An Open Letter to Congressman Frank R. Wolf on the Human Rights Crisis in Ethiopia

The Ethiopian Diaspora salutes you for your sincere efforts in making President Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” mantra a reality by championing the cause of 65 million Ethiopians. You are a leader to whom the attribute “A friend in need is a friend indeed” is most apropos. At a time when international terrorism has marginalized the domestic terrorism inflicted by Meles Zenawi’s regime in Ethiopia, we salute you for bringing our cause to the front burner.

In the light of the fact that you have chosen to champion our “just cause,” we would like to share with you here below a dossier that testifies to Meles Zenaw’s declaration of a sham democracy, flagrant abuses of human rights, blatant violations of the rule of law, and slicing and dicing Ethiopia into Bantustans, all contributing to the current crisis. We would like to begin with a historical background for your kind perusal.

Benevolent dictatorship often hurts more than it helps. The economic mismanagement of the monarchical government of Ethiopia in the face of the death of nearly 200,000 of its citizens from the secretly held 1972-73 famine, helped lead to the February 1974 revolution that eventually brought the overthrow of Emperor Haile Sellassie. In the spontaneity of the political upheaval that was spearheaded by student and labor movements, in the absence of a political party system in the country, a group of so-called revolutionary officers filled the leadership vacuum by declaring a military government, the “Derg.” Then, in May 1991 the Derg regime fell only to be replaced by the ethnocentric regime of TPLF/EPRDF, led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Ethiopians by nature are long distance runners. They have this unique ability to endure pain. Since February 1974, Ethiopians suffered under successive brutal tyrannical regimes that brought untold misery, hardship, corruption, famine, war, and destruction to Ethiopia. The Derg regime, led by Mengistu Hailemariam claimed Marxism-Leninism as the truth. The TPLF/EPRDF regime that took over the reigns of power by the barrel of the gun in 1991 under the leadership of Meles Zenawi claims Ethnic Federation as the truth. Both (closed societies) pursued delusion of perfection. The truth is that people died and are still dying in the name of doctrinaire ideologies. Therefore, what Ethiopia followed the past 29 years is a road to nowhere.

Meles Zenawi and his TPLF guerrilla outfit came to power with a deceptive democratic face, but in reality they hoodwinked the Ethiopian people and the international community with their false promises. They gave lip service to democracy and installed an anti-democratic government. Here is just a glimpse of their 11-year record, more than enough time to measure the performance of any credible government:

• “Murder by Famine” is at work in Ethiopia with the lives of over 15 million people threatened, due to the failure of the policies of the government that includes the divide and conquer policy of Ethnic Federation, the state ownership of land, the disrespect of individual human rights and the rule of law, and the monopoly of state power by the praetorian rulers. No country is immune from natural disasters like drought, hurricane, earthquake, etc., but such calamities need not necessarily translate into famine because countries make rational use of their national resources. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared to BBC “we cannot cope with the famine alone,” yet spends $1 million per month on a prestigious Washington lobbying firm (Verner Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson, and Hand) and pays $15 million annually for the use of Asseb and Djibouti ports after he rendered Ethiopia landlocked, and squandered $2.3 billion in a senseless war with Eritrea in 1998-2000 at a cost of over 70,000 lives on both sides and forced 350,000 to flee their homes.

• Meles Zenawi’s regime has the distinction of having the third largest HIV-infected population in the world and one in four Ethiopians are facing starvation from famine. It is paradoxical for a ruler of a country to state that he doesn’t have the funds to help his people when his regime received $11 billion of infusion from international donors during the past 11 years, according to World Bank report.

• Emboldened by a new $3.6 billion pledged by international donors (to be realized in the form of grants and concessional loans) for a three-year implementation of the Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP), Meles Zenawi said no to reform appeals by the opposition.

• The private sector and entrepreneurship are paralyzed because the ruling party owns a vast private business empire. The ruling party considers the country as its private property and the public treasury as its private pocket and thereby monopolizes the national wealth, maybe because of an inherited culture from the party leaders’ relationship with the feudal past.

• Early this year, hundreds of street children and homeless people were forced out of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and dumped in a forest outside the city, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO).

• The Ethiopian Human Rights Council and four opposition parties have condemned security forces for firing on peaceful protesters on May 24, 2002, accusing them of killing 25 demonstrators in the southern town of Awassa.

• On May 8th, 2001 security forces jailed 72 year-old Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, Ethiopia’s foremost human rights advocate and founder of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (ENRHO), the only independent, non-political and non-partisan human rights organization in the country. Also jailed was Dr. Berhanu Nega, an economics professor and former resident of New York City. In the same period, the regime had abducted some of the leading opposition political leaders, including Mr. Lidetu Ayalew, Secretary General of the Ethiopian Democratic Party (EDP). Not satisfied, during the same week, it abducted over 108 members of EDP and 40 members of AAPO, another opposition party. After an immense pressure of a well-coordinated worldwide campaign, a few of the leaders have been released on bail.

• The regime continues to arbitrarily kill and jail its critics. Two years ago, Professor Asrat, chairman of AAPO, a surgeon and medical school professor, died after the regime jailed him for six years and refused him medical help until the last minute, when his family brought him to the US for critical medical help. The help came too late and the good doctor died in a Philadelphia hospital.

• Dr. Taye, a political science professor and President of the Ethiopian Teachers Association, was jailed on trumped up charges and was released after six years because of international pressure. Dr. Alemayehu, President of the Addis Ababa University, has been in prison for the last eight years. Thousands of others, including teachers, union officers, journalists, students are all languishing in the regime’s overcrowded and disease-infested prisons. Forty senior university professors of Addis Abeba University who expressed their criticism were summarily fired in one sweep. International human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Sans Frontier, International Association of Teachers (IAT), World Organization Against Torture (PEN) and many others have repeatedly protested to the regime, but of course, to no avail.

• In an attempt to divide and rule, the government installed an Ethnic-Apartheid system, pitting one ethnic group against another. As incredible as this may sound, at a time when the discredited Apartheid system has been successfully dismantled in South Africa, the Ethiopian dictator has made it a permanent instrument of his rule. Because of this shameful act and instigation by the regime’s cadres, more than 100, 000 Ethiopians of different ethnic groups are known to have killed each other during the last eleven years.

• In January 2001, as a result of the regime’s Apartheid policy scores of farmers were brutally murdered and 12,000 uprooted from their homes and sent to makeshift camps in an ethnic conflict in Wollega Province. Two years ago, over 3,000 farmers were killed and 30,000 uprooted from Southern Ethiopia in similar circumstances. This kind of inter-ethnic conflict never happened in Ethiopia before, but since the beginning of the policy in 1991, hundreds of thousands of people in urban and rural areas have been affected.

• The regime killed hundreds and jailed or exiled thousands more who refused to participate in bogus elections designed to impress the World Bank, the US and other Western donors. In the recent past, hundreds of people in Hadya District were killed, jailed or exiled because they refused to vote for the ruling junta that masquerades as a democratically elected government.

• Between June 1998 and up to the end of February 2000, the regime slaughtered more than 70,000 soldiers by recklessly using them as cannon fodder in the Ethio-Eritrean war. In a country with some semblance of democracy, such a leader would have been tried for treason, but to this regime killing and mayhem seem to be its everyday function.

• On June 7, 1998, human rights activist, newspaper editor and lawyer Tesfaye Tadesse was hacked to death by government security agents on his way to his home.

• On May 8, 1997, Assefa Maru, teachers’ union leader and human rights activist was murdered outside of his home by government security forces.

Congressman Wolf, as you can see from the foregoing indictments, Meles Zenawi is no less criminal than Milosevic and should have been tried for crimes against humanity at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. We are grateful for your efforts in trying to save Ethiopians from their tormentor.

To give you a balanced report card on the performance of Meles Zenawi, we have included here below two testimonial articles.

Respectfully yours,

Abate Kassa
Executive Director
Ethiopian Open Society Institute (Enderasse)
161-01 84th Road
Jamaica Hills,
NY 11432-1728
(Phone) 718-658-1136