Ethiopian Brutality, British Apathy

Graham Peebles

On 23rd June 2014 Andergachew Tsige was illegally detained at Sana’a airport in Yemen whilst travelling from Dubai to Eritrea on his British passport. He was swiftly handed over to the Ethiopian authorities, who had for years posted his name at the top of the regime’s most wanted list. Since then he has been detained incommunicado in a secret location inside Ethiopia. His ‘crime’ is the same as hundreds, perhaps thousands of other’s, publicly criticising the ruling party of Ethiopia, and their brutal form of governance.

Born in Ethiopia in 1955, Andergachew arrived in Britain aged 24, as a political refugee. He is a British citizen, a black working class British citizen with a wife and three children. Despite repeated efforts by his family and the wider Ethiopian community – including demonstrations, petitions and a legal challenge – the British government (which is the third biggest donor to Ethiopia, giving around £376 million a year in aid), have done little or nothing to secure this innocent man’s release, or ensure his safe treatment whilst in detention.

A tale of neglect and indifference

After nine months of official indifference, trust and faith in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is giving way to cynicism and anger amongst his family and members of the diaspora. The elephant in the room – the unspoken question of racial discrimination – is surfacing. Is the FCO’s apathy and neglect due to Andergachew’s colour, his ‘type’ or ‘level’ of Britishness, is there a hierarchy of citizenship in Britain? If he had been born in England, to white, middle class parents, attended the right schools (educated privately as over half the British cabinet was) and forged the right social connections, would he be languishing in an Ethiopian prison, where he is almost certainly being tortured, abused and mistreated.

Andergachew is the Secretary General of Ginbot 7, a campaign group that fiercely opposes the policies of the Ethiopian government – the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF); highlights the regime’s many and varied human rights violations, and calls for the adherence to democratic principles of justice and freedom; liberal ideals, many of which are enshrined in the country’ constitution. A broadly democratic piece of fiction that is consistently ignored by the ruling party – even through they wrote it.

Political dissent inside Ethiopia has been criminalised in all but name by the EPRDF. Freedom of assembly, of expression, and of the media, are all denied, so too affiliation to opposition parties. Aid that flows through the government is distributed on a partisan basis, so too employment opportunities and university places. The media is almost exclusively state owned, Internet access (which at 2% of the population is the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa), is monitored and restricted; the government would criminalise thought if they could.

The population lives under suffocating repression and fear and the vast majority, we understand, despise the government. Human rights are ignored and acts of state terrorism are commonplace, some of which, according to human rights groups, constitute crimes against humanity. Such is the reality of life inside the country for the vast majority. A stifling reality of daily suffering that animated the actions of Andergachew Tsige and the other members of Ginbot 7, and which has cost him his liberty.

For challenging the EPRDF, in 2009 and 2012, he was charged with terrorist offences (under the notorious, universally condemned Anti Terrorist Proclamation of 2009), tried in absentia and given the death penalty. The judiciary in Ethiopia is constitutionally and morally bound to independence, but in practice it operates as an unjust arm of the EPRDF. A conviction (unless for traffic violations, for example) handed down in a trial where the defendant is not present, is a violation of the second principle of ‘natural justice’, – Audi alter am partum (hear the other party) – and is therefore illegitimate. Such legal niceties, however, mean nothing to the EPRDF, who have dutifully signed up to all manner of international covenants, but ignore them all. They like trying their detractors (activists, journalists, political opponents) who live overseas, in absentia and handing out outrageous judgements; they are particularly fond of the death penalty and life imprisonment. It is hard to think of a more arrogant and paranoid regime. They rule, as all such groups do, by the cultivation of that ancient tool of control: fear.

British complicity

Given the nature of the EPRDF government, little in the way of justice, compassion and fairness can be expected, in relation to Andergarchew, or indeed anyone else in custody. Self-deluding and immune to criticism, the EPRDF distorts the truth and justifies violent acts of repression and false imprisonment as safeguarding their country from ‘terrorism’. Complete nonsense! The only form of terrorism rampaging through Ethiopia is State terrorism, perpetrated by the EPRDF and their uneducated vicious thugs, in and out of uniform.

Andergachew Tsige is a British citizen, and the British government has a constitutional and moral responsibility to act energetically and forcefully on his behalf; to their shame, so far the FCO and the coalition government more broadly, have been consistently woeful in their efforts. In February a British delegation led by Jeremy Corbyn, Mr Tsege’s constituency MP, was due to visit Ethiopia in an effort to secure his release. But, The Independent reports, “the trip was abandoned after a meeting with Ethiopian ambassador Berhanu Kebede [a more arrogant, duplicitous man, is it hard to imagine] in London.” A member of the team, Lord Dholakia, the vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Ethiopia, said, “it was made clear that they would not be welcome.” The Ethiopian ambassador apparently told the parliamentarians “that there was no need for them to go to Ethiopia as the case is being properly handled by the courts.” Again – nonsense: Andergachew is yet to be formally charged, has been denied contact with his British solicitors, as well as consular support, and has received only one brief visit from the British ambassador, in August; a meeting controlled fully by the Ethiopians. The FCO have said they “remain deeply concerned about Ethiopia’s refusal to allow regular consular visits to Mr. Tsege and his lack of access to a lawyer, and are concerned that others seeking to visit him have also been refused access.” So why are you not acting, using your ‘special’ position to secure this innocent man’s release: do something, is the cry of the family, the community and all right minded people.

At what point, does neglect in the face of injustice and abuse become complicity? If you allow illegal detention and the violation of international justice to take place and you say and act not, are you not guilty in aiding and abetting such actions? If you give funds to a government – the EPRDF – that is killing, raping, imprisoning and torturing its own citizens, and you do and say nothing – as the British, the American’s, and the European Union do, even though you know what’s happening – you are, it is clear, complicit, that is to say, party to the crimes being committed.