Denounce, Not resource the Brutal Dictatorship of Ethiopia

“I fear God; I do not fear the current regime in Ethiopia”
By an Ethiopian in the epiphany celebration that Meles turned into chaos by ordering the shooting of people accompanying the’ Holy Tabot’ (Replica of the Arc of the Covenant)

I. Why the call to Stop Donor Aid to the Meles Regime Now?

The Meles regime has locked up the entire opposition leadership. This is
the only regime in the 21st century after an election that has done that.
No other African country that we are aware of has committed such gross
crimes as Meles did today. Even by what people often say, i.e., by African
standards, Meles comes sharply as markedly and characteristically brutish
and murderous. All democrats and republicans from every hemisphere in this
planet can only deal with this outrage and horror from this regime with one
word: utter and unconditional condemnation. They must stand up and be
counted in denouncing such behaviour and not buy into all sorts of flimsy
excuses to resource the criminal regime’s plan to extend its perfidious
repression.

No regime in Africa has taken a pre-emptive brutal measure to herd
thousands of young people, criminalise them and put them in make shift
concentration camps, exposing them to the elements, diseases and
brutalities by the regime’s special forces. This again must be denounced
and not condoned by any democrat in the world. No regime has terrorised the
rural population and used cynically donor money to subdue the same
population that it still keeps treating with contempt and arrogance.

We call on all the leaders throughout the world who say and believe in
values of human rights and democracy to denounce the Meles regime, isolate
and ostracise it. Nothing else makes sense now than a total denunciation of
this regime. It deserves not invitation but denunciation. For all democrats
to accord this regime the usual diplomatic courtesy, the regime has to show
with action that it has begun to change its behaviour. The yardstick of any
sign of change is when at the very minimum the entire elected opposition
leadership that is now in jail are released. The ball is entirely in the
regime’s court now. It has put illegally and unjustly in its jails people
who should not be there at all. We reiterate our earlier calls for the
immediate and unconditional release of the elected leadership, the elected
Mayor of Addis Ababa, journalists, civil society workers such as Ato Daniel
of Action Aid, and the youth in the urban and rural areas.

2. The Regime cares more over loss of control of donor aid than promotingdemocracy!

The Meles regime worries more about donor aid not flowing into its coffers
than democracy being infused deeply in the veins and arteries of Ethiopian
society. The idea of a possible sanction that might not make it possible to
control the distribution of donor aid has been unsettling to it. Meles has
begun to brag at one time that he has the economy that can cope without
budget support, and when he realises that he does not have the economy to
cope berates donors for a’ breach of trust.’

He accuses Ethiopian citizens who have strongly stood against donor budget
support to his government as if they are against support reaching the
Ethiopian people and those who need assistance. Nothing is further from
the truth than this openly violent lie. On the contrary what those at home
and abroad are saying are the following:

Donor support directly to the people is to be encouraged more than donor
budget support to the regime. We are saying switch the support from the
regime to civil society and the grass roots communities, self-help
associations and faith-based development orientated associations. Ethiopia
has innumerable networks of traditional and community organisations. Donor
money must flow directly to the people and their community organisation not
to a corrupt ethnic cadre system that has been destroying the lives of
ordinary Ethiopians from the central, regional, woreda, municipal and
kebele levels… That is what we are saying. Stop budget support. Switch it
and pass it directly to the people. It is better that the people are
allowed this support and see what they decide to do with it for their
communities than give it to the regime organs from the local to the
central level with the hazard that the resources will be used against
the peoples genuine interest to improve their collective livelihood and
human security. Giving resources to the brutal and devious regime is as
good as throwing it to the black hole of corruption and repression.
Resources that are sent directly to the people have a good chance that they
probably be used for productive and community improvement and development
purposes.

The donors, like the British minister of International Development, claim
that the regime has the organisation and the communities do not. It is
actually the opposite. The communities left free from the heavy handed
ethnically biased and brutal cadres are more likely to be capable of using
the resources with prudence and integrity. The donors should find and can
find a way to the communities to empower them. Nothing empowers as
community self- empowerment.

No one should underestimate the ruling party control of the state from the
localities to the federal level. The whole administration is infected with
a cadre- control system that is very hard to inspect and open to
accountability and transparency. The party-state order is fused from the
top to the bottom and vice versa, making this one of the most mafia -like
party-state despotic powers capable of wrecking havoc on society, democracy
institution building and the protection of human rights and essential
freedoms. It is no good to inscribe rights and freedoms in the constitution
if there is a fused party-state authoritarian power that can freely abuse,
misuse, and misinterpret to perpetuate its abuse of power. The donors will
get more value for money if they directly resource the communities, the
schools, the clinics, the water and sanitation systems and the
infrastructure.

There is no doubt that what is given to the regime will be used to repress
the people who fear God, but say they fear the regime no more. The world
knows now that Meles has unleashed his special forces to commit massacres
and forced removals of the youth and to hope that resources in the
regime?s hands will reach the people is to hope in vain and illusion.
What is there from preventing the regime from using donor-fed resources to
escalate its repression of the youth, farmers and other citizens across the
country, and indeed elsewhere?

Above all the regime has shown itself to be an enemy of human rights,
democracy, and rule of law and has violated the enlightened concept of
development cooperation enshrined in article 96 of the ACP-EU Cotonu
agreement. It has tried to unwind the clock of history back, taking Africa
into the history of tyranny that all in the world wished Africa has come
out finally for good. The Meles regime must be punished not only for its
violations of rule of law, constitutionally confirmed rights of speech,
press and assembly, human rights and democracy, but also for the way it
responded when EU parliamentarians, the British Secretary of International
Development and others who advise it to mend its destructive actions
against the people and democracy. The regime responds by attacking the
donors rather than taking seriously the concerns they raised of the rampant
abuse. Meles has been reported to the elected leaders in prison that he
will see to it that the call by outside pressure to get them released
remains inconsequential. The regime’s beggar status and its overweening
arrogance do not make sense. But its arrogance must be punished. Meles has
ignored and berated the opposition by ridiculing the call we all made for
the international community to put pressure on it to release the unjustly
and illegally jailed opposition leadership. We reiterate our demand: No
release of the popularly elected opposition leadership including the
elected mayor of Addis Ababa, no donor budget support!

3. Is the call for stopping Donor Aid to the Meles Regime ?Evil’?

Meles calls the people and parties that stand for democracy, and against
repression ‘evil’. What is evil is not to redirect the money from those
who kill to those who may potentially save lives by putting the money for
the use by the poor. What is evil is to kill Ethiopia’s democracy, to
change the celebration of people into mourning and sorrow, blood and tears.
What Meles epitomises is the evil of dictatorship, intrigue, vicious
brutality the likes of which is only known as the worst both in Ethiopian
and other African history.

By accusing others of ?evil’ because they demanded that donors should
not provide money and guns to repress opposition and the people who wished
nothing but to see their country develop into a flourishing democracy, it
exposes the depravity and greed of the regime. This is a regime that shows
no memory of the harm it did to the nation by spoiling the first ever
democratic election with a turn out of 90 % of the electorate in recorded
history. How can a regime which stands accused in front of history of the
evil of dashing the democratic hopes of a nation, can claim to call those
who genuinely wish a governance of values underscored with deep human
rights, democracy and rule of law and constitutionally confirmed expression
of rights to free speech, press, association and assembly to be
institutionalised as a norm in the country evil?.

All the donors must recognise that dictators that suppress the people, that
also violate their own laws, and kill unarmed ordinary citizens, would not
blink from stealing donor money and using it as an instrument of
repression. Donors cannot apply double standard. If they stand for human
rights, democracy, the rule of law and good government, they must expel the
Meles regime from all the forums where it behaves as if it is a respectable
partner playing by the rules of decorum and democracy, and deny it donor
money that it has been using, amongst other things, for repression. This is
the only logical behaviour that makes sense given the arrogant defilement
of Ethiopia’s democratic process by the regime. Until the regime is
forced by a combined pressure from all sides to create the environment for
the full respect of human rights, good government, democratic freedom, and
stop violating the rule of law and blame others for the crime it is itself
supremely guilty of, the call for all bilateral, multilateral and other aid
that go directly to the regime must stop without any hesitation. We say:

NO WATERING DOWN OF SANCTIONS AGAINST THE REGIME AS LONG AS REPRESSIONCONTINUES IN ETHIOPIA.

4. Call on the International Community

The international community should live by what it preaches. There must not
be bifurcation between word and deed. Standing for human rights, democracy,
the rule of law and good government empowers the disempowered majority.
Standing to save the neck of Meles and the coterie around him is so
disempowering to the people who demonstrated such spirit, interest and
yearning for democracy. The international community should not look away at
the injustices that spoiled their democratic celebration. The international
community cannot condone electoral theft and see itself in the mirror of
history. It must reject the regime’s now openly known electoral theft and
support the people who are struggling to rectify injustice and the abuse
and arrogance of donor inflated local regime power. Not to make a stand
when there is clear abuse now has long term dangers. Consistency of word
and action is not a lot to ask given the enormity of the official crime in
mishandling so grotesquely the trust of 90 % of those who vote in the
country that cared to turn out and elect their representatives.

We say the international community must stand for human rights. They must
uphold without fail democracy, justice, and rule of law and good government
with consistency. They must not take, as an Ethiopian human right lawyer
from Belgium said, poachers of democracy and human rights as gatekeepers of
human rights and democracy. The regime in Ethiopia has been engaged in
gross human rights violations and continues to do so. It needs to be
brought to justice.

It is thus critically important that the international community stand with
the 90 % of those who voted whose vote has not been properly accounted by
the regime that panicked and reversed the election after the May 15, 2005
election, and denounce the regime and isolate it for its fraudulent
behaviour and all the subsequent harm it caused the Ethiopian people. It is
important that the international community through the UN Security Council
put the regime into notice that its systematic and continuous abuse of
human rights makes it liable for proceedings of legal action for crime
against humanity to be initiated.

History will be severe in its judgment of those who betrayed Ethiopian
democracy when they should not let the scoundrels get away from derailing a
democratic historical turning point made and achieved by the people. The
judgment this time will be even more severe than when the nation alone and
forlorn warned in 1934 to act against the fascist aggression of the country
by fascist Mussolini, and when those who could make a difference turned
away from its heroic, proud but humble plea. Today, the world must admire
what the Ethiopian people did for themselves and must rebuff the current
scoundrels and stop the regime from disempowering the people to continue
the democratisation of society, economy and polity in Ethiopia.

5. Concluding Call

Meles is playing the lethally foolish game of deception by denying that
there is a complex and serious political problem that will not easily go
away unless it is solved by inviting the arrested leadership into a process
of genuine dialogue based on the fair, just and constructive eight point
proposal submitted by the leaders before being arrested. He wishes the
world to believe all is hanky dory. He claims any defects in democratic
institution building are being fixed with the consultants hired by the
regime from Canada, Britain and other places. He plans to hire more of
these, as if the problem is one of lack of expertise. What is lacking is
the political will to solve problems, and the violent reduction of
political problems into legal technicalities. No consultant can fix the
mistrust the people harbour to the regime. No consultant can fix the
collapse of authority the regime is facing. The people call the regime
thief, thief and thief. What consultant can fix those crises of confidence
the people have in those who rule them that they no longer fear or respect?
No political problem can be fixed by inviting foreign consultants, paying
them fat fees and asking them to write position papers. Perhaps the
consultants may be used to appeal to the donors to release the budget
support they are withholding. This may be the purpose for employing
consultants. What the hiring of consultants demonstrates is how tenuous the
grip on reality the regime of Meles Zenawi has. This regime has lost the
plot completely. Meles too has become a complete and utter liability to the
country. Before this regime commits more damage to the people, we call on
all those who invited Meles to all the international commissions and forums
to denounce his lack of seriousness and chicanery. All along he pretended
and talked democracy, when in fact his true character is authoritarian and
dictatorial. He deceived many people including Prime Minister Blair who
seems to have now understood with whom he has been dealing.

The AU, EU, leaders of the Germany, UK, USA and others must denounce the
Meles regime and Meles himself for engineering post-election crises with so
many murders, jailing and large scale repressions. Meles can only be out of
his mind, if he thinks the situation is normal after putting in jail the
entire elected leadership of the main opposition party. We call on all of
them to make it possible to create an international inquiry to demonstrate
that the real culprit is the Meles regime for all the crimes against the
people and the nation. We call on the international community including
China to stop any budget support to the regime until the entire elected
leadership is released and inquiry system is set up. We call on the
international community to switch budget support denied to the regime to be
given to the people, community and to support all those who are struggling
for human rights and democracy genuinely in the country especially in the
rural areas. It is not only budget support that the international community
must deny this regime, but also the international community must insist on
the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners
including first and foremost the elected opposition leadership. All the
provisions in the resolution of the EU Parliament must be implemented.

Professor Mammo Muchie, Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Berhanu G. Balcha, Vice- Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Tekola Worku, Secretary of NES-Scandinavian Chapter

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