Eskinder Nega was jailed seven times and tortured because he reported fraud in parliamentary elections in Ethiopia in 2005. Serkalem Fasil gave birth to a child while in captivity, which she was allowed to see only sometimes. She was charged with treason in 2007 but acquitted in response to international pressure. The ‘International Women’s Media Foundation’ (IWMF) conferred on her an award the same year for her courage as a journalist
Karina Boeckmann interviewed the journalist couple by E-Mail against the backdrop of a public debate on development cooperation with Ethiopia, unleashed by a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report ‘Development without Freedom – How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia’ released in October 2010.
The importance of the report is underscored by the fact that between 2004 and 2008, international development aid to Ethiopia doubled to more than US$3.3 billion annually, making this landlocked country in the Horn of Africa one of Africa’s largest recipients of funds from the rich Western nations and multilateral agencies.
Ethiopia is in fact one of the most aid-dependant countries in the world and received more than US$2 billion in 2009, but its major donors have been unwilling to confront the government over its worsening human rights record.
Two months after the HRW report was released, executive director Kenneth Roth admonished the Addis Ababa based Development Assistance Group (DAG) — comprising 26 bilateral and multilateral development agencies — for its failure to “initiate a credible and independent inquiry” into “serious allegations about the misuse of donor-supported programs for repressive purposes by the government of Ethiopia”.
Also the European Union team, monitoring the May 2010 polls, criticized in its November report the ruling party’s misuse of state resources during the election campaign. Ethiopia’s ruling party won more than 99.6 percent of parliamentary seats in an election that, according to European observers, “fell short of international standards”.
Following are extracts from the interview:
Question: How would you describe the current human rights situation in Ethiopia?
Serkalem Fasil and Eskinder Nega: In one word: horrible. Ethiopia has been Africa’s star backslider since 2005, when, as had happened in Burma, an opposition victory in the nation’s first real multi-elections was reversed by brute force. The absence of a strong civil society and free press — both suppressed in 2005 has hastened the descent. The civil society and the free press had both by and large served as checks on the traditionally unrestrained power of the Ethiopian state. Low-level insurgencies in the Oromo and Somali regions have entailed disproportionate responses by the military; in one instance, charges of scorched-earth retaliation in the Somali region has been corroborated by HRW satellite images. Ethiopia is now consistently rated as one of the worst offenders of human rights in the world by all international rights groups.
Q: How many dissidents and journalists are in prison right now?
Eskinder Nega: No precise figures on the exact numbers have ever been tallied. But that they have always run into thousands — mostly into tens of thousands — for the entire span of the two decades that the EPRDF (Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front) has been in power is an established fact. A disturbingly high number of these have either been sentenced — mostly without a fair trail — either to death or life imprisonment. Ethiopia has sentenced more political prisoners to death than the entire sub-Saharan African countries (minus Rwanda and Sudan) combined (which is also true of life sentences.)
Q: Though many of your colleagues have left the country, you continue to hold on. Why? What are your motives/expectations/hopes for your country in the coming years?
Serkalem Fasil and Eskinder Nega: Hope has kept us in the country. Optimism about the future was stirred by the success of multi- party democracy elsewhere in Africa — Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Senegal etc. We have come to believe not only in the possibility of democracy but also in its irremediable destiny for us as a people and a nation. The ups and downs we go through, both as individuals and as a nation, to get there are not only unavoidable, as every precedent throughout the world amply demonstrates, but in the grand perspective of things, they are exactly the ingredients that give the ultimate prize – democracy — real value. We are highly privileged to be part of this history. We cannot envision ourselves giving it up for anything else.
Q: In the last elections the ruling party led by Prime Minister (PM) Meles Zenawi bagged 99.6 per cent of the seats. A result too good to be true . . .?
Serkalem Fasil: Yes, to say the least. In the ultimate height of absurdity, the PM has adamantly insisted that the one seat for the opposition in the 547 seat Parliament — a consequence of his party’s 99.6 “victory” — actually means more democracy than ever. Mind you, he did not blink when he uttered those words. I am fascinated that he has the strength to look at himself in the mirror every morning after saying that. I know I wouldn’t.
