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Abstract
General jurisprudence conceives the courtroom as a space of adjudication and justice far removed from the gravitational field of politics. Both in its normative inscription and function, the court is conceived as a site of truth and justice elevated above and beyond the expediency of power and politics. However, despite the predominance of this normative meaning, courts have been used to advance persecutive forms of politics that had nothing to do with the determination of guilt and innocence or the pursuit of justice. In this article, we will explore the role of the Ethiopian judiciary in legitimizing and rationalizing the politics of repression and elimination under the guise of law and legality. Drawing on Otto Kirchheimer’s seminal work on the political trial, we will examine Ethiopia’s strategic deployment of the judicial space and the devices of justice to produce narratives and generate ‘truths’ in the image of the ruling party.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The Red Terror Trial refers to the trial of government officials responsible for perpetrating atrocities during Ethiopia’s Red Terror era. For a useful genealogy of the Red Terror (see Toggia, Citation2010, pp. 270–273).
2. Tamrat Layne was Prime Minister of Ethiopia from June 1991 to August 1995 in the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE). After a coerced public confession in Parliament, he was tried for abuse of power and corruption and jailed for 12 years in what was condemned by the human rights community as a politically motivated trial.
3. Siye Abreha was Defense Minister of Ethiopia from 1991 to 2002. Following a bitter split within the Tigrean Peoples’ Revolutionary Front, he was accused of abuse of power and corruption and subjected to a political show trial by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s faction.
4. The Treason Trial is a trial of 129 individuals including leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy party following the disputed 2005 elections. The accused were charged with treason, attempted genocide, outrage against the constitution, and several other state crimes.
5. Bekele Gerba and Olbana Lelisa were members of the opposition parties Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement and the Oromo People’s Congress respectively. They were accused of working with the Oromo Liberation Front, considered a terrorist organization by Addis Ababa, and for meeting with Amnesty International researchers. See Amnesty International Report, ‘Ethiopian Opposition Leaders Detained After Meeting with Our Delegates,’ 31 August 2011.
6. Eskinder Nega is a prominent journalist known for writing critical commentaries about the Ethiopian government. He was accused of terrorism and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment following what can only be described as an authentic political show trial.
7. These trials have the objective not only of disposing the political foe from the political sphere but also tarnishing the integrity and reputation of the individuals to the point of erasing their legacy from the historical record.
8. A brief look at the terms of the pardon offered to those tried and released on pardon shows that Ethiopia’s show trial industry has the purpose of coercing its foes into capitulation and accepting a diminished self.
9. For example, in the case against Abubaker Ahmed and 28 others, the Council of Constitutional Inquiry, a quasi-judicial body, responsible for receiving and examining petitions for constitutional interpretation, simply shelved the petition, while the High court rendered its own interpretation of the Constitution and proceeded with the trial. In doing so, the Council enabled the government to drag the defendants before its courts without embarrassing itself and its institutions. The existing constitutional arrangement here is used to contain and suppress the questionable legality of a repressive legislation used by the government to preserve its authoritarian hold on power.
10. See Tegegn (Citation2012, pp. 260–263), the term ‘red terror’ was popularized by Lenin, who used to name his terror against the ‘Socialist Revolutionaries’ then referred to as ‘white terrorists’. The response of the Bolsheviks in Lenin’s view was justified and hence, ‘red,’ signifying communism. In the Ethiopian context, Dergue officials revived this phrase to justify the destruction of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) and its supporters, which quickly became the military junta’s biggest threat after the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie II.
11. The crimes being accounted for took place under the bloody reign of the Military Dergue Regime from 1974 to 1991. According to Amnesty International, during the first four months of the ‘Red Terror Campaign,’ the government killed at least 2500 civilians (mostly students) in Addis Ababa city alone. From August to October 1997, an additional 3000–4000 people were killed in Addis Ababa, and in the final phase between December and February 1978, 5000 more were killed in the capital. Outside of Addis Ababa, the death estimates were roughly 10,000 during this time. In addition, some 30,000 individuals were detained and tortured in jails throughout the country.
12. The Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) was created with the mandate to investigate and prosecute ‘any person having committed or responsible for the commission of an offense by abusing his position in the party, the government or mass organizations’ under the Dergue regime.
13. Former Ethiopian Civil Society Leader in discussion with author, 30 November 2012.
14. Daniel Bekele, ‘A concluding final response letter to charges made against defendant #94,’ p. 12.
15. Daniel Bekele, ‘A concluding final response letter to charges made against defendant #94,’ pp. 23–24.
16. Daniel Bekele, ‘A concluding final response letter to charges made against defendant #94,’ pp. 7–8.