https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/08/19/the-things-ethiopia-doesnt-want-you-to-know-that-are-going-on-in-the-country/
Ethiopia doesn’t want you to know these things are happening in the country
By Paul Schemm
WorldViewsanalysis
August 19 at 4:42 AM
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — After going through its worst drought in 50
years, Ethiopia is again seeing rain falling. In fact, in some places,
it’s falling too hard and has set off floods.
So while the number of people requiring food aid has dropped slightly
from 10.2 million in January to 9.7 million, according to the latest
figures, there is a new threat of disease in a population weakened by
drought.
Measles, meningitis, malaria and scabies are on the rise. And most
seriously, there has been an outbreak of something mysteriously called
“AWD,” according to the Humanitarian Requirements Document, issued by
the government and humanitarian agencies on Aug. 13.
“There is a high risk that AWD can spread to all regions with high
speed as there is a frequent population movement between Addis Ababa
and other regions,” it warned.
The letters stand for acute watery diarrhea. It is a potentially fatal
condition caused by water infected with the vibrio cholera bacterium.
Everywhere else in the world it is simply called cholera.
But not in Ethiopia, where international humanitarian organizations
privately admit that they are only allowed to call it AWD and are not
permitted to publish the number of people affected.
The government is apparently concerned about the international impact
if news of a significant cholera outbreak were to get out, even though
the disease is not unusual in East Africa.
This means that, hypothetically, when refugees from South Sudan with
cholera flee across the border into Ethiopia, they suddenly have AWD
instead.
In a similar manner, exactly one year ago, when aid organizations
started sounding the alarm bells over the failed rains, government
officials were divided over whether they would call it a drought and
appeal for international aid.
The narrative for Ethiopia in 2015 was a successful nation with
double-digit growth, and the government did not want to bring back
memories of the 1980s drought that killed hundreds of thousands and
left the country forever associated with famine.
“We don’t use the f-word,” explained an aid worker to me back in
September, referring to famine.
Like many of its neighbors in the region, Ethiopia has some issues
with freedom of expression and is very keen about how it is perceived
abroad. While the country has many developmental successes to
celebrate, its current sensitivity suggests it will be some time
before this close U.S. ally resembles the democracy it has long
claimed to be.
Ultimately, the government recognized there was a drought and made an
international appeal for aid. The systems put into place over the
years prevented the drought from turning into a humanitarian
catastrophe — for which the country has earned praise from its
international partners.
In the same manner, even though it doesn’t call it cholera, the
government is still waging a vigorous campaign to educate people on
how to avoid AWD, by boiling water and washing their hands.
Yet this sensitivity to bad news extends to the economic realm as
well. Critics have often criticized Ethiopia’s decade of reported
strong growth as being the product of cooked numbers. The government
does seem to produce rosier figures than international institutions.
After the drought, the International Monetary Fund predicted in April
that growth would drop from 10.2 percent in 2015 to just 4.5 percent
in 2016.
Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, maintained, however, that growth
would be a robust 8.5 percent, despite the falling agriculture
productivity and decreased export earnings.
In the political realm, news of unrest and protests is suppressed.
During a weekend of demonstrations on Aug. 6 and 7, the Internet was
cut, making it difficult to find out what happened.
Human rights organizations, opposition parties and media tried to
piece together the toll from the deadly demonstrations, which
according to Amnesty International may have been up to 100.
The United Nations has called for international observers to carry out
an investigation in the affected regions, which the government has
strongly rejected even as it has dismissed estimates of casualties
without providing any of its own.
“That is one of the factors we are struggling against with this
government, the blockade of information,” complained Beyene Petros,
the chairman of a coalition of opposition parties. “Journalists cannot
go and verify. We cannot do that.”
Local journalists are heavily constrained, and as Felix Horne of Human
Rights Watch points out, Ethiopia is one of the biggest jailers of
journalists on the continent.
“Limitations on independent media, jamming of television and radio
signals, and recent blocking of social media all point to a government
afraid to allow its citizens access to independent information,” he
said.
Foreign journalists do not fare much better, especially if they
attempt to venture out of the capital to do their reporting.
In March, the New York Times and Bloomberg correspondents were
detained by police while trying to report on the disturbances in the
Oromo Region.
They were sent back to Addis Ababa and held overnight in a local
prison before being interrogated and released.
In a similar fashion, a television crew with American Public
Broadcasting Service was detained on Aug. 8 south of the capital
trying to do a story on the drought conditions.
They and their Ethiopian fixer — an accredited journalist in her own
right — were released after 24 hours, and they were told not to do any
reporting outside of Addis.
In both cases the journalists were all accredited by the Government
Communication Affairs Office, with credentials that are supposed to
extend the breadth of the country but in practice are widely ignored
by local officials.
The government spokesman, Getachew Reda, has dismissed the allegations
about the information crackdown in the country and in recent
appearances on the Al Jazeera network he maintained that there are no
obstacles to information in Ethiopia.
“This country is open for business, it’s open for the international
community, people have every right to collect whatever information
they want,” he said.
Received on Fri Aug 19 2016 - 06:22:10 EDT