Ethiopian Recycler wrote: Hungry People Are Not Free People!

In the early 1990s the US and Britain made sure Meles Zenawi and his ethnic party took power in Addis Ababa. The two nations' Embassies became ground zero for consultation and where such a road map was ratified. Mr. Meles promised “three meals a day”, “multiparty democracy”, and not to repeat anything Mengistu’s Derg had engaged in. For complying he was granted legitimacy and shots of aid after aid after aid. Twenty years on the nation is still plagued by hunger, corruption, mass and unlawful incarcerations, and absence of strong opposition or free press. There was not a single year millions have not been starving and a single time Mr. Meles was not publicly denying the problem existed. But aid has been flowing in at the rate of 3 billions per year.

In his 'Democracy as a Universal Value' Amartya Sen has said: " Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort."

The ruling minority in Ethiopia reneged its pledges to the constitution and run every credible opposition out of town to establish a one-party state: a thinly veiled socialism labeled “developmental state”. Mr. Meles and his ethnic party will have been in power a quarter of a century by the end of this term. Under the guise of self-censorship, it clamped down on free press. This, in every sense, has been nothing but a return to the dreaded Mengistu-era governance. State-run rationing stores are back with long lines to boot. Government price controls on basic commodities has created such a dire situation that public outrage spilling onto the streets is imminently anticipated. This, in turn, could force the ruling minority to resort to violent intervention. Will the US and Britain be standing by and chattering about law and order?

Over 8 billions of illicit money left the country in less than two decades, according to UN Financial Integrity Report [2011]. Corruption and widespread fear are two issues plaguing Ethiopian society at the moment. Chinese imperialists are making things worse; their technology is in the service of jamming broadcasts and eavesdropping devises trained on the public [the latter is perhaps not so strange to Britain and its publics]. And now hunger comes to the cities and rural areas [excepting Mr. Meles’s region].

The Economist should be ashamed of itself. Archived reports on Ethiopia are clearly so lopsided and less factual that we had to wonder if you were not paid for writing them.

Famine in the early 1970s and 1980s and the secrecy and denial of it was what eventually brought down the governments of Emperor Haileselassie and of the Derg. In all fairness the Economist should be investigating the following issues: a) mining deals between the ruling minority and foreign companies - especially British companies b) land lease to Arab and Indian agri-business, the displacement of the small farmer and destruction of pristine forests and the resulting famine. [Incidentally, you were one of the first to condemn the Derg regime for " villagization" and " resettlement" programs; will you do similarly now the ruling minority is planning to do just that or be fooled into accepting that this time it is going to be strictly " voluntary"? ] d) Ms. Reeyot Alemu was sent to jail on account of reporting fundraising tactics employed by the government [that every worker pay a month's salary spread over a year - exactly what Mengistu's regime did] for dam construction. Today the government reported about $200 millions have been raised in this manner. Talk of priorities.

Ms. Reeyot and Mr. Woubshet were labeled “terrorists” for exercising their constitutional rights and sent to jail under a “anti-terror” law hastily put together to forestall the kind of uprisings the world witnessed in North Africa and the Middle East. Hunger is just the symptom; the real ailment is somewhere else. It is absence of free press, lack of transparency, less state intervention and, above all, the freedom to choose who to vote in and who to vote out.