Europe and African Dictators

By Woldu Mikawl

December 11, 2007 — It is hard to get the world to take a closer look at all the brutal African dictators of the 21st century. No wonder, the call by Reporters Without Borders to bar the Eritrean Strongman Isayas Afeworki from entering Europe to attend a rare EU-African summit in Portugal over the weekend, failed to draw the international attention it deserved. Unlike Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, the equally, if not more ruthless regime of Mr. Afeworki, has not yet come on everybody’s radar screen for public scrutiny and denunciation.

In dealing with human rights issues, most world leaders are guided by political expediencies rather than lofty principles and ideals. Human rights become nobody’s business when national interest alone takes precedence.

Aware of this state of affairs, over 30 years ago, Idi Amin, the blood-thirsty Ugandan dictator terrorized an entire population with impunity. Idi Amin simply rebuffed and mocked Western condemnations as mere racist rhetoric.

Ironically, many Pan-Africanists of the time, though often embarrassed by his vulgar and ill-mannered behavior, admired him for standing up to old colonial Europe and imperialist USA.

Indeed, in 1975, after murdering over an estimated 200-thousand of his citizens, Idi Amin was unanimously selected by his contemporaries to chair the Organization of African Unity, the forerunner of the African Union. The OAU never condemned Idi Amin for his flagrant human rights abuses under the pretext of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

The Ugandan bully also had non-African friends. Soviet Communists armed him to the teeth to counter Western influence in East Africa, and Arab governments took care of his finances because he hated Israel.

Not much has changed since the Idi Amin days. Only the players have changed.

ROBERT MUGABE:

Like Uganda’s Idi Amin, President Mugabe conveniently shrugs off European and American criticisms of his failed policies as racist. At the same time, he is hailed by many African leaders for standing up to Western double standards and for seizing thousands of white farms.

But the mismanaged and corrupt land reform process, launched in 2000, has only managed to enrich Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party and consolidate his power base. It has further alienated and embittered Mugabe’s political opponents who are the main target of his repressive policies.

There is no argument against the idea of land redistribution among Zimbabweans to redress past white racist policies. But the rash to destroy thousands of commercial farms has led the country to abject poverty and famine. Half of the country’s population of 12 million now depend on food aid donated by the US or Britain. Millions have left the country in the past few years to escape repression and poverty.

To control a restive population, the regime uses imprisonment, torture, killings and mass starvation. Instead of feeding its people, the regime has purchased 100’s of millions of US dollars-worth of weapons from China for no other purpose than to intimidate Mugabe’s political opponents.

It is widely recognized that the Zimbabwean leader was a dictator from the start. In a political purge, before and immediately after independence in1980, Mr. Mugabe – member of the majority Shona ethnic group – unleashed genocide against the minority Endebele tribe killing up to 30,000 of them. In 1984, he imprisoned his chief political rival Baptist Bishop Abel Muzorewa without trial for10 months on false treason charges.

He is as oppressive today as he was then. Human rights organizations speak of relentless atrocities aimed particularly at members of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. Government forces have stepped up their repression as the 2008 national elections draw near.

Despite all this, African leaders, many of them openly or closet dictators, threatened to boycott the European-African summit in Portugal over the weekend unless Mr. Mugabe was allowed to participate.

ISAYAS AFEWORKI

The Eritrean strongman presides over a brutal authoritarian military regime camouflaged in civilian attire. Mr. Afeworki has given the military a free hand to use torture, murder, disappearances, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment without trial and intimidations against dissenting politicians, academics, students, journalists, civic and religious leaders and ordinary parishioners. Thousands continue to suffer in the harshest prison environments including filthy dungeons and metal containers on account of their political views or faith.

In 2001, the Eritrean dictator imprisoned without trial his entire cabinet of ministers, among them, the vice president and the foreign and defense ministers under false accusations of conspiring against the country. They are held in secrete prisons and only the authorities know if they are still alive or not. Prior to their arrest, the officials had tried in vain to meet with Mr. Afeworki about the need for constitutional democracy, elections and rule of law. The request for a meeting is the only “crime” they are believed to have committed.

That same year, Mr. Afeworki shut down the entire independent press and the only one university in the country – Asmara University; the government imprisoned without trial close to two dozen journalists and publishers, and detained thousands of university students. The independent press and Asmara University still remain out of service as a punishment for attempting to entertain democratic ideas.

While four journalists are known to have been tortured to death, 15 others still remain in secrete prisons. Eritrea is now considered number one, behind North Korea, as the worst country for press freedom.

On the economic front, Mr. Afeworki has nothing to offer. He uses mass starvation as a political weapon and he exaggerates about crop harvest in order to justify refusal of food aid. UN reports suggest two thirds of the country’s 4.5 million people have to receive external food aid or perish. When he told the Los Angeles Times in October that his people did not need food aid, thousands of Asmara city dwellers were standing in line – many of them near one of his lavish, affluent presidential palaces – to get their meager food ration.

The mismanaged economy is in a shambles and corruption is rampant. The ruling PFDJ (People’s Front for Democracy and Justice) party members and supporters have absolute monopoly over the country’s resources. Many of the top military officers and party members have accumulated immeasurable wealth and some are already millionaires.

The Eritrean government shuns Western criticisms as “hypocritical, misguided or misinformed.” Although the human rights situation in Eritrea is far worse than in Zimbabwe or anywhere else in Africa, the European Union has never threatened the Asmara regime with any sanctions. On the contrary, European development aid continues to flow to Eritrea.

Mugabe is unwelcome in Europe for rigging elections in 2002. Afeworki, on the other hand, has never allowed elections to rig or not to rig. Additionally, Unlike Zimbabwe, Eritrean opposition parties may not operate inside the country. The Asmara regime has arbitrarily arrested and indefinitely imprisoned thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of its citizens incommunicado without trial. Unspecified number of people have been tortured and killed in the process.

There is a clear case of European double standard, which may soon change once two things happen. One: the Eritrean opposition parties need to take concrete steps as a united democratic force and demonstrate to the world that they are ready and capable to mobilize the people for government change. Two: the European Union will have to go along with the United States and impose sanctions if Washington goes ahead as planned and designate Eritrea a state sponsor of terrorism.

AFRICA’S CHOICES

Europe does not have solutions to all problems. Its guiding principle of “enlightened self-interest” is inadequate to deal with domestic or international problems.

Africa, which has suffered so much in the past under colonial and racist rules, has a great deal to offer to the rest of the world by creating saner social and economic systems that really work.

But, this won’t happen unless African leaders choose to make the firmest commitment to the principles of human rights, rule of law, transparency and participatory democracy. Zimbabwe and Eritrea, among many other troubled African states, do not have problems that these values cannot solve. Dictatorships breed poverty, diseases, civil unrest, wars, and terrorism.

Woldu Mikael is a veteran African Journalist and has in the past interviewed Presidents Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe.