The potential of the internet as a site of protest, resistance, and social change in the context of repressive regimes has been the subject of scholarly inquiry in the past two decades (Baron, 2009; Castells, 2012; Cowen, 2009; Fenton, 2016; Pohle & Audenhove, 2017; Shirky, 2008). From the printing press to the internet, the transformative power of new communication technologies lies in their tendency to disrupt central authority and control. When faced with disruptive communication technologies, authoritarian governments’ knee-jerk reaction is usually one of confusion, suspicion, and prohibition. However, repressive regimes also learn to embrace these technologies with the aim of strengthening the existing order (Kalathil & Boas, 2003; Morozov, 2013). For example, McKinnon’s (2011) notion of “networked authoritarianism” reflects how authoritarian regimes in countries like China not only adopt new communication technologies but also use these technologies to bolster their legitimacy. While some of the most widespread practices of using the internet as a means of control include surveillance (Fuchs & Trottier, 2017; Grinberg, 2017), censorship (Akgül & Kırlıdoğ, 2015; Yang, 2014), and hacking (Gerschewski & Dukalskis, 2018; Kerr, 2018), these practices are oftentimes informed by internet policy frameworks and rational-legal dynamics. As Hintz and Milan (2018) articulate, the institutionalisation and normalisation of surveillance practices into law and popular imagination in Western democracies indicates authoritarian repurposing of the internet is now a global phenomenon.

Through a case study of Ethiopia, this paper attempts to shed some light on how the rise of counter-terrorism legal frameworks shape a nation state’s internet policy, especially as it pertains to communication of dissent, resistance, and protest. Consistent with global trends in response to acts of terrorism, the Ethiopian government adopted a counter-terrorism legislation in 2009. While this legislation was championed by the Ethiopian government as a way of combating terrorism, its adoption as arguably the most consequential legal framework in undermining freedom of expression is akin to the neopatrimonial rational-legal design of the ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Neopatrimonialism, Clapham (1985) notes, is “a form of organisation in which relationships of a broadly patrimonial type pervade a political and administrative system which is formally constructed on rational-legal lines” (p. 48). Neopatrimonial governments are organised through modern bureaucratic principles with formally defined powers although these powers are exercised “as a form of private property” (Ibid.).

In this paper, I discuss how the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation of 2009 (hereafter referred to as “the EATP” or “the Proclamation”) has been appropriated to stifle freedom of expression involving mediated communication, especially in digital platforms. The study relies on a policy review of the EATP and other supplementary legal frameworks to assess provisions affecting digital freedoms, internet governance frameworks and political expression. In examining EPRDF’s adoption and use of a counter-terrorism legal framework, I situate my discussion within the neopatrimonial state framework. Drawing on literature that critically examines the corrosive impact of counter-terrorism laws on freedom of expression globally, I analyse how the EATP has severely undermined civil liberties of expression. In doing so, I demonstrate how the law affected digital freedoms as well as other pillars of a democratic polity such as journalistic practice. I conclude by highlighting the implications of the Proclamation in projecting a highly restrictive Ethiopian internet policy framework as it pertains to regulation and surveillance.

The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the US, as well as other similar incidents in different parts of the world have caused profound changes in political, economic, and social relations globally. From communication systems to immigration flows to financial transactions, nations have aggressively sought a wide range of mechanisms to proactively curb potential threats (Birkland, 2004; Croucher, 2018). While executive branches such as law enforcement bodies and even militaries are commonly part of the counter-terrorism apparatus, the most conspicuous common denominator across nations has been the rise of what came to be known as counter-terrorism laws (De Frias, Samuel, & White, 2012).

The recent prominence of counter-terrorism laws across the world has had significant implications to the study of global terrorism from legal and policy perspectives, especially in terms of determining what constitutes (and does not) an act of terrorism. In this regard, the lack of a universal definition of terrorism is not only unsurprising but may also be an impossible task. Although such fluidity of the term is not new, the executive delimitation of terrorism has been conditioned by Resolution 1373 of the United Nations Security Council that was issued on 28 September 2001 following the terrorist attacks on the US earlier that month. The Resolution, among other things, called nations to criminalise acts of terrorism as well as financing, planning, preparation and support for terrorism. In order to expedite the directive, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) created a new Counter-Terrorism Committee that was tasked with overseeing counter-terrorism actions adopted by member states. While the resolution directed member states to step-up their counter-terrorism efforts, it did not provide a framework to define what constitutes an act of terrorism. Roach et al. (2012) note that this has left individual nations to define terrorism according to their contextual concerns. This approach is not unexpected given how international counter-terrorism law and policy involve multiple layers of actors and stakeholders as well as “interplay between international, regional and domestic sources of law” (Roach, Hor, Ramaj, & Williams, 2012, p. 3).

One of the consequences of the rather elastic framing of terrorism coupled with the rise of counter-terrorism laws across nation states has brought renewed concerns about infringement of basic human rights. Well known post-9/11 counter-terrorism activities in Guantanamo Bay or American “black sites” in some European countries (secret prisons mostly operated by the CIA where inmates have no rights other than those afforded to them by their detainers) as well as rendition sites in countries like Egypt have demonstrated there is a thin line between curbing terrorist acts and violating the basic right to be free from torture and degrading treatment (Setty, 2012). In addition to concerns over torture and degrading treatment, counter-terrorism efforts have also ignited debate on striking the right balance between thwarting terrorism and ensuring expressive, associational and assembly freedoms (Schneiderman & Cossman, 2002). Of critical importance here is how UNSC-endorsed counter-terrorism laws have created an added impetus for authoritarian governments to criminalise legitimate forms of domestic dissent (Roach, 2015).

Because of their reactive posture, counter-terrorism laws are closely linked with state securitisation. Securitisation, however, is subject to misperception in its framing of disorder. In many instances, as Bergson (1998) notes, disorder can be a construct of the state emanating from a contradiction between one’s own interests or needs. In this sense, securitisation generates insecuritisation by creating fear, which in turn empowers the state to expand its control. As Karatzogianni and Robinson (2017) highlight, securitisation “involves framing-out any claims, demands, rights or needs, which might be articulated by non-state actors. Such actors are simply disempowered, and either suppressed and ‘managed’ or paternalistically ‘protected’” (p. 287). By reducing social problems and differences to security issues, securitisation considerably expands state power by creating emergencies to combat imagined “dangers” (Bigo, 2000; Freedman, 1998; Gasteyger, 1999). In tandem with this securitisation rationale, many authoritarian and quasi-authoritarian states have aligned themselves with what came to be loosely known as the “war against terrorism” global front. However, these states have intensified the use of counter-terrorism apparatus, including legislative means, to revamp internet policy frameworks, which in turn have direct ramifications to civic liberties.

It should be noted that concerns over appropriating counter-terrorism legal frameworks for authoritarian ends is not a uniquely Ethiopian phenomenon. For example, Egypt adopted its own version of counter-terrorism law in 2015 that significantly curbed rights of freedoms of assembly, association and expression. Formally referred to as the Law of Organising the Lists of Terrorist Entities and Terrorists, Egypt’s counter-terrorism legislation gives mandate to the government to legally exercise surveillance over Egyptians as well as penalise those who oppose or criticise state policies and practices. Egypt’s counter-terrorism law has been criticised for criminalising dissent, usually through conflating crimes committed by violent groups to peaceful acts of expression that are critical to the government. By employing vague language that is prone to arbitrary interpretation, Hamzawy (2017, p.17) notes that the terrorism law “does not require the government’s accusations of terrorist involvement to be proven through transparent judicial proceedings before individuals are placed on the list.”

Another African country that has adopted a counter-terrorism law recently with controversial outcomes is Cameroon. The Law on the Suppression of Acts of Terrorism in Cameroon (No. 2014/028) was enacted in 2014 against a backdrop of an initiative to contain threats from designated terrorist organisations, most notably Nigeria’s Islamist Jihadist group, Boko Haram. While the law won notable support originally, its eventual deployment raised serious concerns over infringement of rights of expression protected under the Cameroonian Constitution and international human rights law. According to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) (2017, p.7), the counter-terrorism legislation has been especially criticised for penalising journalists by conflating “news coverage of militants or demonstrators with praise,” resulting in journalists not knowing “what they can and cannot report safely, so they err on the side of caution.” One of the most notable cases involved Radio France Internationale (RFI) journalist Ahmed Abba, who is serving a ten-year prison sentence on terrorism charges for his reporting on the militant group Boko Haram after he was convicted by a military tribunal of “non-denunciation of terrorism” and “laundering of the proceeds of terrorist acts” (CPJ, 2017, p. 7).

The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) has been ruled by EPRDF since 1991. A coalition of four ethnically organised political parties, EPRDF instituted a highly centralised, top-down administration structure that championed an ethno-nationalist political programme (Gashaw, 1993; Gudina, 2007; Habtu, 2003). Although EPRDF’s administrative lifespan projects a nominal democratic façade of elections, its legitimacy to govern has been called into question several times (Aalen & Tronvoll, 2009; Lyons, 2016). In the most recent national elections of 2015, for example, EPRDF declared victory over every parliamentary seat to extend its already protracted longevity. For the second most populous country in Africa that holds contested ethnic, ideological, cultural, and political worldviews, EPRDF’s complete dominance in the rational-legal apparatus of the Ethiopian state has been anything but representative of the Ethiopian public.

In its 28 years’ dominance of the Ethiopian government, EPRDF carried out several mechanisms of quelling alternative political ideologies as well as the individuals and organisations that express them. The mechanisms through which EPRDF strived for political monism that guarantees its supremacy range from outright human rights violations to ideological warfare (Allo, 2017; Gudina, 2011; Kidane, 2001; Tronvoll, 2008). Arguably, the most common strategy EPRDF deployed to assert its power involved the mobilisation of its security and executive apparatus to go after political dissidents who were reportedly imprisoned, exiled, harassed, disappeared or died (Di Nunzio, 2014; Gudina, 2011; Vestal, 1999). Secondly, EPRDF was involved in a mass ideological indoctrination of its political programme (Abbink, 2017; Arriola & Lyons, 2016). Across federal and state government offices, state-owned enterprises, and state-run higher education institutions, devotion to the ideals of EPRDF’s abyotawi dimokrasi

See Bach (2011) for a discussion on EPRDF’s theory and practice of abyotawi dimokrasi.

An influential player in geopolitical and diplomatic affairs of the African continent, the FDRE is a key ally to the US in combating terrorism and terrorist groups in the Horn of Africa. The US and FDRE have established multiple counter-terrorism partnerships that specifically target designated terrorist groups such as Al Shabab in neighbouring Somalia (for example, see Agbiboa, 2015). In spite of its abysmal human rights record, especially between 2005-2018, Ethiopia continued to be regarded highly by the US and its allies due to the strategic alliance it offers in combating terrorism. Nevertheless, for Ethiopia’s ruling party, this partnership is as much about combating terrorism as it is about extending its grip on political power which has now lasted for nearly three decades (Clapham, 2009). EPRDF has been accused of repurposing counter-terrorism apparatuses—intelligence and surveillance systems, military equipment, and technical knowhow—financed and set up by its Western allies to quell critical expression, organisation and assembly domestically (Turse, 2017). In spite of years of US Department of State country reports that document state-sponsored human rights abuses, the US continued to follow a policy of appeasement toward the Ethiopian government, possibly to avoid the disruption of its geopolitical priority in the region. In this sense, it is plausible to argue that EPRDF views this as a critical leverage, one that is aimed at keeping outside political interference at bay, thereby effectively silencing external pressures of political reform. In the interest of maintaining its strategic priorities, EPRDF’s Western partners have chosen to be “oblivious to or even ignorant of Ethiopia’s worsening political exclusivity” (Workneh, 2015, p. 103), allowing the former to, without meaningful accountability, undermine basic human rights under the guise of counter-terrorism efforts.

It is against this background that Ethiopia adopted a counter-terrorism legal framework in 2009 although, in prior years, it was already involved in other counter-terrorism activities including the US backed military campaign against the Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic Court Union (ICU) in 2006 (Rice & Goldenberg, 2007). Since its enactment by the EPRDF-dominated Ethiopian parliament, the EATP has been extensively used to prosecute hundreds of individuals that include journalists, opposition political party members, and civil society groups.

For example, Kibret (2017) has identified more than 120 cases under which the Federal Public Prosecutor has charged nearly one thousand individuals by citing the provisions of the EATP. Most of these individuals have been charged for alleged affiliation with domestic rebel groups proscribed by the Ethiopian parliament as “terrorist organizations” in June 2011. These rebel groups include Ginbot 7 for Justice, Freedom and Democracy (Ginbot 7), Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). From the 985 individuals prosecuted under the EATP between September 2011 and March 2017, a third of all the charges involve civilians who have “nothing to do with either terrorism or the rebel groups” (p. 524).

The fatal consequences of Ethiopia’s adoption of a counter-terrorism framework to freedom of speech was mostly predictable because of the Ethiopian government’s poor track record on human rights. Several nations’ rush to adopt counter-terrorism laws has been motivated by the idea of creating a lawful means to bypass existing criminal justice procedures that may not be speedy or effective enough to respond to national security threats (Daniels, Macklem, & Roach, 2012). In this sense, counter-terrorism laws empower governments to exercise a “state of exception” where, under perceived or real terrorism threats, normal procedures of jurisprudence in criminal law may be circumvented in the spirit of upholding “the greater good.” As Roach et al. (2012, p. 10) succinctly summarised, the intent here is “accommodating terrorism and emergencies within the rule of law without producing permanent states of emergency and exception.” It is plausible to perceive, without overlooking critical loopholes, how countries with established democratic traditions would have better institutional mechanisms to combat corrosive uses of counter-terrorism laws. In a democratically fragile country like Ethiopia where all branches of government including the judiciary are set up to buttress the self-proclaimed hegemonic project of the ruling party, the EATP has become the rule and not the exception (see Fig. 1 for EPRDF’s neopatrimonial interlocks in the context of the EATP).

The anocratic design of the Ethiopian state has effectively created a monopoly of governance by EPRDF.

An anocracy represents a political system which is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic, often being vulnerable to political instability. See Grigoryan (2013).

The concept of neopatrimonialism essentially encompasses a dualistic nature where “the state is characterized by patrimonialisation and bureaucratization” [sic.] (Bach, 2011, p. 277). This fusion, a quintessential characteristic of the neopatrimonial state, assumes a scenario where the “patrimonial logic coexists with the development of bureaucratic administration and at least the pretence of rational-legal forms of state legitimacy” (Van de Walle, 1994, p. 131). Such dualism can effectively translate into a wide array of empirical situations. These mirror variations in the state’s failure or capacity to produce “public” policies. Neopatrimonialism, in this sense, is a modern, sophisticated form of patrimonialism in which “patrimonial logic coexists with the development of bureaucratic administration and at least the pretense of rational-legal forms of state legitimacy” (Van de Walle, 1994, p. 131).

Davies (2008) incorporates two key features of neopatrimonial governance. Firstly, the neopatrimonial state personalises political authority significantly both as an ideology and as an instrument. Secondly, such governments develop a conflicting rational-legal bureaucratic system and clientelistic relations, with the latter usually dominating over the former. A number of scholars treat clientelism and patronage as integral components of neopatrimonialism (Bratton & van de Walle, 1994; Erdmann & Engel, 2007; Eisenstadt, 1973). Clientelism represents “the exchange or brokerage of specific services and resources for political support, often in the form of votes” involving “a relationship between unequals, in which the major benefits accrue to the patron” and “redistributive effects are considered to be very limited” (Erdmann and Engel, 2007, p. 107). In a broad sense, it is the complexity and sophistication of this “brokerage” that distinguishes neopatrimonial clientelism from patrimonial clientelism. Unlike the “direct dyadic exchange relation between the little and the big man” (Erdmann & Engel, 2007, p. 107) that is characteristic of patrimonialism, the neopatrimonial state needs a network of brokers that have permeated into a bureaucratic nexus where they can render the interest of the political center to the periphery (Powell, 1970; Weingrod, 1969).

In the Ethiopian context, a recent example of how the rational-legal bureaucracy is upended along neopatrimonial lines is indicated by the adoption of the EATP in 2009. Although the Proclamation was conceived as a means by which the Ethiopian state could legally circumvent existing laws of criminal justice—which is commonly practiced in other countries with similar legal frameworks—recent trends indicate the Proclamation has been excessively used to criminalise domestic political opposition and critical speech. In the following, I will address how the EATP was used not as a security tool but rather as a means of safeguarding the ruling party’s dominance in three ways: (a) curbing digital freedoms; (b) monopolising the political narrative; and (c) manufacturing fear to incubate self-censorship.

The adoption of legal frameworks such as the EATP that stipulate broad and vague definitions of terrorism, which, in turn, are used to frame critical speech as terrorist acts, are used to directly prosecute critics of the Ethiopian government. More importantly, however, it is sensible to argue that the Ethiopian government’s actions through the EATP could be seen as a long-term proactive strategy of creating a rational-legal bureaucracy—consistent with the neopatrimonial logic—that is subject to arbitrary interpretation and execution at the will of the state. The result is the making of a public that is unsure about what could be considered as a “terrorist” message as opposed to “normal” speech, which in turn incubates a widespread self-censorship culture. Consequently, the much-publicised prosecution of Zone 9 bloggers and other online political activists in Ethiopia through the EATP and other legal frameworks is not necessarily an exercise of stifling the views of the defendants per se, but rather what they represent in terms of a young, critical and digitally literate Ethiopian populace that is in the making.

As a practical matter, it is evident to see how the EATP compounds the highly restrictive internet policy frameworks in Ethiopia informed by such legal frameworks as the Telecom Fraud Offense Proclamation of 2012. Elsewhere, I argued how Ethiopia’s internet policy frameworks negatively affect user activity (Workneh, 2015), and outlined how the highly centralised, top-down, and monopolistic Ethiopian telecommunication policy adversely affected quality, access, and usability of digital platforms for Ethiopians (Workneh, 2018).

Ethiopia’s internet penetration--though improving--lags behind several other African countries. For details, see ITU, 2018a.

It is in this spirit that, as Ethiopia currently undergoes an uncertain political reform (Burke, 2018) that includes the ongoing scrutiny of its counter-terrorism legislation (Maasho, 2018), a cautions diagnosis of what to do with the EATP is paramount. One approach to address the corrosive outcomes of the EATP is to get rid of the law in its entirety. This view is not uncommon. Brownlie (2014) argues there should be no category of a law of terrorism and that terrorism cases should be conducted “in accordance with the applicable sectors of public international law: jurisdiction, international criminal justice, state responsibility, and so forth” (p. 713). The second approach is to keep the EATP by making significant revisions, especially in terms of provisions that have been identified as problematic to civil liberties. While an argument can be made for the merits and shortcomings of both, the execution of either approach doesn’t necessarily guarantee the right to freely express opinions. In my view, the EATP is one instrument of EPRDF’s multifaceted neopatrimonial apparatus. Without a comprehensive political reform that ensures genuine multi-stakeholder participation and the termination of the neopatrimonial order, any action against the EATP, noble as it may be, will fall short of a meaningful stride toward a free society. The most consequential provision of the EATP is not any of the language that directly curb freedom of expression but rather the Proclamation’s designation of a politically homogeneous legislative body to have the power to “proscribe and de-proscribe an organization as terrorist organization” [sic.] (FDRE, 2009, p. 4837). It is this very clause that has enabled the EPRDF-dominated Ethiopian House of Peoples’ Representatives to proscribe opposition groups and their supporters such as OLF, Ginbot 7, and ONLF as terrorists

In July 2018, the Ethiopian House of Peoples’ Representatives, upon the Cabinet of Ministers’ recommendation, removed Ginbot 7, OLF, and ONLF from its terror list. In January 2019, the FDRE government announced it pardoned 13,000 accused of treason or terrorism.