Amnesty International's hollow statement on Ethiopian 'Muslim protesters’   [Ebrahim Ahmed  08/15/13 ] It has became very common to see neoliberal activist groups in the western issuing statements full of hastily claims based on one-sided information input and without thorough review of the concerned affair. The statement by Amnesty International, that was issued on the morning of Eid Alfatir holiday, is among such blunders by western groups. Amnesty claimed: “We are extremely concerned at reports coming out of Ethiopia this morning of further widespread arrests of Muslim protesters. The Ethiopian government’s ongoing repressive crackdown on freedom of speech and the right to peacefully protest has to end now”. Interestingly, by the time Amnesty issued the statement calling the “repressive crackdown to end”, there was no incident in Addis Ababa. It appears there was a miscommunication between Amnesty International and the extremists in Addis Ababa regarding the exact time when the demonstration was supposed to take place. Therefore, Amnesty International embarrassed itself by releasing its statement (which was written in advance) too early - when Ethiopian Muslims were still praying in Addis Ababa stadium and its vicinity. Since the statement was written in advance and issued prematurely, it is short on facts concerning the Eid Alfatir day. So, it went to recycle allegations made months ago and sufficiently refuted. While there is no point in repeating all the previous replies, it would be useful to highlight a few of them to demonstrate the hollowness of Amnesty International statement. The statement claimed: “During the 18 month-long protest movement against alleged government interference in Islamic affairs, the vast majority of demonstrations have been peaceful. However, there have been at least four incidents involving serious allegations.” This claim is flawed from two angles. First, the “protest movement” was often conducted in the context of prayer time in Mosques where thousands Muslims gather. Since the protesters are few. Since the vast majority of Muslims have little, if any, interest in the protests scheduled for that venue, the event would be “largely peaceful”, as local and western media routinely concur. The problem with Amnesty's statement is that it considers all those gathered to pray as protesters. Secondly, Amnesty failed to elaborate where, when and how those “four incidents involving serious allegations” took place. But it mentions one of them was “in the town of Asasa in the Oromia region - resulted in the deaths of protestors”. It is not clear whether Amnesty atleast reads news reports before parroting allegations made by extremists. However, according to reports by several known western news agencies, the incident was a result of a mob attack on the local jail to free a detained imam and it left four residents dead and 10 police officers injured. For example: Bloomberg news reported at the time: “Four people were killed in clashes with security forces in southeastern Ethiopia on April 27 when a crowd tried to free a Muslim preacher who had been arrested. Ten policemen were injured, the police station and a post office burned down and 24 people were arrested during the incident in Asasa in the Arsi Zone of Oromia region”. Is this the kind of activities that Amnesty wish to defend? Amnesty's statement becomes utterly ridiculous when it claims: “Amnesty International has received a number of reports of messages aired via the state media over the last week, warning that the authorities would take firm action against anyone who attempted to take part in further demonstrations. “This is a violation of people’s right to peacefully protest, as protected in Ethiopia’s Constitution,” said Claire Beston.” It is dismaying that an organization like Amnesty International that collects millions dollars donation under the pretext of overseeing the respect for human rights would make this kind of claim. To begin with, Amnesty was supposed to rely on “a number of reports of messages aired via the state media” about the public statement by the Federal Police commission. It was published on Ethiopia’s websites almost a week before Amnesty’s statement. Amnesty should have gotten hold of it and read it rather than rely on a hearsay. Secondly, there was nothing in the statement to be referred as “a violation of people’s right to peacefully protest” as Amnesty boldly claimed. The police reiterated citizens right to peacefully observe religious rituals, the separation of politics and religion in the constitution and the police;s duty to ensure citizen's religious right and constitutional norms. The police did not, in fact can not, prohibit citizens right to peacefully protest. It was not the subject-matter of the police's statement at all. The police was simply reassuring citizens that it will carryout its duty to protect the peaceful observance of their prayers and the peace and security of their religious rituals. How this counts as violation of people's right to protest is a mystery known only to Amnesty's all-knowing experts. Despite all these lofty lectures, Amnesty International doesn’t seem to have an accurate info on the whole matter. It claimed: “The trial continues of 29 figures representatives selected by the Muslim community to represent their grievances to the government. However, not all charged individuals are protestors or their “representatives”. In fact, not all charged are physical persons as two organizations are among the accused. Some are brought to court for their involvement at different stages and in different manners. Some were included in the criminal prosecution as they allegedly shared similar overarching objectives of spreading extremism and suspected of serving as conduits for communication and financial flows by breaching even more specific laws, in addition to the common offense of “planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt of terrorist acts”. Secondly, it is not clear where, if not from opposition websites, Amnesty got the idea that the Muslim community elected the accused as its representatives. Even the latest Human Rights report of the U.S. State Department referred to them as “members of a self-appointed committee claiming to represent the interests of the Muslim community”. If Amnesty missed on this recent and easily available information, it should not be surprise it has a poor and flawed grasp of the underlying issues and preceding events. Amnesty's statement, which came with an ear-piercing heading at a day when it would attract wide-attention was sadly bereft of systematic analysis of the religious affairs trend and the prudent manner in which it was handled in the past two decades. The impact of some extreme members of the Wahabia is already documented by telegrams sent from US Embassy in Addis Ababa to Washington as far back as 2007, which were published by Wikileaks in 2011. The Cables sent by the then US Ambassador in Addis, Donald Yamamoto, in 2008, which indicates, among others: *Wahabi influence is clearly growing rapidly. *Wahabis have been trying for years to close Sheikh Hussein Shrine, saying it was ‘un-Islamic’ and ‘impure’ *More than thirty smaller, local shrines (mainly to Sufi saints) in the area had also been destroyed by Wahabis who often replaced the shrines with Saudi-style mosques; e.g., mosques that reflect Wahabi architectural and interior styling. Amnesty could have as well read the public remark by Former US Ambassador to Ethiopia, David Shinn, on May 2012, to Reuters (also published on his official blog). David Shinn said: “For the most part, Islam in Ethiopia has been based on Sufi values. As a result, it has never been seen as a threat to the government. In fact, if you look at voting patterns in the controversial 2005 election, I believe the EPRDF did well in predominantly Muslim constituencies. The government has done a pretty good job over the years in ameliorating religious differences where there are potentially serious conflicts among Ethiopian Orthodox, Protestant (including fundamentalists and Pentecostals) and Muslims. Catholics, animists and others are too few to constitute a political bloc. The government has been concerned for more than 15 years about the activities of Wahhabi proselytizers from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. They have funded numerous mosques in Ethiopia. In the 1990s and up until about 2005, before the Saudi Arabian government cracked down, several of the Wahhabi charities such as al-Haramain operating in the Horn of Africa had connections to terrorist groups. This activity seems to have ended in recent years. Although I am not aware that groups like al-Haramain were active in Ethiopia, they were very active in Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania. Wahhabi influence in Ethiopia did result in some localized conflict between it and followers of Sufi beliefs. Many Muslims in the Oromo community have, for example, grave stones above ground that are sometimes painted in bright colors. The Wahhabi do not accept this practice and are believed to have been responsible for destroying some of them. This caused some serious tension between Sufis and Wahhabis, but to the best of my knowledge the government stayed out of it. You can be sure that if the government believes any mosque is spreading extremism, it will take measures to end the extremism. I believe it would work through the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs rather than interact directly with the mosque. I doubt that it would push a particular Muslim ideology such as that of the Al-Ahbash group.” Amnesty appears unaware of the track record of the ruling party. The Constitutional provisions of religious liberty are not unfamiliar imported concepts rather codification of what EPRDF has been doing in areas it administered years earlier. One of the first and historic moves of EPRDF, immediately after seizing power in 1991, was halting centuries old state persecution of religious minorities. Even in the past decade, when the threat of religious intolerance and extremism loomed bigger and bigger, as highlighted in US Embassy Cables and David Shinn's comment, the government didn’t take a knee-jerk action. It established a specific desk at the Ministry of Federal Affairs and engaged in an elaborate exercise of analysis, discussion and charting of the way forward. The general picture could be summed up in the following statement by Ethiopia's Foreign Ministry a few months ago. One major hallmark of the post-1991 era has been the complete absence of any form of regulation of religion, whether of religious policy or rules for religious activity. In other words the practice of secularism during the last two decades has been a watershed in Ethiopia’s history. This absolute liberty in the exercise of religion, however, hasn’t worked entirely properly in practice. Under a claim of freely exercising religion some extreme radicals have burnt shrines and denounced the practices of Islam in Ethiopia. With the help of foreign finance, they have even tried to destroy the significant levels of tolerance that have existed among Christians and Muslims in Ethiopia for millennia. These excesses have meant that the government has applied legal and administrative measures but in a sober and careful manner, in conformity with the principles of tolerance, non-interference in religious affairs and secularism. The recent riots have been an extension of the attempts of some individuals to present themselves as the only representatives of the Muslim community and claim they, and their supporters, project the real understanding of Islam.