UN and the questions of freedom and democracy in Ethiopia

By Qeerransoo Biyyaa

September 19, 2006 — The leaders of Nations of the world are gathering for the sixty first session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, headquarters of the UN. This leaders have job to do and the job is to present the issues affecting their country for global solutions beginning Tuesday 19th of September 2006. The session is open for both democratic and despotic leaders to set their agenda.

Melez Zenawi of Ethiopia, the most notorious mass murderer, will also use the same ritual to present his statements on the country to beg for more funds for “development” or more properly money to buy state of the art military hardware. On previous sessions he attended, he was begging for more funds to achieve the millennium development goals as well as funds to eradicate poverty. But nothing achieved is seen on the ground.

What is surprising is not that Meles is attending the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, but the extent to which the selected agenda items for Africa ignore or relegate issues of conflict and tyranny in the Horn of Africa especially Ethiopia.

The conflict which is mostly based on the Oromo quest for self-determination in particular and overall peoples’ yearn for freedom and democracy is overlooked. Just to mention some of the overall agenda items dealing mainly with the underdevelopment of Africa this year: a) agenda item number 66 reads ‘New Partnership for Africa’s Development: progress in implementation and international support’, (b) agenda item 66(b) ‘causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa’. In themselves, these agenda items have nothing wrong with them; they are appropriate ones but they lack specificity as they are often suffixed with phrases such as “in Africa” is stead of for example specifying a country name. Whereas agenda items dealing with conflict in the Middle East and Asia mention specific countries requiring remedy by name. It is meaningless to discuss Africa without narrowing it down to conflicts within specific African countries such as Ethiopia. I am aware that the crises in the Sudan and Zmibabwe will be specifically discussed on this year’s sessession.

But for 77 million people in Ethiopia under repressive regime that carries out unparalleled genocide and economic and political discriminations against the majority what does this session hold? Literally nothing, as Ethiopia is not even on the agenda regarding its internal political crises that always result from open shootings of the government in power into protesting crowds, and crowds of school and college children.

The more general and ambiguous the African agenda items are, such as the ones listed above, the luckier some of the African despots will get to escape international criticisms and also the more widely they will continue their destructive activities on their subjects right after coming home from New York.

Millions of Ethiopians expect less and remain apathetic regarding this year’s United Nations General Assembly sessession in New York. This happens against a backdrop of a series of public protests held condemning the ‘killings and disappearances’ civilians in Ethiopia especially in Oromia National Regional State and in the capital city Addis Ababa (Finfinnee) all over the cities in the world.

If the United Nations General Assembly is only willing to listen to the voice the Ethiopian prime minister session after session, and not to the voices of millions suffering at home, where will the difference be as a result of the existence of the United Nations General Assembly? It will be to the advantage of the majority in Ethiopia if the UN General Assembly considers human rights violation reports and press releases by the European Union on the political insincerity in the country in the name of elections at least to make sure that multi-party elections will take place in Ethiopia in the presence of the UN as observer and peacekeeper in 2010.

* Qeerransoo Biyyaa is based in Ethiopia. He can be reached at [email protected]