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 Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 9:40 pm |
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Getz # 2: Ethiopians in Prison
Liben Gebre Etyopiya (Donald Levine)
In many parts of Ethiopia today, politically conscious folk keep fretting about Ethiopia's plight in finding some of her most outstanding citizens locked in prison. So many other high priority matters demand attention, yet again and again that quandary looms large.
In January U.S. Charge d'Affaires Vicki Huddleston observed that the decision by Ethiopian government authorities to try more than a hundred opposition leaders, journalists, and local aid workers on charges including treason and genocide was "divisive" at a time when what the country needed above all was "reconciliation and communication." Since then, that divisiveness has spawned antagonisms that keep growing and show few signs of letting up.
Government authorities continue to claim that serious violations of law occurred. They feed on a double bitterness–that what they hoped would be a more open political arena was sabotaged and that observers invited from Europe engaged in unprofessional conduct that exacerbated the problem. They maintain that serious violations of the law occurred, which could have been ignored only if the political leaders involved had entered Parliament and thereby secured an immune status. Opposition supporters of many kinds, including those who were not sympathetic to the positions and pronouncements of the political leaders and journalists in prison, continue to claim that the latter have been jailed in order to stifle dissent. They find the imprisonment an act of vengeance, based on trumped-up charges, designed to divert attention or at least to neutralize and dissolve the most outspoken of all the opposition groups. These antagonisms have spilled over into many parts of society and bred streams of hatred that may take years to dissipate.
The late, distinguished poet laureate of Ethiopia, Ato Tsegaye Gabre Medhin, said in an interview in the early 1990s: "In order to bring about a better future, one must learn from the past.
You cannot build a future based on hatred because hatred is the enemy of hope." Dare we to ask: Is there any way one can think about Ethiopia's detainees without descending into hatred? Might the very dilemma of the prisoners today offer some incentive to learn from the past in order to build a better future? This is a possibility that I discussed with some of the Kaliti prison detainees several weeks ago during what was surely one of the most moving experiences of my life. I was permitted to meet with three groups of the detainees–male CUD leaders, female CUD leaders, and journalists–as someone who had volunteered to intervene as a shemagle (elder) to try to help resolve this painful impasse. They all were grateful, remarking that in their months of imprisonment, I was the first shemagle who had come to visit them; even the Patriarch of the Church had never come to visit them. Their spirit was strong and they were in no way vengeful. The CUD leaders felt that the government had gotten itself into an embarrassing predicament and they indicated a willingness to do what might be done to protect the dignity of the authorities. Eventually we worked out an attractive compromise: reformulate the charges against the prisoners so that they could be let out on bail, then they would affirm the judicial process, let themselves be tried according established procedures, and re-enter the political process in a constructive manner. For a moment, we all were cheered, thinking we had found a way to move Ethiopia forward again.
Although the government did not find that proposal acceptable, I do not count my mission a failure. Personally it was gratifying to experience the courage, the dignity, and the maturity of these Ethiopian patriots. My experience of them resonated with what I experienced in meetings with the highest EPRDF officials. If only these two groups could have heard what each one was saying, I kept thinking to myself. Both groups came across as sincere persons, passionately committed to the future welfare of their country. In particular, I was stunned by the eloquence with which both groups affirmed that what they really cared about in all these struggles was the authority of the rule of law and its even application to all Ethiopian subjects.
Beyond that, since meeting with the detainees I have thought further about grounds for hope rather than hatred one might find in their being detained on non-bailable charges. For one thing, it has occurred to me that putting political opponents in prison is neither so outrageous nor unprecedented in the context of Ethiopia's history. At the very least, it is better than gassing them, boiling them alive, or burning them at the stake as happened so often elsewhere. Indeed, through much of Ethiopian history imprisonment has served as a gesture of forgiveness. Even the traitor Dejazmatch Haile Selassie Gugsa, who rushed to join the ranks of the Italian invaders in the 1935, was sentenced to house arrest rather than execution.
More to the point, it has figured in Ethiopia as a means of neutralizing potential political competitors. Consider the amba–that quintessential testimony to Abyssinian political realism.
For more than a millennium, level-topped mountain fortresses such as Debra Damo-later, Ambas Geshen and Wehni–were used as a reasonably comfortable place for interning all the potential heirs to the throne, so that one could be chosen when needed and the others could be kept from inciting battles of succession. Keeping political competitors in prison to keep them from stirring up political trouble is as Ethiopian as fitfet.
If this analogy seems fanciful, I am dead serious when I connect the current impasse in Addis Ababa to the persistence of an archaic political culture, a culture of suspiciousness and back-biting, and absence of open, direct political dialogue. Opposition has traditionally been either curtailed by authorities and expressed only indirectly–hence, “wax and gold”–or has taken the form of a rebellious rejectionism known as meshefet. This style of communication, found in some other traditional cultures, was adaptive during centuries of feudal warfare and litigation over claims to land use rights. But carried into contemporary national politics, it culminates in
hatred and despair.
Ethiopia’s dilemma in having so much political energy spent on the detainees now in Kaliti prison–no comment here on reports about political prisoners in Dedessa, Zwai, and elsewhere–stands as a constant reminder that, in the words of the poet Rilke, "Du muss dein Leben ändern”–you have got to change the way you live. This deeply embarrassing impasse cries out: Ethiopian politicians, you have got to change the way you talk about each other and how you relate to each other–at least, until the institutions of a democratic political order and a civil society are firmly implanted. There must be room for dissent, protected by just laws and
civil institutions, as well as a willingness to fight non-violently for divergent views even when in a disadvantaged minority. If their imprisonment could serve to help more Ethiopians learn that lesson, then–the Kaliti detainees nodded their heads–"It would have been worthwhile for us to have been here." |
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| Dessalegn |
| Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 3:16 am |
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Dear Mr. Levine:
I would like to start by thanking you for trying to bring about some of progress in the current impasse in Ethiopia. It is such selfless humanitarian actions that bring hope to people and sometimes result in changes in history. If only more would do the same.
I have some comments on Getz Two, if you don't mind. I found your observation about the CUD leaders' being detained in traditional Ethiopian style and the dire consequences of the persistence of such an archaic political culture interesting.
I believe that although, at face value, there seems to have been some progress in political thought or awareness in Ethiopia over the last half-century, not only does the archaic culture still persist, but it is firmly entrenched. There has been precious little social evolution, a variable which, to me, is now becoming more and more evident as the key variable in explaining sub-Saharan Africa's lack of development.
The promotion of democracy, I think, is vital to social evolution in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, though the West has been learning, from years of failure in Africa, that support for good governance, expansion of civil society, etc., is important, it still has a long way to go. Development policymakers have not yet fully internalized the fact that good governance is indeed a necessary condition for development, and that without it, all the economic aid in the world won't make a difference.
This leads me to the current situation in Ethiopia. It seems to me that we are in the midst, on the part of the US, of another one of those 'lost opportunities', as I think you have called them. Here the US had a chance to force the EPRDF to negotiate with the opposition, and without losing power, keep Ethiopia on the road to democracy. (Yes, it would have been an act of force in a neo-colonialist sort of way. But if you're going to give aid and interfere in internal matters, then it is better to interfere constructively or withdraw totally.) Yet, the State Department gave the EPRDF carte blanche, resulting in the current setback.
You see, I don't think we in the West can just sit back and watch the archaic culture continue and expect it to somehow evolve on its own, when years of evidence now make it clear that it won't. Especially not when the West is actually playing an active role in perpetuating it by financially and morally supporting governments' undemocratic actions. We can't on the one hand say let evolution take its course and on the other stifle it by de facto weakening the accountability factor between a government and its people.
It is in this vein that I sincerely hope that we in the Ethiopian diaspora can develop the necessary collective consciousness to concertedly pressure our Western governments to use their unlimited leverage on the EPRDF to get it to negotiate with the opposition and decriminalize dissent.
I hope that, behind closed doors at least, you do so too!
I look forward to the rest of your letters.
Dessalegn
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| Costantinos |
| Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 5:09 pm |
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Joined: 31 Mar 2006
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Location: Addis Ababa
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Complementing Getz Hulet
I must commend Prof Donald Levin, Liben Gebre Etyiobia, for his courageous move to be a shimagile (mediator) in the current political stalemate in Ethiopia. I will start my complementary (or not so complementary) input by taking off from his paragraph “Keeping political competitors in prison to keep them from stirring up political trouble is as Ethiopian as fitfet. If this analogy seems fanciful, I am dead serious when I connect the current impasse to the persistence of an archaic political culture, a culture of suspiciousness and back-biting, and absence of open, direct political dialogue”.
In defining the problems of our democratisation and proposing solution's for them, i.e. in setting goals, and tasks for itself and, in attempting to solve the problems, the Ethiopian political elite (aligned among various political groups, parties and liberation movements since the fifties) has done so largely within a particular tradition of political thought, argument and struggle; that has origins in the radical student movement, in ideas of "national liberation", "class struggle", "national democratic revolution" spawned by that movement, and in Marxist-Leninist tradition of political thought, discourse and action that has been a decisive influence over the current political impasse. At a time when the tradition seems a spent force in much of the former second world, including post-Dergue Ethiopia, a toned down and somewhat reconstructed version of it seems to have gained a new lease on life among Ethiopia’s political elite in country and abroad.
This means that various aspects of the ideological and organisational activities are marked by specific features of the avant-garde zeal (dominance of ethnic formations, Clientelism, urbanite insurgency, presentation of preconditions in tight formulaic terms that are not amenable to alternative formulations and mediation (shimgilina)). As such, they are subject to limitations inherent in the structural model of that tradition of political thought, discourse and practice; (among which are a tendency to reduce broad-based and complex categories, like national tradition, nations, nationalities and people and democracy of autonomous content, and the plenitude of meaning implicated in these categories to a set of signification tied to particular political projects; a habit of discourse and/or argument whereby political parties exerts ideological effort in the making or remaking of our "national" selves and identities); that are conflated into ideas and values of "the nationality" into the consciousness of "the people". This tendency often leads political parties and the elite in question to regard hostility to others views and perspectives as opposition to popular opinion.
These limitations of the structural model of political thought and practice, within which or a version of which most political parties and the Ethiopian political elite operate in large part, are manifested in the ways in which the institutions of governance they have assembled or wish to assemble are structured or still frying in the drawing board.
Indeed there are alternative ways of weighing up and framing the issues and of charting the course of action which may be embarked upon towards the settlement of the current impasse. There seems to be no simple or immediate identification of the problems as they actually are; there is only a definition of them from a certain perspective and towards a certain "resolution". Recognition of this fact by the techno-political elite and the international community (that has taken front seat in the current dynamics) would represent a significant improvement in our democratic consciousness and practice. Instead what have emerged to be vexing issues are not so much the problems of political contestation and participation itself; as what various, competing organisations and groups and the international community conceive them to be and how these stakeholders "settle" their differences. The way to look forward is to correctly analyse the situation and drive a process that would lead to negotiation, mediation or conciliation (shimgilina) without reverting to violence; which in the end would only lead to a Sierra Leone-Cote d’Ivoire-Liberia-Somalia phenomena.
Indeed the context in which political organisations are embedded shape the conditions for democratic change. It provides opportunities and constraints which some organisations will handle well, others less so. Reasons for the impasse cannot only be found inside political organisations, but must also be sought in the wider context in which organisations perform, i.e. national process and international pressures.
Bravo Liben Gebre Etyiobia |
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| liben |
| Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006 4:00 pm |
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Joined: 30 Mar 2006
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Kebur Ato Dessalegn!
I have just re-read your April 20 post and am stimulated to reply despite this long delay, for which i apologize. But I do want to comment on your notion that the US Government missed "a chance to force the EPRDF to negotiate with the opposition, and without losing power, keep Ethiopia on the road to democracy." I know that point of view is shared now more than ever by a vast number of Ethiopians.
I honestly believe that there is nothing that the US Govt could have done or could do now to FORCE the EPRDF to negotiate with the oppposition once they were imprisoned. There appear to be powerful forces within EPRDF that would rather see Ethiopia disintegrate than give in to such external pressure. Remember Atse Tewodros, who would not let a ferinji make off with one drop of Ethiopian soil, and who killed himself rather than yield to outside forces to release his prisoners. Yes, that may bespeak an archaic mentality from which you rightly observe Ethiopian leaders have yet to emancipate themselves, but it also resonates with very modern concerns about national sovereignty and independence.
On the other hand, I do believe that the US Government did miss an opportunity in 1991. I believe that they might have found a way to pressure the then fledgling, wholly inexperienced TPLF regime to be more inclusive in organizing the July conference. I was not around, so I cannot say for sure. But look what the US did in Afghanistan! They were allied with the guerilla forces from the North, but then insisted on offering a fair voice to all parties in the effort to reconstruct a new, democratic government. Unfortunately, there were not sufficiently knowledgeable people at the helm of US policy then to see and/or push hard for this kind of arrangement. But it would have been better not just for Ethiopia but for the TPLF itself in the long run.
Please let me know if you have other questions to raise or points to contribute in dialgoue about this issue.
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