http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-whats-he-got-to-hide.html?_r=1
Op-Ed Columnist
What’s He Got to Hide?
The case of two Swedish journalists imprisoned in Ethiopia sheds light on a
harsh campaign of repression.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: January 28, 2012
DAVOS, Switzerland
The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
IN a filthy Ethiopian prison that is overridden with lice, fleas and huge
rats, two Swedes are serving an 11-year prison sentence for committing
journalism.
Martin Schibbye, 31, and Johan Persson, 29, share a narrow bed, one man’s
head beside the other’s feet. Schibbye once woke up to find a rat mussing
his hair.
The prison is a violent, disease-ridden place, with inmates fighting and
coughing blood, according to Schibbye’s wife, Linnea Schibbye Steiner, who
last met with her husband in December. It is hot in the daytime and
freezing cold at night, and the two Swedes are allowed no mail or phone
calls, she said. Fortunately, she added, the 250 or so Ethiopian prisoners
jammed in the cell protect the two journalists, pray for them and jokingly
call their bed “the Swedish embassy.”
What was the two men’s crime? Their offense was courage. They sneaked into
the Ogaden region to investigate reports of human rights abuses.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s increasingly tyrannical ruler,
seemed to be sending a signal to the world’s journalists: Don’t you dare
mess with me!
So the only proper response is a careful look at Meles’s worsening
repression. Sadly, this repression is abetted by acquiescence from
Washington and by grants from aid organizations.
Those Swedish journalists will probably be released early because of
international pressure. But there will be no respite for the countless
Ethiopians who face imprisonment, torture and rape.
I’m in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic
Forum, and so is Meles. I’ve been pursuing him for the last few days,
trying to confront him and ask him about his worsening pattern of
brutality.
He has refused to see me, so I enlisted my Twitter followers to report
Meles sightings. I want to ask him why he has driven more journalists into
exile over the last decade than any other leader in the world, according to
the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York City.
Meles has done genuine good in fighting poverty. He has some excellent
officials under him, including a superb health minister, and Ethiopia’s
economy is making progress in health and agriculture. Ethiopia is full of
aid organizations, and it has a close intelligence and military
relationship with the United States government.
Yet since 2005, when an initial crackdown left 200 protesters dead and
30,000 detained, Meles has steadily tightened his grip. A Human Rights
Watch report this month noted that the government is forcibly removing tens
of thousands of people from their rural homes to artificial villages where
they risk starvation. Those who resist endure arrests, beatings or worse.
“The repression is getting worse,” notes Tamerat Negera, who fled to the
United States after the newspaper he edited was closed down in 2009. “His
vision seems an attempt to root out any dissent.”
Meles has criminalized dissent, with a blogger named Eskinder Nega now
facing terrorism charges, which could mean a death sentence. His true crime
was calling on the government to allow free speech and end torture.
Appallingly, the Meles regime uses foreign food aid to punish his critics.
Ethiopia is one of the world’s largest recipients of development aid,
receiving about $3 billion annually, with the United States one of its
largest donors. This money does save lives. But it also “underwrites
repression in Ethiopia,” in the words of Human Rights Watch.
Families and entire areas of the country are deliberately starved unless
they back the government, human rights groups have shown. In Ethiopia, the
verb “to starve” is transitive.
Look, I’m a huge advocate of smart aid to fight global poverty. But donors
and aid groups need to ensure that their aid doesn’t buttress repression.
The Meles regime, run largely by a coterie from his own minority Tigrayan
ethnicity, has been particularly savage in the Ogaden region, where it
faces an armed uprising. When Jeffrey Gettleman, a colleague at The New
York Times, went to the Ogaden in 2007, he found a pattern of torture and
rape. The government then arrested Gettleman and two colleagues, detaining
them for five days in harsh conditions.
The two Swedish reporters illegally entered the Ogaden and met a rebel
group to examine that human rights wasteland. In December, they were
sentenced to 11-year terms.
Steiner, Schibbye’s wife, said of the harsh conditions: “Eleven years in an
Ethiopian prison is equal to life, because you do not survive that long.”
Amnesty International says that in the last 11 months, the government has
arrested at least 114 Ethiopian journalists and opposition politicians. It
described this as “the most far-reaching crackdown on freedom of expression
seen in many years in Ethiopia.”
Prime Minister Meles, you may have dodged me in Davos, but your brutality
toward Swedish, American and Ethiopian journalists will not silence the
world’s media. You’re just inviting more scrutiny.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please
also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me
on Twitter.
----[Mailing List for Eritrea Related News ]----
Received on Tue Jan 31 2012 - 10:53:38 EST
