Thank you very much.
You can just pronounce my name as is. It's phonetic, so you just pronounce it as it is written. If you say Aklilu, that should be good enough.
In terms of the Human Rights Watch report, that's one of the reports I quoted earlier. Georgette Gagnon, a Canadian who is now heading the Human Rights Watch Africa desk, was the one who really, clearly, activated this. Yes, you're right, and they were right, absolutely. The government was planning a coordinated attack on journalists, the media, and human rights advocates. That's what they said. Yes, they did it.
In December, four reporters from the most popular journal, Addis Neger, were forced to leave the country. That's what happened. Yes, they did it. They banned. They jammed. In an interview, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia said openly, “Yes, I'm jamming; I'm looking at my technical capacity to see whether I can jam the Voice of America or not.” That's what he said. Then subsequently he jammed it. VOA has to transmit its program--you can go and research this, it's available now--through a satellite program to overcome the jamming. Yes, they are attacking the media.
In terms of other things that I have articulated, they have passed three laws in the last few years to absolutely decimate civic society. The charities and societies act, which I talked about, is one of the cruellest rules they have implemented. It prohibits any non-government organization that receives more than 10% of its budget.... It says you cannot advocate about anything: human rights, women's rights, language rights, or anything else. Imagine Ethiopia, where the population is so poor. And civic societies, where do they get their budgets? From foreign aid, from CIDA, from USAID, and things like that.... They're telling them, if you get this thing, you can't advocate. What does that mean? Basically, it cripples them. With no reserves, you will die. That's what they did.
Again, the government says yes, they have formed some committee to look into complaints. This is all window dressing. Again, as I said, the opposition has not fully participated in that process. As I said, that is part of what they call a code of conduct. It's exclusionary. Only two parties participated. The major opposition, called “the forum”, a coalition of eight political parties, has been excluded completely. They did not take part in that one. Why? Because the coalition said, we can't just talk about a code of conduct; we should talk about the bigger picture.
What does the code of conduct have in it? I'll just give you a couple of examples. It says freedom of the press has to be respected. There should be no harassment. There should be this. There should be none of that.
Ethiopia does not lack rules. Ethiopia does not lack legislation.
Mr. Rae asked me, why is no one supporting it? Because it promised in its own constitution that it will respect human rights; it will respect all of this. That was in 1991 and 1993, but they have been eroding it. What do they do today as part of the code of ethics? They repeat the same thing. They say they'll respect freedom of opinion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. What does that mean? The proof is in the pudding, they say. Where is that? What is the proof here? It's nowhere to be seen.