Land of silence and starvation

By Geoffrey York On market day in the dusty town of Meki, the few cobs of corn sold by the hawkers are scrawny, pale, scabby and pockmarked. Yet the price of this meagre food has doubled since last year – because so many farmers have seen their corn harvests fail. “We are between life and death,” says 50-year-old farmer Geda Shenu, who was forced to buy corn at Meki market after most of his crops failed in this year’s drought. He shows the empty weed-filled fields where he planted corn and beans, crops that never grew when the rains never came. To survive, he is selling one of his two oxen and giving his family just two sparse meals a day. He and his neighbours have marched down to the local government office to sign a petition pleading for government help. “If we don’t get any aid, we will die,” he says. “How can we feed our children?” It’s a story the Ethiopian government does not want told. On the 25th anniversary of the famine that killed nearly a million Ethiopians in 1984, any talk of drought and hunger is still a highly sensitive issue in this impoverished country, subject to draconian controls by the government. Two regimes were toppled in the 1970s and 1990s because of discontent over famines, and the current regime is determined to avoid their fate. Aid agencies that dare to speak out publicly, or even to allow a photo of a malnourished child at a feeding centre, can be punished or expelled from the country. Visas or work permits are often denied, projects can be delayed, and import approvals for vital equipment can be buried. Most relief agencies are prohibited from allowing visits by journalists or foreigners, except under strict government control. After a disastrous series of crop failures, the number of Ethiopians needing emergency aid has jumped from 4.9 million to 6.2 million in the past 10 months. Yet most journalists are barred from travelling to the countryside to document the drought. Relief workers avoid any public comments about the rising malnutrition, and none will talk candidly to journalists except on condition of anonymity.