 2005 national elections, the party has moved aggressively to manipulate local elections, pass repressive legislations, and to ban free media in order to consolidate its power base throughout Ethiopia.
The U.S. Department of State 2009 Human Rights Reports/Ethiopia, and Human Rights Watch on Ethiopia/March 2010 issued reports critical of the human rights and political conditions in the country. The reports illuminate how the EPRDF uses foreign aid to suppress dissent and intimidate citizens into political submission. Given this revelation, the Obama administration can take two immediate steps to end the misappropriation of U.S. aid by the Ethiopian ruling party: 1). It can order all non-military U.S. aid to reach target audiences directly; 2) It can reject the outcome of the May 2010 elections in protest of the pre-election undemocratic environment.

Why are we, Ethiopian Americans Council calling for the Obama administration to take the two important steps?

EPRDF manipulated the 2008 local elections to control 99.9 percent of the kebele (Kebele means local government) council seats, as well as the Woreda (Woreda means Districts) council seats. Those seats combined, represent close to 85 percent of rural Ethiopia. The kebele administrative structure has four major organs: Kebele council, Kebele Chief Executive, Kebele Standing Committee and Kebele Social Court. Several services are rendered at Kebele level, including development activities, housing, employment, issuance of ID, etc. The Kebele officials use these organs to coerce citizens, including the civil servants, students, farmers and business owners, to become cardholding members of the EPRDF party or face exclusion.

In a country like Ethiopia that depends on foreign aid for one-third of its expenditures, the vast majority of citizens could hardly risk the consequences of opposing the regime that controls all access to their basic amenities. After all, the ruling party uses donor food aid as a political tool to reward or punish individuals and families in the countryside. Allegiance to the ruling party is a matter of life or death decision in the country.

Draconian Legislative

After consolidating its power base in the 2008 local elections, the ruling party turned its attention on restraining civil society. In 2009, it used its rubber-stamp parliament to pass two draconian legislation: the Civil Society Law and the Ant-Terrorism Proclamation.

* The Civil Society Law was passed by the parliament on January 6, 2009, to restrict the activities and funding for civil society organizations (CSOs). The law, "Proclamation for the Registration and Regulation of Charities and Societies", forbids civil society organizations from engaging in building democratic and human rights culture. In addition, it requires CSOs, which receive more than 10 percent of their budget from outside, to register as “foreign agents.” The objective is to restrict CSOs to mere service providers and to muzzle local human rights groups.


* The Anti-Terrorism Law, which was passed in July 2009, gives the state sweeping powers to arrest individuals it deemed threatening. The law is designed to end peaceful demonstrations, and to persecute and penalize political dissidents.

Through the 2008 local elections and punitive legislative in 2009, the EPRDF regime has effectively instituted a police state. In this repressive political climate, there is no way a fair and free election can take place. Thus, it is absolutely justifiable for the Obama administration to consider our modest recommendations.
Human Rights Watch rightful points out that the Obama administration is yet to reverse the Bush’s policies toward Ethiopia. It is clear that the appeasement policy of the Bush administration toward the Ethiopian regime had left the country on the brink of political and economic disaster. The potential calamity should compel the Obama administration to seriously examine the current policies toward Ethiopia. After all, EPRDF is unpopular not only in Ethiopia, but also in the surrounding countries. It has caused political instability in the Horn of Africa because of its misguided policies and military adventurism. If the current trajectory continues, the Horn of Africa will sink into further political chaos, which is a nightmare scenario for the United States.

Ethiopia is a very influential country in the Horn of Africa. It is also an important country to the United States because of the two nations’ historical ties and Ethiopia’s strategic location. A democratic Ethiopia can be a stabilizing force not only for the Horn of Africa, but for the entire continent.
As Human Rights Watch/March 2010 correctly put it, the United States is “Ethiopia's largest donor and most important political ally on the world stage.” The United States government should not continue to give credence to a notoriously repressive regime that is growingly become a threat to millions of Ethiopians and to regional stability.
A strong and democratic Ethiopia will prove to be a reliable and durable ally to the United States both in the short-term and long-term.

The Ethiopian Americans Council

Ethiopia activist clubbed to death in 'politically motivated' murder

An opposition activist has been bludgeoned to death with a gun butt in the second politically motivated murder of Ethiopia's election campaign, it was claimed today.


Biyansa Daba was attacked and killed at home by members of the ruling party, according to Bulcha Demeksa, a leader of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC).

"Biyansa Daba was beaten on 7 April with the butt of a gun," Bulcha told Reuters. "He died in hospital on 16 April. He was a very strong up-and-coming figure.

"Of course it was political. They asked him to stop converting people to OFC, they warned him many times. Why else would anyone beat him?"

Government spokesmen were not available to comment but routinely deny that members of the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front intimidate the opposition.

Last month Aregawi Gebre-Yohannes, an opposition candidate for the eight-party coalition Medrek – of which the OFC is a member – was stabbed to death in what the opposition described as a political murder. The government insists that Aregawi was killed in a bar fight. A man has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for the crime.

The government has been accused by Human Rights Watch of waging a coordinated assault on political opponents, rights campaigners and journalists ahead of the national elections on 23 May.

A report by the group said journalists and activists have fled the country because of government repression. Some radio broadcasts by the Voice of America have been jammed.

Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said: "The ruling party and the state are becoming one, and the government is using the full weight of its power to eliminate opposition and intimidate people into silence."

The results of the last elections in 2005 were challenged by the opposition and some international observers. Street riots erupted, security forces killed at least 193 civilians and the main opposition leaders were imprisoned. The prime minister, Meles Zenawi, claimed they were trying to overthrow him.

The OFC and other parties representing the Oromo – Ethiopia's biggest ethnic group – say ruling party officials are again intimidating and jailing their members.

The government denies that it targets Oromo politicians and points to the fact that there are several Oromo government ministers and a ceremonial president of the country as proof.

Oromos, numbering 27m of Ethiopia's 80m people, have not held power in modern history. Ethiopia has more than 80 ethnic groups.

Meles is from the Tigrayan ethnic group, who make up 6% of the population and dominate the political and military elite.

Analysts expect the Meles government to win the election.

source Guardian

Tensions mount in Ethiopia

April 24, 2010 11:14 AM | By Sapa-AFP
Accusations of harassment and even of murder have led to escalating tensions in Ethiopia between the long-entrenched ruling party and the opposition, a month ahead of general elections.


Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Chairman and Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi attends the 14th extra-ordinary summit of IGAD Assembly of Heads of State and Governments on the Sudan Peace Process in Kenya's capital Nairobi.

Ethiopia cracks down on activists, reporters

The death last week in controversial circumstances of a politician from the Oromo ethnic group — the largest of more than 80 in the Horn of Africa nation — has started a row, with each side claiming his political loyalty.

According to Merara Gudina, vice-president of the opposition Forum for Democratic Dialogue (Medrek), when Binsa Daba died on April 16, he was attacked for his political stance by “four members of a (pro-government) local militia”.

But Communications Minister Bereket Simon said that “Mr Binsa died of natural causes and was not even a member of the opposition,” but instead of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary and Democratic Front (EPRDF) led by outgoing Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Bereket said that the opposition was using all possible means to discredit the elections scheduled on May 23, which will be the first national polls since the 2005 elections led to violence in which at least 200 people died.

The opposition has also claimed that the murder of a better-known political figure, Aregawi Guebreyohannes, in March in the northern Tigre region was a political killing, while the government says it came of a dispute.

The government wants to ensure that May’s poll is not spoiled by fraud or the kind of violence that erupted in 2005, when opposition demonstrations were brutally put down by security forces. The opposition then wanted to denounce alleged fraud in the official outcome, after taking the best score of its history.

Ethiopia has 80 million inhabitants, of whom more than 30 million are due to vote to elect their members of parliament.

International observers say that Meles, 54, a former rebel leader in power since the EPRDF ousted the Marxist military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991, has every chance of winning a new five-year mandate.

But the Medrek, a loose coalition of eight highly varied parties without a real leader, ceaselessly denounces the conditions in which the vote is being organised. Non-governmental organisations agree and Human Rights Watch has denounced “the narrowness of the political space.”

Meles, satisfied with an economic policy he says has led to a growth rate of 10.1% and 3.9% of inflation, on April 13 reminded parliament of his determination to create conditions for “free, fair and transparent” elections.

But the president of Medrek, Beyene Petros, 60, says “there is a lack of consensus over who should manage these elections. (...) we have available information on the ground that the election officers are members of the EPRDF or its affiliates. How can you play and referee at the same time and expect fair play?”

Beyene also denounced the selection of the electoral board “by the ruling party in a non-transparent manner when it should have been based on merit. This whole process enables the elections to be open for vote rigging.”

“You also have the issue of harassment that our candidates face,” Beyene added. “Since the ruling controls almost every aspect of economic activity, opposition candidates or members are threatened from working, face demotion and being transferred to difficult places.”

The National Electoral Bureau of Ethiopia, responsible for organising the poll, has devised with the government a code of conduct for international observers who will be sent by the European Union and the African Union.

The bureau is planning a similar code of conduct for local and foreign journalists covering the elections
Source

Cruel Ethiopia

Parts of southern Ethiopia resemble the scenery in a Tarzan movie. When I was there last fall, the green forested hills were blanketed in white mist and rain poured down on the small farms and homesteads. In the towns, slabs of meat hung in the butchers’ shops and donkeys hauled huge sacks of coffee beans, Ethiopia’s major export, along the stony dirt roads. So I was surprised to see the signs of hunger everywhere. There were babies with kwashiorkor, a disease caused by malnutrition, which I’d assumed occurred only in war zones. Many of the older children were clearly stunted and some women were so deficient in iodine they had goiters the size of cannonballs.


This East African nation, famous for its ancient rock-hewn churches, Solomonic emperors, and seemingly intractable poverty, has a long history of famine. But I had always assumed that food shortages were more common in the much drier north of the country than in the relatively fertile south. Although rainfall throughout Ethiopia had been erratic in 2008 and 2009, the stunting and goiter I saw were signs of chronic malnutrition, which had clearly existed for many years.

What was causing it? Ethiopia’s long history of food crises is shrouded in myths and political intrigue. In 1984, famine killed hundreds of thousands of people and left millions destitute. At the time, the UN attributed the famine to drought. But most witnesses knew it had far more to do with a military campaign launched by Ethiopia’s then-Soviet-backed dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam against a rebel group based in the northern province of Tigray, known as the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).1 Government forces isolated the peasantry, destroyed trade and markets, and diverted food aid to their own troops.

Western governments were slow to respond to this humanitarian crisis, but a global charity campaign led by the rock singer Bob Geldof’s Band Aid concerts and albums raised more than $100 million for relief organizations like Christian Aid and Oxfam. Because Tigray was under assault, these organizations established bases in neighboring Sudan. They handed food shipments over to the TPLF, which was supposed to deliver them to starving peasants in Tigray. However, it now appears that the TPLF may also have been using some of the aid to feed its soldiers and purchase weapons. In a March 2010 BBC report, a former TPLF fighter described masquerading as a Sudanese merchant and selling bags of “grain”—many containing only sand—to the aid workers, who then passed the sacks on to other TPLF cadres, who returned them to the “Sudanese traders,” who resold them to the aid workers, and so on. In this way, bags of grain/sand circulated back and forth across the border, as money poured into TPLF coffers. The CIA apparently knew about the scam.2

Scholars and human rights groups had for years been alerting the international community to the fact that EPRDF officials frequently deny the benefits of foreign aid programs—food, fertilizers, training, and so on—to known opposition supporters.17 When I asked World Bank officials whether they were concerned about these allegations, they said that they’d heard a few anecdotal reports, but had yet to see convincing evidence that political diversion of resources was a systematic problem in their programs.

No doubt conducting a systematic survey would be difficult. A Human Rights Watch researcher was deported last November while attempting to investigate the politicization of a World Bank food aid program, and a journalist who tried to follow up the investigation was arrested and jailed for two days.18 In December 2009, the Western press began publicizing these stories, and the donors finally agreed to conduct a study of the “distortions” in the uses of aid in Ethiopia. However, this investigation will be overseen by the government.


For years, Ethiopia’s foreign donors supported a fledgling human rights community that provided voter education, documented political repression, and advocated for the rights of rape victims, abused children, the blind, deaf, and other vulnerable groups. In response to increasing criticism from some of these groups, the government recently enacted a Charities and Societies (CSO) law, forbidding them from receiving all but minimal funding from non-Ethiopian sources. Since few Ethiopians can afford to donate to charity, numerous human rights programs have shut down. The donor agency officials who once supported these programs have protested in internal reports and private meetings with the prime minister, but their public pronouncements have been conciliatory. On the day the EU announced a new €250 million aid package for Ethiopia, it expressed the hope that the CSO law would be “implemented in an open-minded and constructive spirit.”19

Western aid officials seem reluctant to admit that there are two Prime Minister Meles Zenawis. One is a clubbable, charming African who gives moving speeches at Davos and other elite forums about fighting poverty and terrorism. The other is a dictator whose totalitarianism dates back to cold war days. During the early 1970s, when Meles was a medical student in Addis Ababa, he joined a Marxist study group that eventually became the TPLF. Meles’s military performance was undistinguished, but he had a talent for speech-making, and was appointed head of the TPLF’s political wing. In the training courses he ran for recruits, he celebrated Stalin’s achievement in modernizing Russia, but didn’t dwell on the blood that was shed in the process.

In 1985, Meles founded a unit within the TPLF known as the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray, which was guided by the Leninist principle of “Democratic Centralism.” In pursuit of revolutionary socialist goals, the peasants were to be mobilized by a “vanguard elite,” which would exert total ideological and economic control over society.20 But after taking office in 1991, Meles downplayed his Marxist past and even enrolled in a correspondence course in business administration at Britain’s Open University. In discussions with US officials and journalists, he indicated that his Marxism extended to antifeudalism, equality, land reform, and teaching farming skills to women, but not to the nationalization of private enterprises or one-party rule.21

At first, Meles’s government allowed a degree of press freedom, multiparty democracy, and privatization of some state-owned enterprises. But as rigged elections and arrests of journalists continued, some observers wondered whether Meles’s political change of heart was genuine.22 In official English-language documents written for the World Bank and other agencies, his government expressed a commitment to human rights and democracy,23: but Ethiopian-language documents intended for internal government or EPRDF consumption told a different story. These documents outlined a policy known as “Revolutionary Democracy”—essentially the same Leninist program that Meles taught to his TPLF cadres in the 1980s, involving top-down decision-making, regular sessions of “self-criticism,” and single-party rule for generations. Revolutionary Democracy would be promoted through the gradual EPRDF takeover of all organs of “propaganda,” including schools, the civil service, the press, and religious institutions.24 “When ‘Revolutionary Democracy’ permeates the entire [Ethiopian] society,” Meles wrote in 2001,

individuals will start to think alike and all persons will cease having their own independent outlook. In this order, individual thinking becomes simply part of collective thinking because the individual will not be in a position to reflect on concepts that have not been prescribed by “Revolutionary Democracy.”25

Consistent with this aim, the EPRDF has used World Bank funds to purge much of the senior civil service of opposition supporters and replaced the independent Ethiopian Teachers Association with a party-affiliated body.26 Meles concedes that a Leninist economic program would not be possible as long as Ethiopia is dependent on foreign aid from capitalist countries,27 but his government still controls all land and telecommunications, and much of the banking and rural credit sectors. According to the World Bank, roughly half of the rest of the national economy is accounted for by companies held by an EPRDF-affiliated business group called the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT).28 EFFORT’s freight transport, construction, pharmaceutical, and cement firms receive lucrative foreign aid contracts and highly favorable terms on loans from government banks.29 Ethiopia is not a typical African kleptocracy, and there is no evidence that Meles personally benefits from these businesses. Rather, they are part of a rigid system of control that aid agency officials, beguiled by Meles’s apparently pro-Western exterior, have only recently begun to recognize.

There is a type of Ethiopian poetry known as “Wax and Gold” because it has two meanings: a superficial “wax” meaning, and a hidden “golden” one.30 During the 1960s, the anthropologist Donald Levine described how the popularity of “Wax and Gold” poetry provided insights into some of the northern Ethiopian societies from which Prime Minister Meles would later emerge. Even ordinary conversations frequently contain double entendres and ambiguities. Levine theorized that this enabled the expression of satire, humor, and even insults in an otherwise strictly controlled and hierarchical society of all-powerful kings, peasants, and serfs.

However, he worried that this mode of communication would hold Ethiopians back in their dealings with Westerners, who tend to value concreteness and rationality. Double meanings and poetry provide no advantage when drafting legal contracts, filling out job applications, or designing nuclear reactors. It didn’t occur to Levine that “Wax and Gold”–style communication might give Ethiopians like Meles an advantage in dealing with Westerners, especially when the Westerners were aid officials offering vast sums of money to follow a course of development based on liberal democracy and human rights, with which they disagree.

4.

I first traveled to Ethiopia in 2008 to study the country’s new public health strategy. Nearly every government and aid agency official I met expressed enthusiasm for the many programs underway. Rates of AIDS, malaria, and infant mortality were falling,31 and Ethiopian health officials told me that there was no corruption; medicines were always in stock, even in faraway rural clinics; and community health workers were trained, efficient, and never absent from their posts. The government newspaper kept readers abreast of development news with such headlines as “Reinforcing UNDAF to meet PASDEP, MDGs”32
(UNDAF is the UN Development Framework, PASDEP is Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty, and MDGs are the Millennium Development Goals).

Most of these programs were in rural areas far from the capital, Addis Ababa, where my interviews took place. I wanted to see them for myself, not least because I knew that some of the claims I was hearing weren’t entirely true. Government officials claimed that in 2005, 87 percent of children had received all major vaccines, but an independent survey suggested that the figure was closer to 27 percent.33 Similarly, the fraction of women using contraception was 23 percent, not 55 percent as government officials claimed. The annual growth in farm production was also probably nowhere near the government’s own figure of 10 percent.34

One day, I heard an aid official give a lecture about a small nutrition project in one of the poorest regions of the country. She showed pictures of the area and that’s when I noticed how green it looked. “It’s called ‘Green Famine,’” she said, but when I asked her what caused it, her answer rambled from rainfall patterns to soil erosion to local preferences for nutrient-poor root vegetables and made little sense.

Nevertheless, a few days later I visited the region myself. I was amazed by what I saw there. Roads were under construction, a university had recently opened, and crowds of children were on their way home from a new school. Health workers spoke enthusiastically about the malaria bednet program, the immunization program, the pit latrine program, and the family planning program. I attended a village meeting at which some fifty “model families” who had followed all the government-prescribed practices of a “healthy household” were awarded diplomas. Local officials gave speeches, everyone cheered, and a basket of popcorn was passed around.

But when I went to visit the nutrition project, my enthusiasm faded. It was intended for children, but many of their mothers were also malnourished. Several had obvious goiter, and a few were so anemic they nearly fainted while they were speaking to me. When I asked these women why they could not adequately feed their children or themselves, most replied that they didn’t have enough land, and therefore couldn’t grow enough food either to eat or to sell.


There is a long history to their predicament. During the nineteenth century, as the European powers were carving up the rest of East Africa into colonies, Amhara rulers from the northern highlands extended their power southward and established the boundaries of what would become Imperial Ethiopia. As they did so, they seized land, exacted tribute, and turned the once independent peoples of this region into serfs. When the last emperor, Haile Selassie, was overthrown in 1974, the new regime immediately enacted a land reform program that assigned each former serf a plot of his own. This was fine for one generation, but in rural Ethiopia, women have on average six surviving children. Now, thirty-five years later, millions of peasant families live on plots too small to support them.35 The government retains all property rights, so if the poor leave their tiny plots, they lose their only asset. Most remain where they are, living on the verge of starvation.

Half a dozen food security programs existed in the area, but for reasons no one, including the aid workers who managed them, could explain, they were having little effect. According to a government survey, half the families enrolled in the largest food aid program had, in order to feed themselves, been forced to sell what few assets they had, including goats, chickens, pots, and buckets.36 One household in eight had lost a child to hunger. Even so, competition for a slot in the program was so fierce that when the food trucks arrived, riots sometimes broke out. The truly destitute received barely enough to survive. One woman I met said that her family of five was somehow living on five kilos of cornmeal a month.

source

Ethiopia: The Voodoo Economics

“There are lies, lies and implausible lies,” to quote Meles Zenawi, the dictator-cum-economic spinmeister of Ethiopia. Last week, Zenawi told a snickering Parliament a story that is the equivalent of the proverbial bull that gave birth to a calf (or in Amharic “bere welede”): “We will be seeing an economic growth rate of 10.1 percent this year, while inflation will fall to 3.9 percent. This is the result of sound economic policy." (Sorry, but this is the result of voodoo economics!)


For the past several years, Zenawi has been making hyperbolic claims of economic growth in Ethiopia based on fabricated and massaged GDP (gross domestic product) numbers, implying that the country is in a state of runaway economic development and the people’s standard of living is fast outstripping those living in the middle income countries. In March 2009, for instance, Zenawi’s bragged that he expected the Ethiopian economy to grow by 12.8 percent.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) disagreed in the same month stating that given the global economic crises Ethiopia could expect only about 6% economic growth. Zenawi dismissively countered those who pointed out the discrepancies: “We have differences with the international financial institutions when we predict our economic growth, but we usually agree on the economic growth statistics at the end of each year.” The questions remain: Did the Ethiopian economy grow by 12.8 percent in 2009/10? Could it be expected to grow by 10.1 per cent in 2010/11? Who is keeping track of the economic statistics?

The Central Statistics Agency (CSA) and the “National Accounts Department of the Ministry Finance and Economic Development” are the two institutions in Ethiopia that are responsible for keeping track of the statistical data and providing analysis on economic performance. But neither organization has the institutional capability to collect reliable and accurate economic data, let alone assemble complete and comprehensive data sets which could serve as empirical bases for economic prognostications. This fact was emphatically stated on March 24, 2010 in the official statement of Paul Mathieu, the IMF team leader who, after conducting an evaluation of the current half fiscal year economic performance of Ethiopia, said: “Statistics collection of the country requires transformations, and we advised the government to do that.” Translated from “diplomatese” into ordinary language, Mathieu’s statement makes it plain that the statistics and data generated and used by the regime to describe Ethiopia’s economic performance and make predictions are basically “cooked up.” The simple fact of the matter is that the statistics buttressing Zenawi’s exaggerated claims and projections of stratospheric economic growth, vanishing inflation and red-hot performance of key economic sectors originate from seriously flawed, massaged and deficient economic data cooked up in the kitchens of the two institutions for whom the IMF recently prescribed “transformations”.

Zenawi’s stated claims of multi-year runaway GDP growth taken at face value defy not only economic realities but also common sense. On March 4, 2009, the IMF reported that Ethiopia's economic growth could slow to 6 percent in 2009 based on objective factors rooted in the global economic slowdown and specific trends in the critical foreign exchange earning sectors in Ethiopia such as coffee exports (with decreased demand and a 19 per cent decline in price), tourism and transportation, and depreciation of effective foreign exchange rates by 30 percent. The IMF also indicated that Ethiopia has the highest inflation rate (26%) in Africa outside Zimbabwe. In its April 2010 “Background Note: Ethiopia”, the U.S. State Department reported an average inflation rate (FY 2008-2009) of 36%. There is no IMF (or any other credible multilateral institution) year-end or any other report which indicates that Ethiopia could expect a 12.8 or 10.1 percent economic growth or a decline in inflation to 3.9 percent in 2009/10 or any other subsequent year. Indeed, IMF’s Mathieu stated on March 24, 2010 that “non-food inflation remains close to 20 percent, and has been rising in recent months.” The claim that “we usually agree on the economic growth statistics at the end of each year” is simply not true.

However, for a number of years Zenawi’s regime has been pulling a public relations sleight-of-hand by using the IMF as a front to channel its own preferred economic statistics to prove its economic prowess and unrivalled success to the world. For instance, IMF Country Report (Ethiopia) No. 08/264 (July 2008)[1], states: “Growth has averaged 11 percent since 2003/04, far exceeding the minimum target of 7 percent in the Program for Accelerated and Sustainable Development (PASDEP), that is estimated to be consistent with keeping the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) within reach.” On pp. 20-24 of this Report, the origin of the data indicating an 11 percent growth is not some independent data collection and analysis source but the very same Central Statistics Office which last month the IMF said needs massive “transformation”. The footnotes in the above-referenced pages state: “Sources: Ethiopian authorities; and IMF staff estimates and projections.” Similarly, the data source for “Financial Soundness Indicators for Banking” is identified as the “National Bank of Ethiopia; and IMF calculations.” In its official reports, the IMF simply accepts and incorporates at face value the data for GDP growth given to it by the Central Statistics Office (with its own staff estimates) and incorporates those figures in its own report without so much as qualifying it for completeness, accuracy or reliability.

In the above-referenced report, the IMF further presents GDP growth data given to it by Zenawi’s regime for 2005/06 at 11.6 percent and 11.4 percent for 2006/07. The IMF uses its own “estimates” (without fully disclosing its methodology given the fact that IMF staffers are allowed considerable latitude in incorporating country-specific circumstances in making estimates) to make additional GDP growth projections for 2007/08 at 8.4 percent, followed by 6.0 percent for 2008/09; 6.5 percent for 2009/10; 7.5 percent for 2010/11; 7.5 percent for 2011/12 and 7.5 for 2012/13. The discrepancy between the IMF’s and the regime’s estimates appears to reflect the IMF’s clear lack of confidence in the regime’s economic data and analysis.

The bottom line on the regime’s statistical claims of economic growth, financial soundness and the rest of it is that the figures are cooked up in the Central Statistics Office and fed to the IMF, which slavishly (with a wink, nod and a smile) parrots back to the world the same figures with some of its own “staff estimates and projections”. This is the extent of the economic statistical game that continues to be played before our eyes.[2]

On the other hand, with respect to inflation, the World Bank (Policy Research Working Paper 4969, June 2009), citing IMF data concluded, “One of the most affected countries is Ethiopia, which, with the exception of Zimbabwe and small island economies, has had the strongest acceleration in food price inflation during recent years. Average food prices rose by more than 34 percent in 2007/08, but annual inflation reached historical record growth of 91.7 percent in July 2008.” On March 17, 2010, the regime’s Central Statistics Office reported, “Except for cereals, all food components have shown a rise. The prices of fuel, construction materials, clothing and footwear, furniture and personal care (products) are on the rise.” What empirical evidence exists in the first half of 2010 to justify a prediction of a steep decline in inflation to 3.9 percent in 2010/11 or beyond?

All of the statistical fairy tales about the economy told in Parliament were a source of puzzlement and amusement for Mr. Bulcha Demekssa, the leader of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Party (OFDM) and former vice-minister of finance and senior official at various international institutions. Mr. Bulcha asked Zenawi in Parliament how such fantastic GDP figures could be achieved: “The prime minister and the government have repeatedly said Ethiopia has grown by 10 and 11 percent. The prime minister and Ethiopian economists know that it is a miracle for Ethiopia to grow by 11 percent. How is it that Ethiopia grew by 11 percent? We know that China, South-Korea are registering such economic growth. But we are confused how Ethiopia ’s economic is growing like these countries. Our unemployment and poverty is on the rise.” Zenawi’s response was characteristically evasive, and he denied any real discrepancies: “We have differences with the international financial institutions when we predict our economic growth, but we usually agree on the economic growth statistics at the end of each year.”

The answer to Mr. Bulcha’s question, of course, is obvious. Magic! All one needs to achieve an 11 percent growth is to invoke the GDP Spirits and recite to them the right incantations about “sustainable development”, “export-led growth” and “improved export revenue sector”. Then sprinkle a palmful of that fine IMF gold dust and command: “Shazam! Let there be economic growth of 10.1 percent! (or 12.8, does not matter any number will do). Abracadabra! Inflation, I command you to go down to 3.9 percent (or 1.1).” But the real “miracle” occurs when the magic wand is waived to deliver economic growth to a precise tenth of a percentage point such as 10.1 percent instead of merely 10.

All of the economic swagger and wind-bagging about unrivalled economic boom, prosperity and progress comes from a regime not known for its economic “literacy”. In an editorial published in the Economist magazine on November 7, 2006 in the context of the Starbucks coffee row, the magazine was graphic in its description of the regime: “The Ethiopian government, one of the most economically illiterate in the modern world, would do well to take Starbucks's advice.”

But there is a more fundamental question to be answered: Could a nation’s economic health be reduced to a single statistical summation? Does GDP growth necessarily mean improved in standard of living?

Zenawi says GDP is the only measure of economic performance that has universal acceptance, and he will continue to use it until a better measure comes up. As anyone with an elementary understanding of economics knows, GDP has little value in meaningfully understanding a country’s economic growth, development and prosperity. Its analytical and descriptive value has been thoroughly critiqued in the economic literature. Suffice it to say that to claim that an economy grew by an 10.1 percent is like saying “activity” on city streets increased by 10.1 per cent. The street “activity” without specificity as to crime, car accidents, pedestrian traffic or other events by itself is meaningless. Yet for the past few years, the regime has been trumpeting GDP numbers as some sort of fetish that definitively explains Ethiopia’s economic growth. The GDP numbers, for instance, tell us nothing about the enormous disparity in incomes between the rich and poor in Ethiopia. By overstating economic welfare, GDP calculations do not tell us the magnitude of environmental damage that is taking place. GDP is certainly not a measure of the sustainability of growth, a point repeatedly made in numerous IMF reports on Ethiopia.

Even if actual GDP growth in Ethiopia is 11 percent or more, it is a meaningless statistic when considered in light of the basic needs and well-being of the people. In the vital area of health, for instance, Ethiopia is in a state of absolute wretchedness. According to World Health Organization (WHO) (2006) data[3], to serve a population of 77 million people, there were 1,936 physicians (1doctor for 39,772 persons); 93 dentists (1: 828,000); 15,544 nurses and midwives (1: 4,985), 1,343 pharmacists (1: 57,334) and 18,652 community health workers (1: 4,128). Total expenditure on health as a percentage of gross domestic product was 5.9 per cent. General government expenditure on health as a percentage of total expenditure on health was 58.4 per cent, and private expenditures covered the balance of 41.6 percent. Hospital beds per 10,000 population was less than 25. Per capita expenditure on health was USD$3 at an average exchange rate. WHO’s minimum standard is 20 physicians per 100,000 population, and 100 nurses per 100,000 population. Such is the real matrix of Ethiopia’s 12.8 or 10.1 or whatever fictional GDP number that is pulled from thin air.

On November 3, 2007, the Economist magazine reported:

The fact is that for all the aid money and Chinese loans coming in, Ethiopia's economy is neither growing fast enough nor producing enough jobs. The number of jobs created by flowers is insignificant beside an increase in population of about 2m a year, one of the fastest rates in Africa…. The government claims that the economy has been growing at an impressive 10% a year since 2003-04, but the real figure is probably more like 5-6%, which is little more than the average for sub-Saharan Africa. And even that modestly improved rate, with a small building boom in Addis Ababa, for instance, has led to the overheating of the economy, with inflation moving up to 19% earlier this year before the government took remedial action. The reasons for this economic crawl are not hard to find. Beyond the government-directed state, funded substantially by foreign aid, there is—almost uniquely in Africa—virtually no private-sector business at all.

The IMF estimates that in 2005-06 the share of private investment in the country was just 11%, nearly unchanged since Mr Zenawi took over in the early 1990s. That is partly a reflection of the fact that, despite some privatisation since the centralised Marxist days of the Derg, large areas of the economy remain government monopolies, closed off to private business. This is where Ethiopia misses out badly. Take telecoms. While the rest of Africa has been virtually transformed in just a few years by a revolution in mobile telephony, Ethiopia stumbles along with its inept and useless government-run services…. There is no official unemployment rate, but youth unemployment, some experts reckon, may be as high as 70%. All those graduates coming out of state-run universities will find it very hard to get jobs. The mood of the young is often restless and despairing; many dream of moving abroad…. Just as the government is slowing the pace of economic expansion for fear that individuals may accumulate wealth and independence, so it is failing to move fast enough from a one-party state to a modern, pluralist democracy. Again, the reason may be that it is afraid to.

The Heritage Foundation, the pre-eminent conservative American think tank echoes the Economist in its 2010 Index of Economic Freedom[4] concluded:

Ethiopia underperforms in many of the 10 economic freedoms. The business and investment regime is burdensome and opaque. The overall quality and efficiency of government services have been poor and are further undermined by weak rule of law and pervasive corruption. Monetary stability is hampered by state distortions in prices and interest rates, and trade freedom is hurt by high tariff and non-tariff barriers…. All imports must be channeled through Ethiopian nationals registered as official import or distribution agents with the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Foreign participation is prohibited in domestic banking, insurance and microcredit services, and several other activities…. Ethiopia ranks 126th out of 179 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2008. Despite legal restrictions, officials have been accused of manipulating the privatization process, and state-owned and party-owned businesses receive preferential access to land leases and credit.

Zenawi is desperate to show economic development of epic proportions in Ethiopia after nearly 2 decades of clinging to power. The fact remains that despite the incredible claims of economic growth, tens of millions of people are starving and go without any health care. Millions of young people remain unemployed and trapped in hopelessness. There is no rule of law and human rights violations are widespread. Whether or not Zenawi’s regime has accomplished an economic feat with few rivals in modern history is not a matter of wishful thinking or public relations. It is a matter of evidence: accurate, complete, reliable and comprehensive statistical evidence that is systematically and carefully collected, analyzed and verified. Such evidence can not be invented, fabricated, manufactured, contrived, concocted or cut from whole cloth. Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th Century British prime minister said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” In Ethiopia today, we are witnessing all three!

[1] http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2008/cr08264.pdf
[2] To see a consistent pattern of “economic gamesmanship”, see also IMF Country Report (Ethiopia) No. 07/247 (July, 2007); IMF Country Report (Ethiopia) No. 06/159 (May, 2006); IMF Country Report(Ethiopia) No. 05/25 (January, 2005) and other reports prior to these dates.
[3] http://www.afro.who.int/home/countries/fact_sheets/ethiopia.pdf
[4] http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/ethiopia

Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on pambazuka.org, allafrica.com, newamericamedia.org and other sites.

Egypt warns against Nile Basin pact

CAIRO — Egypt insisted Monday on its traditional share of the Nile river and warned basin countries against signing a water-sharing agreement in which it is excluded.
The warning came days after Nile basin countries meeting in Egypt failed to agree on a framework to reallocate shares from the river, a longstanding demand by several up-stream countries.
"Egypt's share of the Nile's water is a historic right that Egypt has defended throughout its history," Mohammed Allam, minister of water resources and irrigation, told parliament.
Allam added that Egypt saw the matter as a national security issue.
"Egypt reserves the right to take whatever course it sees suitable to safeguard its share," he said.

"If the Nile basin countries unilaterally signed the agreement it would be considered the announcement of the Nile Basin Initiative's death," Allam added.
The Nile Basin Initiative, the World Bank funded umbrella group of Nile basin countries, has put off signing a water sharing pact over objections from Egypt and Sudan.
At the heart of the dispute is a 1929 agreement between Egypt and Britain, acting on behalf of its African colonies along the 5,584-kilometre (3,470-mile) river, which gave Egypt veto power over upstream projects.

An agreement between Egypt and Sudan in 1959 allowed Egypt 55.5 billion cubic metres of water each year -- 87 percent of the Nile's flow -- and Sudan 18.5 billion cubic metres.
Some of the Nile Basin countries, which include Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, say past treaties are unfair and they want an equitable water-sharing agreement that would allow for more irrigation and power projects.
Egypt, a mostly arid country that relies on the Nile for the majority of its water, argues up-stream countries could make better use of rainfall and have other sources of water.

Ethiopia Accuses Egypt of Stalling Talks on Sharing Nile Water

BY Jason McLure
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopia accused Egypt of stalling talks aimed at reaching an accord over sharing water from the Nile River.
“Egypt has employed a delaying tactic which has dragged the negotiating process,” Shimeles Kemal, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government, told reporters today in the capital, Addis Ababa. Ethiopia and six other downstream countries plan to sign a new accord that will redistribute rights to water from the Nile. Egypt and Sudan, the two-largest consumers of Nile water, have refused.
Egypt warned it would withdraw from the Nile Basin Initiative, a World Bank-funded program aimed at resolving disputes over the river’s water, if the seven downstream states sign the accord, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.
Egypt claims 55.5 billion cubic meters (14.5 trillion gallons) of the Nile’s annual flow under a 1959 treaty with Sudan, according to the Web site of Egypt’s State Information Service. That agreement didn’t include Ethiopia, which is the source of about 85 percent of the river’s water, or other downstream states.
Ethiopia will sign the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement with Uganda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya and Rwanda by May 14, said Shimeles. The accord would leave open a controversial provision on water security in the hopes that Sudan and Egypt may be persuaded to return to the talks, he said.
--Editors: Paul Richardson, Alastair Reed.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin in Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.

Ethiopia elections: Can the EU effectively monitor?

The Ethiopian press corps put Thijs Berman, the EU’s chief observer for the country’s May 23rd elections, under some serious pressure at his first press conference since arriving last Wednesday – less than five weeks before the poll.

“Won’t you just rubberstamp a precooked election?” said one.

“How can you do your work with less than five weeks left?” another.

“You have 150 observers for 43,000 polling stations?!” a third.

Berman, a seasoned election monitor who has Afghanistan’s mess of a 2009 poll on his CV, took it all in his stride and even showed flashes of humour.

“If you need to examine a patient and you want to take his blood, you don’t need to take all of his blood. One drop is enough,” he said to laughter.

When the EU monitored Ethiopia’s last elections in 2005 it ended with spiteful accusations from both sides after Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused Europe’s then chief observer of helping incite post-election violence.

That European parliament MEP, Ana Gomes, says this poll will be a “farce”.

But it’s been all smiles and handshakes so far with Berman meeting Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and promising he is “not here to please any party.”

When the opposition claimed victory in 2005, Gomez immediately backed them, despite no voter polling being allowed before the vote. Government officials say she struck up inappropriately close relationships with opposition leaders.

Security forces then killed about 200 people in street riots and imprisoned the main opposition leaders. Meles insists his party won and that Gomez’s support for the opposition led to the protestors trying to overthrow him by force.

A Dutch socialist MEP, Berman refused to be drawn on the allegations against Gomez but described her as a “highly regarded and good colleague.”

Most Ethiopia analysts I’ve spoken to, who normally ask we don’t name them for fear they’ll be refused visas to the country they study, are against the mission.

They say, if there is fraud in the May poll, it will be of a sort that is difficult to detect and quantify. They say candidates have already been blocked from registering. They say people in remote areas are coerced or threatened into choosing the ruling party and, despite the ballot being secret, are told the government will “somehow, someway” know how they vote.

The analysts echo the opposition charge that the very presence of an EU mission – and the difficulty it will have working effectively in a huge country where more than two-thirds of people live two hours from a tarmac road – is at risk of being used by the government to legitimise the election even if there is widespread fraud.

The government and some European diplomats in capital Addis Ababa are irritated by a growing international narrative that the elections will not be democratic. They say the opposition – both in Ethiopia and in its diaspora community – is manipulating human rights groups and journalists into undermining the government before anyone has even been in a polling booth.

“I just wish people would hold their fire,” one diplomat told me recently. “Give the government their chance to improve on 2005 and just wait and see.”

So are the opposition and the cynical Addis press corps right? Has the election been “precooked”? Or should the government and the EU be given a chance?

PHOTO CREDIT: An Ethiopian woman stands in line outside a polling station in Addis Ababa on May 15th, 2005 REUTERS/Anthony Njuguna
Reuter

Egypt and Ethiopia Lock horns over Nile water deal

Egypt’s fight to hold on to its monopoly over the Nile’s water resource has split the Nile dependent countries into two groups with Sudan supporting the north African country. But notwithstanding the northern African country’s claim to veto power, by virtue of an 80 year old treaty signed with Great Britain, and attempts to get Ethiopia, which leads the upper riparian countries, to soften its position, Ethiopian Water Resource Minister has announced that the signing of a Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) that seeks a fairer use of the Nile’s water resource will go ahead, with or without Egypt and Sudan’s agreement.

An Extraordinary Nile Council of Ministers’ Meeting that saw the gathering of all ten Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) member countries last week at Sharm El-Cheikh, in Egypt, failed to produce an agreement over the sharing of the Nile’s resources. Egypt, supported by Sudan, refused to give its stamp of approval to a Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) that seeks to develop the Nile river in a cooperative manner and share its resources equally without causing significant harm to other riparian countries. The meeting which assembled both Upper riparian countries (Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea and Burundi) and lower riparian countries (Egypt, Sudan) revealed the deep fissure that separates the two groups. An agreement signed in 1929 with Great Britain on behalf of its East African colonies, and another in 1959 between Egypt and Sudan allowed Egypt alone to use 55.5 billion cubic meters (87% of the Nile’s flow) and Sudan 18.5 cubic meters of water each year.

The CFA, which was finalized during a previous meeting in 2009, in Kinshasa, DRC, questions the near monopoly Egypt and Sudan hold over the Nile river. Mohamed Allam, Irrigation Minister of Egypt, had announced, ahead of the Sharm El-Cheikh meeting that his country intended to hold on to every drop of its annual 55.5 billion cubic meter water quota, which represents half of the Nile’s water resource. Among other things, Cairo claims a veto power over all new irrigation projects in NBI member countries, without which, it claims, its "historical right" over the Nile will be undermined.

Ethiopia, which contributes to 85 per cent of Egypt’s Nile resource and plays a significant role in the negotiations, while enjoying a highly strategic position among the upper riparian countries as a key member, came under scrutiny when the Eastern African country signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), late last year, to establish an Ethiopia-Egypt Council of Commerce with the aim of strengthening economic ties between the two countries. Observers argued that a future shift by Ethiopia on the Nile negotiations was imminent after the Ethiopian Prime Minister indicated, at the signing of the MoU, that the two countries will develop the Nile Basin jointly through the Nile Basin Initiative.

Hani Raslan, who heads the department for Sudan and Nile Basin countries at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo believes that "after Egypt’s offer of financial assistance and investment, Ethiopia has noticeably moderated its position on water sharing (…) Addis Ababa has even begun to play the role of mediator between Egypt and Sudan and upstream states like Congo, Kenya and Tanzania."

Ethiopia steadfast

But, Ethiopia’s Water Resource Minister, Asfaw Dingano, reacting to the impasse told journalists on Friday, April 16, that the seven upper riparian countries will go ahead with the signing of the CFA, set to begin May 14 and remain open for a year, with or without the agreement of Egypt and Sudan. With nearly forty articles established to date within the framework of the Nile Basin Initiative, Egypt and Sudan oppose any agreement that modifies their water quota. According to Asfaw, Egypt, seconded by Sudan, rejected the agreement after citing two articles as being particularly problematic, although they had come to a consensus on the subject during the group’s previous meeting.

According to Hani Raslan, "Egypt has the right to maintain its current share of Nile water under international law." He further argued in a recent interview on RNW, a Dutch radio, that the upper riparian countries should not reproach Egypt’s position, as the country depends on the Nile for 95 per cent of its water needs, whereas the "upstream countries depend on the river for as little as 5 percent of their water needs."

Egypt, which has since the last decade been qualified as a water-scarce country, and Sudan have been consistent in their opposition to all deals that seek to renegotiate the several decades old treaties that give them a lion’s share of the Nile River’s water resource.

Source

it isn't natural for there to be an Ethiopian officer - a capable Ethiopian, a proud Ethiopian.

Netzanet Fredeh is constantly required by her surroundings to bear the title "an Israeli of Ethiopian origin." But she bears this title with pride. As commander of the Immigration and Integration Branch of the Israel Defense Forces' Education Corps, she works to advance the lot of Ethiopian soldiers - an advancement that she herself epitomizes.

She recently returned from a trip to the United States with the chief of staff and other senior officers, on which she told her life story to a crowd of Jewish donors. She described her childhood in Ethiopia and the long journey she endured to this point, which may soon include a milestone that has yet to be attained by any Israeli of Ethiopian extraction: a promotion to the rank of major. Advertisement


As Independence Day approached, she was not surprised when the IDF spokesperson requested that she, the promising Ethiopian officer, give interviews to the press.

"Perhaps they invited me [to the U.S.] because I'm Ethiopian," said Fredeh, a resident of Beit Shemesh. "But I look at the trip and the other things as a wonderful opportunity. Unfortunately, it isn't natural for there to be an Ethiopian officer - a capable Ethiopian, a proud Ethiopian. I try to use this label to my advantage and, often, to the community's advantage."

Her story begins with an old picture of her father holding his daughter in his arms. This is the only memento she has of her father, who was a soldier in the Ethiopian army. When she was three years old, he was killed in Ethiopia's civil war.

At the age of nine, her mother sent her to Israel with an uncle. There, she enrolled in the Segula girls' religious high school in Kiryat Motzkin. She considers this "one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was there that I was given the confidence to stand on my own."

This confidence later brought her to write a letter to then-president Ezer Weizman begging him to arrange her mother's immigration to Israel.

"I remember when I went to the post office to buy a stamp," she recalled. "The clerk saw what was written on the envelope and looked at me with pity, as if to say, 'Why is a girl like me, a naive, foolish girl, writing a letter to the president?'"

"I received an answer from the president's office within two weeks saying he would help me," she continued. "A few months later, my mother and my two brothers were in Israel."

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Ethiopian Opposition Confront PM in Parliament

April 13, 2010
Ethiopia's heated election campaign has spilled onto the floor of parliament, with bitter and at times personal exchanges between Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and opposition leaders. The prime minister was forced onto the defensive on issues from the economy to allegations of political dirty tricks.

With less than six weeks to go before elections for a new legislature, Prime Minister Meles used a nationally-broadcast speech to trumpet his government's achievements. He said the economy is expected to register double-digit growth for the seventh consecutive year, inflation has slowed to under four percent, and the number of Ethiopians needing food aid is less than predicted.

Speaking in Amharic with an interpreter, he hailed a newly adopted, legally-enforceable code of conduct that sets behavior standards for participants in the May 23 elections.

Favorable conditions have been set for the conduct of elections which are peaceful, democratic and credible to the people," he said.

But when the floor was opened for opposition comments, Mr. Meles found himself facing a barrage of criticisms.

Merera Gudina, leader of a party representing Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, the Oromos, drew a rebuke from the house speaker for challenging the prime minister's economic figures.

The Oromo leader also charged the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front with rigging next month's elections through its control of the electoral machinery. He spoke in Amharic, but afterward summarized his remarks in English.

"The EPRDF is trying to be both the referee and a player. If you are both the referee and a player, who is going to win is clear from the beginning," said Gudina.

Ethiopian Democratic Party leader Lidetu Ayalew caused a stir when he charged ruling party officials in his devoutly Christian district were trying to discredit him by spreading false rumors he had converted to another religion.

Mr. Meles called such acts 'deplorable', and promised that if the charge turns out to be true, the 'disreputable elements' would be expelled from his party.

He accused the opposition of whipping up passions with inflammatory charges. Again through an interpreter, he warned party leaders not to boycott the vote, as happened during the 2008 local elections, saying it would be like starting a dangerous fire and walking away.

"If my estimation is correct, some of you are walking this direction," said the prime minister. "I think you are making a huge mistake because to light the fire and at the last [moment] to go into hiding, would not be good, because to light the fire and [be] behind it, and also to fight and use the blood of children, that would not be something that is useful," he said.

Officials said Tuesday's address was likely Prime Minister Meles's final speech in parliament before the May 23rd elections. Analysts say the ruling party is expected to easily retain control of the legislature.

Ruling party officials attribute the bright outlook to effective policies and an opposition in disarray. Opposition leaders say their poor prospects are the result of the ruling party's firm control of the electoral process.

Egypt says Nile sharing meeting fails

By SALAH NASRAWI (AP) – 1 hour ago

CAIRO — Egypt's state news agency reported Tuesday that 10 African nations have failed to conclude a long delayed new agreement for sharing water from the Nile and will call for closer cooperation instead.

The Nile basin nations have failed for years now to agree on the Nile River Cooperative Framework Agreement to administer the longest river in the world, which would reduce Egypt's share of the Nile water.

Egypt has categorically refused to sign the agreement.

Ugandan Minister of Water and Environment Maria Mutagamba, in her opening speech at the meeting in the Sinai resort of Sharm al-Sheikh called on her counterparts to sign the agreement without further delay.

Ahead of the discussions, however, Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohammed Nasreddin Allam insisted that Egypt would maintain its share of 55.5 billion cubic meters of water from the river — more than half of the Nile's flow.

Egypt also wants veto power over any new irrigation projects undertaken by the other nine riparian states.

The Sub-Saharan African states have rejected the clause and called for the signing of the agreement.

Egypt's claim to Nile water is based on a 1929 agreement between Egypt and Great Britain on behalf of Britain's colonies which gave Egypt the right to most of the more than 100 billion cubic meters of water that reaches the downstream countries annually.

Egypt, a country of some 80 million people says if Egypt's annual share of Nile water remains at 55.5 billion cubic meters, per capita water availability will stand at around 630 cubic meters in 2025, compared with 1,213 in 1990.

The agreement lays down principles of cooperative water resources management. If signed, the treaty would pave the way for the establishment of a permanent Nile River Basin Commission.

In addition to Egypt the group includes Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, which are calling for new allocations of Nile water to reflect their burgeoning populations and industrial capacity.

100 flowers of repression bloom as Ethiopia moves to gag press ahead of elections

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, admitted this month that his government had jammed Voice of America’s broadcasting in the country’s Amharic language.

The reasons Meles provided for targeting the station were outrageous, even by Ethiopian standards.

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He likened the VOA, the US international public information broadcaster with a track record of professional reporting, to the Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) — the infamous radio station that incited violence throughout the Rwandan genocide.

Yet the comments provide an important glimpse of the ugly inner workings of the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front.

The Ethiopian government has a long history of silencing the media and stifling dissent. VOA officials say their Amharic broadcasts were also jammed in 2005 and 2008.

In both cases, elections were at stake. Now that the 2010 electoral season is in full gear, the Ethiopian government is at it again.

New legal restrictions limit the ability of independent Ethiopian groups to monitor the elections; to date, only government-affiliated organisations have been licensed.

A recent electoral code of conduct for the media forbids them from interviewing voters, candidates and officials on Election Day.

And election observers are barred from making any kind of statement until election results are announced. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In a new report, One Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure: Violations of Freedom Expression and Association in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch documents the myriad ways in which the Ethiopian government is muzzling critics, jailing opponents and exercising control over civil servants in an effort to maintain control.

At the village level, people know that openly supporting the opposition can lead to persecution and the withholding of government services, jobs and educational opportunities.

In addition, the Ethiopian government has enacted an arsenal of repressive laws in recent years to deflect independent criticism.

The most disingenuous of those laws is the “Charities and Societies Proclamation.”

Under this law, the government has tightly restricted non-governmental activity in areas deemed sensitive like human rights, governance, and even advocacy for the rights of women, children and people with disabilities.

The practical result is simple: Independent human-rights work is quickly disappearing in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Council, one of the most effective and professional human-rights groups in Africa, tried to operate under the new law.

But after the government unlawfully froze its bank accounts and threatened its staff, it closed all but three of its offices and half its investigators fled the country.

Under an anti-terrorism law passed last year, legitimate peaceful protest and dissent can be considered terrorism and critical reporting by the media can easily get labelled as “encouraging terrorism.”

The editors of Ethiopia’s leading independent newspaper, Addis Neger, closed the paper and fled the country after repeated threats that they would be prosecuted under this law.

The Ethiopian government tried last year to impose its awkward definition of terrorism across the border after a Kenyan television station broadcast a programme on the rebel Oromo Liberation Front.

Fortunately, the Nation Media Group in Kenya refused Ethiopia’s demands to stop the broadcast.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the only African country with more journalists behind bars than Ethiopia is its archrival, Eritrea.

The Ethiopian journalists languish in jail along with at least nine opposition leaders detained following the crackdown after the 2005 elections.

The most prominent among them is Birtukan Midekssa, the young, charismatic leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party, pardoned in 2007 but re-arrested and returned to jail in 2008. She is fast becoming one of Africa’s most celebrated political prisoners.

Keeping Birtukan behind bars, tightening the screws on non-governmental organisations and jamming VOA are just some of the “100 ways” in which the government is putting pressure on the opposition and exacting a high price from those who dare to criticise the government.

Ethiopia’s influential foreign donors on the other hand have every opportunity to raise their voices against the Ethiopian government’s growing repression ahead of the parliamentary elections in May. They should do so loudly and clearly.

Ben Rawlence is a researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Three-Day US Conference Spotlights Ethiopia’s Future

A three-day conference that focused on good governance, peace and security as well as sustainable development in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa ended over the weekend in Arlington, Virginia.

Aklog Birara, a senior advisor at the World Bank and an organizer of the conference, said it was a soul-searching conference, adding that Ethiopia’s future and that of the Horn of Africa will largely depend on the talent pool of experts in the Diaspora.

“One of the features that really attracted me is the fact that it [conference] drew a cross-section of experts -- foreign experts, Europeans, Americans, Ethiopians, and Ethiopian-Americans from different backgrounds. Overall, there were more than 70 speakers on different topics,” he said.

The conference organized by Advocacy for Ethiopia (AFE) and the Ethiopian National Priorities Consultative Process attracted specialists, former diplomats, human rights activists, and scholars, as well as top officials of the international community.

Birara said the conference also focused on how countrymen living abroad can help improve the lives of Ethiopians back home.

“The focus was on Ethiopia, the Ethiopian people, and the Horn of Africa particularly. What is it that all of us can do that will make a difference in terms of the ordinary people in Ethiopia. What is it that we can provide in terms of really engendering hope (and) aspiration. Bridging relations, for example, across ideological and ethnic lines,” Birara said.

The organizers believe that development in Ethiopia, the stability and its viability, as well as peace and economic development in the region are tied to how Addis Ababa and the international donor community can work together to address previously unmet challenges.

They also said the stakes for Ethiopia and its population of 83 million people are higher than at any other time in its history.

Birara said unity and dialogue among Ethiopians could help rebuilding efforts.

“One of the areas that we tried to explore was we can’t just be constant critics. How is it that we can bridge relationships in order to contribute our part at least in building durable, strong-pluralized institutions in Ethiopia? I think the fact is that we do not reach out to one another across ethnic lines. Dialogue among us, you know. And also dialogue between the opposition parties and government. We need to really accentuate the reaching out,” Birara said.

He added that if Ethiopians fail to come together, the challenges facing the country will persist.

Source VOA

Ethiopia: The Truth, the Whole Truth and…

By Alemayehu G. Mariam



“Lies, lies and implausible lies,” blasted Meles Zenawi, the enfant terrible of Ethiopia, in describing the March 11, 2010 U.S. State Department’s “Reports on Human Rights Practices” on Ethiopia. Apparently, the U.S. State Department is not worth a damn when it comes to lying: “The least one could expect from this report, even if there are lies is that they would be plausible ones,” snarled Zenawi. “But that is not the case. It is very easy to ridicule it [report], because it is so full of loopholes (sic). They could very easily have closed the loopholes and still continued to lie.” His consigliere, Bereket Simon chimed in, “It is the same old junk. It’s a report that intends to punish the image (sic) of Ethiopia and try if possible to derail the peaceful and democratic election process.”

So here is a representative sample of the implausible, ridiculous and junk lies of the U.S. State Department and the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of Zenawi’s dictatorship:

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #1:

There were numerous credible reports of unlawful detention of opposition candidates and their supporters. Opposition UDJ party president Birtukan Mideksa, whose pardon was revoked and life sentence reinstated in December 2008, remained in prison throughout the year. She was held in solitary confinement until June, despite a court ruling that indicated it was a violation of her constitutional rights. She was also denied access to visitors except for a few close family members, despite a court order granting visitor access without restrictions. There were credible reports that Birtukan's mental health deteriorated significantly during the year.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #1:

A humongous L I E! Birtukan is actually at the “Akaki Hilton Spa and Resort” doing R&R (rest and relaxation). Her health situation is in perfect condition. She may have gained a few kilos, but other than that, and that may be for lack of exercise, she is in perfect health. All the lies about Birtukan’s bad health situation are made up by the “usual suspects” who shall remain nameless. She is not denied access to visitors, but she is shy and prefers to visit only with her mother and daughter. In short, she is having the time of her life. Or as the French say, “C’est la Vie!”

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #2:

The constitution and law provide citizens the right to change their government peacefully. In local and by-elections held in 2008, virtually all of the more than three million seats open at the federal and local levels were taken unopposed by the ruling EPRDF and allied parties. Of the 3.6 million local and by-election seats open to be contested, opposition parties won three.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #2:

The State Department should know better than telling this ridiculous lie. The opposition won only 3 seats because “there is no alternative in the opposition.” Everybody knows that including “most Western governments [who] want Meles to continue because there is no alternative in the opposition. As long as the elections are semi-democratic, they’ll probably stay quiet, keep giving aid, hope for liberalisation of the economy and leave full democracy for later.” Here is a hint: The opposition will completely lose again in next month’s election regardless of how many candidates they run because they don’t understand a simple fact about elections: "The people who cast the votes do not decide an election; the people who count the votes do."

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #3:
, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #1:

There were numerous credible reports of unlawful detention of opposition candidates and their supporters. Opposition UDJ party president Birtukan Mideksa, whose pardon was revoked and life sentence reinstated in December 2008, remained in prison throughout the year. She was held in solitary confinement until June, despite a court ruling that indicated it was a violation of her constitutional rights. She was also denied access to visitors except for a few close family members, despite a court order granting visitor access without restrictions. There were credible reports that Birtukan's mental health deteriorated significantly during the year.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #1:

A humongous L I E! Birtukan is actually at the “Akaki Hilton Spa and Resort” doing R&R (rest and relaxation). Her health situation is in perfect condition. She may have gained a few kilos, but other than that, and that may be for lack of exercise, she is in perfect health. All the lies about Birtukan’s bad health situation are made up by the “usual suspects” who shall remain nameless. She is not denied access to visitors, but she is shy and prefers to visit only with her mother and daughter. In short, she is having the time of her life. Or as the French say, “C’est la Vie!”

Although the constitution and law prohibit the use of torture and mistreatment, there were numerous credible reports that security officials tortured, beat, and mistreated detainees. Opposition political party leaders reported frequent and systematic abuse and intimidation of their supporters by police and regional militias… Abuses reportedly include being hung by the wrists for several hours, bound by chains and beaten, held in solitary confinement for several days to weeks or months, subjected to mental torture such as harassment and humiliation…

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #3:

Lies! Torture is a matter of semantics. The alleged torture-victims in the State Department report have an unusually low threshold for psychological and physical pain and discomfort. They also exaggerate stuff. The truth is that the so-called torture-victims are all wusses and wimps. Intimidation is a state of mind as is solitary confinement. Some people just scare easy. Individuals in solitary confinement are not really “solitary” because they can talk to themselves all day and all night. It is a bold-faced lie for the State Department to say, “the [“Ethiopian”] constitution and law prohibit the use of torture and mistreatment.”

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #4:

The country has three federal and 117 regional prisons. There are several unofficial detention centers operating throughout the country. Prison and pretrial detention center conditions remained harsh and in some cases life threatening. Severe overcrowding was common, especially in sleeping quarters. Juveniles were often incarcerated with adults, sometimes with adults who were awaiting execution. Men and women prisoners were generally, but not always, separated… The government continued to prevent International Committee of the Red Cross representatives from visiting police stations and federal prisons throughout the country including those where opposition, civil society, and media leaders were held.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #4:

Lies, dirty lies! The so-called prisons are actually popular spas and resorts, as Birtukan can testify. The reason they are “severely overcrowded” is because of high popular demand. It’s “la dolce vita” (the sweet life) as they say in Italian in those spas, or “c’est la vie” as they say in French. As to juveniles, women and condemned prisoners being held together, what difference does that make? A criminal is a criminal is a criminal. The Red Cross? They are too nosy, always asking questions. Shouldn’t they be helping out flood, earthquake and disaster victims somewhere else instead of sniffing around spas and resorts?

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #5:

Although the constitution and law prohibit arbitrary arrest and detention, the government frequently did not observe these provisions in practice… The federal police acknowledged that many of its members as well as regional police lacked professionalism. In July the Addis Ababa Police Commission fired 444 staff members, including high-ranking officials, for involvement in serious crimes including armed robbery, rape, and theft. There were no prosecutions of those dismissed.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #5:

Another pack of lies! The State Department is putting words and numbers in the mouths of the Police Commission. The allegedly “fired” police officials are still in their jobs continuing to do armed robbery, rape, and theft.

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #6:

Authorities regularly detained persons without warrants and denied access to counsel and family members, particularly in outlying regions. Although the law requires detainees to be brought to court and charged within 48 hours, this generally was not respected in practice… While in pretrial detention, authorities allowed such detainees little or no contact with legal counsel. Police continued to enter private residences and arrest individuals without warrants.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #6:

First of all, the whole due process thing is overrated. Lawyers, warrants, procedure and all that legal mumbo jambo are a big waste of time. The applicable principle is that one is presumed guilty until proven innocent. So, why do guilty people need lawyers? It does not make sense. Why should warrants be required to arrest guilty people? Anyway, even if these people did not commit a crime, they definitely thought about committing one. They are guilty, guilty, guilty! The State Department is obviously pushing some new-fangled Western idea that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. What a bunch of liars!

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #7:

In May the director general of the Federal Police reported that 65 percent of the 45,000 criminal cases filed at the federal first instance court in 2008 were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence or witnesses…. There was a large backlog of juvenile cases, and accused children often remained in detention with adults until officials heard their cases.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #7:

As the old saying goes, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. The State Department is fabricating false statistics to show that the regime is going soft on criminals. That is a lie! It is a well-known fact that a criminal case is filed only after a person has been convicted of committing a crime. To claim that nearly 30,000 cases were dropped for lack of evidence is to unfairly suggest that the vast majority of those charged were not guilty. How could that be so? The director general of the Federal Police never reported such statistics. It is all a figment of the State Department’s warped imagination.

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #8:

Political party leaders reported incidents of telephone tapping and other electronic eavesdropping. In May a former employee of ETC, the state-run monopoly telecom and Internet provider, reported from self-imposed exile that the government had ordered ETC employees to unlawfully record citizens' private telephone conversations… The government used a widespread system of paid informants to report on the activities of particular individuals. Kebele officials have been reported to go from house to house demanding that residents attend ruling coalition meetings. Those persons who do not attend party meetings reportedly have difficulty obtaining basic public services from their kebeles.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #8:

Ding, dong! All lies told by paranoid opposition leaders who are afraid of their own shadows. By using the phrases “widespread system of paid informants”, “forced attendance of party meetings”, etc., the State Department unfairly suggests that the country has become a police state. Not true! If they had done their “investigations” right and interviewed the “informants”, they would have easily found out that the “informants” are actually researchers doing field studies in social anthropology using “participant observation” techniques. Kebele officials never force people to attend party meetings. The people just love to party and show up uninvited.

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #9:

During the year the government loosened restrictions on the delivery of food aid from donor organizations into the five zones of the Somali region in which military activity was the most intense. Approximately 83 percent of food aid reached beneficiaries, a significant improvement from the previous year.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #9:

Liars! The State Department in its usual manner is cooking up numbers. No food aid reached beneficiaries in the five zones of the Somali region.

Implausible, Ridiculous and Junk Lie #10:

The government restricted academic freedom during the year. Authorities did not permit teachers at any level to deviate from official lesson plans and actively discouraged political activity and association of any kind on university campuses. Frequent reports continued of uniformed and plainclothes police officers on and around university and high school campuses. College students were reportedly pressured to pledge allegiance to the EPRDF to secure enrollment in universities or postgraduation government jobs. Non-EPRDF members were also reportedly denied teachers' benefits, transferred to undesirable posts, and restricted in promotions.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth #10:

Ha! Who would believe in their right minds anything those fog-headed college students and their absentminded professors say? There is a good reason why they are not allowed to engage in politics or deviate from the official lesson plan. We know from personal experience decades ago that you if give students and their professors an inch, they will take a mile. If you give them “academic freedom”, they will soon be yapping in the streets for speech freedom, press freedom, associational freedom, assembly freedom and all sorts of other freedoms. That is just too much freedom for those crazy students and their air-headed professors to handle.

It is just too bad the U.S. State Department can’t handle the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on pambazuka.org, allafrica.com, newamericamedia.org and other sites.