NYTimes.com: Repression Is Alleged Before Vote in Ethiopia

Repression Is Alleged Before Vote in Ethiopia
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: May 21, 2010

NAIROBI, Kenya - Diplomats, human rights groups and witnesses say the Ethiopian government is methodically stifling dissent in the prelude to this weekend's national elections, denying food aid to opposition supporters, jailing political opponents and possibly killing a few activists, part of a broader pattern of repression in several of America's closest allies in Africa, especially during election time.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest and most aid-dependent countries in the world, and the American government and the World Bank, two of its biggest donors, are investigating potential leaks in the aid system and allegations that the government is manipulating food aid to reward political allies and literally starve out political opposition.

"We have seen these reports, and we are looking into them, and we would object to any politicization of our humanitarian assistance," said Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs. "We expect
countries to use the aid in the manner in which it was given and to ensure that it reaches those who need it."

The allegations, which the Ethiopian government strongly denies, seem to be part of an increasingly iron-fisted strategy to ensure that the governing party holds on to power while preventing the widespread protests that erupted after the last major elections in 2005.

Back then, opposition groups said they had won far more seats than the government acknowledged, setting off demonstrations that were violently suppressed. Security forces arrested tens of thousands and killed scores of unarmed protesters.


According to human rights groups, recent State Department reports and witnesses, the Ethiopian government has recently imprisoned opposition leaders on false charges, passed laws to stymie intellectual and human rights groups and silenced independent media. Ethiopia gets roughly a billion dollars a year in aid from American taxpayers; at the same time, the government is  jamming radio broadcasts from the American-financed Voice of America, one of the few major independent media outlets left in the country.

The complaints pouring out of Ethiopia echo some of those from Rwanda, the

Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, American allies that receive

hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year.


Elections are looming in each of these countries, and though such contests

are supposed to be the embodiment of democracy, they often presage harsh

crackdowns. Human rights groups say strongman governments across the

continent continue to use a variety of tools - arresting journalists,

driving out human rights monitors and jailing opponents - to eliminate any

serious political threat.





"More repression, less democracy and no real outcry," said Daniela Kroslak,

deputy Africa program director for the International Crisis Group. "That's

true for much of Africa today."





In a recent report,  Human Rights Watch describes how the

Ethiopian government employs an extensive network of local officials,

militias and spies to control who gets donor-financed fertilizer, seeds,

food aid and jobs. It is part of a "complex and multilayered strategy aimed

at preventing political opposition and dissent," the report said, and the

elections on Sunday will probably be "a veneer of democratic pretension

hiding a repressive state apparatus."





Many Ethiopians are terrified to discuss these issues openly, and the

government has denied visas to several foreign journalists trying to cover

the elections and is restricting the movements of foreign diplomats.





But some Ethiopians are speaking out. Hassan Ali, a farmer in central

Ethiopia with seven children, was one of several villagers who said they

were cut off from a donor-supported antipoverty program because they backed

the opposition. He said local officials warned him in March, "Unless you

join the E.P.R.D.F.," the ruling party, "you could die and your family will

starve to death."





Some analysts go as far as saying that American aid to governments like

Ethiopia's is actually subsidizing the problem.





"Our findings show that the development assistance is helping to underwrite

the repression" in Ethiopia, said Georgette Gagnon, director of the Africa

division of Human Rights Watch.





American officials say they have tried to broach these complaints with their
Ethiopian counterparts, and the State Department's human rights report on Ethiopia is unsparing: "There were

numerous credible reports of unlawful detention of opposition candidates,"

and, "Security forces committed arbitrary and politically motivated killings

during the year."

Since early March, two opposition activists and  one candidate have been killed. Witnesses and some

Western diplomats say the victims were singled out because they were outspoken opponents of the

 governing party.


The Ethiopian government says that the killings were common crimes, not assassinations, and that the opposition was fabricating abuses to discredit the election. The government has also lashed out at critics abroad, denouncing the State Department assessment and dismissing the Human Rights Watch report as "a smear campaign."


Bereket Simon, Ethiopia's minister of communication affairs, said last week

that the government did not need coercion to win the election because "the

people of Ethiopia know for sure the future of Ethiopia lies with this

government."





Supporters of the government say it has reduced poverty and improved

infrastructure, unlike some African nations that get staggering sums of

foreign aid yet have little to show for it because of corruption.





The United States has many delicate interests to balance in Ethiopia, a

sprawling Christian-led country of 85 million people in a region struggling

with Islamic extremism. Mr. Carson, the State Department official,

acknowledged that a top priority was maintaining a "military-to-military

relationship" with the Ethiopians, who received covert American help in 2006

to invade Somalia and oust a government that was tilting toward radical

Islam.





Human rights groups are urging the United States to put more strings on the

humanitarian aid to Ethiopia, but the Obama administration is against that.





"We should never tie our humanitarian assistance to political goals and

objectives," Mr. Carson said. "We are trying to ensure that poor people's

lives are saved."





But he added that "other pieces of the aid package are subject to discussion

when governments backslide on democratic reform."





That backsliding is a problem across the continent, despite the money,

effort and diplomatic capital spent on democratic reform. Sudan just

completed its first multiparty election in 24 years, but many analysts say

the previous election, in 1986, was freer and fairer. Kenya held a clean

election in 2002, and a disastrously flawed one in 2007.





Few of Africa's authoritarian governments, like Ethiopia's, were previously

bastions of liberty. The country has a long history of repression and

rebellion. But critics contend that many of Africa's

former-guerrilla-fighters-turned-leaders are growing steadily more

repressive as their terms stretch from years into decades. Ethiopia's prime

minister,  Meles Zenawi, has led the country for 19 years.


"They still have this leftist ideology that the vanguard party knows what is

right for the people," said  Berhanu Nega, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa, the capital, in 2005, then

jailed for nearly two years, forced into exile in the United States and

recently sentenced to death in absentia. "Anyone who opposes the party is an

enemy of the people."





Jason McLure and an Ethiopian journalist contributed reporting from Addis

Ababa, Ethiopia.