The General Assembly appointed Eduardo Anze Matienzo of Bolivia as the United Nations Commissioner in Eritrea, assigning him the responsibility of helping to draft a constitution for the territory. The task before him was far from easy, and the challenges he faced were described in detail in his report to the 7th Session of the General Assembly.
On one hand, the spread of violence and terrorism carried out by armed bands known as shifta—which Eritreans claimed were organized from Ethiopia—forced the Commissioner to postpone consultations with the people of Eritrea. On the other hand, he was repeatedly frustrated by the attitude of the Ethiopian government, which proposed giving the Emperor powers in Eritrea to manipulate the head of the Eritrean government, veto laws passed by the Eritrean National Assembly, appoint judges, and more. The Commissioner explained that such proposals were unacceptable, as they amounted to interference in Eritrea’s internal affairs and were contrary to the UN resolution.
Even the Eritrean Liberation Front, which was critical of both the UN Commissioner’s work and the Eritrean constitution, later admitted that “the General Assembly’s resolution on Eritrea, unjust as it was, would have satisfied to a reasonable extent the legitimate aspirations of the Eritrean people if it had been faithfully implemented and respected.”
But this was not the case. It soon became clear that the Emperor did not feel bound by the United Nations resolutions—much less by the Eritrean constitution. After a series of actions, including Ethiopia’s appropriation of Eritrea’s share of customs revenue, the suppression of labor unions and press freedom, the removal of the Eritrean flag, and the renaming of the Eritrean Government as the “Eritrean Administration”—all violations of both the Eritrean constitution and the UN resolution—the Emperor proceeded further.
On 14 November 1962, through his hand-picked Chief Executive in Eritrea, Asfha Woldemichael, he declared the Federation null and void. Eritrea was formally annexed as Ethiopia’s 14th province.
There were several reasons the Emperor was able to get away with such a flagrant violation—not only of the UN’s decision on Eritrea but also of his own Federal Act of 11 September 1952. First and foremost, he was confident of the support of the United States, which in 1953 had concluded an agreement with Ethiopia concerning U.S. military bases—an arrangement that stemmed from close U.S.-Ethiopian cooperation dating back to the period when the United States pressured the UN General Assembly into adopting the federal formula, despite Soviet bloc opposition. Even members of the UN Commission—Burma and South Africa among them—had expressed serious concerns about this direction.
In the United Nations—still divided along Cold War lines—the United States commanded a comfortable majority and could therefore block any proposals that conflicted with its own foreign policy. Secondly, it must be kept in mind that in 1962 the Emperor’s international prestige was very high. In Africa, he played a key role in reconciling the three major political groupings—the Casablanca Bloc, the Brazzaville Twelve, and the Monrovia Group—and persuading them to agree on the establishment of the Organization of African Unity. His 1959 tour of Eastern Europe and visit to the Soviet Union helped blunt Soviet criticism of his policies on Eritrea, making it more difficult for Eritreans to mobilize world opinion.
Thirdly, the newly independent African countries were not well acquainted with the Eritrean question, and most accepted the Emperor’s explanation that resistance to the unification of Eritrea with Ethiopia was the “work of foreign agents” promoting “secession”—a word that, after Africa’s experience with Katanga, had come to signify something dangerous or destructive.
There is no better example of the Emperor’s confidence that the world would accept the annexation of Eritrea than his speech of 16 November 1962, titled “Accepting Eritrean Assembly Decision for Administrative Union.” Undeterred by the wave of Eritrean protests and demonstrations against the manner in which the Assembly was convened—described by one eyewitness as held “at gunpoint” to vote for its own liquidation—he had the nerve to describe the event in the following way: first, he characterized the Federation, for whose creation the Ethiopian delegation at the UN had mounted one of the greatest lobbying campaigns in UN history, as a “ready-made tool through which the enemies of Ethiopian and Eritrean progress and solidarity have endeavored to further their evil design.” He ended his speech with these words: “We thank our people of Eritrea who, guided by a deep sense of patriotism and unity, have laboured without cease to bring about this advancement. We vow before God that, as we have repeatedly stated, we shall spare no effort to secure the happiness and advancement of our people.”
It is no wonder that, to Eritreans, this sounded like a mockery of justice. Increased taxation was imposed on them; the court system became more remote and more expensive; Eritreans lost government jobs to Ethiopian Amharas, who discriminated against them; and Amharic was made the sole language permitted in government offices and schools. All schoolbooks in Tigre (one of Eritrea’s two major languages, the other being Arabic) were burned. This act had a profound effect on the Eritrean population, which threw its support behind the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).
The above text is taken from the following a study paper
Eritrea: Struggle for Self-Determination or Secession?
Author(s): Zdeněk Červenka
Source: Africa Spectrum, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1977), pp. 37–48
Published by: Institute of African Affairs at GIGA, Hamburg, Germany