Oops: Amnesty International gets it wrong on Ethiopia, again

The Human Rights group Amnesty International sure has a decent reputation and defends the voiceless and persecuted people all around the world. But at times, such dedication and the will to help everyone has its weaknesses and comes at the cost of professionalism & impartiality. Sometimes by sacrificing peace and stability in the certain region that is irresponsibly covered by the organization, Amnesty can actually end up doing the opposite of what it wanted to accomplish. One such case has been its work in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is a nation that is well-known for poverty since 1980's, but also known for its long & rich history as well as culture. However it has never had a democratic government until a recent attempt by the EPRDF-led government. Even though religious freedom, ethnic tolerance and peace (compared to previous years) have been the assets of this current government, strong democracy is sure not one of them. After the 2005 elections, where the main opposition parties CUD and UEDF won high amounts of the votes, the ruling party started to ban all demonstrations fearing the public reactions on what it is about to say. Or rather what its about to do, which was, ofcourse, crowning itself the winner.

Sure, everyone expected CUD to win in Addis Ababa, but everyone also knew that CUD & UEDF had won a much higher share of the votes in other places. No matter, protesters turned rioters, and now, what we have is almost 200 rioters & bystanders killed and many members of CUD's leadership in jail. Some say that "it would have been nice if the CUD leaders 'admitted' losing the election and took their seats in the parliament being happy of the votes they gained." However, the reverse can also be said that "it would have been nice if the ruling party didn't prematurely concluded its victory; or if it really felt so insecure, it would have been nice if it atleast formed some type of National unity government." Anyhow several months have passed and all of these events have contributed to the make up of the present conditions where the government is trying every magic trick to deflect attention from inside problems and where the extreme parts of the opposition are behaving even more confused & lost. How lost? Some of them, without any real leaders left, are going back to the only game they previously knew, which was propaganda. And once again the tool and thus the victim of this propaganda is Amnesty's dwindling reputation.

Amnesty International, ofcourse, uses as much evidence as it can before it reports an issue or an incident found anywhere around the world. But what about when its evidences are limited or coming from a biased source; as it is often the case of its reports about some African nations? Unfortunately, even Amnesty has its limits. We can say "unfortunately" - because all peace-loving and humane people around the wolrd would love to see Amnesty International succeed all the time and in all places. Almost like a superhero organization using its super powers, flying above all human limits and all weaknesses to report all bad things happening around the world impeccably. Not only that, even when the reporting appears conflicting, it would be just magical if Amnesty's executive leaders could transform into the Biblical King Solomon and effortlessly differentiate & judge whose side of the story is correct or which description of an event is accurate. Regrettably, Amnesty is not a collection of superheroes and none of their staff as well as HRW's Peter Takirambudde is having much success impersonating King Solomon.

As the result of this, we should not blame Amnesty for giving baseless and false reports on Ethiopia, but one can expect such an organization to learn from its endless mistakes, accept constructive criticism and improve. Just in the last six months, most of the accusations against Ethiopian leaders have been proved wrong or proved too unrealistic to even be discussed. For instance, Amnesty fell for the oldest trick in the book when a group of Diaspora Ethiopians from the most radical side of the opposition used propaganda and staged witnesses to claim human right abuses in Ethiopia. Ironically, it happened just before these groups tried to pass a House Resolution bill in US congress against the Ethiopian government & its moderate opposition supporters. But what became an international news of abuse and torture was suddenly curbed when the apparent victims of the government torture miraculously re-appeared without a single mark on their bodies. Though embarrassing, such mistakes by Amnesty continue to be a regular.

Certainly Amnesty has been a useful machine for the most radical parts of the Ethiopian opposition, which often use the same propaganda not just to turn lies to facts via Amnesty, but also to provoke anti-government feeling inside the Diaspora Ethiopians and spark violence & riots inside mainland Ethiopia. Even though more propaganda has been occuring since, another dangerous propaganda was used at the end of January to provoke more anti-government feeling and ofcouse manipulate the defenseless Amnesty into believing & reporting it. On January 30, the Diaspora leadership of one of the most well-known opposition groups called Kinijit (CUD) used a very sickening propaganda displaying torture images from Indonesian jails and used it to defame the Ethiopian government of committing abuses & torture. (*Check links below) For those readers who are geographically challenged, Indonesia is a country in Asia while Ethiopia is located in another continent called Africa. Sadly, the leadership of the Ethiopian opposition party,CUD, took the photos of torture from an East Timor Human Rights Centre database of Australia covering abused in Asia and used it to provoke more violence, hatred and divisions between political parties of Ethiopia.

Even though the consequences of these dangerous propagandas and the effect they might have on the Diaspora are unmeasurable; one thing is for sure, this has not stopped Amnesty from being used like a political tool, once again. Unfortunately the advisor to Ethiopian Prime Minister is once again accused and left stunned by Amnesty's outrageous accusations ( http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2007-02-05-voa5.cfm ) For most peace-loving and optimistic Ethiopians, it is hard to judge Amnesty and simply blame it for its various mistakes. But knowing how much destructive its blind support for the extremist opposition groups in the Diaspora has become, Amnesty should take it upon itself to improve its reportings on Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a nation where most of her innocent refugees who left their country more than a decade ago are now ripe & ready to be remote controlled by the extreme parts of opposition groups; especially if Amnesty continues becoming the rubber stamp organization for these groups by becoming their political tool & keeping the status quo that the hopeless Ethiopia they were forced to abandon decades ago is still the same. Granted there aren't that many sources of information coming out of Africa for Amnesty to function, but it is still necessary for Amnesty to keep its standard of work, it ethnics and impartiality no matter which section of the world being reported so that it can avoid being part of the problem in Ethiopia, instead of being part of the solution.

Photo copied details of the fabrications made by the opposition party CUD branch in America

http://hagerfikerradio.com/killliesfull.htm

http://hagerfikerradio.com/abugidaliesl.htm

The genuine, real source of the photos, which were from south Asia, NOT Ethiopia

http://www.math.jussieu.fr/%7Ekahn/Timor/images/torture/torture4.jpg

http://www.math.jussieu.fr/%7Ekahn/Timor/images/torture/torture.html