Ethiodemocrat.com

Yellow Hijab, Symbol of Resistance

With their beautiful attire and Hijab on the head, Ethiopian Muslim women surprised Woyanes and everyone in Houston on Sunday, April 14, 2013. Instead of usual cordial and subservient Ethiopian woman, who were often absent from such rallies, Woyane Ambassador was  confronted with assertive, and bold Ethiopian women, who at last understood the damage the regime has done to their people regardless of where they hail from.

Unlike in the past the conference was packed, but the Woyane Ambassador might have thought the Muslim audience was his usual allies of the past from Tigre or some allies from the South. To his surprise, he faced a different class of Ethiopian women who at last decided to face the Woyane beast head on.

The Woyane amassed security, for  protection, and to silence the opposition, despite such preparation and the presence of such force, the Ethiopian women refused to be silenced and refused to be kicked out of the audience even after the Woyanes urged the police to do so.

The new face of Ethiopian resistance was no more men with jackets, and pants, but Ethiopian women with Hijab. With their coordinated attire, the women filled over half of the audience, showed their protest banners demanding the release of political prisoner and more.

The Ethiopian community in Houston showed up inside the conference room and on the streets in force to demonstrate its displeasure with the Woyane Ambassador from Washington. After months of advertising and promotion, the Woyane Ambassador Girma Biru showed up to collect funds for the Abay Dam, believing his cadres in Houston sold the idea with an ironclad confidence. At the beginning, Houstonians gave the Ambassador the benefit of the doubt to tell his version of the Woyane story and about the Abay Dam. At the beginning, the confident Ambassador narrated the importance of the dam to Ethiopia and how the Woyanes are pulling Ethiopia out of it darkness, while this assertion is highly debatable and probably patently false.

To the surprise of the Ambassador and many Ethiopians, almost half of the audience was women of the Islamic faith. The turnout was beyond any ones expectation; the conference room was packed and some people were forced to stand up. Besides filling the conference with their beautiful attire and yellow Hijab, the Ethiopian women put the Woyane cadres to the task repeatedly raising the plight of their brethren and forcing the police to ask some of them to leave. However, the women would not have it and refused to budge, and the police were forced to back down as the audience turned to their defense.

To his credit, the Ambassador agreed to answer all questions at the end despite his Woyane handlers’ recommendation that all questions be submitted in advance in writing so that they can dictate which questions to be asked or not to be asked. The audience protested to Woyane handlers’ recommendation and the Ambassador relented and took questions from the audience. Unfortunately, he was unable to give straight answers as the audience was looking forward, and the conference degenerated into chaos and the police were called in intervene a few times.

Another surprise to Woyane and other Ethiopians, most of the audience turned to be from the opposition. When the room was cleared off all the protestors, only small groups of people were left with the Ambassador.

As the meeting become unruly, the ambassador decided to call of the meeting and the Ethiopians audience starting singing “Woyane Leba” and Lelaba Genzeb Ansetim”

When the Ambassador cancelled the meeting, he urged those Woyane supporters stay put to make their contribution. However, an awe struck Ambassador was left with an empty room of few supporters and Woyane cadres who organized the meeting. This should have been the most humiliating moment for him: seeing empty conference full of Police and Woyane cadres.

The demonstration continued outside the building and on the streets to make sure that the Ambassador did not leave without more humiliation and embracement and to make sure that he tells his masters in Ethiopia that the table has turned against them and the rumbling of the new freedom fighters, Ethiopian women with hijab. It should be very clear to Woyanes that the days of using religion and tribe are no more marketable as more people are becoming more aware of the damage the Woyane system has caused to every Ethiopians in the last 21 years.

While many in the audience have no problem with the construction of the dam, but they are keenly aware of what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN, the U.S. Department of State, and Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have documented about the human rights violations committed by the incumbent regime. Using the Federal Police regularly intimidates and kills at will on streets, schools, churches and mosques, as it has done just recently in Anwar Mosque in Addis Ababa and in various cities throughout Ethiopia.

Many Ethiopians are aware of the overwhelming evidence about the tyrannical situation in Ethiopia and all believe that it went too far and for too long. The end of the Woyane appears imminent whether they realize it or not; the rising tide of resistance fueled by the unwarranted religious interference and oppression is unstoppable.

The yellow color or a warning sign, a symbol of resistance adopted by the Ethiopian Muslims, will accelerate the downfall of the Woyanes, and restore hope and unity, missing for the last 21 years.

Dula can be reached at dula06@gmail.com

Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman’s travel to North Korea to prod the regime about the importance of Internet access and technology is commendable; however Ethiopia, a U.S. ally has avoided such criticism and scrutiny despite subjecting its citizens to similar situation.

Ethiopia’s Internet access like North Korea’s is limited, strictly regulated, and allowed only with government approval. The Ethiopian government controls major resources, including land, banking, telecommunication, and keeps a record number of journalist, human rights activists, and opposition leaders in prison.

Both Ethiopia and North Korea suffer perennial famine and remain one of the poorest nations in their respective continents. Ethiopia’s per capita according to 2011 World Bank data is $374, while North Korea is $1200. Recently, the blocking of Skype by the Ethiopian government created uproar by the International community, but fizzled out without causing any major changes in government policy. Blocking access to technology puts Nations like Ethiopia and North Korea at Risk.

In 1996 at the dawn of the Internet, the U.S. government gave a grant through the Mickey Leland Foundation to wire all Ethiopian universities and high schools with broadband Internet services. The grant was in an effort to leapfrog Ethiopia’s access to technology in order to bring about economic growth at rates enjoyed by East Asian countries and help end its food dependency and perennial famine. The late congressman Mickey Leland died in Ethiopia in 1989 as he was trying to stave off hunger and famine in western Ethiopia. This grant was seen as the best chance to end Ethiopia’s perennial famine and backwardness and to transform it into an economically viable nation similar to other countries that improved their economy by leveraging technology

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi blocked the grant because it stipulated open access and competitive bidding for the installation of the network. The regime was afraid that the citizens of Ethiopia would use the power of the Internet to organize against the status quo that has been highly detested by the majority of Ethiopians primarily for the lack of democracy and government control on land and other resources.

During the 1996 project, Mr. David Shinn, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, did everything he could to convince Meles to accept the grant and allow broadband access in order to end Ethiopia’s economic backwardness and perennial famine. Similar efforts by many other groups were aborted because of the regime’s fear of technology as well as lack of interest in leveraging technology for development in most parts of Ethiopia except in the province of Tigre, where Meles was from. In Tigre, the establishment of the Mekele Institute of Technology (MIT) was a break through. Unfortunately, the graduates from MIT are primarily deployed in cyber spying, blocking websites, and filtering email and phone conversations against the opposition.

According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Ethiopia ranks at the bottom of nations in accessing and leveraging technology (see graph below). Even war torn Somalia has better Internet and mobile services than Ethiopia.

Many countries have been able to propel their economy and living standards by leveraging technology. Five years ago, an initiative to upgrade information technology was undertaken in the southwestern Shoa province in Ethiopia. This initiative was led by Ethiopian expatriates, David Levine and Phillip LeBel, two former Peace Corps volunteer teachers who had taught in Ethiopia in the 1960s, and Appropriate Technology Group where I served as director. The project focused on creating a technology corridor to make Ethiopia the outsourcing center of Africa in 10-20 years and to give alternative development to this highly densely populated and poor region stretching from Gibe River to Awassa.

The plan was to start by equipping 15 high schools in the area with computers and Internet access as part of a technology corridor with the elite of the students going to planned post-secondary institutions to form a core of technological innovation center that could help transform the region into a high-technology hub. The initial shipment was sent on July, 2009 to Djibouti with brand new servers, hubs, and various educational software on a container. However, when it reached Djibouti, the Ethiopian government refused to grant a permit to move the equipment into Ethiopia. They demanded an exorbitant tariff, though the organization had an approval from the Ethiopian Embassy and other concerned agencies in Ethiopia to donate the equipment to the schools through a nonprofit agency in Ethiopia. The group was forced to abandon the project after several months of delays and failed negotiations.

Technology has become an important tool in increasing GDP and standard of living for many nations including China, India, and others. In Ethiopia, out of 85 million people, less than 700,000 or less than 1% of the population have limited Internet access. Besides deliberately limiting access, the cost to use the Internet is exorbitant. Most Internet access is extremely slow. Instead of broadband access, the country uses primarily dialup internet connection that costs more than high speed service. In addition, to establish a traditional dialup service often takes over six months. Part of the delay is due to a rigorous application process and in an effort to use censorship that is supervised by the national security agency. The agency keep records, blocks websites, radios, TVs, and maintains a total monopoly on all forms of information technology in use in the country.

Denial of access to technology to people and economy can cause incalculable harm. Meles took over Ethiopia in 1991 and a year later the Internet was born. Marc Andreesen from the University of Illinois, my alma Mater, unveiled the Internet browser- Mosaic in 1992 and Netscape in 1994. Since then companies like Amazon, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Google, Facebook and more, were created and their total revenue alone is over a trillion dollars compared to Ethiopia’s $5.7 billion annual budget for 2011. Out of Ethiopia’s $5.7 billion, 42% or $2.4 billion comes from foreign aids and loans. Incidentally, the city of Houston, with a population 2.2 million has a budget of approximately $4.3 billion vs. $3.3 billion for Ethiopia with 85 million people.

Again according to the Word Bank, Ethiopians survive on a dollar a day as measured by their per capita income of $374 compared to $48,000 per capita income for the U.S.A. Ethiopia is also miserably poor compared with other African countries.

Despite these shocking poverty statistics, the Ethiopian regime like North Korea denies private ownership of Land, Telephone, Internet and other major industries, as well as makes it difficult to obtain education or government jobs unless one is a card carrying members of the ruling party.

One might ask why focus on access to technology or information technology. The answer is that many countries have been able to improve their economy and living standard by leveraging technology as witnessed by many successful economies such as those in East Asia. Overall, Information technology reduces transactions costs and it brings major increase in productivity and enables countries leveraging technology to better compete in the global economy. Despite these factual evidences, Ethiopians have been denied the opportunity to take advantages of this important tool for their economic development.

Many economists believe that there are two main factors that enable a country to enjoy rapid economic growth: discovery of natural resources  or leveraging technology or both. Ethiopia, despite its prime location, so far has not discovered any gas or oil, but it failed to take advantage of one factor that was readily available, leveraging technology, despite many opportunities to do so.

In its continuing effort to impose censorship by limiting access to Internet and technology, the regime is condemning entire generations of Ethiopians to ongoing poverty that could have been redressed by more open and forward-looking choices.

Like North Korea, Ethiopia has a new ruler, Hailemariam Desalegn. Can Eric Schmidt or President Obama pay a visit to Ethiopia to prod this Luddite regime to finally grant unfettered Internet and technology access to create a sustained and rapid economic growth in Ethiopia similar to the Asian Miracle.

Dula Abdu, is a former banker and professor of economics and has been promoting Internet access in the USA and in Africa. He can be reached at dula06@gmail.com.