By Muktar M. Omer
Template denials
March 17, 2014 (WardheerNews) – The Ethiopian Government, through its foreign ministry, responded to Martin Plaut’s article“Silence and Pain: Ethiopia’s human rights record in the Ogaden” with the usual feigned shock and template denial that has long characterized the regime’s political personality. It is the established behavior of aggressive and autocratic regimes to discount well-founded reports of human right violations as propaganda constructs of the ‘enemy’. The response from the Foreign Ministry was thus nothing more than a well memorized and rehearsed Ethiopian way of disregarding documented depravities committed by the regime. As usual, the tenor of the regime’s reaction is blame apportionment, not done on the basis of reasoned assessment of the evidences presented, but prompted by the urge to bear out its political prejudice and cover-up.
This is a regime whose character has the potential to confuse even Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former Reagan foreign policy advisor, who made a distinction between “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” regimes. In her essay “Dictatorship and Double Standards,” she describes authoritarian dictators as “pragmatic rulers who care about their power and wealth and are indifferent toward ideological issues, even if they pay lip service to some big cause”; while, in contrast, totalitarian leaders are “selfless fanatics who believe in their ideology and are ready to put everything at stake for their ideals”.
We face a regime that is an amalgam of authoritarianism and totalitarianism paying lip service to the cause of ‘development’ while fanatically believing that a small gun-wielding minority has the right to rule the country forever. Although it calls itself “revolutionary democracy”, as oxymoronic as this is, the country is run by a revolutionary autocracy, whose slogan for justifying the oppression of the most valuable asset of the country – its people – has become “we build roads, schools and dams”.
Template denials
March 17, 2014 (WardheerNews) – The Ethiopian Government, through its foreign ministry, responded to Martin Plaut’s article“Silence and Pain: Ethiopia’s human rights record in the Ogaden” with the usual feigned shock and template denial that has long characterized the regime’s political personality. It is the established behavior of aggressive and autocratic regimes to discount well-founded reports of human right violations as propaganda constructs of the ‘enemy’. The response from the Foreign Ministry was thus nothing more than a well memorized and rehearsed Ethiopian way of disregarding documented depravities committed by the regime. As usual, the tenor of the regime’s reaction is blame apportionment, not done on the basis of reasoned assessment of the evidences presented, but prompted by the urge to bear out its political prejudice and cover-up.
This is a regime whose character has the potential to confuse even Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, former Reagan foreign policy advisor, who made a distinction between “authoritarian” and “totalitarian” regimes. In her essay “Dictatorship and Double Standards,” she describes authoritarian dictators as “pragmatic rulers who care about their power and wealth and are indifferent toward ideological issues, even if they pay lip service to some big cause”; while, in contrast, totalitarian leaders are “selfless fanatics who believe in their ideology and are ready to put everything at stake for their ideals”.
We face a regime that is an amalgam of authoritarianism and totalitarianism paying lip service to the cause of ‘development’ while fanatically believing that a small gun-wielding minority has the right to rule the country forever. Although it calls itself “revolutionary democracy”, as oxymoronic as this is, the country is run by a revolutionary autocracy, whose slogan for justifying the oppression of the most valuable asset of the country – its people – has become “we build roads, schools and dams”.
Why deign a response to Plaut’s article?
Martin Plaut’s timely and courageous article deserves appreciation. He is one man who felt his responsibility as a journalist obligates him to bring hidden atrocities to the eyes of the world, even when the most powerful countries in the world would prefer to look the other way than to see the crimes committed with their money. If his report has a flaw, it is that it has adopted a very high evidence threshold not applied for other countries where atrocities are reported from such as Syria, and consequently has omitted several large-scale violations in the Somali Region of Ethiopia, including the Malqaqa massacre of May 17, 2010, the Gunagado massacre of February 12, 2012, and the Qorille massacre of September 06, 2012.
A question worth asking however is why the Foreign Ministry chose to respond to Martin Plaut when the allegations captured in his article are not new? Numerous local and international journalists, reputed global human rights activists, thousands of refugees who run away from the region, and defected members of the repressive regime have been saying the same thing for years. In fact, the Congress of the biggest ally of the regime, the United States, has enacted a budget law as recently as January 2014, which contains important provisions that a) “put the Congress on record as noting the Ethiopian government is violating human rights; and b) prohibits the U.S. government from providing foreign aid that supports the violation of human rights”. A Senate report that accompanies the law says Congress is “concerned with the use of anti-terrorism laws to imprison journalists, political opponents, and others calling for free and fair elections and political and human rights.”
full story
Martin Plaut’s timely and courageous article deserves appreciation. He is one man who felt his responsibility as a journalist obligates him to bring hidden atrocities to the eyes of the world, even when the most powerful countries in the world would prefer to look the other way than to see the crimes committed with their money. If his report has a flaw, it is that it has adopted a very high evidence threshold not applied for other countries where atrocities are reported from such as Syria, and consequently has omitted several large-scale violations in the Somali Region of Ethiopia, including the Malqaqa massacre of May 17, 2010, the Gunagado massacre of February 12, 2012, and the Qorille massacre of September 06, 2012.
A question worth asking however is why the Foreign Ministry chose to respond to Martin Plaut when the allegations captured in his article are not new? Numerous local and international journalists, reputed global human rights activists, thousands of refugees who run away from the region, and defected members of the repressive regime have been saying the same thing for years. In fact, the Congress of the biggest ally of the regime, the United States, has enacted a budget law as recently as January 2014, which contains important provisions that a) “put the Congress on record as noting the Ethiopian government is violating human rights; and b) prohibits the U.S. government from providing foreign aid that supports the violation of human rights”. A Senate report that accompanies the law says Congress is “concerned with the use of anti-terrorism laws to imprison journalists, political opponents, and others calling for free and fair elections and political and human rights.”
full story