Barack the Vote

Today is a historic day in this nation's history. Senator Barack Obama just clinched the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States.

More than a year ago, in February 2007, in From Kenya With Love: Barack Hussein Obama, we believed that Senator Obama's historic candidacy for the Office of the President of United States " . . . would allow registered African-American voters (including Ethiopia-Americans) in the Democratic Party a clear alternative to the carpet-bagging junior senator from our favorite state in the Union. " Before the world was introduced to the monstrously bizarre world of the Clintons, long before a single primary vote was cast, we seethed at the fact that "Hillary Clinton and her arrogant and demeaning posture vis-à-vis African-American voters is back and managing to convince, yet again, many in the African-American community that she, like her husband, is "black" and deserving of their support."

Our two years of blogging has elicited many e-mails, most supportive of our writing, some hate-filled, particularly from members and supporters of the current ruling party in Ethiopia. Our few departures from our writing on Ethiopia have explored the war in Iraq, US presidential elections, other weighty issues that include race relations, US Congressional elections, and the death penalty. One particular post that elicited the most negative reaction is Ethiop Office Rant, a piece that expressed our bewilderment at the African-American affection for the Clintons. Several e-mails chastised us as right-wing Clinton-haters.

Fifteen months in politics is two lifetimes. Since Senator Obama's announcement of his candidacy and his shocking victory in the Iowa Caucuses, the world has been able to see Hillary Clinton's deranged narcissism; her sheer hunger to realize her and her husband’s delusional ambition to return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. African-American voters (which includes us, Ethiopian-Americans) in particular swallowed a bitter pill – they saw and heard a woman who supposedly built her career helping indigents and the politically unrepresented to claiming that the son of the Kenyan was an elitist when she, just a few weeks earlier, had declared $109 million in income earned. They saw the son of the Kenyan accumulating primary and caucus victories but watched in utter puzzlement as she constantly moved the rules of a game she helped create; how she and her husband attempted to paint the son of the Kenyan into a rewarmed Jesse – a candidate that appeals only to colored folk; they observed a woman who concocted a fictional account of being targeted by snipers, yet survived; they saw a woman who kept up her attack on the Illinois senator for accepting donations from former Weatherman William Ayres yet her husband pardoned two former members of that sinister group; they lived through months of infuriating stump speeches declaring that she is the stronger candidate – code for"America can't possibly vote for this boy."

In her speech today, Senator Clinton did not concede the race to Senator Obama. Hillary Rodham Clinton has become, as Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote today, "a hungry hack, a Janus looking both forward and backward and seeming to stand for nothing except winning."

Barack is now caught between Scylla and Charybdis: whether to add Clinton on his ticket. I considered this issue at much length and my conclusion is no. Hell fucking no. I'll risk a defeat against McCain. My favorite candidate: Chuck Hagel. It's time to turn the page on the deep bipartisan divide in this country. He would also hugely supplement Barack's national security bona fides.

But here’s where we are today: when my sons wake up in the morning, I will be telling them an important story -- that the man who shares their skin color and whom they saw and heard while sitting on their daddy's shoulders several months ago, finally won the nomination. And won it with class.

The Grind

They have finally seen the outside gates of Kality Prison. (Can we hear a Hallelujah?) Some of the members of the Coalition of Unity & Democracy Party (CUDP) are senior citizens who languished in jail in bodies wracked with old age and rapidly deteriorating health. Others are parents to young children. They needed to be among their families, their followers, and their supporters, and only the most contemptuous would ignore the human story behind last week's negotiated release. And this is essentially what all of us sought: in numerous petitions, protests, articles, blogs, and support for various proposed legislative acts, Ethiopians and non-Ethiopians alike lobbied for the day to see the men and women who led the campaign to realize the electoral demise of the ruling party walk away from prison intact.

Then there's the issue of the July 16, 2007 admission of culpability. The letter to the Prime Minister included language that frankly shocked our conscious, including admission to attempting to usurp power through non-constitutional means, and a promise to refrain from engaging in similar conduct in the future. Many who supported the opposition movement in Ethiopia, particularly the CUDP, were in utter disbelief that its leaders and members signed a document not just admitting guilt but asking the very forces that engaged in extra-judicial killing of young children for forgiveness. A friend described this development as a bitter taste he had difficulty rinsing from his mouth; an infectious mucus he couldn't spit out. Our initial reaction was not that far off.

A quick Timeline

July 9, 2007 = the ruling party seeks the death penalty;

July 16, 2007 = the ruling party hands down life sentences;

July 20, 2007 = the ruling party issues "pardons."

In just ten days, the EPRDF's Ministry of Justice went from arguing that the most ultimate, cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment should be visited upon some of the most respectable members of Ethiopian society, to four days later, in an act of seeming penance, setting aside that call and passing life sentences, and to finally absolving them of their purported sins. All it took was their placing their signatures on a pro forma document that is silent on the level of culpability of each defendant and the manner, time, and place of the supposed constitutional violations. So much for establishing legal precedence.

Forgive what?

Never recognizing the jurisdiction of the court, the accused maintained that the ruling party's genocide and treason charges were nothing but an attempt to rewrite the fraudulent elections of May 2005 and the ensuing EPRDF violent crackdown. They argued, in our opinion, rightfully, that they would not receive justice in a court that is subservient not to the rule of law but to the dictates of the Office of the Prime Minister. They maintained that the EPRDF's incantations of a divided government, checks and balances, and independence of the judiciary were a collection of phrases designed to keep Western donors at bay.

So while the EPRDF information machinery engaged in a sustained media blitz declaring the government’s non-interference in the judicial process underway, the ruling party was steeped in negotiations to secure a negotiated settlement. In what is perhaps the world’s longest plea-bargain-but-soon-to-be-post-conviction-pardon, both parties ultimately obtained what they apparently sought—for the EPRDF, both a conviction and an admission that the defendants engaged in extra-judicial political activities; for the CUDP, a political as opposed to a legal resolution and reinstatement of the right to participate in future political activity.

Gambling with Human Lives

The benefit of hindsight rewards the CUDP. The treason and genocide charges and the courtroom proceedings were merely a drawn-out process designed to accomplish at least three objectives: (1) alienate the most critical and popular voices of dissent from their supporters and the public, (2) create a rift within the CUDP and to hasten factionalism among its leaders and supporters, and to (3) grind the CUDP leaders toward an unfair bargaining table. After all is said and done, the enduring reality will be that the EPRDF’s prosecutions were not designed to meet out justice or to set a precedent for the adjudication of the laws of treason, insurrection, and genocide. The unproven charges, repeated delays of courtroom proceedings, the government’s in- and out-of-court repetition of unsubstantiated legal theories were designed to vilify men and women whose worst sin was to vociferously campaign for the EPRDF’s electoral demise. What makes the ruling party reviled among the governed is its willingness to use the country’s legal arms to wrangle political outcomes. The governed are left with a deep-seated resentment that this type of activity is par exellence governance without accountability to the rule of law.

The process by which the EPRDF has arrived at the latest “pardon” does not necessarily usher hope into the hearts of the governed. It merely completes the monstrous noose the government has placed around the fragile neck of Ethiopian democracy. We have repeatedly argued that democracy is not just about reaching the right outcome; its the tedious processes are perhaps more important. We recall one of our earlier postings where we hypothesized a scenario where the CUD was indeed guilty of the crime of treason as charged:

[L]et’s assume for a moment that the EPRDF is right—that those who disagreed with its policies violated basic tenets of democratic debate and engaged in acts of treason. Winston Churchill once remarked that “one of the most unfailing tests of civilization lies in how a country treats people accused of crimes.” The EPRDF’s treatment of those it accuses of committing crimes has rendered the ruling party and the government it leads utter failures under both the civilization and fear tests.

And who speaks for them?

Even though history will not be kind to the EPRDF on its treatment of political dissent, there is the nagging issue of the admission of guilty signed by the detained members of the CUDP. The people of Ethiopia deserve to hear from the leadership as to the degree of culpability they’ve owned up to. Saying that the admission was a result of a drawn-out and complicated elder process (Shemgilina) or that it was signed under duress is not enough. It also leaves both the democracy movement and the people of Ethiopia uninstructed on the limits of constitutionally protected speech and dissent. The people of Ethiopia deserve it.

Ultimately, the EPRDF, as the government, bears the ultimate burden to show that both the process and the outcome of the political settlement were fair. But the ruling party does not seem concerned about fairness. Instead, it is gambling on a scenario where, at best, a mutually assured interpretive destruction ensues where both parties will either be winners or losers, or at worst, to leave a lasting perception in the hearts and minds of the governed that it has the power to ultimately decide the fate of all that cross its path. This list includes individual voices of dissent, opposition parties, civil society, the private media, foreign journalists, and blogs.

So here were are, elated that the leaders of the opposition who have taught millions to advocate for democracy (regardless of its consequences) will no longer have to breath the putrid smell of their prison cages. At the dawn of the Coptic Ethiopian millennium, we must, however, reluctantly believe in Bernhard Meltzer's oft-repeated aphorism: "when you forgive, you in no way change the past—but you sure do change the future."

The opposition will continue to do what it does—oppose. The issue is how the EPRDF will deal with that opposition. Once again, the ball is in the ruling party’s court.

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• Andrew Heavens' departure from Ethiopia has left a void in the Ethiopian blogsphere. We thank Andrew for his work during his stay in Ethiopia and his apparent affection for Ethiopians from all walks of life regardless of the situation in which life has placed them. We hope to soon write a piece on Meskel Square's important contributions to the development of Ethiopian democracy.

Flea

Ethiopian prosecutor Abaraham Tetemke's closing argument yesterday calling for death penalty snapped us from a self-induced reverie. We took a brief hiatus from blogging: needed to recalibrate, re-synch; regain lost time with good friends—old and new, and our families. The horror taking place at the federal "high" court and the government's sickly recommendation for the ultimate sentence prompted our return.

We hope to soon return to our attempt to become, as Ethiopian Politics urges, one of the fleas arrayed against injustice.

Until we publish our own writing, we took the liberty to repost a brilliant op-ed piece by Ethiopian Politics. It is rare to agree with everything we read on the issue of Ethiopian democracy and governance, but we almost always do with ETP. The Millennium Disconnect is one of those writings that remind us of the cyclical and cynical nature of power and politics in Ethiopia. The piece also reverberates our own disgust with the fanfare underway in Addis. We, like ETP, once witnessed the Dergue’s lavish ten-year anniversary celebration, and have long felt the disgust with the upcoming September celebrations when so many of Ethiopia’s children live under dire poverty and the yoke of tyranny.

We encourage you to read the original posting on Ethiopian Politics—it includes images we haven't been able to reproduce, but that tell half of the story. ETP has also blossomed into a valuable news site worthy of daily review for all things Ethiopian. So here goes:

The Millennium Disconnect (Ethiopian Politics)

We are now at a point in Ethiopia, where if someone mentions the word “millennium” - people in the immediate vicinity collectively cringe in disgust. Interestingly enough, our borderline comical and very oblivious government officials, the Prime Minister included, seem to have an insatiable urge to utter the word once every two to three minutes – sentencing the public to unending torture.

When a certain regime stays in power for too long, disconnect with its citizenry is bound to ensue. Through out the world’s history, this detachment is to blame for "If they have no bread, then let them eat cake" moments, in which the ruling elite display their total lack of empathy, sympathy and understanding.

Yes, Ethiopia is no different; and we need not look too hard for evidence either, just forty or so years of recent history will do. In 1972, officials of the then Monarchy were abuzz with excitement over the upcoming 80^th birthday of the Emperor. Extravagant ceremonies were planned, money was spent and officials were fitted for tuxedos.

Meanwhile, there was resentment brewing within the public. Teachers, workers, the military and students who were disappointed with the government's failure to achieve significant economic and political reforms were complaining of rising inflation, corruption and famine. Sadly, we all know how that ended.

Did the next regime learn from the mistakes of the previous? The answer is - not in the least. Not only did it repeat the same mistakes; but it also added some new ones exasperating Ethiopia’s situation from bad to worse.

In 1984, just twelve years after the Emperor’s 80^th birthday, another colossal gala was being planned in Addis. This time for the revolutionaries; the “MEret LAaRashu!” and “AlEm Lewzaderoch!” comrades. The rest of Ethiopia on the other hand, mixed up in a bitter civil war, was going through a draught that made the preceding one pale in comparison.

According to some estimates, close to $100 million in government funds was spent on the celebration of the 10 ^th anniversary of the revolution. (Paul Henze, Layers of Time, 2000).

William Pascoe, a political analyst for the Heritage foundation, in 1987 said

When Through early 1984, even as evidence of impending drought mounted, the regime was concentrating almost solely on preparations for the September celebration of the establishment of the Workers Party of Ethiopia and the tenth anniversary of the revolution.” (Time for action against Menistu’s Ethiopia, Heritage foundation, 1987)

The times;

“For months before the scale of the famine became known, President Mengistu denied its existence and flew in planeloads of whisky to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the revolution.”(Jonathan Clayton, the Times, 2006)

What is happening here? How can a government be so out of touch, so blissfully unaware?

It is a bit difficult to satisfactorily answer this question, as there isn’t a one fits all diagnosis to this problem. It could be that the administration is so intolerant of criticism; it has driven off those with sound judgment and is only surrounded by dim-witted cheerleaders; or it could be arrogance, total disregard for the needs of citizens, “who cares what they think as long as we have the guns”, type thing. Still another possibility: the psychological equivalent of burying one’s head in the sand – wishing problems would disappear if ignored. In all likelihood the ‘disconnect’ is a result of the combination of one or more of the above circumstances.

Here we are today, and once more, Ethiopia’s current regime is preparing to repeat the same mistakes. The Economy is in shambles, famine is on the horizon; we are at war on one border and in a tense standoff in another; the primary aspiration of an Ethiopian currently is leaving the country due to the lack of opportunity; democratically elected parliamentarians are in prison; the free press is no more; human rights abuses are out of control, etc…

And yet, amidst all these problems facing the country, the government is preparing to do some serious celebrating. An AAU (Addis Abeba University) student, writing anonymously on the magazine ‘Abiy Guday’ about the upcoming “millennium celebration” says;

What do we really have to celebrate at the moment? Trouble is pushing in at us from every border – what are the millennium parties going to be like in Somali region, in Gambella? And you don’t need me to remind you about all those terrible development statistics. How about if, instead of all this effort to mark the millennium, we focus our minds on something else, something more concrete. How about if we work out ways to develop the economy and become self-sufficient by 2010 … We could hold a huge party and make lots of speeches – ‘Thank you Mr UNICEF, thank you Ms Red Cross. You have helped us for so long. And we are hugely grateful. But we don’t need you anymore.’

Now There's An Idea.

The Ethiopian government is advertising the millennium party as an event that shouldn't be missed. The September celebration, they say, is going to be one for the history books. Right they are, history will most certainly remember – the same way it remembers the celebrations of the past.

Anthony Mitchell: Keeping the Tormentors Honest

We were grieved to learn of the untimely death of Anthony Mitchell this past weekend. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his wife, children, and all his friends and colleagues at Associated Press. Anthony Mitchell was a true friend of Ethiopia and Ethiopians.

Last year, in Suffocated, we wrote the following on the EPRDF’s expulsion of the journalist, whose only crime was to report the truth:

We are incensed over Anthony Mitchell's expulsion, the jailing of Ethiopian journalists, and the consequence of these draconian measures to the freedom of thought and expression in Ethiopia.

It is one thing for a government to kick out a foreign journalist on grounds of national security threat. But a decision to render a journalist persona non grata for merely "disseminat[ing] information bent on tarnishing the image of the country" brings us closer to the type of tyranny that made Jefferson lose sleep. And Ethiopians, withered by years of governmental repression understand that [ ] tyranny is never a one-time dose; it's part and parcel of an overall intention to muzzle anything printed or spoken by those who disagree. The Walta, ETV, and Fana Radio type of journalism savored by those in power--pamphleteerism--is suffociating and at times puke-worthy. Andrew Heavens' fatigue with what he correctly refers to as blaxploitative headlines is justified (especially those on Gondar) and do nothing to contribute to the marketplace of ideas so stifled in Ethiopia.

And by the way, what image is Ethiopia upholding? Aren't millions dying of hunger? Didn't you shoot kids in broad daylight? What exactly did Frezer and Anthony say or write that deserved the EPRDF's wrath?

Addis Voice has written a befitting tribute which can be read here. Vaya Con Dios, Mr. Mitchell.

Marbles

Find out what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. Frederick Douglas

Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love, only for their fear. Heinrich Himmler

1977

No one mentioned how long she labored to bring me into this world. Or what my birth weight was. My mother birthed me. And that was it. The earliest memories of childhood emerge from a kaleidoscope of marbles: small marbles, large marbles. Bright, colorful marbles. And then there were the buddies. Oh how I loved playing marbles with my buddies!

Barely five years old, we hit marbles with amazing precision—one eye closed shut, head cocked to the side, tongue flicking from corner to corner of our mouths . . . and swoosh!

And one day, someone came and said something like “hey guys, I think they took the Negus away!” My buddies and I stopped our game and glanced at each other for a full two seconds. The event sufficiently digested, we returned to our marble game in progress.

In the fall of 1974, while my brat friends and I argued over marbles, an empire came crashing down. By 1977, we had seen things children should never see—like lots of young people lying in their own pools of blood.

And we stopped playing marbles. Our childhood had come to a screeching halt.

2007

They should’ve told me to blink slowly because when I opened my eyes thirty years had gone by. You’ve traveled thousands of miles from where they buried your umbilical chord, fled an ancient nation whose rulers rendered life hellish for you and your people; sought and acquired refugee status in a new land that welcomed you without much fanfare—just your promise to abide by an uncomplicated document that begins with the words We the People.

Thirty years have offered a life of crossing not just oceans and continental divides but also centuries of philosophical schism on issues of governance, restraint, suffrage, and statecraft.

But your escape from tyranny is only corporal—your mind is back there; you wish the same for the children of Ethiopia, who, in 2007, are petrified out of their wits of those who govern in their name.

Tone Deaf at the Dawn of the Millennium

Here’s what the EPRDF and its supports don’t get: democracy doesn’t exist because a government claims it does. As we argued more than a year ago in Can our Generation be Heard, that judgment belongs to the governed.

Democracy also exists when the governed stop fearing their rulers; when they cease talking about their rulers in surreptitious and hushed tones. This, our friends, is our simple and rudimentary democracy test for an African government.

The EPRDF’s incantations on good governance and the rule of law fall on deaf ears not because the governed have not bought into the EPRDF’s offers of democracy but because the party is preaching to the converted. What the people seek is not a government of dictum but one that restrains its police powers. The EPRDF’s endless litigation of democracy in op-ed pieces is abortive and deathly boring.

The EPRDF wants you to believe that opposition to its rule is wrapped in a cocoon of ethnic hatred for members of the Tigrayan community. We, at Carpe Diem Ethiopia, have repeatedly expressed our abhorrence of ethnic hatred and have in fact placed a high burden on the political party we believe best enshrines Ethiopia’s democratic future—the CUDP—to lead the way in denouncing anyone, including the EPRDF, who expressly or impliedly uses ethnicity to further a political outcome.

But the EPRDF’s and its supporters’ non-sequitur assertions of Tigrayan hatred are nothing but boldfaced red-herringed lies: opposition to the party is rooted in the governed’s disagreement with the party’s prescriptive agenda on countless issues of state governance.

But let’s assume for a moment that the EPRDF is right—that those who disagreed with its policies violated basic tenets of democratic debate and engaged in acts of treason. Winston Churchill once remarked that one of the most unfailing tests of civilization lies is how a country treats people accused of crimes. The EPRDF’s treatment of those it accuses (and suspects) of committing crimes has rendered the ruling party and the government it leads utter failures under both the civilization and fear tests.

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The BBC reported the April 9 dropping of genocide charges against the Ethiopian voices of democracy. In discussing the charges, the report states that “[t]he opposition [CUD] blames the deaths on security forces.” The BBC gets it wrong—almost every international observer, including prominent international human rights organizations, placed that blame squarely on Ethiopia’s security forces—not just the CUDP. On a related note, as we argued in The Consent of the Governed, the attempted genocide charges, much like the treason charges, are rooted in one incontrovertible and indelible truth: bullshit. As we wrote in Consent:

[H]ow does one defend against the charge of genocide? All precedent tells us is that those who commit genocide—the Hitlers, Stalins, Pol Pots, and Milosovics have never been tried, found guilty, and sentenced in courts set up by their own people. Our very own Mengistu falls in that category. Also, the convictions have always required the United Nations or the Allied Powers after the Second World War to set up monstrous tribunals that have attempted to give some semblance of timely, and non-retributive justice administered to the most responsible mass killers. Immensely perplexing is how in the world could people who are not part of a government’s security apparatus or acting on behalf of such entity be charged of the crime of genocide when they have not committed such act or do not have the means to commit it? The EPRDF has thrown us in a bizarre world where those who have done the killing have charged those whose only crime is to demand an end to tyranny through peaceful means.

. . .

When Bereket Simon compared the Ethiopian democratic movement with the Interhamwe, no one knew the metaphor was intended to plant seeds in Ethiopia and abroad to subsequently justify possible post-election crackdowns. The oft-repeated EPRDF reference to the Rwandan experience is deceptively erroneous: the Interhamwe was a government-sponsored mob and was not a civilian campaign that rolled out of control—it was, as Human Rights Watch described, a campaign in which the early organizers were military and administrative officials. The Rwanda genocide was a state-sponsored killing and the EPRDF's disingenuous analogy was designed to create fear among the governed to ultimately justify bogus genocide and treason charges.

Outrage in Addis

Early this morning, the Ethiopian Federal High Court, under the guise of prosecuting acts of treason, decided on a course to continue the process of silencing Ethiopian voices calling for free, fair, and transparent elections. A dose of sulfuric acid has just seared through the arms of the torchbearers of Ethiopian democracy yet the silence of the international media (including that of the BBC’s that has attempted to keep Ethiopia’s authorities honest) is deafening.

We were not entirely surprised by the Easter Week High Court assault but we must admit that we harbored some hope that Ethiopia’s best minds relegated to Kaliti’s dungeons may have a courageous ally on the Federal bench. But hope, as Red warned, and as we frequently forget in EPRDF’s Ethiopia, “is a dangerous thing [that] can drive a man insane.”

So how did we all get here? How did Ethiopia’s voices of democracy end up facing treason charges by the very government that shed the blood of the innocent in the wake of the May 2005 elections?

For the EPRDF, the modus operandi was simple. It just took it right out of Peter Willem Botha's and Robert Mugabe's playbooks of power retention: you send high velocity bullets in the general direction of the heads and chests of the governed who demonstrate, drop them dead, then send your secret police frocked in garbs of the federal police to roam your cities and countryside to hoard the young by the thousands into your notorious detention centers. You do what governments who are not supported by their people have always done—you unleash your hounds of hell to excise hope from the hearts of the hopeful and you force in a frigid climate of fear in your country.

Then you turn a page in the Botha-Mugabe playbook. You cherry pick those who led the freedom movement and place them before un-judicious men cloaked in black robes and accuse them of a plethora of offenses found in Chapter One of the Pretoria-Harare codex: treason, inciting, organizing, or leading armed rebellion, obstruction of exercise of constitutional powers, and impairing the defensive powers of the state.

You then throw a monkey wrench in the playbook and charge them of a crime usually reserved for those in power—incitement to commit genocide. It doesn't end there—in interviews your primo ministro drops the "I" word—insurrection. But that wouldn't carry the imprimatur of legitimacy unless you throw into the mix foreign journalists and dissidents whom you charge with the catch-all crime of "outrages against the Constitution." We held our breaths for the added charges of Celibacy, Gluttony, and Sloth.

Then comes a drawn-out game of charades. You conduct false trials and present a parade of coerced witnesses, illegally obtained “confessions” and evidence that is circumstantial only to the deficiency of its prosecutors and judges. Trials are then started, adjourned, postponed, postponed, and postponed.

The irony in all this is that if the EPRDF's charges carried an iota of truth—had the detained leaders of the CUDP preached to their followers to violently dispose of the governmental order, millions would not have marched to the voting booths on May 15, 2005. The opposition gained the support of Ethiopians from all walks of life in the days leading up to the May elections by its ideas of hope. Not violence. Populist ideas have a way of drawing populations to embrace change and a peaceful future for their children. If the EPRDF’s charges were indeed true, the ruling party would have won a landslide victory unseen in the nation's short electoral history. But the Ethiopian Ministry of Justice’s charges are simply, as Amnesty International describes them, absurd.

So here's what the EPRDF expected the governed to do on May 15, 2005: ignore the opposition's legal, non-violent, and convincing call to the governed to vote the EPRDF out of office because it had failed to deliver sound policy in the agrarian, economic, monetary, and foreign policy realms.

The EPRDF knows if can never successfully convince Ethiopians that the opposition leaders are guilty of the charges extracted from the Botha-Mugabe playbook. It knows that its High Court edicts could never rewrite the May 2005 elections.

Then why is it going through these motions? Like the ZANU-PF the Ethiopian ruling party is bidding for time. Time to rule a few more years; time to realign its forces; time to entrench deeper into a society that is teetering between life and death, with a majority of its citizens who lead a life wondering where their next meal would come; time to overwhelm a nation with its sheer force; time to realign its wealthy and entrenched supporters and to close ranks by separating the weed from the chaff; time for another opportunity to redefine itself, to make a pitch to a nation of kind people for whom forgiveness is an endemic part of life.

But it ignores a powerful lesson in history that even though men are besieged by poverty and disease, the call to an end to tyranny can never be extinguished. The EPRDF is not prepared to heed this powerful lesson in history and today's decision should be viewed in that light.

A repressive government needs to count on the fear of its people to rule in perpetuity. What inspired millions of Ethiopians to follow Engineer Hailu Shawel, Dr. Berhanu Nega, Dr. Yacob Hailemariam, Professor Mesfin Woldemariam (and yes, Lidetu Ayalew) and others to the voting stations in 2005 was the absence of fear in the eyes of their leaders. Messengers of hope possess that peace of mind.

And for that, whatever happens in the EPRDF's "High" Court in 2007, our belief in the powerful ideals of democracy unleashed by the CUDP--the institution of a free press, an independent judiciary, and a representative government that draws its legitimacy only through the consent of the governed will never be extinguished.

Engineer Hailu Shawel Needs Urgent Medical Attention

Folks, read this petition (an Amharic version is available here), and sign it. You can also mail a copy to:

The Honorable Condoleeza Rice Secretary of State United States Department of State 2201 C Street NW Washington, DC 20520

This is an urgent issue that requires your immediate attention. In its recently issued 2006 Country Report on Human Rights Practices (March 6, 2007) the U.S. Department of State listed a series of human rights violations in Ethiopia including poor prison conditions and "abuse, and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces."

The U.S. Department of State must be held accountable to its citizens, including to Americans of Ethiopian origin. The right to petition our government is a right guaranteed since the founding of this country and we should never hesitate to exercise it when the need arises. Petitioning the agency to pressure the government of Ethiopia--its primary regional ally in the Horn--to allow Engineer Hailu access to immediate and proper medical care is not a political demand. It is a purely human rights concern.

An Ethiop Office Rant

I have avoided all interaction with the man down the hall in the past several years since I joined this east coast outfit. The dour self-righteous pre-Madonna’s world view revolves around stale and unsolicited sloganesque rants against Bush, American racism, and organized religion. With the exception of the occasional silly emoticon-filled group e-mails I get from him, our paths generally don't cross each other. The New Englander, like some white liberals I know, loves his causes but not necessarily the people he purportedly defends: talking to black and Latino male coworkers makes him break into a cold sweat.

I overheard his conversation with someone in the hallway not too long ago. I could trace an edge to his nasal timbre. “He doesn’t have the support of the real African-American community right?” Shit. Obviously, Barack Obama. “. . . and minorities (it came out “MNORDYS”) have so much to thank the Clintons, right?” The woman he was talking to is an African-American woman who unfortunately harbors an outward contempt for African- and Caribbean-born immigrants. She kept repeating “that’s right, honey, you got that right!”

WTF?

I resisted the urge to march out of my office to connect my Swingline to Moron 1 and Moron 2’s noggins and instead turned to blogger to start this rant. I have pondered this before in From Kenya with Love: what is it about Bill and Hillary that makes African-Americans believe the fake New Yorkers will deliver them to the Promised Land?

Unfortunately, African-Americans and Africans have borne the brunt of most of President Clinton’s failed policies. Several issues come to mind but let’s look at four: crime, death penalty, immigration, and Rwanda. Turning first to crime, the findings of the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice are revealing—at the end of the Clinton presidency,

With two million people behind bars in the U.S., and 4.5 million people on probation and parole, America ends the Clinton-era with at least 8.5 million people who are either under the control of the correctional system or working for the criminal justice system . . . While everyone is affected by the nation's quadrupling of the prison population, the African American community has borne the brunt of the nation's incarceration boom. From 1980 to 1992, the African American incarceration rate increased by an average of 138.4 per 100,000 per year. Still, despite a more than doubling of the African American incarceration rate in the 12 years prior to President Clinton's term in office, the African American incarceration rate continued to increase by an average rate of 100.4 per 100,000 per year. In total, between 1980 and 1999, the incarceration rate for African Americans more than tripled from 1156 per 100,000, to 3,620 per 100,000.

Toni Morrison’s stupid comment that Clinton is America’s “first black president” had very little to do with the fact that the former president’s policies improved the lives of African-Americans. In her own words, it had everything to do with the fact that Clinton "displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

And who can forget Ricky Ray Rector? In 1992, the governor of Arkansas left a heated presidential race to return to his home state to preside over the execution of a severely retarded African-American death row inmate (Rector saved his desert thinking he would return to finish it after his execution) and sent a clear message to America that he was strong on crime. In a 5mg dose of Sodium thiopental, the presidential candidate erased the specter of a Dukakis dilemma. Clinton would be proven ethically, medically, and constitutionally wrong ten years later: in 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court finally did away with the practice of executing the mentally retarded ruling that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

And then there are Bill Clinton’s 1996 immigration laws that allowed for the wanton deportation of thousands of immigrants, including Ethiopian-Americans. We recognize the complexity of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) (passed along with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) but Clinton signed on to the deportation provisions of the Republican bill in an election year, again, in an attempt to erase any notion of weakness. In an all too familiar Ricky Ray Rector moment,

with the stroke of a pen, then-President Bill Clinton signed two bills that would be remembered notoriously as the 1996 immigration laws. The laws made whole classes of people detainable and deportable. Greencard holders with any contact with the criminal justice system, people fleeing persecution from other countries, undocumented workers earning less than minimum wage, and immigrants detained on secret evidence all became targets of the government, and at risk of permanent exile from the United States. In preparation for deportation, immigrants would be herded off like cattle by Homeland Security (formerly INS) into county jails and prisons around the country, indefinitely. Since 1996 over one million immigrants have been deported.

I’ll end this rant with what is perhaps Clinton’s supposed biggest policy failure of his presidency: the Rwanda genocide. In 2001, following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the National Security Archives published a series of declassified U.S. government documents detailing the Clinton administration’s knowledge of the impending Rwanda genocide (the “final solution” to exterminate Tutsis) and did nothing about it. Clinton’s decision to become a bystander to the unfolding events in Rwanda and why he chose that course are detailed here, here, and here. A poignant commentary on the findings of the National Security Archives, as reported in The Nation states:

[t]hroughout the crisis, considerable U.S. resources--diplomatic, intelligence and military--and sizable bureaucracies of the U.S. government were trained on Rwanda. This system collected and analyzed information and sent it up to decision-makers so that all options could be properly considered and 'on the table.' Officials, particularly at the middle levels, sometimes met twice daily, drafting demarches, preparing press statements, meeting or speaking with foreign counterparts and other interlocutors, and briefing higher-ups. Indeed, the story of Rwanda for the U.S. is that officials knew so much, but still decided against taking action or leading other nations to prevent or stop the genocide. Despite Rwanda's low ranking in importance to U.S. interests, Clinton administration officials had tremendous capacity to be informed--and were informed--about the slaughter there.

Relax, Clinton lovers: I’m no Clinton hater. Overall, 42 is possibly one of the most brilliant presidents to occupy the White House. But black love for Hillary based on a bizarre and misplaced black love for Bill is infantile. Even more unfortunate is the African-American rallying behind the fake New Yorker without even listening to a single debate between the top Democratic hopefuls, and this includes John Edwards.

I don’t agree with Obama on every issue. Nor do I believe America is ready for him (yet). But based on what I’ve seen and heard to date, I dig the son of a Kenyan immigrant who is no intellectual lightweight. I also have faith in America: it is, after all, the land of the possible.

As far as the New Englander (and those who sent me links to Hillary Clinton’s campaign website following my last piece on Obama), S P F C C M T. As to Obama’s “blackness,” a recent Guardian article is a must read.

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The Call for Democracy (Dr. Berhanu calling it here)

Ethiopian democracy continues to be on a standstill: Predictably, the treason and attempted genocide trials have met repeated courtroom delays and the unwillingness (and/or inability) of High Court judges to proceed with deliberations on the underlying alleged offenses signals continued governmental repression. The 2006 U.S. Country Report on Human Rights Practices recounts a laundry list of abuses, including

limitation on citizens' right to change their government during the most recent elections; unlawful killings, and beating, abuse, and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention, particularly those suspected of sympathizing with or being members of the opposition; detention of thousands without charge and lengthy pretrial detention; infringement on citizens' privacy rights and frequent refusal to follow the law regarding search warrants; restrictions on freedom of the press; arrest, detention, and harassment of journalists for publishing articles critical of the government; restrictions on freedom of assembly; limitations on freedom of association; violence and societal discrimination against women and abuse of children; female genital mutilation (FGM); exploitation of children for economic and sexual purposes; trafficking in persons; societal discrimination against persons with disabilities and religious and ethnic minorities; and government interference in union activities.

The Country Report paints a picture of a country besieged by a leadership unwilling to heed the calls of the governed to be ruled under an open and transparent decision-making process. The people of Ethiopia deserve better. Although a clear vindication by the Court is the best outcome for the imprisoned leaders of the CUDP, we are happy to read about the U.S. Ambassador’s attempts to seek a negotiated release. Given their age and physical condition—especially Engineer Hailu Shawel’s and Professor Mesfin Woldemariam’s—we are hopeful the leaders could, at the very least, fight the false charges while released on bail. Denying them and the other prisoners such a right is cruel, vindictive, and consistent with the pattern and behavior of repressive African regimes. Arguments that they are charged with high crimes or that they would pose a flight risk are laughable and smack of political as opposed to judicial decisions.

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The only good thing that has come out of ET Wonqette’s silence is that I finally managed to browse through her archives to read postings I missed in the past couple of years. Until she returns to blogging, I urge you to take your time to review her archives. Weichegud is as good as blogging gets.

From Kenya with Love: Barack Hussein Obama

Senator Barack Obama's decision this morning to throw his hat in the presidential race is a significant moment in this nation's history. In MLK, Jr., Ethiopia, and Protest Politics, we honored the work and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., and in so doing, recognized the numerous legislative and judicial victories scored by African-Americans in the last century (to name a few, voting rights, access to education, health care, housing, public benefits, employment, and affirmative action). The African-American struggle for equality clearly made America live up to the promises of liberty and justice its founders promised to the governed in 1787.

Beyond the historic significance of Obama’s announcement, the Illinois senator’s candidacy will allow registered African-American voters (including Ethiopia-Americans) in the Democratic Party a clear alternative to the carpet-bagging junior senator from our favorite state in the Union. Yes, Hillary Clinton and her arrogant and demeaning posture vis-à-vis African-American voters is back and managing to convince, yet again, many in the African-American community that she, like her husband, is "black" and deserving of their support. (When, by the way, will African-American voters stop giving their vote lock, stock, and barrel to the Democratic Party?)

This is not a posting that throws its support behind Obama's campaign—we simply find the candidate to be compelling and one who reconciles the dreams and aspirations of African-American voters, be they descendants of slaves or the recently arrived. In her recent comments, writer Stephanie Molkins opined that the meaning of Black History month "has far exceeded the hopes of its founder [Carter G. Woodson]. It not only highlights the impact of African-Americans on society. It also helps people remember the danger of racial and socio-economic oppression which effect more than just blacks. This month helps everyone see the importance of human rights for all people and is the reason why it should always be celebrated."

In continuing to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., Black History Month, and the importance of today’s announcement to American history, we sign-off with one of our favorite passages from Obama's book Dreams of My Father (2004):

I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder—alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware—is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.

Bealu Girma: Now, at this Moment

He came to class reeking of the brothel where he had spent the night and of the undistilled Katikala that still swam in his body. He was a drunk fool, my Amharic teacher, a man small in stature and in mind and prone to hurling insults at his students in the cruelest words he could conjure in the Amharic language. He was unashamed to discharge audible bodily vapors so putrid those of us condemned to his class learned to hate our own language.

But then there were those rare moments of sobriety that more than made up for the daily gaseous inferno. A lucid clear-eyed man would bounce from the door to his desk in his heavy platform shoes and bark a perky "endimin aderachuh!" to a room of adolescents uncertain how to deal with the malevolent moods of an alcoholic teacher. A torturous gilmicha (glare-filled) roll-call later, the tiny man would ceremoniously reach for a crumpled paperback from his equally crumpled jacket. He would then launch into a dramatic reading from Oromay, the recently published novel by Bealu Girma.

He told us he read Bealu Girma "for both content and form" ("le fere negeruna l'aTaTalu.") The year was 1983 and the teacher's occasional reading of possibly the most controversial Ethiopian novel of all time kept his students who were no more than fifteen years of age, riveted. As we sat lost in Bealu's tempestuous world of love and war, none of us knew the novel had already unleashed forces that ultimately took from Ethiopia's literary scene a writer whom Reidulf Molvaer, contemporary chronicler of Ethiopia's writers, describes as "the most consistently good writer Ethiopia has produced." (Black Lions: The Creative Lives of Modern Ethiopia's Literary Giants, 1997).

I have always wanted to write about Bealu Girma—my favorite Ethiopian novelist—but found writing about him extremely challenging. For starters, out his six novels (Kadmas Bashager (Beyond the Horizon), Yehilina Dewel (The Bell of Consciousness), Yeqey Kokeb Teri (The Call of the Red Star), Haddis, Derasiw (The Author), and Oromay ("Now, at this Moment"), I have only read three—Kadmas, Haddis, and Oromay. Second, the novelist's personal life and work deserve separate volumes of their own. Bealu's life and death are of Shakespearean proportions: Julius Caesar comes to mind—much like the Roman emperor's unprecedented expansion of his empire by his sheer ability to bend the will of men, the Ethiopian author reached the apogee of creativity by his ability to gain almost a cult following that allowed him survive unscathed through much of his career despite his persistently harsh criticism of the societies in which he lived. (In addition to his novels, Bealu Girma served as editor for newspapers and magazines including Menen, Addis Reporter, Addis Zemen, Yezareyitu Ityopia, and The Ethiopian Herald , much of this while serving as a high-ranking official at the Ministry of Information). Also, like the conqueror of Gaul, Bealu was murdered by erstwhile admirers and colleagues. And who can ever forget Almaz? Much like Calpurnia, Caesar's beautiful wife who foresaw the emperor's death, Bealu's wife, Almaz, known to be of striking beauty, had warned her husband to stay home on the day of his abduction and disappearance in February 1984.

His fascinating biography is recounted in Molvaer's Black Lions. Bealu Girma was born in 1938 or 1939 in the province of Illubabor, Bealu's natural father was an Indian carpenter from Gujirat, India, who remained in Ethiopia after he fell in love with an Ethiopian woman, Bealu's mother. Bealu's father returned to India when Bealu was very young but a determined mother ensured that her son received an excellent education, first in Illubabor and subsequently in Addis Ababa, at Princess Zenebework Secondary School. Bealu's excellent grades earned him a scholarship at General Wingate Secondary School. He went on to graduate from Addis Ababa University and then moved to the United States where he earned a masters degree in journalism. In the early 1960s he returned to Ethiopia and soon thereafter joined the Ethiopian Ministry of Information.

While his work as editor of some of the most respected papers and magazines earned him respect as a journalist, it was at the Ministry of Information where Bealu found a lifelong career as a civil servant. His high-ranking position at the ministry allowed him to gain powerful allies and enemies, including Ethiopia's dictator Mengistu Hailemariam. Throughout his career, Bealu's associations with his allies and admirers allowed him to write critically and uncensored during both the Haile Selassie and Mengistu regimes, and it was through his association with these allies that Oromay was subsequently born.

The novel that led to his untimely death in the hands of the Derg (he was only 45) has its progeny in his earlier and critically acclaimed novel, Haddis . The word Oromay, uttered by an Ethiopian of Eritrean descent in Haddis means a questo punto—Italian for "now at this moment." The moment in Oromay was 1982, during the planning and execution of the Red Star Campaign ( yeqey kokeb zemecha)—the Derg's most sustained offensive in Eritrea planned jointly by Soviet and Ethiopian generals. The naming of the campaign "Red Star" was after Bealu's earlier novel of the same name. In an effort to project an image of force and finality, Mengistu had taken his entire senior military apparatus and cabinet level ministers to Asmara for several months in marathon planning and conference sessions. Bealu, who was invited to Asmara, remained in the city for three months where he was granted interviews with several high ranking Derg officials.

According to Molvaer, Mengistu Hailemariam granted Bealu several interviews and may have even read and approved earlier manuscripts of the novel. He must have because the book starts with a prologue by Mengistu himself in which the dictator states that the book was written in the spirit of making Ethiopia's revolution complete and the realization of a Worker's Party in Ethiopia. Mengistu signed his foreword with his standard shibboleth Ye Ityopya Abyot le zelalem yenur! ("may Ethiopia's revolution live forever!")

With Mengistu's introductory praise for the book, one would expect writing that hails the life and work of the dictator. But what pours forth in next 370 pages (Kuraz Publishers, 1^st Edition) led to Bealu's murder in the hands of Mengistu's security apparatus, all editors at Kuraz Publishers sacked, and the book pulled from every bookseller in the country. According to Molvaer, officials were even snatching the book from anyone seen with it. (In our class, my teacher stopped reading from the novel, but to his credit, switched to Kadmas Bashager). In Oromay, Bealu identified members of the Derg under altered names yet whose identities were readily apparent to most readers at the time. Bealu's mockery of Mengistu whom he identifies as "the Comrade Chairman" and refers to as The Man (Sewiyew), and whose Asmara speech he reproduced with subtle parodic alterations was astounding and many are convinced Bealu made an error in judgment to believe the former dictator would tolerate the author's vituperations. The novel's protagonist's (Tsegaye Hailemariam) impressions when he first saw Sewiyew in the Addis Ababa-Asmara flight sets the author's sardonic tone vis-à-vis the dictator (all translations mine):

The protocol officer loudly announced "the Comrade Chairman!" All racket, chatter, and whispering in the plane came to a sudden hush. One could have heard a needle falling. A voice of a man's man. A smile that comes from the heart and strikes like lightning. Extreme politeness that almost breaks the spirit . . . The Man! He wore a lovely military uniform. When I saw him, I was washed with feelings of strength and self-confidence. Even though men who lead nations are mere mortal beings, I am always surprised by their ability to make men respect, love, and fear them. I see them as larger than life. Perhaps it is because they have their people's consent to be their protectors or maybe because they carry on their shoulders the pride of their people. I don't know. But in any event, for these or other reasons, I tend to respect people in power. And my colleagues who have observed this in me talk about me behind my back and say, "there he goes wagging his tail when he sees a person in power." May God curse them! I'm not a person who wags his tail! Even though I don't know much about myself, I know I don't wag my tail! (Oromay, 18).

The novel is an excellent read and its underlying story of its protagonist's love for two women ("Tsegereda Me'akel Hager" (Rose of the Central Land) and "Key Kokeb" (Red Star) set in the background of the military campaign, and his ultimate loss of both women recounted a recurrent theme in Bealu Girma's novels about the recklessness of man not just in the affairs of the heart but also in his inability to rule wisely.

Bealu's disappearance in February 1984 was preceded by the abrupt withdrawal of the book from the market and its subsequent banning in Ethiopia. Bealu's liquidation in the hands of Mengistu's security agents was confirmed after the downfall of the Derg and reading about it in Mengistu's own words is downright chilling (See Seifu Negussie's interview in Chewata, January 2003).

Hands down, Bealu Girma is Ethiopia's best creative writer. It is difficult to summarize Bealu's work within the parameters of this short piece but I can say that three of his novels I have read unravel intricately spun narratives without being convoluted; complex yet accessible characters that are deeply flawed but are almost never beyond redemption. And rare among Ethiopia's novelists, Bealu took great pains to create multidimensional female characters that are never two-sided or subservient to the whims of men or the situations in which a male-dominated society places them. Bealu Girma's novels are unquestionable labors of love created by a man who left us enduring tomes of Ethiopic literature.

A celebration of Bealu's work and achievements is timely. Writers, whether they are journalists or creative writers, are able to put into words the hopes and aspirations of the generation in which they live. Bealu did just that. He has single-handedly inspired hundreds of Ethiopian writers to test Ethiopia's ability to tolerate dissent and its willingness to respect the freedom of expression—the foundation on which the altar of democracy is built. Like him, many have paid with their lives. Bealu Girma left us six incredible novels but more important, a legacy of defiance, courage, and opposition to tyranny. I am reminded of James Baldwin's comment "the obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it—at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only ways societies change."

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• A first draft of this posting (our 40th) appeared in the [first] November 2006 issue of The Big Issue Ethiopia. Special thanks to Andrew Heavens of Meskel Square for inviting me to write for a promising magazine and a wonderful idea to get kids to “work and not beg.”

• A short ETV interview with Bealu Girma can be seen on youtube here.

• I am grateful to one of my favorite bloggers, Yagerlig of Redeem Ethiopia, for his help on this piece (Molvaer's account was indispensable--thanks for sharing it).

• We miss the Wonqette. The internet is a vapid region without her prolific writing. Her blog inspired us to create Carpe Diem Ethiopia.

• Very much obliged to Fikru Halebo for linking our previous positing in his awesome blog Enset. His writing and blog inspires us to keep our “eyes on the prize.”

Revenge: A Dish Best Served with Civility

So we started the New Year with images of a botched cell phone-recorded hanging of a man a few months shy of his seventieth birthday shooting through a trap door while attempting to drown out the taunting jeers of an angry mob with his own incantations of an incomplete death prayer. By turning a judicially sanctioned execution into a degrading display of vengeance, the Iraqi government failed to seize a momentous occasion to show one of the worst offenders of human rights the dignity of death he denied to millions of Iraqis, Iranians, and Kuwaitis during his quarter-century rule. The Butcher of Bagdad certainly did not deserve to be afforded dignity in his last hours but it is not unreasonable to expect a young democracy emerging from decades of bloodshed to use every opportunity to teach those it governs the virtues of justice and forgiveness.

We recognize the Iraq war is highly divisive and many, including those in the Ethiopian-American community, are frustrated about this war that has dragged on with no respite in sight and that has left tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and more than 3024 U.S. troops dead. Despite the horrific Faustian scenes out of Bagdad and Anbar and the Bush administration’s screw-ups since declaring victory in Iraq (we draw our conclusions from Bob Woodward’s three-part book Bush at War (I-III) and particularly State of Denial—all three are great reads), immediate redeployment of U.S. troops at this time is not a feasible option and would be disastrous for the people of Iraq. The Democrats on the Hill have so far failed to articulate a sound and a workable solution in Iraq. Their hands are understandably tied--they do not control the executive branch of the government and there are few options left. But to demand instant troop withdrawal is to abandon any hope for democracy in Iraq.

No one needs to remind Iraqis to rise to this critical point in their history and to reject sectarianism and the temptation to vendetta themselves into extinction. Those with cooler heads--including the government of Nouri al-Maliki--must do everything in their power to become the calming waters that douse the passions ablaze in that nation and not the kindling that enflames them.

The Iraqi government’s missteps of late demonstrated its ability to sink to mind-boggling levels of incompetence leaving a world aghast and to wonder if the yet again botched and nauseating beheading of the despot’s half-brother is a harbinger of worse times ahead for the people of Iraq. We certainly hope not. Iraqi blogs we often visit, including Iraq the Model, Iraq Pundit, Iraq at a Glance, Iraq Girl, Healing Iraq, The Mesopotamian and others depict a challenging but not an impossible road ahead for Iraqis.

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In Republic of Fear we briefly touched on our extreme opposition to the death penalty, even when administered to those who commit mass human rights violations. We applaud the Ethiopian High Court’s decision to sentence Mengistu Hailemariam and his aides to life in prison following that court’s conviction of the primary architects of Qey Shibir (Red Terror) of the crimes of genocide, murder, imprisonment, and property seizure. We have lost families during the Qey Shibir scourges but nothing we do can return our loved ones to us. (Postings that discuss the Qey Shibir include Revanchist Hearts and Perfect Genocide Memorial.)

We continue to grieve our family members but no Kerchele hanging or firing squad will provide solace to our bruised souls. Contrariwise, the High Court’s decision uplifted our spirits: the life sentences reminded us that somehow, the cycle of death spun by Mengistu Hailemariam—one of the most evil Ethiopians alive—needed to come to a halt.

Several questions arise following the Federal High Court’s decision: was it prompted to project the image of judicial independence in Ethiopia? Is this a cynical attempt to legitimize the same court that is trying the leaders of the Coalition for Unity & Democracy (CUD), journalists, and others, and who are facing charges that carry the penalty of death? Was it intended to make possible convictions palatable for consumption in the international community?

The EPRDF’s relentless pursuit of convictions for bogus treason and attempted genocide charges forces cynicism into our writing. Regardless, whether the High Court's decision was made in the Guebbi or in the minds of undeterred judges, how can Ethiopia ever justify the need for a death penalty statute in its books? If the High Court’s life sentences survive appeal, given the fact that an Ethiopian court has spared the lives of some of the worst human rights offenders, what use does the death penalty serve the country? Put differently, how can an Ethiopian court pass a death sentence on a common murderer when those who exterminated an entire generation of kids were spared the ultimate sentence? Would that death sentence ever pass the smirk test?

The only solution is for Ethiopia to get rid of state-sanctioned death immediately and to join 13 nations in Africa that have abolished the death penalty for all crimes (Angola, Cape Verde, Cote D’Ivoire, Djibouti, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, and South Africa). Twenty other African nations retain the death penalty on the books but according to Amnesty International, no longer carry out executions (guess which country is on that list).

This is the last posting we will write on Mengistu Hailemariam. We consider the chapter on that monster closed and we’re pretty much done talking about that vermin. More pressing issues confront Ethiopian democracy, and perhaps the most important is the February 2007 date when the Ethiopian High Court will decide if the charges and evidence presented against the leaders of the CUD and others hold water. This is Ethiopia’s greatest test in 2007—whether its judges will tell the EPRDF that its pitiful treason and attempted genocide charges are as empty as the democracy the party promised and took away from the people of Ethiopia in 2005.

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This posting is for the thousands of Ethiopian families (including mine) who lost loved ones in the hands of the Derg since that fateful day in November 1974 when 58 former officials were slaughtered in the Alem Bekagn ("Enough of this World") ward of Kerchele Prison.

This posting is also for the children of Iraq who’ve learned to fall asleep with the sound of exploding mortars. May God protect them in the coming days.

The Republic of Fear

It's easy to get lost in the numbers—no less than two million Iraqis died under Saddam Hussien’s watch. Images of Kurdish children lying prostrate, dead on the spot they breathed Saddam’s deadly mustard gas—the same biological weapon used by fascist Italy against Ethiopian villagers in 1935—show one of the most horrific acts of brutality known to mankind. The Butcher of Bagdad’s 1986-88 chemical and biological weapon attacks on thousands of innocent Iraqis in Halabja and al-Anfal are only a few examples of his systematic campaign to exterminate opposition to his brutal twenty-five year rule.

In various postings, we have stated our support for the war on terror. We are convinced that the dictator’s quarter-century rule needed to come to an end. In the long run, his removal from power will allow Iraqis the opportunity to build a nation based on tolerance and respect for the rule of law. We are further convinced that despite the US-led coalition’s failure to secure the peace following the regime’s downfall as well as the ensuing sectarian violence that may inflame the country and the region in further bloodshed, the powerful ideals of democracy and representative government have found their way into the hearts and minds of the governed all across the Middle East.

International lawyers and commentators will be debating the fairness of the political and judicial process that led to the dictator’s execution early this morning. Some of the questions will concern the removal of judges during the trials and whether the in- and out-of-court statements made by the Iraqi cabinet compromised the former defendant’s due process rights. The latter possibility is disconcerting—we have stated in past postings on the treason trials against the leaders of the CUD that improper political interference in judicial affairs is a primary indicator of a government’s use of its courts to determine a political as opposed to a just outcome.

Beyond issues of fairness is also the appropriateness of Saddam Hussein’s execution before other cases were heard, especially the trials on the massacre of Kurds. In our view, the need to create a meticulous record of the killings with the primary architect facing the charges and the victims’ families in court was compelling; such trials would have also shown to the world the horrors of chemical and biological warfare. We further believe such trials would have helped bolster the Bush administration’s claim of Saddam Hussein’s possession of and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction.

What we nevertheless take from this incredible day in history is a reaffirmation of the notion that heads of states will answer for the crimes they commit against their people. Saddam Hussein’s conviction by the Iraq tribunal comes in the heels of the Rwanda and former Yugoslavia tribunal verdicts against individuals who participated in genocides against their people and goes a long way in sending a powerful message to those who engage in terror and extermination that such acts of impunity will not go unpunished.

Notwithstanding this powerful and timely lesson; however, we regret Saddam Hussein’s execution today. We agree with Richard Dicker, Human Rights Watch’s Director of the International Justice Program, that “the test of a government’s commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders.” We categorically reject the use of the death penalty even when imposed by a properly constituted court. In our view, an execution, whether carried out by Saddam Hussein against hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians or by a properly constituted court is the same: it is wrong. It is evil. Amnesty International states it best: the death penalty is the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights.

The man who created the Republic of Fear is gone for good. On this day, our thoughts and prayers are with Saddam Hussein's victims and with the people of Iraq who must find a way to create a viable system that will allow them and their children to live in peace.

Term Limits: Unknown in Ethiopia

"We must resist the powers to keep our independence" Menelik II

The bright stars set against the dark night above Mount Entoto must have been a spectacular sight to the aging monarch from Ankober. A devoutly religious man, he woke up early in the morning to recite the Psalms of David before tending to the affairs of his ancient yet infant empire. Having pulverized a recently united, desperate, and foolhardy European power, the brilliant warrior literally and figuratively stood on top of his nation. With his back turned to an ancient highland past and his navel to an equally historic lowland south that would soon fall under his empire, he observed his garrisons camped on the frosty hill that stood 10,000 feet above sea level. They were armed to the teeth with weapons seized from a humiliated Italy and also supplied by European powers with dubious intentions; prepared to respond to the steady beating of the Negarit, ready to act at the monarch’s bidding, and ready to push Ethiopia’s frontiers to her limits.

His beloved second wife, not-so-lovely-to-look-at-but-a-must-have for any empire builder, shared her husband’s dreams of southern conquest but had her eyes set on the hot springs a few miles south. The Gondarine arthritic who couldn’t stand Entoto’s chilly nights spoke rarely, but when she did, her words resonated in her husband’s heart and in those of her enemies—“I am a woman…I do not like war…[h]owever, I would rather die than accept your deal” (rejecting Count Antonelli’s interpretation of the Wechale Treaty). On matters relating to palace intrigue and power play the monarch turned to her wisdom which the Light of Ethiopia supposedly dispensed with clairvoyant precision but which ultimately failed to serve her own end.

The emperor was no humanitarian—like George Washington a century earlier, the Ethiopian nation builder owned slaves and never considered ending ownership of human chattel. As the 19^th Century drew to a close, the Ethiopian ruler’s dreams were unrequited and his ambition to expand Ethiopia’s frontiers to the south, southeast and southwest frontiers were only stopped by the ubiquitous British and French whose dreams to control the headwaters of the Nile would have placed those territories under the British Empire (extending from the Sudan and Kenya); French Legion d’Honneur outposts as far inland as Asbe Teferi; and the Brits and the fascists duking it out in the Ogaden. Through sheer will, King of Kings Menelik II struck fast and hard and brought in formidable people and fertile lands within the confines of the emerging empire.

Conquest is a bitter affair for the conquered—men die defending their villages, women are impregnated by foreign DNA, and their children are turned into slaves, caretakers of the offspring of conquistadors. Our history books and numerous unpublished masters and doctorate theses stacked on the shelves of AAU recount the countless wealth that flowed north following the conquest of the Oromo and Southern lands—grain, livestock, ivory, gold, and yes, human chattel. Clearly, the inclusion of these lands and people into Ethiopia resulted in an exponential economic windfall for the empire. It also added to the nation a wealth of cultures some extremely rich in democratic traditions and thousands of miles of buffer zones contiguous to the Indian Ocean that served to limit expansionist ambitions connived at the 1884 Berlin Conference as well as irredentist zeal of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. The monarch handed to his predecessor(s) an Ethiopia spatially, demographically, militarily, and economically unimagined by the two Kassas before him. And for that, Ethiopia is today and will always be a power to be reckoned with.

But frontiersmanship always comes to a halt, as it must. Warriors at times engage in self-destructive behavior—they cross rubicons and take on more that they can peacefully administer. Campaigns also meet “natural deaths”—rivers, seas, cliffs, impenetrable forests, and mountain ranges—God’s barriers that allow soldiers to finally sheath their swords and to transform them into plough shares. Frontiersmanship takes on a new annotation: the collective aspiration of warriors and their descendants to secure a peaceful future for their children. For many nations, the process of creating political stability takes centuries.

"Apart from the Kingdom of the Lord there is not on this earth any nation that is superior to any other” Haile Selassie I

34 Years

Think what you must about the legacy of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I but the important role he occupies in Ethiopian history cannot be denied. In November 1930, at the time of his coronation, the 38-year-old assumed a nation without access to the sea, a written constitution, with a medieval economy, inexistent infrastructure, and militarily vulnerable—a reenergized fascist Italy breathing its putrid colonial breath across the Mereb River and who would soon use chemical-biological weapons to march into his capital in its zeal to avenge its humiliation in Adwa. But the emperor did it—in just 34 years, the son of Menelik’s favorite cousin created a strong unitary state, reclaimed Mereb-Melash and an outlet to the sea, helped create the OAU and ECA and brought their headquarters to Ethiopia, and shepherded his nation through the untenable world of non-alignment. And these are only a few of his achievements.

But HIM’s claim to power (essentially, descendance from a dubious union that resulted from an act of Judaic rape) and rule were certainly not democratic. By the end of the 1960s, a new direction was sorely needed and the emperor, for all sorts of reasons, was simply unable to read the pulse of his people. HIM’s undoing was his failure to imagine an Ethiopia without the Solomonic Dynasty and in that sense he was no different than Menelik—for all his accomplishments, he failed to bestow to his vassals the greatest gift he could have imparted to them: a system of governance that allows Ethiopians to have a say in their country’s future.

Ploughshares into Swords

Despite the uplifting Ityopia Tikdem rallying cry, sanguinous Mengistu Hailemariam drenched his country in rivers of blood unseen in the nation’s history. He did so by convincing young men to join death squads that hunted and cut down those who dissented. By creating a culture of mass flight out of the country, Mengistu (and his predecessor Meles Zenawi) turned Ethiopians into refugees who live as second-class citizens throughout the world. Mengistu’s end, like his predecessor’s was identical—he was forced to abandon power by those who wielded superior military power.

The more things change the more they stay the same. Since 1995, Ethiopia’s leadership has told us that unlike prior regimes it has received the consent of its people to rule over them. It has told us over and over again its claim to power is based on expressed consent it received in three election cycles. Repeated United States Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, by in large unopposed and unresponded to by Ethiopia, informs the conclusions we draw that those who dared to disagree with the EPRDF’s prescriptive agenda in the constitutional, political (domestic and foreign policy) and judicial realms have either paid for their disagreement with their lives or received brutal physical and/or psychological torture in the country’s notorious detention centers. When dissenters enjoy access to the public (like the leaders of the Coalition of Unity & Democracy), the EPRDF has used its security, judicial, and information apparatus to mete out its version of justice through surveillance, prolonged detention without change, presentation of false charges, and outright defamation of character.

And so we return to the warrior afoot on Mount Entoto. Empires are built by individuals who allow their dreams to seep beyond the frontiers they’ve inherited; to reach levels of expansion and power unfathomed by their predecessors. When judging these characters history’s eyes should nonetheless be fair—acts of barbarism of the heretofore must not be free of condemnation but revision and attendant reproach must be fair—after all, if we use past persecution practiced by the ancien order as a yardstick to measure the ability of a people to ultimately create a democratic society, America’s barbaric acts against native Americans and African slaves would render her system of individual liberty, separation of powers, and independence of judiciary, ideals on which we model our ideals of democracy, negligible.

The yardstick we use is one that contemplates the future—the question of whether a particular society has learned from its past mistakes and whether it uses those lessons to devise policy that serves the interests of Ethiopians and Ethiopians alone. For starters, the political party Ethiopian voters should support is not one that merely proves its superiority to the EPRDF by listing a litany of promises to adhere to lofty democratic ideals (not difficult to do so) but one that also runs on a single commitment: to limit the number of years it intends to rule.

Yes, my friends, the more things change the more they stay the same. Ethiopians have been governed by a group of heretics who replicated Joseph Stalin’s rule in Ethiopia and now by former Albanian Communists who waive a sickly and withered democratic banner as a pretext to rule in perpetuity. Monarchs have come and gone as have, and eventually will, “revolutionaries” of various types—the “socialists” and the “democrats”—but what remains constant is the curse that has befallen this nation of 70 million people of never having been blessed with rulers who have relinquished power voluntarily.

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• We look forward to discussing Dr. Berhanu's Goh. ET Wonq's suggestion, like her blog, is brilliant. We can't promise acuity but will do our best to contribute to the Wonq's attempt to engage all of us in a productive (and yes, democratic) exercise.

• Enkwan le berhane lidetu aderesachuh. (Merry Ethiopian Christmas)

• May the new Gregorian year bring peace to the good people of Ethiopia.

The Contributing Ethiopian

We wish to congratulate Ato Fassil Yirgu, Ethiopian-American owner of Chicago based Nyala Publishing, for being one of five immigrants who received the 2006 Changing Worlds' Immigrant & Refugee Contribution Award.

Ato Yirgu, editor of One House: The Battle of Adwa 1896--100 years (with Pamela S. Brown, 1996) brought us The Texture of Dreams by author Fasil Yitbarek in 2005. Read reviews of the novel by Tecola Hagos, Helm Magazine, Richard Pankhurst, and here; an interview with Yitbarek on The Big Issue Ethiopia is available on the publisher's site. Also available on that site are several interesting titles we can't wait to pick up.

When people speak STEAM happens

Democrats ran on a campaign for a new direction in the nation’s war on terrorism and it looks like they obtained a protest vote. Now comes the hard part for the Democratic Party: Governance. It must offer sound policy on the Iraq question beyond the soundbites.

Regardless of what happens in the Senate (still up in the air at the time of this posting but it’s likely the Democrats may eak out a victory there too), we draw two overarching lessons from tonight’s midterm election results: first, when people speak, politicians bow down to the will of the people—this, dear EPRDFers, is the Rule of Law. Second, a government of checks and balances is one that best protects democracy and forestalls tyranny. This is democracy at work.

The incredible story for Ethiopian-Americans and advocates of HR 5680 is Nancy Pelosi’s (8^th District, San Francisco) accession to the leadership position in the lower chamber. The new Speaker, who now has the most influential power in Washington in her hands—that of the power of the purse—will have a lot on her plate, but it’s now up to her Ethiopian-American constituents in San Francisco. You folks didn’t ask for it but a bill is now in your backyard.

As to Dennis Hastert, Confucius say: