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Biography
Meles Zenawi was born on 08 May, 1955 in Adwa, in the Tigray Province of Northern Ethiopia. He attended the Queen of Sheba Junior Secondary School before going on to complete his tertiary schooling at the General Wingate School in Addis Ababa; after graduation he attended Addis Ababa University, studying medicine between 1972-1974. In 1974 he left school to join the Tigrai People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) during the chaos that ensued in Ethiopia that led to Haile Selassie’s overthrow by coup d’état by the Derg, which was the group of the army who orchestrated the coup
He would go on to be elected to the Leadership Committee and the Executive Committee of the TPLF in 1979 and 1983 respectively, and by 1989 he was chairman of both the TPLF and the EPRDF (Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front). It should be noted that after since the overthrow of Haile Selassie a guerrilla war had raged against the Derg and their leader Mengistu Haile Mariam until his overthrown in May 1991, when EPRDF would close in on Addis Ababa, forcing him to flee the country.
After Mengistu’s overthrow, Zenawi would assume the role as transitional President of Ethiopia on 28 May 1991 until 22 August 1995, when he would go on to become Prime Minister of the country, despite opposition boycotts of the election. He would be re-elected to the Prime Minister office in 2000 and in 2005. During his tenure in office, he has been active as a mediator in several regional conflicts in the region, including in Burundi, Somalia and Sudan.
A long time friend of the Clinton Administration, he has also been recognized by the Bush Administration as an important war on Terror in the region, receiving massive US aid for both food and other financial assistance programmes.
He would go on to complete his MA in Business Administration at the Open University (UK) in 1995, followed by an MSc in Economics from the Erasmus University (Netherlands) in 2004. He is married with three children, and his hobbies include reading, swimming and tennis.
His presidency is lauded by his followers as him being one of the most progressive in Ethiopian history, and he has been successful in throwing off the cruel shackles of Mengistu’s extremely oppressive Marxist regime, and he is noted to be an very well-read intellectual. That said, his opposition has many charges against him.
Human Rights Abuses
Once thought of as the great hope for democracy in Africa and lauded by Tony Blair for his exemplary good governance, recent evidence suggests that a human rights crisis is now brewing in Ethiopia. After parliamentary elections in May 2005, which has come under scrutiny after Zenawi’s party won a majority with 296 of 547 Parliamentary seats, despite the fact that the Kinjit, which is a unified opposition to Zenawi has ranks of approximately 1.5 million members, and dominates some densely populated areas. This immediately raised questions of whether the election was rigged. Moreover parliamentary rules have been recently changed to only allow a party with more than 51% of parliamentary seats the right to raise issues for discussion.
This has created instability in the country which has caused an eruption of violent demonstrations against Zenawi in June, 2005 which led to violent measures to quell the riots, leaving scores dead as government forces fired live rounds into the crowds. Following this, he has continued to crack down on brutally on opposition, with reports of numerous politically motivated murders carried out by the country’s security forces. Zenawi maintains that the current situation has been orchestrated against him by opposition to effect his overthrow and that this has been planned since before parliamentary elections.
Recently reports of detention camps in Ethiopia are coming to light, particularly the Dedesa camp, where there are reports of merciless beating and torture of political prisoners by Ethiopian security forces, and as many as 45,000 detainees are being held in the camp right now. Opposition leader Hailu Shawel alleges that between 40,000 and 50,000 youths have been detained by the Zenawi government, although other sources suggest that this number is closer to 10,000.
This is causing much concern among British and other European politicians, with foreign aid and projects now being withheld or delayed. Many think that Tony Blair is beginning to regret appointing Zenawi to the African Commission earlier this year.
There are also reports that journalists in the country have been arrested in numbers and charged with treason, and some say that Ethiopia now ranks among the world’s leading jailers of journalists since government crackdowns in November 2005, with many private newspapers now forbidden from publishing, and a wanted list for more journalists.
War with Eritrea
After the successful secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia under Mengistu’s regime, several territories granted to Eritrea in the peace settlements, notably Badame, the gradual separation of Eritrea under Afewerki from Ethiopia would result in increasing border tensions. This culminated in all-out war between the two countries in 1998 until a peace settlement was reached in 2000, but not before dealing a major blow to both already-impoverished countries. In fact as a result of the peace treaty reached in December 2000, Badame was granted to Eritrea, while other disputed territories were divided between the two countries.
Despite Zenawi’s public statements that he and his country agree to the peace settlements, 2004 marked the beginning of another military build-up by Ethiopia on the frontier with Eritrea, and at the end of December, 2005, the International Crisis Group (ICG) is warning that "urgent intervention is needed to prevent war" between the two countries.
Original article written by www.dictatorofthemonth.com in December, 2005. © 2005, all rights reserved
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1536854.htm
http://www.ethioembassy.org.uk/Facts%20About%20Ethiopia/Biography%20Ato%20Meles%20Zenawi.htm
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1657344,00.html
http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=12757
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/imprisoned_05/imprisoned_05.html#more
http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/Ethiopia14nov05na.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/27/opinion/edethiopia.php
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