Chad and Dictators

One of the functions of the media is to marginalise or silence Western aggression. The coverage of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad, for crimes against humanity could well have presented the opportunity for the media to examine in detail the complicity of the US, UK, France and their major allies in North Africa in the appalling genocide Habré inflicted on Chad during his rule – from 1982 to 1990. After all, Habré had seized power via a CIA-backed coup.

 As William Blum commented in Rogue State:

“With US support, Habré went on to rule for eight years during which his secret police reportedly killed tens of thousands, tortured as many of 200,000 and disappeared an undetermined number.”

Largely missing from the corporate media was the massive, secret war waged over these eight years by the United States, France and Britain from bases in Chad against Libyan leader Colonel Mu’ammar Gaddafi.

By 1990, with the crisis in the Persian Gulf developing, the French government had tired of Habré’s genocidal policies while George Bush senior’s administration decided not to frustrate France in exchange for co-operation in its attack on Iraq. And so Habré was secretly toppled and in his place Idriss Déby was installed as the new President of Chad.

Reporting of the Habré sentencing has been predictably consistent across all the leading newspapers in the UK and US. Thus the focus has been on the jubilant reactions of a few of the victims of Habré’s torture and rape, on the comments from some of the human rights organisations involved for many years in the campaign to bring the Chad dictator to justice – and on the fact that it was the first time an African country had prosecuted the former head of another African country for massive human rights abuses. Only a tiny part of the reporting has mentioned the West’s role in the genocide. None of the reporting has placed the Chad events in the broader context of US/Western imperial aggression.

The story in the Guardian, by Ruth Maclean, was typical. Some 21 paragraphs were devoted to the report. But only in the last one (appearing almost as an after-thought) was there any mention of US complicity:

“The US State department and the CIA propped up Habré, sending him weapons and money in return for fighting their enemy, Muammar Gaddafi.”

In a follow-up editorial, the Guardian again left mentioning the West’s role until the last paragraph:

“Many questions still remain unanswered, including several concerning the responsibility or complicity of Western countries, such as France and the US, which actively supported Habré during the cold war years, turning a blind eye to his methods.”

The Telegraph adopted a similar approach. Aislinn Laing, based in Johannesburg, reported briefly:

“Mr Habré, 73, is a former rebel leader who took power by force in Chad in 1982 and was then supported by the US and France to remain at the helm as a bulwark to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.”

Adam Lusher, in the Independent, devoted just eight words to contextualising the trial:

“Hissène Habré was once backed by America’s Cold War-era CIA.”

In the New York Times, buried in paragraph 24 of a 27-paragraph report by Dionne Searcey are these words:

“Mr. Habré took power during a coup that was covertly aided by the United States, and he received weapons and assistance from France, Israel and the United States to keep Libya, to the north of Chad, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, then the Libyan leader, at bay.”

Similarly, in Paul Schemm’s 23-paragraph report in the Washington Post, his paragraph 15 reads:

“Supported by the United States and France in his wars against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, Habré was accused of killing up to 40,000 people and torturing hundreds of thousands.”

Neither the Los Angeles Times nor the Belfast Telegraph could find any space to mention the West’s complicity.

The US today is still supporting human rights offenders across the globe – including the current dictator of Chad, Idriss Déby. Moreover, the Western powers, the US and France in particular, are using Chad as a major base for their covert military operations in Africa. A number of newspapers have commented on how the case set an important precedent for holding high-profile human rights abusers to account in Africa. Yet there has been little mention of the extraordinary background. For in June 2003, the US actually warned Belgium that it could lose its status as host to Nato’s headquarters if the Habré case went ahead on the basis of a 1993 law, which allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/06/how-the-press-hides-the-global-crimes-of-the-west/

When reading a book is a crime

In Lisbon last week angry demonstrations took place in support of Angola’s human rights activists and against the influence of Angolan tycoons who have been investing in Portugal’s cash-strapped news and telecommunications industries, something that has been called “reverse colonisation”. The Portuguese parliament failed to condemn the long sentences given to the so-called Luanda Book Club – the 17 dissidents convicted of political defiance of Angola’s government. They accuse the Portuguese government of  “complicity in the ongoing looting” of the country by the Angola’s regime. Monday marks the 14th anniversary of the end of Angola’s 26-year civil war which began after independence from Portugal. Dos Santos, 73, has been president since 1979 and has been accused of presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt regimes, amassing a fortune for himself, his family and friends while two thirds of his country lives below the poverty line. Dos Santos is worth an estimated $20bn.

The group – including rapper Luaty Beirão, writer Domingos da Cruz and political T-shirt seller Nito Alves – were arrested for holding a meeting at which they discussed books, including one by Gene Sharp about non-violent protest, which was entitled From Dictatorship to Democracy. After a lengthy remand period, which included several of the activists going on hunger strike, and a trial on charges ranging from conspiracy to plotting, all 17 were sentenced last Monday to terms ranging from two to eight-and-a-half years, with hefty fines. Beirão was given five-and-a-half years for “falsifying documents” and journalist da Cruz was given the longest sentence – “for leading the criminal association”. One activist, Francisco Mapanda, was further sentenced to eight months for contempt of court after shouting in the courtroom, “This judgment is a joke.”

The Albert Einstein Institution has strongly condemned the men’s trial, as has the Human Rights Foundation. All 17 have been adopted as “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International, which has called for their immediate release and dismissed the trial as a “mockery of justice”. Its director for Southern Africa, Deprose Muchena, said: “The activists have been wrongly convicted in a deeply politicised trial. They are the victims of a government determined to intimidate anyone who dares to question its repressive policies. This unjustifiable conviction and draconian sentences against these peaceful activists, who should never have been detained at all, demonstrate how Angolan authorities use the criminal justice system to silence dissenting views. They should not have spent a single day in prison.”

“The Angolan authorities always proclaimed to have caught this group ‘red-handed’ in their crime. That crime was reading a book,” said Vicky Baker, deputy editor of Index , the Index on Censorship’s magazine. “Evidence was so scant of the alleged coup-plotting that those charges had to be dropped. It is absurd and tragic that these young men have been convicted of rebellion and must now see out jail terms. This has been another sham trial, similar to the one we saw last year with Rafael [Marques de Morais], who was convicted of defamation after writing a brave and much-needed exposé of the country’s blood diamond industry.”

Why Dictatorships?

In April, Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza, in power since 2005, announced he’d be running for a third term in elections scheduled for June. Opposition supporters, church leaders, student and civil society groups, much of the international community, and even many in Nkurunziza’s own party say this violates the Arusha agreement, which limits a president to two terms in office.

Thousands of Burundians took to the streets to protest Nkurunziza’s plans to run for office again. Hundreds were arrested and perhaps twenty—the number is disputed—were killed. Security forces were split, with some in the army on the side of the people. On May 13, a group of army officers led by former intelligence chief Godefroid Niyombare announced they’d ousted Nkurunziza, to much rejoicing in Bujumbura. Nkurunziza who was in Tanzania discussing the crisis with other African leaders, quickly sneaked back across the border where he was met by his own forces and retook the capital a couple of days later.

Nkurunziz isa former warlord who became a born-again Christian and travels with his own Hallelujah football club and choir—of presiding over a regime of corruption remarkable even by East African standards. Many also claim President Nkurunziza has condoned politically motivated killings of opposition figures and provided tacit government support to an armed militia known as Imbonerakure, which could be deployed to intimidate voters during the election. Niyombare is said to be on the run, and most of his fellow coup plotters have been arrested. Three who were wounded were subsequently shot in their hospital beds by men in police uniforms as horrified nurses, doctors, and other patients looked on. An estimated hundred thousand refugees have fled to neighboring countries. Nkurunziza seems determined to go ahead with his plans to stand for reelection. Radio France Internationale reported that police in Bujumbura had cordoned off an entire neighborhood and were shooting at anti-third term activists among their homes.

In their new book 'Africa Uprising', Adam Branch and Zachariah Mampilly document more than ninety political protests in forty African countries in the past decade—most in the past six years. Many have had the same aim as those in the Middle East: to force corrupt leaders out of power. After Senegal’s Constitutional Court ruled that President Abdoulaye Wade could run for what many maintained was an unconstitutional third term in the 2012 elections, people poured onto the streets in outrage. Police in riot gear fired tear gas and rubber bullets, and a handful of protesters were killed. But the country’s citizens got their point across. Wade lost the election and conceded defeat. In Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré tried to strong-arm the National Assembly into removing term limits so he could contest the 2015 election, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in front of the building while some forced their way in. He was deposed in October 2014, and an interim military council is now organizing elections to take place later this year. And when demonstrators in the Democratic Republic of Congo took to the streets of Kinshasa in January, they managed to halt President Joseph Kabila’s attempt to alter the constitution, which would have extended his term beyond its end date of 2016. Over two dozen African countries are headed for elections in the next two years, including Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and other countries whose leaders have signaled an intention to remain in office no matter what. Protest movements in some of these countries are gathering force, and army commanders are quietly choosing sides between the autocrats and the people.

But why do so many African leaders assume they can ignore their constitutions, cling to power, and get away with it?

Western aid pays for half of Burundi’s budget, roughly 40 percent of Rwanda’s, 50 percent of Ethiopia’s and 30 percent of Uganda’s . All these countries receive an unknown amount of military aid as well. This money enables African leaders to ignore the demands of their own people, and facilitates the financing of the patronage systems and security machinery that keeps them in power.

African countries that had borrowed and spent lavishly in the years following independence found themselves unable to repay the commercial banks that had lent them money. The Western nations, via the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, took over and restructured these loans, but demanded large public spending cuts. Huge numbers of teachers, nurses, doctors, and other public servants lost their jobs; programs to expand health care and education, improve roads and bring water and electricity to rural areas ground to a halt; poverty deepened; infant mortality rose.

In many cases, the new austerity programs, intended to lead to more efficient government, instead encouraged unprecedented corruption. Those who managed to hold on to government and civil service jobs scrambled to grab whatever they could for themselves and their increasingly dependent extended families. This patronage system helped control dissent, as many African leaders used what Cameroonians term “the politics of the belly”—bribery—to compromise their critics and coopt opposition groups. But it also led to deteriorating public services where for example the maternal mortality rate in Uganda’s largest referral hospital has increased seven-fold since the days of Idi Amin.

 Foreign aid donors were not oblivious to these problems. They knew that this new loan regime, known as Structural Adjustment, would hurt huge numbers of people. For example, in a notorious 1981 World Bank report about the program , the authors acknowledge that some reforms would be resisted by “consumers and producers, parasitical managers, civil servants and industrialists,”—meaning just about everybody in the nations involved. The state had to be “willing to take strong action on internal problems,” the report continued. As Branch and Mampilly note, many African scholars interpreted this as tacit donor permission for repression in countries receiving loans. This would be consistent with the donors’ tendency to look the other way when Adjustment-friendly leaders—like Burkina Faso’s Compaoré, Cote D’Ivoire’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Uganda’s Museveni and Kenya’s Daniel Arap Moi—jailed, murdered, or exiled their critics. The donors’ tolerance for human rights abuses may help explain why, when ethnic discrimination and repression escalated into genocide, as it did in Rwanda and Burundi, the international community did nothing until it was far too late.

Another reason so many African leaders feel they can afford to ignore their own people has to do with America’s “War on Terror.” During the 1990s, the Clinton administration began securing military ties with African leaders who seemed willing to cooperate in the fight against what Clinton officials saw as the rising threat of Islamic militancy on the continent. These ties have only grown in the years after September 11. According to journalist Nick Turse, the US military has sponsored more than one thousand African missions since 2011, with countries such as Nkurunziza’s Burundi, along with Rwanda, Ethiopia, Chad, and Uganda, deploying troops and guards across Africa and the Middle East at America’s behest. The primary purpose of this seems to be to monitor and prevent the emergence of terrorist groups in weak states. But it’s no coincidence that the US’s military allies in Africa have often used security forces against their own critics at home. As the events in Burundi suggest, providing support to ugly regimes may ultimately undermine the very stability we are supposedly seeking.

Now, fed up with decades of lies, plunder and abuse, Africans across the continent are finally rising up to challenge these Western-backed thugs. Some have been inspired by protests elsewhere in the world; some are united in new ways by Facebook, Twitter, and chat programs. Foreign aid has also brought thousands of NGOs into Africa. Not all are effective, but their American and European employees and volunteers have, naively or not, exposed African people to liberal Western attitudes and ideals of human rights as never before. Previous African protest movements had clear ideologies, like Independence, African Nationalism and Pan-Africanism, the only thing today’s protesters appear to want is the removal of the current leadership of their countries. But this lack of a grand objective may not be such a bad thing, as long as whoever takes over pursues a modest program of obeying the rule of law, eschewing corruption and respecting human rights.

FROM HERE

The Eritrean Dictatorship

As of July last year, more than 320,000 Eritreans had fled the country, according to the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). After Syrians, Eritreans are the second most common nationality to arrive on Italian shores. Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afewerki, who has been in power since de facto independence from Ethiopia in 1991, has for decades used the threat of an outbreak of war with Ethiopia as a means of keeping his people under tight authoritarian rule.

The Eritrean government has been linked with “ruthless repression” and systemic human rights violations, including carrying out widespread detention and forcing citizens into indefinite military service, according to the UN’s first inquiry into human rights in the secretive country. Rights abuses perpetuated by Eritrea’s government, coupled with dismal economic prospects, are driving hundreds of Eritreans out of the country every day, according to an interim report by the UN’s commission of inquiry on human rights in Eritrea.

“Most Eritreans have no hope for their future,” said Mike Smith, chairman of the commission, which was formed in June last year. “National service, whether in a military unit or in a civil assignment, is the only thing that from the age of 17 they can expect to spend their life doing – paid between less than $1 and a maximum of $2 a day.”

Describing Eritrea’s culture of “pervasive state control”, Smith said a network of spies had been created that permeated the basic fabric of everyday life. “A man employed by national security might not know that his daughter is similarly employed,” he said, noting that extra-judicial executions, enforced disappearances and incommunicado detentions were commonplace. “Is it surprising that, faced with such challenges, Eritreans leave their country in their hundreds every day?”

Eritrea has long been regarded as one of the world’s most secretive states, even drawing comparisons with North Korea. It was ranked at the bottom of the 180 countries assessed in Reporters Without Borders’ (RWB) 2015 press freedom index. “Eritrea systematically violates freedom of expression and information. It is Africa’s biggest prison for journalists, with at least 16 currently detained – some of them held incommunicado for years,” said RWB.

Leslie Lefkow, HRW’s Africa director, said: “The [Eritrean] government’s refusal to cooperate with human rights investigators is symbolic of its broader rejection of essential human rights reforms. Until that stance changes it is impossible to have meaningful impact on the domestic crisis and the massive exodus of Eritreans provoked by the dire human rights situation.”

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/19/eritrea-ruthless-repression-human-rights-violations-un-commission

A Despot's Time Will Come

King Mswati the Third of Swaziland has a fleet of luxury cars, a dozen mansions and 15 wives. Mswati is the last absolute monarchy on the continent and has ruled since he was 18; his father had banned all political parties a decade earlier. Many Swazis are too poor to agitate, and those that do are quashed. There are no trade unions. Members of the main opposition group, the “People’s United Democratic Movement,” are regularly arrested, peaceful demonstrators beaten up and journalists sent to jail. Many of his subjects live grim lives: Swaziland is the seventh-hungriest country in the world, 63 percent of its citizens live below the poverty line and more than 1 in 4 adults (aged 15–49) have HIV/AIDS. GDP growth is negative and unemployment is at nearly 23 percent.

He buys luxury cars worth 61 years of Swazi wages, takes trips to Las Vegas on private jets and picks a new virgin wife every couple of years. Most Swazis are too busy trying to feed their families to start a revolution. “The majority aren’t screaming for democracy because they are not educated,” says Nhlanhla Msibi, the Swazi author of The Delayed Revolution: Swaziland in the Twenty-First Century. HIV has wiped out “muscle,” too, he says: “There’s only young orphans or old people.”

But in the cities, a democratic movement is challenging Mswati’s rule. “It’s a rotten, pathetic, undemocratic and corrupt system,” says Philani Ndebele of the Swaziland Democracy Campaign, a coalition of organizations demanding multiparty democracy in the country. There are elections. It’s just that Mswati decides the outcome

For Western nations that promote democracy abroad, Swaziland lacks geopolitical significance. While there are some exceptions — South Africa rescinded $207 million after Mswati refused to make basic political reforms, and the United States booted Swaziland from the African Growth and Opportunity Act over human rights concerns — few countries care much about that small patch of green next to South Africa.

 “The problem is that Swaziland is not Zimbabwe. There is no extreme humanitarian crisis and it has no oil or interesting natural resources,” says says Chris Vandome of the Africa program at U.K.-based Chatham House. It does have is sugar — the country’s main export — but it can’t compete much with producers like Brazil.

Mswati hasn’t done much to diversify the agricultural industry.  Budget cuts have become so severe that teachers are not getting paid and schools can’t open their doors, yet Swaziland spent about $478 million over the past four years on defense, and the king’s annual household budget is $61 million.

“If things continue like this, the country will soon be depending on humanitarian aid and eventually collapse into a failed state,” warns Msibi.

Nevertheless, public disaffection is on the rise. Several mass protests have taken place since 2011. “Transformation is inevitable,” says Ndebele, citing the Arab Spring. “No matter how despotic, brutal and indifferent a regime is, it can be toppled.”

Ethiopia's Dictatorship

Some governments are more despicable than others. The elite ruling Ethiopia is especially nasty. They claim to govern in a democratic, pluralistic manner; they say they observe human rights and the rule of law, that the judiciary is independent, the media open and free, and public assembly permitted as laid out in the constitution. But the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) systematically violates fundamental human rights, silences all dissenting voices and rules the country in a suppressive, violent fashion that is causing untold suffering to millions of people throughout the country.

There is no freedom of the press: Journalists are persecuted, intimidated and arrested on false charges, so too their families. All significant media outlets and print companies are state-owned or controlled, as is the sole telecommunications company - allowing for unfettered government monitoring and control of the internet. Radio is almost exclusively state-owned and, with adult literacy at around 48 percent, remains the major source of information. Where private media has survived, they are forced to self-censor their coverage of political issues: If they deviate from "approved content," they face harassment and closure. The government also restricts access to numerous websites, including independent news, opposition parties and groups defined by the government as terrorist organizations and political blogs. The required technology and expertise to carry out such criminal acts is supplied by companies from China and Europe - companies that should "assess the human rights risks raised by potential business activity, including risk posed to the rights of freedom of expression, access to information, association, and privacy." In other words: behave in a responsible, ethical manner.

The two most prominent journalists to be imprisoned are award-winning Eskinder Nega and Reeyot Alemu Gobebo. Arrested at least seven times, Nega is currently serving an 18-year sentence for doing nothing more than calling on the government to respect freedom of expression laws enshrined in the constitution (that the EPRDF themselves penned), and end torture in the country's prisons. Reeyot Gobebo, winner of the 2013 UNESCO-Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, is currently serving a five-year jail term (commuted from 14 years after two of the charges were dropped on appeal), after being charged with a variety of unfounded, unsubstantiated terrorist related charges. These two courageous professionals, HRW relates, have "come to symbolize the plight of dozens more media professionals, both known and unidentified, in Addis Ababa and in rural regions, who have suffered threats, intimidation, sometimes physical abuse, and politically motivated prosecutions under criminal or terrorism charges."

By essentially banning independent media and making freedom of expression a criminal offense, the Ethiopian government is in gross violation of its own legally binding constitution as well as a raft of international covenants. All of which seems not to concern the ruling party, which treats international law with the same indifference it applies to the Ethiopian people. Freedom of the media and freedom of expression sit alongside other democratic principles, like an independent judiciary, consensual governance, participation and freedom of assembly. Where these basic tenets are absent, so too is democracy. If the state systematically crushes independent media and commits widespread human rights violations, as in Ethiopia, we see not a democratic government, but a brutal dictatorship committing acts of state terrorism.

This is an abridged version of a Graham Peebles article which is available in full at the Truthout website

Burundi About to Boil Over?

"There's no shortage of fear around here," said Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa Burundi’s leading rights activist. In May, Mbonimpa was thrown in jail for broadcasting widespread allegations that the government was distributing weapons to youths and training a faction in the badlands of nearby eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Gentle-mannered and close to retirement, Mbonimpa said it was only an international outcry and prison illness that freed him, and he's not allowed to leave the capital.

Marauding members of the Imbonerakure - a youth wing allied to Burundi's ruling CNDD-FDD party are accused of beating, extorting and killing civilians. Benefiting from complete impunity, some armed and militarised elements within the most popular youth party have become a weapon that the state can wield as it cracks down on critics ahead of elections in May. Rights activists say leaders only quelled violence because of international donors who raised the alarm over rights reports in a country that relies heavily on foreign aid. New rules banning people from jogging or meeting in unauthorised groups - even at the central market where people used to gossip on benches - show levels of state paranoia. People are not keen to talk amid reports of Imbonerakure beating police and taking over local governments in some areas. The few people accused of violent crimes have also been released from custody within weeks to seek revenge on victims who denounced them. Burundi's Interior Minister Edouard Nduwimana dismissed a leaked UN cable documenting a case of two military men distributing arms and uniforms to the Imbonerakure youth militia and former soldiers as the work of an unsteady employee.

Despite having a plethora of opposition parties, they are seen as weak and disorganised in a country where politics is viewed as a gravy train and public policy an afterthought. The irony of the current crackdown is that many say the CNDD-FDD would easily win next year's elections, despite rights groups crying foul over President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term, claiming it violates the constitution.

Last week, the UN scaled down its operation in Burundi. "The UN got pushed out because it actually did its job," said a leading journalist who requested anonymity to protect himself from reprisals - rare praise in a region where peacekeepers are often accused of selling civilian protection down the river to save themselves from official backlashes.

In a region where police states or rebellions cause enormous and expensive international headaches, Burundi benefits from neighbours and backers keen on maintaining a semi-stable status quo. "There's the reasoning that you should favour stability to avoid a return to chaos and violence that will make us invest more to lift the country out of strife," said one diplomat. He added: "That means you're comforting a government in its authoritarian practices to control the country". He warned if "manipulating" the ballot box doesn't work, the government will "play all its cards" to win this election by activating "this new tool; these youths that they've trained as killers".

"Everything here has been bought; land, votes and the people's conscience," said Gabriel Rufyiri, who heads Burundi's main anti-corruption organisation. His predecessor was killed in 2009, and the government refused the US FBI's help to investigate. Rufyiri said one-third of Burundi's budget goes into individuals' pockets. The success of army generals accused of trafficking minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo or officials allowing friends to have tax benefits through kickbacks is visible on the prettiest hillsides. Next year, Burundi's elite "are going to use everything they've got" to maintain their grip on the purse strings, Rufyiri said.

Activists talk of "an invisible circle" of army generals who call the shots. The diplomat said this cabal has organised and trained youths to take orders that Burundi's state security forces would refuse. "The police can stop the opposition demonstrations, but you can't ask them to go and kill people," he said.  "If the state's in control of the army, why has it recruited, armed and secretly trained youths? It's to make them do what the other security organs can't."

Now, in one of the world's most densely populated countries, 80 percent of local court cases are over land. Stunting from malnutrition affects, almost 60 percent of the population and corruption keeps them poor. With a pressure cooker of local tensions, disputes easily turn deadly.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/burundi-no-shortage-fear-around-here-2014122371044747308.html

The Military Muscle

As many remember Nelson Mandela on the anniversary of his death, his hopes seem as far away as ever. For now, the advance of democracy in Africa appears to have stalled. Elections have now been held across the continent, but their credibility varies. In some countries, rulers deploy state security forces to marginalize opposition leaders. Less autocratic leaders foster loyalty by doling out state jobs and other perks that would raise eyebrows even in many developing nations. In 1990, just three of Africa’s 48 countries were electoral democracies, according to Freedom House, a Washington-based pro-democracy advocacy group. By 1994, that number had leapt to 18. Two decades later, only 19 qualify. In many African countries, soldiers have run the show since the earliest days of colonialism. In the late 1800s, Europeans recruited local men into new armies to help conquer a vast continent. Throughout the imperial century that followed, Europeans used those colonial brigades to repress the African lawyers, civil servants and journalists who were agitating for independence. Today, blue-chip companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and General Electric Co. are expanding into countries whose leaders have never faced a real electoral contest.

Two decades of elections and economic progress in Africa haven’t erased the vast power that militaries have long wielded in many countries, large and small. In much of Africa, in fact, the armed forces have gained influence in recent years as battling Islamist terrorists has become a priority. The military remains a swaggering presence in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. On the surface, the country is a flourishing democracy. President Goodluck Jonathan, one of the first elected Nigerian leaders who didn’t come from the military. But Nigeria’s army—which led the country almost nonstop from 1966 to 1999—still wields considerable power. A fifth of Nigeria’s nearly $30 billion budget goes to the armed forces. When Kashim Shettima, the governor of a state in Boko Haram’s heartland, complained that the army was being gutted by corruption, Mr. Jonathan threatened on television to remove the soldiers guarding Mr. Shettima’s house, exposing him to attack by Boko Haram.

The military has defended Mr. Jonathan, too. Soldiers have blocked opposition leaders from landing at airports during their campaigns, and in June, soldiers confiscated bundles of newspapers containing articles criticizing government corruption.

The U.S. trained some 52,000 African troops in 2013 alone, at a cost of $99 million. After Liberia’s 14-year civil war ended in 2003, the U.S. paid security contractor DynCorp International, based in McLean, Virginaa, to train the country’s new, 2,000-person army. Other institutions like the health ministry received scant attention.

“There are signs of the predatory nature of military rule” returning to Africa, said Larry Diamond, director of Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. “This is a calamity for a number of these countries.”

Many African countries, such as Angola and Sudan, are resource-rich, single-party autocracies that have consolidated their grip on power. Angola’s president, José Eduardo dos Santos, is a military commander who has used his country’s vast oil wealth to build a police network that has helped to neutralize rivals for more than 30 years. In 2012, his party won more than two-thirds of the vote in elections that observers called deeply flawed. Nations that underwent the Arab Spring have regressed back to military dictatorship as in the case of Sisi’s Egypt or become militia civil war zones as in Libya. Africa has weathered more than 60 coups between 1960 and 1990, according to the African Development Bank. Some overturned election results that military leaders found unpalatable; others promised to stamp out political corruption, took over and became corrupt themselves. A whole generation of elected leaders is now angling for more time in power. Next year, both Faure Gnassingbé of Togo and Joseph Kabila of Congo are expected to seek third terms. (Mr. Kabila will have to change Congo’s constitution to do so; Togo has no term limits.) Both men inherited power from their fathers, who were ex-military leaders.

Robert Mugabe, 90, has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980. This week, he tightened his grip on power at a party conference by sidelining perceived rivals and backing his 49-year-old wife, Grace, for a senior party post. And former rebel commander Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president since 2000, is widely believed to be weighing a constitutional amendment that would allow him to remain in power beyond his second elected seven-year term, which is set to end in 2017.

Taken from here 

Ethiopia's "Authoritarian Developmentalism"

Ethiopia is both a darling of the international development community but organisations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) describe it as “one of the most repressive media environments in the world”.  Ethiopia is seen as a reliable police officer in the region, hosting a US military base and sending troops to fight the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab in neighbouring Somalia. Of 547 MPs, only one belongs to an opposition party. Activists and journalists describe an Orwellian surveillance state, breathtaking in scale and scope, in which phone conversations are recorded and emails monitored by thousands of bureaucrats reminiscent of the Stasi in East Berlin. The few who dare to take to the streets in protest are crushed with deadly force. Amnesty International has called it an “onslaught on dissent” in the runup to elections next year. An investigation by HRW noted the government had complete control over the telecoms system and virtually unlimited access to the call records of all phone users. Journalists have described telephone conversations they had years ago being played back to them during interrogations.

The country has enjoyed close to double-digit growth for a decade. One study found it was creating millionaires faster than anywhere else on the continent. The architect of this model of development – or “authoritarian developmentalism” – in east Africa was the late prime minister Meles Zenawi. Among the winners of the Meles legacy is Tesfakiros, the head of the Muller Real Estate company with a business empire that includes logistics, transport, food manufacturing and the wine venture with Geldof, which last year made a profit of $5m (£3m). “We’re trying to put Ethiopia as a wine-producing country like California or South Africa,” he said. Ethiopia imports about 10m litres of wine a year to serve a growing ‘middle’ class. Tesfakiros reflected. “There has been amazing growth in the last 15 years. People have got the work ethic and are investing. The real estates market is booming and will boom for a time.”

While tycoons such as Tesfakiros are showered in money from the property boom, Bekele Nega, general secretary of the  Oromo Federalist Congress, which has more than 10,000 members, has a different perspective. “This we don’t consider ‘development’,” he said. “This we consider the uprooting of the indigenous people, who will lose their culture and identity. The government say they are expanding Addis Ababa but the reality is they are getting rid of the people who don’t support the EPRDF [the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front].”

The frenetic economic expansion has uprooted thousands of farmers while, critics say, those who speak out against it are rounded up and jailed. The Congress, representing Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group, is resisting the government’s “masterplan” for expanding Addis Ababa, claiming it has forced 150,000 Oromo farmers off their land without compensation. Witnesses say police killed at least 17 protesters, including children and students, during demonstrations this year and hundreds more are being detained without charge.

Bekele Nega challenged the west’s perceptions of positive change in the country. “Foreigners who see these tall buildings will say Ethiopia is developing. The reality is we are not developing. We are not having three meals a day. People like Bob Geldof and others consider they have helped our people and of course they have. But they didn’t come to the kernel of the matter. The EPRDF used the money from that time to build the empire they are in control of. Somebody hijacked the money from that hunger. It’s written in black and white.”

Ethiopia is still one of the biggest recipients of UK development aid, getting about £300m a year. Money also pours in from the US. Nega believes it is misspent: “The west has left us, left the people. The US is aiding dictators and turning a blind eye to us. Why? The same with Britain, which has democratic values. They give the taxpayers money for buying weapons or for the police station to handcuff people.” Donor aid is also helping the government to spy on its citizens and even turn family members against each other, he alleged. “For any five family members, one will be reporting to the police. Your brother or your sister or your mother...”

One senior official said: “The most basic human right is food on the table. If we’re doing that, why would we violate other human rights? This is a safe, secure place and we want to keep it that way. We’ll do anything to keep it that way. We have 90 million people – you try to control them.”

Tesfakiros asks: “What’s democracy? The opposition needs support by the middle class. When we have a middle class, we will have a stronger democracy. Until then, we have a nanny for the democracy. Democracy is a matter of education and civilisation – 85% of our population is farmers; we don’t know how to read and write. When you have a middle class, you push for your rights.”

Nega replies. “The west wants us to be democrats and build a democracy. This question is not comfortable for our leaders. According to them, we need only food. They don’t understand that poor people need democracy. They fact we are poor does not mean we are not human beings. We cannot be uprooted and tormented. As human beings we deserve democracy, human rights, rule of law. ..”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/22/-sp-ethiopia-30-years-famine-human-rights

Ethiopian Dictatorship

 Ethiopia’s ruling regime is following a nationwide policy of violent suppression and constitutional vandalism.

 Human Rights Watch state the government “regularly use abuse to gather information…. Ethiopian authorities have subjected political detainees to torture and other ill treatment at the main detention center [Maekelawi Police Station] in Addis Ababa.” Journalists who challenge the government are intimidated (so too their families) and silenced. Many have been arrested, and as the Committee to Protect Journalists reports, “are languishing in Ethiopia’s prisons on trumped-up terrorism charges for doing their jobs.” In their thorough report “They Want A Confession”. HRW documents “serious rights abuses, unlawful interrogation tactics, and poor detention conditions in Maekelawi since 2010. Those detained …include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies.” Public assembly, whilst not being outwardly criminalized is effectively banned, despite the fact that it is a right enshrined like all such liberal freedoms in the legally binding constitution which has no influence over the ruling party, or indeed the judiciary, which functions as a docile enforcer of government criminality.

For a country beset with acute poverty, where it is conservatively estimated 30% of the population (World Bank figures) are living below the ‘official poverty line’ (that’s income of $2 a day), the government somehow manages to administer and fund (to the tune of $340 millions) the largest standing army in Sub-Saharan Africa. They boast 560 tanks, over 80 warplanes, and out of a population numbering 92 million, Global Fire Power reveals, 25 million are armed and ‘fit for service’, with a further 10 million standing by. The men in uniform are kept busy by their political masters – there is a whole nation to suppress and control, including the people of Oromia (who are calling for self-determination) and Amhara. There is the Ogaden region to occupy and forcibly govern, innocent men and women – who seek nothing more threatening than autonomy, their constitutional right – to murder, terrorise and rape. There is Gambella in the far south west and the Lower Omo Valley where women are raped by soldiers, men beaten, indigenous people (who have lived on ancestral land for generations) herded into government camps (the notorious Villagisation project – part funded by Britain and the World Bank) as vast tracts of lands are sold for pennies to international corporations. There is torture to be administered, assassinations to plan and execute, rapes to be performed and surveillance of dissenting voices to be carried out.

Graham Peebles' full article can be read here 

Gambia - an open prison

Ten of thousands of winter tourists flock to Gambia, mainland Africa's smallest country, each year. Tourism has become an economic lifeline under the regime of a president who urges "every Gambian to be a policeman". The Gambia has one of the continent's worst human rights records.

"Gambia is not a military dictatorship but nobody likes to mention the president's name," said a tour guide.

Since taking power in a bloodless coup in 1994, President Yahya Jammeh has swapped army fatigues for a white gown and sceptre, and rules through a potent mix of state brutality and mysticism, claiming to cure a long list of maladies from Aids to erectile dysfunction. His secret police, disguised as everything from gigolos to street hawkers, have arrested people for reacting "indifferently" when his presidential convoy passes.

Activist and former minister Amadou Scattred Janneh was sentenced to life imprisonment for distributing T-shirts at a rally. He shares a cell with a 24-year-old jailed for creating an online social media profile using the president's name. Janneh said that in August last year he saw nine prisoners apparently randomly dragged out of their cells and executed by firing squad. "It was very traumatic. No-one knew what criteria they used," he said. "One person had already served their term, another had been in jail for eight months, another for 27 years."

Gambia has some historical repute on account of the Kunta Kinte story from the novel Roots--which highlights the period of West African history characterised by the inhumane ravages of the Atlantic slave trade. The Gambia river is the silent container of James Island and Georgetown Island both river isolates on which the unfortunate African captives were kept shackled until some ship with dank holds arrived to convey them over the vast Atlantic for the purposes of captive labour in the service of a burgeoning capitalism. Multitudes died in this ultimate sacrifice for capitalism. Recently there was a repeat of history when along the Senegambian coast droves of young men risked their lives--many died in the process-- in rickety boats to sail over to Europe as willing slaves of industrial capitalism.

FROM HERE 

Eritrea's Tyranny

Eritrea has jailed at least 10,000 political prisoners, many in "unimaginably atrocious conditions", rights group Amnesty International said in a report. The exact figure is impossible to know.

Eritrea is one of the most repressive, secretive and inaccessible countries in the world. Anyone who challenges President Issaias Afeworki is jailed without trial.


Political opposition is banned, independent media quashed and religious minorities targeted. Reporters Without Borders lists Eritrea below North Korea as the worst country in the world for press freedom

"The government has systematically used arbitrary arrest and detention without charge to crush all opposition, to silence all dissent, and to punish anyone who refuses to comply with the repressive restrictions it places on people's lives," said Claire Beston, Amnesty's Eritrea researcher.

Underground dungeons and shipping containers are used to house the prisoners.

Plutocracy or Democracy?

It is fact that in many – if not all ‑ countries of the world, the dominant political discourse consists of ideas put forth by the ruling class. This discourse led Karl Marx to argue that in any society, those in charge have the power to propagandise their world-view. The term plutocracy is generally defined as the government by the wealthy and for the wealthy, and is usually used to refer to the rich who control the government ‑ often from behind the scenes. President Abraham Lincoln's that democracy “is a government of the people, by the people, for the people” remains utopian, as a global plutocracy now replaces it. If you believe the US is a democracy, if you believe in the rule of the many and not the rule of the wealthy few, then you will be in for some serious disappointment when you realise that the American model is not designed for the development and upliftment of the majority.

Marx never visited the United States, but nevertheless understood the country, because he understood capitalism. It has become common knowledge that there is no American ideology that is mightier than capitalism. Political scientist Michael Parenti comments; “American capitalism reflects more than just an economic system, it is an entire social and cultural order, a plutocracy, a system that is mostly by and for the rich.”

Equality, justice and the rule of law are all nice, but money speaks the language that all nations and people understand. If you have a lot of money and own a lot of property, then you have the power to propagandise your world-view. It is done to protect and promote your own interests and is the natural progression in the process of accumulation of wealth and exercise of power. As such, any talk of “democracy”, “rule of law” and “human rights” is packaged to promote and protect the interests of the wealthy in their exercise of power. According to EJ Dionne, a columnist in the Washington Post, “Capitalism works for the wealthiest and most powerful in the country, especially if they want to shroud their efforts to influence politics. “It just doesn’t happen to work if you think we are a democracy and not a plutocracy.” There is no way that the US can be interested in genuine democracy because that would fly in the face of the plutocracy they have worked so hard to achieve over the centuries.

In a genuine democracy, the people of any nation freely enjoy the resources that within their borders. Wars are not fomented to get their oil, gold and diamonds from them and they have the right to determine how exactly they use their resources, who they sell them to and what they buy from other countries in return. They are not forced to have particular leaders who are acceptable only to the West and they determine in which direction their leaders should lead them.

Sadly, true democracy is still very far away from visiting this world. Africans peoples must gird their loins and be ready to fight for it.

Extracted from here

from cradle to grave votes

Nearly one-third of Zimbabwe's registered voters are dead, and others appear to be babies or up to 120 years old, the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network's report said.

The group found some 2,344 voters between the ages of 101 and 110 still on Zimbabwe's voting rolls , a dubious figure in a country where the average life expectancy is a mere 44 years. t also revealed nine people born between 1890 and 1900 aged between 111 and 120 years old. The report also cited a lawmaker who found that more than 500 dead voters had all been given the same birth date — January 1, 1901. It found that electoral officials had not made efforts to update the lists by deleting the dead and eliminating duplications.

There were 93 children below one year old.

The election network said that its researchers had found more than 185,000 cases of the same voters being listed in two or more voting constituencies during Zimbabwe's last vote.

judicial murder

A UN investigator has called for the removal of Kenya's police commissioner and attorney general over a wave of alleged extrajudicial killings.

Philip Alston said: "Kenyan police are a law unto themselves. They kill often, with impunity...There exists in Kenya a systematic, widespread and well-planned strategy to execute individuals, carried out by the police"

Diplomatic Hypocrisy

Socialist Banner has no sympathy with the false socialist Mugabe but we can agree with much of this story .

"...Nigeria. Rwanda. Uganda. Ethiopia. Gabon. Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe has plenty of competitors for the title of "least democratic in Africa."

But while he has been singled out for condemnation by the West, leaders of other autocratic states in Africa have largely been able to avoid sanctions and isolation. Many have friends in Western capitals. Or play a strategic role in the war against terrorist groups. Or sit on oil...How many African leaders can point a clean finger at him? How many held a better election than his one-man runoff that followed a campaign of violence against his foes that induced the opposition leader to quit the race?

"It seems Washington and European governments will accept even the most dubious election so long as the 'victor' is a strategic or commercial ally," Kenneth Roth, executive director of New York-based Human Rights Watch said

Among countries he singled out as sham democracies are oil-rich Chad and Nigeria; Uganda, whose President Yoweri Museveni's friendship with President Bush has shielded him from criticism; and Ethiopia, a major U.S. ally against Islamic militants.Other oil producers that have managed to avoid international condemnation include Angola, which hasn't held a presidential election since 1992, and Gabon, where President Omar Bongo seized power in a 1967 coup and now reigns as Africa's longest-serving leader.

"Countries that have made a point of overtly aligning themselves with U.S. narratives and policies regarding terrorism appear to have benefited not only from financial and military support but seem successfully to have diverted attention away from their internal poor governance and human rights abuse," said Akwe Amosu, senior analyst at the Open Society Institute in Washington.

We are minded of that oft quoted statement of diplomacy and real politic.

"He might be a son-of-a-bitch---but he is OUR son-of-a -bitch"