President Barrack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
March 22, 2011

Dear President Obama,

THE ZENAWI’S REGIME

Ethiopians are joining the waves of changes that are sweeping Middle East and North Africa. On March 7 and 9, 2011, Ethiopians in Gamu Gofa peacefully protested against political repression as well as depressed economic conditions. The regime’s security apparatus rounded up and forcefully took protesters to the notorious prison in Araba Minch City. Twelve people were shot dead senselessly.

The regime is also intensifying its effort to pursue the opposition. According to Medrek, 217 members of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) and 40 members of the Oromo People's Congress

(OPC) have been arrested in the past one week, and their whereabouts is still unknown.

As you insightfully put it, “When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now.” We agree with you completely, and want to see the end of the Meles Zenawi’s regime.

Ethiopians are yearning for freedom and liberty. They are united to challenge the current regime in power, which has more than once resorted to violence, terror, and the rigging of elections to cling to power.

The atrocious human rights’ records of the regime are well documented in the various reports of the US State Department Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Ethiopian human rights groups. By using its rubberstamp parliament, the Zenawi regime passes punitive legislative such like the Civil Society Law, the Anti-Terrorism Law, and the Press Law to severely hamper opposition groups’ ability to organize public meetings, rallies and raise funds in our country.

Since the regime controls both the armed and security forces, it uses deadly force to control and subdue Ethiopian citizens. It is safe to say that Ethiopia is a police state.

The people are not only repressed politically, but also economically. While oligarchs enjoy wealth, access, and influence; millions of Ethiopians, particularly the youth, comprising over 60 percent of the population, are mired in extreme poverty and in a sense of hopelessness and despair. Thousands die of hunger and of diseases every year.

As your foreign advisors certainly can attest, absolute power rests in the hands of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a once secessionist group from the Tigray region. Through the farcical “Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT),” this group controls big business in Ethiopia, and has unfettered access to state-owned assets priced far below fair market price. More and more, small businesses who find themselves outside the protected circle of EFFORT are closing, due to concerted harassment, random tax increases, and relentless extortions.

Ethiopian farmers are the hardest hit by the misguided economic policies of the Zenawi’s regime. Under the current Ethiopian Constitution, farmers are not allowed to own the land they labor, but must lease lands from the federal government, and that government has the autocratic right to expropriate land from the farmers with only 30 days of notice—keeping Ethiopians in a vulnerable state of insecure means and uncertain futures.

Rather than allowing Ethiopians to take charge of their futures by reforming the agriculture polices to empower small scale farmers and entice Ethiopian entrepreneurs to engage in large scale farming, the regime is now adding insult to injury by issuing business licenses to government backed investors from China, India, and Saudi Arabia to harvest foods for export to their respective nations.

Furthermore, in order to clear the millions of hectare of land designated for these foreign multinational companies, the regime is now forcefully dislodging hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians from their ancestral homes without effective resettlement plans or compensation to face a stressful and unknown future.

Many Ethiopians and their supporters are outraged to witness such abhorrent, draconian, neo-colonial practices being instituted in a country that prides itself in having successfully defeated European colonization. The mass polarization of the population—due in part from these insurmountable economic tensions—has generated deep hostility and resentment to the ruling TPLF/EPRDF party.

Unless a swift and viable political solution is found, a popular uprising will continue to escalate. The question is, Mr. President, what can be done to avert further bloodshed? We think the following measures should be implemented to achieve a peaceful transition:

• Legalize all political groups and guarantee their security;
• Release all political prisoners;
• Repeal the Civil Society Proclamation, and the Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation;
• Reform the Electoral Law;
• Establish an independent judiciary at the national, regional and local levels; and
• Establish an independent political commission.

The ruling party will not cede power to the people willingly. However, Mr. President, your administration can play a critical role in turning political situation in Ethiopia for the better by exerting pressure on the government to implement political reforms to lead to a free and fair election.

As you know well, Mr. President, for sometime now different administrations, some for shortsighted and cynical reasons, have supported the Zenawi dictatorship, against the broader interests of the Ethiopian people. This has contributed to the overall impoverishment of the Ethiopian people to the profit of a few, and has contributed to regional instability. As the United States re-evaluates its support of Middle Eastern authoritarian types (Ben Ali, Mubarak, etc), we ask that, at the same time, you begin to re-evaluate similar policies affecting Ethiopia in order to bring about lasting peace in the Horn of Africa. It's time for change, across the globe, Mr. President.

May God bless you and the United States of America!

The Ethiopian Americans Council (EAC)

West Coast Office
90 East Gish Road Ste #
25 San Jose, CA, 95112
Tel (206) 888-2004
East Coast Office
10125 Colesville Rd, Ste 104
Silver Spring, MD 20901
www.eacouncil.org
[email][email protected]

* The Ethiopian Americans Council (EAC) is a grassroots policy advocacy organization.