OAKLAND, California, Jan 25 2016 (IPS) - With the African Union celebrating
the African Year of Human Rights at its 26th summit, at its headquarters in
Addis, Ethiopia, the venue raises serious concerns about commitment to human
rights.
Ethiopia’s so
called economic development policies have not only ignored but enabled and
exacerbated civil and human rights abuses in the
country. Case and point is the ongoing land grabbing affecting several regions
of the country. Under the controversial “villagization” program, the Ethiopian
government is forcibly relocating over 1.5 million people to make land
available to investors for so called economic growth. Since last November, the
country’s ruling party, EPRDF’s, “Master Plan” to expand the capital Addis has
been the flashpoint for protests in Oromia which willimpact some 2
million people. At least 140 protestors have been killed by security forces
while many more have been injured and arrested, including political leaders
like Bekele Gerba, Deputy Chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, Oromia’s
largest legally registered political party. Arrested on December 23, 2015, his
whereabouts remain unknown.
Political marginalization, arbitrary
arrests, beatings, murders, intimidation, and rapes mark the experience of
communities around Ethiopia defending their land rights. This violence in the
name of delivering economic growth is built on the 2009 Anti-Terrorism
Proclamation, which has allowed the Ethiopian government secure complete
hegemonic authority by suppressing any form of dissent.
A
new report, Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Law: A Tool
to Stifle Dissent, by the Oakland Institute and the
Environmental Defender Law Center, authored by lawyers including
representatives from leading international law firms, unravels the 2009
Proclamation. It confirms that the law is designed and used by the Ethiopian
Government as a tool of repression to silence its critics. It criminalizes
basic human rights, like the freedom of speech and assembly. Its definition of
“terrorist act,” does not conform with international standards given the law
defines terrorism in an extremely broad and vague way, providing the ruling
party with an iron fist to punish words and acts that would be legal in a
democracy.
The law’s staggering breadth and
vagueness, makes it impossible for citizens to know or even predict what
conduct may violate the law, subjecting them to grave criminal sanctions. This
has resulted in a systematic withdrawal of free speech in the country as
newspaper journalists and editors, indigenous leaders, land rights activists,
bloggers, political opposition members, and students are charged as terrorists.
In 2010, journalists and governmental critics were arrested and tortured in the
lead-up to the national election. In 2014, six privately owned publications
closed after government harassment; at least 22 journalists, bloggers, and
publishers were criminally charged; and more than 30 journalists fled the
country in fear of being arrested under repressive laws.
The
law also gives the police and security services unprecedented new powers and
shifts the burden of proof to the accused. Ethiopia has abducted individuals
from foreign countries including the British national Andy Tsege and the Norwegian national, Okello Akway Ochalla,
and brought them to Ethiopia to face charges of violating the anti-terrorism
law. Such abductions violate the terms of extradition treaties between Ethiopia
and other countries; violate the territorial sovereignty of the other
countries; and violate the fundamental human rights of those charged under the
law. Worse still, many of those charged report having been beaten or tortured,
as in the case of Mr. Okello. The main evidence courts have against such
individuals are their so-called confessions.
Some individuals charged under
Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law are being prosecuted for conduct that occurred
before that law entered into force. These prosecutions violate the principles
of legality and non-retroactivity, which Ethiopia is bound to uphold both under
international law as well as the Charter 22 of its own constitution.
A few other key examples of those
charged under the law, include the 9 bloggers; Pastor Omot Agwa, former
translator for the World Bank Inspection Panel; and journalists Reeyot Alemu
and Eskinder Nega; and hundreds more, all arrested under the Anti-Terrorism
law.
It has been a fallacious tradition
in development thought to equate economic underdevelopment with repressive
forms of governance and economic modernity with democratic rule. Yet Ethiopia
forces us to confront that its widely celebrated economic renaissance by its
Western allies and donor countries is dependent on violent autocratic
governance. The case of Ethiopia should compel the US and the UK to question
their own complicity in supporting the Ethiopian regime, the west’s key ally in
Africa.
Given
the compelling analysis provided
by the report, it is imperative that the international community demands that
until such time as Ethiopian government revises its anti-terrorism law to bring
it into conformity with international standards, it repeals the use of this
repressive piece of legislation.
Case and point is the controversial
resettlement program under which the Ethiopian government seeks to relocate 1.5
million people as part of an economic development plan. Research by groups
including the Oakland Institute, International Rivers Network, Human Rights
Watch, and Inclusive Development International, among others, as well as
journalists.
Perhaps there is hesitation to
confront this because it would implicate the global flows of development
assistance that make possible rule by the EPRDF. Receiving a yearly average of
3.5 billion dollars in development aid, Ethiopia tops lists of development aid
recipients of USAID, DfID, and the World Bank. Staggeringly, international
assistance represents 50 to 60 per cent of the Ethiopian national budget.
Evidently, foreign assistance is indispensible to the national governance. At
the face of this dependency, the Ethiopian government exercises repressive
hegemony over Ethiopian political and civil expression.
It is the responsibility of
international donors to account for the political effects of development
assistance with thorough and consistent investigations and substantive demand
for political reform and democratic practices as a condition for sustained
international aid. This will inevitably mean a new type of Ethiopian
renaissance, one that seeks the simultaneous establishment of democratic
governance and improving economic conditions.
Source: Ipsnews
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