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Alemayehu Fentaw Weldemariam, born on June 8, 1979, in Alamata, Ethiopia, is an Ethiopian public intellectual based in Addis Ababa. Weldemariam graduated summa cum laude with a Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies from the European University Center for Peace Studies, at Stadtschlaining, in April 2009, Austria, where he is also a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar.[1] Besides, he is a Fellow of the Academy for International Business Officials, in Beijing, China. He also received LL.B degree from Addis Ababa University School of Law in July 2005.[2] He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago in November 2011.
He has taught various courses at Jimma University Law School, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Jurisprudence, and Law of Traders and Business Organizations where also served as the founding editor of Jimma University Journal of Law and Head of the Research and Publications Office.[3] Besides, he has served as project officer with the Organization for Social Justice in Ethiopia, legal advisor to the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce, and regional director of the Ethiopian Global Initiative, contributor to the Horn of Africa Bulletin, a monthly publication of the Life and Peace Institute, based in Uppsala, Sweden, editor-in-chief of Addis Fortune, and a consultant on regional and national peace and security.[4] Weldemariam has researched and published extensively on Ethiopian law, politics, national security and foreign policy, as well as regional peace and security.[5]
Weldemariam is a political liberal in the Rawlsian sense of the term, but he owes his political liberalism more to Joshua Cohen, Bruce Ackerman and Martha Nussbaum than to John Rawls. In his book, Legal Pluralism in Contemporary Ethiopia(2010), Weldemariam, following the tack taken by Andreas Eshete, defends multination federalism in line with the nonideal theory of John Rawls under unfavorable conditions.[6] He contends that legal pluralism is an important federalist policy in a pluralist society such as Ethiopia. He does so by telling the story of the suppression of the diverse customary and religious laws in the country’s recent past as part of the larger history of ethnic homogenization and state centralization. Since 1957, customary and religious laws had been alienated from the state legal system by virtue of the great influx of Western transplants providing the setting for competition between legal universalism and legal pluralism. In 1995, legal pluralism triumphs over legal universalism, as the 1995 FDRE Constitution recognizes the validity of customary and religious laws in personal and family matters. He analyzes the salient elements of legal pluralism in Ethiopia, argues for redrawing the frontiers of formal legal pluralism in such a manner as to include criminal matters, and points out the challenges.
In an interview with the Reporter(2008), the Amharic private bi-weekly, Weldemariam made an incisive analysis of Ethiopian politics and the role of political parties in the country as well as ethnic animosity in Ethiopian institutions of higher learning. Weldemariam’s gloomy analysis bears on the future of democratization in general and free and fair elections in particular in Ethiopia. Invoking Weldemariam’s observation, Wondwosen Teshome(2009, 822)of the University of Vienna writes, “In fact, frustrated by the fragmentation of opposition parties and the refusal of many African incumbents to hand over power peacefully some political observers felt that unless the army stages a coup it is not possible to remove electoral autocrats democratically.”[7]
The interview, provoking a brutal retaliation by the regime in Addis Ababa, led to the taking of a decision by Jimma University to terminate his contract of employment, cancellation of the scholarship that enabled him to study in Austria, and permanent prohibition from employment by Ethiopian institutions of higher learning or civil service. In this regard, Abrha Belai, editor of Ethiomedia, the major Diaspora website based in Seattle, Washington, wrote, “Before he left for Austria on a scholarship, Alemayehu Fentaw was a lecturer at the Law Faculty of Jimma University. A few days prior to his departure, Alemayehu was interviewed by the Reporter newspaper on such issues, among other things, like federalism, regional governments, multi-party democracy. While elaborating, Alemayehu said that opposition parties may never seize power in Ethiopia unless the army stages a coup and removes the regime. The Reporter made that remark the headline of the story. Trouble began to haunt Mr. Alemayehu and family.”[8]
Almost a year after the interview was published by Reporter, Ethiopian authorities arrested 35 people suspected of involvement in a plot to overthrow the government. Those arrested are said to be followers of an exiled opposition leader living in the United States. Government spokesman Ermias Legesse, who went into exile a few days later, said the 35 arrested included two groups, one comprising soldiers and another that included civilian government employees and others. He told the Voice of America that police found weapons and other incriminating evidence when they raided the homes of suspects. In his own words, "We have got information from different people and we investigate it, and we have gone to the court and the court gave us an allowance to go to their home and we have checked their home and we have arrested 35 people and in their home we have got so many weapons, landmines, soldier uniforms, and their future plan what they want to do."[9] Despite initial statements,Ethiopia's communications minister Bereket Simon, in a press conference he gave to foreign journalists later on, attempted to reverse earlier claims that the government had foiled an attempted coup led by an exiled political leader living in the United States. Bereket denied the suspects were part of a coup plot. He described those arrested as ‘desperadoes’ intent on creating havoc. The intention of these people was not to conduct coups d’état. We're not implicating them in coups d’état. We know this desperado group was intending to assassinate people and demolish public utilities and that was intended to attack, the attack was intended on the government.[10] All those arrested were said to be members of a group called "Ginbot 7," or "May 15th", which is the date of Ethiopia's bitterly disputed 2005 election. Ginbot 7 is led by Berhanu Nega, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in the 2005 election.
His work as human rights and peace activist figures in prominently in his advocacy for the release of Judge Birtukan Mideksa, leader of Unity for Democracy and Justice, the major opposition party in Ethiopia, against the rise of authoritarianism, and his critique of the Ethiopian national security and foreign policy in many of his writings. He was nominated for the Lorenzo Natali Prize for Excellence in Reporting on Human Rights for the year 2009 for his Sudan Tribune article about the re-incarceration of Judge Birtukan Mideksa.[11]
Following the re-release of Judge Birtukan Mideksa from prison on 6 October 2010, he wrote a critical article exposing the sinister motive behind the decision and the particular procedure selected for her release. He criticized the Government of Ethiopia for harbouring an ill will to crush the morale of this great leader of a major opposition party not only by incarceration, but also by selecting procedures ill fitted for securing freedom from prison like forcing her to confess and request for pardon as well as for being hell-bent on destroying her political career. In his The Unbearable Lightness of Pardon: Reflections on Birtukan’s Second Sailing, he contends that "Apparently, in both of her sailings out of prison, the master of the ship was none other than the Prime Minister. One thing that the granting of pardon in both instances proved to all of us is nothing but the unbearable lightness of pardons. In spite of the cruel and inhumane treatment Birtukan received in the hands of her jailors, one thing that is certain is that she will remain to be a source of inspiration for all who work to advance basic human rights in Ethiopia and the world over."[12]
In a series of articles, Weldemariam engaged in a constructive criticism of Ethiopia's national security and foreign policy in which he unmasked the incumbent's obsession with territorial security to the detriment of human security. More particularly, he blames Ethiopia for its incursion into Somalia in December 2006. He also prognosticated the low ebbs in Ethiopia's bilateral ties with the US as result of foreseeable diplomatic wrangles over the grim domestic human rights situation. His criticism never went without provoking an official response from the foreign policy establishment. A case in point is the publication of 'A Bogus Call for a Paradigm Shift-Ethiopia’s Foreign Affairs and National Security Policy and Strategy', in A Week in the Horn, the e-weekly of The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the official response, the Foreign Ministry wrote "Alemayehu Fentaw does not just miss these central elements of the Policy and Strategy instrument. He concocts facts and makes unsubstantiated allegations. One is the suggestion that US-Ethiopia relations would cool under the new US administration. In fact, as is obvious, the relationship between the two countries is thriving."[13]
Legal Pluralism in Ethiopia: A Critical Introduction, Lambert Academic Publishing, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010
1. www.aspr.ac.at/epu/research/Weldemariam.pdf 2. www.salzburgglobal.org/go/eView 3. http://www.ju-et.academia.edu/AlemayehuFentawWeldemariam 4. ssrn.com/abstract=1467722 5. www.life-peace.org/default2.asp?xid=316 6. http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Pluralism-Contemporary-Ethiopia-Introduction/dp/3838356179 7. www.waset.org/journals/ijhss/v4/v4-5-41.pdf 8. www.ethiomedia.com/accent/8270.html 9. www.sudantribune.com/Ethiopia-On-forgiveness,30826 10. http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Week_Horn_Africa_December_04_2009.htm#55