Ethiopia: Land of silence and starvation

Geoffrey York
Ethiopia: Land of silence and starvation
A famine is growing across Ethiopia, but the government is clamping down on
information - even ejecting aid agencies that could help bring aid for fear
of provoking unrest and losing their grip on power.


MEKI, ETHIOPIA — From Saturday's Globe and Mail


Published on Friday, Nov. 06, 2009 6:11PM EST


Last updated on Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009 1:25PM EST


On market day in the dusty town of Meki, the few cobs of corn sold by the
hawkers are scrawny, pale, scabby and pockmarked. Yet the price of this
meagre food has doubled since last year – because so many farmers have seen
their corn harvests fail.


“We are between life and death,” says 50-year-old farmer Geda Shenu, who was
forced to buy corn at Meki market after most of his crops failed in this
year’s drought. He shows the empty weed-filled fields where he planted corn
and beans, crops that never grew when the rains never came.


To survive, he is selling one of his two oxen and giving his family just two
sparse meals a day. He and his neighbours have marched down to the local
government office to sign a petition pleading for government help. “If we
don’t get any aid, we will die,” he says. “How can we feed our children?”


It’s a story the Ethiopian government does not want told.


On the 25th anniversary of the famine that killed nearly a million
Ethiopians in 1984, any talk of drought and hunger is still a highly
sensitive issue in this impoverished country, subject to draconian controls
by the government. Two regimes were toppled in the 1970s and 1990s because
of discontent over famines, and the current regime is determined to avoid
their fate.


Aid agencies that dare to speak out publicly, or even to allow a photo of a
malnourished child at a feeding centre, can be punished or expelled from the
country. Visas or work permits are often denied, projects can be delayed,
and import approvals for vital equipment can be buried. Most relief agencies
are prohibited from allowing visits by journalists or foreigners, except
under strict government control.


After a disastrous series of crop failures, the number of Ethiopians needing
emergency aid has jumped from 4.9 million to 6.2 million in the past 10
months. Yet most journalists are barred from travelling to the countryside
to document the drought. Relief workers avoid any public comments about the
rising malnutrition, and none will talk candidly to journalists except on
condition of anonymity.


Another restriction is even more damaging: Foreign agencies are not
permitted to do their own independent assessments of malnutrition this year.
Instead, they must be accompanied by government officials in joint teams
that are difficult and time-consuming to negotiate, delaying the response to
regional emergencies.


Aid agencies have known since July that at least seven million people will
need emergency aid in Ethiopia this year, based on detailed assessments
across the country. But the government delayed the release of these figures,
continuing to insist publicly that only 5.3 million people needed help.


Finally, after months of mystifying delays, the government announced in late
October that 6.2 million people needed emergency aid – still below the true
figure, and too late to trigger a large-scale fundraising effort this year.
Another estimate is due to be released in mid-November, unless it too is
delayed.


Why such heavy-handed controls from a government that is seen as a U.S. ally
in the Horn of Africa, a country that is still viewed sympathetically by
most of the world? One reason is the election scheduled for May. The
long-ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, is
keeping a tight grip on the vote. The last election, in 2005, was widely
criticized for vote-rigging and fraud, and about 200 people were killed
after the election when police fired on opposition protesters.


Since then, the government has strengthened its control of the country.
Maoist-style neighbourhood committees watch over all activity in the
villages, with informants appointed for every five families in some areas.
Local elections in 2008 were so carefully managed that the opposition ended
up with only a tiny handful of the three million seats.


But nobody expects the controls to disappear after the May election. The
ruling party has always been sensitive about any questioning of its ability
to feed the country. Its own rise to power in 1991 was largely a result of
the famines of the 1980s. And it knows that the long reign of Emperor Haile
Selassie was brought crashing down after the globally televised images of
the 1974 famine.


Relief agencies say it is harder to make a global appeal for help for
Ethiopia when the official estimates are politicized, minimized and delayed.
By the time the 2009 appeal was released in late October, only two months
were left in the year.


“This year’s fight is over,” said an aid worker at one of the biggest
agencies. “The children who were at risk of death in the summer have died by
now.”


In some of the hardest-hit regions, foreign relief agencies have extremely
limited access. Their movements are tightly controlled, partly because of
military operations against rebel groups in the Somali region. Several of
the biggest international agencies were expelled from the region or withdrew
under pressure in 2007 and 2008.


In another region, Tigray, aid agencies are heavily restricted, because
Tigray is the traditional base of the ruling EPRDF. “It’s a black spot,
because it’s supposed to be a model of success,” one aid worker says. “When
people are starving, the information doesn’t get out.”


The government is widely suspected of using the foreign aid shipments to
reward its supporters. Up to 20 per cent of the aid is “lost” before it
reaches the neediest people, but the diverted sacks of food are often
noticed at military barracks, according to one aid worker.


When Ethiopia is hit by cholera outbreaks, as often happens, the government
prefers to call it acute watery diarrhea because it dislikes the bad
publicity that cholera attracts. The latest cholera outbreak, which began in
August, has sickened thousands of people, but the government called it AWD
and minimized the numbers. When the true numbers finally surfaced in a
United Nations document, the government was so furious that it suspended its
co-operation meetings with the relief agencies for a month.


In fear of government punishment, many agencies fall into self-censorship.
“There’s a whole layer of anxiety that we’re all operating under,” one
veteran worker said. “The obsession with control has been even stronger than
last year.”


Some Western diplomats argue that the government’s euphemisms and public
evasions are unimportant because the accurate assessment data is known
internally to the key agencies that supply emergency aid to Ethiopia.
Compared with many other African countries, they say, Ethiopia is relatively
efficient in distributing aid and is introducing good programs to expand
health care and food delivery in rural regions.


But others say the government’s sensitivities and restrictions are hampering
the world’s response to Ethiopia’s emergencies, delaying the flow of crucial
aid for months.


“If you delay the life-saving response, lives don’t get saved,” one relief
worker says. “People get weaker and less productive. And the response is a
short-term band-aid. If you recognize a situation earlier, the response can
reduce the chances of needing emergency aid in the future.”


Another aid worker is even more blunt. “The government is locked into a
cycle of very significant denial,” he said. “It’s playing with millions of
lives.”


Ethiopia has been hit by a series of crop failures and droughts since 2007,
and the cumulative effect is taking a heavy toll. In addition to the 6.2
million who are officially deemed to need emergency aid, another 7 million
are already getting food aid because they are chronically vulnerable to food
shortages, meaning that Fully one-sixth of Ethiopia’s 80 million people are
on food aid.


The global recession, meanwhile, is making it harder to raise funds from
international donors. Canada has given $54-million to the Ethiopian relief
effort this year, but the overall level of global donations is far below
what is needed. As a result, the food rations for most Ethiopian recipients
are barely half of the needed level.


But instead of redoubling its efforts to seek help, Ethiopia is tightening
its controls as the 2010 election approaches. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi
repeatedly denies that Ethiopia has a food crisis and accuses the “food aid
industry” and the “lords of poverty” of deliberately inflating the number of
Ethiopians who need aid.


Relief agencies give troubling accounts of how their work is becoming more
difficult. One agency was forced to halt its food distribution for three
months in one region because the government was unhappy with a local media
article.


Another agency tried to offer help after a massive blaze destroyed 20 homes
in an Addis Ababa shantytown this week. At first welcomed by firefighters,
the agency was abruptly ordered to leave when security agents arrived on the
scene. “Even for something that was so obviously a disaster, where we could
have helped, there was suspicion and distance,” a worker said.


Most foreign journalists are prohibited from travelling outside Addis Ababa,
the capital. The Globe and Mail twice applied for permission to visit rural
regions, but both applications were rejected. In the end I had to travel
without permission, at the risk of arrest if I was discovered.


When I asked a government official why I was barred from reporting in rural
districts, he said too many journalists were too interested in the drought,
which he said was entirely due to climate change and had nothing to do with
the government.


The very few journalists who do obtain permission to visit a feeding centre
are accompanied by a government “minder” at all times. Feeding-centre staff
are sometimes interrogated by security agents after they talk to foreign
journalists, making them fearful of saying anything.


The government maintains a “black list” of foreign correspondents who are
deemed unfriendly to the regime, and some have been expelled, refused entry,
or detained at the Addis Ababa airport when they arrive. Several Ethiopian
journalists who work for foreign media have fled the country for fear of
punishment.


The Ethiopian government, using technology from its new economic partners in
China, has blocked many websites that criticize the government, including
those of Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists. The
same Chinese technology is allowing the authorities to monitor e-mails and
cellphones, making relief agencies and journalists nervous about government
eavesdropping on their conversations.


Back in the drought-stricken Meki region, a farmer named Gudeta Beriso
points to a field of withered corn stalks, surrounded by empty fields. “In
the old days, all of this was covered by corn,” he said.


“Now you don’t see anything. The fields are just rubbish. We haven’t had a
good crop for two years. We are worried about the future. We are shouting
for help.”