New York Times journalist, who worked as the paper’s East Africa
Bureau chief for a decade, says the oppression that the majority, especially
Amharas and Oromos, suffer under the minority government is a danger for the
future of the country.
Jeffrey Gettleman, who won the most coveted journalism award,
the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for his work focusing on East Africa, said in an
exclusive interview with ESAT that building infrastructure is important but not
an excuse to kill, jail and torture innocent civilians.
“Infrastructure is really important in Africa right now. But if
you are very repressive you are jeopardizing everything because you are
creating this anger and resentment and volatility. We have seen that in the
last couple of years, more volatility, violence and political upheaval in
Ethiopia than there has been since the 1990s,” he said.
Gettleman, who’s was detained, along with his wife and a
photographer in May 2007 for travelling to the Ogaden for a reporting
assignment, noted that there is widespread anger and resentment against the
government in the last few years. “The two largest ethnic groups, the Amharas
and the Oromos, feel they are oppressed. That is dangerous.”
He noted that Ethiopia is a country that will have 100 million
people soon with powerful and important culture in Africa. “But there is a lot
of repression. It is the law of physics where anything you push down doesn’t
necessarily disappear. It pops out somewhere else. I worry that there will be
more problems unless there is an opening, people feel empowered in Ethiopia and
they don’t feel discriminated against.”
He described the escalating popular protest against the
government as one that is no longer easy to stamp out as people can communicate
better unlike the aftermath of the 2005 elections and the subsequent killings
of protesters. “It is harder to repress because of cell phones and technology.
People can communicate much better than they could. The protest movement is
much stronger and longer this time. The government was not able to simply put
its foot on it,” he said.
He said the reason why he travelled to the Ogaden was to tell
the stories of the people and the ONLF rebels fighting the regime. According to
the award-winning journalist, the government military was abusing people, was
brutalizing innocent civilians, raping girls, burning down houses, hanging
elders, and this was part of the government’s response to the insurgency in the
region.
“I wanted to share the story because Ethiopia is a strategic
ally of the United States . It receives a lot of aid from the United States,”
Gettleman said.
He said the government falsely accused him of being a terrorist
and helping the ONLF. He said he was never allowed back to Ethiopia after he
was declared persona non grata.
Gettleman pointed out that the United States is making some
terrible decisions and miscalculations in a manner that hurts its own long-term
interests as well as the sub-region. “I think Africa doesn’t always get the
bandwidth that other parts of the world gets.”
Gettelman says that the decision of the United States to back
the 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian forces was a serious mistake as it
paved the way for the rise of Al Shabab.
He said Obama’s visit to Ethiopia and referring the regime as
democratic was another mistake that sent the wrong message. “Ethiopia is not
democratic. Anybody that knows Ethiopia and Ethiopians living in Ethiopia will
tell you that. There is little freedom of expression, there is almost no viable
opposition media, the opposition have been persecuted and the government
controls 100 percent of the parliament. That is not a democracy.”
According to Gettleman, U.S. foreign policy of “engaging”
tyrannies has proven to be counter productive. He underlined that the U.S.
should rather invest in the long term interests of Africa as well as the
national interest of the United States.
The United States should pay attention to the people, not please
the rulers and dictators, he said. “You cannot have stability without human
rights. You cannot have long term stability crushing people.”
(Gettleman’s interview with Abebe Gellaw of ESAT will air on
Monday July 31, 2017 on INSIGHT, a show which will debut on the same day.)
