The Ethiopian Muslim civil rights movement: implications for democracy
<
http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/alemu-tafesse> Alemu Tafesse
26 April 2013
In a country where NGO's have been severely crippled, press freedom is dying
out, religious institutions are tightly controlled, and professional
associations effectively co-opted - in short, where civil society is in
grave danger of extinction - there has been one arena of visible democracy,
that of the protesting Muslims.
The fifteen-month old Muslim civil rights movement in Ethiopia has so far
had some spectacular implications for the development of democracy and
democratic political culture in the country. It has affected its culture as
well as its institutional dynamics. I will examine three very inter-related,
but broad, ways in which Muslim activism has impacted on the contours of the
current and future democratic possibilities of Ethiopia.
A deceptive government shows its true nature
Many twentieth and twenty-first century dictators on the one hand style
themselves as democratic and constitutional. They conduct elections, draft
democratic constitutions, establish "human rights" institutions, and
tirelessly speak of the need for and their commitment to democracy. On the
other hand, they rig elections, embezzle public funds and intimidate, round
up, torture and kill their opponents unconstrained by any notion of the rule
of law. Such governments strive to have it both ways at the same time: they
wish to benefit from having two apparently opposite faces.
<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_People%27s_Revolutionary_Democratic_
Front> The EPRDF has been a master of this Janus-faced game (it isn't a game
for the victims, of course). With its "democratic" face, it has deafened us
with its ranting on the need for the rule of law; enshrined a more or less
democratic constitution; conducted several elections, and installed a
parliamentary system. With its autocratic face, however, it has defiled the
constitutional system and the rule of law by violating the basic political
and natural rights of citizens with impunity. It alone has been the state
and the law.
How have the two faces of the EPRDF combined? They have been meant to
deliver certain political functions internal and external to the state - in
principle, exploited in their proper places, times, and context, and hence
not expected to be contradictory. But in practice, their relationship has
usually been precarious, leading to great tensions at times. The democratic
face has been used to garner "democratic" legitimacy from those who have had
good reason to side with government. It has helped these same people to
boost their moral status while engaging in a heated debate with the
detractors of the regime.
But the most important function of the democratic face has had to do with
the international community (to be precise, major international powers). For
the sake of obtaining either diplomatic or economic or military assistance,
building such an image has always been crucial for any regime in the world
that has grabbed state power since 1991. The EPRDF has not been an exception
to this rule, and in many cases it has succeeded in styling itself as a
pioneer of democracy in this otherwise troubled region of the world we call
the Horn of Africa.
But as a minority-based party, the EPRDF can't afford to genuinely
liberalize the country and still stay in power. Enter the need for the
second face, which has been at the heart of the party's reign since 1991 and
well into the 2010s. It has to mortify the psyche, inflict fear in the mind,
torment the body, and take life in order to ensure its survival. These
mechanisms have been applied to deal with those who have refused to be
socialized into the regime's propaganda, or who trusted the regime's
propaganda and, taking it at its word, plunged themselves into public
contestation with it - until, that is, they received the strong message,
physical or otherwise, that they should back down.
The balancing between these two faces however is very delicate. Any major
disturbance, may lead to either near regime collapse or full-blown regime
brutality. When the democratic side is allowed to thrive more than the
autocratic one, the EPRDF regime is bound to lose power. However, if the
autocratic tactics are put in place with more severity or longer duration,
then the benefits of appearing to be democratic withers away. Hence,
striking a balance between those two apparently contradictory aspects of the
regime's image has been a great challenge to ensuring its political
longevity. At the international level, the EPRDF has managed to make an
effective use of its "democratic" credentials: but the internal dimension
has quite frequently oscillated from one extreme to another.
The challenge from the numerous oppositions has largely forced the regime to
emerge as more brutal than democratic, although the trend has not been quite
linear. At least in one occasion, the ruling party also oscillated in the
opposite direction. In 2005, it opened up the political system, and wished
to stage a more credible democracy-like contestation from which the new
rulers could emerge. The results were rather disastrous to the political
life of the EPRDF. It learned the lesson then that exposing too much of the
democratic face might lead to the replacement of the very body of which the
face is a part. As a result, the reversion to brutality came in the
aftermath of these elections.
But this brutality had to wait for yet another phenomenon to emerge to
appear in its darkest, most unambiguous, form. The most significant
challenge to the government to date is the Muslim civil rights movement that
has been active since December 2011. This movement has laid bare its true,
unbridled authoritarian nature. Not for the first time - from its first
contentions with the Oromo Liberation Front, to the most recent threat from
Ethiopian nationalist forces, many innocent people including journalists
have been unfairly victimized by the government, according to plenty of
independent sources. But never so visibly as now.
Confronted by a simmering Muslim opposition to the government's
anti-secularist policies, the government initially tried to play it legal.
It acknowledged that the Majlis (Ethiopian Islamic Supreme Council) problem
was a legitimate concern and was willing to negotiate with the committee
that was representing the angry crowd. It praised the demands of the
representatives, and declared that an election would be held to form a new
Majlis. However, it was soon announced that the Majlis election was to be
held in an obviously highly controlled environment (the ulama council, a
Majlis affiliate, in charge of the elections, which in turn was to be
conducted in the government-controlled kebeles - both contrary to the
demands of the protesting masses).
Since then the EPRDF has engaged in innovative means of brutality. Not only
have some people in Harar and Asasa been shot and killed, and people in
their thousands intimidated, detained and tortured while the whole movement
is denigrated as terrorist and Islamist. But recent developments have
included state-inspired night-time house break-ins and blatant robbery. Many
Muslims have confirmed that masked thugs accompanied by security officers
have broken into their houses without search warrants, intimidating them,
searching for materials and taking away some of their valuables. Unconfirmed
but numerous reports of highway robbery by government-sponsored thugs
especially targeting Muslims with laptops have also been reported. Security
officers have broken into places of worship with a scale of destruction not
seen before: people were preparing food for a Sadaqa session when tons of
security officers barged into the Awoliya compound one night in July 2012,
and fired tear gas on the people who took refuge in the mosque. They rushed
into the mosque shoe clad, deliberately wrecked the praying precinct and
hurled the Holy scriptures to the floor. Similar incidents are reported to
have occurred in other Addis Ababa mosques.
Security officers have also forcefully broken up other Sadaqa gatherings,
gatherings that bring people together people from diverse backgrounds (and
sometimes even faith groups) for sharing food and sending out a messages of
peace, unity and the protection of citizens' rights. On some occasions,
police may confiscate the animal to be slaughtered, and the food ingredients
to be used for cooking, or commercial cooks have been impeded from
conducting their daily business of selling food items to the Sadaqa
organizers. In other instances, grand mosques have been unusually closed in
the morning hours for fear that Sadaqa sessions might be conducted in them.
Finally, and perhaps most outrageously, many intercity buses have been
stopped and "Muslim-looking" people have been forced out of the buses by
security officers. The reason given: they might be travelling to attend a
Sadaqa session in another town!
In short, although we have always known the ruling party to be brutal, the
Muslim movement (its immediate causes as well as the government reactions to
it) has helped us know what government brutality looks like, completely
deprived of its "humane" cover.
An alternative path towards democracy
The political culture of Ethiopia has long been beset by the politics of
exclusion and the psychology of rebellion. On the one hand, successive
governments of Ethiopia have uncompromisingly held the belief that their
political survival largely depends on the political death of those they see
as their opponents. The exclusion of a significant portion of the voices
from the mainstream political system has been the hallmark of any
governments' power. The excluded might have been earmarked in ethnic,
gender, religious, regional or personal terms. This has been an exclusion
that bases itself on the self-identification and the political and economic
interests of the ruling class, as well as on the personal idiosyncrasies of
its members. Opposition, even more than difference, has needed to be
"solved", rather than incorporated and managed. Unflinching in their grip on
the bar of certainty, they have never swallowed the virtue of plunging
oneself into the unknown that inclusion brings with it. Bent on saving the
regime from a lurking threat, exclusion has been the normal and first
procedure that has been applied to disagreement.
Exclusion usually breeds rebellion, and persistent and absolute exclusion
breeds persistent and absolute rebellion. This has been largely true
throughout the political history of this country. Different reformers might
have started out to air their critical views in moderate terms, but many of
the organized movements in much of modern Ethiopian history have been
radical. They have been radical in the sense that they have been anti-system
and mostly violent. While some have violently rebelled against the regime
and everything associated with it, and demanded its complete displacement,
others have fiercely demanded nothing short of the dismemberment of Ethiopia
itself. In either case, the movements haven't just looked for change, but a
radical change using radical methods.
The politics of exclusion paradoxically married to the psychology of
rebellion has had disastrous consequences for the democratic record of the
country. Democracy both as a historical process and as a theory is about
compromise, inclusion, diversity, and tolerance. In a society, on the one
hand, where the balance of power between the rulers and the ruled is highly
skewed against the latter; where the rulers feel insecure in hearing any
dissent from the ruled; where the usual mechanism of regime stability is not
pulling up, but pushing out, as many voices as possible; and on the other
hand, where the ruled do not aspire to bring about a culture of loyal
opposition in the country but one of unbounded rebellion; where they refuse
to see a possibility for change coming without the excesses of violence;
where being 'anti-system' is seen as the only way of making the system work
better; where the anti-regime movement itself becomes exclusivist and narrow
- in a society where these features constitute the political culture,
democratic culture will have a really hard time surviving let alone
flourishing.
Such has been the problem with the political culture of Ethiopia. I hasten
to add here that I'm not necessarily blaming the anti-government forces in
Ethiopia or elsewhere for operating as rebels. But in the Ethiopian case, I
am trying to explain the never-ending replacement of political exclusion by
itself.
It is my belief that the current Muslim rights movement has gone an
unprecedented distance in transcending this dichotomy. Under frequent fire
from a highly exclusivist regime and for so long, neither the leaders of the
movement nor the major actors in it have yet developed an ultra radical
consciousness or behaviour. Any seasoned observer of Ethiopian politics
might be surprised that people in their millions, from so diverse
backgrounds, consistently demonstrating so loudly every week for over a
year, and in receipt of all sorts of brutal reactions from government
forces, could ever be so consistent in their demands and conduct. The
unflinching obedience they have showed to their leaders' injunctions before
the latters' arrest, and the unwavering commitment to their last words after
their arrest should appear baffling to those who have always witnessed the
opposite in the political history of Ethiopia.
The movement has consistently demanded the protection of democratic and
constitutional rights, nothing more or less. It has couched its demands in
the most legitimate manner, and has staged perfectly non-violent rallies. It
has never, on the one hand, asked for, or worked towards, the realization of
religious interests beyond or independent of the constitutional framework,
nor, on the other hand, has it demanded, or sought, the displacement of that
framework by a new secular system. This is very significant for the
development of an inclusive and non-violent democratic culture in Ethiopia.
The government, just like its predecessors, has responded by trying to
relegate the voices of dissent to the margins. The voices, however, refuse
to be marginalized. The barrage of formal and informal, overt and covert,
physical and verbal pressures applied to the protestors to keep them silent
has been blatantly rejected. The movement has kept going - unabated - for so
long despite the highly repressive regime.
The movement has also refused to be plunged into the margins by taking a
radical turn. Radicalization is liable to be defeated, as government
violence is usually more refined, more disciplined, and more brutal than any
its opponents could deploy. The Muslims' movement has refused to commit
suicide by transforming itself into what the government wants it to become:
a supra-constitutional "pariah". It has been very critical of the
government, but very respectful of the constitutional order at the same
time. This doesn't mean that it has been supportive of the ruling party or
of its policies in other areas. It simply means that its aim has been the
full realization of democratic and secular order with the minimum cost that
may come alongside constructive change, but with the maximum effort that
such a change requires. This is a very economic use of mass power against
the state.
In echoing a loud and critical, but non-radical, voice, the movement has
contributed a lot to the development of a new stream of culture in the
politics of this country, helping us to assess the possibilities and
potential outcomes of a non-violent democratic struggle for constructive
change in Ethiopia. Bearing the brunt of a set of violent responses from the
government, the Muslims' movement has taught us that at least a strong
public sphere that aspires to change the status quo can be established with
or without the existence of a repressive state structure. This has widened
our horizons. Yes, a very unique Ethiopian non-violent struggle is unfolding
before our eyes, and we're being forced to re-think some of our assumptions
about the way we understand the mechanisms of effecting political change in
Ethiopia.
Secondly, it has helped us to understand the vulnerability of authoritarian
rule. Contradicting the many academic assertions that accord undue historic
value to state power against the people, the Muslim struggle has proven to
us that state violence is not always effective in putting an end to
opposition. This may come as no surprise in the era of the Arab Spring, but
it is a quite unique discovery in Ethiopia.
Muslim activism, by demonstrating authoritarian vulnerability, has also
taught us that all marginalization is self-marginalization. Many
structuralist accounts of change have neglected the subjective forces that
create the agency which is so important in explaining political outcomes.
Power resides not just in the state, but also in the subjectivities of the
individuals whom the state targets. We have been, in the past, fixated on
changing exclusivist systems, but ended up bringing/witnessing other
exclusivist ones to replace them. This time around, we need to be fixated on
democracy itself - the idea, the culture, the way of life. When the ultimate
and major goal of activism is changing regimes or changing territorial
borders - however democratically couched the discourses calling for those
ends might be - there is no guarantee that the new regime or the new country
will adopt a democratic system. But I think when the ultimate goal, and the
way towards that goal, is democracy, equality, inclusion and freedom; and
when the masses behind such a massive change are thoroughly democratized in
mind and spirit; and when retaliation has no place in the minds of the wider
public, I think we are a step closer to bringing about the system we have
cherished for so long. Ethiopian Muslims have charted for all of us a new
path towards a new Ethiopia.
An alternative location of democracy
At this rather bleak moment in EPRDF rule, the civil rights movement shines
out as the only true locus of democracy. Struggle for freedom and democracy
is not new for Ethiopians; many have been involved in this struggle since at
least since the second half of the twentieth century. But the struggles have
fallen short of developing a critical mass and sustainable Ethiopia-wide
public that can act as a democratic crucible in society - a dependable
resevoir. They have been either non-pan-Ethiopian, or unsustainable and/or
authoritarian, or any combination of those.
Some freedom fighters have fought just to save their ethnic groups from
government brutality; some Ethiopia-wide movements couldn't succeed in their
peaceful struggle, and hence had to go underground, thereby (usually)
developing clandestine non-transparent, centralized, structures that
rendered them authoritarian themselves. Or when they finally escaped from
their clandestine centralized rule, they had faded away out of touch with
the public and could offer them little.
By its very nature, recent Muslim activism has been trans-ethnic and
trans-regional, and hence it has offered a glimpse of a pan-Ethiopian trait
(despite the obvious limitation of its being religion-based). But it has
also been "Ethiopia-centred" in the sense that its discourse, its actors,
its visions etc have been Ethiopian, not international or regional. The
government's accusations notwithstanding, there has not been any trace of
foreign involvement in this struggle.
In a country where NGO's have been severely crippled, press freedom is dying
out, religious institutions are tightly controlled, and professional
associations effectively co-opted - in short, where civil society is in
grave danger of extinction - there has been one arena of visible democracy,
that of the protesting Muslims. They have been the last - but interestingly
the most vibrant - bastion of democracy in the country. Their voice has been
the only remaining dependable, independent and loud voice of liberation,
uncontrolled and uncontrollable by the government. The Ethiopian Muslims are
coming out of this year-long journey as a new brand of strong, assertive,
post-violent, and unified locations of anti-authoritarian struggle.
Conclusion: a plea
This civil rights movement of Ethiopian Muslims will play its full potential
only when two actors join it wholeheartedly: the rest of the Ethiopians, and
the international community. By the former, I specifically have in mind
Ethiopian Christians in Ethiopia. It is true that many of them have
disclosed their support for the Muslim rights movement, and have helped in
sheltering, feeding and morally supporting them. But democratic
transformation requires more than this. Christians should join the movement,
bringing with them their own demands for freedom from government
interference in religious matters (of which they have much to complain).
Another proposal is to the big players on the world stage. I'd now say,
paraphrasing Condoleezza Rice, that many of you have dreamt of and at times
have sought to create what you thought were forces of stability even at the
expense of democracy, and as a result have failed on both accounts. One path
towards realizing both valuables is to protect non-radical, mass, persistent
and daring forces of unity and anti-authoritarianism from below. And start
with the protesting Ethiopian Muslims!
Received on Fri Apr 26 2013 - 21:29:42 EDT
