Mereja Forum

[Selam/]

Anarchy, hatred, and demolition of heritage sites in Ethiopia
October 13, 2024

Getahun Assefa

Ethiopia is deliberately reduced to a failed state by sheer incompetence and lack of mature leadership. The country has become an epicenter of intentionally fomented disorder and chaos by the ethno-anarchic leadership of Abiy Ahmed Ali (henceforth Abiy).

The regime in Addis Ababa has been deliberately orchestrating interethnic wars, causing destruction and mayhem since 2018. The war in Tigray has already caused the death of more than one million citizens. The current ongoing war in the Amhara region killed hundreds of thousands of innocent women, men, and children. Millions are displaced and forced to live in concentration camps with little or no supplies of basic utilities. Schools, health posts, social and cultural institutions, and economic infrastructure were destroyed. Still, there is no end in sight for the suffering of citizens, with conflicts shifting from one region to another within a country. The apocalypse we have been seeing in Ethiopia over the last five years exceeds the combination of war-related deaths and destruction in all active conflicts including in Palestine, Syria, and Ukraine.

What is more saddening is the deafening silence of the international community to the daily cries of the Ethiopian people. The continued financial support of donors including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the wanton destruction waged by the ethnocratic regime of Abiy and the suffering of civilians is mind-blowing. Available evidence suggests that aid resources given to the regime by the World Bank and IMF are entirely spent on acquiring armaments and drones that are immediately put on operation against Amhara civilians, including children at schools and patients at the hospitals. While war crimes and crimes against humanity are rampant in Ethiopia and going on at an unprecedented scale, there is utter silence from the donors, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and other rights-based institutions.

In the week of 7 October 2024, the current Labor Government of the United Kingdom pledged to “support growth and stability in Ethiopia”. This only shows the ignorance and stupidity of the so-called development partners about the conditions on the ground. It is impossible to support growth that does not exist and stability that will not materialize under ethnocratic dictatorships. The aid goes to financing interethnic wars and feeding ethnic entrepreneurs at a colossal cost to British taxpayers. Likewise, during the same week, Tony Blair, ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom paid a visit to Ethiopia. Reportedly he had a courtesy call to Abiy. It looks like two blood-stained hands shaking and hugging each other. Mr. Blair’s role in the destruction of Iraq and the bombing of Iraqi children, women, and the elderly is all too evident and fresh in our memories. Mr. Blair has also established an institute by his name: the “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change”, attempting to influence economic policymaking in Africa and the rest of the developing world. For a warmongering and killer of Iraqi civilians like Mr. Blair, the audacity of going into influencing development policy making is a travesty of justice and a mockery of development partnerships. Mr. Blair’s meeting with Abiy is a recognition and endorsement of one war criminal by another war criminal. The adage that birds with the same feathers fly together is true.

Whatever support donors provided to Abiy is a colossal mistake and a waste of precious resources. Due to a failed and rudimentary political governance, Ethiopia remained poor and vulnerable to environmental and economic shocks. The impact of development aid on Ethiopia is close to zero or net zero, if not negative. Sadly, the nation that is often touted as the origin of mankind and which is expected to answer the most vexed questions about the origin of humanity, could not hold itself together. Unfortunately, it is on the verge of collapse like the house of cartons. The incompetence of the regime of Abiy is solely responsible for the current regional tensions and rampant interethnic wars as well as the massive violation of citizen’s rights.

The regime which is bent on reducing Amharas to political, social, and economic insignificance, is solely responsible for the anarchy and chaos engulfing Ethiopia. causing mayhem and untold suffering to the citizens. The continuation of systemic and institutionalized discrimination against Amharas and pitching them against other ethnic groups is the reflection of the political immaturity and inadequacy of Abiy to lead the nation. Surprisingly, such an immature and inadequate ethnocratic dictator is left unchecked and, in some instances, supported by gullible bilateral and multilateral donors.

With or without donors’ support, everything the regime had planned was in shams and shutters. The attempt to subjugate and unseat Amharas is backfiring and has turned out to be a dismal failure in the political, social, and economic spheres of the Ethiopian nation. Utter lies and shameless misinformation about the country’s socioeconomic progress are unraveling before our naked eyes. While Abiy was busy with his vanity projects amid interethnic wars, unemployment skyrocketed, economic malaise deepened, and war and the resulting crises were all too evident with the multidimensional poverty headcount reaching as high as 85 percent. There is no more evidence to justify policy and political failures as well as the wastage of development resources (including from donors) than the hungry, sick, and destitute men, women, and children on the streets. The lesson here is that, when citizens are discriminated against and marginalized from economic, social, and political decision-making and in a situation where ethnicity and ethnic entrepreneurship are rampant, destructive interethnic wars will become unavoidable. This results in a perpetual and vicious cycle of generalized poverty, irrespective of development aid.

The demolition of Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa was founded in 1887 by emperor Menelik and his wife empress Taitu Bitul-Amhara couples who ruled Ethiopia from 1889 to 1913. It is one of the oldest cities in the African continent and is often described as the melting pot of the Ethiopian ethnicity where every ethnic group has lived in harmony and side-by-side for more than a century.

By historical conjuncture, Amharas are not only the founders of Addis Ababa. They are also the “makers” of present-day Ethiopia. They mobilized other ethnic groups including the Oromos in the defense of the “Ethiopian empire” against countless wars of aggression. The current generation inherited a free and proud nation (with a multiethnic cosmopolitan city) that gallantly defended itself from subjugation and colonization. Despite its proud past, as indicated above, the country is made to become the locus of poverty, illiteracy, and malnutrition by interethnic conflicts orchestrated and intensified by the combination of inadequate leadership and ethnocratic dictatorship.

In developed and advanced developing countries urban centers are serving as economic growth and transformation poles. They are bringing citizens from diverse racial, social, cultural, and economic backgrounds together to live in harmony and side-by-side. Old architectural, traditional agricultural, and archeological sites as well as deposits of artifacts serve as major tourist destinations and hubs for employment, modernization, and social harmony. They attract much-needed investments and advance the balanced socioeconomic, political, and cultural development of nations. What is being done in Ethiopia under our naked eyes is quite the contrary: cities are serving to advance ethnic politics, build ethnic entrepreneurs, create socio political upheavals (latent or active), fuel disgruntlement and public anger as well as abject poverty and destitution.

The ongoing demolition of Addis Ababa by Abiy and his regime under the disguise of “development” or “modernization” of the city is a continuation of uprooting Amharas from their ancestral land. It is an attempt to change the demographic composition of the city by making Oromos a dominant ethnic group. Without changing the demography of the city, the ethnocratic regime realized that its survival for long was questionable.

What the regime is ignorant of are the international legal consequences of the demolition of one of the oldest cities in Africa. The destruction of the city is the manifestation of a sheer dictatorship and a violation of citizens’ intergenerational heritage and rights. That is, the intentional destruction of the city of Addis Ababa by the ruling Oromo elites and the demolition of more than century-old heritage sites is a crime under international law. It violates the key provisions of the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCRs) to which Ethiopia is one of the signatories.

Conceptually, international law and related covenants distinguish cultural heritages into three types: First, built environments such as buildings, townscapes, and archaeological remains. Second, the natural environment, including rural landscapes, coasts, and shorelines as well as agricultural heritage. And finally, artifacts such as books, archives (documents), objects, and pictures with historical and heritage significance. What we are observing in Addis Ababa is the wanton destruction of such heritages cherished by international law and international covenants of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

As recently as 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously adopted resolution 49/7 on “cultural rights and the protection of cultural heritage”, reinforcing relationships between the protection of cultural heritage, human rights, and the risks faced by cultural heritage defenders.

ESCR defines cultural rights and the protection of cultural heritage as integral to the complex sets of “human rights such as the rights to adequate food, shelter, education, health, social security, cultural life, water and sanitation, and citizens’ right to work and enjoy decent lives”. Likewise, international law including resolution 49/7 conceptualizes the right of access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage based on various human rights norms, including “the right of individuals and communities to, inter alia, know, understand, enter, visit, make use of, maintain, and exchange cultural heritage, as well as to benefit from the cultural heritage and the creation of others”. It also includes “the right to participate in the identification, interpretation, and development of historical heritage, and in designing and implementing practices to safeguard it”. The resolution also requested the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “to promote the tools for the dissemination and possible methods of implementation of an approach to the protection, restoration, and preservation of cultural heritage that fosters universal respect for cultural rights by all”.

The Ethiopian people, particularly the Addis Ababa residents, have not been consulted on the so-called “modernization” or “development” of the city. The destructive actions are imposed by the autocratic regime in Ethiopia with the ulterior motives of political point-scoring by uprooting Amharas and changing the demographic dynamics of the city. Every step of the process follows the systematic imprisonment and intimidation of the Amhara political figures, intellectuals, businessmen, journalists, and youth. These all are violations of international norms and legal instruments that Ethiopia has signed and committed to uphold.

The deafening silence of the international community to the massive abuse of human rights and rampant crimes against humanity against Amharas in Ethiopia also manifests itself in the ongoing wanton destruction of Addis Ababa. Why do the so-called bilateral and multilateral donors that poured scarce resources to maintain an ethnocratic dictatorship in Ethiopia keep silent in the face of the destruction of the city? Why do the United Nations Commission for Human Rights and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) fail to uphold the laws and regulations under their respective purviews to protect and promote cultural and heritage sites in Ethiopia? Would they allow the destruction of Paris, London, New York, or Rome by dictatorships and political diatribes as we see today in Ethiopia?

Conclusions and the way forward

The ethnocratic dictatorship that we see in Ethiopia today has already proven destructive to the country’s socioeconomic progress. It emerged as a bully in the region, steering regional and interregional disagreements and conflicts in the Horn of Africa. Such a regime will not guarantee the protection and promotion of the geopolitical and economic interests of developed nations and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, Africa Development Bank, and IMF. Ethnocratic dictatorships have never delivered on promises of development, democracy, and good governance. Nor have they produced social harmony and societal cohesion in the history of mankind. This is because such systems do not allow citizens’ interests to be expressed, protected, or promoted. Instead of advancing development, ethnocratic dictators are facilitators of ethnic entrepreneurship, favoring the interests of one ethnic group over the others. They do not respect the rules of law and continuously subjugate the groups that are perceived to be historical political rivals or enemies.

Development partnerships and international cooperation that feed taxpayers’ money to dictators and anocracies will produce neither growth nor political stability. Nor will these address underdevelopment and impoverishment. Donors, if they are genuinely committed to development, must pay greater attention to the political governance and the local conditions in recipient countries. They must ensure that their development aid is spent on the intended development programs. They should also go beyond their geopolitical interest of ensuring empty security and stability that will be short-term in nature or unsustainable for longer periods. There must also be prior agreements on policy options and approaches to development before pouring scarce resources into the hands of arch-dictators and ethnocratic leaders.

It is long overdue for the Ethiopian people (at home and in the diaspora) to make the legal case for the intentional destruction of Addis Ababa and its thousands of nationally registered heritage sites. The United Nations Commission for Human Rights and UNESCO must be held responsible for their utter silence in the face of the glaring destruction of the cultural and heritage sites in Addis Ababa by political animals ruling the country. Ethiopians must urgently establish a multiethnic and multidisciplinary group (consisting of renowned experts in the fields of international law, engineering, architecture, economics, demography, statistics, sociology, and history). The group must be tasked to elaborate legal demarch and develop legal cases against Abiy and his regime for the wanton destruction of Addis Ababa and the massive violation of the rights of citizens in Ethiopia. Uprooting citizens from their ancestral land because of their ethnic, religious, or political affiliation is a crime against humanity.

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