Tunisian tyrant Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has found refuge in Saudi Arabia. As the sands shift in their countries, other rulers, including those of Egypt and Yemen, are – despite protestations to the contrary – no doubt studying their expatriate retirement options.
It remains an international disgrace that so many will elude justice, in the manner of Chad’s ex-dictator Hissène Habré, and the poster-tyrant for them all, Ethiopia’s monstrous Mengistu Haile-Mariam.
While the pressure on exiled dictators has been increased in recent years – with efforts to identify and freeze ill-gotten assets, and the threat of pursuit by human rights lawyers and international prosecutors – apprehension, convictions and punishment have been rare.
Human Rights Watch, for example, has worked for years to seek justice for Mr. Habré’s victims. Accused of thousands of political killings and systematic torture when he ruled Chad from 1982 to 1990, Mr.
Habré is living in Senegal. He appears the most vulnerable of the ex-dictators. Senegal’s president promised four years ago to prosecute him, but then pleaded poverty.
Last November, international donors raised the $11.7-million cost for a trial. Even so, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal has dithered.
The case of Colonel Mengistu is even more egregious. Chairman of the dreaded Derg, a Communist military junta that in 1974 overthrew (and then murdered) Emperor Haile Selassie, and later the self-declared president of Ethiopia, Col. Mengistu accrued an impressive list of sins, running the gamut from regicide to famine and genocide, before fleeing to Zimbabwe in 1991.
Among the legion of Africa’s rotten ex-despots, a special place of dishonour is reserved for Col. Mengistu.
Yet, while he has been convicted in absentia of genocide by an Ethiopian court, the colonel continues to enjoy a luxurious exile as the guest of the authoritarian President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe.
“Why to this day the International Courts have not as yet indicted the brutal dictator, Mengistu Haile-Mariam, and his other henchmen, remains a mystery,” said Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie, the late emperor’s grandson and the current president of the Crown Council of Ethiopia.
It is a very good question. The international community needs to turn up the pressure on authoritarian safe havens like Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Zimbabwe (and until recently France, in the case of Jean-Claude Bébé Doc Duvalier). The maxim applied to such despicable people should be, they can run but they can’t hide
Source: The Globe AND Mail
3 comments:
If tyrants have no where to run, then they will fight to the death other peoples deaths, of course to remain in power.
Mengestu Hailmariam the great African hero ,strong man,he of Alula Abanaga ,he did the work, no shame. New generations discoverd the wolf's whole and taktics of the today elphant's tear
When we remember of President Mengistu Hailemariam, we remember of the real Ethiopian who was fighting for the unity of the country despite the mercenaries within the army who were feeding valuable top military secrets in particular of military operations to the then rebels who are today blaming the unique hero Mengistu.
People are getting distructed with the development seen in the country in the past few decades. It is simply the fact that in the absence of war there will be development and no magic have been done by the current wild rulers.
Mengistu had no personal interest, he was determined to keep the historic unity of the counntry in every direction. Atleast let's give him credit with his leadership to defend and counter attack the aggressor Ziad Bare in the early 1970's.
TPLF obviously have contributed for the Eritrean rebels to come in power while only few weeks left for their total destruction from the Nakfa mountain.
I don't wont my readers to be bored in reading this comment and in short Mengistu deserves to have his name recorded as the real and true Ethiopian of the current generation.
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