Ethiopia’s Muslim Protesters Face Unfair Trial

(Nairobi, April 2, 2013) – The prosecution of 29 Muslim protest leaders and others charged under Ethiopia’s deeply flawed anti-terrorism law raises serious fair trial concerns, Human Rights Watch said today. The trial is scheduled to resume in Addis Ababa on April 2, 2013, after a 40-day postponement.
The case has already had major due process problems, Human Rights Watch said. Some defendants have alleged ill-treatment in pre-trial detention. The government has provided defendants limited access to legal counsel and has taken actions that undermined their presumption of innocence. Since January 22 the High Court has closed the hearings to the public, including the media, diplomats, and family members of defendants.
“There seems to be no limit to the Ethiopian government’s use of its anti-terrorism law and unfair trials to stop peaceful dissent,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s treatment of these Muslim leaders bears the hallmarks of a politically motivated prosecution.”
The defendants include Muslim leaders and activists arrested and detained in July 2012 following six months of public protests in Addis Ababa and other towns by Ethiopia’s Muslim community over alleged government interference in religious affairs. Others on trial include Yusuf Getachew, former managing editor of the now defunct Islamic magazineYemuslimoch Guday, and two Muslim nongovernmental organizations, allegedly managed by three of the defendants. Solomon Kebede was arrested and is being held under the anti-terrorism law.
According to official figures, Muslims make up approximately 30 percent of Ethiopia’s population. The protest movement began after the government insisted that the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs accept members from an Islamic sect known as al Ahbash and tried to impose its teachings on the Muslim community. The government also sought to influence the operations of the Awalia mosque in Addis Ababa.
In January 2012 the Muslim community created a committee to represent it in discussions with the government. Nine of the 17 members of this committee are among those on trial: Abubekar Ahmed, Ahmedin Jebel, Ahmed Mustafa, Kamil Shemsu, Jemal Yassin, Yassin Nuru, Sheikh Sultan Aman, Sheikh Mekete Muhe, and Sheikh Tahir Abdulkadir. They were arrested as the Ethiopian security forces began a major crackdown on the protests at Awalia and Anwar mosques in Addis Ababa and on protests in other cities as well, arresting and assaulting hundreds of protesters. Although the government has not released numbers, credible sources told Human Rights Watch that as many as 1,000 people were arrested in July alone.
Journalists attempting to cover or report on the protests were also detained or intimidated. Despite these arrests, weekly protests have continued throughout the country.
As in Ethiopia’s earlier terrorism trials of journalists and opposition leaders, the current trial has been marred by serious due process violations, Human Rights Watch said. Defendants have had erratic access to lawyers and relatives, and a number of the defendants were initially held for almost two months without access to legal counsel.
Lawyers for the defendants have repeatedly complained to the courts about the treatment of their clients, and alleged that the Muslim committee members and Getachew were mistreated during their pre-trial detention at the Federal Police Crime Investigation Department, known as Maekelawi prison, in Addis Ababa, which is notorious for torture. The complaints do not appear to have been appropriately investigated, Human Rights Watch said. Both the first instance court and the higher court have claimed not to have the jurisdiction over these matters.
The defendants have all been charged with “terrorist acts” under article 3 of Ethiopia’s 2009 Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, and with planning and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts under article 4. Descriptions of the charges in the initial charge sheet do not contain the basic elements of the crimes that the defendants are alleged to have committed.
Human Rights Watch, other human rights organizations, and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have repeatedly raised concerns about the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation’s overly broad provisions, which have been used to criminalize legitimate free expression and peaceful dissent. Thirty-four people, including eleven journalists and at least four opposition supporters, are known to have been sentenced under the law between late 2011 and mid-2012 in apparently politically motivated trials.
The government has also undermined the defendants’ presumption of innocence by broadcasting inflammatory material and accusations against them on state television, Human Rights Watch said. In February state-run Ethiopian Television (ETV) broadcast a program called “Jihadawi

In Aid to Ethiopia, a Costly Trade-Off

           Freedom House
Chloe Schwenke, Vice President of Global Programs

The dividing line between developmental assistance and aid that is intended to strengthen human rights and democratic governance is an obscure boundary, yet it has considerable moral and strategic significance. Donor countries must weigh a variety of factors—including security and economic questions and the geopolitical role of the beneficiary country—that often leave democracy and human rights goals on the back burner. Such a ranking of priorities has an immediate negative effect on the ground, and it ultimately represents a costly trade-off in which long-term interests are exchanged for short-term gains.
By any plausible account, the performance of Ethiopia’s current government raises daunting dilemmas of this kind. International donors have generally responded by emphasizing economic growth and all but ignoring the erosion of human rights. It is an approach that flies in the face of American values and of current U.S. policy for sub-Saharan Africa, which explicitly promotes the creation of democratic and just societies.
The Ethiopian government’s recent actions clearly warrant scrutiny. In February of this year, the Federal High Court revived previously dismissed charges against one of the regime’s few remaining critics in the country, the respected journalist Temesghen Desalegn, who had been chief editor of the weekly newspaper Feteh until it was shut down by the government in July 2012. Temesghen must now confront charges of “outrages against the constitution” for having exercised a basic human right that Americans cherish—freedom of expression. The case is illustrative of a continuing and pervasive deterioration in the space for free speech, peaceful protest, and opposition political activity.
The death of longtime Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi in August 2012 raised many uncertainties about the future of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, marked his passing by praising the prime minister’s “decades-long commitment to Ethiopia’s development” and “his tireless efforts to liberate his proud people from famine, poverty, and disease.” It is true that Meles was a leading figure in the revolutionary movement that rid Ethiopia of the Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. And while Ethiopia remains one of the world’s poorest countries, Meles did preside over significant gains in economic development during his two decades as undisputed leader. He even adhered to a range of democratic standards after taking power. However, his leadership style became increasingly ironfisted over time, following a trajectory that is all too familiar in Africa. The close elections of 2005 led to years of persecution of the political opposition and suppression of civil society. The next elections in 2010 were thoroughly tainted by government intimidation of opposition parties and their supporters, independent media, and civic activists.
Despite this degradation on human rights and democratic governance, the international community has maintained its robust support for Ethiopia’s economic progress. The World Bank has become the country’s largest provider of official development assistance, offering over $7 billion in aid over the past 21 years. In 2006, amid growing concerns about human rights violations by the Meles government, the bank canceled all of Ethiopia’s debt as part of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative.
Bilateral donors have also been active. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has shifted from the famine relief efforts of past decades to a relatively new strategy intended to help Ethiopia “transform its economy and society toward middle income status.” USAID hopes to achieve this by “coordinating its efforts more closely with the Government of Ethiopia, other donors and civil society.” But under Ethiopian government pressure, USAID projects to strengthen human rights and democratic governance have been assigned a lower priority than economic growth and trade. If it continues, this pattern could have sobering consequences.
For now, the EPRDF’s rule appears to be secure. An internal party compromise after Meles’s death confirmed Hailemariam Desalegn as prime minister. Nevertheless, the leadership shows no sign of opening the political space and allowing some dissenting voices to be heard. To the contrary, the assault on human rights has continued apace, with widespread use of internet surveillance, censorship of websites and social media, smear campaigns against all opposition figures, and broad application of restrictive statutes like the antiterrorism law and the Charities and Societies Proclamation (CSP). Few human rights organizations remain active in Ethiopia; they have not benefited from a largely symbolic relaxation of restrictions on nongovernmental organizations addressing issues like gender equality and maternal and child health. The CSP has cut off local human rights groups from foreign

The Scramble for Ethiopia (Messay Kebede)

            by Messay Kebede

What else could better express the existence in today’s Ethiopia of more than eighty political parties, out of which ethnic parties represent the overwhelming majority, than the term “scramble?” That for now the TPLF holds together the disjoined parts of the country by force for its own sectarian interests only reconfirms the accuracy of the term. How did this come about?
When we try to understand what happened to Ethiopia and, by extension, to Eritrea, since the overthrow of the imperial regime, we are invariably overtaken by a mounting perplexity. Unlike the imperial regime, which never declared its intention to empower the people, the political movements that opposed the regime emphatically and without exception asserted their primary and unique goal to be the liberation and empowerment of the people. The EPRP, MEISON, the Derg, the OLF, the TPLF, and the EPLF, to name the most important ones, all claimed to fight for the cause of the people. Yet, none of the movements that succeeded to seize power and implement their programs came anywhere near to fulfilling the promise of liberation and empowerment. On the contrary, all ended in similar types of abject dictatorial and sectarian rules.
The dominant explanation attributes the failures to accidental derailments. It argues that the initial intention and corresponding organizations were fully committed to the goal of liberation until they were derailed by the rise to the leadership position of unfit or fraudulent individuals, who used their position to institute a dictatorial rule and surround themselves by cynical and self-serving groups. Mengistu Haile Mariam, Meles Zenawi, and Isiyas Afeworki negatively altered, so it is said, the original good intention of the movements that brought them to power.
The trouble with the explanation is that the notion of derailment presupposes what needs to be explained. How could individuals, however smart, determined, and cunning they may be, succeed in overturning movements that were often able to overcome very challenging situations. Even if it was short-lived, the triumph of the Derg over so many opponents remains an exploit. Equally remarkable is the defeat that the EPLF and the TPLF inflicted on the military machine of the Derg. It just begs the question to assert that one or several individuals were able to misdirect movements with such proven strength.
Hence the need for a change of paradigm: instead of taking for granted an initial good intention, what if the devil was already in the intention? Rather than derailment, such an explanation sees continuity between departure and arrival, despite contrary appearances. What happened and is happening are already contained in the initial intention, which therefore was itself vicious. In other words, though the movements promised liberation and empowerment, the real and hidden goal was self-promotion and exclusive control of power. Ideologies advocating the liberation of the masses by revolutionary elites, such as Leninism, Maoism, and ethnonationalism, came in handy and quickly spread like a bushfire.
It must not be made to seem that the adoption of these ideologies by the revolutionary elites was a deliberate deception. The tragedy is that they honestly believed in these ideologies and honestly thought that they were working for the empowerment of the people. The fault was and still is in their mind, in the mistaken understanding of what liberation and empowerment mean. The misunderstanding can be traced to their colonial attitude toward their own people, itself being a resultant of the colonial education they received and thank to which they earned their elite status. The education convinced them that they are the native heirs to the civilizing mission of the colonizer, that the measure of their own modernity is the extent to which they see themselves as tutors and agents of change.
At first