Ethiopia using foreign aid as a political weapon, says BBC
By Tesfa-Alem Tekle
August 8, 2011 (ADDIS ABABA) – As drought and famine threatens the lives of millions in the horn of Africa region, a BBC investigative team accused the Ethiopian government of using international aid to repress those who refuse to support the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party.
According to BBC, the team of journalists travelled to the southern region of Ethiopia where it found villages where whole communities are starving, having allegedly been denied basic food, seed and fertilizer for failing to support Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
“The investigation has also gathered evidence of mass detentions, the widespread use of torture and extra-judicial killings by Ethiopian government forces” BBC said in its report.
The Ethiopian embassy in UK immediately dismissed the allegations saying that the Newsnight / BIJ report “lacked objectivity, even-handedness”.
“The sole source of the story was opponents of Ethiopia who have been rejected by the electorate, and time and again it has been shown that their allegations are unfounded” said Ambassador Abdirashid Dulane, the Deputy Head of Ethiopia’s UK Mission.
An opposition official from the country’s biggest opposition coalition agreed that government is abusing foreign-aid funds.
“Almost all of the aid goes through the government channels… in terms of relief food supply and some of the safety net provisions, they simply don’t get to the needy of an equitably basis” said Beyene Petros, the current vice-chairman of the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Forum, an alliance of eight opposition parties.
“There is a great deal of political differentiation. People who support the ruling party, the EPRDF, and our members are treated differently. The motivation is buying support, that is how they recruit support, holding the population hostage,” he said.
Ethiopia, one of the world’s largest recipients of foreign aid, has in the past rejected similar accusations of using aid money as a political tool.
Last year, Human Rights Watch, an independent monitoring group, alleged that “the Ethiopian government has withheld foreign-aid from those who desperately need it, to consolidate the rule of a repressive one-party state”
Relation between Ethiopian government and BBC went odd after the World Service last year claimed that the Band Aid and Live Aid money raised to the1984 famine in Ethiopia was diverted to purchase weapons for Tigrian rebels then led by the current Ethiopia Prime Minister.
Weeks later BBC retracted the report and apologised to Sir Bob Geldof, the chief organiser of Band Aid, for a series of false reports linking Band Aid cash to arms purchases but did not retract allegations of links between arms and aid.
The relationship between Geldof and the BBC had been good – it was a BBC report that moved him to begin the first Band Aid and the BBC broadcast the Band Aid show.
“The BBC wishes to apologize unreservedly to the Band Aid Trust for this misleading and unfair impression. The BBC also wishes to apologize unreservedly to the Band Aid Trust for a number of reports on television, radio and online which went further than the programme itself in stating that millions of pounds raised by Band Aid and Live Aid had been diverted to buy arms. The BBC had no evidence for these statements, and they shouldn’t have been broadcast,” the corporation said.
In a stateent in November the Ethiopian government described it as “odd” that the apology did not extend to all those who were victims of smear by the BBC report.
(ST)