TERRITORIAL CESSION UNDER THE PRETEXTE OF BORDER DEMARCATION
THE ANATOMY OF COLONIAL TREATIES
By: Tseggai Mebrahtu
"A tacit contract! That is to say, a wordless and consequently a thoughtless and a will-less contract: a revolting nonsense! an absurd fiction! An unworthy hoax! For it assumes that when I was in a state of not being able to will I bound myself and my descendants..."Mikhail Bakunin
"No generation can bind the next generation to commit suicide"
Bejamin V. Cohen The farcical drama which aims at depriving Ethiopia of its sovereign right will soon come to an and. The main protagonists of the drama seem to have fared well. They seem to be less concerned by the fact that Ethiopians have shunned them and that they will continue to denounce the cession of their territory in an arbitrary and cavalier fashion. But, that decision will never be just because it violates the elementary principle of justice which is due process of law. One cannot talk of a decision while Ethiopia has been muzzled from pleading for the respect of its sovereign right. Ethiopia is perhaps the first country in the twenty first century to be denied the right to present its case just as she was denied its sea outlet and territories at the dawn of the twentieth century. The big difference is that in the twenty first century it is her leaders who are waging undeclared war on her so that she would not be in a position to assert her sovereign right. Not only that . Ethiopia is the only country in the world to be denied by same leaders her right to life. Therefore, Ethiopia and Ethiopians find ourselves in an unprecedented trying situation. Should Ethiopians of this generation live up to their responsibility towards their descendants by saying no to the international collusion after the example of Mikhail Bokunin and Benjamin V. Cohen cited above or will they be passive spectators to the flagrant violation of their inalienable sovereign right?
Every concerned Ethiopian seems to be lost for words in the face of the government's arrogant determination to cede Ethiopian territory with view to satisfying EPLF's hunger for territorial grandeur. Ethiopians have not known democracy. But they are not the first and they will not be the last. Ethiopians are not economically rich. But poverty is not the preserve of Ethiopia. Ethiopians are being obliged to abandon their territory by a government which has lost its raison d'être. They are the first and for sure the last. What is then to be done?
Our plea for the respect of our sovereign rights both by our own government and the international society has remained unheeded. Strangely very few of our best intellectuals are saying that the plea for the respect of our sovereign right has the insidious effect of retarding the democratisation and the modernisation of our country as if the respect of our sovereign right and the respect of our fellow countrymen's right to continue to live in their ancestral homes is a secondary issue. How sure are we to embark on modernisation under the leadership of a government whose preoccupation is money and power? . In a reply to my reply Ethiopian distinguished scholar professor Messay Kebede has strongly argued that any pleading for the respect of Ethiopia's right recognised by international law and Ethiopian law is potentially dangerous in that Ethiopia could be contaminated by what he calls the Somalia virus. In his reply to my reply, the venerable professor wrote" I concur with the steps that Tseggai enumerates to democratise our society. But I don't see why he relates the steps to the recovery of Assab". It is not my intention here to discuss the points which Messay has raised for I have already dilated on the issue. Allow me to say only two things en passant. The first is to express my heartfelt admiration for the professor's determination to defend his ideas even if he knows that he cannot swim against the wave of the vox populi. Although many of us are not convinced by his arguments(some fellow Ethiopians are even very angry), I must say that we are indebted to him and it would not be an exaggeration if I say that Professor Messay is indeed a model for all of us. To repeat myself, it is not his arguments which lead me to this conclusion. It is rather their significance which I find extremely important. Because by deciding to challenge us on a point where there is unusual national consensus, he is breaking Ethiopian taboo. Namely, yilugnta or the fear of being regarded as misfit which leads to conformism and whose devastating consequences for our country is by now very clear to everybody. I hope that others intellectuals will participate in the debate of all issues of national concern and Messay will continue to write instructive articles as he has been doing so far.
That said I must express qualm with professor Messay's accusation of the tigrean peasantry when he says " how can one miss the alarming significance of the spectacle of the long-time pro-Ethiopian people of Tigrai siding with the secessionist forces in Eritrea and helping them achieve independence(with Assab included ) under the leadership of the TPLF. This unimaginable shift occurs thanks to ethnicization". Given my esteem for professor Messay, I am really baffled by his repeated anti tigrean rhetoric. Each time that I read his articles, I get the impression that I am reading an opinion of a European. My fear is that his accusation can give rise to a sentiment of tigraiphobia and thereby to an increasing ethnic polarisation. Messay accuses unjustly and gratuitously the tigrean peasantry of having facilitated Eritrean separation as if tigrai had the means and the capacity to stop that from happening whereas the central government and its top military generals did their level best to prolong the war in order to continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the Ethiopian people. I would have liked that Messay be a bit understanding towards the tigrai population and examine the problem objectively.
Why does Messay who believes rightly that Ethiopia is a victim elitism think when it comes to tigrai that peasants facilitated the dismemberment of Ethiopia? What alternative did the tigrean peasantry have when it was obliged by the EPRDF/EPLF to fight on the top of being bombarded, imprisoned, tortured and humiliated by the derg?. Does Messay really believe that the bombardment of the town Hawzien which killed 2500 innocent peasants in a space of one hour should have left indifferent those bereft of their family ? Was it not the Derg which decided childishly to leave the entire tigray province to the EPLF/EPRDF without fighting and bombarded the same region which it had left? Hasn't Messay ever heard the tigray peasantry's retort to the EPLF/TPLF: "the Derg has left tigrai. our enemies are behind us not before us. So let us be on the qui vive". The answer for this was an intensified bombardment by the Derg". What could Messay have done if he were caught between two fires as the case of the tigrean peasantry? As if that was not enough, the derg leader tried in vain to pit the Shewa population against its brothers. Who wrote the racist speech for Mengistu when he asked the maquisards to go back to "their Tigrai"? Don't tell me it was him self. I know Mengistu could not differentiate guerrilla from gorilla. Who was taxing the tigrigna speaking Ethiopians dildey sebari, gentai, tegentai? Messay may not believe it but there were times when speaking tigrigna per se was a crime. The list of the grievances is endless. So, I refuse to accept that ethnicisation was not principally the work of the Derg and its political cadres whose responsibility Messay wants to share. Who killed in the most cruel way Ethiopia's top twelve Generals whose only mistake was their desire to save Ethiopia? Not only that. Had it not been for the God given sageness and perspicacity of the Ethiopian people, the Derg was out to pit Ethiopians one against the other for the sake of its power. If Messay says that tigrai is responsible could the EPLF/TPLF have entered Menelik's place if more than fifty million Ethiopians were to fight against them? As Yohaness Mulugeta demonstrated brilliantly, the Derg's seventeen years of murder, humiliation, torture, economic oppression, et cetera made the fighting spirit of the Ethiopian people ebb away (read his book "atfito metfat", destroy and be destroyed). In an interview to the BBC in 1996, Mengistu Hailemariam had even confessed the truth: "Even if I am alive, I am a dead man because I am responsible for the destruction of my country".
I am not saying that tigrean peasant youth was not sacrificed in the valleys of Sahel. But I argue that the Derg's scorched earth policy of tigrai, the racist behaviour of its military political cadres: "destroy tigre together with the rock for tigre is indistinguishable from a rock", the rape of wives of priests and defloration of young girls, the robbing of the peasantry ,et cetera, were utilised by the maquisards to manipulate certain parts of the province . What is more, Messay should not forget that the TPLF army decided to fight because it was told that there would be peace, democracy, freedom and economic development in Ethiopia after the demise of the Derg. They fought against the Derg not against their own country. Contrary to the Marxist intellectuals who preached for secession as a panacea for all Ethiopian maladies( read Ethiopian profile of 1985) and others who failed from expressly condemning the Somalia invasion of Ethiopia, the tigrean peasant had never fought with the intention of nullifying its own history. Tigrai knows full well that those who paid their life for the defence of the motherland at Gura, Gundet and Metema were its direct great grand fathers. Therefore it is a big mistake to accuse this victim population of having shifted from pro-Ethiopian to anti Ethiopian. Tigrai cannot be pro-Ethiopian or anti Ethiopian. It is Ethiopian. One cannot be pro oneself or against oneself. Tigrai is a permanent victim of all regimes even if it is not the only one. The principal responsible is the derg and its ideologists whose rabid hate of tigrai led them to leave the whole province even without reflecting for a minute on the impossibility of provisioning the national army in Eritrea when tigrai was left to separatists. Messay should not forget that as a result of this foolish policy motivated by anti tigrean sentiment, the EPLF/EPRDF were able to achieve in two years time what they could not have done in fifteen years.
Surprisingly enough, Messay's accusation is not limited to innocent peasants. He believes also that erstwhile members of the TPLF who have the courage to say mea culpa should not plead either for Ethiopia's cause. Allow me dear professor to express my great admiration and respect for these men because I think they could have done more damage to Ethiopia and could have led a comfortable life if they were belly politicians. So, I ask politely professor Messay to recognise their civil right to speak on behalf of Ethiopia and not to criticise them by borrowing the words of their adversaries with hidden motives. I believe that the professor's rhetoric can only do harm to Ethiopia at the very moment when the unity between Ethiopians is badly needed.
To come back to the preoccupation of Ethiopians, I must say that if Ethiopians including myself make many cris de cœur, it is in the hope of being heeded by our own government. Being unable to admit that our government can decide to arrogantly waive our sovereign right, I found it appropriate to continue to propound all the legal arguments in case our government is not well aware of them. Because, it is never too late. If there is a good will to work for the respect of Ethiopia's right, our government can always reconcile itself with its people and compensate them for all the crimes it has committed knowingly or unknowingly by backtracking now and immediately on the illegal and anti Ethiopian agreement it has irresponsibly signed. Doing so is in its best interest for doing otherwise would amount to foolishly putting to test the Job's patience of Ethiopians. So my conviction being that the role of the intellectual is to make a constructive criticism, and refusing to believe also that Ethiopia's cause is lost, I have decided to write this long article in the hope that it would trigger a heated debate and a change of policy on the part of our government.
We should not forget that a century ago our ancestors fought a European power with spears, axes, stones et cetera and scored resounding victory which surprised the whole world. And we are the direct beneficiaries of the sacrifices paid by our valiant forebears. We had been the only proud people of the third world to live independently while others had been smarting under racism and colonialism. In fact my reading convinces more and more to believe that we are the only country in the world not to have experienced any foreign rule during the known history of organised societal life on this planet. This unique history is not the result of a chance. The secret of Ethiopian independence lies in the courage of past generations to ward off every aggressor so that the following generation could live free in his own country. In comparison to Egypt's thirty centuries history of colonisation, Ethiopia distinguishes itself by a good thirty centuries history of independence.
It goes then without saying that it behoves this generation to discharge its historic responsibility towards the next generation. The intergenerational contract which has so far been honoured should not be broken this time. In this respect the intellectual is saddled with a unprecedented big historic responsibility. Ethiopian peasants have always defeated their enemies(including their own brothers) by paying their life. What about intellectuals and the politicians whose turn has now arrived? Will they be able to bury their differences and demonstrate intellectual heroism or will they continue to pass their time by pettifogging eternally? Our people expects from us to manufacture missiles in order to defeat the enemy. The enemy is injustice. The missiles are not intended to kill anyone; they are intellectual missiles intended to convince all justice loving individuals, states or organisations and our government that we are victims of unprecedented injustice. The injustices stems from the Ethiopian government's decision to see the "border demarcated" on the basis of selectively chosen colonial treaties so that Ethiopian territories can be ceded to the EPLF.
In this regard, I find it necessary to dilate on the rationale of colonial "treaties" in their historical and ideological perspective. So that we can understand how much the selective exhumation of colonial treaties is a sacrilege to the memories of our valiant forbears, an insult on the honour and intelligence of our generation, and a flagrant violation of our fundamental right recognised by international law and Ethiopian law. What the reader should bear in mind as of now is that if our government changes its mind and is committed to our cause, then there is an incontrovertible evidence which shows Ethiopia's right on all the coastal areas inhabited by the Afar population not to mention that the EPLF has not any legal basis to claim an inch of Ethiopian territory inhabited by Afar and tigrigna speaking Ethiopians.
The fundamental viewpoint of this article is that the colonial treaties which the Algiers Agreement illegally and selectively exhumes were destined to be valid only among Europeans and not between Ethiopia and Italy. Put differently, these treaties served for Italy as a proof to show to the contracting parties of the African Berlin Conference that some parts of Ethiopia territory was Italian private property. In so arguing, I will base my arguments mainly on the underlying ideology of the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885. I have already showed in my article entitled "the unconstitutionality of the Algiers Agreement that Italy had never had the intention of being abided by these treaties because its ultimate aim was the colonisation of the whole Ethiopia. The aim of the present article is to develop this position. I will argue that all "treaties" which Italy "concluded" with Ethiopia were, from the Italian point of view, a continuation of the Berlin conference, which was a culmination of the racist ideology prevailing in the 19th century. In order to enable the reader to appreciate the racist conspiracy against Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular, I will refer to the history of international law. Thus, I will show that international law (which I would have preferred to call European international law but a conventional use of the word obliges me to use the word international law) was based on a racist conception which saw every non European territory as a territory without owner. To elucidate this concept, I will use the Roman term, terra nullius. My aim is to show that the concept of terra nullius was predicated on the Eurocentric conception which considered a non European society as a territory without owner thereby susceptible of being appropriated by Europeans, and that irrespective of whether that territory was inhabited or not.
I will also show that the concept of terra nullius had at least three definitions different in form but the same in essence. Namely, roman, Catholic and civilisational (Bedjaoui, 1975). The Berlin conference and the colonial "treaties" of 1900, 1902, 1908, were concluded in the spirit of the civilisational definition of res nullius. Accordingly, we can argue that the definition of terra nullius was always dictated by the need to satisfy the territorial greed of Europeans. Therefore as racism was at the heart of the European concept of terra nullius, the territory and people inhabiting such territory were always considered to be objects of appropriation like a chattel.
Thus, before discussing the concept of terra nullius, it seems to me necessary to make a tour d'horizon of racism in historical perspective and its direct connection with Ethiopian identity.
Next Page
[Opinions in this article are solely that of the writer.]