The Day the Music Died or When A Dictatorship Targets Artists

Seriously, we have put up with quite a bit from this dictatorship in Ethiopia! Economic stagnation. Food crisis. Uncontrollable Inflation. Political prisoners. Intellectual strangulation. Decrepit education system. But the current arrest of musician and man about town, Tewodros Kassahun, popularly known as Teddy Afro, has us at our wits end. Is nothing sacred? First they came for the politicians, then they came for the lawyers and now they are coming for our artists. Must the hot, smart boys suffer along with the rest of us mortals?

The veracity of the accusations against him is hard to swallow. After all this is the same state apparatus which not too long ago accused journalists and human rights defenders of genocide—which would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragically disrespectful to victims of genocide worldwide. The artist stands accused of a hit and run in which the victim died. His real crime however, is not genuflecting to the powers of the tyrannical regime.

Teddy Afro’s popularity among progressive pro human rights Ethiopians is well noted. The antagonism of the regime is also inevitable—they detest anything that is naturally beautiful and gravitate towards the profoundly artificial. It is therefore not surprising that on May 5, 2008, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that an Ethiopian Deputy Editor and two staff writers of the monthly Enku, were arrested in connection with the publication of a cover story on our Teddy Afro. The newspapers, with treasonous materials such as “interviews with [Teddy’s] lawyer and fans,” were confiscated by the police. The supremely important head of the Ethiopian Information Ministry (our country’s Orwellian Ministry of Truth) confirmed the right of the police to “intervene if there are any problems with “content.” Bravo to the supporters of the regime! We feel much safer and smarter knowing that the information we received has been initially culled and properly vetted by the police.

So it is from some of these junta apparatchiks that one can hear the cries for justice for the young man allegedly killed by Teddy Afro and for accountability for the accused artist. Suddenly everyone is an advocate for retribution. Oh that poor boy, they say of the victim. Yes, it is tragic as is any loss of life. Yet those who are most fervently calling for the electric chair in this case, also happen to be the most ardent supporters of the regime. One would be hard pressed to find these same people calling for justice when the government’s security forces mowed down Ethiopians in broad daylight.

Let us by all means prosecute those pesky drunk drivers! What a blight they are on our otherwise pristine existence!  What? You can’t afford Teff? You don’t know how to make your meager salary stretch? Well. A government that is failing to feed its own people—that is just economics! We are somehow expected to railroad Teddy to prison for an alleged hit and run but the crimes of Meles and his henchmen against 80 million Ethiopians go unanswered.

Jaded as we are, our first instinct was to think something much more sinister was afoot! Is the Meles regime rounding up eligible young bachelors and locking them up? Do we now have to withstand our diminished wages along with the dwindling prospects of a date with a talented artist? As if life isn’t depressing enough, must they lock up the good-looking boys? Our survey regarding our theory of Teddy’s arrest proved inconclusive. It seems that although the regime has been imprisoning young men en masse for some years, it is not the intent but simply the outcome that the number of free, eligible, good-looking men has dwindled.

Our protest is not against accountability but rather against selective prosecution and implementation of laws. Our opposition is to the silencing of artists whose work is deemed contrary to the interests of the regime. 

Revolutionary artists are raconteurs of a people’s suffering, their hopes and their work for change. Some have already written about Teddy and his inspiration, Bob Marley. Before he was co-opted by corporations, hipsters and those unfamiliar with history but enraptured with reggae, Marley promoted African independence through his cri de coeur against white colonial rule in his song “Zimbabwe.” He was a protest musician. South Africa’s Anti Apartheid movement was accompanied by the melodies of Miriam Makeba, Mbgeni Ngema and Vuyisile Mini. In North America, author James Baldwin penned the angst of the Black population while chanteuse Nina Simone belted out tunes of rage during the black liberation movements of the 1950’s through the 1970s. Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu and dead prez provide the soundtrack of the current struggle for human rights in the United States. Bards, authors and songwriters offer an essential element of movements providing visual and vocal representations of the struggle. Teddy Afro falls squarely within that tradition. He is that tradition.

So as a special homage to artists, whose who have stood and continue to stand in solidarity with movements for freedom, we offer, with profuse apologies to the incomparable Nina Simone, a play on her protest song of the black liberation movement of the 1960’s in the United States,  “Mississippi Goddam!” 

We have renamed it “Meles Zenawi Goddam!”

The name of this tune is Meles Zenawi Goddam

And I mean every word of it

Ogaden's gotten me so upset

Somalia made me lose my rest

And everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam

Ogaden's gotten me so upset

Somalia made me lose my rest

And everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam

Can't you see it

Can't you feel it

It's all in the air

I can't stand the pressure much longer

Somebody say a prayer

 

Ogaden's gotten me so upset

Somalia's made me lose my rest

And everybody knows about  Meles Zenawi Goddam

This is a show tune

But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Security forces on my trail

Political prisoners sitting in jail

Black cat cross my path

I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine

We all gonna get it in due time

I don't belong here

I don't belong there

I've even stopped believing in prayer

 

Don't tell me

I tell you

Me and my people just about due

I've been there so I know

They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble

"do it slow"

Free Elections

"do it slow"

Human rights struggle

"do it slow"

You're just plain rotten

"do it slow"

You're too damn lazy

"do it slow"

The thinking's crazy

"do it slow"

Where am I going

What am i doing

I don't know

I don't know

Just try to do your very best

Stand up be counted with all the rest

For everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam

I bet you thought I was kiddin' didn't you

National strikes

School boy cots

They try to say it's an orange revolution plot

All I want is equality

for my cousin my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years

You told me to come and vote without fear

And talking real free won't land me in jail

And I believed it all without fail

Oh but this whole country is full of lies

You're all gonna die and die like flies

I don't trust you any more

You keep on saying "Go slow!"

"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble

"do it slow"

Freedom of Speech

"do it slow"

Mass participation

"do it slow"

Free the prisoners

"do it slow"

Do things gradually

"do it slow"

But bring more tragedy

"do it slow"

Why don't you see it

Why don't you feel it

I don't know

I don't know

You don't have to live next to me

Just give me my equality

Everybody knows about Ogaden

Everybody knows about Somalia

Everybody knows about Meles Zenawi Goddam

That's it!

Water? Let Them have Macchiato!

One of our loyal fans emailed us some pictures purportedly of a mansion in Ethiopia. Vainly, we gawked at the marvelous architecture, the cerulean water of the Olympic size pool, the absolute luxury of marble baths and the cascading staircases. We imagined many a fancy party, perhaps even a ball or two and definitely some kind of outrageous fundraiser hosted at the lavish residence.

The materialistic girl in us wondered: might we be invited to these shindigs? Could we hobnob with the über elite of a country that is consistently ranked at the bottom of all economic indices?

And what in heaven’s name do you wear to such an ostentatious venue?

In the midst of our deeply important ponderings of whether our stilettos would slip on the marble floors, we thought, finally, we can offer an explanation for the water shortage that is reportedly afflicting millions of people in the land where the Blue Nile originates: the water is all in the pools! 

Yet we needn't have bothered with these pictures of a grossly out of place mansion in a city of aluminum (korkoroh) houses. We have the Sheraton, that symbolic embodiment of the bankruptcy of the current regime. The amount of water in those pools could probably irrigate the entire countryside!

But pesky concerns like access to clean water or even the chronic Ethiopian problem of food insecurity need not concern you. That's right. Our esteemed ambassador to Turkey, Ato Malutu Teshome, His Excellency, purveyor of knowledge and such, recently declared that Ethiopia is not in need of political reform. Well. We can all close up shop and sleep soundly now.

It is too banal to speak of an ever-expanding gap between the very rich and the very, very poor in Ethiopia. That would be too kind. It would almost be a capitalist excuse –the kind you hear in the West, which inevitably reverberates with some admiration for the infallibility of the markets and discounts any failures as merely the fault of those not fit to survive.

Oh were it that our Ethiopian problems are so simple!

We do not have some byproduct or residual effect of the market regulating itself, which therefore leads to some inequalities between some classes of people.

 Oh dear. Now. We have gone and brought up class, the boogeyman of economics, so we obviously have to disavow certain labels. No, we aren't Marxists; we simply can't be bothered to be that dogmatic. We are, however, unabashedly opposed to the massive accumulation of wealth at the expense of meeting the basic necessities of life. We do know that we can't give some market-induced rationale for our situation. At least not one that sheds any positive light on what is occurring, quietly but surely in East Africa. 

Ours is a case of massive human rights violations. It is also a case of greed. Our children are hungry because the regime, prevailing on everyone that they are better than Mengistu, still refuses to feed its people. Yes refuse. Not inability but refusal.

 Young women become sex workers in Ethiopia because while the government is busy jailing "unemployed youth", they have done nothing to alleviate poverty in the countryside. Forced to choose between an abandoned and miserable life without food and resources and an uncertain future, young women bank on selling more than their souls for just another form of misery. And we are supposed to denounce them out of some moral indignation that they are sex workers when it is the decadence of the Meles regime that we should be denouncing?

It is this military junta that prostitutes our country: selling her dignity for some paltry gains, trading her geographical location for "strategic" military operations, and peddling her historical joining of Christians, Animists, Muslims and Jews for some unholy alliance with neocolonialists, such as China.

Never mind that with inflation continuing to spiral out of control, the price of teff, that staple grain of Ethiopian life, is beyond the budget of the average citizen.

Those in power in Ethiopia view water as a luxury that is used to fill up enormously useless swimming pools. To the rest of us mere citizens, access to clean water is a fundamental human rights issue. According to the World Health Organization, a meager 11 percent of the rural population has access to clean water. Moreover, 63 % of all infant mortality rates are caused by water borne diseases. Most impacted by the lack of access to clean water are Ethiopian women and girls—those who are not only responsible for transporting water for their families but also disproportionately suffer from water related diseases.

As we were rattling off these statistics at a dinner one night, some enterprising young man informed us that the right to water was "enshrined within the Ethiopian Constitution." We giggled.  What to laugh at first? The notion that citizens have "rights" in Ethiopia or that there is a rule of law in the form of the constitution?

Our constitutions have been the love letters of all the dictators. This latest version is no different. The approach to constitutional drafting in Ethiopia is to throw everything and the kitchen sink in—and why not? There is no mechanism for ensuring the implementation of these alleged rights and no accountability when obligations are violated.

But back to our water shortage problem: We are reminded of another regime some time ago where the avarice of the ruling class overwhelmed the impoverished population. What most people remember of the French Revolution is the callous queen and her oft quoted declaration. Forgotten is the fact that the people stormed several places, including the Bastille. Granted the Sheraton isn’t the Bastille—though it is frequented by many of Meles’ sycophants who should be hauled off to court to answer for corruption at the very least!

The current regime rules Ethiopia under the very same sentiments that were expressed by Louis XIV of France or one of his underlings: “après moi le deluge”—after me, the floods.  He lived extravagantly while the populace starved. Meles et al now live with wonton abandon while the population starves. The French Emperor built an extraordinary empire while the peasantry suffered; Ethiopia’s pillagers fill their coffers with our wealth, relaxing and swimming in opulent pools while ordinary people wonder how they will buy their next meal and where to get that clean cup of water.

While we are not structural engineers or well diggers, we have a thoroughly appropriate solution to the water crisis. The millions in need of water should descend on the Sheraton with buckets, jars, ensira, jugs, water bottles, mica, and politely demand that before the pools are filled, that the water is first purified and given to the population. It is quite naturally the only fair thing to do.

If all of that should fail, we should all crash the next pool party at the Sheraton and bring a million of our thirsty friends.

YECHALAL! E 4 O!

 

We have to be honest. We are not much for electoral politics. This may make us an anomaly in a time of frenzied excitement over the presidential elections. It can’t be helped though. Except for the occasional salacious scandal (Spitzer and his sex workers), or the ranting of a lunatic (Cheney grunting that he doesn’t care if Americans are against the war), there is really nothing to recommend the discipline. Politics has become the bully pulpit of the moralizing majority, the psychotic Christian right coalition and every nut job who wants to blame immigrants, gays and anyone else for their problems. And politics is certainly not glamorous. Well. Not in the classic sense.

Too often we have thought that national elections have had no consequences on our every day lives. We have supported local races with the strategy that we can impact the policies imposes at the city, county and state level with much more effectiveness than we can nationally. However, we know from our struggle for human rights that the fight must be on different fronts. Ethiopians living in the United States have learned many lessons since the so-called elections of 2005 and the subsequent unlawful arrests and massacre of citizens by the Meles Zenawi regime. Chief among them is the importance of participation in the United States electoral process. Influencing American foreign policy toward Ethiopia has to be among the many avenues we pursue as we continue our work.  Engagement in American politics is not only critical for our lives here in the states but for the lives of millions of Ethiopians held hostage by the Zenawi regime. 

Decisions about immigration, schooling and a myriad of other issues affect our lives tremendously. Our ability to impact the future direction of this country is critical. This is particularly relevant at a time of a massive economic downturn and a worthless yet never-ending war. The "fierce urgency of now" compels us to participate where as we might have otherwise gripped about the lesser of two evils theory or the general bankruptcy of politics.

As people who watched two elections, in 2000 and 2004, manipulated and ultimately stolen, we were reticent to put ourselves back on the line. The Rovian tactics had broken us; the "anything goes" Machiavellian modus operandi of late had demoralized us. Were we the only sane voices amidst a chorus of pro war, pro national security, anti immigration populace enraptured by a manipulative cabal?

Yet to gripe on the sidelines had never been our style.  Mitmita believes in being engaged. Being in the mix. Making it spicy.

So we have arrived once again at the gates of electoral politics and we have jumped in saying: Yechalal! 

We have always advocated the importance of engaging our opponents on different fronts. In Meles Zenawi and his junta, we do not have a common foe. There is sophistication to the operation, a method to the madness of the minister. It isn't an average dictator who hires the prestigious firm of DLA Piper to lobby against [read: kill and bury] HR 2003, the Ethiopian human rights and democracy bill currently in the Senate.

 The United States government funds the Zenawi regime to the tune of millions a year. As citizens we have the right and ultimately the responsibility to petition the government about where our tax dollars are being spent and what is being done in our name. That is what makes our engagement critical.

The vote determines who gets what, when, where and how.

Don't misunderstand us. We do not offer the ballot as a panacea—as a cure all to what ails our communities. The solution to the challenges facing our communities must be multifaceted. As with any strategy, we tread cautiously. No one should place all the eggs in one basket. Supporting a presidential candidate or working for a campaign is simply one of many methods for achieving our objectives.

Through this presidential campaign, we have the ability to shape the future policy towards Ethiopia and to blunt the current trajectory. We can not very well discuss McCain or the Republicans. Not with any sort of seriousness. We also cannot seriously consider Hillary Clinton. Her entire campaign have left many of us wondering what if anything is it that white women have learned about the struggles of women of color over the years? Asking us to make false choices between our race and our gender is not only tired but is engaging the type of political dishonesty that we are not interested in. She is not our feminist candidate. And incidentally why do we wax nostalgic about the Clintons when it was Bill, after all, who christened Meles as “a new breed of African leader”—as if we need a Ferenje telling us what’s good for Africa.

Which brings us to Barack Obama.

No, he is not a panacea either. Yet we can challenge him, provide him with critical information that he may not be privy to and begin with a cleaner slate than we would any of the other candidates. But what will not change the travesty of what’s happening at home is to sit on the sidelines. When engaged,  we can make an impact.

Since ballot determines who gets what, when, where and how, let’s make sure that our voice is heard.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN ETHIOPIA

MITMITA has come across a series of reports and articles that detail a stunning new tool in the fight against injustice: Silence! Yes, it seems as though through this new weapon, international organizations believe that they have hit a most coveted trifecta! First, they can fulfill their organizational roles--be it feed the hungry, shelter the homeless , or observe trials. Second, NGOs can do this while effectively shielding dictators from public criticism and rebuke for their role in the persistence of massive human rights violations. Thirdly (and this dovetails beautifully from the last point), they are permitted by the regime, in exchange for their silence, to remain in gorgeous Ethiopia, to ostensibly continue their "do gooding."

So in what contexts are these international organizations remaining silent? There was that recent story of aid organizations refusing to speak to the press about the human rights violations in Ogaden while at the same time administering assistance to those who have suffered tremendously at the hands of the regime. Then of course there is the ongoing saga of the human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience Daniel Bekele and Netsanet Demissie whose continued incarceration and the silence of NGOs was detailed in a report by Ethiopolitics.com last week.

Ultimately the reasoning of the NGOs when confronted about their decision to remain silent is:  "at least we are able to do some good and provide some services. People wouldn't be able to get this help, if we spoke up and if we are kicked out." Some, cynics that they are, might decry these methods as akin to putting a bandaid on a gushing deep wound and patting yourself on the back for all of the great work that you are doing. 

Mitmita is not that generous. We don't think that the issue is the inability of the NGOs to understand how silence is detrimental. We believe that above the interest in doing good, above the interest in humanitarianism and human rights is an interest in self preservation. And these international organizations do have a legitimate concern when it comes to that issue. Our Prime Minister is quite fanatical about being obeyed and he certainly doesn't like it when you criticize him. Remember how he rudely told Tony Blair to shove his money some years back? Recall how he has previously kicked out aid organizations? We all know that the foreign press corps in Addis simply fawn over him, reporting with feigned (we hope) genuineness about his elections, his promise to get a handle on the skyrocketing inflation and to root out  "economic criminals." Mitmita genuinely wants to know if he will start with himself. If the press didn't comply, they risk the fate of many who have been expelled or barred. So instead of news, we get packaged stories. Instead of agitation and pressure from international organizations, we get silence with the promise that this will buy us some justice. 

What justice? And at what price?

Yet more important than the need for these individuals to remain in Ethiopia is the need for the truth. Silence brings with it a false notion of neutrality. It has never been on the side of the oppressed. Silence benefits the oppressor. It shields wrongdoing, instead of exposing it. To argue that you are in Ethiopia to provide aid, to shelter, feed, ensure that basic necessities and fundamental rights are met--yet to remain silent on the ROOT causes of these ailments is to be disingenuous to your cause, to the people that you are providing aid to and ultimately to the principle of justice. 

It is silence that fuels Darfur's continuing genocide. It is silence that allowed the massacre in Rwanda. And it is silence that is allowing the brilliant minds of Daniel and Netsanet to rot in prison in Ethiopia.  Above all, it is our collective silence that has allowed our country to burn continuously.

One of Mitmita's favorite quotes is from Dante in his discussion of the various circles of hell. He wrote in Inferno, "the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." 

There is nothing that deserves the very screaming from our souls and the very agitation of our hearts than the suffering of our fellow Ethiopians. Where international organizations leave off, we must take up for ourselves. 

THE FINANCIER AND THE TEFF

“The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.” George Bernard Shaw

 

The entire hubbub surrounding the proposed Ethiopian Commodity Exchange has Mitmita tickled and a little atwitter. Nothing gets us girls more hot and bothered than a commodity exchange or a stock market—the most capitalist of tools. We have in fact joked about this possibility since 2001 because we are avid followers of NYSE and the NIKKEI.

 

Try as we might however, we can’t muster up the requisite enthusiasm for this latest antic from our favorite faux Marxist/Leninist turned über capitalist Prime Minister.

 

We are sure that people who will no doubt scream “you are ruining opening day at the Exchange for us” will label us as naysayers but our obligation is not to be popular but to report the truth. Well. We would also like to be popular. But sometimes we are willing to sacrifice our eternal need to be liked for the good of the nation.

 

So we do truly hate to put a damper on the celebrations (we do love us a good party) but we are aghast at the suggestion that Ethiopia is not only ready for a commodity exchange but that the nation is able to begin and sustain such a system. Perhaps someone should clue in some of these would be financiers that what lies within the gates of the Sheraton is not Ethiopia. The hotel in its grotesqueness might have begun to resemble a little province or even a region of the country. Except it’s not. We know for some of you, holding your noses, haughtily complaining that the poor are just simply depressing, averting your eyes to the truth lining the streets leading up to the gates of the hotel has become your reality. Yet it doesn’t mean that because you can get your macchiato just as you like it and the guard’s English is better than yours, that you are now ready for a commodity exchange. 

Let us begin with the basics.

First, free markets follow free societies. Having established a free democratic Ethiopia, the regime now boldly enters the free market enterprise! Except they haven’t done the former and the latter is still a twinkle in the Prime Minister’s eye. If the jailing of dissidents, journalists, and members of the intelligencia et al under the surreally absurd charge of treason and genocide are all marks of a free society, then we would have been well on our way. Except they aren’t and we are going nowhere fast. Before we can talk about in what town and in which cities we are planning to house this exchange, we should be concerned about how to have conversations with our neighbors and families that are actually private. A regime that spies on its own citizens, squelches all independent thought and suppresses free flow of information and exchange can only outwardly mimic a so called free market economy.

  

Second, markets function on perception. More than anything else, what keeps the western markets running is the deep belief that the various institutions of the country are stable. That they are viable. That there is a continuity of sorts. This is the same belief that allows these countries to have elections and seemingly effortless handoffs from one administration to the next (Granted, we will concede that the Bushies have engaged in vast violations of civil rights when it comes to voting but the premise remains: a stable political, economic and social environment allows for a peaceful transition of power). So in essence markets function because the populace has faith in the banks, in the regulators, in their government. Ultimately, they have faith in the transparency of the system. Reader, we know you will be shocked to hear this but we do not have such a system in place and we are millions of Meles, err, miles, rather, away from achieving it with the current regime.

 

To the imagination of many a ferenji, the country is on it’s way to becoming this hotbed of capitalist activity. The rest of us see a regime that can’t get a handle on inflation, can’t feed its own people and has a pesky penchant for liquidating the opposition. But what do you care about inflation or transparency in governance. Mitmita knows that so long as you are able to get your plot of land in coveted locales in Addis, your sauna at the Hilton and daily manicures/pedicures, you’ll scream, “let them eat cake.” The current Ethiopian regime, on the other hand, is holding the country “steady” with its U.S. imported guns, its chokehold on all fundamental freedoms and its steal boots on the neck of the press.

 

This leads us to our third point: stable institutions. There are none in the country.

Rampant corruption is about the only thing that has been institutionalized in Ethiopia. Second to it might be the efficient way in which the regime disposes of its opponents. Perhaps the most interesting part of the article detailing the set up of the commodity exchange was the discussion of electronic screens which will be set in “20 market towns” and will project real-time prices. This sentence is followed by discussion of the current method that uses “donkey drawn wagons.” The juxtaposition struck us since we know that not too many miles outside of Addis, not even hours away from the Sheraton, we have seen women carrying water on their heads.

Can we figure out how to institutionalize access to clean water across the country? That would be more beneficial to the population than this artifice of modernization that they are proposing.

 

Finally, economics divorced from human rights is essentially bankrupt. This regime wants to have all of the accoutrements of a modern society without any of the accountability. People remain in jail on trumped up charges, those disappeared are never discussed and the regime rules with impunity. Much of the country subsists on an average of two dollars daily and in the rural areas, the Economist has reported that villages survive on six cents a day.  This economic strangulation is in addition to the erosion of fundamental human rights. Ethiopia's refusal to protect fundamental rights essential to a democracy has created a "brain drain". Potential contributors to the economy, which express views different from the regime, are forced to live in exile or flee to avoid facing imprisonment or death. A society's economic system and social and political institutions are linked, human rights analysis should not be applied as a second prong in a two-step solution to Ethiopia’s economic woes.

 

Yet. We know this is really about perception. We’ll admit it. Exchanges, markets, stocks are all very sexy. It’s a sophisticated alluring esoteric world. It has a mystique and the gang in Addis is thinking that it will bestow upon them some coveted title—similar to that given the Asian markets a few years back.

 

Just like the elections in May 2005 bestowed on Ethiopia the title of a democratic state! Remember that?

 

 Except they didn’t.

Just like changing from army fatigues to tailored suits and dropping the antagonistic communist language made our Prime Minister the dapper don that’s the darling of the West.

 

Except he isn’t.  The emperor has no clothes and all that.

 

We just can’t be bullish on the prospects of the commodity exchange. These folks must be using the “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quakes like a duck”, then it must be a commodity exchange theory of economics.

 

We are girls who are very easily bored by people who are seeking to benefit at the expense of the poor. Greed, may be capitalist, but ultimately it is boorish and it is what is at the heart of this commodity exchange proposal.

 

The charade of modernization must stop.

I HEART DANIEL BEKELE!

Indulge us a bit, will you, as we lay out our case for this crush, this adoration we have for the mind of a most brilliant man. This love letter is a protest letter. It is as much a love letter about a man as it is about our country. 

We are quite sure you thought we meant to write an ode to the ole Prime Minister. The international homage he received of late, honoring his place in the legions of rulers and documenting his resolve to ensure that his government is not treated differently has caused us all to genuflect whenever his name is uttered.

But we don’t intend to canonize him within these pages. Besides, our feelings toward the Prime Minister cannot be adequately captured in any written language. So strong are our emotions that they risk being misunderstood. Yet we think about him quite often. We are also very convinced we have committed thoughtcrime numerous times.

But we digress.

Speaking of criminalizing dissent and other such undemocratic tactics that are obviously beneath our esteemed Prime Minister (see, high praise from the Committee to Protect Journalist for his work), let us return to the subject of our crush.

We were reminded of Daniel earlier this week amid discussions of this proposed law entitled “Charities and Societies Draft Proclamation No. 00/2007” governing civil society organizations in Ethiopia. Daniel Bekele's name has been absent from blogs, websites and news sources as of late and now he returns as the Ethiopian legislature takes aim at their latest victims: charities and civil society organizations.

You see this draft proclamation seeks to "regulate" civil society organizations by making it extremely burdensome for them to function. A renowned attorney has analyzed the most salient parts of this draft legislation and points out that another alternative to this draconian law exists. It is a proposal that was put together by none other than our Daniel. This attorney, who no doubt knows that we have a crush on Daniel, described him as "a young and dynamic anti-poverty civil society activist."

We couldn't agree more. And we can most probably go on about the many wonders that are Daniel Bekele.

What is striking about this latest draft law and Daniel's connection is that it illustrates a pattern on the part of the Ethiopian legislature to thwart progressive attempts by our gallant advocate. 

Let us rewind back several years to yet another draft law that shockingly enough sought to regulate the press but ended up curtailing freedom of expression. Our young and enterprising Daniel was at the heart of that brouhaha as well. When does the man get the time?

As a consultant to Article 19 (a London based organization that advocates for free expression) Daniel published a paper entitled “The Legal Framework for Freedom of Expression in Ethiopia.” The report assessed the framework for free expression, identified “key areas of concern” and provided some recommendations for “prospective law reforms or enactment of new laws” to the Ethiopian government and other interested parties.  On the eve of the publication of Daniel’s report, in March 2003, the Ethiopian legislature drafted an extremely repressive press law that editors from nine different newspapers described as draconian and would ultimately jeopardize free speech.

Fast-forward five years later and once again the Ethiopian legislature, through this draft law is curtailing what little progress fledgling civil society organizations have made. To add insult to injury, two of the most prominent members of civil society, Daniel Bekele and his colleague Netsanet Demissie, remain in prison. Experts have noted that instead of viewing these organizations as equal partners in the fight for democratization, the government views them as enemies.

In fact, its as though in hearing that Daniel works in public charities, the Prime Minister and his cronies channeled Lord Goring from “An Ideal Husband” and said “In public charities? Oh dear me. What a lot of harm you must have done, [Daniel!]”

What Daniel sought to do was to move the essential elements of a free, democratic society—free speech, free press, and by acting as an election monitor, free elections—from the margins into the center of the Ethiopian Consciousness.

Witness who is imprisoned in Kality; it is not merely some agitators caught in the crosshairs of an election dispute. Daniel is a committed human rights defender.

Who else would risk attacks, public rebuke, fines, imprisonment and the constant threat of harassment? In a country that suffers from undeniable brain drain, you can understand our praise of this man and ultimately our love of Daniel, a man who remains and battles daily for our rights and our country.

It is patriotism itself that languishes behind barbed wires in Kality.