Let’s start with the numbers: In a country of 73 million only 113,000 or (0.2%) of Ethiopians have access to the internet (2005 figures). Compare this number with another African country with an almost identical population—Egypt: population—72 million, internet users—5,000,000 (21.1%).
Other African countries with pathetic Ethiopia-like numbers include the Democratic Republic of Congo (58 million; 50,000 users (0.2%), Tanzania (38M, 333,000 users (1.5%); Eritrea, well, you can check the numbers at the Internet World Stats site. The company provides interesting and at times surprising breakdowns of internet users in every country in the world.
Meles Zenawi apparently experiences digital dreams. As recently as August 2005 cyber cracker Zenawi sounded like Bill Gates:
I want to see ICT [information communications technology] pervade all our activities as a government, not just in the urban areas. We want to connect all our villages in two to three years. All education services, likewise. We would also like to provide a bit of telemedicine.
So, why would Meles-let’s-spread-the word-Zenawi order the blocking of news and blog sites when there are such few internet users in the country? To say the TPLFer is a despot bent on restricting the freedom of expression and speech in Ethiopia is far too easy. The Meles regime's killing of peaceful dissenters and indefinite detention of political leaders and thousands of young people in the aftermath of the elections under the glare of the world’s cameras spoke volumes of Meles’ indifference to public opinion in Ethiopia and abroad. Seriously, being labeled a blog-blocker pales in comparison to the extrajudicial killing and incarceration he has unleashed on his people.
Notwithstanding the EPRDF’s cyber crackdown, internet subscribers in Ethiopia will find alternative means to access blocked websites thanks to mass e-mail campaigns (see Ethio Zagol's May 26 posting and RSS feeds (see Meskel Square's Magnificent 8). Clearly, Ethiomedia, Ethiopian Review, and Ethiopia-related news sites and blogs that operate on the blogger platform will survive Meles’ censorship.
But here’s what's baffling: If Meles has done his homework and did indeed seek the advice of the Chinese (which we doubt—aren’t there Ethiopians who can do that?), he would know his blog-blocking venture would be tantamount to placing a band-aid on a shotgun wound. Given the negligible gains blog-blocking brings him, he should conclude his cyber censorship is more harmful to his regime's image than the trouble worth going through.
So why did he do it? The true reasons lie in the secret rooms of the offices of the regime's security agents—those known and unknown to the public; it exists in the dark and fecund minds of these few heretics who have sworn allegiance not to their country and their people but to the preservation of a regime at all cost. We can be sure of these obvious reasons—those that ascribe despotism—but there is also another reason right in front of our very noses.
Our take on why they're doing it? To show you, the editors of news sites and bloggers as well as our readers that they could. It's simple as that. It says I can reach you; it says "you're put on notice: I fucking hate you."
That was the only reason Meles Zenawi brought his pathetic civil suit in the United States against Tensae Radio: I will come after you, wherever you are. What surprises us is not the evil that lurks in the minds of the men and women who work for the feared TseTita in Ethiopia and abroad but the sheer banality of their evil.
Does anyone doubt this is their motive? If they knew our identities and had access to our bodies in Ethiopia, what would they do? Would stalwart bloggers including ethiopundit, ET Wonqette, Dagmawi, Ethiopian Politics, One Ethiopia, Redeem Ethiopia, aqumada, Tsegasaurus, Ethio Zagol and others who have taught us so much about Ethiopia and ourselves in the past year be safe? Would the editors of quatero, ethiomedia, Nazret, and Ethiopian Review survive the wrath of Ethiopia’s security apparatus? The EPRDF's treatment of Frezer Negash and it's crackdown against the private media should be both instructive in considering the answer to this question and also responsive to it.
So this got me thinking about a powerful question ethiopundit, in one of his brilliant musings posed several weeks ago and that has resurfaced unanswered in my mind since Andrew Heavens' breaking news of the blog-blocking: what happens if they arrest our parents? My pops would certainly not make it at the Sendafa detention center. That I know.
I concede the mere thought of that reality forces a mental pause. But my tired and struggling soul, grappling to get a hold of my too evasive Coptic faith finds answers in the words of Psalm 23: "Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
We blog for one simple reason: to see representative government in Ethiopia—whatever it looks like. And to see kindness in government. Our people deserve it. Really, we blog for peace. And you can't stop that EPRDF. You can't, and here we come.
