“… the Ethiopian government has spent tens of thousands of dollars to lobby to kill this bill [HR-2003]. I hope the message goes out loud and clear that this particular group of Congress people and this subcommittee in Congress is not for sale…”

An American lawmaker was standing up and speaking out loud for justice. It was obvious what he was alluding to, after all, HR-2003 was not the first Bill brought in front of lawmakers, only to have them killed by Meles Zenawi’s million dollar lobbyists such as former House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), and the US State Department which cited “national security” as the reason why the United States Congress should refrain from taking any punitive actions against the genocidal regime in Ethiopia.

The record shows that at least 6 other bills on Ethiopia have been introduced over the last few years, each one taking up where the last one left off. Each and every time, the minority regime’s multi million dollar lobbyists have managed to stop them from ever becoming law, to the detriment of the Ethiopian people and the Horn region in general. Let us take a look at some of them in chronological order:

• Congressman Tom Lantos [D-CA] on16 July 2003 introduced H.R. 2760 -Resolution of the Ethiopia-Eritrea Border Dispute Act of 2004. It was co-sponsored by Rep. Dan Burton [R-IN], Rep. Eliot Engel [D-NY], Rep. Barney Frank [D-MA], Rep. James Moran [D-VA], Rep. Donald Payne [D-NJ], Rep. Edward Royce [R-CA], Rep. Thomas Tancredo [R-CO]. This Bill passed the House of Representatives on 8 October 2004 without objection. The US State Department prevented the Senate from voting on it.
  
  The Senate received the Bill on 9 October 2004. The State Department stopped the Bill from becoming the law. It cited “national security reasons” for not allowing for the expeditious demarcation of the Eritrea Ethiopia border in accordance with the Final and Binding decision of the EEBC. Today, over 51/2 years later, the border remains un-demarcated and sovereign Eritrean territories remain under Ethiopian occupation.

• HR-5321 Free and Fair Elections in Ethiopia Act -was introduced on 8 October 2004 by Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA) and Co-sponsored by Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ) and Rep. Edward Royce (R-CA) also did not become law.
• HR-935-Free and Fair Elections in Ethiopia Act was introduced on 17 February 2005 by Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA) and Co-sponsored by Rep. Shelley Berkley [D-NV], Rep. Howard Berman [D-CA], Rep. Dan Burton [R-IN], Rep. Dennis Cardoza [D-CA], Rep. William Clay [D-MO], Del. Eni Faleomavaega [D-AS], Rep. Barney Frank [D-MA], Rep. Al Green [D-TX], Rep. Darrell Issa [R-CA], Rep. Tom Lantos [D-CA], Rep. James Leach [R-IA], Rep. Barbara Lee [D-CA], Rep. Zoe Lofgren [D-CA], Rep. Edward Royce [R-CA], Rep. Linda Sánchez [D-CA], Rep. Loretta Sanchez [D-CA], Rep. Janice Schakowsky [D-IL], Rep. David Scott [D-GA], Rep. Patrick Tiberi [R-OH], Rep. Frank Wolf [R-VA], Rep. Lynn Woolsey [D-CA].
  
  Referred to the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Relations on 17 March 2005.
  
  This Bill never became law.

• Congressman Smith of New Jersey introduced H.R. 4423- the Ethiopia Consolidation Act of 2005 on 18 November 2005. In addition to human rights provisions, this Bill also said:
  
  “…Declares that the current stalemate in the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea has the potential to lead to conflict and must be addressed. Prohibits assistance to the governments of Ethiopia or Eritrea (with exceptions for assistance for democracy, peacekeeping, child survival and health, education, and agriculture) until the Secretary of State certifies that Ethiopia or Eritrea is taking steps to comply with the Algiers Agreements… Prohibits nonessential U.S. assistance to Ethiopia if the government of Ethiopia obstructs U.S. technical assistance to Ethiopian opposition parties...”
  
  HR-4423 never became law.

• HR-5680- Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights Advancement Act of 2006 authored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) to promote human rights and democracy in Ethiopia was approved by the International Relations Committee on 27 June 2006.
  
  Smith, who is the Chairman of the Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations Subcommittee, said, “freedom and human rights in Ethiopia have seriously deteriorated under President Meles Zenawi.”
  
  According to Smith, more than a hundred elected officials, party activists, journalists and human rights defenders were “thrown into jail on trumped up charges.” He said, “Violence against dissidents has increased significantly and yet there have been no credible accounts for the slaughter of protestors in the streets of Addis last year.”
  
  Rep. Donald Payne, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee joined Smith in presenting the Bill. The bipartisan legislation had 15 cosponsors. HR 5680 also denied visas to anyone who was involved in the June and November 2005 killings of demonstrators. At that time Smith said:
  
  “Nearly 40 political activists were shot to death by government forces in the capital city of Addis Ababa last June,” Smith said. “A similar demonstration in early November also resulted in the deaths of scores of protesters and bystanders at the hands of government forces…The bill is a comprehensive measure that provides funding and technical assistance to those who want democracy and want to positively change the circumstances that have limited progress in Ethiopia…”
  
  The Bill proposed to put limits on military aid to Ethiopia — with the exception of peacekeeping and antiterrorism programs — until the government released all political prisoners and provided fair and speedy trials to other prisoners held without charges.
  
  The bill swiftly passed the House International Relations Committee with bipartisan support. Again with the help of the US State Department, the minority regime’s lobbyists and the then Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, the Bill was killed.
  
  The Ethiopian Diaspora in the United States launched a letter and e-mail campaign to push the legislation in Congress. To counter that grass-roots effort, the Ethiopian government hired a well-established law and lobbying firm in Washington, DLA Piper, to quash the bill. The lobbying team included former House Republican majority leader Dick Armey and 12 other lobbyists. In a 22 may 2007 article “Allegiance Rewarded: Ethiopia reaps U.S. aid by enlisting in war on terror and hiring influential lobbyists”, Marina Walker Guevara from the Center for Public Integrity wrote:
  
  “…from April to August 2006, DLA Piper lobbyists talked on the phone and met numerous times with the staffs of the House International Relations Committee; Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Ethiopia and Ethiopian American Caucus; the congressional affairs section of the Department of State; and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and 2008 presidential candidate…”
  
  Ms. Guevera also reported that her sources at the Bureau of African Affairs at the State Department objected to the bill as being "too punitive" and getting in the way of U.S. foreign policy, and that they “did everything they could to sabotage it”. Acording to Ms. Guevera, State Department spokesman, Steve Lauterbach, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that the bill was "prescriptive" and "limiting" on how foreign aid to Ethiopia should be spent.

• On May 9, 2007, Republican Congressman Christopher Smith introduced H.R. 2228- The Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights Advancement Act of 2007, which effectively replaced H.R. 5680. This Bill prohibited:
  
  “…U.S. entry of any Ethiopian official involved in giving orders to use lethal force against peaceful demonstrators or accused of gross human rights violations, government security personnel involved in specified shootings of demonstrators, and Ethiopian civilians involved in specified killings of Ethiopian policemen…”
  
  This Bill did not become law.

Congressman Donald Payne’s statement about the Ethiopian lobbyists is understandable considering the many years and the efforts of so many it has taken to get to this point. Ethiopia has been the subject of debates amongst lawmakers for over 4 years. Their voices have been muted and they have been prevented from carrying out their moral and legal obligations by the US State Department and Ethiopia’s million dollar lobbyists.

Jendayi E. Frazier was also present at that hearing on 2 October 2007. She was there to defend her friend Meles Zenawi. After she read her opening statement, it was time for questions. I listened as Congressman Smith, Payne and Tancredo tried to make sense of her logic,, not to mention her duplicity and hypocrisy. I was surprised by her determination to deny the facts in defense of Meles Zenawi. She sounded more like a spokesperson for the minority regime in Ethiopia than an official of the US government.

Throughout the hearing, Jendayi E. Frazier attempted to blame Eritrea for everything that ailed Ethiopia today. Sensing the reluctance at the State Department to call a spade a spade, lawmakers asked her at what point the State Department would stop being an apologist for regimes such as that in Ethiopia, they asked her to define the “criteria” which was being used to decide when it was time to say enough! Of course she evaded the question by going off on an unrelated tangent. At one point Congressman Payne asked her if there was anything that she could find wrong with Meles Zenawi’s actions. She said that she dealt with the regime in Ethiopia through “quite diplomacy”. The State Department that has unleashed several illicit campaigns to blacken the image of certain countries whose policies do not jive with what the US dictates is content with hiding, covering up, and sugarcoating Meles Zenawi’s crimes against humanity and international law.

The minority regime in Ethiopia ought to fire their lobbyists and hire Jendayi E. Frazier to represent them, if they haven’t already. The million dollar lobbyists wouldn’t have put their credibility and integrity on the line the way she did with her futile attempts to defend the indefensible, egregious and criminal activities of the minority regime in Ethiopia. Congressman Payne asked Jendayi E. Frazier about a story in the paper that said something about Eritrea being put on the terrorist list, which he called a serious allegation. Here is what she had to say:

“ …the clearest evidence of Eritrea’s support for terrorism is the fact that Hassan Dahir Aweys was sitting in Asmara at the invitation of the Government of Eritrea…”

What kind of evidence is that? Where is the evidence that Aweys is a terrorist? What terrorist acts did he engage in? According to the BBC, Aweys is a former army colonel, who was put on the US list because he used to head al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, an Islamist militant group accused of having links to al-Qaeda in the 1990s. Abdulahi Yusuf supposedly wiped out that group with Ethiopia’s help. During the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) brief six-month reign in Mogadishu, there were many European Union officials and others that held talks with Aweys. At what point did he become a problem? At what point did he become a “terrorist”. I bet it was on the day Meles Zenawi decided that he was.

Who is next? The ONLF? The OLF? The people of Ethiopia? I am not being facetious; after all we were told that the Somalis in Mogadishu who were forced to evacuate their homes should not to be given humanitarian aid because they were “terrorists”. The word has lost its meaning and has become a bullying tactic for those who want to evade international law and subjugate populations in order to advance their own narrow interests.

I would like to refer the readers to an interview Jendayi E. Frazier had with the BBC’s Hassan Arouni on 21 November 2006 (Jendayi Frazer told BBC's Focus on Africa reporter), right before the US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in which she talks about Mr. Aweys. The highlight of the interview is the fact that she implies he himself is not considered a terrorist by his own acts as the excerpt from the audio clip clearly shows:

Question-Hassan Arouni-: "What about Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is quite powerful in the Islamic Courts Union, some say he is the de facto leader, he is in the UN Security Council's targeted sanctions list, is that a major problem for you?"

Answer -Jendayi E. Frazier-: “…it is not a major problem. He is on that list because of his leadership of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya and their relationship with Al Qaeda and we continued to be concerned about the notion of AIAI (al-Itihaad al-Islamiya) that there should be five stars of Somalia, which means expansion against neighboring countries which is undermining regional stability…”

It should be recalled that the Secretary of State for African Affairs has been peddling the discredited Somali Monitoring Group’s Report as evidence against Eritrea and now seems to believe the presence of Aweys in Asmara, to participate in the Somali Conference, somehow implicates Eritrea with terrorism. This moderate religious cleric has never committed any terrorist acts and is fighting to liberate his country from Ethiopian occupation. He is also not “harboring” the individuals that attacked the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and has never been charged with any criminal acts. Jendayi Frazer needs to ask the many warlords (Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) that the US was supporting about the terrorists that she is searching for as Meles Zenawi’s marauding forces wreck havoc in the lives of the Somali people.

Despite US and Ethiopian air raids that have been bombarding Somalia, we have yet to see any evidence of any terrorists being present in Somalia. The minority regime in Ethiopia told us that there was going to be some DNA testing to determine the presence of terrorists in Somalia, but that genetic pointer has yet to be presented. The more Jendayi Frazier tries to defend her friend Meles Zenawi, the more she undermines her own credibility, integrity and neutrality.

Speaking of Meles Zenawi’s skirted friends, Vicki Huddleston, the retired State Department envoy has come out of hibernation to also add her voice in his defense and block the passage of HR-2003 in the United States Senate. I was not at all surprised to read Vicki Huddleston’s statements in defense of the minority regime in Ethiopia. This woman presents herself as an “expert” and yet offers nothing but deliberate distortions of known facts. Whilst her entire letter, posted in the same TPLF site (Jimma Times) that had posted the erroneous and baseless allegations about Eritrea and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, needs further scrutiny, I want to take this opportunity to correct her often-repeated erroneous statement about Eritrea.

Meles Zenawi did not grant Eritrea its independence. Eritrea’s independence on 24 May 1991 was a result of a 30-year bitter-armed struggle against successive Ethiopian regimes supported by the United States and others. On 28 May 1991, it was the Eritrean People’s Liberation Army that helped the TPLF and other groups in Ethiopia oust the Menghistu regime. Over 65000 Eritreans died to liberate their country and as a US diplomat who is presenting herself as an “expert” on Africa, I would advise her to read a little bit more about Africa and its people instead of regurgitating falsehoods she has collected from self serving “cocktail diplomats” during her tenure in Africa’s sin city, Addis Ababa. By the way, the fabricated news item that found its way into a report submitted by Senator Lugar turned out to be another TPLF ploy to implicate Eritrea and Norway in yet another futile attempt to evade its legal and moral responsibilities under international law.

Vicki Huddleston is the American diplomat that encouraged the invasion and occupation of Somalia. It was under her watch, while she served as the Charge D’Affaires at the US Embassy in Ethiopia that the 193 innocent civilians were massacred in cold blood in the Ethiopian capital for voting Meles Zenawi’s regime out of office. It was also under her watch that the minority regime’s “agazi” forces terrorized and brutalized the Ethiopian population in the aftermath of the May 2005 elections. I am not surprised then to see her come out of retirement to add her voice in defense of Meles Zenawi against the sober and responsible voices of the United States Congress which voted unanimously to pass HR-2003.

Despite the glaring facts on the ground and the indisputable documented abuses and excesses of the minority regime, these skirted friends of Meles continue to campaign on his behalf in Washington. The facts about an American diplomat, a former US Ambassador to Ethiopia, who had returned to Ethiopia after his service there, to work for an Ethiopian millionaire closely allied with the TPLF regime is well known. A well-placed source within the State Department recently divulged a not so well hidden secret about Jendayi E. Frazier and her business dealings with the same millionaire.

Is there a conflict of interest issue here? Is this another case of corruption at the US State department that needs the attention and investigation by Congressman Henry Waxman and his team? There is credible evidence to suggest that it is. I hope US lawmakers take a look at the record of these skirted friends of Meles and stop Meles Zenawi’s terrorist acts of invasion and occupation of sovereign states in the Horn before it is too late.

For the sake of the people of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, I hope that the members of the United States Senate muster the political will and the moral courage to pass HR-2003 and rein in Meles Zenawi, the only terrorist lurking in the Horn region.

The rule of law must prevail over the law of the jungle

Play here interview Jendayi E. Frazier had with the BBC’s Hassan Arouni on 21 November 2006

---