Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi

By Richard Dowden

Meles Zenawi is the cleverest and most engaging president in Africa – at least when he talks to visiting outsiders. When he speaks to his fellow Ethiopians, he is severe and dogmatic.

But he entertains western visitors with humour and irony, deploying a diffident, self-deprecating style which cleverly conceals an absolute determination to control his country and its destiny, free of outside interference.

He was one of four African presidents to be invited to the Camp David G8 meeting last weekend. The aid donors love Meles. He is well-informed, highly numerate and focused. And he delivers. Ethiopia will get closer to the Millennium Development Goals than most African countries. The Ethiopian state has existed for centuries and it has a bureaucracy to run it. So the aid flows like a river, nearly $4 billion a year. And Meles is the United States’ policeman in the region with troops in Somalia and Sudan. He also enjoys a simmering enmity with his former ally, now the bad boy of the region, President Isias Afwerke of Eritrea. “It’s Mubarak syndrome,” a worried US diplomat told me. “We only talked to Mubarak about Egypt’s role in the region, never about what was happening inside Egypt. It’s the same with Ethiopia.”

In the 2005 election when the opposition won the capital, Addis Ababa, and claimed to have won nationally, the government arrested its leaders and tried them for treason. Some were imprisoned, others fled into exile. Now with 99.6% of the vote, the ruling Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has created a virtual one party state. In an interview last week Meles told me he did not know of a single village in the whole country that voted for the opposition.

This is subtle totalitarianism, dubbed ‘Authoritarian Developmentalism’ by some. If you do what the government says, you get assistance – land, water, services. If you don’t, you get nothing. The basic principles of political freedom enshrined in the constitution are frequently undermined by subtle edicts from government departments. Press freedom is clearly spelt out and recently a minor ruling stated that printers must take responsibility for everything they publish and can refuse to print anything the government might consider illegal. Hardly a devastating blow to press freedom you might think until you discover that the only presses in Ethiopia capable of printing newspapers are government-owned.

Meles’ remarkable achievement since he took power in 1991 has been to attract foreign companies to Ethiopia through a policy of low taxes and a free hand. Growth has been between 8 and 11 percent over the past eight years thanks to the private sector (both western and eastern.) The economy has doubled over the last five years. Meles is rushing to develop the country as fast as he can. Using the Chinese model he has attracted foreign investors to develop agriculture and manufacturing. As he told me: “The criticism we had in the past was that we were crazy Marxists. Now we are accused of selling the family spoons to foreigners. It’s a balance.”

Meles has leased more than 4 million hectares of land to foreign or domestic companies to grow food or flowers. And to provide them with water and power he has built dams which he says are environmentally much better than power stations since they are built in gorges with little water loss through evaporation. But it is not a completely free market solution. There are government monopolies in banking and telecoms. Nor will the government give people title deeds. All land is state owned. Meles has made it clear he will keep it that way.

“Have we created a perfect democratic system? No it’s a work in progress. Are we running as fast as our legs will carry us? Yes. And it’s not just Addis but also the most remote areas. Unlike previous governments we have really created a stable country in a very turbulent neighbourhood. Our writ runs in every village. That never happened in the history of Ethiopia. The state was distant, irrelevant.”

He fiercely defends his policies, in the face of Western NGO criticism, that this development is environmentally unsound and indigenous people have been removed forcibly from their land. He insists that in every case they were consulted, dismissing a report by the Oakland Institute in the US which said people had been forcibly removed as “bullshit”. When I suggest that pastoralists should be allowed to continue their nomadic way of life, he says I am a romantic westerner. But he adds that it is their right to continue their way of life.

It is the same with the politics. Having taken power by force in 1991 and coming from a minority, Meles created a safety valve by writing into the constitution the right of every “nation” in Ethiopia to declare independence. Whenever there are local political problem he re-asserts that right to leave but it is unlikely the clause will ever be put to the test through a referendum.

The current trouble spot is the southern region of Gambela where land has been given to agricultural businesses. Meles is defensive about reports of recent forced removals. “We are making sure that the Gambela people are settled and have land and that young people can go to farms not as guards but as farmers,” he said, assuring me that the people who have been moved were consulted. Only when all those in the region who want to work have jobs will other workers be recruited from other parts of Ethiopia.

Is the Meles plan for rapid, state directed capitalism working? At the recent World Economic Forum meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa earlier this month, criticism came, not from western NGOs , but from China, Ethiopia’s closest ally. Gao Xiqing of the China Investment Forum, warned Meles: “Do not necessarily do what we did”. Policies of “sheer economic growth” should be avoided, he said. “We now suffer pollution and an unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities… You have a clean sheet of paper here. Try to write something beautiful.”

Has any Chinese official ever publically criticised an African leader in such terms before?

And some foreign investors are not happy either. They have driven Ethiopia’s growth but now the government and Ethiopian firms are desperate for a greater slice of the profits. Flower and horticultural companies have been suddenly ordered by the government to only use Ethiopian companies for packing their produce, transporting it to Addis Ababa airport from where only the state-owned Ethiopian Airlines must be hired to fly it to Europe. As the distraught owner of one of the biggest flower farms told me last week: “Ethiopia does not have such companies yet”. But if they refuse, their licences will be withdrawn. It appears that having lured foreign businesses into Ethiopia, the government is now tying them down and taking their profits.

Meles is caught in a bind, under pressure on several fronts with problems that economic growth may not solve. Inflation is coming down but has been running at almost 50 percent. Everyone I spoke with in Ethiopia said that the cost of living was the highest they had ever known. There is real hardship among the poor as the staple grain in Ethiopia, teff, has quadrupled in price recently. The universities are pouring out graduates but there are few jobs. One recent graduate I spoke with said she was one of about 10 out of more than 100 in her class who had a job. The government’s hope is that it can grow the economy even faster. It is promising mining as the next bonanza and Meles hinted last week that oil has been discovered.

But this is the scenario he may soon be facing: a mass of urban poor hurt by the price rise of the staple food and large numbers of educated but unemployed urban youth. Sounds familiar? The Arab Spring was watched closely by Ethiopians. Watch this space.

Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of Africa; altered states, ordinary miracles.

The Ethiopian Community Association in Sa protests outside the Sandton Convention Centre against Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi, who is attending the Global African Diaspora Summit. Photo: Dumisani Sibeko

By Yusuf Omar

About 300 Ethiopians descended on the streets of Sandton on Wednesday, almost bringing business to a standstill. They gathered at noon on the corner of Alice Lane and 5th Street, outside the Sandton Convention Centre, which is hosting this year’s Global African Diaspora Summit.

“Freedom!” they cried. “Allahu Akbar (Arabic for “Praise be to God”),” they yelled. “Viva South Africa, viva!” they cheered.

Most of the participants were political asylum-seekers from Ethiopia now living in Joburg. Their banners read “Meles Zenawi, most notorious, evil, brutal east African dictator Terrorist alive!”.

Zenawi, Ethiopian president for the past 21 years, arrived in Joburg on Wednesday to attend the three-day summit.

Mulugeta Felkea, chairman of the human rights organisation Better Ethiopian, left his home country seven years ago after family members were killed by the regime’s security forces.

“We can’t protest like this in Ethiopia. The soldiers would just shoot us,” he said.

“We want the South African government to influence the international community to take action against Zenawi. He must stop the harassment, release political prisoners and have real elections,” said Felkea.

He said there were officially more than 50 000 Ethiopians in SA, but reckoned there were many more under the radar.

Fana Dereje, general secretary of the Ethiopian Community Organisation, said: “We would return to Ethiopia tomorrow if peace was restored.”

“Right now we are second-class citizens in our own country. The people are hungry, but Zenawi gives us bullets.

The Ethiopian community thanks South Africa for hosting us during these hard times,” he said.

The strongest voice on the loudhailer, leading the men at the front of the march, was that of a woman – actress, journalist and activist Gelila Mekonnen.

She was due to leave on Thursday for Amsterdam, where she works at the Ethiopian Satellite Television headquarters.

“The Ethiopian government calls our independent television station a terrorist channel, but we are simply struggling for democracy,” said Mekonnen.

On Sunday night, more than 1 000 Ethiopian migrants met at the Standard Bank Arena in Joburg to raise funds for the tv station, which they hope to launch in SA this year.

yusuf.omar@inl.co.za

(IPI/IFEX) – VIENNA,  Twenty international journalists who have been recognised as World Press Freedom Heroes by the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI) have condemned the Ethiopian government’s decision to jail Eskinder Nega and other journalists on terrorism charges, and called for their immediate release.
Eskinder Nega, an online writer and critic of the current Ethiopian government, was arrested in September 2011 and is accused of supporting terrorism, for which he could face the death penalty if convicted. He was jailed shortly after having criticized the government’s use of anti-terrorism laws to jail other journalists and opposition figures.
This is hardly Eskinder’s first brush with the authorites – he and his wife, also a journalist, were jailed for 17 months on treason charges in the aftermath of the disputed 2005 elections. Their son was born in prison. Since then, Eskinder has been banned from journalism but has continued to speak out and write.
Ethiopia, which is set to host the World Economic Forum on Africa in May 2012, jailed Eskinder and four other journalists on anti-terrorism charges over the past year.
Woubshet Taye, deputy editor of the now-defunct Awramba Times, and Reyot Alemu of Feteh newspaper were convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison this January. In December, Swedish journalists Martin Schibbye and Johann Persson were sentenced to 11 years in prison for aiding terrorists. They had been arrested last year in the company of rebels in the Ogaden region.
Last month, IPI Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie called on United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to speak out against Ethiopia’s use of anti-terror laws to jail journalists, which IPI said “makes a mockery of the universal right to ‘hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’.”
IPI noted that this practice also undermines “the fight against real terrorists, who use violence – and not words – to achieve their ends”.
Each of the men and women who signed this petition has been honoured for their contributions to freedom of the press in their home countries and around the world. Many have themselves been jailed for their work – indeed Turkish author and investigative reporter Nedim Sener’s battle against terrorism charges, believed by observers to be designed to silence him as a journalist, is not over yet. Read their call for Ethiopia’s journalists to be freed,   A letter to  H.E. Meles Zenawi. Read below at: http://www.ifex.org/ethiopia/2012/04/23/nega_petition/

Source: IFEX

The global spread of coffee growing and drinking began in the Horn of Africa, where, according to legend, coffee trees originated in the Ethiopian province of Kaffa. It is recorded that the fruit of the plant, known as coffee cherries, was eaten by slaves taken from present day Sudan into Yemen and Arabia through the great port of its day, Mocha. Coffee was certainly being cultivated in Yemen by the 15th century and probably much earlier. In an attempt to prevent its cultivation elsewhere, the Arabs imposed a ban on the export of fertile coffee beans, a restriction that was eventually circumvented in 1616 by the Dutch, who brought live coffee plants back to the Netherlands to be grown in greenhouses.

Initially, the authorities in Yemen actively encouraged coffee drinking. The first coffeehouses or kaveh kanes opened in Mecca and quickly spread throughout the Arab world, thriving as places where chess was played, gossip was exchanged and singing, dancing and music were enjoyed. Nothing quite like this had existed before: a place where social and business life could be conducted in comfortable surroundings and where – for the price of a cup of coffee – anyone could venture. Perhaps predictably, the Arabian coffeehouse soon became a centre of political activity and was suppressed. Over the next few decades coffee and coffeehouses were banned numerous times but kept reappearing until eventually an acceptable way out was found when a tax was introduced on both.

By the late 1600’s the Dutch were growing coffee at Malabar in India and in 1699 took some plants to Batavia in Java, in what is now Indonesia. Within a few years the Dutch colonies had become the main suppliers of coffee to Europe, where coffee had first been brought by Venetian traders in 1615. This was a period when the two other globally significant hot beverages also appeared in Europe. Hot chocolate was the first, brought by the Spanish from the Americas to Spain in 1528; and tea, which was first sold in Europe in 1610. At first coffee was mainly sold by lemonade vendors and was believed to have medicinal qualities. The first European coffeehouse opened in Venice in 1683, with the most famous, Caffe Florian in Piazza San Marco, opening in 1720. It is still open for business today. The largest insurance market in the world, Lloyd’s of London, began life as a coffeehouse. It was started in 1688 by Edward Lloyd, who prepared lists of the ships that his customers had insured.

The first literary reference to coffee being drunk in North America is from 1668 and, soon after, coffee houses were established in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and other towns. The Boston Tea Party Of 1773 was planned in a coffee house, the Green Dragon. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of New York started in coffeehouses in what is today known as Wall Street.

In 1720 a French naval officer named Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, while on leave in Paris from his post in Martinique, acquired a coffee tree with the intention of taking it with him on the return voyage. With the plant secured in a glass case on deck to keep it warm and prevent damage from salt water, the journey proved eventful. As recorded in de Clieu’s own journal, the ship was threatened by Tunisian pirates. There was a violent storm, during which the plant had to be tied down. A jealous fellow officer tried to sabotage the plant, resulting in a branch being torn off. When the ship was becalmed and drinking water rationed, De Clieu ensured the plant’s survival by giving it most of his precious water. Finally, the ship arrived in Martinique and the coffee tree was re-planted at Preebear. It grew, and multiplied, and by 1726 the first harvest was ready. It is recorded that, by 1777, there were between 18 and 19 million coffee trees on Martinique, and the model for a new cash crop that could be grown in the New World was in place.

But it was the Dutch who first started the spread of the coffee plant in Central and South America, where today it reigns supreme as the main continental cash crop. Coffee first arrived in the Dutch colony of Surinam in 1718, to be followed by plantations in French Guyana and the first of many in Brazil in the state of Pará. In 1730 the British introduced coffee to Jamaica, where today the most famous and expensive coffee in the world is grown in the Blue Mountains.

The 17th and 18th centuries saw the establishment across Brazil of vast sugar plantations or fazendas, owned by the country’s elite. As sugar prices weakened in the 1820’s, capital and labour migrated to the southeast in response to the expansion of coffee growing in the Paraiba Valley, where it had been introduced in 1774. By the beginning of the 1830’s Brazil was the world’s largest producer with some 600,000 bags a year, followed by Cuba, Java and Haiti, each with annual production of 350 to 450,000 bags. World production amounted to some 2.5 million bags per year.

The rapid expansion of production in Brazil and Java, among others, caused a significant decline in world prices. These bottomed out in the late 1840’s, from which point a strong upward movement occurred, reaching its peak in the 1890’s. During this latter period, due mainly to a lack of inland transport and manpower, Brazilian expansion slowed considerably. Meanwhile, the upward movement of prices encouraged the growth of coffee cultivation in other producing regions in the Americas such as Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador and Colombia.

In Colombia, where coffee had been introduced by the Jesuits as early as 1723, civil strife and the inaccessibility of the best coffee-growing regions had hampered the growth of a coffee industry. Following the “Thousand Days War” of 1899 to 1903, the new peace saw Colombians turn to coffee as their salvation. While larger plantations, or haciendas, dominated the upper Magdalena river regions of Cundinamarca and Tolima, determined peasants staked new claims in the mountainous regions to the west, in Antioquia and Caldas. New railways, relying on coffee for profit, allowed more coffee to be grown and transported. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 permitted exports from Colombia’s previously unreachable Pacific coast, with the port of Buenaventura assuming increasing importance.

In 1905 Colombia exported five hundred thousand bags of coffee; by 1915 exports had doubled. While Brazil desperately tried to control its overproduction, Colombian coffee became increasingly popular with American and European consumers. In 1914 Brazil supplied three-quarters of U.S. imports with 5.6 million bags, but by 1919 that figure had fallen to 4.3 million, while Colombia’s share had risen from 687,000 to 915,000 bags. During the same period Central American exports to the U.S. had risen from 302,000 to 1.2 million bags.

In spite of political turmoil, social upheaval and economic vicissitude, the 20th century saw an essentially continuous rise in demand for coffee. U.S. consumption continued to grow reaching a peak in 1946, when annual per capita consumption was 19.8 pounds, twice the figure in 1900. Especially during periods of high global prices, this steadily increasing demand lead to an expansion in production throughout the coffee-growing regions of the world. With the process of decolonisation that began in the years following the Second World War, many newly independent nations in Africa, notably Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi, found themselves in varying degrees dependent on coffee export revenue.

For US coffee drinkers, the country’s wettest city, Seattle, has become synonymous with a new type of café culture, which, from its birth in the 1970s, swept the continent, dramatically improving the general quality of the beverage. This new found ‘evangelism’ for coffee has spread to the rest of the world, even to countries with great coffee traditions of their own, such as Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia, adding new converts to the pleasures of good coffee. Today it is possible to find good coffee in every major city of the world, from London to Sydney to Tokyo; we are drinking more and, more importantly, better coffee.

The importance of coffee to the world economy cannot be overstated. It is one of the most valuable primary products in world trade, in many years second in value only to oil as a source of foreign exchange to producing countries. Its cultivation, processing, trading, transportation and marketing provide employment for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Coffee is crucial to the economies and politics of many developing countries; for many of the world’s Least Developed Countries, exports of coffee account for more than 50 percent of their foreign exchange earnings. Coffee is a traded commodity on major futures and commodity exchanges, most importantly in London and New York.

Source ICO

DUKEM, Ethiopia–A steady drone of machines hum as workers assemble shoes in a Chinese-built industrial park outside Addis Ababa, the first in Ethiopia by the Asian giant deepening its presence in Africa.

A handful of Chinese supervisors at the Huajian factory watch hundreds of Ethiopian workers trim leather, glue soles and lace up boots in the Eastern Industry Zone in Dukem, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of the Ethiopian capital.

It marks a shift in China’s traditional investments in Africa, which mainly involve heavy infrastructure development and oil production, while for Ethiopia it offers an alternative to export of unprocessed raw materials.

“The two sides have a commitment, they say ‘you should have something, I should get something,’” said Qian Guoqing, the deputy director of the Eastern Industry Zone.

Huajian, one of China’s biggest shoe manufacturers, plans to invest up to US$2 billion (1.5 billion euros) in Ethiopia to make shoes for export to Europe and North America.

Construction of the industrial park started in 2009, and rows of three-storey green and yellow buildings now stand on a patch of the expansive land. The government says it plans to build five more industrial zones throughout the country to attract further foreign investment.

When completed in 2014, the US$250 million project will host over 80 factories and create 20,000 local jobs. Currently six Chinese-run factories operate in the zone, including a car assembly plant and a plastics factory.

However, analysts say large-scale investment in Ethiopia has risks and its financial benefits are still uncertain.

“It’s not a risk-free strategy and it’s not necessarily clear that it will work,” said Stefan Dercon, development economist at Oxford University.

“The Chinese … take the opportunities now in Ethiopia where they make the trade-off between very high rewards. That’s pretty risky in the first few years of doing this, and we’ll have to wait and see.”

To minimize risks and attract investors, the Ethiopian government is offering four-year tax breaks, cheap land and free electricity to investors in the industrial zone.

But challenges abound: foreigners complain of poor telecommunications, overbearing bureaucracy and the absence of a port in the landlocked Horn of Africa country.

Cultural differences, the language barrier and a poor work ethic among the locals also pose hurdles, said Paul Lu, Huajian’s human resource manager, but noted that the availability of labour and raw materials were key attractions.

“We came to make shoes and we had to consider the resources — Ethiopia is very rich in leather,” said Paul at the factory’s entrance, where about two-dozen people were waiting for job interviews.

Source China Post

Addis Ababa, May 17 — A second Indian company, Esimo Flower & Agro Industries Plc, is investing $100 million in Ethiopia to produce flowers, fruits, and vegetables for the European, Russian and Middle Eastern markets.

The company has acquired a 71-hectare farm in Debre Brehan, northeast of capital Addis Ababa. It will start planting flowers in July and has constructed a pack house, where harvested flowers are to be processed for export in 2012, according to Sanjaye Bangali, owner and general manager of Esimo.

Debre Berhan Mayor Getaneh Zeke also confirmed this. Esimo is set to become the second flower farm in Debre Brehan after ASK Flowers and Greens Plc, run by another Indian, Shahab Khan.

Producing flowers is a high-risk but high-profit business and Bengali thinks his company has a good opportunity to succeed within a few years.

“We are planning to buy a seedling for 0.52 dollars and sell the flowers with prices ranging between 0.71 dollars and 1.1 dollars, depending on the stem of the plant,” he said.

Bangali foresees growing roses that are bred locally and are similar to Ecuadorian and Colombian breeds after setting up its drip irrigation system.

Ethiopia has a stable year-round temperature and strong sun, and the region is acknowledged as one of the best growing areas, according to an expert from the Ethiopian Horticulture Producers & Exporters Association (EHPEA).

The EHPEA earned $178.3 million dollars in 2010/11, making flowers the third-largest export earner in the economy following coffee and khat.

The firm plans to grow 75,000 rose plants on one hectare, which would enable a harvest of 80,000 to 90,000 stems in the first phase of production, covering 15 hectares. In the second phase, the plan is to increase its harvest to 90,000 or 100,000, according to Bangali.

Source Daily News

By Peter Heinlein

What is the poison that corrupts many African leaders, no matter how honorable their intentions when they take office? That was the question put to a panel of that included heads of state and government at the World Economic Forum on Africa on Thursday. The question received a surprisingly candid answer.

It was promoted as a conversation on Africa’s leadership. Among those on stage were the leaders of Africa’s two most populous nations – Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

The conversation was routine until the floor was opened to questions from youth leaders. A young South African woman stood up to ask the question that many had pondered, but few dared to pose.

“Good day. My name is Gobano Madnamaraso,” she said. “When our leaders are young – most of our African leaders – they are visionaries. They have wonderful visions for our continent. They are admirable. The speak good, they do good. But something happens to them once they are seated in those chairs of power. My question is: We want to see our continent change, but we are afraid of this power that corrupts even some of the best, most admirable leaders on our continent, and what is this poison that happens in these chairs of power and how can we prevent it? “

But perhaps just as frank as the question was the reply.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi pointed to greedy foreign corporations as a main driver of corruption.

“What is the poison that leaders face when you go to national palaces, and transforms people with vision sometimes into ordinary thieves? Let’s start with the total amount of loot in Africa, and what our role as leaders in that loot[ing] is,” said Meles. “The vast majority of the loot[ing] is done by properly organized companies through all sorts of accounting gimmicks.”

Meles said African leaders are forced to be facilitators for foreign companies who demand favors in return for their investment that might means jobs for their people.

“It’s a difficult thing to manage because our bargaining cards are very limited,” he said. “We need these companies to create jobs, in order for them to come to Africa. The image is very negative, so the risk is artificially spiked. And if the risk is artificially spiked, the return has to be commensurate with the risk. And so it’s difficult to attract them without extraordinary returns.”

The Ethiopian leader said that sometimes leaders give in to temptation.

“Sometimes we facilitate without being paid,” he said. “At other times we say, ‘Okay, if your family’s farm is being looted, why not join in?’ I think that is the most insidious form of corruption. It affects everybody, including those whose hands are not in the till.”

Another question that was less confrontational, but no less pointed, came from young Sudanese woman who wanted an explanation for the lack of female representation among African leaders.

“Hello, I am Jihada Bonefice from the Khartoum hub in Sudan,” she said. “It’s quite wonderful to see all you gentlemen up there. But my question is: How do you envision the role of African women in shaping the future? And is there any way you are trying very hard to maybe to get African women where they belong – right up there [on stage]?”

Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba answered, saying “Women are Africa’s chance for success tomorrow.” But panelists agreed that solutions to the continent’s leadership gender imbalance will be difficult.

Increasing the ranks of female leaders will be among topics discussed at Friday’s closing forum meetings, along with China’s rising prominence in Africa.

Ethiopia has been deemed a population-climate “hotspot” – a place where rapid growth and a changing climate pose grave threats to food security and human well-being.

By Laurie Mazur for the Wilson Center

Certainly, the landlocked East African nation faces outsized challenges. One in ten Ethiopians is chronically food insecure, and nearly one in five go hungry in drought years. With almost half its people under the age of 15 and an average fertility rate of nearly five children per woman, Ethiopia’s population is the fifth fastest-growing in the world.

By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN

An imprisoned Ethiopian journalist and blogger who could face the death penalty for advocating peaceful protests in his Horn of Africa homeland was honored Tuesday with PEN America’s “Freedom to Write” award.

Eskinder Nega was arrested in 2011 under Ethiopia’s sweeping anti-terrorism laws, which PEN says criminalize any reporting deemed to “encourage” or “provide moral support” to groups and causes the government deems “terrorists.”

Nega is still in jail after a judge in Addis Ababa found him guilty Jan. 23 on terror charges. He could face the death penalty at sentencing.

Ethiopia has arrested close to 200 people, among them journalists and opposition politicians and members, under last year’s anti-terrorism proclamation.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more journalists have fled Ethiopia than any other country in the world over the past decade.

Nega was honored at PEN/America’s annual gala dinner Tuesday at the American Museum of Natural History, with some 500 PEN members and supporters in attendance.

PEN/America granted him the year’s PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.

Forty-six women and men have received the award since 1987; 33 of the 37 honorees who were in prison at the time they were honored were subsequently released.

Accepting the award was his wife, Serkalem Fasil, a free expression advocate in her own right, who served 17 months in prison for treason starting in 2005 and gave birth to their child behind bars. She won the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award in 2007.

“The Ethiopian writer Eskinder Nega is that bravest and most admirable of writers, one who picked up his pen to write things that he knew would surely put him at grave risk,” said Peter Godwin, president of PEN American Center. “Yet he did so nonetheless. And indeed he fell victim to exactly the measures he was highlighting, Ethiopia’s draconian `anti terrorism’ laws that criminalize critical commentary.”

Nega has been publishing articles critical of the government since 1993, when he opened his first newspaper, Ethiopis, which was soon shut down by authorities.

He was the general manager of Serkalem Publishing House, which published the newspapers Asqual, Satenaw, and Menelik, all of which are now banned in Ethiopia.

Nega has also been a columnist for the monthly magazine Change and the U.S.-based news forum EthioMedia, which are also banned in Ethiopia.

He has been detained at least seven times under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, including in 2005, when he and his wife Serkalem were imprisoned for 17 months on treason charges for their critical reporting on the government’s violent crackdown of protests following disputed elections, and briefly in February 2011 for “attempts to incite Egyptian and Tunisian-like protests in Ethiopia” after he published articles on the Arab uprisings.

Nega has been denied a license to practice journalism since 2005, yet he has continued to publish columns critical of the government’s human rights record and calling for an end to political repression and corruption.

Nega was again arrested Sept. 14, 2011, after he published a column questioning the government’s claim that a number of journalists it had detained were suspected terrorists, and for criticizing the arrest of well-known Ethiopian actor and government critic Debebe Eshetu on terror charges earlier that week.

Shortly after his arrest, Nega was charged with affiliation with the banned political party Ginbot 7, which the Ethiopian government considers a terrorist organization. On Nov. 10, Nega was charged and further accused of plotting with and receiving weapons and explosives from neighboring Eritrea to carry out terrorist attacks in Ethiopia. State television portrayed Nega and other political prisoners as “spies for foreign forces.”

He is being held in Maekelawi Prison in Addis Ababa, where detainees are reportedly often tortured.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Before you print anything please show the Government. It’s the Law

Najum Mushtaq NAIROBI, Jul 8 (IPS) 

 A new media law – six years in the making – has been passed by Ethiopia’s House of People’s Representatives. Its preamble declares that “the proclamation removes all obstacles that were impediments to the operation of the media in Ethiopia.” But an analysis by Ethiopian journalists finds it actually clears the way for government to continue to harass and persecute the messenger when the message is not in line with the whims of the rulers.

The ‘Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation’, which purports to update and reform the first ever Ethiopian press law of 1992, has been a source of controversy ever since its initiation in 2002.
In countless meetings with the ministry of information – which regulates Ethiopian media – local and international activists have been lobbying in vain for revisions in the draft to make it compatible with international norms and conventions on press freedom. The version adopted by parliament last week seems certain to further restrict freedom of expression and intimidate journalists.
“We have come to understand… that the proclamation is incompatible with the (Ethiopian) constitution and other international human rights laws, conventions and agreements. It is a reversal and desecration of victories achieved by the repealed press law (of 2004),” says a resolution adopted Wednesday at the end of a UN-sponsored workshop of media practitioners in Addis Ababa organised by the Horn of Africa Press Institute (HAPI).
The workshop reviewed the new legislation and called for “a reassessment of all the provisions of the law” as it imposes “substantive restrictions with heavy burden and obligations” on journalists.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the new law is that the government has appropriated the right to prosecute defamation cases against the media even if the ostensibly defamed government officials do not initiate legal proceedings. Article 43 (7) of the proclamation says that defamation and false accusation against “constitutionally mandated legislators, executives and judiciaries will be a matter of the government and prosecutable even if the person against whom they were committed chooses not to press charge.”
This provision overrides the 2004 criminal law which had stated that cases of defamation would go to court only when the victims make complaints. Also, the compensation for moral damage caused by mass media has been raised from 1,000 birr to a crippling 100,000 birr – just over $10,000.
Journalists attending the workshop also pointed out that many restrictive measures had already been incorporated into other laws during the six-year debate on the media bill. For instance, the Criminal Code of the country which came into force in 2005 includes penal provisions for “participation in crimes by the mass media.”
In another example, the role and duties of the Ministry of Information were redefined in 2007 to give the government arbitrary powers to use registration and licensing procedures as a punishment for dissent. It also empowers the government to stop distribution of a newspaper if the attorney general deems a news item to be a criminal act.
And in a country where most of the established newspapers as well as radio and television channels are government-owned, the new law undermines the growth of the independent private sector by placing its fate in the hands of the information ministry.
“We understand that the regulatory authority itself is involved in the media and news making and has no institutional freedom,” the workshop resolution observed.

Banned journalists
The new law fits into a pattern of official persecution of journalists seen over the last three years. Soon after controversial 2005 elections, three newspapers and magazines belonging to the country’s largest private publisher, Serkalem Publishing House, were closed down as part of a widespread crackdown on media that dared to criticise the handling of the poll. Serkalem Fasil and her family were imprisoned for over a year.
Ten other independent publications were also forced to shut down, leaving hundreds of journalists unemployed.
Already this year, the government has forced two more magazines out of circulation using laws against disturbance to public order. One of them, Enku, a fashion magazine, was not only confiscated but its deputy editor, Aleymayehu Mahtemwork and three colleagues spent four days in jail for covering the trial of a popular pop star whose songs angered the government. Though he was released, the case against him remains pending and his magazine is yet to be revived.

Fasil recalls the recent history of media persecution by the state and observes and explains the apathy of the international community: “Much to the utter amazement of the of the Ethiopian public, the international community shrugged and moved on, perhaps writing off the democratic cause in Ethiopia as superfluous in light of the perceived danger posed by Islamic extremists in the Horn. Every single one of those papers is still closed, and almost all journalists that worked for them are either in exile or remain unemployed to this day.”
She told IPS that a few months after her acquittal she applied for new press licenses as prescribed by the press law and the constitution. “And though we were assured by the Ministry of Information that we had fulfilled all legal requirements and are entitled to the licenses by law, we were advised to pursue the issue at the prime minister’s office, which had extra-judicially interceded to block the applications. Ten months later, we are still patiently waiting for the application of rule of law.”
“The provisions of better laws are desirable,” she says, “but they will hardly matter if they are not binding and could be abrogated at will by government officials, as has been clearly established in our case.”
Signs are that the government intends to widen the scope of its assault on people’s rights. The current session of parliament is also taking up a bill to regulate non-governmental and civil society organisations. The banned journalists, it seems, will soon have more allies to share their adversity and join their struggle. (END/2008)