New York Times journalist says Ethiopia faces dangers due to oppression of majority

Jeffrey Gettleman

ESAT News (July 27, 2017)

New York Times journalist, who worked as the paper’s East Africa Bureau chief for a decade, says the oppression that the majority, especially Amharas and Oromos, suffer under the minority government is a danger for the future of the country.

Jeffrey Gettleman, who won the most coveted journalism award, the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for his work focusing on East Africa, said in an exclusive interview with ESAT that building infrastructure is important but not an excuse to kill, jail and torture innocent civilians.

“Infrastructure is really important in Africa right now. But if you are very repressive you are jeopardizing everything because you are creating this anger and resentment and volatility. We have seen that in the last couple of years, more volatility, violence and political upheaval in Ethiopia than there has been since the 1990s,” he said.

Gettleman, who’s was detained, along with his wife and a photographer in May 2007 for travelling to the Ogaden for a reporting assignment, noted that there is widespread anger and resentment against the government in the last few years. “The two largest ethnic groups, the Amharas and the Oromos, feel they are oppressed. That is dangerous.”

He noted that Ethiopia is a country that will have 100 million people soon with powerful and important culture in Africa. “But there is a lot of repression. It is the law of physics where anything you push down doesn’t necessarily disappear. It pops out somewhere else. I worry that there will be more problems unless there is an opening, people feel empowered in Ethiopia and they don’t feel discriminated against.”

He described the escalating popular protest against the government as one that is no longer easy to stamp out as people can communicate better unlike the aftermath of the 2005 elections and the subsequent killings of protesters. “It is harder to repress because of cell phones and technology. People can communicate much better than they could. The protest movement is much stronger and longer this time. The government was not able to simply put its foot on it,” he said.

He said the reason why he travelled to the Ogaden was to tell the stories of the people and the ONLF rebels fighting the regime. According to the award-winning journalist, the government military was abusing people, was brutalizing innocent civilians, raping girls, burning down houses, hanging elders, and this was part of the government’s response to the insurgency in the region.

“I wanted to share the story because Ethiopia is a strategic ally of the United States . It receives a lot of aid from the United States,” Gettleman said.

He said the government falsely accused him of being a terrorist and helping the ONLF. He said he was never allowed back to Ethiopia after he was declared persona non grata.

Gettleman pointed out that the United States is making some terrible decisions and miscalculations in a manner that hurts its own long-term interests as well as the sub-region. “I think Africa doesn’t always get the bandwidth that other parts of the world gets.”

Gettelman says that the decision of the United States to back the 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian forces was a serious mistake as it paved the way for the rise of Al Shabab.

He said Obama’s visit to Ethiopia and referring the regime as democratic was another mistake that sent the wrong message. “Ethiopia is not democratic. Anybody that knows Ethiopia and Ethiopians living in Ethiopia will tell you that. There is little freedom of expression, there is almost no viable opposition media, the opposition have been persecuted and the government controls 100 percent of the parliament. That is not a democracy.”

According to Gettleman, U.S. foreign policy of “engaging” tyrannies has proven to be counter productive. He underlined that the U.S. should rather invest in the long term interests of Africa as well as the national interest of the United States.

The United States should pay attention to the people, not please the rulers and dictators, he said. “You cannot have stability without human rights. You cannot have long term stability crushing people.”

(Gettleman’s interview with Abebe Gellaw of ESAT will air on Monday July 31, 2017 on INSIGHT, a show which will debut on the same day.)