Congressman Payne’s Horn hearing degenerates into an Ethiopia-bashing circus, again
The sub-committee on Africa and Global Health of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, held a hearing on 17th June, entitled “ The Horn of Africa: Current conditions and US Policy”. In what has now become an all-too-predictable pattern, the sub-Committee’s hearings on the Horn of Africa almost invariably degenerate into an Ethiopia-bashing circus whereby testimonies of a select group of detractors of the government of Ethiopia take turns to level all kinds of allegations against it. The latest hearing left little doubt that this was indeed the case. [More detailed response next week].
As usual, the hearing was chaired by Congressman Donald Payne and also in attendance was ranking committee member Chris Smith. The selection of people giving testimonies was clearly made to fit the intention of the organizers. More particularly, two of the testimonies were unabashed indictments against the government of Ethiopia. Congressman Payne, as is usual, took the opportunity to put the government of Ethiopia in the dock on a wide array of issues. According to the testimonies, the recent election results were proof positive that Ethiopia is indeed becoming a one-party state. HRW’s whimsically generated reports were once again recycled during the hearing to lend credence to the self-serving claims that have been pushed ad nauseam. It was suggested by the speakers that the US leverage its aid to Ethiopia - whose amount has been dramatically inflated to two billion USD annually - to force an elected government to submit to their will. Specific demands - very strict ones at that - were also made of the government of Ethiopia and even stricter conditions were suggested by way of recommendations to the Obama Administration. The Ethiopian government was even instructed to amend specific provisions of specific legislation, underlining the extent of hubris that informs such hearings. All told, the hearing made recommendations that practically amounted to demanding absolute abdication of sovereign power by the government of Ethiopia.
More outrageous claims were made during the question and answer session. Deep-seated prejudices veiled in semantic sleights of hand during the presentations were on display in the heat of the Q & A session. Mendacious allegations were made, for example, concerning the presence of Chinese military in some parts of the country, while speakers repeatedly bantered against what they said was a dangerous tendency on the part of the Ethiopian government.
While they were at it, the Congressman from New Jersey and his select group of witnesses did everything they could to defend the most egregious behaviour of the government of Eritrea. In fact, it is not entirely surprising that the Congressman should do this as it has now become an open secret that he and his closest unofficial advisors are only too keen on helping the regime in Asmara get away with its repeated wrong doing on any occasion they can. What is a little more surprising during the latest hearing, was that there was no inhibition whatsoever on the part of these people when they tried to defend the government of Eritrea on its abysmal record in religious persecution and suppression of dissent. If the hearing was about bashing Ethiopia on political grounds, it was even more about exonerating Eritrea from all kinds of accusations made against it by the international community including the US. What all this underlines is that most, if not all, the pressure these people want to bring to bear on the government of Ethiopia has nothing to do with what they purport it to be about.