THE MORAL DILEMMA OF INTERNMENT: THE CASE OF TPLF SLEEPER CELLS
Wondimu Mekonnen, England, 11/11/2021
INTRODUCTION
This paper briefly examines
internment as a confinement of a group of individuals belonging to the
belligerent parties for military reasons to avoid threats of sabotage during
the eminence of war[1].
It doesn’t have to be foreign nationals. It can be applied to own profiled nationals
belonging to a section of the society posing a potential threat
Emperor Haile Selassie I
wrote:
“In
all civilized world if one state wants to wage war against another, it
announces its intention of doing so. After such an announcement has been made,
the diplomatic representatives of the two sides return to their home countries.
If their citizens so desire, they may also leave.”
This protocol exists between
modern countries. For example, Japanese residents of the United States of
America did not get that chance in advance to leave, as Japan launched a
pre-empted strike at Pearl Harbour.
The same thing happened in
Ethiopia when Italy launched a surprise attack on Ethiopia in 1935, however,
Ethiopia didn’t act against Italians living in the country. To this day, it has
been a longstanding tradition that strangers should not be harmed, but looked
after, no matter what. Ethiopians were naïve and God-fearing people. As a
result, Ethiopia paid dearly.
The justification of
confinement of people for security reasons during the war has been debated.
Advocates of internment during war justify the action under the primary
protection of the safety of citizens and possible passing of information to the
enemy or even attacks from sympathetic individuals to the invading force.
However, the opponents of the idea argue that it violates human rights.
Categorizing people according to their race, colour, faith, or origin is
discrimination. Is it?
Malkin (2004) strongly
suggests that a balance must be drawn between civil liberties and national
security.
INTERNMENT
IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
The archive of World War II
memories gathered by the BBC states, “Internment of civilian nationals
belonging to opposing sides was carried out, in varying degrees, by all
belligerent powers in World War II.”
The BBC sounded like: “The
UK was not the only one interning citizens of alien origin.”
BBC Fact File estimates that
“at the outbreak of war [against Nazi Germany] there were around 80,000
potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing
to assist Britain's enemies in the event of an invasion.”
The UK gave a legal veil to
its actions in dealing with the issue. It brought all German and Austrian
citizens over the age of 16 before special tribunals dividing them into three
groups.
A. High-security risks - numbering just under
600, who were immediately interned,
B. Doubtful cases -
numbering around 6,500, who were supervised and subjected to restrictions,
C. No security risks -
numbering around 64,000, who were left at liberty. More than 55,000 of category
'C' were recognized as refugees from Nazi oppression. The vast majority of
these were Jewish.
However, Group B was rounded
up in 1940 after the failure of the Norwegian campaign, noticing the insurgence
of spies and the people’s agitation against these aliens. This group included
Germans and Austrians. The Italians were also included in this group when Italy
became a potential threat aligning with the Nazis. These people were seen as
the security risk of the nation. Later, even Group C was also affected due to
tabloid press scaremongering articles about foreigners. This led to a public
call to do something about the aliens in their midst. That could have been
where things gone wrong had the British Government did not have interned the potential
threats.
The government decided to
round up all male enemy aliens, regardless of classification, between 16 and 60
years of age and all women in category B, sometimes with their children
Category ‘A’ interned in
camps erected across the UK, the largest settlement of which was on the Isle of
Man. Category ‘B’ and some in Category ‘C’ were held in camps in major cities
throughout the country.
Pistol estimates Up to 30,000 Germans, Austrians, and Italians
were arrested during May and June 1940 and sent to temporary holding camps
INTERNMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The United States was a
neutral country during the Second World War up until 07 December 1941. However,
on one Sunday morning before 08:00 a.m., everything was changed. Imperial Japan
launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour
If we draw a parallel, the
pre-emptive attack of the Japanese air fleet was like the recent Tigray
People’s Liberation Front’s (TPLF) “lightning attack” on the Northern Command
of the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF). The justification given by both
actions is the same: the latter would launch an attack sooner or later anyway.
That was cowardice.
It took the USA authorities
some time to wake up from the shock and think straight to decide what steps it
should take next. Retaliation was imminent. Japan awoke a sleeping giant.
However, you don’t just go to war driven by emotions. So, the US took stock of
residents that belong to Japanese heritage. By the time Pearl Harbour was
attacked, 127,000 Japanese was living in the United States. The
Government of President Franklin Roosevelt was instructed by Executive Order 9066
to send 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese origin to a concentration camp
There were huge arguments
about the legal implication of that action at the time by the US Government,
but the safety of the country outweighed the risk of being accused of racism.
Setting them free before the war was over was considered a national threat since
they could sympathize with Japan. The USA Government cited national
security as justification for this policy although it violated many of
the most essential constitutional rights of Japanese Americans.
THE
ETHIOPIAN EXPERIENCE
The Ethiopian situation was totally
different. Interment was rarely considered during the war, perhaps because of cost
and the logistics it involved. For example, In May 1998 war broke out between
Ethiopia and Eritrea over a piece of land called Badme. As Eritrea was part of
Ethiopia up until 27 April 1993, a great number of Eritreans had been living
throughout the country. The moment the war broke out, the TPLF authorities
considered those Eritreans as “national risks,” making the case the first in
Ethiopian History. The Eritreans were not interned. However, the then Prime
Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi decided to expel them from the country. When
challenged, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “if we do not like the colour
of their eyes, they had to leave". As a result, 75,000 Eritreans were rounded
up, evicted from Ethiopia to Eritrea
On the other hand, the regime of The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF),
which was dominated by the TPLF, for example, used frequent internment as a
means of removing young people is considered a threat to its power. After
months of detention, which it calls the training period, it used to release
dressing them up with a T-shirt that read “Never again” (አይደገምም), which meant “I would never protest against the
government again”. The following picture depicts Amhara internees in 2016 after TPLF sent its soldiers to burn down the Gondar marketplace[2].
That was a brutal crackdown
by the TPLF. Such brutality, however, didn’t save it from being ousted from
power by a popular uprising. Right now, intending to come back to power,
the same group of terrorists has plunged the country into a conflict that is
threatening the whole region of East Africa.
Because TPLF’s and its
supporters sabotage the war, it wages in Ethiopia, internment is currently
brewing in the country. On the night of 03 November 2020, the Tigray People’s
Liberation Front (TPLF) Special Forces, militia, and Tigrayan ethnic officers
launched a surprise attack on the ENDF barracks in Tigray. The attack resulted
in 36,000 members of the ENDF being unaccounted for
On 04 November 2020, the
Federal Government sent law enforcement troops to Tigray to apprehend those who
were behind the massacre. It succeeded in capturing some of the ring leaders of
the attack, some were killed, some remain at large.
In June 2021, the Government
of Ethiopia declared a Unilateral Humanitarian Ceasefire and withdrew its
troops from the Tigray region to give peace a chance. The leadership of the
TPLF that was on the run returned to Mekelle, the regional capital, and called
back its disbursed army. One would expect them to use the opportunity for
peaceful activities. However, the belligerent TPLF leadership decided to fight outside its territory to replace the Federal
Government. It immediately launched an attack on Afar and Amhara regions with
the intention come back to power. So far, hundreds of thousands are killed and
around 850,000 people are displaced from the two regions.
In its 27 years of brutal rule
of Ethiopia, the TPLF had armed the majority of Tigrayans to support the regime
and defend themselves in case of any resistance of the non-Tigrayan citizens. Leave
alone Tigrayans, even loyal “opposition” party members and those non Tigrayans
who worked for the TPLF were armed, as the recent court case revealed
Similar behaviours were observed in 1991 when the joint army of the TPLF and Eritrean People’s Liberation Front were fighting to overthrow the military regime of Col. Mengistu Hailemariam. However, in those days, the sleeper cells were not armed like these days. Nobody touched the Tigrayans or Eritreans at that time and yet they were instrumental in supporting the rebels both financially and provision of information.
WHAT
SHALL BE DONE?
Tigrayans are living in
large numbers throughout the country. Now, the Government of Ethiopia is facing
a dilemma. Most of them are armed as indicated above. Shouldn’t the Government
of Ethiopia deal with the threat posed by these sleeper cells, given the
lessons learned from Dessie and Kombolcha? Holding them somewhere in camps
throughout the country may be a violation of their constitutional rights.
Leaving them at large is, however, allowing them to hit from behind as they did
in the city of Dessie and Kombolcha. Just as the United Kingdom does not want
the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to take over Westminster, the Ethiopian
government does not either wish the separatist brutal TPLF to overrun the capital
city, Addis Ababa. Everywhere the TPLF went, they killed people and farm
animals, raped women, and children looted everything they came across, no
matter how big or small the value of the war spoils could be. Amnesty
International says: “They defy
morality or any iota of humanity.”
The Ethiopian government
needs to take lessons from the United Kingdom, the USA, and other countries on
how they dealt with the German and Japanese or even the IRA potential threats.
No country has any moral upper ground to accuse the Government of Ethiopia of
taking the same action to protect their own citizens. Taking the right
decision is paramount to safeguard the safety and security of the citizens. Internment
is a temporary measure to protect the Defence Force from being backstabbed yet
again. It might also be found necessary to protect the Tigrayans themselves
from an angry mob. If TPLF supporters are isolated, the internment of the sleeper
cells is second to none solution.
In conclusion, here is the advice suggested by Malkin (Ibid). It is important, especially in times of war,
that governments should consider nationality, ethnicity, and religious
affiliation in their homeland security policies and engage in what she calls
"threat profiling." These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures, but she argues, they are preferable to "being incinerated at your
office desk by a flaming hijacked plane”. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
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[1] The International Committee of Red
Cross (ICRC, 2014) defines Interment as
deprivation of liberty - detention - is a common and lawful occurrence in armed
conflict that is governed by many provisions of international humanitarian law
(IHL). Like other bodies of law, IHL prohibits arbitrary detention.
[2]
https://borkena.com/2016/09/16/ethiopia-gonder-fire-entire-market-with-420-stores-reduced-to-ashes/
[3]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/01/tigrayan-forces-claim-control-of-two-cities-on-road-to-ethiopias-capital