Human rights abuses in "democratic" Ethiopia: Government - sponsored ethnic hatred
Keywords:
Ethnic federalism. ethnic warfare.Abstract
In Ethiopia, the world is witnessing ethnicity gone awry. The division of Ethiopia into ethnic administrative regions was mandated by an EPRDF government and written into a new constitution approved by faux elections. The idea of ethnic federalism did not originate from the people nor did they approve of it in free and fair elections. In light of events in Rwanda, the Congo, and the former Yugoslavia, it is doubtful that any people willingly would subject themselves to the horrors of state-enforced ethnic warfare. In Ethiopia, the people have not been given the opportunity so to choose at the grass roots level, and until they do, ethnic federalism must be viewed as an artificial system imposed from above.
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References
"TPLF/EPRDF Congresses Wound up without Addressing Crucial Political Issues," Ethiopian Register, February 1998, p. 13.
Aryeh Neier, "Human Rights," in Joel Krieger (ed), The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 401-403.
Paul B. Henze, Ethiopia in 1991--Peace Through Struggle, Washington, D.C., RAND, 1991, p7743, p. 3.
See, e.g., The International Solidarity Committee for Ethiopian Prisoners of Conscience, Unraveling Human Rights’ Abuses in Ethiopia, Proceedings of a Human Rights Week Observance and Electronic Mail Conference 3-8 March, 1997 (Medford, MA: ISCEPC, 1997); Theodore M. Vestal, "Deficits of Democracy in the Transitional Government of Ethiopia Since 1991," in Harold G. Marcus, ed., New Trends in Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 2 (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1994), pp. 188-204.
"TPLF/EPRDF's Strategies for Establishing its Hegemony & Perpetuating its Rule," English translation of TPLF/EPRDF document published in June 1993, Ethiopian Register, June 6 1996, pp. 20-29
Ibid.
Theodore M. Vestal, "Documented Sacrifice: The Experience of Young Ethiopians Now Seeking Political Asylum Abroad," Ethiopian Register, August 1997, pp. 30-33.
Joby Warrick, "Psychology: Syndrome Suspected in Genocidal Acts," Washington Post, 29 Dec 97, p. A02.
Jack Saul, "Forgotten in the Hoopla: Tibet's Young Torture Victims," New York Times, 1 November 1997, p. A29.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of Americaÿ(NY: W.W. Norton, 1992), p. 112.
See, the English translation of the guidelines of one of the supreme bodies of the EPRDF Central Committee, Dirijitawi Ma'ekel, "EPRDF's Organizational Structure & Operation," Part I, Ethiopian Register, September 1997, pp. 16-19; Part II, October 1997, pp. 18-22; Part III, November 1997, pp. 18-21; Part IV, December 1997, pp. 22- 27; Part V, January 1998, pp. 20-24; Part VI-Final, March 1998, pp. 18, 20-22, 24.
Schlesinger, p. 110.
Solomon Deressa, "The Poem and Its Matrix," in Silence isÿNot Golden: A Critical Anthology of Ethiopian Literature, ed. Taddesse Adera and Ali Jimale Ahmed (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea
Press, 1994), p. 177.
For reports of harassment of AAPO, see Moresh 2,3,4 especially Apr/May, July/Aug, Aug/Sep,
Dec 1994; Aug, Oct/Nov 1995; Neka Tibeb, "Speech," Andinet, 1 February 1997, p. 3.
Human rights abuses against Oromos and especially members of the Oromo Liberation Front
(OLF) are documented in Sagalee Haaraa, the newsletter of the Oromia Support Group.
Credit for the recipe for turning prejudice into murder belongs to A.M. Rosenthal in describing
what happened in India during communal rioting following destruction of a mosque in Ayodhya in 7
December 1992; see, "The Alchemists of Murder," New York Times, 2 March 1993, p. A21.
Okwudiba Nnoli, "Ethnicity," in Joel Krieger (ed), The Oxford Companion to Politics of the
World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 280-284.
Ibid.
John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical," Philosophy and Public Affairs,
XIV, (1985), pp. 223-51.
Schlesinger, p. 118.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, Democracy on Trial (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 2.
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