BY GETACHEW MINAS
Investigating and determining responsibility for egregious domestic crimes, gross violations of human rights and serious humanitarian violations precedes reconciliation. Identifying the true causes of violent conflicts helps in designing real measures to ensure that truth, justice and reconciliation become permanent features of the socio-economic, political, legal and cultural landscape of a country. These causes may include misunderstanding, inequality, poverty, oppression and deadly conflict within and between people. The tortuous history of conflicts in Ethiopia is woven deeply into its troubled socio-political and psychological culture.
History teaches us that Ethiopia was forced to live under various forms of oligarchic, autocratic, militaristic and authoritarian governments. In spite of the challenges the country faced, the distasteful character of various regimes was not tolerable. The country’s troubled history inevitably culminated in protest, chaos and mass violence. Violent coups, military dictatorships and brutal repressions, and widespread deadly conflicts represented the rule of repression. A resurgence of violent ethnic conflicts and corruption became the characteristic features of the country. Sometimes, this blurred the real causes and effects of violence in Ethiopian communities.
To protect fundamental human rights, end impunity and foster national healing, rehabilitation and reconciliation, it is absolutely necessary to identify the root “causes” of conflict in Ethiopia. It is strongly felt that the future of a country rests with its citizens, free of conflicts. While the international community has and will continue to play a role in assisting to develop a sustainable democracy, only citizens can establish a durable human rights-based culture where peace, development and the rule of law are permanent features of the country’s political heritage. In this process, citizens should be given the right to elect leaders that represent their interests.
Disregarding the interest of the people, political factions, engaged in armed conflict, violated, abused and degraded Ethiopians. They committed sexual and gender-based violence against women including slavery, forced marriages, and other dehumanizing forms of violations. Similarly, massacres, economic crimes, extra-judicial killings are all serious violations of human rights in Ethiopia. All parties in a conflict and other armed groups recruited and used “youths” during periods of armed violence.
Justice and genuine measures
A form of individual and community reparation, compensation, restitution and reward is desirable to promote justice and genuine reconciliation in Ethiopia. Domestic and international criminal laws are used in the determination of responsibility for compensation. However, there is a need to institute an adequate mechanism to “mitigate” massive violations of human rights that characterized conflicts. It is also suggested that some form of both individual and community reparation is desirable to promote justice and genuine reconciliation.
In promoting justice, there should be no exemption from or relaxation of a rule of law during periods of emergency or armed conflict. Prosecution mechanism is desirable to fight “impunity” and promote justice in the country. In other words, those who committed crimes against humanity should not be sheltered from prosecution or the rule of law. Countries engulfed in armed conflict should be enabled to establish prosecuting institutions, ready to gather evidence as proof a criminal act. Penal codes have to be applied to mercenary acts, official oppression, murder, kidnapping, rape and sexual assault. They should also be applied to“fraud” in the internal revenue and financial institutions and theft. The law should strictly be applied to illegal disbursement and expenditure of public money, counterfeiting, and misuse of public money, property or record “during” conflicts.
In Ethiopia, human rights violations are generally committed by state actors and may take place during times of peace or armed conflict. They can be directed against individuals or a group of individuals. Lack of human rights culture and education, deprivation, suppression and insensitivity lead to massive violations of rights. “Wealth” accumulation by a privileged few created a fertile condition and a stained conscience for massive rights violations. This occurs during conflicts thus engendering a culture of violence as “means” to an end, with entrenched impunity among Ethiopian ruling “party” members. External state actors may participate, support, and aid, conspire and instigate violence in the country.
Accountability for violence
All warring factions are accountable for the commission of gross human rights violations, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and domestic criminal acts. They have to be “prosecuted” in a court of competent jurisdiction. They also have to face other forms of public sanctions. These measures are desirable and appropriate mechanisms to promote justice, peace and security. They foster “genuine” national reconciliation and combat impunity. These actions are desirable in view of the massive wave of gross violations and atrocities which characterize conflicts in Ethiopia. The damages assumed a systematic pattern of abuse in their execution.
Human rights violations are the product of deliberate planning, organization and orchestration to “achieve” a military or political objective. One of the objectives of the former ruling party in Ethiopia was vandalism, damage, destruction,
wreckage, sabotage and harm. All these cause economic and social destructions that are painful to society. They require “huge resources” to replace and revitalize the society to which harms are inflicted upon. The damage may involve loss of lives and material destruction. Loss of lives is a permanent one; it cannot be revitalized or replaced as in the case of material loss. Moreover, disregarding the rights of civilians, children, women, the elderly, and the “disarmed” enemy combatants comprise a gross violation of civil liberties.
Parties to a conflict systematically targeted women mainly as a result of their gender vulnerability. Offenders commit gender-based violations against them including, rape of all forms, subjugation, forced recruitment, and related atrocities. Though reparation and material compensation is a desirable and appropriate act, it does not fully redress violations of rights. Some acts of violation are “incomprehensible” to normal human beings. Trying to redress gross violations of human rights suffered by communities and individuals, especially women and children is only a “token” of reconciliation. To help restore human dignity, it is absolutely necessary to foster healing through justice for the insulted, humiliated and dishonored.
Amnesty for all human beings is the basis for reconciliation. Pardon, forgiveness, exoneration, remission and clemency for violent crimes are also desirable and appropriate to foster national “healing” and reconciliation. But, national laws should establish who is “accountable” for crimes committed against innocent citizens. These laws are applicable if only they are observed by all concerned legal and appropriate institutions that promote good governance. These elements promote and protect not only human rights, but they also reduce poverty and illiteracy. They promote peace, security, national reconciliation and opportunity for all.
All individuals residing within their country at the time of human rights crisis should be given the chance to “express” themselves. If they admit the wrongs they committed and speak truthfully as an expression of “remorse,” then they are believed to seek reconciliation with victims. The Ethiopians who settle abroad or the Diaspora are as much concerned about the violation of rights as their relatives at home. They should be engaged with developments in the home country and support and finance those victims of violence. Their voices must be heard and their issues and concerns must be addressed in fostering greater national reconciliation.
Effects of violence
One of the effects of violence is the rise of authoritarianism. This is reflected in hegemony, domination, control and supremacy through oligarchy. In the absence of popular representation in the ruling party, the state “breaks” down and
violent conflicts follow. Dictators impose unilaterally sponsored constitutional amendments that install personal rule without term limits. A military junta may reappear, as it did in Ethiopia before, in the political arena, to claim absolute power. One junta replaces anther through bloody coups or military interventions. Splinter groups come into the picture, claiming real or imagined power-sharing in the name of the people they claim to represent. They resort to constitutional loopholes and legal manipulations to justify their political role.
This incongruous act of constitutional manipulation creates precedent or model thathaunts countries for decades. Furthermore, subsequent responses to constitutional amendment can be regarded as the modern “genesis” of a culture of political intolerance and witch-hunting. Challengers to party leaders are disgraced, slurred and insulted. They find it hard to live in their own country and are forced into exile. The political contests that follow symbolize the division of people by ethnicity, tribe, clan and kinfolk at a very defining moment. The consequences of this division become one of the hallmark, symbol or trademark of the means by which politicians treat political opponents and their families.
Conclusion
The legacy of human rights abuse in Ethiopia has created instability, underdevelopment and poverty of people. This led to a widespread political, economic and social insecurity, uncertainty and unpredictability. It also caused systemic inequality and disenfranchisement that spread an immature political culture. These developments impeded the germination of genuine democracy. This phenomenon can be linked to the ethnic politics that was dependent on its militaristic adventure that subdued various ethnic groups that resisted its domination and exploitation.
The major root causes of conflicts are attributable to poverty, greed, corruption, limited access to education, economic, social, civil and political inequalities. They are also caused by identity crisis and conflict, land tenure and distribution. Parties in a conflict are responsible for the commission of domestic violations and crime. They are also responsible for violations of international criminal law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including war crimes violations. To reach a permanent peace that induces economic development, it is absolutely necessary to submit to truth and reconciliation of all Ethiopians, inspired by the elderly and the horrendous lessons of the past.
