The Kingdom of Sunshine
I'm here in Sioux Falls, SD at a coffee shop called Black Sheep listening to my lovely Kate Morrissey do a little show (see link on right). We are making our way across the U.S. to Palo Alto, CA for the summer to teach at a Stanford program for gifted high schoolers. Sioux Falls is a very cosmopolitan town. The Ellis Island of the Midwest. A big Ethiopian population, and good Ethiopian food.
Here's something good we can do. The U.S. is propping up a murderous dictatorial regime in Ethiopia and has been giving the dictator, Meles Zenawi, over a billion dollars a year in military aid since he came to power fourteen years ago. He is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in the Sub-Sahara. The house is now in the process of reviewing this "aid" as part of HR 4423. This nascent bill needs your support. Urge your congressperson to cosponsor this bill. And sign this petition. You can read about the human rights violations that are being committed with your US tax dollar, but here's a little bit from the Human Rights Watch Ethiopia overview page.
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Key International Actors
Ethiopia is considered an essential partner of the United States in its "war on terrorism," and Washington has generally been unwilling to apply meaningful pressure on the Ethiopian government over its human rights record. The U.S. suspects Islamic extremist groups are hiding in bordering areas of Somalia, and sometimes inside Ethiopia itself. The U.S. military, operating primarily out of a base in Djibouti, cooperates closely with the Ethiopian armed forces in counterterrorism efforts and capacity building work. The United States is also the largest donor of bilateral aid in Ethiopia.
Political Repression
Government officials and security forces in much of Ethiopia make routine use of various forms of human rights abuse to deter and punish dissent. For more than a decade, authorities in the country’s vast Oromia region have used exaggerated concerns about armed insurgency and “terrorism” to justify the torture, imprisonment and sustained harassment of their critics and even ordinary citizens. Student protests in 2004 at Addis Ababa University and in secondary schools throughout Oromia led to the arrest of hundreds of students, many of whom were mistreated while in custody. Ever since the protests and throughout 2005, regional officials in Oromia have gone to oppressive lengths to monitor and control the speech and conduct of students and teachers alike.
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Of course, the Bush administration rhetoric about aiding democratic movements in the world is nonsense. The empire much prefers a dictator like Zenawi to true democratic self rule. Ethiopia is virgin territory for the mining, and Zenawi is happy to enrich his regime and Western transnational companies. All he asks in return is military aid so that those who think that the Ethiopian people should claim their own wealth can be terrorized into submission. Last time they checked with an election, in 2005, this was about 90% of the population. Zenawi did not like this and decided to chase the independent election overseers out of the country and burn all the ballots. Nearly the entire print, radio, and television media apparatus was thrown in jail along with the winning candidates. Not very democratic, one would think. Yet, for the U.S., Ethiopia remains a vital ally in the war on terror. Hmmm.
Here's something good we can do. The U.S. is propping up a murderous dictatorial regime in Ethiopia and has been giving the dictator, Meles Zenawi, over a billion dollars a year in military aid since he came to power fourteen years ago. He is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in the Sub-Sahara. The house is now in the process of reviewing this "aid" as part of HR 4423. This nascent bill needs your support. Urge your congressperson to cosponsor this bill. And sign this petition. You can read about the human rights violations that are being committed with your US tax dollar, but here's a little bit from the Human Rights Watch Ethiopia overview page.
******
Key International Actors
Ethiopia is considered an essential partner of the United States in its "war on terrorism," and Washington has generally been unwilling to apply meaningful pressure on the Ethiopian government over its human rights record. The U.S. suspects Islamic extremist groups are hiding in bordering areas of Somalia, and sometimes inside Ethiopia itself. The U.S. military, operating primarily out of a base in Djibouti, cooperates closely with the Ethiopian armed forces in counterterrorism efforts and capacity building work. The United States is also the largest donor of bilateral aid in Ethiopia.
Political Repression
Government officials and security forces in much of Ethiopia make routine use of various forms of human rights abuse to deter and punish dissent. For more than a decade, authorities in the country’s vast Oromia region have used exaggerated concerns about armed insurgency and “terrorism” to justify the torture, imprisonment and sustained harassment of their critics and even ordinary citizens. Student protests in 2004 at Addis Ababa University and in secondary schools throughout Oromia led to the arrest of hundreds of students, many of whom were mistreated while in custody. Ever since the protests and throughout 2005, regional officials in Oromia have gone to oppressive lengths to monitor and control the speech and conduct of students and teachers alike.
******
Of course, the Bush administration rhetoric about aiding democratic movements in the world is nonsense. The empire much prefers a dictator like Zenawi to true democratic self rule. Ethiopia is virgin territory for the mining, and Zenawi is happy to enrich his regime and Western transnational companies. All he asks in return is military aid so that those who think that the Ethiopian people should claim their own wealth can be terrorized into submission. Last time they checked with an election, in 2005, this was about 90% of the population. Zenawi did not like this and decided to chase the independent election overseers out of the country and burn all the ballots. Nearly the entire print, radio, and television media apparatus was thrown in jail along with the winning candidates. Not very democratic, one would think. Yet, for the U.S., Ethiopia remains a vital ally in the war on terror. Hmmm.
posted by thebaffler at 9:06 PM
7 Comments:
Thanks so much for highlighting the plight of Ethiopia and US selfish policies.
Ethiopian people has suffered more than any other nation in Africa. But the period under Meles, where a democracy was brutally suppressed in front of all International media was the hardest and most painfull of all. And still the notion of Democracy was aired and spread to all International medias, thinking Meles and his party could hoodwink the world.
Thanks god, finally the true colour of Meles Zenawi and his EPRDF party is coming to light in the world.
Thank you everyone for your tireless effort to make this Bill pass through.
Very kind regards,
Efrem from London
Hi Robert Stahl
May your words be heard by those people of the donor nations, especially our friends Americans. It is their money that is evidentely spent to silence, intimidate, torture, abuse and even kill everybody in Ethiopia irrespective of their age, gender, religion or what so ever. Your life is in Ethiopia no more secure, even if you are of another nationality if they dare to critisize the regime. Opposing the current unelected(!) Ethiopian government (I would say gangster) means a real threat for one's life. Ethiopians in the country and in the diaspora are crying and demanding assistance to end this nightmare, this barbaric Meles Zenawi's Nazi-like system. They demand to free imprisoned elected politicians, journalists, human right activists, civic society activists.
This stone age stalinistic communist system must come to end.
The free nations must help the struggle of Ethiopians to end this evil, inhumane, and mafia-like rotten system. God bless Ethiopia.
Sir, there is more to this murderous regime than what one see. Like its counterparts in many African countries its corruption and embezzling the public fund is unprecedented. The Prime Minster has been quoted many times saying how to cow westerners by telling them what they want to hear when he strategize his survival, in what he calls “ western imperialist’ in his hard line Marxist ideology he praised all his life. He is still the chairman of “Marxist Leninist League of Tigriy” he himself founded thirty years ago and still operational.
The US policy towards Africa is a disaster waiting to happen and every enemy and foes of United States are waiting to exploit the situation. Tyrants like Melse are playing westerners by pretending to be democrats when in actuality they are hardliner Marxist who lost their way in communism and make the best out of it. When the Berlin wall fail and communism collapsed, we thought we were finally free, but what happened is the US and UK knowingly or unknowingly started propping up tyrants masked as democrat.
Americans have to be aware of what is being done in their name.
It's not only Bush, who happens to hate Ethiopians and use the headless goat-man Meles(who hates Ethiopians) to kill us. It's also the majority in the American administration.
Bush and Meles have a remarkable similarity - both don't have the human substance in their head - they are, therfore, people with the worst kind of disability:headlessness.
How come one unedcuated man fooled all of this top world leaders.meles have marxist ideology soon or later bush and others will found out who meles is.When prime menester Blair stop the aid meles called him "colonial master" I wonder what is going to call presdent bush?
For Americans like myself, I think the issue of military aid to Meles is largely invisible. This aid follows larger imperial patterns of aid to military dictatorships. The fact that Meles might have Marxist or Stalinist leanings is irrelevant to the Bush administration (or Clinton before him). Some Americans can recall the massive military support given to the equally brutal regime of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s (before Hussein disobeyed his U.S. masters and became and went from ally to enemy). Hussein was an avowed Stalinist. This didn't matter; he was useful in U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East, which included uprooting any homegrown nationalist governments (like Iran at the time).
So long as the U.S. supports Meles, we can expect that this support will be invisible to Americans, who would not be able to stomach it. The good news is that the injustice is so acute in the case of Meles that a very compelling case can be made for the ceasing of aid. Meles represents everything that American culture has traditionally opposed (human rights violations, rigged elections, and communism). The only public reason the Bush admin can give for continued support is some vague reference to the War on Terror.
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