SITUATION in ETHIOPIA 6 T K I a L N ° : C.340.M .171.I935 Vi I
LEAGUE OF NATIONS
DISPUTE BETWEEN ETHIOPIA AND ITALY
REQUEST BY THE ETHIOPIAN GOVERNMENT
Memorandum by the Italian Government
on the SITUATION IN ETHIOPIA 6 t k i a l N ° : C.340.M .171.I935 Vi i
Geneva, September n th , 1935.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS
DISPUTE BETWEEN ETHIOPIA AND ITALY
REQUEST BY THE ETHIOPIAN GOVERNMENT
Memorandum by the Italian Government
on the SITUATION IN ETHIOPIA
I. REPORT
Series of League of Nations Publications
VII. POLITICAL 1935. VII.11. ____ CONTENTS.
Part I. — ITALY AND ETHIOPIA.
[jjïroddctory N o t e ......
j — Violations o f I t a l o -E t h i o p i a n T r e a t i e s b y E t h i o p i a ......
A. Treaties regarding the Eritrean Frontier......
(a) Violations of the Convention of May 15th, 1902—Ambush laid for a group of Italian subjects; (b) Violation of Convention of July 10th, 1900, regarding the eastern boundary between Eritrea and Tigre— Ethiopian obstruction to the work of the Mixed Commission—Wrongful Ethiopian occupation of Italian territory— Attack by Ethiopian raiders on the Mabra plain and outrages by them on women and children; (c) Violation of Article 2 of the Convention of May 16th, 1908, regarding the frontiers in the Danakil; (d) Violation of Article 5 of the same Convention, which prohibits crossings of the frontier and raids.
B. Treaties regarding the Somali Frontier ......
Violation of the Convention of May 16th, 1908—Impossibility of proceeding to delimitation through the fault of the Ethiopian Government—Military occupation of the Italian locality of Scillave by the Ethiopians.
C. Pact of Amity of 1928 and Convention regarding the Assab-Dessieh R oad ......
(a) Obstacles placed by the Ethiopian Government in the way of the development of Italo- Ethiopian trade; (6) Systematic opposition of that Government to Italian co-operation in the administrative, technical, social, humanitarian, agricultural, commercial and industrial spheres.
D. Klobukowski Treaty on the Treatment of Foreigners in E thiopia ......
Illegitimate prohibition of the ownership of landed property—Hindrances and obstacles to freedom of movement—Monopolies and exclusive privileges of purchase and sale established in violation of the Treaty— Illicit increase in Customs duties and imposition of new Customs charges not allowed by the Treaties— Discrimination among neighbouring States in violation of the most-favoured-nation clause—Administration of justice where foreigners are involved—Illegal arrests of foreign subjects and protected persons.
E. Conclusions......
II. — Acts against the Security of the Italian Colonies and against th e Italians in E thiopia ......
Ethiopian Attempts to commit Acts of Aggression against the Italian Colonies while Italy was engaged in the European W a r ...... 1. Affronts to Italian diplom atic and consular r e p resen ta tiv es...... 2. A cts directed against Italian lives, property and i n t e r e s t s ...... 3. Raids, aggressions and frontier in c id e n t s ...... C o n c lu sio n ......
III. — Ch r o n ic D is o r d e r in E t h i o p i a — - I t a l y 's P o s it io n i n E t h io p ia u n d e r E x i s t i n g T r e a t ie s ....
Chronic disorder in Ethiopia — Revolts and p} onunciamentos — Political action of the present Emperor since his coronation — Italian sphere of influence in Ethiopia.
Part II. — ETHIOPIA AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.
I. — H o w E t h io p ia b e c a m e a M e m b e r o f t h e L e a g u e o f N a t i o n s ......
Admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations and conditions to which the admission was subject — British public opinion against the admission of Ethiopia to the League - - The value and scope of the Ethiopian declaration and the special obligations arising therefrom - - How Ethiopia responded to the trust placed in her by the States Members of the League.
P o litica l St r u c t u r e a n d C o n d i t i o n s o f E t h i o p i a i n r e l a t io n t o A r t ic l e i o f t h e C o v e n a n t . . .
A. A byssinia and her " Colonies ’’ ...... Clear distinctions between the Abyssinian State and the territories conquered by it — Difference of religion, language, history, race and political and social structure — Negus's domination over non-Abyssinian populations — The “ gebbar " system (a form of slavery) applied to subject populations -— The Ethiopian Government’s responsibility for the decimation of the subject populations — Ethiopia’s incapacity to possess a colony.
B. Disorganisation of Public Authorities in E thiopia ...... Inadequate authority of the Central Government — Grave dangers resulting therefrom.
I^55 (F.) 950 (A.). 9/35. Imp. Kundig. I I I . — E t h io p ia a n d A r t ic l e 23 o f t h e C o v e n a n t 43
IV. -— Violations of the Special Engagements undertaken by Ethiopia tow ards the League of N ation 46 A. Slavery in E th iopia ...... 46 The suppression of slavery the primary condition for the admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations — Accession of Ethiopia to the international Acts regarding the abolition of slavery_ Ethiopia does not fulfil the obligations undertaken —- Italian information on the subject Lists of slave owners — Slave traffic — Powerlessness of the public authorities to repress the slave trade — The State, donations and private rearing of slaves —- Horrors of dom estic slavery — The enquiry of the British Anti-slavery Society — The report of Lord Noel Buxton and Lord Pohvarth to the League of Nations and the British Foreign Office — Slavery the basis of the economic system _ The power of the Negus — A memorandum by the French Government — The two British White Papers — Lady Simon's opinion on Ethiopia — Two million slaves out of a population of ten m illions — The social and religious classes against the abolition of slavery — Other British opinions
B. Traffic in Arms and Ammunition
The Ethiopian declaration of 1923 and the Treaty of Paris of 1930 between Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Ethiopia —• Violations of conventions concerning the control of the traffic in arms and ammunition (improper sale of arms) — Non-fulfilment of obligations under the Paris Treaty of 1930 — Foreigners prohibited from being in possession of arms.
VI. B a r b a r i s m i n E t h i o p i a
Emasculation and traffic in eunuchs — Cannibalism and the bleeding of infants —- Life of lepers - A typical case of xenophobia — Barbarous law — Punishments — Ethiopian prisons.
C o n c l u s io n s 63 — 5 —
Part I.
ITALY AND ETHIOPIA.
The Government of His Majesty the King of Italy calls attention to the special political and legal position of Italy w ith regard to Ethiopia. Since th e middle of the last century, Italy has been in relations w ith the countries forming the present Ethiopian State, and has materially contributed, through h e r travellers and explorers, her missionaries, her scientists and her diplomatists, even at the cost of their blood, to a knowledge of Ethiopian territory and to the endeavours made to exercise a civilising influence in those regions. Italy’s various activities in Ethiopia received legal sanction in the Treaty of May 2nd, 1889, Article 17 of which was notified to the Powers on October n t h , 1889, for the purposes of Article 34 of the General Act of Berlin of February 26th, 1885, as constituting an Italian Protectorate over Ethiopia. I t was accordingly to be supposed that the peaceful development of Italo-Ethiopian co
o p e r a t i o n under a regime analogous to that set up in other African and Asiatic regions was assured. But, immediately after the conclusion of the Treaty of 1889, the Ethiopian Government failed in its treaty obligations, and thereafter initiated a series of hostile acts against Italy, which, becoming more and more serious, ended in the armed conflict of 1895-1896. This conflict was terminated by the T reaty of Peace of October 26th, 1896. There followed a period of adjustment, after which the Italian Government resumed that policy of co-operation with Ethiopia which is a vital necessity to the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland, connected as they are with the Ethiopian territories by close and direct relations. The Italian Government accordingly concluded a series of treaties and conventions with Ethiopia to settle the whole of its relations with that country. These relations are particularly delicate and complicated owing to the fact that Ethiopia is situated between two Italian colonies and has over 2,000 kilometres of common frontier with Italy. This series of agreements, concluded in the most friendly spirit, is in itself the best proof of the Italian Government’s attitude, in contrast to that of Ethiopia, to which Italy has patiently offered, over a long period, every opportunity of development and co-operation. The Ethiopian Government, on the other hand, has responded with an attitude not merely negative, but hostile or definitely aggressive. The Italian Government feels that nothing other than an objective and circumstantial state ment of well-established facts can give an idea of the state of relations which, through the fault of the Addis Ababa Government, has arisen between Italy and Ethiopia.
I. VIOLATIONS OF ITALO-ETHIOPIAN TREATIES BY ETHIOPIA.
SUMMARY.
V io l a t io n s o f T r e a t ie s b y t h e E t h io p ia n G o v e r n m e n t .
A. Treaties regarding the Eritrean Frontier: (a) Violations of the Convention of May 15th, 1902—Ambush laid for a group of Italian subjects; (6) Violation of the Convention of July 10th, 1900, regarding the eastern boundary between Eritrea and Tigre— Ethiopian obstruction to the work of the Mixed Commission—Wrongful Ethiopian occupation of Italian territories—Attack by Ethiopian raiders on the Mabra plain and outrages by them upon women and children ; (c) Violation of Article 2 of the Convention of May 16th, 1908, regarding the frontiers in the Danakil; (d) Violation of Article 5 of the same Convention, which prohibits crossings of the frontier and raids.
Treaties regarding the Somali Frontier: Violation of the Convention of May 16th, 1908— Impossibility of proceeding to delimitation through the fault of the Ethiopian Government—Military occupation of the Italian locality of Scillave by the Ethiopians.
P i d o f Amity of 1928 and Convention regarding the Assab-Dessieh Road: (a) Obstacles placed by the Ethiopian Government in the way of the development of Italo-Ethiopian trade ; (6) Systematic opposition of that Government to Italian co-operation in the administrative, technical, social, humanitarian, agricultural, commercial and industrial spheres.
Klobukowski T reaty on the Treatm ent of Foreigners in Ethiopia: Prohibition of the ownership of landed property—Hindrances and obstacles to freedom of movement—Monopolies and exclusive privileges of purchase and sale established in violation of the Treaty—Illicit increase in Customs duties and imposition of new Customs charges not allowed by the Treaties— Discrimination among neighbouring States in violation of the hîû s t-fa vo 11 red - nation clause— Administration of justice where foreigners are involved— Illegal arrests of foreign subjects and protected persons.
C o n c l u s i o n s . A. TREATIES REGARDING THE ERITREAN FRONTIER.
The Ethiopian Government is bound, in virtue of Article i of the Convention of May i-y, 1902, to delimit the frontier between Eritrea and Ethiopia “ so that the Kunama tribe beion to Eritrea Not only has the Ethiopian Government never consented to proceed to the delimitation of the frontier in this sector, but it has brought about a state of affairs contrary to the obligations entered into, causing the Tigre chiefs to occupy a sector adjacent to the Adiabo inhabited by members of the Kunama tribe, and appointing and paying Kunama chiefs in that sector. This has given rise to grave incidents, some of them in recent years, such as the appoint ment as chiefs by Ethiopia of exiled Kunamas who were Italian subjects and to the sanguinary ambush laid at Biara by another Kunama chief in Ethiopian pay for a group of notables, Italian subjects, who, having been invited to enter Ethiopian territory to confer on frontier incidents were received with rifle-fire and killed (see documents Nos. 10, 18, 19, 20). The Italian Government, in agreeing, after three years’ negotiations, to an extremely generous settlement of this incident, firmly insisted, in 1929, on the frontier’s being delimited and appointed its own delegates (see document No. 25). But the Ethiopian Government never allowed the work to begin, adopting its usual notorious dilatory methods. Thus, even to-day, a sector in the zone between the Rivers Mareb and Setit which, according to the 1902 Convention, is Italian territory, is occupied by the Ethiopians. The Convention of July 10th, 1900, fixes the thalweg of the Rivers Belesa and Muna as the eastern frontier between Eritrea and Tigre. In this sector, too, the Italian Government made every effort to arrive at a delimitation which would remove all pretext for future incidents; but a mixed commission, which had begun operations in 1907, was obliged to interrupt its work owing to the obstructive attitude of the Ethiopian delegates, and since then it has not been possible to induce the Ethiopian Government to resume delimitation operations. In this case too, the attitude of the Ethiopian Government is essentially dictated by its desire to hide its failure to fulfil its obligations. In fact, in violation of the Convention in question, the Ethiopian Government has even yet, thirty-five years after the signature of the Convention, taken no steps to evacuate certain territories, including two posts on the right bank of the Belesa (Kolo Burdo and Addi Gulti) and one on the north bank of the Muna (Alitiena), which are quite indisputably in Italian territory. This situation has given rise within recent years to serious incidents, and the Italian Government, although having had occasion several times to make formal protests against the violation of the frontier convention, has hitherto refrained, out of a desire for peace, from proceeding to the action that the Treaties would entitle it to take. The surprise attack made on May 31st last on a group of our subjects by Ethiopian raiders on the Mabra plain, in Italian territory, an attack rendered still more barbarous by the inhuman outrages committed by the Ethiopians upon women and children (see photographs), is the most recent and sanguinary example of the series of violations by the Ethiopian Government of the Convention of May 16th, 1908, which lays down the Ethiopian boundary in the Danakil. As regards the Danakil, too, that Convention laid down (Article 2) the obligation to fix the frontier line on the spot, and in this region, also, it has never been possible to proceed to a delimi tation. So, again, not only has the obligation formally entered into by the Ethiopian Government (Article 5 of the Convention) “ to exercise no interference beyond the frontier line and not to allow their dependent tribes to cross the frontier, in order to commit acts of violence, to the detriment of the tribes on the other side ”, never been observed by Ethiopia, but the Italian Government has for years been obliged to keep a costly and difficult watch over this region, to guard against the raids and depredations of the Ethiopians. In the following chapters, a circumstantial account is given of the long series of incidents that have occurred on the Eritrean frontier.
B. CONVENTION REGARDING THE SOMALI FRONTIER.
The questions relating to the frontier between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia are g o v e r n e d by the Convention of May 16th, 1908. The Ethiopian attack upon the Italian garrison of Walwal (see Appendix to Volume II) is in itself the gravest possible proof of the Ethiopian Government’s manifest intention, not on. of violating the obligations it has assumed, but also of menacing the tranquillity of the Italia colonies. It is well known that the Italian Government, in accordance with the terms of the Convention' repeatedly pressed at Addis Ababa for steps to be taken to proceed to the delimitation 01 — 7 —
frontier, which the Ethiopian Government had pledged itself (Article 5 of the Convention) to U n d e r t a k e “ as soon as possible . It is also common knowledge that when, in 1910, the Ethiopian Governm ent consented to accede to the Italian requests and to appoint its delegates to the Mixed
fom m ission, work was interrupted after only four months because the Ethiopian delegates (see d o c u m e n t No. 1), on instructions from their Government, stated that “ they could not guarantee the Mixed Commission’s safety in the Ogaden frontier district”. The sole result of the mission’s „ork was therefore the markmg-out of the short section of the frontier between Dolo and Ato,
b u t not even this small demarcation on the spot was accepted by the Ethiopian Government. This dilatory attitude, shown from 1908 to the present day by Ethiopia towards the Italian Government with regard to the delimitation of the frontier, has its counterpart in a long series of armed attempts made by Ethiopian chiefs to establish a favourable de facto situation on the Somali frontier, in the same way as we have seen above was the case on the Eritrean frontier. The Italian Government will give a detailed account in the following chapters of all the Ethiopian raids and expeditions in Somaliland, which have had grave consequences, not only because they have ren dered trade practically impossible between Italian Somaliland and the adjacent regions of Ogaden, Galla, Boran and Sidamo, but also because they have obliged the Italian Government to maintain’ at serious cost to the colony’s budget, a line of garrisons and mobile forces along the frontier to protect its native population and the Italian centres of colonisation. The Italian Government here confines itself to mentioning the most recent—namely, the coup de main carried out on January 29th, 1935, and leading to the Abyssinian military occupation of Scillave, which is situated in Italian territory and is the terminal point of an Italian motor-lorry road. Summarising the statements made above, the Italian Government would call attention to the following facts : It has not been possible to delimit in practice any of the frontiers between Ethiopia and the Italian colony, solely owing to consistent obstruction by the Ethiopian Govern ment. Equally consistently, and in disregard of the Treaties, the Ethiopian Government has endeavoured along all the frontiers of the Italian colonies to establish a de facto situation contrary to the obligations freely entered into. The Italian Government recalls the protests several times made in recent years to the Ethiopian Government, which is still at the moment in military occupation, both on the Eritrean frontier (between the Mareb and the Setit, on the Belesa and on the Muna) and on the Somali frontier (Scillave, etc.), of territories placed under Italian sovereignty by treaty.
C. PACT OF AMITY OF 1928 AND CONVENTION REGARDING THE ASSAB-DESSIEH ROAD.
The Italian Government, preoccupied as it was by this Ethiopian situation affecting the Italian colonies—a situation which was further aggravated by the false interpretation placed by the Ethiopian Government on the Italo-British Agreement of December 1925—nevertheless decided to give Ethiopia once more a practical chance of demonstrating her alleged possibilities of civilisation and modernisation. First of the adjacent European Powers, and alone among them, it concluded, on August 2nd, 1928, a Treaty of Amity with Ethiopia, for the exceptional term of twenty years, wishing thus to guarantee the Ethiopian Government a long period of tranquillity in its foreign policy and the peaceful co-operation of Italy in the economic develop ment of the country. This co-operation took, inter alia, a practical form in the Road Convention annexed to the Treaty, which satisfied an aspiration several times expressed by the Ethiopian Government to secure an outlet to the sea, which was granted to it in the form of a special free zone in the port of Assab, in Eritrea. This last attempt at co-operation and trust on the part of the Italian Government completely broke down owing to the deliberate and total failure of the Ethiopian Government to observe any of the obligations assumed in the Treaty of Amity and the attached Road Convention. This policy of non-fulfilment has not only prevented the Italians from carrying on any economic activity in Ethiopian territory, but, as a number of cases demonstrate, has also led to the renunciation of the co-operation of Italian science and initiative in the protection of Ethiopia’s own interests. The facts speak for themselves. The fundamental clause of the Pact of Amity (Article 3), which contains the obligation of the two Governments “ to develop and promote trade between the two countries ”, has not merely not been observed by the Ethiopian Government, but has also been openly violated by it in the letter and the spirit. Since 1928, the most systematic and definite obstruction has been opposed to Italian economic activity throughout the territory of the Empire. In practice, the Italians have been refused any new concession, and all their commercial, industrial and agricultural initiative has been stifled. The illicit raising of the Customs duties by the Ethiopian Government, the numerous supplementary taxes imposed by it on im ported goods, the failure to extend to other adjacent owers certain Customs privileges granted to British Somaliland, the creation of monopolies not allowed by the Treaties in force, the practical impossibility of establishing industries in the country and the Ethiopian refusal to build roads between Ethiopia and the Italian colonies facts which will be amplified below and which assume a character of exceptional gravity 0 Italy, both in relation to the geographical position of her colonies and in relation to the Italo- hiopian Pact of Amity of 1928, which, as stated above, contained the obligation “ to develop promote trade between the two countries — 8 —
But a Pact of Amity demands, above all, that the relations between the contracting Stat should be marked by a spirit of co-operation and understanding. For her part, Italy ^has ^ missed any opportunity of offering Ethiopia the advantages of her experience in solving numerous problems which that country must tackle in order to advance along the path f civilisation and progress. 1 0 The Ethiopian Government has replied by closing every door to Italian co-operation1 and systematically obstructing every request made by the Italian Government. In this way, Jtal has in practice found herself in a position of inferiority compared with other Powers, whereas the Treaties in force promised her a predominant position. Below we mention certain facts which clearly prove that the Ethiopian Government’s conduct was contrary to the Treaties and was definitely hostile to Italy and the Italians. 1. The few lines of communication which link Ethiopia with the adjacent regions are- with French Somaliland, the Jibuti-Addis Ababa railway ; with British Somaliland, the Zeila- Jijiga-Harrar lorry-road ; with the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the lorry-roads from Gambela to Yubdo and in the direction of Gore. The Addis Ababa Government has failed to construct any road towards the Italian colonies whose traffic still has to follow the old caravan and mule tracks. The fate of the Road Convention is typical. This Convention contained nothing but advantages for Ethiopia, for the Italian Government had agreed to grant her a free zone in the port of Assab, thus meeting a wish several times expressed by the present Negus, and a lorry-road which, while offering great advantages to the personal fiefs of the reigning Negus, is economically one of the least convenient for Eritrean traffic. Nevertheless, the Convention has never been applied, since the Ethiopian Government has never seriously considered the question of taking possession of the free zone, nor has it allowed road work to be even begun in its own territory. The Italian Government, which, in conformity with the Treaty, immediately constructed the section from Assab to the Italo-Ethiopian frontier, has with the greatest patience negotiated for a number of years with the Ethiopian Government to induce it to carry out its obligations. It may be recalled, for example, that, after various unavailing attempts, in November 1931, over three years after the signature of the Convention, the experts of the two Governments were able to meet at Addis Ababa to begin the discussion of a very broadly defined line, exclusively planned on the Ethiopian side by the Dutch engineers in the service of the Addis Ababa Government. A few months after this meeting, however, the Ethiopian Government announced that the Parliament newly set up at Addis Ababa had decided that absolute precedence should be given in the construction of roads to those radiating from Addis Ababa (see document No. 87). The Ethiopian Government took this as a pretext, not only for evading the undertaking entered into with regard to the Assab-Dessieh road, but also for refusing to construct another road from Eritrea to Gondar, which had meanwhile been asked for by an Italian company. 2. With regard to public works in the interior of Ethiopia, the Addis Ababa Government has engaged Dutch experts and has entered into negotiations with Swiss, French and American companies ; but, in spite of all offers, it has never accepted the assistance of Italian companies or firms which already possess an organisation of their own in our neighbouring colonies, as well as special experience of road construction in East Africa. 3. Notwithstanding the professional and technical qualifications and the spirit of abnegation displayed for so many years by Italian doctors and medical officers in charge of the dispensaries of the Italian consulates (constructed and maintained at the Italian Government’s expense), or of the religious missions of Italian nationality, not one of the doctors employed in the Ethiopian Government’s service is an Italian. The Ethiopian Government’s two hospitals at Addis Ababa are directed by a Frenchman and a Swede respectively. The head of the Ethiopian Government's hospital at Harrar is a Frenchman. 4. The Ethiopian Government has not given the slightest support to the Serum and Vaccine Institute at Addis Ababa, founded by Italian private citizens for the prevention of cattle-plague. This prophylaxis had given excellent results in Eritrea and Somaliland; it therefore seemed desirable to a group of Italian volunteers to extend it beyond the frontier to defend both the live-stock of our own colonies and that of Ethiopia, which in certain parts of the Empire forms the sole wealth and the only means of livelihood of the population. But, as the enterprise was
1 It may be recalled, for example, that, of the numerous foreign experts engaged by the Ethiopian G overnm ent as advisers in its own administrations, only one (the last in point of time) is an Italian, and he is an electrical engineer. The other experts, all appointed since 1928, are: Internal administration : an Englishman ; Judicial questions : a Swiss; Financial questions : an American ; Questions of foreign policy : a Frenchman and then a Swede; Military questions: a Swede ; Public works : a Frenchman and a Russian ; Aviation : Germans and Frenchmen ; Archaeology : a Frenchman; Postal administration : a Frenchman. The Military Mission is Belgian, and the instructors of the Ethiopian officers are Swedes. , Even the Marconi station, constructed by the Ansaldo Company (not because it was specially selected by e Ethiopian Government, but because its tender was the most advantageous one), was placed by the Ethiopian G overnm in the hands of foreign technicians—a Frenchman and a Swede—as soon as it was completed. — g —
Italian, the Ethiopian Government has never consented to recommend it to its officials and to I chiefs of the interior, so that the Institute has not been able to carry out its work effectively and has been obliged to suspend operations. 5 Another Italian enterprise in Ethiopia, the Dallol potash mines, has met with nothing but obstacles and obstruction from the Ethiopian authorities whenever it has had to deal with them. Suffice it to say that the company working the Dallol mines, which are near the Eritrean frontier, has been forbidden to build roads from the mines to our colony, through which their produce must necessarily pass before it can be sold. 6. Nor has it been possible to undertake any agricultural work in Ethiopia, because the Ethiopian Government, in violation of the special treaty undertakings entered into with Italy, has not hesitated to prohibit the acquisition of landed property by foreigners, thus placing in a condition of inferiority, not only the numerous communities of Italian colonial subjects residing in Ethiopia, but also every Italian citizen capable of initiative in the agricultural sphere, and precluding any Italian participation in the development of the country. The whole series of Italo-Ethiopian agreements of August 2nd, 1928, has thus been rendered nugatory by the deliberate failure of the Ethiopian Government to comply with them. In fact, it may be said that the Treaty of Amity of 1928, which should have made Italy the most favoured, tuition, made her in practice the least favoured nation.
D. KLOBUKOWSKI TREATY.
In virtue of the most-favoured-nation clause contained in Article 3 of the Italo-Ethiopian Commercial Treaty of July 21st, 1906, and in virtue of Article 4 of the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of Amity of August 2nd, 1928, Italian nationals, subjects and protected persons are entitled to the treatment provided for in the Treaty concluded between Ethiopia and France on January 10th, 1908, known as the Klobukowski Treaty. This Treaty, which governs the treatment of citizens, subjects and -protected persons of European States in Ethiopia, and constitutes the principal legal safeguard possessed by the European communities in the present state of civilisation of Ethiopia, has for some years past been systematically violated by the Addis Ababa Government. Individual violations have often led to collective steps being taken by the Powers represented at Addis Ababa, as will be seen below. The Italian Government wishes to emphasise that this attitude on the part of the Ethiopian Government is especially injurious to Italy, not only because the geographical position of the Italian colonies with regard to Ethiopia places her in a special situation as compared with the other Powers, but also becausethe rights conferred by the Klobukowski Treaty in the matter of jurisdiction were explicitly extended to Italy by a clause which forms an integral and fundamental part of the Italo-Ethiopian Pact of A m ity of August 2nd, IÇ 28. Any violation of the Klobukowski Treaty by Ethiopia therefore constitutes, as far as Italy is concerned, a further breach of the system of agreements governing the relations between the two countries. The principal violations are as follows :
I. R ig h t o f F o r e ig n e r s to o w n L a n d e d P r o p e r t y in E t h io p ia .
Article 2 of the Klobukowski Treaty reads as follows :
“ Nationals and protected persons of each of the two States shall be free to enter the territory of the other State, to travel, reside and possess property therein according to the customs of the country, and to engage in trade, industry and agriculture therein, with every security for their persons and property. “ This freedom may not be restricted by any monopoly or exclusive privilege of sale and purchase, apart from State monopolies already in existence and such others as the Ethiopian Government may wish to introduce in conformity with the regime in force in France.”
On the basis of the provisions of this article, foreigners belonging to States to which the benefits of the Klobukowski Treaty have been extended ought to be allowed to own landed property in Ethiopia. Instead of this, the Ethiopian authorities systematically forbid foreigners to acquire and own land—a fact which has led to a collective protest from the foreign diplomatic representatives at Addis Ababa. This protest has had no effect, however. Ethiopian subjects whose rights of ownership of a given piece of land have been recognised ™aY sell it to other Ethiopian subjects, but not to foreigners, without special authorisation by the ^tate. Such authorisation is never given. Thus Ethiopian subjects are free to acquire land in the states to which the Klobukowski Treaty applies, while citizens of those States cannot acquire land 111 Ethiopia. But this is not all. The Ethiopian Government has also taken steps to prevent foreigners from establishing nemselves on Ethiopian soil by concluding long leases. In a Decree published in the Official Journal of January 3rd, 1929, it fixed the maximum uration of leases of land to foreigners at thirty years. — 1 0 —
On the expiry of the lease, the land must be irrevocably given up, in the absence of a • Government authorisation, which in practice is never given. Pecial The lease must also be registered at a so-called " control office This registration wh't, ought to be a pure formality, is transformed into a vexatious measure, used as a pretext f violating the Abyssinian law itself, which allows thirty-year leases. * ' 0r In 1932, some Italian millers of the name of Toquarelli acquired land from Ethiopian own on a thirty-year lease, in full conformity with Ethiopian law. When they went to have th^ contracts registered, the control office refused to register them unless the duration of the lease we'1 reduced to fifteen years and unless the lessees declared in writing that they would submit a ^ disputes arising in connection with the lease to the Ethiopian courts. In this way, not only a Klobukowski Treaty, but also Ethiopian law itself is violated. lt The Ethiopian Government forbids the acquisition of land and places obstacles in the wav of foreigners’ concluding thirty-year leases, in order to prevent them from establishing industries in its territory. A foreign manufacturer who has secured possession of land for thirty years can during that period, establish his industry, earn profits and redeem the capital invested. Such result' cannot, however, be obtained if the period of lease is limited to fifteen years or less.
II. F r e e d o m o f M o v e m e n t in E t h io p ia .
Article 2 of the Klobukowski Treaty, the text of which was reproduced above, provides that nationals and protected persons of each of the two States shall have full freedom to enter the territory of the other State and to travel and reside therein. Notwithstanding the explicit terms of the provisions contained in the above-mentioned article, which are not accompanied by any reservation, the movements of foreigners in Ethiopia are subject to limitations and vexations of every kind. Not only are they obliged to comply with protracted and wearisome formalities in obtaining permission to travel in Ethiopian territory, but, in the case of many districts, permission is definitely refused, for alleged reasons of safety, which, though sometimes justified by the insecure internal condition of the Empire, in many cases constitute mere pretexts for hampering the most legitimate activities of foreigners. During the first half of 1933, the British Consul at Mega, who wished to make an excursion in Boran, was prevented from doing so. During the same period, the British Consul at Dangala, who had set out for the Sudan via Metemma, was stopped at the frontier. On the pretext of their own safety, the Italian consuls have had restrictions placed on their movements even in their own areas. If such difficulties are encountered by members of the Consular Service accredited in Ethiopia, it is easy to imagine what obstacles have to be surmounted by private persons before they can obtain permission to travel in Ethiopian territory.
III. M o n o p o l ie s .
On the basis of the same Article 2 of the Klobukowski Treaty, freedom of trade in Ethiopia must not be hampered by any monopoly or exclusive privilege of purchase and sale, apart from State monopolies already in existence and such others as the Ethiopian Government may wish to introduce in conformity with the regime in force in France. In open violation of this clause, the Ethiopian Government, in 1922, granted a liquor monopoly to a Belgian company, the R.T.A.L.E.T. This monopoly came to an end in 1929 owing to dissension between the Ethiopian Government and the company, but its principle has been maintained, and the Government has been looking for another concessionaire. In 1930, the salt monopoly was granted in the form of a régie to a French company, one of whose members was M. Homberg, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jibuti Salt-works. The capital for exploiting the monopoly was fixed at 4,000,000 francs, half to be found by the French company and half by the Ethiopian Government. The profits were to be divided equally. When the salt monopoly was created, the Ethiopian official journal Light and, Peace, in its issue of May 8th, 1930, published the following notice by the Director of the Ethiopian Customs Services :
“ The right to import and sell salt throughout Ethiopia has been granted exclusively to the Franco-Ethiopian Company. Accordingly, it is absolutely prohibited for any other person or company to import salt into Ethiopia. " Any person guilty of unlawfully importing salt of any kind into Ethiopia will be punished as provided in Article 18 of the Law establishing Penalties for the Import of Prohi bited Goods into Ethiopia and in Article 16 of the Customs Ordinance.” It is worth pointing out that, in France, neither liquor nor salt is subject to a monopoly. On September 5th, 1930, the Diplomatic Corps sent the Ethiopian Government a collective note of protest against the concession of the liquor and salt monopolies. This note had no resut • On the contrary, the Ethiopian Government afterwards established a privileged regime for tn importation of petroleum, which, although not formally described as a monopoly, in fact possesses all the characteristics of one. — I I —
IV. Cu s t o m s D u t ie s in E t h io p ia .
Article 3 of the Klobukowski Treaty reads as follows :
“ French goods imported into the Ethiopian Empire shall be subject to a duty of 10% on their commercial value at their destination. Nevertheless, wines, champagnes, beers and non-alcoholic drinks shall pay only 8%. When the state of trade in Ethiopia permits of this being done without loss to the Imperial Treasury, the commercial value shall be determined by the Customs declaration of the price at the place of origin or manufacture, plus costs of transport, insurance and commission necessary for importation as far as thé place of introduction.”
Although the text of this article is perfectly clear and fixes in a simple and definite manner the amount of the Customs duties to be charged on foreign goods imported into the Empire, the Ethiopian Government has nevertheless, by subsequent unilateral decisions, added other taxes and charges to the duty provided for in the Treaty. In 1910, it imposed on all goods introduced into Ethiopia a " factage ” or delivery fee, which was followed in 1915 by a " storage ’’ fee. At about the same time, the Emperor Menelik introduced another charge known as the " coti ” (toll). The imposition of this charge was to be of a purely temporary character, being intended to raise the sum necessary for paying damages to a certain M. Savouré, whose caravan had been robbed in the interior of the country. Savouré having been paid with the proceeds of the tax, the latter of course continued to be levied, together with the two others mentioned above. In 1922, as already stated, the Ethiopian Government, contrary to Article 2 of the Klobukowski Treaty, granted a liquor monopoly to a Belgian company. Thereafter, by means of regulations unilaterally issued on July 19th, 1924, it announced the monopoly taxes to be imposed on alcohol and spirituous liquors from abroad. The collective protest of the Diplomatic Corps against the concession of the liquor monopoly remained a dead letter. In addition, in 1932, the Ethiopian Government imposed a surtax on spirituous liquors in the provinces of Adowa and Makale (bordering on Eritrea), and the fiscal authorities claimed the right to levy the monopoly taxes retrospectively. A further protest by the Diplomatic Corps had the same result as before. On October 6th, 1925, the levy of another tax on imported goods, known as the “ school tax ”, was ordered. The proceeds of this tax were to be used for the development of public education in Ethiopia. In 1930, a chemical laboratory was established at Addis Ababa under the Ministry of Com merce. The Ethiopian Government could not let slip such a good opportunity, and promulgated, again unilaterally, regulations, dated April 9th, 1930, imposing a " chemical tax ” on goods coming from abroad. On March 27th, 1931, an Imperial Decree imposed heavy excise and consumption duties on imported goods. The proceeds of these duties were to be used to purchase the Bank of Abyssinia, with a view to introducing a monetary system on a gold basis. The Diplomatic Corps made every reservation as to the applicability of this Decree to their own nationals. The Ethiopian Government acknowledged the reservations, but continued to levy the duties. Thereupon the Diplomatic Corps, displaying a most conciliatory spirit and being anxious to meet the Ethiopian Government's wishes, proposed that negotiations should be opened with a view to reaching an agreement with the Government on an increase in the Customs duties fixed in the Klobukowski Treaty. In return for this, it asked that the increase in duties should be applied uniformly to all imported foreign goods, and that the excise and consumption duties should be abolished, with an undertaking that they should not be reimposed. The proposal was not accepted, and had no result. Finally, the Ethiopian Government introduced two other duties to be imposed on foreign goods-—namely, the " statistical duty ” and the “ transport duty ”. Thus, at the beginning of 1934, in addition to the duties fixed by the Klobukowski Treaty, the Ethiopian Government had introduced unilaterally, despite the protests of the Diplomatic Corps, no fewer than nine special duties. Then, on April 8th, 1934, the Ethiopian Government issued—still unilaterally—a new Customs tariff of a very rudimentary and imperfect character, in which, on its own initiative, 11 replaced the system of ad valorem taxation by that of specific duties on nearly every item, at the same time confirming the levy of the nine special duties mentioned above. This new tariff gave rise to protracted discussions between the Diplomatic Corps and the Ethiopian Government, which are still continuing. It will be clear from all this that the Ethiopian Government has treated Article 3 of the Klobukowski Treaty as non-existent. It has unilaterally imposed on foreign goods duties the proceeds of which were intended for special purposes, and, finally, on its own initiative, it has completely changed the system of taxation agreed upon with the foreign States. A cursory perusal of the new Ethiopian tariff will confirm the facts stated above. — 1 2 —
V . D iscrimination a m o n g N eighbouring S t a t e s in V io l a t io n o f t h e M o st- f a v o u r e d -n a t io n C l a u s e .
Article 4 of the Klobukowski Treaty reads as follows :
“ The Ethiopian Government undertakes to extend to French nationals all the right' advantages, and privileges it has granted or may hereafter grant to the nationals and protect d persons of any third Power, particularly as regards Customs, internal taxes, and jurisdiction "
Not only France but also the other States to which the benefits of the Klobukowski Treatv have been extended are entitled to this treatment, among them being Italy, as we have already shown. During a journey in the interior, the Emperor of Ethiopia made a brief halt at Jijiga on January 25th, 1933. The local traders submitted to him a petition for exemption from Customs and excise duties on goods from British Somaliland. The principal signatories were the firms of Bazarà and Mohammedally & Co. It is common knowledge that the Emperor has a large personal interest in the latter firm whose managers act as consular agents of the British Government in places where there are no regular consuls. The Emperor granted the privileges asked for, giving the necessary order to the Chief of the Customs. On the Emperor’s departure, the Chief of the Customs restored the Customs and excise duties but, in consequence of imperative orders from Addis Ababa, only the Customs duty was maintained while the excise duties were reduced by half. In virtue of the most-favoured-nation clause contained in Article 4 of the Klobukowski Treaty, goods from the neighbouring Italian and French colonies should also have enjoyed in Ethiopia the privileged treatment applied to goods from British Somaliland. Such, however, was not the case. The French Legation, on asking for equality of treatment for goods from Jibuti, was met with a refusal on the specious pretext that the most-favoured-nation clause was not violated by the above-mentioned concession, " because French traders or the citizens of other States entitled to the benefits of the Klobukowski Treaty would also be charged excise duties at half rates if they imported goods into Ethiopia from British Somaliland ’’. This highly singular interpretation of the most-favoured-nation clause in a treaty requires no comment. We attach a list (document No. 37) of the goods which are subject at Jijiga to excise duties at half rates, while full rates are charged on goods not coming from British Somaliland.
VI. A dministration o f J u s t ic e .
The jurisdictional rights enjoyed in Ethiopia by foreigners belonging to States entitled to the benefits of the Klobukowski Treaty are laid down in Article 7 of that Treaty, which reads as follows :
“ All cases of whatever nature, whether criminal or other, between French nationals or protected persons shall henceforward be subject to French jurisdiction for so long as the legislation of the Ethiopian Empire has not been brought into line with the legislations of Europe. “ All cases of whatever nature, whether criminal or other, between French nationals and protected persons and subjects of the Emperor shall be brought before an Abyssinian magistrate sitting in a special court, who will try them with the assistance of the French Consul or his deputy. " If the Abyssinian subject is the defendant, he shall be tried according to Ethiopian law. “ If the French national or protected person is the defendant, he shall be tried according to French law. “ In case of disagreement between the judges, the final decision shall lie with the Tribunal of His Majesty the King of the Kings of Ethiopia. “ In case of a crime or offence committed by French nationals or protected persons, the territorial authority shall exercise its police rights in seeking out and arresting the offenders, but shall be obliged to notify the French Consul immediately and hand the offenders over to him .”
On the basis of the above provisions, disputes between foreigners and Ethiopians a r e judged by a so-called “ Special Court ” consisting of an Ethiopian judge and of the consul of the State to which the foreign party belongs. The conduct of this court has always given rise to serious friction between the foreign M is s io n s and the Ethiopian Government. The Abyssinian tendency is, indeed, to regard the consul, not as a judge having equal righ ' with the Ethiopian magistrate, but as a silent spectator who watches the proceedings and w h o se only right is to veto the execution of the Ethiopian magistrate’s sentence. — 13 —
The complete lack of training of the Ethiopian judges, the inefficiency of the native clerks, nd the chaotic judicial procedure make conflicts between the consuls and the Ethiopian magistra- l ie an almost daily occurrence. These drawbacks are the more serious inasmuch as the consuls are in a position of inferiority in these conflicts, since their right to veto the execution of the sentence often works to the detriment of their compatriots when the other party is Ethiopian, as happens in the majority of cases. W hen a disagreement arises between the consul and the Ethiopian judge, the case is referred, after interminable formalities, to the Emperor's Tribunal for a final decision. The foreigner’s position before this supreme Tribunal is still worse, as his consul can no longer veto the execution of the sentence, and the Ethiopian Government claims that the law to be applied is the Abyssinian law. This is a complete legal absurdity, since it would mean that a different law would be applied in the judgment of the second instance from that on which the judgment of the first instance was based. Hence the Ethiopian party always finds it possible to obtain from the foreigner—who fears complications, delays and costs—a settlement out of court to his own advantage. Even if a judgment can be obtained against a local subject from the Special Court, it is practically impossible to secure its execution when the person against whom it is given is a chief or other important personage. The Diplomatic Corps submitted numerous proposals to the Ethiopian Government with a view to the constitution of regular mixed courts, but these never had any effect, because the Government evaded them by submitting counterproposals not answering to the purposes aimed at by the Diplomatic Corps. Finally, in 1931, the foreign Missions, weary of these eternal tergiversations, decided to refrain from taking part in the proceedings of the Special Court until the Ethiopians showed a serious intention of introducing the necessary reforms. The Italian Legation participated in this action, as will be seen from a note dated April 21st, 1932, No. 2417, a copy of which is attached (document No. 75), addressed by the Italian Embassy at Paris to the Quai d’Orsay. In view of the energetic and unanimous attitude taken up by all the foreign Missions, the Ethiopian Government, on April 12th, 1932, made new proposals to the Diplomatic Corps for the improvement of the procedure of the Special Court. The Diplomatic Corps replied in the collective note dated August 31st, 1932, a copy of which is attached (document No. 81) ; this note shows the conditions under which justice is administered in Ethiopia, and the chaotic state of the Special Court when the foreign Missions decided to refrain from attending. We also attach copies of the subsequent notes exchanged on the same subject between the DiplomaticCorps and the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry, viz.:
1. Note from the Ethiopian Government, dated October 29th, 1932 (document No.36). 2. Note from the Diplomatic Corps, dated November 26th, 1932 (document No. 157). 3. Note from the Ethiopian Government, dated March 21st, 1933 (document No. 99).
The Ethiopian Government having finally agreed that an endeavour should be made to execute within six months the numerous sentences of the Special Court which had been left in suspense and that a Mixed Commission should be set up to compile a mixed code of civil procedure, the abstention of all the foreign Missions, which had lasted for over a year, came to an end in May 1933. The Mixed Commission met and drew up draft mixed codes of civil and penal procedure. These drafts were approved by the foreign Governments concerned. The Diplomatic Corps also pressed for the constitution of another commission to study the institution of mixed courts in Ethiopia. This second commission was also set up. The labours of both Commissions have dragged on for the last two years without reaching any conclusion, and it is difficult to say whether or when they will ever complete their task. The administration of justice occupies first place among the functions of the State and provides a sure indication of the degree of civilisation and progress achieved by a people. The necessary conclusions can be drawn from the above facts as regards Ethiopia—the only State in which the Diplomatic Corps has been obliged to declare a judicial strike in order to secure the execution of the sentences pronounced by the local courts and induce the Government to agree, in principle, to consider the necessary reforms.
VII. A r r e s t s o f F o r e ig n S u b je c t s a n d P r o t e c t e d P e r s o n s .
In virtue of the last paragraph of Article 7 of the Klobukowski Treaty, the Ethiopian police ave the right to arrest foreign subjects or protected persons charged with an offence, but are ot)nged to notify their consul immediately and hand the offender over to him. This clause of the Treaty, too, is violated by the Ethiopian police. We need only mention a lew of the more recent cases. On June 4th, 1932, the Ethiopian police arrested a Dodecanesan, an Italian subject, Emanuele agginikitas, on a charge of unlawfully carrying arms, but failed to notify the consul. Hagginikitas — 14 — was kept in prison for twenty-four hours. No satisfaction could be obtained in respect of tV arbitrary arrest, because the police simply denied the fact. 5 In 1933, the Ethiopian authorities imprisoned no fewer than fourteen Itahan colonial subi who had committed no offence. ^ cts On the intervention of the Italian Legation at Addis Ababa, four of these were releas H Several months’ negotiations were required to secure the release of the others, because the Ethion' Government, when it runs short of arguments to justify the acts of its agents, resorts to ° original device. It claims that the persons arrested are Ethiopian subjects, and according refuses, not only to hand them over, but even to give any explanations regarding the arrests and the reasons for which they were made. At about the same time, Fitaurari Mezlekia arrested nine more Italian colonial subjects in Ogaden. Two of these, Sheikh Isaak Egalle and Shire Egalle, of the Averghedir, do not appear to have been released even yet. The others were only able to obtain their liberty by signing a declaration that their goods had been restored to them, which was untrue. The Ethiopian Govern ment has adopted the system of disputing that not only the Italian Somalis, but also the French and British Somalis, residing in Ogaden and other parts of Ethiopia are foreign subjects; it thus deprives the consuls of practical jurisdiction over many of their subjects, who are exposed to raids and depredations without the consular authorities’ being able to intervene. For example, at the end of 1931, Ethiopian soldiers under the command of Fitaurari Assaue assaulted Italian Somalis of the Mijurtini tribe, Omar Mahommed Ber Liban Egalle, near Bubi, in Ogaden, and seized 300 camels, 9 taniks of butter, and 50 akals (straw huts). Three persons were wounded, and one woman who had taken to flight died of exhaustion. A child died of starvation as a result of the sack of the encampment. The damage done amounted to about 80,000 lire. We attach a copy of a note, dated September 14th, 1932, No. 570-425 (document No. 83), in which the Italian Legation at Addis Ababa claimed compensation for the damage suffered by our subjects. This note has so jar had no effect. Similar damage was done to Italian Somalis at Ballei (Ginyer). In March 1928, they were raided three times by a band of armed Abyssinians. Energetic representations made by the Italian agent at Magalo to the local authorities induced them to agree to pay an indemnity to the persons who had been raided, but the Governor of the district vetoed the payment. The raiders, being sure of immunity, repeated their exploit on August 26th, 1931, inflicting on the Italian Somalis further damage amounting to 1,956 thalers. The intervention of the Royal Italian Legation at Addis Ababa again had no result. On August 20th, 1932, the Hungarian citizen Bela Hegl, an Italian protected person, had a dispute at Magalo station with the native porters regarding the amount of pay due to them, They appealed to the danya, or Abyssinian judge, who pronounced a decision. Hegl, as an Italian protected person, refused to accept this decision, which he regarded as ultra vires. Without further ado, the danya ordered his agents to arrest Hegl. They assaulted him and brutally kicked and beat him, reducing him to a pitiable state. Hegl having complained to the Italian Legation, the clerk of the consulate was sent to the spot to ascertain the facts. In connection with these incidents, three notes, copies of which are attached, were exchanged between the Italian Legation and the Ethiopian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. From these notes it will be seen that the Ethiopian Government refused to punish, even by administrative action, the Ethiopian policemen responsible for ill-treating Hegl. In May 1934, nine Italian Somalis, who followed the calling, very common in that district, of hunting leopards, in order to dress the skins, went for that purpose to the district in front of the Italian post at Walwal. They were arrested by armed Abyssinians at Gerubis, and sent to prison at Degabur, after all their property had been confiscated. There they remained for eight months, suffering ill-treatment of every kind and being subjected to continual pressure to renounce their status of Italian subjects and adopt Ethiopian nationality, which they energetically refused to do. Later they were transferred to Jijiga prison, where they fell ill and suffered the severest privations. After nearly a year’s imprisonment, in April 1935, as a result of the energetic efforts made in the previous six months by the Italian Consul at Harrar, they were released, with the exception of one who had died in prison. Owing to the cruel treatment they had suffered, and to hunger and exhaustion, two of them were in such a condition that they could not leave Jijiga on their release. Five of the other six had to be admitted to hospital in Harrar. The Ethiopian Government has never stated the reasons for their arrest, nor has it so far consented to indemnify them for the damage done to their health and property. A Somali, an Italian subject, Emanuele Giama, who had returned to Somaliland, sent for his family, consisting of his wife and two daughters, to join him in April of the present year. Ihe members of Giama’s family, although in possession of the proper travelling-papers from the Roya Italian Legation, were arrested by the Ethiopian authorities at Diredawa. The Italian Legation had to make the most energetic protests to secure their release, and not until the following m°n were they allowed to continue their journey. VIII. E x pu l sio n s .
As already stated, the last paragraph of Article 7 of the Klobukowski Treaty authorises the Ethiopian police to arrest foreigners charged with crimes or offences, but at the same time requires them to notify the consuls concerned immediately and to hand the offenders over to them. Until 1933. this article of the Treaty had been construed as meaning that foreigners could not be expelled from Ethiopian territory without the intervention and consent of the consul to whom the person to be expelled was amenable. This interpretation, sanctioned b y constant usage, has recently been disputed by the Ethiopian Government. In the year mentioned, that Government unilaterally expelled a number of foreign subjects. To the remonstrance of the Diplomatic Corps, it replied that no treaty obliged it to abandon its right to maintain order in the territory under its sovereignty and that the State was the sole judge of the requirements of public order. Although the Ethiopian Government’s right to expel undesirable foreigners from its territory is not disputed in principle, the procedure adopted by it violates the provisions of the Klobukowski Treaty. Under that Treaty, if the Ethiopian police even arrest a person who is to be expelled, they must hand him over to the consul. Thus, from the formal standpoint, an agreement between the Ethiopian authorities and the consulates concerned is essential before a person to be expelled can be arrested and conducted to the frontier. But even this compromise, based on the treaties in force, has been rejected by the Ethiopian Government, which has in numerous cases expelled foreigners without previous consultation and by means of its own officers.
E. CONCLUSION.
It is thus clear that, despite her membership of the League of Nations, which requires the scrupulous observance of existing treaties and of the principles of international law, Ethiopia has systematically violated the treaties she has signed and has shown that she does not possess that degree of internal organisation which is indispensable to a member of the community of civilised nations.
II. ACTS AGAINST THE SECURITY OF THE ITALIAN COLONIES AND AGAINST THE ITALIANS IN ETHIOPIA.
SUMMARY.
Eth io pia n Attempts to commit Acts of Aggression against the Italian Colonies while Italy was engaged
i n t h e L i b y a n a n d E u r o p e a n W a r s . 1. Affronts to Italian Diplomatic and Consular Representatives. 2. Acts directed against Italian lives, property and interests. 3. Raids, aggressions and attempts at invasion. Conclusion.
ETHIOPIAN ATTEMPTS TO COMMIT ACTS OF AGGRESSION AGAINST THE ITALIAN COLONIES WHILE ITALY WAS ENGAGED IN THE LIBYAN AND EUROPEAN WARS.
The systematic disregard of the obligations assumed by Ethiopia under her agreements with Italy is only one aspect of her policy of availing herself of every propitious opportunity to undermine the security of the Italian colonies. The facts which prove this attitude are of various kinds and descriptions, but taken together they reveal the constant aggressiveness of Ethiopia’s policy in respect of Italy. Mention should be made in the first place of the serious and repeated attempts by Ethiopia |° act in force against the Italian territories. These attempts were made mainly whenever Italy found herself in delicate situations of policy—i.e., whenever, being occupied in other directions, she seemed to be less able to parry Ethiopian aggression.
Ethiopian Preparations to attack Italy while she was engaged in the Libyan War. During the Libyan campaign, active propaganda w'as conducted in Addis Ababa to demon strate the desirability of attacking Eritrea while Italy had her hands full in North Africa. n this campaign of propaganda, the Ethiopian Government employed insulting tracts, articles ^verses (cf. document No. 2) directed against Italy, also making use of exiles from the colony ® Eritrea to such good effect that in March-April 1914 Negus Wolde Giorgis, Governor of °ndar, with a force of more than 50,000 men, advanced into Tigre right up to the Eritrean — i 6 — frontier. There were practically no troops in the colony. The Italian Government found > obliged, in face of the threatening advance of the Negus, who was neither recalled nor disayV^ by the central authorities, to despatch troops from the home country to Eritrea and brins- Eritrean battalions back from Libya. Not only were the military consequences of this ner ^ very unfavourable to the course of the Libyan campaign, but the colony of Eritrea, under rï? threat of invasion, experienced a grave economic crisis, the effects of which were felt for a long time
Ethiopian Preparations for Attack on the Eve of Italian Participation in the European War.
Subsequently, after the European war had broken out, in the difficult period during which Italy was preparing to intervene (February 1915), there occurred another serious military threat to Eritrea. Negus Michael, father of Lijj Yasu, was preparing a plan of attack, having gathered together three bodies of troops numbering in all about 150,000 men. At the same time, intense anti-Italian propaganda was being carried on, even among the native populations of our colonies In order to meet this menace, Italy had to take exceptional military measures to protect Eritrea and had to maintain a considerable body of troops in that colony right through the war. This situation was highly injurious to Italy: deprived of Eritrean troops, practically the whole of Libya had to be evacuated except for the coastal garrisons ; the East-African colonies had to be maintained in a permanent state of defence, in order to meet a possible Ethiopian attack; and finally, Italy, having her colonial forces thus immobilised for the defence of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, was unable to take part in the Allies’ colonial operations in Africa and in Asia a fact which had disastrous political consequences for Italy in the post-war settlement of the colonial question. Of the threatening actions of Ethiopia during the European war, particular mention should be made of the Islamic agitation conducted by Lijj Yasu in 1916. This agitation, having worked up the Somali population into a state of excitement, led, in Italian Somaliland, to the sanguinary episode at Balo-Burti, in which one Italian officer and a number of non-commissioned officers and men from the home country lost their lives. The perpetrators of this attack took refuge in Ethiopian territory, where they were welcomed.
Ethiopian Protection accorded to Rebels against Italy and England.
Simultaneously, this same Lijj Yasu was openly supporting the Mullah, who was in rebellion against Italy and England, with arms, ammunition and moral encouragement. When, moreover, in the immediate post-war period, in 1920, the Mullah was forced by the British military expedition to quit the territory of Somaliland, the Ethiopian Government made no difficulty about allowing him and his horde to settle in Ethiopian territory near the frontiers of Italian Somaliland. The Italian Government was thus once more obliged to take military precautions for the defence of the colony. In 1925-26, during police operations in Northern Italian Somaliland, the Ethiopian Government did not confine its action to welcoming the rebel columns to its territory, allowing them to establish bases in Ethiopian territory, from which they conducted raids and expeditions into Italian territory; it even assisted the rebels by providing them with arms and ammunition, and granted both lands and pensions to the leaders of the revolt. It was owing to this attitude of the Ethiopian Government, and to the aid furnished to the rebels in Ethiopian territory, that the Italian military operations in Northern Somaliland lasted for about three years, making considerable military and financial demands upon Italy. These Ethiopian military threats and aggressions carried out in force against the Italian colonies are a principal cause of the constant state of insecurity created by Ethiopia in respect of the Italian possessions and their inhabitants. But a long list of other facts confirm the hostile intentions of the Addis Ababa Government, and also clearly prove the state of anarchy prevalent in Ethiopian territory and the powerlessness of the Ethiopian Government to control certain outlying districts situated along the frontiers of the Italian colonies. We give a list of these facts — a list which is by no means exhaustive, but merely relates the most serious and significant occurrences—from 1923, the year in which Ethiopia was admitted to membership of the League of Nations. For the sake of greater clearness, we divide them into three separate main groups : (a) Attacks on Italian diplomatic and consular representatives; (b) Acts against Italian lives, property and interests; (c) Raids, aggressions and attempts at invasion.
1. A f f r o n t s t o I t a l ia n D ip l o m a t ic a n d C o n s u l a r R epresentatives .
The first group consists of attacks on and affronts offered to Italian diplomatic and consulat representatives in Ethiopian territory. These attacks and insults suffice to demonstrate the wav in which the Ethiopian authorities interpret their obligations towards foreign representatives an their particular attitude towards Italy. Though limiting the list, as we have said, to the main incidents which have o ccu rred since 1923, we cannot, in the first place, fail to mention the very serious incident that occurred in 191 within the very precincts of the Italian Legation in Addis Ababa. — 17 —
M ,4/tocÆ on the Italian Legation in Addis Ababa (1916). — During a period of xenophobia roduced in Addis Ababa by the policy of Lijj Yasu, armed Ethiopians entered the precincts of the Royal L egation, and, taking up position around the Minister’s residence, fired at the windows of the Legation drawing-room. The Italian Minister appeared on the balcony, a n d they also fired at him, but he was unhurt. Notwithstanding its promises, the Ethiopian Government never succeeded in identifying or punishing the offenders (document No. 3).
(2) Thefts from and Attacks upon Italian Representatives in Ethiopia in May IÇ28. — May 25th, 2g __ On the night of May 25th, 1928, some persons unknown penetrated into the precincts of the Italian Consulate at Gondar, after forcing a window, and stole some arms. The Italian Consul immediately demanded of Ras Gugsa Olye that the offenders should be punished, but the Ras took no action in the matter, and in fact, in July, a whole series of thefts and attacks were again committed against the agency without the local authorities’ taking any steps to trace and punish the offenders. May 20th, 1928. — Postal couriers of the Italian Agency at Adowa proceeding to Dessieh were attacked shortly after they had passed Kworam by eight armed men who opened the mail-bags, tore up part of the correspondence, and robbed the couriers of the money in their possession. As a result of energetic protests by the head of our agency, monetary compensation was granted and steps were taken to trace the offenders, but, of course, they were never discovered (see documents Nos. 21 and 22).
(3) Arrest for Five Days of Comm. Porta, Counsellor of the Italian Legation, and the German Minister, Herr Prufer, and their Wives, on the Orders of one of Ras Gugsa’s Sub-chiefs (January 1929). — Comm. Porta and Signora Porta, and Herr and Frau Prufer, proceeding to Om Hager and in due possession of a laissez-passer signed by the Negus, had reached Kworatas without incident when they were suddenly arrested by one of Ras Gugsa Olye’s sub-chiefs, who kept them under arrest at Kworatas for five days, refusing to allow them to proceed because they were not in possession of a passport visaed by the Ras, as if such a document were of greater importance than one signed by the Negus himself. Notwithstanding the prompt and energetic action of the Italian Consul at Gondar, the travellers were only able to continue their journey after having spent five days in prison. This shows that the state of anarchy in the country, when the Negus’s owrn authority is denied by a minor chief, has reached such a point that foreign diplomatists can be kept in custody by an unimportant local chief.
(4) Attack on Couriers at Buya (Tsellemti) by Armed Ethiopians (December 4th, 1929). —• On December 4th, 1929, some postal couriers of ours, proceeding from Gondar to Adowa, were attacked at Buya (Tsellemti) by nine Ethiopians, five of whom were armed, and were robbed of their personal possessions. The aggressors first seized the mails, but subsequently gave them back to the couriers, who had been kept prisoners for twenty-four hours. When setting the couriers at liberty, the aggressors made them swear that they would not speak of the occurrence (document No. 30).
(5) Attack by Armed Ethiopians on our Askaris near the Italian Consulate at Gondar : Firing on the Native Levies and Camp of the Gondar Consulate (January 26th, 1930). — On the evening of January 26th, 1930, a band of about fifteen armed Ethiopians opened fire, with intent to rob, on certain askaris returning from Libya, who, while waiting to proceed to their homes, were accommodated in a tukul near the camp of the Italian Consulate at Gondar. The askari Mulune Jember was wounded ; and clothes, two hundred and twenty thalers and a few documents were stolen by the Ethiopians. Some native levies of the consulate came up, whereupon the aggressors withdrew, after firing a large number of shots at these men and the camp, fortunately without result. The consul immediately informed Ras Gugsa Olye of the occurrence, and requested that energetic action should be taken. All he got was apologies, and no attempt was made to find or punish the offenders (see document No. 32).
(6) Armed Invasion of the Italian Consulate at Harrar (May 13th, 1930) — Violation of the Precincts of the Consulate and the Private Residence of the Consul by Fifteen “ Zabagnas ” led by a Chief. — On May 15th, 1930, the Italian Consul at Harrar received from the chief of the quarter of Adere-Tiko, in which the consulate is situated, a letter worded as follows:
“ To the Italian Consul, Harrar. — Your askaris Gabremicael and Baccala have been found guilty, and the Fitaurari has ordered their imprisonment, and I inform you of this in order that they shall not escape and that you keep them in safe custody (8 Gheubot 1922).’’
In spite of the error of procedure and the discourtesy, the consul confined the two askaris 0 the consulate pending a proper statement of the case. “ v°n t*le following day, however, at 8 p.m., in the momentary absence of the consul, fifteen zabagnas ” under the orders of a chief came to the door of the consulate and demanded admission !n 0r(^er to arrest the two askaris. The picket on duty said that he could not allow the “ zabagnas ” 0 enter in the absence of the consul ; he was pushed out of the way by the Ethiopians, who entered the garden, penetrated into the consul’s house and even entered the room in which the c°nsul's wife was. The consul’s wife, alarmed and terror-stricken, asked them to leave, but, in face of th > refusal, was obliged to call for help. The servants ran in and engaged in a fierce strusri?] • the intruders. After the whole consulate guard had entered into action, the " zabaem- " W finally expelled. Were As soon as he returned to the consulate, the consul conducted a rapid enquiry and th went to Fitaurari Gabre Mariam and demanded : ' ’ en
(1) The discovery and punishment of the offenders and of those responsible ■ (2) A salute to the Italian flag; (3) Formal apologies and assurances for the future.
As a result of the energetic insistence of the consul, the Fitaurari, who had in the first place procrastinated, complied in a few days with the second and third demands only, merely promising as regards the first, that the guilty parties should be punished. The Italian Minister drew the attention of the central Government at Addis Ababa to this serious incident (see docum ents Nos. 33, 34 and 35). (7) Armed Attack on the Royal Italian Consulate at Dessieh (November 1931). — Following on a trivial dispute at Dessieh between native soldiers of the Italian Consulate and askaris belonging to Fitaurari Haile Mariam, the latter, to the number of about sixty, many of whom were armed, entered the precincts of the consulate and wounded one of our men. The speedy interven tion of the consul prevented the incident from becoming more serious (see document No. 71).
(8) Murder of a Courier of the Italian Consulate at Go7idar (December 27th, 1932). On December 27th, 1932, a courier of the Italian Consulate at Gondar was attacked by armed Ethio pians. In defending the mail-bag, he received numerous knife-wounds in the hand. A few days later he died from an infection caused by these wounds. The Italian Consulates at Adowa and Gondar protested to the local authorities, and obtained the usual promises that led to nothing (see docum ent No. 89). (9) The Robbery of Caravans and Couriers of the Italian Consulate at Gondar (June-July 1932). — Towards the end of June, one of our caravans, consisting of Eritrean subjects, which had left the Italian Consulate at Gondar for Eritrea, was attacked on the journey by a group of armed Ethiopians, who wounded one Eritrean subject and maltreated the others. Subsequently, in the early days of July, our postal couriers proceeding from the Italian Consulate at Gondar to the Italian Consulate in Debra Markos were attacked and robbed of their clothes, the whole of the correspondence, including highly confidential documents addressed to the Italian Legation at Addis Ababa, and several packets of medicines. On instructions from the Italian Ministry, the Italian Chargé d’Affaires addressed to the Ethiopian Government a formal and energetic note of protest, demanding that prompt measures should be taken to discover and punish the guilty parties and to secure the restitution of the stolen objects. At the same time, he made express reservations regarding the damage suffered, for which the Italian Government claimed compensation from the Ethiopian Government as being responsible at international law for the frequent occurrence of such brigandage. The Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs assured him that the note had been submitted to the Emperor, who had instructed Ras Kasa and Dedjatch Aialeu to take immediate steps to arrest and punish the thieves and ensure protection against brigandage on the highways. These orders led to no result ; in fact, the number of outrages continued to increase (see documents Nos. 78 and 79). (10) Assault by the Harrar Police Authorities on the Staff of the Italian Consulate and Certain Somali Subjects of Italy (March 1933). — Towards the end of February 1933, the Harrar Chief of Police had four of our subjects arrested, put in chains and beaten, with a view to compelling them to renounce Italian citizenship. On the same day, an askari in the uniform of the Italian Consulate was arrested, taken before the Chief of Police, beaten, and stripped of his badges. On March 2nd, again at Harrar, the Italian subject Yasin Yusuf, attached to the Italian Consulate as agent for native affairs, was arrested. In view of this succession of serious arbitrary acts against our subjects, the Italian Consul demanded due reparation. His request having met with no success, the Itahan Minister at Addis Ababa addressed a note of protest to the Ethiopian Government, reiterating the demands of the Italian Consul at Harrar. After about twenty days, he got the Ethiopian Government to promise:
(1) That the prisoners should be set free and be handed over to the Italian Consul; (2) That an official appointed by the Emperor should be sent to Harrar to c o n d u c t an enquiry into the case of the askari, because the Ethiopian Government maintained that no such case had occurred.
If the incident were confirmed by the evidence, the Ethiopian authorities would express their regrets. Nevertheless, the Ethiopian Government again showed its bad faith. In spite 01 formal promises, our arrested subjects had not been set at liberty by the end of March. On the contrary, others of our subjects in Harrar had been arrested. The Italian Minister in Addis Ababa renewed his demands, and the Ethiopian Minister tor Foreign Affairs, after taking refuge behind childish excuses, repeated the usual promises. 1 9 —
Finally, at the beginning of April, two of our subjects were set at liberty, and the Minister
f o r Foreign Affairs assured the Italian Minister that the others would be set free at the earliest ossible moment. On April ioth another was liberated, but he had been compelled to renounce L status of Italian subject. Seeing that the situation was practically unchanged, the Italian Minister presented a further note of protest. The release of the remainder of the prisoners was only secured on August 8th (see documents Nos. 96, 98, 101, 103 and 110).
(1 1 ) Confiscation of a Caravan of the Italian Consulate at Gondar (March 1933). At the
b e g i n n i n g of March, M. Polizzotto, chief clerk of the Italian Consulate at Gondar, who was going from Eritrea to Gondar with a small caravan, was stopped by Ethiopian Customs officials just
b e y o n d the Setit. These officials confiscated wireless apparatus and numerous articles belonging to the caravan, allowing Polizzotto to continue his journey with only his food-supplies and camping
m a t e r i a l . As a result of representations by the Italian Minister at Addis Ababa to the Ethiopian
G overnm ent, the confiscated articles were finally returned. The caravan was thus held up for s e v e r a l days on its journey (see document No. 97).
(12) Incident affecting Native Levies belonging to the Italian Considate at Adowa (April 20th, I933)- — 0n APril 2°th, 1933, native levies attached to the Italian Consulate at Adowa, who had gone in the prescribed dress to the market-place at Adowa to buy food, were ordered by the head merchant, Kanyazmatch Michael Dedjatch Mashasha, never to come again to the market in uniform, because if they did they would be driven away. The Italian Consul took this matter up with the local authorities, and the Italian Minister at Addis Ababa, having been advised of the incident by telegram, informed the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs of the matter and pointed out its anti-Italian significance. He obtained the usual evasive answer—namely, that a reply would be given as soon as information had been received from Adowa, the Ethiopian Government having absolutely no knowledge of the occurrence (see document No. 112).
(13) Arrest of Three Couriers of the Italian Consulate at Adowa (December ioth, 1933). — On December ioth, 1933, Aksum Nebraid Aregawi had three couriers of the Italian Consulate at Adowa arrested at Malmen. These couriers, who had their papers quite in order, were taking mail-bags to Gondar. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa immediately lodged a strong protest with the Ethiopian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, demanding the prompt release of the arrested persons and the severe punishment of those responsible. After thirty-six hours, the couriers were finally set free (see documents Nos. 133 and 134).
(14) Assault and W ounding of a Native Soldier of the Escort of the Caravan of the Italian Considate at Gondar by Armed Ethiopians (March 31st, 1934). — On March 31st, 1934, while the caravan of the Italian Consulate at Gondar was coming down the Takazze, one of the members of the escort, who had fallen back to rearrange some baggage, was suddenly attacked and wounded by about fifteen armed Ethiopians. The other members of the escort came to the assistance of their comrade, and the aggressors succeeded in escaping under cover of the dark (see document No. 143).
(15) Attack on the Italian Consulate at Gondar (November 4th, 1934). — On the evening of November 4th, 1934, the Italian Consulate at Gondar was suddenly fired upon by numerous assailants. One askari was killed ; two were wounded, as was also the wife of one of these. Numerous shots were fired at the Italian Consul and his wife, who had come upon the scene when the firing began. The consular guard succeeded in driving back the attackers, and the Italian Consul was able to identify some of them who were members of the local police. The attack was directed by the slave-trader Belai, head of the municipal police. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa immediately made strong representations to the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs, demanding that urgent steps be taken. Aleca Sereke Brahane, a town-quarter chief at Gondar, who had been present at the incident, made a declaration in the presence of witnesses fully confirming the consular report. In the light of such subsequent confirmation, the Italian Minister made a formal protest to the Ethiopian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, requesting the prompt and rigorous punishment of the offenders, compensation for the victims, and full and formal apologies. He received the usual promises and was asked for fuller particulars, all this being obviously procrastination. On November 15th, the Italian Minister received the reply from the Ethiopian Government. It stated that the accused had been arrested and deprived of office, but not that they would be brought before the courts of justice, as had been demanded. The Ethiopian Government promised to pay compensation to the victims and announced that an enquiry would shortly be instituted. In the matter of apologies, it only complied to a very slight degree with our request : apologies were made to the Italian Consul at Gondar, but not in the form prescribed by international usage. In view of the incomplete fulfilment of his demands, the Italian Minister formulated the most express reservations. Finally, on November 25th, he obtained entire compliance with our demand. Nevertheless, on April 23rd, 1935, the attackers of the Italian Consulate, who had at first been kept ln custody, were for some inexplicable reason set free, and returned to Gondar. On hearing this, the Italian Minister protested to the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs. Ihe latter, expressing great surprise, said that he had absolutely no knowledge of the fact and asked, as usual, to be allowed time to make enquiries. — 2 0 —
The liberation, without any trial, of the persons responsible for the attack on the It r Consulate was an obvious violation of the agreements concluded between the two Governm 'T concerned for the settlement of such incidents—namely, the Klobukowski Treaty. The accu 1 ought to have been tried before a special tribunal for various crimes on miscellaneous counts The Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs replied to a further note of protest from the Ital' Minister with the absurd story that the accused had escaped from prison. Later, when it had bee”1 clearly proved that the accused had been liberated with the full consent of the Ethiopian authorities he replied in an evasive m anner (see documents Nos. 153, 154, 155, 156, 186, 198, 214).
(16) Attack on an Askari of the Italian Legation by Ethiopian Officials. — On December 2nd 1934, when the train of the Franco-Ethiopian Railway was in the station at Dawanleh, Ethiopian Customs officers called upon an askari of the Italian Legation in uniform to hand over 30 thalers he had in his possession. The askari replied that, if necessary, he would hand over the sum to the chief. The only reply of the Ethiopian officials, eight or ten in number, was to throw themselves upon the askari and seize his money with the utmost violence, striking him with their fists and the butts of their rifles, depriving him of his revolver and tore his uniform. The askari was bruised in several places. It should be noted : (a) That the askari of the Italian Legation was well known to the aggressors ; (b) That he was in uniform ; (c) That the Ethiopian officials knew that the Italian Minister was travelling on the same train ; (d) That the only object returned to the askari was his revolver, the 30 thalers, for some mysterious reason, being confiscated (see document No. 158).
(17) Stoppage of Couriers and Postal Caravans and Arrest of our Subjects (January-February 1935). — In January-February 1935, the Ethiopian authorities committed a number of abusive and arbitrary acts which impeded the regular working of the Italian post-offices in Ethiopia. Messengers of the Italian Consulate at Magalo were arrested ; one of our caravans carrying mail for Magalo was stopped ; another commercial postal caravan coming from Magalo was stopped at Lanuvashilindi and four askaris of the escort were arrested (see documents Nos. 164, 165).
(18) Anti-Italian Attitude of the Ethiopian Authorities in Gondar (March 1935). — On March 30th, while the wife of the Italian Consul at Gondar and two officials of the consulate were proceeding to the town market, some soldiers of the Kentiba (prefect), with unqualifiable impudence, forbade them to continue on their way, as “ Italians were not allowed to walk about freely in the town of Gondar The consul sent in a written protest to the prefect (see document No. 175).
(19) Insults offered to the Italian Consul at Adowa, in Aksum (April 1935). — When the Italian Consul in Adowa proceeded to Aksum this year, he was received in a hostile manner by Dedjatch Maru, the district chief. The Dedjatch did not merely refrain from showing the courtesy consecrated by long usage, but made difficulties about the consul’s camping-ground, notwith standing the fact that it had been designated by Ras Seyyum. The Dedjatch, without thanking the soldier who, according to custom, brought a message of greeting from the consul, asked this man whether the consul himself had permission to come to Aksum. Not until three hours had passed did he send a messenger to return the c o n s u l’s greetings. Moreover, to the Buluk Bashi who had come to him to fix the consul’s camp-site before the consul’s arrival, he said that, whereas in the past century hands and feet had been out off, this time eyes would be put out. The Italian Minister drew the Ethiopian Government’s most serious attention to the provo cative and hostile attitude of Dedjatch Maru, wThich was, he said, indicative of the feelings that had been stirred up among the Ethiopian population, this episode being only one of many (see documents Nos. 182, 183).
(20) Arrest and Maltreatment of Native Soldiers of the Italian Consulate in Debra Markos (February-May 1935). — On the morning of February 28th, some “ zabagnas ” (soldiers) proceeded to the house of a consular guard of the Italian Consulate at Debra Markos and placed him under arrest without any explanation. On the same day, the Town Council sent to the office of the consulate a letter asking the head guard to come to the Kentiba to receive a communication. The Italian Consul went to the town hall to protest against the arbitrary arrest of the guard and to accompany the head guard. Notwithstanding the consul’s protests, the Ethiopian authorities detained the latter on the absurd and untenable accusation that he had not returned a rifle given to him by Ras Hailu sixteen years before. It should be noted that in 1934 a similar charge had been dealt with, the proceedings ending in the acquittal of the head guard. Ras Imru, to whom the consul went to protest, brought forward fresh pretexts and remained intractable; the two arrested persons were imprisoned and put in chains. The Italian Minister in Addis Ababa made a formal protest to the Ethiopian Governmen ■ — 2 1 —
On March 6th, the two men were set free, after having been subjected to violence and beating +h a view to extracting information. "n Furthermore, on the same day, some workmen of the Italian Consulate were arrested, and chnrtlv afterwards an old ex-askari who was alleged to have expressed his admiration for Italy i s severely beaten. On March 14th, Government guards posted before the gate of the Italian dispensary prevented all patients from entering and beat them with sticks. a The Italian Minister and the Italian Consul again protested to the Ethiopian Government and to Ras Imru. On April 18th, fifteen workmen of the Italian Consulate were arrested and forced to work on the building of the Debra Markos-Dejen road. As a result of the consul’s protest, they were released on the following day. On April 26th, a number of armed “ zabagnas ” surrounded the consulate, while others posted before the gates of the dispensary arrested all outcoming patients. At the beginning of May, the consulate caravan which had arrived from Addis Ababa was, for some mysterious reason, held up in the Customs for four days. About the same time, a sub-chief of Gondar went to the quarry from which, for seven years, the consulate had, w ith the consent of the Ras, been obtaining building material, and by th re a ts and cries endeavoured to intimidate the workmen into stopping work. The consul, who was present, caused the work to continue; the sub-chief, now addressing his threats to th e consul direct, sent for some “ zabagnas” to arrest the workmen. The “zabagnas”, frightened by the c o n su l’s resolute attitude, did not dare to carry out this order. Nevertheless, the Ras sent a note to the consul telling him to abandon the quarry and praising the action of the sub-chief, the author of the arrests and other arbitrary acts quoted above. Forty-five other employees were arrested. Moreover, the same Ras Imru refused to return a case of wireless apparatus belonging to the consul, which had fallen into the Abbai. The Italian Minister in Addis Ababa renewed his protests to the Ethiopian Government. He obtained the usual vague statements and promises. At the beginning of June, however, Ras Imru made the Town Council request the Italian Consul to furnish a complete list of the regular guards and workmen of the consulate as from September 1st, 1934, these were obliged to pay a monthly tax of a quarter of a thaler. The Ras did not, however, trouble to explain on what grounds this tax was levied. This difficult situation in Debra Markos is still unchanged (see documents Nos. 166, 173, 180, 181, 185, 187, 197, 200).
(21) Attack on and Robbery of Couriers of the Italian Post-offices in Ethiopia (March-May 1935). — On March 8th, 1935, certain couriers of the Italian Consulate at Adowa, on their way to Gondar, were attacked at Mudi-Bado by ten Ethiopians. The mail-bags were seized and part of the mail was destroyed. The aggressors severely beat two of the couriers. On May 12th, soldiers of Ras Kasa stopped some couriers who were returning from Adowa with the mail and arrested them. Only after the energetic intervention of the Italian Consul in Gondar was the mail restored and the prisoners set free. At the end of May, the chief of the Ethiopian Customs at Dawanleh told Comm. Bazzani, the Italian official who was accompanying the courier of the Legation at Addis Ababa, that he had been ordered by the Ethiopian Consulate at Jibuti to stop the courier and send him back, although he was in possession of all the necessary papers in due form. After various difficulties, and solely on the strength of Comm. Bazzani’s personal guarantee, the courier was allowed to proceed. The Italian Minister protested to the Ethiopian Government, drawing its most serious attention to these incidents (see docum ents Nos. 167, 195). (22) Holding-up of the Italian Consul at Adowa (June 2nd, 1935). — On June 2nd, 1935, the Italian Consul at Adowa, after crossing the Alaji Pass, was held up by the head of the Customs authorities there, who said that he could not allow the caravan to pass without authorisation. An agent of Dedjatch Haile Selassie, who was travelling with the consul, returned to Alaji, "here he endeavoured, without effect, to make his authority felt in the name of the Dedjatch. The Italian Consul retraced his steps, but was received in the most insulting and contemptuous manner, so that a non-commissioned officer of the escort was obliged to proceed to physical measures. Notwithstanding reiterated protests, the Customs official insisted on arresting the non-commis sioned officer, giving the order for arrest in the name of the Negus and in a deliberately provocative tone of voice. Two of his men loaded their rifles. Finally, after the arrival on the scene of the commander of the Alaji post, the caravan was aWe to proceed. This incident formed the subject of an exchange of notes between the Italian Minister at Addis Ababa and the Ethiopian Government. The matter has not yet received any practical settlement (see documents Nos. 210, 211). I (23) Insults offered to the Italian Consul at Harrar (July 6th, 1935). — On the morning of 6th, 1935, the Italian Consul at Harrar was proceeding by motor-car to Diredawa with the c 'ef clerk of the consulate, the interpreters and an askari, when he came up with a column consisting of about ten horses being led by Ethiopian regulars of the Harrar garrison. Although e car was proceeding at walking pace, he was told, with insulting expressions, to stop. — 2 2 —
In view of the narrowness of the road (about ten metres), the consul, in order to avoid th slightest incident, was driving very slowly. e The motor-car was then surrounded by the armed Ethiopians, who assumed a violent! : aggressive attitude. • A mounted officer, bringing his horse up to the car, violently seized the chief clerk bv th arm, threatening him. " e As the motor-car was precisely opposite the headquarters of the Belgian Military Mission the consul went to protest energetically to the Commanding Officer. The latter promised that the offenders should be punished. In the afternoon of the same day, an askari of the Italian Consulate, when proceeding to the post-office, was suddenly surrounded and attacked with stones and sticks by about twentv Ethiopians, including several “ zabagnas ” and soldiers in uniform. The askari was seriously bruised in many places. The consul went to protest and demand due reparation from the Governor of Harrar.
(24) Holding-up of the First Secretary of the Italian Legation (July 28th, 1935). Qn July 28th, 1935, at Bishoftu, in the immediate neighbourhood of Addis Ababa, the First Secretary of the Italian Legation, M. Mombelli, was returning from a walk and was about to enter his hotel when he was stopped by an Abyssinian chief, one Kanyazmatch Aile, who, accompanied by numerous armed men, had put himself across his path. Although M. Mombelli explained that he was a diplomatist, and although he was accompanied by an escort of the Royal Italian Legation in uniform, the armed men, relying on their numbers, surrounded the askari, and the Kanyazmatch confiscated the First Secretary’s sporting gun. M. Mombelli energetically demanded that his gun should be restored, and warned the Kanyaz match that he would immediately inform the Ethiopian Government and protest at this unusual treatment. But Kanyazmatch Aile persisted in his insolent attitude and refused to give way. As the result of a fresh and strongly-worded demand by M. Mombelli in writing, on the morning of the following day, at 9 a.m., the Kanyazmatch gave in and decided to return the confiscated gun to its owner. The Itahan Minister at Addis Ababa duly brought this incident to the notice of the Ethiopian Government, with an energetic protest and demand that proceedings should be taken against the offenders (see document No. 218).
(25) Attack on an Official of the Italian Legation (August 15th, 1935). — On August 15th, 1935, at Diredawa railway-station, an Italian official, M. Mecenate, who was on the platform supervising the loading of the Legation mail—the Italian Vice-Consul at Jibuti being already seated in a compartment of the train—was suddenly attacked and struck on the shoulders and on one foot by an Ethiopian who had stepped out from a group of persons that had for some time been watching the loading of the mail with manifestly hostile glances. Mecenate hit back. A brawl ensued in which he was hit on the head with a stick. In order to avoid dangerous developments of the incident, and in view of the overwhelming number of his assailants, Mecenate got into his compartment. He had a wound several centimetres long in the right frontoparietal region. The Italian Legation at Addis Ababa has sent in a note of protest, demanding due reparation (see document No. 221).
2. A c t s c o m m it t e d a g a in s t I t a l ia n L iv e s , P r o p e r t y a n d I n t e r e s t s .
Another group of facts that deserve mention are the offences committed in Ethiopian territory against the lives, property and interests of Italian subjects. Not only is no scope allowed for nor any consideration given to Italian economic enterprises in Ethiopian territory—contrary to the stipulations of the Treaty of Political Amity and Economic Collaboration of 1928 and contrary to what might reasonably be expected in view of the peaceful expansion of Italian economic interests—but no security has been provided for Italian subjects either resident in or passing through Ethiopian territory. Italian private citizens have been attacked, assassinated, robbed, arrested and expelled, while in almost every case the guilty parties have been left unmolested.
(1) Sanguinary Attack on Eritrean Notables at Biara (November 1924). — In the first fortnight of November 1924, by agreement between our agent at Adowa and the local chiefs, a deputation of notables from Biara, in our colony, was sent to the district of Shire in order to settle amicably with the Abyssinian chiefs a frontier incident which had occurred some little time previously. The deputation of our notables, having proceeded to the meeting-place, was treacherously attacked near Biara by retainers of the Kunama chief Grazmatch Kasa Kulala, one of our chiefs and one of the escort being killed. It would seem that Ras Gugsa Araya, Governor of Southern Tigre, was not innocent of all responsibility for this bloody incident. On the intervention of our Minister at Addis Ababa, Kasa Kulala was arrested, b u t tne question remained unsettled for about four years, because the Ethiopian Government kept tempo rising in spite of our reiterated demands. Finally, the Italian Government was obliged to accep most unsatisfactory solution of the incident : the guilty party, against whom no proceedings " 6 ever taken, was set free, and the victims were granted a ridiculously small indemnity (see docum en - Nos. 10, 18, 19 and 20). — 23 —
M Attack on a Caravan of yoo Camels belonging to the Said Basrà Company in the Lowlands
n e a r t h e River Awash (May 1929). — A caravan of 700 camels belonging to the Said Basrà Company, while proceeding from Dessieh to Assab, was raided in the lowlands near the River Awash. The goods were abandoned and all the camels were stolen. Three hundred camel-drivers were dispersed I different directions. The Italian Legation protested to the Ethiopian Government, but obtained no compensation for the loss suffered. So serious a raid created a state of panic, and the caravan traffic to Assab practically came to a standstill for a considerable time (see document No. 27). (3) Incidents at Adowa — Restrictions placed on Foreigners (April 1932). — At the beginning of April, Fitaurari Mesfin telephoned to the Italian Consul at Adowa a communication received from Ras Seyyum to the effect that European merchants resident in Adowa must no longer go outside the town. In the face of such an inexplicable decision, the Italian Consul asked that these orders should be repeated in writing. Two days later he received a letter worded as follows: " Europeans in the town go out into the desert country and shoot on the pretext that they are aftergame. In order that no questions may arise with anybody, and in order to avoid the possibility of any unfortunate incident, it will be better for them to stay at home and attend to their business. I should be obliged if you would kindly inform them accordingly.” Such an absurd demand could only be interpreted in one of two ways : either as one of the many manifestations of Ethiopian xenophobia, or, as is clearly admitted in the text of the letter, as a definite confession of the powerlessness of the Government to prevent the extremely frequent acts of brigandage and theft. Notwithstanding the absurdity of this decision, the Itahan Consul communicated the Fitaurari’s letter to the local traders, with the request that they should comply with its provisions until further notice. The Italian Legation at Addis Ababa, informed of the occurrence, telegraphed to the consul at Adowa to point out to the Fitaurari Mesfin the absurdity of his request, and stated that Europeans could never agree to these orders. And yet, a few days later, Fitaurari Mesfin, through the chief of the local police, communicated to all European traders in Adowa an order from the Negus exactly similar to that already communicated to the Italian Consul, adding, furthermore, that Europeans must not remain out of doors after 10 p.m. On the proposal of the Italian Legation, the whole Diplomatic Corps made joint represen tations, upon which the Ethiopian Government assured the Corps that it would telegraph to Adowa to end these restrictions; and Ras Seyyum, to whom a similar protest had been presented, stated that Fitaurari Mesfin had wrongfully exceeded his instructions, which referred only to the protection of crops during the shooting season. Finally, these orders were revoked, after tergiversations and quibblings that were clear evidence of bad faith (see documents Nos. 73, 74, 76, 77). (4) Murder of Cav. Alfredo Peluso (June 9th, 1932). — On the night of June qth, 1932, Cav. Alfredo Peluso, an Italian citizen who had for years been trading in Ethiopia, was treacher ously murdered by persons unknown, at Lumanieh, in the Metsha region in Gojjam, whither he had proceeded on business. As a result of formal representations by the Italian Legation, the Ethiopian Government decided to institute an enquiry in order to determine the responsibility and ensure the capture and punishment of the murderers ; the Italian Legation issued similar instructions to the Italian Consuls at Gondar and Debra Markos. Certain persons were arrested by the Ethiopian authorities, the most seriously implicated being Kanyazmatch Belai, who had travelled with Peluso, with whom he was in business relations and to whom he owed money, and one Gebre Selassie Bezzabeh, who was in Peluso's service. But Gebre Selassie succeeded, on September 1st, in escaping from the premises of the Italian Consulate at Gondar, where he had been kept in custody ; later, Kanyazmatch Belai also made his escape. In view of the insistence of the Italian Legation at Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs, after communicating the first results of his enquiry, instructed the new Governor of Gojjam, Ras Immeru, to continue the investigations in conjunction with the Italian Consul at Debra Markos, and to trace and rearrest Kanyazmatch Belai. The enquiry, however, was seriously hindered by the escape of Gebre Selassie, who was the party most seriously implicated and who was not found. In March 1933, Kanyazmatch Belai, who had taken refuge in one of the convents of Dima Giorgis, was accompanied, according to local custom, by the monks of the convent to Debra Markos, where he was interrogated by Ras Immeru and the Italian Consul, without result. He protested his innocence. Accompanied by the monks, he was sent on to Addis Ababa ; all the documents were sent by Kas Immeru to the central Government for the prosecution of the enquiry. * . Since then, no further action has been taken by the Ethiopian Government in connection with this serious occurrence. (5) Robbing and Attacking of Italian Somali Subjects by Ethiopians — Arbitrary Arrest of Mian Subjects by the Ethiopian Authorities fFebruary-M arch 1933). —- In May 1933, the Minister of the Colonies compiled a list of acts of theft and violence committed against our ^oniali subjects by Ethiopians. This list shows how considerable was the total amount of unage done. The short period of time in which they occurred and their frequency demon- s.?te the state of uncontrolled anarchy (in many cases instigated by the chiefs themselves) 0 taining in the outlying regions of the Ethiopian Empire (see document No. 117). d (6) Attack on a Caravan near the Belesa, and Murder of One of our Muntaz by Ethiopian egulars (March 29th, 1933). — On March 29th, 1933, at 8 a.m., a caravan proceeding from Asmara — 24 — to the Tigre country was attacked and robbed by a group of armed Ethiopians at the place kn as " Ruba Shiru ”, in our territory, near the Belesa. The caravan succeeded in escaping and soi '1° help from a small neighbouring post. A muntaz and three native soldiers came up, but th attackers forded the Belesa and took refuge in Ethiopian territory. The muntaz, however h h noted that the men were Ethiopian regulars, having at their head one Lijj Worres Dedjatch Ha l Mariam, a relative of Dedjatch Liben, chief of two frontier provinces and a confident of Ras Sevyurn' While our men were retiring, the muntaz was mortally wounded by treacherous shots fired > the Ethiopians. The three men immediately replied, wounding one of their adversaries. In accordance with instructions, the Italian Minister at Addis Ababa presented a note to the Ethiopian Government drawing its most serious attention to these incidents and demanding due reparation for the death of the muntaz. These demands led to no practical result (see documente Nos. 102 and 106).
(7) Arbitrary Arrest of Somali Subjects in Ogaden — Hostile Attitude of Fitaurari Meslekia (April-May 1933). — In April and May 1933, in Ogaden, and in particular in the zone near the Italian frontier, frequent raids were carried out by various Ethiopian tribes, resulting in conflicts with the troops garrisoning the region. In the state of anarchy of which this was th e logical development, our subjects were being constantly attacked or maltreated owing to th e hostile influence of Fitaurari Meslekia, head of the Ethiopian troops in Ogaden, of whom m ention has already been made. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa lodged a protest against this state of affairs with the Ethiopian Government ; he obtained no satisfaction. Fitaurari Meslekia, who had, inter alia, threatened to enter our territory on the pretext that raiders had taken refuge there, continued his provocative activities undisturbed (see documents Nos. 118, 121 and 127).
(8) Murder of an Eritrean Subject at Ibni (May 5th, 1933). — On May 5th, 1933, two Eritrean subjects were proceeding peacefully with three donkeys on the other side of the frontier, to purchase grain. On reaching Ibni (Adi Abo), they were attacked by five armed Ethiopians, who bound one of them, while the other took to flight, followed by two of the assailants. The prisoner was set at liberty that same evening, after having been closely searched and been obliged to state exactly who he and his companion were. The latter’s return to his village was awaited in vain ; finally, after long searches, in which the garrison of the small Italian post of Kesad Degadegenni joined, his body was found, shot dead. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa informed the Ethiopian Government of the occurrence, demanding the punishment of the guilty parties and blood-money for the relatives of the victim. In spite of profuse promises, nothing was done (see documents Nos. 132 and 139).
(9) Raids and Attacks on Italian Subjects in the Ogaden-Italian Somaliland Frontier Districts — Provocative and Hostile Attitude of Barambaras Afework (January 22nd to 27th, 1934). — On the evening of January 22nd, 1934, two of our Somali subjects, who had come to the Shaveli district from Warder, were attacked by armed Ethiopians. One of the Somalilanders, hit by an arrow, succeeded in escaping; the other was shot to death. In the afternoon of the 26th, other Ethiopians posted on the slopes of Mount Danyerei endeavoured to carry off live-stock belonging to our subjects. The shepherds defended themselves, beat off the raiders and inflicted considerable losses upon them. Another raid was carried out against some Jajele, who are Somali subjects. In the afternoon of the 27th, Barambaras Afework caused 6,000 cartridges to be distributed among the Ethiopian tribes of the frontier district, stating that all were free to conduct raids against Italian subjects, and adding that if our dubats intervened he would send Ethiopian askaris to the rescue (see document No. 135).
(10) Arbitrary Arrest of an Eritrean Subject — Hostile and Quarrelsome Attitude of Kanyaz match Mongustu (May 1934). — An Eritrean subject, having obtained permission from the Resident at Tessenei to go to the Setit to buy live-stock, and having crossed the frontier for trading purposes, was arbitrarily arrested by Kanyazmatch Mongustu, sub-chief to Dedjatch Aialeu, and was also divested of 600 lire. To the enquiries of the Resident, the Kanyazmatch replied that the man had been arrested because he had no laissez-passer, although, according to recognised local custom, traders were not required to possess written laissez-passers. To a further demand by the Resident that our subject should be released, the Kanyazmatch first replied vaguely, and then said quite plainly that he did not propose to have any dealings with the Resident. After that, Eritrean caravans proceeding to Om Hager were frequently subjected to aggressive behaviour on #the part of the Kanyazmatch, who had arbitrarily raised the duties and h ad even posted along the frontier his armed men, who insulted our levies and pointed their rifles at any white person approaching the river. After about a month, the prisoner was released through the instrumentality of our Legation and the consul at Gondar. But Kanyazmatch Mongustu, notwithstanding our protests, was allowed to continue undisturbed in his provocative attitude (see documents Nos. 146, 147> I 4 -
(11) Arbitrary Arrest of Three Italian Colonial Subjects at Harrar (October-December 1934); — At the beginning of the second half of October 1934, the Somali subject Ali Mohame Diamma, in possession of a regular passport issued to him by our consul at Harrar, was arreste , without reason, by the Ethiopian authorities at Harrar. In reply to the protest of the Italian Minister at Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian Minister 0 Foreign Affairs stated that he was making enquiries. — 25 —
After about two months’ imprisonment, Ali Mohamed Diamma was finally released, together with two other Italian colonial subjects arrested at the beginning of December at Harrar (see documents Nos. 152, 1 5 9 ) ■ (12) Arbitrary Arrest of an Italian Trader, Domenico Lanzini (March 24th, 1935). On March 24th, IQ35, an Italian trader, Domenico Lanzini, who had left Makalle for Sokota, was arbitrarily arrested at the Customs at Fenerna, subject to the authority of Ras Seyyum, and brought under arrest to Makalle. The Italian Consul at Adowa sent a letter of protest to Ras Seyyum. At the same time, the Royal Minister at Addis Ababa presented a note to the Ethiopian Government, demanding the punishment of those responsible and the payment of compensation to Lanzini. Investigations proved the arbitrariness of the arrest of Lanzini, who w as not s e t at liberty until April 25th (see documents Nos. 176, 177, 178, 179).
(13) Arrest, Torture and Arbitrary Imprisonment for One Year of Nine Somalis (May 1934- April 1935)- — In May 1934 a band of nine Italian Somali subjects, engaged in the occupation, very common in the region, of hunting leopards for their skins, having betaken themselves for this purpose to the district of Gembis, in Ogaden, were arrested by armed Abyssinians. From the account given by the oldest cf them, it is possible briefly to reconstruct their sad odyssey. Having been sent to prison at Degabur, after the seizure of all their goods, they remained there about eight months, during which they were subjected to ill-treatment of every kind and to continual pressure with a view to making them renounce Italian nationality and assume Abyssinian nationality: firmly and consistently they refused. They were subsequently transferred to Jijiga, where they contracted serious diseases and often went hungry. Finally, after almost a year's imprisonment, in April 1935, they were released, in consequence of repeated and energetic representations by the Italian Consul at Harrar. This notwithstanding, as a result of the privations and cruelty they had suffered, one of them died in prison. Two others, whose health was seriously impaired, could not be moved from Jij iga. Of the six remaining, five had to be admitted to hospital at Harrar (see document No. 189). (14) Various Incidents (June 1935). — In the Adowa zone, the local authorities arrested twenty-five persons for having sold food to the Italian Consul and they dismissed an employee guilty of having spoken to him. In the region of Gondar, a band of Ethiopian soldiers stopped the wife of the Italian Consul, who was travelling with her caravan, notwithstanding the fact that the Kentiba of the town had previously issued a regular pass. Only after protests by the Italian Consul and after two days’ waiting was it possible for the caravan to proceed (see documents Nos. 216 and 217). (15) Imprisonment and Death of a Somali Subject at Jijiga (February-August 1935). — On August 14th it came to the knowledge of the Italian Consul at Harrar that an Italian Somali subject, who, unknown to him, had been kept in prison at Jijiga for over six months on suspicion of espionage, had died as the result of the atrocities he had suffered. It was established that the corpse showed fractures of the ribs, wrists and of limbs as the result of floggings. The Ethiopian authorities, to avoid responsibility, had, with unspeakable callousness, handed him over to his relatives in a dying condition. The Italian Consul, to whom no communication had been sent by the local authorities, came to hear of the occurrence by mere chance. An investigation has been asked for (see document No. 220).
3. R a id s , A t t a c k s , a n d F r o n t ie r I n c id e n t s .
The third group of facts to which attention must be drawn consists of attempted invasions, periodical raids, and frequent attacks by armed Abyssinians in Italian territory. These facts afford decisive proof of the spirit and the aggressive intentions of Ethiopia in regard to Italy and of the state of anarchy prevailing in the Ethiopian border provinces which march with Italian territory. They reveal the state of menace, permanent and intolerable, which has arisen in Ethiopia in regard to Italy. (1) Despatch of 30,000 Men under Dedjatches Wolde Selassie and Wake against Somaliland (February 1923). — The Italian Legation at Addis Ababa reported, in February 1923, that a big military expedition had set out from Harrar, under the command of Dedjatch Wolde Selassie, uncle of the Negus and Governor of Jijiga, and Dedjatch Wake, Governor of Gara Mullata. The expedition was about 30,000 strong. The Governor of Somaliland reported subsequently that the expedition was moving in the direction of the Italian border and that its attitude was menacing. Dedjatch Wolde Selassie was concentrating his troops at Gorrahei, in the sector of Ogaden towards the Sultanate of Obbia, while Dedjatch Wake was advancing along the Webi Shebeli in the direction of our frontier garrisons. The Somaliland Government was obliged to take precau tionary measures for the defence of the colony. Dedjatch Wake approached to within a few hours, March of our frontier garrisons and had it proclaimed that it was his intention to occupy the kalian post at Beled Wen. As a result of energetic intervention by the Italian Legation at Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian Government was prevailed upon to send instructions to Dedjatch Wake to withdraw, but, notwith standing orders, the latter maintained his threatening attitude towards our frontier possessions throughout May 1923. 26 —
(2) Raid in the Territory of Oddur. — Armed Encounter, with Three Killed and Twentv it- Wounded on the Italian Side (May 1923). — At the end of May 1923, Deyes Musa, chief of th* Talamoge, Ethiopian subjects, asked leave to enter our territory to confer with the Italian Resid t at Oddur. Having entered the territory, he arrived at Oddur, and a few days later, feigninJT leave it with his armed men, raided our populations between Oddur and the frontier on his return journey. A violent encounter took place between our armed levies, which had hastened up, and the raiders, in which our men lost three killed and twenty-five wounded. Our legation at Addis Abab lodged a protest on account of the incident, but it was not possible to obtain the restitution of the stolen live-stock.
(3) Crossing of the Frontier into Somaliland, and Subsequent Encounter with our Frontier Levies, of the Abdalla Talamoge and Aulian, Ethiopian Tribes (December 3rd-!ith, 1923) — Following on an attempted raid of the Abdalla Talamoge against the Aulian, during the fight and subsequent flight of the latter, the two tribes crossed the frontier, advancing far into our territory, in the Digei zone, between Lugh and Dolo. A detachment of our troops and frontier levies repelled this unexpected irruption, and on December 4th, the Talamoge and Aulian, after a brief but sanguinary encounter near the Afmadu river, were driven back and finally forced to retire to their territories (see document No. 5).
(4) Attempted Raids and Thefts of Live-stock on the Somali Border (September 1924). — In the northern border zone of Somaliland, in the month of September 1924, there was an intensification of thefts from and raids on our populations by the Ethiopian frontier tribes. Notwithstanding repeated provocations of this kind, the Governor of Somaliland, in order to prevent incidents, gave orders that our populations should not be allowed to issue forth, even if raided, at the same time strengthening the vigilance service. The Ethiopian Government was warned of this state of affairs and requested to give instructions to the frontier chiefs to prevent such incursions into the territory of our colonies (see documents Nos. 6 and 7).
(5) Incursion and Raid of Armed Abyssinians near Dolo: an Italian “ Dubat ” killed (June 21st, 1925). — On June 21st, 1925, thirty armed Abyssinians, led by Chief Tesamma, advanced into our territory near Dolo, with the object of raiding our populations’ live-stock. A detachment of our dubats intervened, and succeeded in recovering the live-stock already stolen and driving off the marauders. The following day, the latter appeared again on the confines of our territory, and there, while parleying with two of our N.C.O.s, insisted that they would enter and go to Lugh without further permission. While this discussion was going on, they opened fire without warning on the N.C.O.s and the levies, who had remained five metres behind them. Iubasci fell dead, with three bullet-wounds. The levies were thus forced to reply and put to flight the Abyssinians, who left several dead on the ground, including Tesamma himself. Our Minister at Addis Ababa protested on account of this serious incident, and received from Ras Tafari, who stated that he knew nothing about it, in addition to apologies, a promise that stricter supervision would be exercised over the frontier tribes (see documents Nos. 8 and 9).
(6) Intensification of Raids and Incidents in the Ato-Dolo Border Zone (first half of 1926.) — In the first half of 1926, attempts by Ethiopians to cross the frontier became more frequent in the border sector of Dolo-Ato. Early in August, Kanyazmatch Belachu, with his men, attacked an Italian caravan coming from Magalo, and himself stole a rifle from our escort. Despite the undoubted provocation, the Governor of Somaliland, in order to avoid fresh incidents, confined his action to intervening in a friendly fashion through the Resident at Dolo, requesting the restitution of the stolen goods. That request was without effect (see document No. 16).
(7) Attempted Raids on the Somali-Ethiopian Border in the Dolo-Belet-Wen Sector (July 1926). — In the Dolo-Belet-Wen border sector, particularly in the centre, there was an intensive movement of Abyssinian chiefs, who incited bands of marauders to advance into our territory to carry out raids. Our levies, however, on the alert, succeeded almost always in preventing such raids, repelling the marauders. The Governor of Somaliland issued strict instructions that any incident must be avoided. Our Government referred the matter to our Minister in Ethiopia, giving him instructions to request the Abyssinian Government to see that steps were taken to prevent the occurrence of regrettable incidents (see documents Nos. 12 and 14).
(8) Raid by 430 Armed Abyssinians at Dus Amaret—Engagement : Twenty Dead and Ten Wounded on the Italian Side (July 5th, 1926). — Rebels, exiles from Omar Samatar, who had for some time been adopting an aggressive attitude, taking advantage of friendly hospitality and as the result of continual Abyssinian instigation, early in July descended on the line of our frontier levies and succeeded in carrying out an unexpected raid, rich in booty, on the Marehan and Aver- ghedir populations, who were there with their live-stock for grazing. This occurred on July 5*' 1926, in the Dusamareb zone, shown on the map between Beredenjia and Allaba. The Sinadogo company and our local levies immediately despatched a company of a hundred men, reinforced by some fifteen dubats. The marauders, consisting of three hundred rifles, thirty — 27 —
mounted men, and a hundred lances, were overtaken in the Dusamareb zone and, after a furious and nçuiimry encounter, were put to flight. The proceeds of the raid were recovered almost entirely, nd a large number of Marehan and Averghedir, who had been taken prisoners, were set at liberty. The raiders left dead and wounded on the ground. Our losses were twenty killed, ten wounded, and a few missing (see documents Nos. n and 13).
(9) Raid by Aulian in the Ato-Dolo Border Sector (end of July -beginning of August 1926). —■ In the latter part of July, a band of Aulian entered our territory and carried off seventy camels. The opportune intervention of our dubats prevented the raiders from getting away undisturbed, and led to the recovery of the stolen property (see document No. 15).
(10) Attack by a Band of Armed Ethiopians on our Post at Kullula, on the Dancalia-Ethiopian f r o n t i e r — Massacre of our Soldiers (April n t h , 1928). — On April n th , 1928, a band of armed Ethiopians attacked our post at Kullula, on the Eritrean-Ethiopian frontier, in Dancalia. The attack ended in the sacking of our little post and the slaughter of the guard. The Italian Legation at Addis Ababa protested to the Ethiopian Government, without, however, obtaining any satisfaction, notwithstanding its repeated representations.
(11) Attack and Raid of 500 Armed Ethiopians on the Post at Rendacamo— Two Women Wounded, a Child Killed and Castrated (March 29th, 1929). —• On the morning of March 29th, 1929, a band of over 500 armed Ethiopians surrounded the Italian post at Rendacamo, attempting to set fire to the camp of the levies at the foot of the knoll on which the small fort was situated. Our armed forces opened fire from the fort in self-defence. Not succeeding in destroying, far less capturing, the fort, the aggressors were unable for long to maintain their position, which they abandoned, taking to flight, pursued for a short distance by our levies, and leaving several dead on the ground. While returning to Rendacamo, our forces surprised a band of raiders who were driving off about 200 sheep stolen from our people. The raiders were dispersed ; the live-stock thus recovered was restored to the rightful owners. Two women and two children belonging to our levies, having taken refuge during the attack in a little wood near the fort, were surprised by the raiders, who beat the women with sticks and mutilated one of the children, barely three weeks old, whose dead body was found later. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa made representations to the Ethiopian Government, obtaining only the usual vague promises (see document No. 23).
(12) Crossing of the Border and Attempted Raid on the Eritrean Frontier (April 6th, 1929). — On April 6th, 1929, a group of some forty armed Ethiopians succeeded in crossing the Eritrean frontier, passing between Mount Erennei and the Lasacuti river, with the object of looting. Prompt intervention by our levies frustrated the attempt, putting the raiders to flight (see document No. 24).
(13) Attack on the Frontier Post at Odas (April 23rd, 1929). — On the morning of April 23rd, 1929, a band of some thirty armed Ethiopians attacked the small frontier post at Odas (Adiabo). The attackers, who were driven back and suddenly counter-attacked by the levies at the post, fled precipitately (see document No. 26).
(14) Raid in the Kunam-a Zone— Two Men Killed (July 15th, 1929). — On July 15th, 1929, a band of armed Ethiopians, crossing our frontier line in the Kunama region abreast of Adiabo, stole 400 oxen, killing two shepherds and wounding several others. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa presented an energetic protest to the Ethiopian Government, obtaining the usual dilatory promises (see document No. 28).
(15) Raid carried out by Ethiopians of Adi Agera and Kunama of Biara, under the Leadership °f Fitaurari Sahle, on the Commissioners’ Stations at Barca and Hamasien (July 15th, 1929). —■ On July 15th, 1929, Ethiopians of Adi Agera and Kunama of Biara, under the leadership of Fitaurari Sahle, crept in between our little border posts, and raided, to the east of Mount Gongona, over 4°o oxen belonging to the Commissioners at Barca and Hamasien. Of the few shepherds who were looking after the live-stock and attempted to offer resistance, two were killed and several wounded. The Italian Legation protested in vain to the Ethiopian Government (see document No. 29).
(16) Series of Attacks and Raids in Eritrean Danacalia — Sultan of Biru — Murder and Capture our Subjects — Sanguinary Encounters with Large Numbers Killed (August-October 1930). — 1 Early in August 1930, at Gundet, an encounter occurred between the levies belonging to a ®Mll post and a band of raiders who had carried off 800 head of cattle from the Hedarem Ali “Uritto tribe. The raiders were put to flight, leaving on the ground one killed and three wounded. “e live-stock was all recovered.
. 2- The notorious Ethiopian brigand Lijj Belai Woldie, who had set out for Northern Danacalia W'th about 500 armed men to raid the territory of the colony, desisted from the attack as soon as e became aware of the presence of our District Commissioner on an inspection tour in Cabuia. — 2 8 —
3- On August 20th, in the district of Awalu, in the neighbourhood of Affammo, an encount took place between the levies belonging to our little post and a band of Ethiopian raiders from hills consisting of about 300 men, supported by about 100 Danakils of Biru. One native sold' 6 was killed and four wounded. The raiders had one killed and one wounded. Subsequently two other raids occurred in the Waddi zone. In connection with this, the Suita of Biru sent a provocative letter to the Resident at Assab, in which he admitted that he was the author of these raids, and stated that he proposed to continue them until the withdrawal of our frontier posts in Danacalia. Obviously, the Sultan must have been secretly supported by some great chief from the plateau. 4. Early in September, armed Ethiopians from Agame attacked one of our patrols in the district of Addi Relmo, near the River Mareb (in Seraye), which resulted in a fight, ending in the flight of the attackers. 5. On September 14th, about midnight, a band of about 500 armed Biru attacked our small fort at Waddi, where the reinforcements had not yet arrived which had been ordered up by the Government of Eritrea in consequence of the continual attacks and raids that had recently taken place. A number of native soldiers were killed ; the remainder were taken prisoner. While the main body of armed men remained in the redoubt, a band of over a hundred advanced up the hill to Beilul, captured three native soldiers who happened to be there, pillaged the place and then withdrew. In consequence of these new and very grave incidents, the Italian Government telegraphed to the Minister at Addis Ababa, requesting him again to direct the serious attention of the Ethiopian Government to the incident. 6. End of September 1930. — A band of armed Ethiopians, advancing into our territory, stole in the district of Mesha (Scimezana-Acchelè Buzai) 234 thalers and various articles of personal property from our subjects. 7. After having taken possession by force of Waddi, the Sultan of Biru had immediately put in a garrison of about fifty armed men at Gaharre, in token of occupation. In conformity with the orders issued by the Government of Eritrea, on September 25th, an Italian detachment of forty levies, on their way to reoccupy the small fort at Waddi, met at Gaharre the armed Biru, who, after an exchange of shots, fled headlong in the direction of the mountains, leaving on the ground one man killed, one wounded, and one rifle. Pushing on in the direction of Waddi, our levies, with some reinforcements, after a fierce encoun ter, put to flight the main body of the invading forces, under the command of the Sultan himself. During the fighting, the Sultan and a large number of his followers were killed. Our prisoners wrere released, and the greater part of the live-stock stolen from them was recovered. Forty rifles remained in our hands. On the Italian side, there were eight killed and four wounded. As a result of this sanguinary encounter, the Ethiopian Government stated at last that it was willing to intervene. That intervention, as we have said, had already been requested several times in vain by our Minister at Addis Ababa. In practice, however, the Ethiopian Government’s action amounted to very little, considering the gravity of the facts reported. It despatched a confidential representative to the frontier zone; and—which proves how powerless it was to cope with the anarchy reigning in the border territories of the Empire—requested us to restrict, at all events temporarily, the transit of our caravans through the frontier zone, in order to avoid fresh incidents. Apart from the facts already set forth, it may be noted also that the Sultan of Biru and his followers were responsible for the murder cf the Giulietti expedition (see documents Nos. 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 and 47).
(17) Raid in Eritrean Territory by an Ethiopian Chief and his Armed Followers (February 1931). — At the end of February 1931, Barambaras Shidememariam, commanding in the region between Medebai Tabor and the Setit in the name of Ras Seyyum, began his activities as chief by crossing over with armed men into Eritrean territory and seizing sixteen head of cattle. The Italian Legation at Addis Ababa, which had made representations concerning the case to the Ethiopian Government, obtained the recovery of the stolen property and the usual assurances regarding the future (see documents Nos. 48 and 49). x (18) A Number of Raids and Attacks on the Frontier (March-April 1931). —• In March-April 1931, there was a number of raids and attacks on our subjects and small frontier posts. Vve mention some of them by way of example :
1. Early in March, a certain Grazmatch Bihil, sent by Kanyazmatch Desta, representative of Ras Seyyum, to Adowra, seized ninety-seven head of live-stock belonging to the districts ot Hassish Addi and Dembe Aish (Acrau), while the animals were at the frontier being watered as usual. As a result of the energetic protests of our authorities, the live-stock was restored. 2. On March 5th, the notorious bandit Merraj Tesfai attacked and pillaged a small Italian caravan in the district of Haras.
3. On March 16th, in the neighbourhood of Amasat, the brothers Ibsalim and Hameddi Abdalla, of the Decimula tribe, were attacked and robbed by armed Ethiopians. One brother, receiving a violent blow on the head with a stick, dropped down, while the other was stabbed with a knife in the chest. They were also stripped of their clothing and money. — 29 —
On March 25th, a few kilometres from the frontier, within our territory, a band of armed Ethiopians> numbering at least sixteen, drew into an ambush a patrol belonging to the small D0St at the Mochiti wells (Barentu Residency), consisting of the commander of the post and six soldiers. The commander was killed and two private soldiers wounded. The Ethiopians had one killed and two wounded. The attackers took refuge in Ethiopian territory. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa made an energetic protest to the Ethiopian Government. The incident was never settled (see document No. 50). (19) More Raids and Attacks in Eritrean Territory — Capture of Men and Women (May 1931). On May 5th, 1931, about a hundred armed Ethiopians, under the leadership of Balambaras Besseru Tedla, representative of Dedjatch Gereselassie, titular of the fief of Egglula Deggebsi, entered our territory, in the Acchele Guzai, stealing money and numerous personal belongings and taking prisoners three of our subjects, who subsequently suceeded in escaping. 2. On May 9th, the exile Ghideiemmha, a chief of Adisessahu in Adiabo, seized at Mai A dal, on the right bank of the Mareb, in our territory, sixty head of cattle, which he restored only after having extorted a large sum from the herdsmen, one of whom was, however, kept prisoner by him and ill-treated.
3. On May 15th, a number of armed Ethiopians, advancing into our territory, carried off at Enda Abba Mai Atal (Acchele Guzai) a granddaughter of one of our meslessies of Enda Dascim, Azmatch Belai Negussie. This abduction angered followers of the meslessie, who followed a n d overtook the raiders, recovering the little girl and seizing two rifles. In consequence of this, Kanyazmatch Alemaio, Chief of Gule Mokada, had seven of our natives arrested, and his followers stole twenty thalers from another of our subjects and brutally beat him. Such events, following upon one another in such quick succession, often provoked by known Ethiopian chiefs, and taken in conjunction with the recent grave incident of the Mochiti wells and with the other earlier incidents, constitute a further proof, if proof were needed, of the permanent state of anarchy reigning throughout the border zones of the Empire, a condition of things which the central Government was manifestly powerless to change or regulate (see documents Nos. 48, 51 and 52).
(20) Ethiopian Expedition in Ogaden, with Large Concentration of Forces in the Proximity of the Italian Frontier — Attempted Advance on Mustahil: 15,000 Armed Men with Ten Machine- guns — Attitude of Dedjatch Gabre M ariam (September 1931). — Early in September 1931, in the zone between Kallafo and Buslei, on either side of the Webi Shebeli, about 10,000 armed Ethiopians with ten machine-guns were concentrated ; a further 4,000 or 5,000 were concentrated in the Tur zone. Dedjatch Gabre Mariam, who was at the head of these Ethiopian forces, stated repeatedly, and caused it to be circulated, that it was his intention to enter Italian territory and occupy the zone as far as Beled Wen. In view of this great display of force in the vicinity of our territory, the Governor, M. Rava, sent the Secretary-General to Ferfer with orders to go to Mustahil in case Dedjatch Gabre Mariam should show any intention of conferring with the Governor’s representative. Further, M. Rava ordered out troops to be posted in the proximity of the threatened zone. The permanent presence, close to our frontier, of 14,000 or 15,000 armed Ethiopians constituting a very grave situation, the Governor of Somaliland also requested the intervention of our Legation at Addis Ababa. On September 15th, Dedjatch Gabre Mariam, with about 10,000 armed men, advanced to within one hour’s march of our garrison at Mustahil, and there stated that it was his intention to proceed with all his forces to Beled Wen. A letter from the Secretary-General of Somaliland elicited no reply from him; indeed, he sent word to the latter to evacuate Mustahil forthwith. In consequence of these facts, while the Ministry of the Colonies telegraphed to Mogadiscio giving instructions for the posting of our troops along the frontier for purposes of defence, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs sent instructions to our Minister ât Addis Ababa to direct the urgent attention of the Negus to the danger of the situation, and to inform him of our determination to meet any hostile act by force. Then, by a second telegram, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs informed our Minister in Ethiopia of the latest developments in the situation, and instructed him to declare categorically to the Negus that the Royal Government could not separate the personal responsibility of the Dedjatch from that of the Addis Ababa Government, and that it accordingly held the latter responsible for all the consequences that might ensue from any attack by the Ethiopians on our frontier posts. On September 22nd, the Emperor telegraphed to our Governor at Mogadiscio requesting him to communicate to Dedjatch Gabre Mariam a telegram from him ordering him to turn back without crossing our frontier, and to inform Dedjatch Gabre Mariam that the question of the frontier would be settled between the two Governments. The Emperor’s telegram was accompanied by a letter from the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs, in which the imperial instructions were confirmed. In assuring our Minister at Addis Ababa of all this, the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs used, in connection with our protests, the expression “ what you say is the frontier ”, an expression which betrayed the hidden Ethiopian purpose, and which showed th at the action of Dedjatch Gabre Mariam was fully approved v his Government, though liable to be disavowed in the event of failure. In the meantime, up to September 26th, the Ethiopian forces gave no sign of withdrawing, ndeed, one of the minor chiefs, a certain Mohodad, when visiting Major Ridelli at Mustahil, °ld him that Dedjatch Gabre Mariam had for the moment suspended the advance, but that e was nevertheless determined to continue it. — 30 —
The withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces did not begin until the beginning of October was practically completed by about the middle of the month (see documents Nos nc 5 6 , 57 and 58). 3 " 35’
(21) Attempted Attack by 750 Armed Abyssinians on the Post at Mochiti (December k » January 1932). — On December 14th, 1931, a band of Abyssinians, who had advanced into Italian territory, constructed in the district of Mochiti two zaribas, a tukul and a trench, subsequently abandoning the place and leaving written on a stone in Amharic : “ Let Haile Selassie remember that this is territory of the Negus Our soldiers belonging to the post at Barentu destroyed these constructions, and the Commissioner at Agordat took steps to garrison the place, and informed Fitaurari Sahle, sub-chief of Adiabo, of what had happened. The latter’s only reply was to utter grave threats, saying that the Italians would be given an exemplary lesson. At the same time he ordered fifty of his armed men to return to Mochiti and reconstruct everything there, firin°- on anyone who opposed the execution of his order. The Fitaurari placed himself at the head of another fifty armed men, and set off in the direction of Gongoma. In connection with this, our garrisons in the threatened zone were properly reinforced, and the Asmara Government gave telegraphic instructions to the local Commissioner to oppose most energetically any attempted invasion of our territoiy. Having overtaken the first band of armed Ethiopians sent by Fitaurari Sahle in the vicinity of Mochiti, on the morning of January ist, 1932, the Royal Commissioner at Agordat visited their camp and gave them twenty minutes to evacuate it. In view of the determined attitude of our people, the Ethiopians withdrew half a day’s march. In order, however, to arrive at a definite and final settlement of the incident, the Royal Commissioner sent a messenger inviting Fitaurari Sahle to come to Gongoma to confer with him. But Fitaurari Sahle was not to be found, having left Biara, where he had been until then. Two or three days later, however, the Commissioner at Agordat learned that Fitaurari Sahle was at Auditalama with 250 armed men, sixty of whom were still posted on the boundary- line at Mochiti. Another chief, with 500 armed men, was on the point of joining him with the obvious purpose of attacking the little post at Gongoma or Mochiti. Preparations were being made for the provisioning of the expedition. In connection with these preparations, our garrisons were further reinforced, with explicit orders to oppose any attempt to cross the frontier. At the same time, the Italian Legation at Addis Ababa made representations concerning the case to the Ethiopian Government, intimating that further attempts by Ethiopia on our frontier might provoke a justified reaction on the part of the Government of Eritrea. The Ethiopian Ministry for Foreign Affairs stated in reply that it was unaware of the incident, and that the latter was the inopportune and unauthorised act of a petty local chief, giving an assurance that telegraphic orders were being sent to the local authorities. It was only after a month that the Italians succeeded in having this threat on the Eritrean frontier removed (see documents Nos. 59, 60, 61, 62, 63 and 64).
(22) Raid into Seraye (February 1932). — On February 23rd, 1932, armed Ethiopians, dependants of Barambaras Kidane Mariam of Adiabo, having advanced into Eritrean territory in Seraye, seized forty-four head of cattle there. Eritrean soldiers and a number of peasants, who had immediately rushed to the spot, exchanged shots with the raiders, during which one Eritrean subject was killed. The Ethiopians were put to flight, and took refuge in their own territory. Among them was recognised the notorious Kefle Mariam Hadera, an Eritrean subject who had crossed the frontier on account of a charge of murder, and other dependants of Barambaras Kidane Mariam. In consequence of this incident, the Commissioner of the Southern Border (Eritrea) wrote to the Abyssinian chief in th e frontier district, calling upon him to punish the guilty parties, and demanding blood-money for the Eritrean killed and th e surrender of the murderer Kefle Mariam Hadera. The Italian Chargé d’Affair es at Addis Ababa took similar action, presenting a note to the Ethiopian Government. The investigation carried out on the spot by Seyyum Serasebhatu showed clearly the guilt of the Ethiopians. But all that was obtained was the a rr e s t of only one of the o ffen d ers and a small compensation in kind fo r the relatives of the man who had been killed. In the meantime, the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs, as a result of the note presented to him by our Chargé dAffaires, expressed regret for the incident, making no objection to the Italian demands, and gave an assurance that h e would bring the matter to the notice of Ras Seyyum, chief of the region. As usual, these assurances produced no effect (see documents Nos. 67, 68 and 69).
(23) Encounter on the Mareb: an Italian Native Soldier Wounded (March 1932). — On March 17th, 1932, Eritrean levies belonging to the post at Cohli Zebi encountered, in the neigh bourhood of Dembe Anadi, on the right bank of the Mareb, in Eritrean territory, a band of seven armed Ethiopians, led by the notorious Meraj Tesfai, already guilty of various crimes in Eritrea After some firing from both sides, the Ethiopians recrossed the Mareb, leaving traces of blood along their path. One of our soldiers was wounded. On being informed of the incident, Ras Seyyum promised the Chargé d’Affair es to give order? for the capture of Meraj Tesfai, and to authorise his sub-chiefs to come to a direct agreement wi the Commissioner for the Southern Frontier, with a view to joint action. In practice, thing5 remained as before (see documents Nos. 70 and 72).
(24) Crossing of the Frontier into Eritrea by Meraj Tesfai and his Armed Followers: Encouner and Death of Two Italian Native Soldiers (August 1932). — Early in August 1932, the notonous — 3 1 —
b a n d i t Meraj Tesfai, at the head of a band of armed men, crossed the Mareb, advancing into Eritrean territory and pillaging as he went. This was only a small incident in a long series of acts of brigandage, begun long before by Meraj Tesfai and his followers, and continued, despite r e p e a t e d protests by the Italian Minister. The local Italian Commissioner gave immediate orders to the soldiers at the small frontier posts at Mahabit and Mai Gudun to pursue the raiders, and arranged for patrols to watch the Mareb. On August 20th, eleven native soldiers encountered ten armed Ethiopians, and a hot fusillade ensued. Eight of the opponents and two of our levies were killed. Meraj Tesfai, who was wounded, with the only survivor of his band, succeeded in escaping discovery, b u t was seen shortly afterwards on the banks of the Mareb, which was in flood, waiting for the waters to go down, so as to get back into Ethiopian territory, his safe and usual refuge. Here a further fight took place, during which the bandit was killed. One muntaz and one native soldier were wounded (see document No. 80).
(25) Raid, at El Beit (Somaliland) : An Italian Subject Wounded (December 9th, 1932). — On December 9th, 1932, not far from the Italian post at El Beit, raiders of the rer Abdulla, of the rer Ugaz Nur, Ethiopian subjects, seized cattle belonging to our subjects and dubats. An attempt was made to pursue the marauders, but, the latter having passed over into Ethiopian territory, it was not possible to reach them. In all, the live-stock carried off amounted to 500 head of cattle. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa made energetic representations to the Ethiopian Govern ment on account of the state of anarchy in Ogaden and the continual grave incidents, for which the person chiefly responsible was Fitaurari Meslekia, to whose subversive and anti-Italian activities the Ethiopian Government’s attention had already repeatedly been drawn (see documents Nos. 90 and 129).
(26) Attack on a Caravan on the Mareb (December 16th, 1932). — On the morning of December 16th, 1932, native soldiers of a detachment on the southern border of Eritrea surprised four Ethiopians on the Mareb who were engaged in plundering a caravan on its way to Eritrea. The soldiers opened fire, wounding two of the Ethiopians and putting to flight the remainder, who abandoned the stolen goods and took refuge over the border. It was learnt subsequently that some days previously those same Ethiopians had carried out another raid (see document No. 88).
(27) Raid in the Somali Border Zone by Digodia, Ethiopian Subjects (January-February 1933). — A strong band of Digodia, Ethiopian subjects, made a big surprise raid on live-stock belonging to Somali subjects in the vicinity of the frontier. The restitution of this live-stock was demanded of the Ethiopian chief of Dolo, Ato Mauria, who, however, confessed himself powerless, stating that he possessed neither the authority nor the strength to insist on it. Indeed, he himself had at the same time seized a rifle, two camels and several boxes belonging to the caravan of Captain San Marzano, which were then at Dolo. The arms, camels and boxes were recovered, but negotiations with the Digodia chiefs for the restitution of the stolen live-stock proved fruitless (see document No. 93).
(28) Italian Patrol attacked at Jirajiru (Seraye) in Eritrea: One Killed, One Injured (February 2nd, 1933). — On February 2nd, 1933, at 11 o’clock in the morning, a muntaz and two of our native soldiers belonging to the little boundary post at Jirajiru in Seraye (Eritrea), in Italian territory, were suddenly fired at by armed Ethiopians who, posted along a path in Italian territory, were firing on our levies at very close range. The m untaz fell wounded, but returned the fire, along with the soldiers. In the volley which followed, he was wounded again, and one of the soldiers with him. The remaining soldier succeeded in defending those who had fallen and in preventing the attackers from obtaining possession of their arms, and subsequently put them to flight. One of the Ethiopians was wounded. The soldier who was wounded died a few hours later. As a result of this incident, the Italian Minister at Addis Ababa informed the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs urgently of what had happened, asking that immediate orders be given to guarantee the safety of our frontier. He obtained the usual promises (see documents Nos. 91 and 92).
(29) New Attempts by Armed Bands to enter the Territory bordering on the Setit (February 1933) — On February 22nd, 1933, our patrols arrested a group of armed Ethiopians commanded by Hassan Mohammed, who were endeavouring to ford the River Setit in order to enter Eritrean territory for purposes of plunder. On February 24th, a group of armed Ethiopians opened fire on our sentries posted on the bank °f the Setit, and endeavoured to ford the river. Our soldiers waited until they had nearly reached the Eritrean bank, and then fired back, wounding three of the attacking party. Some Abyssinian sub-chiefs of Bikutta later informed the Residency at Barentu by letter that another group of armed men from Tigre were endeavouring to enter our territory on an illicit e'ephant-hunting expedition. Steps were therefore taken to prevent them from crossing the frontier. This fact clearly shows^ the situation existing in all the Ethiopian border regions ; the authorities themselves admitted hat they were not in a position to prevent these continual acts of aggression against us. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa reported these further incidents to the Ethiopian Govern ment, which gave an evasive and dilatory reply (see documents Nos. i n and 116). — 32 —
(30) Surveyors attacked on the Setit (March 2nd, 1933). — On March 2nd, 1933, some survev who were marking out the ground on the bank of the Setit, in Italian territory, with a viewT the installation of a hydrometer near Elaghim, were seized, together with the whole of th ° material, by armed Ethiopians. A certain Bashai Teferra, who was under the orders of Dediat h Aialeu, said that he would not allow the work to be proceeded with until Dedjatch Aialeu’ permission had been received. The Vice-Resident of Om Hager obtained the release of the men who had been seized strengthened the sentries on the frontier, and ordered the work to be resumed (see document No. 94).
(31) Raid into Ogaden, Somaliland — Capture of Italian Subjects — Hostile Conduct ot Fitaurari Meslekia (March 1933). — In March 1933, Fitaurari Meslekia instigated a series of raids which created a dangerous state of anarchy, and had a serious effect on the Somali frontier population. On the morning of March 28th, a group of some sixty Ethiopians attempted to seize the cattle of some of our subjects, who were grazing them in the district which is under the protection of the post of El Furuk. Five dubats suddenly appeared and put the Ethiopians to flight, killing one and taking another prisoner. Fitaurari Meslekia thereupon issued a proclamation expelling all our subjects from the district and authorising any native to arrest and bring before him any Italian subject. This arbitrary and unreasonable order was speedily carried out, and in a very short time several of our subjects were arrested without any reason, or subjected to acts of violence. For instance, when some of our subjects of the Habar Ghidir Saad tribe, who were following the tracks of two camels which had been stolen from them, were approaching Buslei, they were arrested and taken to Bardodi, where they were imprisoned. Again, armed men from the garrison of Bardodi arrested a Mijurtine who was one of our subjects and an ex-N.C.O. of the regular army, and who had for some time past been carrying on trade in the Shaveli region. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa sent a strong note of protest demanding the speedy abrogation of the absurd orders of Fitaurari Meslekia, the immediate release of our subjects who had been arbitrarily arrested and adequate compensation. He received a reply in the usual evasive terms, alleging a lack of precise information, ignorance of what had happened, etc. Up to May, no precise answer had been given to our demands. Finally, at the end of that month, the Fitaurari, on leaving Bardodi, released all our subjects who had been arrested, with the exception of one who was kept in prison for unknown reasons (see documents Nos. 100, 104, 105, 108, 109, 122 and 125).
(32) Armed Violation of the Eritrean Frontier at Colo Bordo (April 1933). — At the beginning of April 1933, a large band of armed Ethiopians camped in the Ona Isak district, in Eritrean territory, in the enclave of Colo Bordo. On being informed of the serious violation of our frontier, the Italian Government wired to its Minister at Addis Ababa asking him to request the immediate withdrawal of those troops from our territory. While the Italian Minister at Addis Ababa was submitting a note of protest and the Ethiopian Government, with its usual dilatoriness, was replying, asking for time to enquire into the facts, the armed invaders withdrew from the occupied zone, but camped in the neighbourhood, in Ethiopian territory. The question remained unsettled because the Ethiopian Government, n o tw ith standing the insistence of the Italian Minister, on one pretext or another, evaded the request for satisfaction (see documents Nos. 1x3, 114, 115, 119, 123 and 124).
(33) Attack on and Plunder of a Caravan in Eritrean Territory (April 12th, 1933). — On April 12th, 1933, in our territory (Gundet), a small caravan which was going to cross the frontier was plundered by three armed Ethiopians, who carried off money and a large number of objects (see document No. 120).
(34) Clash at Jirajiru, in Eritrea (May 30th, 1933). — On May 30th, 1933, a clash took place near Jirajiru between five native soldiers of an Italian patrol and three armed Ethiopians who had entered Eritrean territory. The Ethiopians, one of whom was wounded, took shelter across the frontier. The subsequent enquiries revealed the fact that the men involved were Baram- baras Seare and two of his armed men, who had already been guilty of four acts of plundering committed on May 17th, the victims being Italian subjects who were in Eritrean territory (see documents Nos. 126 and 128).
(35) Raid near El Beit (June 1933). — At the end of June 1933, a group of armed Ethiopians, who had entered our territory near El Beit, stole cattle belonging to our subjects. The dubats at once followed the raiders and got back all the cattle stolen (nearly 100 head) (see document 131).
(36) Raid on theDawa (July 3rd, 1933). — On July 3rd, 1933, a group of Ethiopians w ho had reached the Dawa, near the point of junction of the Kenya, Somaliland and Ethiopian frontiers, stole ninety head of live-stock belonging to our subjects. The dubats of the post of M alka Re followed the raiders and got back 86 camels (see document No. 130).
(37) Raids in El Furuk District by Armed Ethiopian Regulars of Barambaras Afework- Result: Seven Killed and Six Wounded ( J anuary-February 1934). — On the afternoon of January 28th, 1934, a group of armed Ethiopians stole nearly 200 head of live-stock belonging to our — 33 —
s u b j e c t s , in Somali territory. Two of the shepherds who were endeavouring to g e t back their beasts were wounded. Barambaras Afework, who was in charge of the raiders, withdrew with his Ijootv to Mount Danyerei. On February 7th, while the animals belonging to our subjects were proceeding to the watering-place in the Shebeli, near the post of El Furuk, two groups of Ethio pian regulars forded the river and attacked the shepherds, who were forced to leave their animals in the hands of the aggressors. A patrol of ten of our dubats, which was reconnoitring the district, was attacked by the Ethiopians. The dubats retaliated, and were joined by other armed shepherds and the levies from the post of El Furuk. The Italian commander endeavoured to parley with the Ethiopians, waving a white flag, but the latter again fired on the levies. T h e dubats at once retaliated and put the aggressors to flight; twenty-two of the latter were killed and a large number w o u n d e d . On the Italian side, there were seven men killed and six wounded. The armed Ethiopians belonged to the troops under the command of Barambaras Afework. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa made the necessary representations to the Ethiopian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The reply was—the old story—that no news of the incident had been received, but enquiries would be made. As a result of subsequent investigations, it was found that the Ethiopians had stolen 3,656 cattle, 546 goats, 17 camels and 4 donkeys (see documents Nos. 136, 137, 138, 140). (38) Raid near El Furuk (March 22nd, 1934). — On the afternoon of March 22nd, 1934, groups of Jidle and Issa, Ethiopian subjects, stole live-stock belonging to our subjects which was grazing in the district of El Furuk. The dubats of the post rushed to the spot, got back all the animals and put the raiders to flight (see document No. 142). (39) Raids on the Ogaden-Somaliland Frontier (first half of April 1934). — On April 9th, 1934, the Ethiopians stole from El Furuk district camels belonging to our subjects. At the end of the first half of April, in the Mustahil district, another group of armed Ethiopians stole six animals belonging to our subjects. On account of these and the large number of previous raids, the Italian Minister at Addis Ababa on several occasions made representations to the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs, receiving the usual assurances and the familiar assertion that he had no knowledge whatever of the occurrence (see documents Nos. 141, 144). (40) Activities of the Rebel Omar Samantar in Ogadenin the Spring of 1934. — From March 1934 onwards, steps were taken to form armed bands of Ethiopian irregular troops in Ogaden under the command of the exiled Italian subject Omar Samantar, who had murdered an Italian officer, Captain Franco Carolei. Omar Samantar was taken into the pay of the Ethiopian Government, from which he received arms and ammunition to equip his bands for the purpose of attacking and endeavouring to occupy the Italian posts of Walwal and Warder. In view of the definite information received on the matter, the Italian Government, in April 1934, instructed the Italian Legation at Addis Ababa to draw the serious attention of the Ethiopian Government to the aggressive action against Italy for which preparations were being made. Nevertheless, during the months of June and July, Omar Samantar continued to advance with his armed bands towards the Italian frontier, and in the middle of July he camped at a place five hours away from Walwal, sending strong patrols nearly as far as the Italian post. The Government of Somaliland wras obliged hastily to strengthen the Walwal and Warder garrisons, and the sentries in that sector. Early in August, the danger of any action by Omar Samantar appeared to have been removed, as his troops, for lack of provisions and water and on account of sickness, were obliged to withdraw from the neighbourhood of Walwal and to proceed towards the Ethiopian post of Dagabur (see Annexes 1 a, 1 m, to the Italian Government’s Memorandum on the Walwal incident, pages 31, 55). (41) Occupation of the Italian Post of Barrei by Armed Ethiopians — Fourteen Hours’ Fighting ; One Italian Soldier Killed and One Wounded (May 15th, 1934). — On May 15th, 1934, a group of seventy-four armed Ethiopians under the command of Kanyazm atch Barakei occupied a height near the Italian post of Barrei and ordered the dubats to evacuate the post. When they curtly refused to do so, the Kanyazmatch replied that he preferred to fight in order to settle the question whether Barrei was to belong to the dubats or to the Ethiopians, and attacked the post. The Ethiopians were repulsed after a lengthy combat, which was sustained by only seventeen men, of whom one was ill, against seventy-four Ethiopians. In the meantime, two dubats ran to the Goriane and Burano stations to inform them of what was happening, but reinforcements did not arrive until the attack had already been repulsed. In this first encounter, two Ethiopians were killed and four wounded, and on the Italian side one dubat was killed and another wounded. The Ethiopians withdrew in order to prepare for a further attack. However, the reinforce ments had now arrived, and, on the morning of the 16th, the Italians once again succeeded in repulsing the aggressors. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa sent a note of protest to the Ethiopian Government, reserving the right to claim compensation. The Minister for Foreign Affairs assured him that he had telegraphed instructions to the Governor of Bale not to allow such an incident to occur again (see documents Nos. 145, 149). (42) Attack or- Walwal (December 5th, 1934). — On December 5th, 1934, a corps of Ethiopian roops under the command of Fitaurari Shiferra attacked the Italian garrison of Walwal. The ocuments relating to this attack are included in the Memorandum already submitted to the °mmission of Conciliation and Arbitration (see Appendix to Volume II, “ Documents ”). ~ (4 3) Attacks on and Ambushes laid for our Patrols in the Ado-Af dub District — Losses sustained : wee Wounded and One Prisoner Murdered (December 28th, 1934). — On the morning of ecember 28th, 1934, an Italian patrol was fired on between Ado and Warder, near Ubertale, by — 34 — an Ethiopian patrol which had crept up during the night under cover of the thick bush n patrol retaliated and the attacking party hurriedly withdrew. There were no losses on either On the same morning, the usual patrol which regularly visits the observation post south of Ad found that post occupied by a large patrol of Ethiopians, who had disguised themselves as dub t° and attempted to deceive our men by calling out “ Who goes there ? ” in Italian. Taking advantage of the momentary hesitation on the part of our patrol, they at once opened fire. Three of our dubats were wounded, and a fourth who was wounded and had become separated from the rest was captured by the Ethiopians and murdered. Our patrol fired back. The Ethiopians withdrew, leaving three men on the ground. However as he was afraid the aggressors would return, the commander of the dubats at Afdub sent reinforcements. At 3.30 p.m. on that same day, the Ethiopians attacked in large numbers bringing with them two machine-guns from Gerlogubi, which opened fire at a distance on our patrol The dubats, who had received definite orders not to fire back unless this was absolutely necessary for their own defence, obeyed their instructions with admirable restraint. Shortly afterwards, for some mysterious reason, the Ethiopians withdrew (see Walwal Memorandum)
(44) Ethiopian Attack on an Italian Patrol near Afdub (January 8th, 1935). — On January 8th 1935, an Italian patrol of ten men was attacked near Afdub by a group of Ethiopians. Thé dubats fired back, and, with the help of another patrol from the post, prevented the Ethiopians from advancing. The Ethiopian firing lasted for half an hour, after which they withdrew (see Walwal Memorandum).
(45) Attack on and Encirclement of the Italian Post at Afdub by a Large Ethiopian Armed Column (January 29th, 1935). — On January 29th of this year, at about 8 a.m., a group of armed Ethiopians advanced on the Italian post at Afdub until they came in sight of our patrol, which was outside the enclosure. There was a sharp exchange of shots. Our dubats followed the patrol for a short distance, when a large number of armed Ethiopians, with two machine-guns, suddenly emerged from the bushes. A violent combat ensued between the dubats and the Ethiopians, and several men were killed or wounded on both sides. However, on the 31st, a column of about 650 Ethiopians, which had camped not more than a kilometre away from the post, began to encircle it after sunset. As it was so greatly outnumbered, our garrison withdrew to Ubertale. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa sent a note of protest asking for proper compensation. In order to prevent further incidents, it was decided to create a neutral zone, which has been defined only after lengthy and very slow negotiations. The conciliatory spirit displayed by the Italian Government was in marked contrast to the Ethiopian attitude (see Annexes Nos. 40 and 41 to the W alwal Memorandum, page 133).
(46) Occupation of Shillave (January 31st, 1935). — On January 31st, 1935, a group of armed Ethiopians suddenly occupied Shillave. As is well known, this place is part of the Sultanate of Obbia, to which the Marehan Somali belong, in whose territory it is situated. Latterly, there has been no permanent Italian garrison there, although the place was under the control of our patrols, of whose temporary absence the Ethiopians took advantage in order to occupy it. The Italian Legation at Addis Ababa made the necessary representations to the Ethiopian Government on account of this serious incident, which is connected with the previous occurrence at Afdub (see documents Nos. 161, 162).
(47) Raid at Ayable (March 3rd, 1935). — On March 3rd of this year, rer Abdulla and Talamoge, Ethiopian subjects, seized near Ayable, between the posts of El Beit and Corogei, about 100 camels belonging to our Rahanuin subjects. A mobile unit of the frontier levies, which arrived at the scene of the raid, endeavoured to follow the raiders, but, as the latter entered Ethiopian territory, the patrol turned back in order to avoid incidents. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa sent a note of protest asking for compensation due and the return of the stolen animals. The incident has not yet been settled (see Annexes 42, 43, 44, to the Walwal Memorandum, pages 137, 139, 141, and document 169).
(48) Crossing of the Frontier and Encounter in Italian Territory at Om Hager (March 24th, 1935). — On the night of March 24th, an Italian patrol, consisting of a lance-sergeant of the carabinieri and a buluk bashi, suddenly encountered a large group of armed Ethiopians nearly 300 metres inside Italian territory, in the neighbourhood of Om Hager. On being ordered to withdraw, the Ethiopians replied by a hail of shots, which seriously wounded the buluk bashi. The lance-sergeant then took shelter behind an ant-hill and used all his cartridges against the aggressors, who hurriedly withdrew, leaving behind them one dead man, two rifles and sixty cartridges. The Italian Minister in Addis Ababa sent a note of protest asking for the compensation due to us. The Ethiopian Government replied by a note in which the facts were completely distorted, so that the Italian Minister refused to examine it and to forward it to his Government (see Annexes Nos. 45 and 46 to the Walwal Memorandum, pages 143, 147).
(49) Italian Native Soldier killed at Gogula (May 4th, 1935). — On May 4th o f this year,a native soldier belonging to the small Italian post of Gogula, who was drawing water from the Sittona torrent, was killed and deprived of his arms by armed Ethiopians. The commander 0 the post, who at once rushed to the spot, followed the tracks of the murderers as far as the frontier- The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa sent a note of protest to the Ethiopian Governmen asking for compensation. He obtained the usual dilatory reply (see documents Nos. 191, x94) — 35 —
(50) Further Attempts by Armed M en to cross the Frontier illicitly at Gublei (May 31st, 1935). — On May 31st of this year, a group of about twenty armed Ethiopians attempted to cross the Italian lines near Garasgalo, in the neighbourhood of Gublei. The Ethiopians, on being warned by the dubats not to cross the line, opened fire. The dubats retaliated and repulsed the aggressors. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa sent a note of protest. The incident has not yet been s e t t l e d (see document No. 201). (51) Ethiopian Raid in the Assab District — Four Women and Ten Men killed; Six Women and Six Men wounded; Five Children castrated; Three Women and Four Men captured as Slaves — all Italian Subjects (May 31st, 1935). — On the morning of May 31st, 1935, some 300 Ethiopian raiders who suddenly appeared in the Mabra plain attacked the Italian post at Dol, while other bands of raiders made an incursion for a long distance, without any resistance being offered, into the Mabra plain, attacking the unarmed population. Ten men and four women were killed; six men and six women wounded ; five children castrated; four men and three women captured as slaves, and 4,000 head of live-stock stolen. After the raid, the robbers took refuge in Ethiopian territory before any punitive action could be taken by us. The Italian Minister at Addis Ababa sent a note of protest asking for the compensation due to us. This grave incident has not yet been settled (see documents Nos. 207, 208, 217, 218).
C o n c l u s io n s .
The foregoing facts show not only the patient and tolerant attitude of the Italian Government (which it continued to adopt even after it found that the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation of 1928 was being systematically infringed), but also the existence of a definite and tenacious policy of hostility towards Italy, which constitutes a continued menace for her. And this menace can clearly never be removed so long as the present situation in Ethiopia continues. There is a constant state of alarm which compels the Italian Government to incur very heavy expenditure in order to strengthen its garrisons in its African colonies and to keep them in a state of permanent mobilisation, so as to ensure the safety of its own frontiers and its own territories. However, the special dangers to Italy do not stop short here. The Addis Ababa Government itself is instigating subversive action directed solely against Italy and against her frontiers. Efforts are made to attract to the capital disloyal individuals who have escaped from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, for the purpose of using them against Italy at every opportunity. Persons who have been banished fr&m Eritrea, deserters from the Eritrean militia, fugitives from justice, individuals discharged by the Italian colonial administration on account of inefficiency, insubordin ation, or dishonesty are attracted to Addis Ababa by the promise of work in order to form a special association (assisted by the Ethiopian Government) for carrying on subversive propaganda against Italy. There is yet another danger in addition to all these—namely, the intensive arming in which Ethiopia is engaged as the most im portant task of the State, whereas after the Treaty of Amity with Italy her need for armaments should, on the contrary, have been lessened. Under cover of that treaty, Ethiopia has armed herself more and more strongly. The loyalty and goodwill with which she was treated by the Italian Government is shown by the fact that the greater part of the arms supplied to Ethiopia prior to the signature of the 1930 Treaty between Italy, France and England, regulating the quantity of arms to be imported into Ethiopia, were furnished to the Negus by the Italian Government. The latter supplied him with 4,000 Mannlicher rifles and 1,000 Mannlicher muskets together with a million cartridges for those arms, 24 Colt machine-guns and a million cartridges, 50 Beretta pistols, 350 automatic rifles together with a million cartridges for them, the whole being worth 1,900,000 Italian lire, of which the Ethiopian Government still owes 840,000 lire. These arms were of great utility to the Negus, who was engaged in suppressing internal disorders and whose relations with Ras Gugsa Olye were very strained. The Negus is now preparing to use these Italian arms, which have not yet been wholly paid for, against Italy. In recent years Ethiopia has—as is well known—made strenuous efforts to obtain war material, ter supplies of which (much of it imported secretly and as contraband) have increased enormously. In the light of all the facts enumerated above, it is clear that these arms are intended to be used against Italy, and for no other purpose.
The foregoing facts show that Ethiopia has maintained an aggressive political attitude and has threatened the security of the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland by attempting to invade them while Italy was having difficulties in other regions, and by a lengthy and uninter rupted series of raids, depredations and illicit crossings of the frontier. III. CHRONIC DISORDER IN ETHIOPIA. ITALY’S POSITION IN ETHIOPIA UNDER EXISTING TREATIES.
SUMMARY.
Chronic disorder in Ethiopia — Revolts and pronuncianientos — Political action of the present Emperor since his coronation — Italian sphere of influence in Ethiopia.
Chronic State of Internal Disorder in Ethiopia.
The violations of the Italo-Ethiopian treaties, and Ethiopia’s anti-Italian political attitude, assume an even graver character, inasmuch as the Ethiopian State is to-day in such a condition of internal disorder, and so politically, economically and culturally backward, that it cannot cany out, unaided the thorough reorganisation without which it must remain a permanent danger to the neighbouring Italian colonies. Consequently, it is no longer a question of settling particular frontier problems or obtaining satisfaction for countless individual incidents, because the Ethiopian State, in its present condition, can offer no guarantee of its ability to fulfil its undertakings satisfactorily. Evidence of the internal disorder of Ethiopia is easily provided. Only the most recent manifestations of it need be recalled here.
Revolts and “ Pronunciamentos ”.
Even in the period of the Regency, during the last years of the Emperor Menelik’s illness, two successive coups d’état were carried out at Addis Ababa—one against the Empress, on March 21st, 1910, and one in the summer of i q i i , under the direction of Ras Abate, the object of which was to seize the person of Lijj Yasu. The whole period of Lijj Yasu’s government was punctuated by a series of military expeditions and civil wars, from the armed expedition of Negus Woldê Giorgis and that of Negus Michael (already referred to) to the armed struggle in Tigre, on the borders of the Colon}/ of Eritrea, between the two Tigrine chiefs, Dedjatch Gabre Selassie and Ras Sebhat, which terminated in the killing of Sebhat in 1914; and to the armed expedition which Lijj Yasu led in 1915 against the peaceful Ghimirra of Western Ethiopia for the sole purpose of killing a certain number of presumed enemies in battle (which, according to the local tradition, is a condition that the sovereign of Ethiopia must fulfil before he can assume his nom de guerre). In 1916 there was another mutiny among the troops at Addis Ababa against Lijj Yasu, the object being to induce him to dismiss the Ministers whom he had appointed to form the shadow of a central organisation on the European model. In 1911, Lijj Yasu made another military expedition to Harrar and Jijiga to proclaim his alliance with the Moslems ; there followed the revolution of September 1916 at Addis Ababa, and the war between Lijj Yasu and the present Emperor, ending in the battle of Sagale and the punitive expedition against Diredawa and Harrar, in which the most barbarous atrocities were committed and serious loss was caused to the Italians settled in the district. In 1920 and 1921, an armed expedition of about 150,000 men was led by the present Emperor against Northern Ethiopia, where Lijj Yasu had taken refuge ; it ended with the capture and imprisonment of the deposed prince (see document No. 4). Lijj Yasu, whom the Emperor Menelik had caused to be recognised as the sole legitimate heir, being thus eliminated, the Ethiopian Empire was in practice under a dual monarchy—under the frequently conflicting dominations of the Empress Zauditu, Menelik’s daughter, and the then Ras Tafari, who, after the revolution of 1917, had assumed the title of Regent and Heir to the Throne. This uncertain situation, aggravated by Tafari’s continual efforts to diminish the prestige of the Crown and augment his own powers in consequence, did much to accentuate the disorder in the structure of the Empire, due chiefly to the two parties—the Empress’s and Ras Tafari s— whose antagonism, always latent and from time to time bursting out into open strife, led to revolts and palace intrigues. Here again we need only mention the most salient episodes. In March and April 1928, Addis Ababa had been threatened by a pronunciamento by Dedjatch Balcha, Governor of Sidamo, a member of the Empress’s party, who, at the head of 5,000 men, took up a rebellious attitude and encamped near the Ethiopian capital with plainly aggressive intentions. The Dedjatch was taken prisoner and exiled to a remote province. I n September of the same year came the revolution of the guard of the Imperial Gebbi, undei the command of Dedjal ch Aba Ukau, also a member of the Empress’s party. The revolt produce a state of immediate alarm in the city of Addis Ababa; indeed, the resident diplomatic missions were obliged to consider whether military forces should be despatched from the neighbouring — 3 7 —
olonies to the Ethiopian capital. Aba Ukau occupied part of the Gebbi by force of arms, and vas only induced to surrender by the personal intervention of the Empress, who was anxious to avoid bloodshed. He was condemned to death, and afterwards reprieved and exiled. His move m e n t however, afforded a pretext for an agitation by Tafari s party, which ended in an increase ■ Safari's power, inasmuch as the Empress was obliged to grant him the title of Negus and appoint him R e g e n t with full powers. This success on the part of the Negus, however, had no favourable influence on the internal c o n d i t i o n of Ethiopia; indeed, the situation grew more and more acute, even i n the northern provinces of the Empire, where sanguinary conflicts began to occur between the Galla Wojerat, \zelo, and other tribes, and the local troops. At the same time, in the Lake Tsana region, Ras Gugsa assumed an attitude of open rebellion against the Addis Ababa Government, and placed himself at the head of a violently anti-foreign movement. It will suffice to refer in this connection to the episode of the arrest of the German Minister, Dr. Kurt Prufer, and his wife, and the First Secretary of the Italian Legation, Comm. Porta, who were travelling through the district on their w a y 'to Eritrea with all necessary authorisation from the central Government. The revolt of Ras Gugsa, who, as the last husband of the reigning Empress, was popular with the partisans of the Empress Zauditu, contributed to foment and still further aggravate the raiding campaign which had meanwhile been going on, especially in North-Eastern Ethiopia, on the immediate confines of the Colony of Eritrea. The situation became so alarming that the Regent of the Empire was obliged to send an armed expedition of several thousand men against the Ras, under the command of the Minister of War himself, Ras Mulugeta ; this concluded with the battle of Zebit (March 1930), when Ras Gugsa’s army was defeated—mainly owing to the panic caused by the bombs dropped by the French aviator Maillet, who was in the service of the Negus—and the Ras was hacked to death.
The Political Action of the Present Emperor since his Coronation. No sooner had the news of Ras Gugsa’s defeat reached Addis Ababa than the Empress died suddenly. Her death was shortly followed by that of the Governor of Tigre, Dedjatch Gabre Selassie, one of her most active partisans. The Dedjatch died of poison ; it is said that he was murdered by a servant, out of revenge. . Immediately upon the death of the Empress, the Regent caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor, and, to assert his personal power, summoned all the provincial chiefs to Addis Ababa. This action, which, on account of the primitive nature of internal communications in Ethiopia, obliged the chiefs to remain absent from their territories for many months, still further aggravated the situation in the frontier provinces of the Empire. Meanwhile, the presence of the great chiefs at Addis Ababa caused very serious incidents there as well, these being mainly due to the change that the Emperor had been obliged to make in his domestic policy. Down to 1930, Ras Tafari had endeavoured to wreaken the power of the Crown in order the better to strengthen his own supremacy over the Empress. Consequently, he had until then passed as the greatest feudatory of the Empire, who, in accordance with the traditional policy, sought to limit the powers of the sovereign. After 1930 and the Empress’s death, Tafari, having himself become Negus and hence head of the State, was obliged to reverse his own policy completely, and to strengthen the supreme power of the Crown to an increasing extent, thus reasserting in his own name the very tradition that he had previously combated. By this new policy he gained some apparent successes, as we shall see in due course, but he did not succeed in re-establishing the sovereign power which he himself had been undermining for m any years—from 1916 to 1930. This is the main cause of the present political disorder in Ethiopia, where the elimination of certain local Rases has really been more in the nature of a personal victory for the Negus than of a genuine step towards the restoration of order in the Empire. The Emperor was able to profit by the presence of Ras Kasa at Addis Ababa for these his political ends. On the one hand, he brought pressure to bear on Ras Kasa to induce him to hand over Lijj ^asu, Menelik’s adopted son and designated heir, who had been in the Ras’s custody since his dethronement. On the other hand, he kept Ras Ailu, the chief of Gojjam, at Addis Ababa. In May 1932 came the crisis. Lijj Yasu succeeded unexpectedly in escaping from his place of detention, and w7as promptly recaptured by the soldiers, not of Ras Kasa, but of the Emperor; at the same time Ras Ailu was accused of being in league with Lijj Yasu, and was arrested, deprived of his chieftancy, and exiled, all his property being confiscated. A Shoan chief, a close adherent °f the Emperor, was sent to his province of Gojjam. This action, which struck a severe blow at the traditional autonomy of Gojjam, led to a series °f rebellions in those parts. We need only mention the two most important—that led by Fitaurari Admasu against Debra Markos, the capital of Gojjam, and the more recent revolt of Lijj Manu m the western part of that region. Another chief, Fitaurari Berru, also a surviving representative of Menelik’s traditional policy, VVas little by little eliminated by the Emperor from his im portant offices, until in July 1934 he was summoned to defend himself before the Negus against trivial charges, and was condemned and exiled to the Arusi. Another sanguinary rebellion broke out in October 1934 at Mai Cheu (Northern Tigre). • son of Lijj by a Danakil woman suddenly attacked the market at Mai Cheu at the head of a s ron8 body of armed men, but after a violent battle he was defeated and taken prisoner. All these events—and only the most important are mentioned here—suffice to demonstrate e sta.te of complete internal disorder and latent rebellion obtaining in Ethiopia, which, by preventing any permanent consolidation of the powers of the central Government and the provincial - 3 8 - authorities, has a particularly detrimental influence on relations with the neighbouring colon' which are precluded from finding their natural outlet in Ethiopia for peaceful trading and co-operation in the direction of civilisation and progress. The instability due to the Emperor'- change of policy, the elimination of important chiefs who wielded an extensive influence in certaii^ regions, and the substitution of Shoan officials of the Central Government for the traditional chiefs' while failing to strengthen the central Government’s power in the frontier regions, have, at thé same time, disorganised the provincial administrations and helped to make internal conditions in Ethiopia even more unstable than they were in the Emperor Menelik’s time. With its largely mediaeval structure, with an utterly primitive administration vitiated by the peculiar mentality of the central and local authorities, with a judicial organisation offering no guarantee whatever of impartiality, and with a special treaty regime for foreigners which has never worked satisfactorily; with a financial organisation which is still on patriarchal lines, the State budget not being distinguished in practice from the Emperor’s personal income ; with a population which, deprived of the benefits of education and instruction, has preserved the most barbarous customs and the most backward mentality ; with an economic system based on slave labour ; with an almost complete lack of rapid communications, except for the Jibuti-Addis Ababa railway with the disorderly condition in which the outlying provinces, especially those of the south-east south and west, are left ; with all these deficiencies, the Ethiopian State is an anachronism when contrasted with all the other parts of Africa, which, whether as independent States like South Africa and Egypt, or under the control of European Powers, have long enjoyed the benefits of civilisation and progress. Owing to the geographical position of her colonies in relation to Ethiopia, Italy is the Power which suffers the most serious damage, direct and indirect, from this chronic state of internal disorder in Ethiopia, and from the inability of that country to progress.
Italian Sphere of Influence in Ethiopia.
This chronic state of disorder in Ethiopia has, for years past, obliged the neighbouring Powers to secure their interests through treaties and conventions dealing with Ethiopia. These agreements subdivide Ethiopian territory into spheres of influence, of which the Italian is recognised as the most extensive. Brief reference should be made in this connection to the substance of the Italo-British Protocols of March 24th, 1891, April 15th, 1891, and May 5th, 1894; to the Italo-Franco-British Agreement of December 13th, 1906 (the Tripartite Agreement, which explicitly confirms the validity of the above-mentioned Protocols) ; and, lastly, to the Italo-British exchange of notes of December I4th-20th, 1925, which is based on the Tripartite Agreement. By the Protocols of March 24th and April 15th, 1891, the Italian and British Governments established a line of demarcation in East Africa between the spheres of influence allotted to Italy and the United Kingdom. This line left to Italy all Ethiopian territory to the east of the thirty-fifth meridian, from the point at which the latter meets the Blue Nile to the sixth parallel, and all territory north of the sixth parallel as far as the point at which it meets the River Juba, the thalweg of which constitutes the rest of the line. By the Protocol of May 5th, 1894, the Italian and British Governments similarly established the line of demarcation between the Italian and British spheres of influence in Eastern Ethiopia, almost all the territory of the former Emirate of Harrar, including Ogaden, being assigned to the Italian sphere. The Tripartite Agreement of 1906, confirming the above-mentioned Protocols, specifies that the three signatory Powers also recognise French economic interests in connection with traffic on the Jibuti railway, and the hydraulic interests of the United Kingdom and Egypt in the basin of the Nile, with a reservation in regard to local hydraulic interests and the Italian territorial interests already recognised. The exchange of notes of 1925 between Italy and the United Kingdom, registered at Geneva, confirms the Tripartite Agreement after the entry of Ethiopia into the League of Nations. It defines the British hydraulic interests, and binds Italy to promote the construction of certain hydraulic works on Lake Tsana by the British Government ; at the same time, it binds the British Government in relation to the Italian Government to respect the interests of the population of that region.
The predominant Italian interest to which the diplomatic instruments referred to above give legal recognition corresponds, as has already been observed, to the de facto situation m which Italy, who stands in most urgent and recognised need of colonial expansion, is also the Power which is suffering the greatest damage through the present situation in Ethiopia. — 39 —
Part II.
ETHIOPIA AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.
I HOW ETHIOPIA BECAME A MEMBER OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.
SUMMARY.
^mission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations and conditions to which the admission was subject — British public opinion against the admission of Ethiopia to the League — The value and scope of the Ethiopian declaration and the special obligations arising therefrom — How Ethiopia responded to the trust placed in her by the States Members of the League.
Conditional Admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations, etc.
Ethiopia was admitted to the League of Nations in 1923. The conditions on which her request for admission was accepted by the Assembly are well known. They are clear from the Minutes of the Sixth Committee and the report of the Sub-Committee appointed to consider the request. The Sub-Committee felt bound to point out in its report that it " found itself unable to determine exactly the extent of the effective control of the central authority over the provinces remote from the capital As regards the condition required by Article 1 of the Covenant regarding effective guarantees of a sincere intention to observe international obligations, the Sub-Committee pointed out that, in the past, Ethiopia had not fully observed her international engagements. During the discussion it was stressed how difficult it was to reconcile Ethiopia’s demand with the circumstance that Ethiopia, once admitted to the League, might sit in judgment on countries under mandate, more civilised than Ethiopia herself and not stained with the disgrace of slavery. Lastly, Ethiopia’s declarations of goodwill having been noted, the Sub-Committee decided to propose that the request for admission should not be submitted to the Assembly until the Ethiopian Government had undertaken certain special engagements set forth in a declaration, the terms of which were formulated by the Sub-Committee itself. The Ethiopian Government having signed this declaration, the Assembly, at its meeting on September 28th, 1923, decided, on the recommendation of the Sixth Committee, to admit Ethiopia to membership of the League. Immediately she was admitted, a hostile campaign broke out in the British Press. It was pointed out that terrible anarchy prevailed in Ethiopia, that every chief could indulge in as much raiding and robbery as he liked, that entire regions were given over to brigandage and slave- hunting. In particular, the review East Africa stated that it was urgently necessary in the interest of all nations having relations with Ethiopia, particularly the United Kingdom, that Ethiopia should stop devastating the regions adjoining her frontiers and that she should proceed to develop her own immediate resources ; and, further, that, if Ethiopia would not or could not carry out these reforms as quickly as possible, measures of intervention and protection would become inevitable. It was evident from the discussions to which Ethiopia’s request for admission gave rise at Geneva that the Assembly’s decision in 1923 was influenced by various special factors which militated in favour of Ethiopia. One of these factors was the trend towards universality, to which the League, particularly in its early years, attached particular importance. Another element which exercised a decisive influence was the desire to give a backward country asking to be admitted to the League a mark of confidence in its capacity to make progress in civilising itself. It was this feeling that inspired the Italian Government’s attitude towards Ethiopia’s request. It was ln the atmosphere created by these considerations, and by others of political expediency, that the «ague, in 1923, overcame the difficulties raised by a request for admission on the part of a country jn which slavery still existed, by merely expressing certain reservations and asking the Ethiopian Government first to sign a declaration involving certain special obligations.
Ethiopia’s Declaration and Special Obligations.
On these conditions, Ethiopia became a Member of the League. She thus assumed the obliga- 10ns imposed by the Covenant upon all the Members of the League and the special obligations ^sing out of the declaration which she was required to sign as a preliminary condition of the • ssemhly’s decision regarding her request for admission. — 4 0 —
This declaration is worded as follows :
“ The Empire of Abyssinia, following the example of other sovereign States which ha •? given special undertakings on the occasion of their admission to the League of Nations mal/6 the following declaration : “ i. Abyssinia adheres to the obligations formulated in Article n , paragraph i 0f the Convention signed at St. Germain-en-Laye on September ioth, 1919, amending the General Act of Berlin, dated February 26th, 1885, and the General Act and Declaration of Brussplc dated July 2nd, 1890. “ 2. Abyssinia, recognising as binding the system at present established with regard to the importation of arms and ammunition, undertakes to conform to the principles set forth in the Convention and Protocol signed at St. Germain-en-Laye on September io th , iq iq and, in particular, to the stipulations contained in Article 6 of the said Convention. " 3. Abyssinia declares herself ready now and hereafter to furnish the Council with anv information which it may require, and to take into consideration any recommendations which the Council may make with regard to the fulfilment of these obligations, in which she recognises that the League of Nations is concerned.”
Twelve years have now elapsed since Ethiopia was admitted to the League. It is the right and the duty of the League as a whole and its Members to ask themselves how the Ethiopian Government has responded to the trust placed in it in 1923, and how it has fulfilled its general obligations and special engagements.
II. POLITICAL STRUCTURE AND CONDITIONS OF ETHIOPIA IN RELATION TO ARTICLE 1 OF THE COVENANT
SUMMARY.
A. Abyssinia and her " Colonies Clear distinction between the Abyssinian State and the territories conquered by it — Difference of religion, language, history, race, and political and social structure — Negus's domination over non-Abyssinian populations — The gebbar system (a form of slavery) applied to subject populations — The Ethiopian Government’s responsibility for the decimation of the subject populations — Ethiopia’s incapacity to possess a colony.
B. Disorganisation of Public A uthorities in Ethiopia: Inadequate authority of the central Government — Grave dangers resulting therefrom.
A. ABYSSINIA AND HER “COLONIES”.
Ethiopia’s Obligations.
As in any organised society, the Covenant imposes on every Member of the League of Nations the primary obligation of fulfilling the conditions required by the Covenant as qualifications for membership. One of these conditions is that every Member of the League must possess a Government capable of effectively exercising its authority throughout the whole of its own territory. The Covenant regulates the mutual relations of Members by means of a system of special obligations and rights, which would be meaningless if membership were not subject to the conditions set forth in Article 1. Apart from the specific obligations imposed by the various articles of the Covenant on Members as regards their conduct in their mutual relations, the obligation of each Member to fulfil these requirements is imposed in virtue of the Covenant, and is an essential duty, since the whole operation of the Covenant depends upon the fulfilment of this obligation. In 1923, the Sub-Committee which examined Abyssinia’s request for admission stated that it found itself unable to determine exactly the extent of the effective control of the central authority over the provinces remote from the capital.
Distinction between the Abyssinian State and the Conquered Territories.
On this subject it is first of all necessary to obtain a fundamental idea of the position. It is commonly said that Ethiopia is a national State in Africa which forms a single unit. Notmng could be further from the facts. . , The Ethiopian State, in its present form, is composed of two regions which are clearly distinct both geographically and politically (see map at end of volume, and attached diagram). (a) The old Abyssinian State, consisting of the regions inhabited mainly by A b y s s i n i a n populations speaking kindred languages derived from Southern Arabic. But the old A b y s s i n i a n
State itself could not be called a national State, because even in those regions there are c o n s i d e r a D — 4i — nofi-Abyssinian minorities, such as the Agau in the Tsana and Nile regions, the Falasha of Semien, professing the Jewish religion (American and French missions are engaged in alleviating their unhappy conditions of servitude) and others. Nevertheless, their common allegiance to the dynasty of the House of Solomon, and the fact that for ages they had belonged to the same group of States, have to a certain extent welded all these Abyssinian regions into a political unit which, though rough and shapeless in structure, might have a position of its own in the composition of present-day Ethiopia. This Abyssinian State has well-defined and exact historical, geographical and ethnical boundaries. On the west, towards the Nile basin, and on the east, towards Danakil, the frontier of the Abyssinian State coincided with the edge of the plateau. The Abyssinians, a mountain people, are clearly distinguished by race, language and religion from the populations which inhabit the torrid Danakil plain and the valleys sloping down towards the Sudan. To the south, the boundary of the Abyssinian State was marked by the course of the Blue Nile a5 far as its confluence with the Adabai, by the watershed between the Blue Nile and the Awash, an d by the course of the River Awash as far as its entry into the Danakil plain. The territories beyond these boundaries, in the south, are inhabited by non-Abyssinian populations which, throughout the centuries of their history, have been traditional enemies of the Abyssinian State.
(b) The non-A byssinian areas recently conquered by the arms of the Negus Menelik. — Beyond the confines of this nucleus of the Abyssinian State there were, until forty years ago, other native States, some of which have a long historical tradition of independence. Among the principal may be mentioned the Emirate of Harrar, which comprised the regions between the River Awash, the Webi Shebeli, and the south-eastern edge of the plateau, having the inhabitants of Ogaden as tributaries. The Emirate of Harrar is a Moslem State which was ruled for centuries by the dynasty of its Emirs, and was the cultural and religious centre of Islam in South-East Africa. The continuous relations maintained by the Emirate with the Arab countries of the Levant had brought that State up to a level of civilisation far superior to that of Abyssinia. We need only mention the fact that, even to-day, Harrar is the only town in the territory of the present Ethiopian State which is built of masonry and is not composed of huts and hovels made of branches, apart from a few buildings in Addis Ababa. In the south-west, the Kingdom of Kafa was founded by the western Sidama peoples. The political and social constitution of this kingdom and its history (which comprises at least 600 years of independence, from the fourteenth century to the Abyssinian conquest) form the subject of various well-known works published only recently ; and, not to quote Italian writers, we need only refer to the voluminous work of the Austrian traveller Franz Bieber. In the south, there is the kingdom of Wolamo, founded by the Sidama populations of the Omo. How this peaceful little agricultural State was devastated and destroyed by the Abyssinians is described in a work by a Frenchman, M. Vanderheym, which is nothing less than an indictment of the Abyssinian State. In the west, there is the Sultanate of Jimma, a Moslem State that became a centre in Western Ethiopia towards which Moslem currents flowed from Harrar and from Egypt. Under the patriarchal administration of its sultans of the local dynasty, Jimma had reached a high degree of economic prosperity, which it retained, being the only Moslem State remaining independent of the Abyssinians until the Negus annexed it to Ethiopia a few months ago. The Abyssinian State is completely different in every respect from these vast “ colonies ” which it has recently acquired :
(a) In religion, because the Abyssinians are Monophysite Christians, whereas the Somali, Harrari, Galla, Sidama are largely Moslem, and in part still pagan ; (b) In language, because the Abyssinians speak Amharic and Tigrai (Semitic languages), whereas in the conquered regions the languages spoken are totally different from the Abyssi nian languages, but are interrelated among themselves—e.g., Galla, Somali, Kafi, Wolamo, etc. ; (c) In political and social structure, because the Abyssinian State is based on the feudal system, whereas the Emirate of Harrar was organised on the model of the States of the Arabian Peninsula, and the Sidama States have a highly centralised organisation of their own ; (d) In race, because the Abyssinians are a Semiticised people, whereas the Galla, Sidama, Somali, Tishana, Yambo and the rest are Cushitic and Nilotic peoples; (e) In history, because the Emirate of Harrar, for instance, has for centuries waged relentless warfare against the Abyssinian States. Indeed, this warfare might be said to constitute the whole history of Abyssinia itself ; records of it exist from at least the fourteenth century onwards. The Abyssinian domination constitutes, in fact, the subjection of a conquered people by its age-long enemy.
Domination of the Negus over Non-Abyssinian Populations.
The Abyssinian domination in the conquered countries takes concrete form in the slave trade and the so-called gebbar system. The slave trade will be considered below. It should be pointed °ut here, however, that the slave trade is due not only to a desire for gain, but also to the idea, eep-rooted in the Abyssinians’ minds, that their victories have left them absolute masters of — 42 — populations which, in their eyes, are no more than human cattle. This conception of th Abyssinians is confirmed by a typical incident narrated by Sir Arnold Hodson in his work “ Wh 6 the Lion Reigns ” (page 41) : re
" An old Abyssinian was shooting with the sight adjusted at more than a thousand metres I said to the Dedjiazmatch that the bullets might fall on the mountain and kill someone He burst out laughing and said, ‘ What does it matter if they do ? There is nobody here but Shangalla (Shangalla is the name given by the Abyssinians to the Nilotic peoples.)
The gebbar system is a form of slavery, and is regarded as such by European writers and travellers. In each of the countries conquered and annexed by Abyssinia, a body of Abyssinian troops is stationed, comprising the soldiers themselves and their families. The in h a b ita n ts of the conquered country are registered in families by the Abyssinian chiefs, and to every family of Abyssinians settled in the country there is assigned one or more families of the conquered as gebbar. The gebbar family is obliged to support the Abyssinian family; it gives th a t family its own lands, builds and maintains the huts in which it lives, cultivates the fields, grazes the cattle and carries out every kind of work and performs all possible services for the Abyssinian family' All this is done without any remuneration, merely in token of the perpetual servitude resulting from the defeat sustained thirty years ago. It amounts to what Anglo-Indians are accustomed to call " the law of the jungle The gebbar can never obtain freedom from their chains, even by ransom. They must not leave the land assigned for their work, and, if they run away, they themselves are subject to the terrible punishments which are inflicted in Ethiopia, and to which we shall refer shortly, while their village is bound to supply the Abyssinians with another family to be reduced to the condition of gebbar, in place of the fugitive family. As to the effects of slavery and the gebbar system, all who know the facts are agreed : the non- Abyssinian regions of Ethiopia are becoming a vast desert. Every Abyssinian chief sent to those parts finds it necessary on his arrival to provide himself with slaves and his soldiers’ families with gebbar. And when he leaves the conquered countries to be transferred elsewhere, he takes away with him, and allow his soldiers to take away with them, the greatest possible number of slaves and gebbar to be employed at his new residence. This constant draining of the population of the subject territories is particularly terrible, because the slaves and gebbar are decimated, during the long journeys, by hunger, thirst and ill-treatment from their Abyssinian masters. We quote evidence from non-Italian sources. Sir Arnold Hodson (“ Seven Years in Southern Abyssinia ”, London, 1927, page 146) writes of Kafa:
“ There has recently been a change of Governors in Kafa, and, as usual, the outgoing official was taking away as much as he could in goods and slaves.”
The German traveller Georg Escherich (“ Im Lande des Negus ”, Berlin, 1921) describes vividly the atrocious scenes of which he was an eye-witness on the occasion of the d ep artu re of Dedjatch Burru from the region of Bakko.1 The Swiss traveller and ethnologist, Georges Montandon, now Professor at the Sorbonne, whose work on the Ghimirra is of fundamental importance for all modern studies of Ethiopia, was an eye-witness of the transfer of a chief of the Ghimirra, and saw in the forest dozens and dozens of corpses of gebbar who had died of thirst and exhaustion, when being compelled by force to follow their Abyssinian masters.2
1 Escherich, “ Im Lande des Negus ”, pages 114 and 115: “ Anything of the smallest value was taken from the natives. For three days Burru’s bravos made their rounds and took what they could find from the poorest huts. Not a thing that might be of any value was left. Everything was taken ; from the mules to the cock and the jar of wild honey, Burru’s people neglected nothing. Since he would never return to the country, the tyrant was anxious to enrich himself with its spoils to the utmost possible extent. He was still the master. He had still the power and could use it. And how he used it ! The goods and property of the native Shangalla, reduced by him to utter ruin, were not sufficient for him; he wanted their bodies as well. Stout youths to carry his baggage, slim girls and ripe matrons for work and for his pleasure. Some hundreds of Shangalla are being dragged, these days, to Addis Ababa w ith Burru s caravan, and will never see their native land again. It is to-day they must leave. They are not even given the time to say good-bye. Here is a sturdy youth, laden like a mule, being driven by a small, malignant-looking Abyssinian. Stupefied by his sad fate, the poor fellow walks on. He sees a friend who has been more fortunate. W h at a moving farewell ! Bent double beneath the heavy weight, the weeping captive kisses his friend on both shoulders again an again. But this delays his progress. The bravo finds the process too long, and gives his victim a blow of his bamboo. The wretch has no feelings : Hid ! Hid ! Here are two women, black as coal and not beautiful to look upon. They are naked except for the girdle of leaves round their flanks. Another farewell ! Maybe they are friends or sisters, inseparab e till now, who have been together through everything. But the soldiers of Burru have come to say that one may sta> but the other must go. The latter will not believe it; but the brute holds her with an iron grasp. There is nothing left for the poor things but to say good-bye after their manner. Poor women !... “ I was to witness still worse. What is that tall Abyssinian doing with the two girls ? They are two girls in the earliest youth, without a stitch on them. The Abyssinian drives them in front of him like a pair of goats. The shame Burru still takes pleasure in young flesh. ...” . 2 G. M ontandon, “ Au pays des Ghimirra ”, page 2 8 8 : “ The road is littered with dead bodies in all stages of decaj r they lie in the bushes, under the shelters, by the roadside, or drowned in the mud. Elsewhere, though there is not to be seen, a sudden outbreak of pestilence reveals yet more decay. , " They are all gebbar, prostrated with fatigue, blows and hunger. To learn the story of the dead, one need ^ look at the living. Haggard, they totter painfully along under their burdens, and the whip is not spared for those flag. A slave, perhaps 15 years old, heavily burdened, is leading a mule by the bridle. Tired out, he sits down on bank of a stream, and does not rise at the first sign from his master; whereupon the latter, who is clad only in his trou 43 —
Responsibility of the Ethiopian Government for the Decimation of the Subject Peoples.
Thus the population of Kafa, which Cardinal Guglielmo Massaja estimated at a million and a half before the Abyssinian conquest, is now reduced to 20,000. Again, whereas Vittorio Bottego estimated the population of the Burji in 1895 at 200,000, there are n o w no more than 15,000 people in that region. And Sir Arnold Hodson, who was Consul at Gardulla, not far from Burji, writes as follows (“ Seven Years in Southern Abyssinia ”, page 102) : “ Burji had been sadly devastated quite recently, and very few natives were left there. The responsibility for this rests with a former Governor of Sidamo, named Ato Finkabo, who appears to have carried on a very flourishing business in slaves from these parts. In fact, he became so enterprising that most of the natives who were left fled to Conso and Boran to escape falling into his clutches.” Georges Montandon calculates (“ Au pays des Ghimirra ", page 223) that the population of Ghimirra has declined in a few years from 110,000 to 10,000. The responsibility of the Addis Ababa Government for this incredible state of affairs in the non-Abyssinian areas of the south is particularly great, because it has compelled some of the more warlike "non-Abyssinian peoples to arm themselves in defence of their lives and liberty ; and these foreign peoples, having acquired arms and ammunition, have in their turn become slave-raiders, p r e y in g upon the unarmed neighbouring tribes, and so have increased the destruction and the scourge of slavery. For the non-Abyssinian races cannot obtain rifles and ammunition otherwise than in exchange for slaves, so that anyone who wants rifles to protect his children from slavery has to be in a position to sell the children of others into slavery. We may mention here two peoples—the Tishana and the Yambo—who have had to arm themselves in sheer self-defence.. Here again we will cite the evidence of Sir Arnold Hodson (" Where the Lion Reigns ”, page 140) :
“ The Abyssinians, who carry off women and children from the Tishana, have made mortal enemies of the latter ; and whenever the Tishana succeed in capturing Abyssinians they kill them, after subjecting them to torture when possible. Some Abyssinian brigands have joined the Tishana, and help them in their raids. Slave-traders are made welcome in the country, and bring in exchange the goods and provisions demanded. The Tishana are well equipped with arms and munitions, and their intelligence services are excellent. They make raids over long distances through a vast territory. During my first journey, I found that they had raided as far as the Tirma, Beru and Maji. When I was at Sire, the current prices for slaves among the Tishana were as follows : a Gras rifle for one slave ; fifty cartridges for one adult slave and one boy; a Mauser rifle for four slaves.”
The Yambo, too, when they determined to arm themselves in self-defence against the slave- raiders, had to obtain arms by reducing their neighbours, the Masongo, to slavery (“ Where the Lion Reigns ”, page 223) :
“ The Yambo told me that they are not friends of the Masongo, and that when they can they capture Masongo women and children."
In conclusion, we need only quote another excellent British official, Major M. Darley, who has had a very long experience of Ethiopian affairs, and who wrote in 1926, three years after Abyssinia’s entry into the League (“ Slaves and Ivory ", page 34) :
" How long Abyssinia will exist in this state of essential barbarism I do not venture to prophesy, but it would seem that a country which can feed the whole of the desert countries surrounding it will not for ever be allowed to check the progress of humanity and its economic welfare. “ Abyssinia should be the heart of North-East Africa, but all the veins or roads, which should supply the rest of the starving body with nourishment, are blocked by the Abyssinian policy, abysmal and suicidal, of depopulation, retrogression and racial extermination.”
It will thus be seen that the Ethiopian State, administratively and politically disorganised as it is, carries the dire effects of its domination (slavery and gebbar) into vast regions of East Africa which were conquered by the arms of the Negus only a few years ago. It is surely in the interests of civilisation that the Harrari, Galla, Somali, Sidama, and other peoples which have for centuries formed separate national entities, should be removed from Abyssinian oppression. To effect an immediate settlement of this grave problem is, indeed, to act in conformity with the spirit of the Covenant, which requires that colonisation should be carried out only by advanced States which are in a position to ensure the development and welfare of the native peoples.
3 ^nen shirt, and his idleness, throws him down into the mud and lashes him until he starts up with a scream and goes sobbing on his way. We watch the scene from the top of the bank, and we shall often see it repeated. But what finishes off all the gebbar is starvation. On their war or hunting expeditions, the Abyssinians take j^th them food for a few days only. They ought to know that, numerous as they are, the Mocha will provide nothing °r them, nothing at all. But improvidence is traditional with them, and, if the master has to go hungry, the slave * certainly get nothing to eat. A gebbar woman, seated against a tree-trunk, a shrunken and terrible sight, is holding a handful of dry brown 0ur °n a leaf; she has hardly strength enough left to raise her hand to her mouth and chew. It is clear now why the country is being so rapidly depopulated ; a few more such draughts, and it will be dry. be the end of a race.” B. DISORGANISATION OF PUBLIC AUTHORITIES IN ETHIOPIA.
Inadequate Authority of the Central Government.
This strange position of present-day Ethiopia—an African State consisting of an Abyssinian nucleus which lives by dominion over other conquered African peoples—is also one of the funda mental causes which prevent the necessary civil organisation of Ethiopia. Conditions in Ethiopia are such that, even twelve years after her admission to the League of Nations, the central Government is incapable of exercising effective authority over regions distant from the centre. This incapacity of the central Government is specially noteworthy in regard to the fulfilment of the international obligations which it has assumed, and for which it is responsible from the standpoint of international law. The long series of incidents and raids which have occurred on the Italo-Ethiopian frontier through the action of regular forces and armed irregulars or tribes, constitutes a proof th a t thé central Government does not, in fact, exercise its power in the outlying regions of the Empire bordering on Somaliland and Eritrea. This incapacity of the central Government in Ethiopia may, however, be said to be general throughout the country, with the result that the laws and decrees promulgated by the Negus not only are not applied, but may even be said to be unknown outside the neighbourhood of the capital.
British Testimony.
Without quoting here the testimony of many travellers who have gone through the interior of the country, we may sum up the situation in the following sentence from the report by Lord Noel Buxton and Lord Pol war th, submitted to the League of Nations on April 26th, 1932 : “ It is impos sible to say how far these laws are known outside the neighbourhood of the capital, and to what extent they are in practice carried out ”. This is the result of the complete lack of any State organi sation worthy of the name. The same report continues : " Government in the European sense does not exist. In practice, the machinery for the prevention of crime is absent, except in or near the capital. The village has its headman and the district its sub-governor, who is responsible to the Governor, but he is an official paid only by the right to reward himself through the exaction of labour and by such dues as he can collect, while Governmental force is represented by the class of military men settled throughout the country and owing military service in return for the holding of land. Accordingly, at the place where we first heard of a recent murder there was no police agent of the State whatever, and this is the usual situation. If a party of slaves is being taken through the country (led, of course, by armed men), no regular force exists for dealing with the trader. In this state of things, which to our minds is anarchy, it is indeed remarkable that brigandage towards Europeans is almost unknown ; but it means, of course, that violence between natives is common and commonly unpunished. The practice of carrying arms, which is the most noticeable character istic of the country, must add to the sum of violence, though, in the main, rifles or cartridges (or cartridge belts without cartridges) are carried as the way to social consideration rather than for use.” Lord Noel B uxton’s statem ents are, moreover, confirmed by other official British documents. Thus, for instance, Mr. Russell, British Minister at Addis Ababa, wrote as follows to Lord Curzon on September 29th, 1923, with regard to certain enactments of the Ethiopian Government concern ing slavery : “ Proclamations in regard to the slave trade have appeared periodically for some years past, and have remained without appreciable effect. This proclamation will no doubt share the fate of similar pronouncements on the same subject.” The kind of administration existing throughout Southern and Western Ethiopia, bordering on Kenya and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, is made clear by the interesting British White Papers published in 1925 (Cmd. 2553) and 1928 (Cmd. 3217). Mr. Russell, British Minister at Addis Ababa, had no hesitation in saying, in a letter dated October 20th, 1923, that to send back to Abyssinia a group of Galla who had taken refuge in Kenya in order to escape “ the exactions and tyranny of the Abyssinian authorities, is against all precedent, as it is, in my opinion, against every principle of justice and humanity ”, The Minister added : “ I am distressed to think of the treatment to which these unfortunate people have doubtless been subjected on falling again into the power of their old oppressors ”. The British Minister’s description of the Abyssinians as oppressors of the Galla is, moreover, fully justified by what was said, for instance, in a report dated October 19th, 1923, by the British Resident at Moyale: “ It is perfectly true that a tribe of people c a l l e d Dais, living on the banks of Lake Rudolph, have been practically exterminated by Abyssinian raiders. They themselves have been enslaved and their small herds taken.” This weakness of the Ethiopian Government in the Southern Galla regions led Sir Robert Coryndon, Governor of Kenya, to make the following proposal in a despatch addressed on July 25th, 1924, to Mr. Thomas, Secretary 01 State for the Colonies :
Dangers for British Possessions.
“ I would submit that the time has now come when the Imperial Government, with the aid of the League of Nations, may well consider whether the burden of preserving order amongst — 45 —
these Somali tribes should not be shared by others besides this colony. It would afford an admirable object-lesson and problem for the League of Nations to secure order in the country lying to the s0uth of A byssinia and to the north of this colony, which is now the happy hunting-ground of raiders and refugees. If this area could be treated as a mandated territory and administered as such, a very great burden on the finances of the colony would be removed. It must, I think, be realised that the present state of affairs is prejudicial to all good government—it involves this colony in very heavy expenditure quite apart from the serious position of affairs resulting from constant agitation and unrest on the frontier. It must be recognised that the only country which can and should control these migrations of population—which are not only hostile raids but also flights of fugitives from persecutions at home—is the Abyssinian Government. The admission of Abyssinia to the League of Nations would, it was hoped, result in steps being taken by Abyssinia to prevent these abuses occurring in future. I regret to say that such is not the case, and I must once more urge that the administration of Southern Abyssinia should form a subject for full enquiry and consideration by the League of Nations.” These observations by the Governor of Kenya on the bad administration of the neighbouring Ethiopian regions correspond to those which appeared in the English W hite Papers of 1928, quoted above, and 1932 (Cmd. 4153), which enumerate a long series of raids and frontier incidents down to July 1932, provoked by armed Abyssinian bands on the Anglo-Ethiopian frontiers (see document No. 222). The White Paper of 1928 alone gives a list of 139. The state of anarchy in Ethiopia resulting from the barbarous condition of that country again led Sir Edward Grigg, a former Governor of Kenya, to write as follows on July 8th, 1935 : “ The Ethiopian Government . . . maintains slavery as an institution, and does nothing to discourage a steady traffic in African slaves between Abyssinia and Arabia. We English have made short work of such systems of government in a large part of Asia and Africa, maintaining —I think, rightly—that we had an unassailable moral justification for doing so.” The need for intervention by foreign Powers to reorganise the administration of Ethiopia led, moreover, as long ago as 1919, to a proposal by Lord Lugard, British representative on the Mandates Commission, to Lord Milner, to the effect that an Italo-Franco-British Commission should be appointed, or an adviser appointed and chosen by the League of Nations, to ensure the carrying-out of the necessary measures to suppress slavery, control imports of arms, and strengthen the power of the central Government. We have seen that, in 1925, Sir Robert Coryndon, in his turn, proposed that the League should consider the administration of Ethiopia. Side by side with these observations by British diplomatists and governors, explicit con fessions have been made, even quite recently, by Ethiopian officials. For instance, Dr. Martin, Ethiopian Minister in London, said, in the speech he made at the luncheon given him in the House of Commons restaurant on July 22nd, that traders live peaceably in every part of Ethiopia " except in the Danakil and Somali countries, which had not been brought under proper administration ”. This confession, although couched in cautions terms, is more than significant.
III. ETHIOPIA AND ARTICLE 23 OF THE COVENANT.
Article 23 of the Covenant imposes various obligations on all Members of the League. Ethiopia has not fulfilled those obligations. Article 23 lays dowrn th at Members of the League will endeavour to secure and m aintain fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women and children in their own countries, and for that purpose will maintain the necessary international organisations. The condition of a country such as Ethiopia, where slavery still forms the basis of the economic system, is in itself proof that these provisions of the Covenant have never been applied. It is in virtue of this provision of Article 23 that Members of the League are also Members of the International Labour Organisation. 1 hroughout her twelve years' membership of that Organisation, Ethiopia has never given anY sign of active participation. She has never been represented at the annual Labour Conferences, nor has she ratified any of the International Labour Conventions. As regards many of these Conventions, such abstenteeism is explained by the absence of even the most rudimentary system of labour legislation, which is the essential pre-condition of the application of such conventions. There is one Convention, however, which is the touchstone of fhe genuineness of the Ethiopian Government’s intentions to improve social conditions at home. Inat is the Convention on forced labour, to which even Liberia acceded, whereas Ethiopia continues to ignore it. Ethiopia has refused to undertake to abolish forced labour, even with all the delays, exceptions, and tolerances provided and allowed by the Convention. Thus the Ethiopian Government has urnished the world with fresh proof of the exclusivist mentality which is deep-rooted in that country. , Article 23 provides that Members of the League will undertake to " secure just treatment of e native inhabitants of territories under their control ”. f *lave already seen the kind of domination exercised by Ethiopia over the populations 0 he conquered areas. — 46 —
There is a large body of evidence to show that, far from making any effort to improve th moral and material conditions of the native inhabitants of the conquered areas, the Ethion' 6 Government is making conditions of life steadily worse for them ; the proof lies in th e ir const/1) and extensive decline. Article 23 further provides that Members of the League “ will make provision to secure and maintain freedom of communications and of transit and equitable treatment for the cornmpm of all Members of the League The obstacles placed by Ethiopia in the way of every initiative or offer of assistance for the improvement of her primitive communications show that Ethiopia is defaulting in this undertaking also. °
Thus Ethiopia has not fulfilled any of her obligations under Article 23 of the Covenant
IV. VIOLATIONS OF THE SPECIAL ENGAGEMENTS UNDERTAKEN BY ETHIOPIA TOWARDS THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
SUMMARY.
A. S l a v e r y in E t h i o p i a : The suppression of slavery the primary condition for the admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations — Accession of Ethiopia to the international acts regarding the abolition of slavery — Ethiopia does not fulfil the obligations undertaken — Italian information on the subject — Lists of slave owners — Slave traffic — Powerlessness of the public authorities to repress the slave trade — The State, donations and private rearing of slaves — Horrors of domestic slavery — The enquiry of the British Anti-Slavery Society — The report of Lord Noel Buxton and Lord Polwarth to the League of Nations and the British Foreign Office •— Slavery the basis of the economic system — The power of the Negus — A memorandum by the French Government — The two British White Papers — Lady Simon’s opinion on Ethiopia — Two million slaves out of a population of ten millions — The social and religious classes against the abolition of slavery — Other British opinions.
B. T r a f f ic in A r m s a n d A m m u n it io n : The Ethiopian declaration of 1923 and the Treaty of Paris of 1930 between Italy, France, United Kingdom and Ethiopia — Breaches of the Convention on the Control of the Trade in Arms and Ammunition (improper sales of arms) — Failure to fulfil obligations under the Treaty of Paris of 1930 — Prohibition of the possession of arms by foreigners.
A. SLAVERY IN ETHIOPIA.
The Juridical Importance of the Engagements undertaken by Ethiopia as a Condition of her Admission to the League of Nations. The survival in Ethiopia of the system of slavery and of the similar institution termed gebbar not only constitutes a horrible offence against civilisation and an open breach of the obligations imposed by Article 23 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, but also represents a flagrant violation of the special obligations assumed by the Ethiopian Government at the time of its admission to the League. The declaration signed by the Ethiopian Government as a condition of Ethiopia’s admission to the League includes, under No. 1, Ethiopia’s accession " to the obligations formulated in Article 11, paragraph 1, of the Convention signed at St. Germain-en-Laye on September ioth, 1919, amending the General Act of Berlin dated February 26th, 1885, and the General Act and Declaration of Brussels dated July 2nd, 1890 ”. Article n of this Convention is worded as follows : “ The Signatory Powers exercising sovereign rights or authority in African territories will continue to watch over the preservation of the native populations and to supervise the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being. They will, in particular, endeavour to secure the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms and of the slave trade by land and sea. ” It is incontestable that the existence of slavery constituted the most serious objection to Ethiopia’s admission to the League. There is no need to emphasise the importance which th e League attached to this obligation. It is an obligation involving the removal of a situation the existence of which was incompatible with the status of a Member of the League of Nations. In view of the importance of this obligation from the point of view of the Covenant, the question whether a State which has undertaken it has fulfilled it is of particular juridical importance in respect of the righ of that State to remain a Member of the League. If the Ethiopian Government had really been sincere in its intentions, it would have taken in hand firmly and without delay the abolition of slavery, the slave trade and slave-raiding. Here, however, is the position twelve years after these engagements were undertaken. The Italian Government has an exhaustive collection of reports from its Legation at Addis Ababa and from the dependent consultâtes at Adowa, Gondar, Debra Markos, Dessieh and Harraj, through which it has been kept informed year by year of the slavery position in Ethiopia, rai ’ within and outside the country, the home slave-market, the slave trade with foreign countries, t cruelties and horrors perpetrated in connection with slavery, and so on. These reports are f^1) — 47 —
c o n fir m e d by the British White Papers (already referred to), by a memorandum from the French
fovernm ent, and by the report on the enquiry carried out in Ethiopia for the London Anti-Slavery Society in 1932 and submitted to the League of Nations and the British Foreign Office. These r e p o r t s are further confirmed by a mass of literature on the subject—British, French, American arid German; then there are the accounts given by foreign travellers and explorers, which leave n0 d o u b t that slavery exists and flourishes in Ethiopia on a most extensive scale, even since the a d m is s io n of Ethiopia to the League. On September 28th, 1923, immediately after Ethiopia’s admission to the League, Ras Tafari issued an edict which, after recalling that previous edicts had proved ineffective, imposed the death penalty on all persons buying or selling slaves. On March 31st, 1924, shortly before Ras Tafari's visit to Europe, there was issued, on the suggestion of French advisers at his Court, a second edict whereby all children were declared to be born free and all slaves had to be given t h e ir freedom seven years after the death of their masters. Ten years later, on August 15th, 1934, the Negus informed the League of Nations that two years previously an office had been opened in Addis Ababa for the punishment of slavery, and a similar office in every province, with the object of applying the edicts of 1923 and 1924. He further stated that between September 1933 and August 15th, 1934, 3,647 slaves had been liberated. It will be noted that the Negus has never decreed the complete abolition of slavery, though that was the sine qua non of Ethiopia’s admission to the League ten years previously ; he has merely taken steps to have slaves placed under guardianship in some cases and to prohibit their sale, and has in some places appointed an insufficien t staff to which such questions should be referred ; but he has never provided adequate means for the purpose. That the measures taken by the Negus have all been utterly inadequate and illusory is proved by the fact that there are upwards of two million slaves in Ethiopia. Ethiopia (as is shown in a report of July 25th, 1935, by the Temporary Slavery Commission of the League of Nations) is the only Christian State now remaining in the world which recognises the legality of the slave status. Italian Reports. The numerous reports received at intervals during the twelve years in question by the Italian Government from the Italian Legation and consulates in Ethiopia, in which there is to be found a long list of specific incidents, accompanied in some cases by photographs, all agree in concluding that the provisions adopted for the abolition of slavery have proved inadequate and ridiculous. They have not been genuinely applied, since it was known they would not have the proposed effect. The chiefs and the Abyssinian people do not believe in them or else do not understand them. The edicts of Ras Tafari were empty gestures intended to throw dust in the eyes of the world, since it is not possible for the Ethiopian Government to eradicate slavery, closely interwoven as it is with the feudal administrative organisation of the country. Those with whom it rests to execute the new laws are corrupt and venal : and they are opposed by the clergy, and especially by the military caste, with its barbaric principle of law under which it is allowable for the conquerors in war to enslave the conquered. It is proposed to give a brief account of some of the more significant references to the subject in these reports. The edicts of Ras Tafari met with no acceptance in the country. Grumblers in conservative circles very soon spread the charge that the heir to the throne was under the influence of the " Franks ” and was seeking to sell the country to them. It was also reported that the application of the engagements assumed at Geneva had given rise to a revolution on the part of the chiefs, the governors of provinces and the various under-chieftains, including all the numerous authorities of the Abyssinian hierarchy who live on the unpaid labour of slaves, on the revenues they derive from them, on payments of taxes extorted in the form of slaves, and on the products of the land which the slaves cultivate for them. The ancient customs of war treat slaves as legitimate booty, and the slaves are essential for the houses of all, for the armed escorts of the chiefs and for the guardianship of their live-stock. The abolition of all this would mean an economic upheaval in the caste of the oppressors and indeed would mark the end of their prestige and privileges. True reform—this is a point made in all the reports under consideration—consists in the education of the people and in measures which cannot be taken by the Ethiopian Government because they sap the very foundations of its own existence. Europe has been gulled, and the promises made and the engagements assumed by Ethiopia have not been, and cannot be, respected. Moreover, the traffic in slaves is a public as well as a private matter, inasmuch as there is a regular official trade carried on by slave traders in official positions. It is, in fact, one of the prerogatives of the army. No governor returns from his province to the capital without driving an army of slaves before him. Lists oj Slave-owners. The Italian Government has a detailed list of 26 local chiefs in Harrar alone w’ho, on September 30th, 1932, were in possession of 237 slaves among them. The positions of these authorities are significant. They include Dedjatch Gabre Mariam, with 25 slaves ; Kanyazmatch M kala, a judge, with 20 slaves; Ato Mangasha, another judge, with 12 slaves ; Memmere Asfau, another judge, with 27 slaves ; the head of the slaves of the Government, Atsag Kebret, with 5 personal slaves; another judge, Fitaurari Balacheu, with 15 slaves ; and even the Chief of Police 0 Harrar, Grazmatch Igzau, with 10 slaves. The Administrator of the Emperor’s Privy Purse, Ato Mashasha, is also in the list with 2 slaves. The Government at this time had 486 slaves in arrar, of whom 50 were distributed among the churches of the Trinity, St. George and St. Michael. Was calculated that, at the end of 1932, there were 10,000 slaves in the houses and countryside round about the city of Harrar. On May 24th, 1932, two hours out on the caravan route from the stone bridge over the River essa> three Europeans happened by chance to meet a caravan of twenty slaves, six of whom were - 48 -
15 years of age, while twelve were children of 7 or 8, and two were grown men. All were chain d k the wrists in couples. In charge of the caravan was a Derenya or head of the slaves of the Imn \ Court, who was not by any means pleased at the meeting. The caravan was followed by a R 1 Abbat or head of a district. The twenty slaves were being sent to Addis Ababa for the pers 1 use of Haile Selassie I. They were sent by Sheikh Khojjali, Governor of the Beni Shangul Bek as an instalment of an annual tribute of 100 slaves which the sheikh has paid for years past to th ’ Emperor in lieu of the customary tax in gold. The three Europeans further learned th at Dediat V Taye Gululatie, who is Governor of the district of Gurafarda, on the borders of the Sudan, and is ' member of the house of Menelik, pays a great part of his annual taxes by sending 250 slaves a year m successive instalments. The twenty slaves on the present occasion were brought to the River Debus and there handed over to Fitaurari Birratu of Nejjo (a district of Wollega) to be transferred in the district of Ghindi, to Fitaurari Nagari, and then to be passed to Dedjatch Habre Mariam, so that eventually, after transference from one authority to another, they all reached Addis Ababa A singular incident occurred in Debra Markos, in Gojjam, on September 15th, 1934. Here too, the proclamation of Ras Tafari, to the effect that anyone having slaves must present himself within a month to the registration and liberation office, had been published. The order had some effect in the city, but none in the interior of the country. Just at this moment a hospital orderly from the Italian Consulate was summoned to give an injection to a local chief who was sick, when he discovered in the gardens of the latter some forty slaves who had been chained with the express purpose of preventing them from reporting at the liberation office.
Slave Trade. In October 1934, the Italian Consulate in Gondar reported a recrudescence of the slave trade in that district. It was also rumoured that the Kentiba had restored almost all the slaves to their former masters in return for payments varying from 40 to 100 thalers. A certain Beli Gebrezgier, a well-known slave trader and emasculator, had been appointed Chief of Police in Gondar, and had received a “ shirt of honour " from the Kentiba on the occasion of the Maskel. Ras Mulugheta himself was accused at the time of taking fees of 20 thalers for each slave sold. In spite of the edicts, there is not a chief’s or notable’s house in Abyssinia, from the Imperial Gebbi downwards, which is not a t all times supplied with slaves of both sexes ; and all the Rases have thousands of them. The authority of an Ethiopian personage and the estimate of his family’s standing are measured by the number of slaves owned. Slaves are still sold. The sales are concealed from the complacent eyes of the authorities by being represented as fictitious donations or transfers of persons in security for imaginary debts. The very judges who deal with slavery questions are themselves slave owners, and for that very reason indulgent to such an extent that, instead of inflicting punishments, they take a conciliatory line, usually with profit to their own pockets. The customs authorities shut their eyes and allow the caravans of slaves to pass, where the latter do not prefer hidden byways. It is true that the export trade to Arabia has diminished: but that is due solely to the vigilance of the neighbouring European States, to the fact that the regions subject to Ethiopia from which slaves were formerly derived have now been depopulated, and lastly to the fact that the chiefs of provinces in which there are potential slaves are careful not to let them be taken away and their own property thereby diminished. Another defect is the inability of the public authorities to intervene on their own initiative in the suppression of the traffic. They can only act on the motion of an informer, and the latter has first to deposit 100 thalers with the judge, which are not restored unless the charge is proved. As may be imagined, the judges have every reason to give judgment in such a manner that the 100 thalers remain in their pockets. Moreover, we repeat, the law has not abolished slave status, but still sanctions it. It insists throughout on the inferiority of the slave, who remains the absolute property and chattel of his owner, the latter being still the arbiter of his fate. If the slave escapes, the authorities bring him back in chains to the owner, and any person who may have sheltered or aided him is fined not less than 100 thalers. How can the slave trade be abolished when taxes are paid in slaves, when women and children are passed from hand to hand, when these payments are still enforced by terrible and brutal punishments, and when any refusal or resistance is met with the annihilation of whole tribes and the carrying-off of the cattle of a whole region, all this being done lawf ully by the authorities ? What weight can attach to the denials of Addis Ababa when it is admitted that the central Government has no power over the outlying areas ? A case reported from the Gondar territory is typical. Dedjatch Aialeu, at Dabat, issued a proclamation in September 1930, stating that slave-trading was a punishable offence a n d calling upon the public to report infringements. In April 1931, a man came to him and said th a t it had come to his knowledge that a female slave with a baby had been purchased—an offence punishable with a fine of 150 thalers. The Dedjatch required the infomer first of all to pay down th a t sum, which would be confiscated if he could not prove the charge. Being unable to pay it, the informer was imprisoned; he then withdrew the charge, but had to pay more money in order to obtain his release. According to statements by Italian consuls, the carrying-off of slaves still continues ; if nien; women or children venture to go a little way out of the village when working, it is by no mean^ uncommon for them to be forcibly gagged and bound, taken away to other districts and sold. In Abyssinia, as we have already noted, the most serious crimes are not matters for pub® action ; the injured party has to take the initiative. With such a system, how can anything ev^r be done against slavery, when every chief and every slave owner (even the poorest pe0P — 49 —
^ slaves) is in favour of it ? If a chief has occasion to intervene and take slaves away from a dealer on the pretext of keeping them until they can be restored to their lawful owner, he actually keeps them for himself. The scandal continues as it always was, and we still find among the provinces from w h ich these miserable human cattle are derived those of Wallega, Lekemti and Wanbera, whence the slaves are taken through Damot and Agaumdir to the markets of Gemja-Beit, Benja, Kwakru, Burye and Dangala. Fitaurari Teferra, Ras Hailu’s sub-Chief for Agaumdir, was still, in 1931, collecting a fee for every caravan of slaves, according to size, and issuing an agreed laissez-passer for the Customs posts under his control, which then refrained from levying the customary duty of two thalers per slave. It is also common knowledge that the Dangala Customs make a considerable amount on the transit of these caravans and that some houses in that region are used as temporary stores for human merchandise. The traffic is carried on under the same conditions in Achifer, under the command of Fitaurari Admasu. Again, in Gondar, where, out of a population of 5,000 in 1932, there were still 900 slaves, as there had been seven years before, slave-trading continues in the Moslem quarter at the southern end of the town, the slaves being sent to Socota or Tembien, whence they are dispersed over Eastern Tigre. For instance, in January 1931, two dealers arrived in Dembea with ten slaves and one of the Wember of Gondar with two new slaves, while ten more are known to have arrived at about the same time. The prices ruling on that market are also known — from 160 to 200 thalers for women and from 120 to 140 for men of negro race, according to strength; and it is known that a woman with a baby was bought for 235 thalers and that a castrated baby may fetch anything from 125 to 230 thalers. Then there are stolen slaves who are sold at half price. The negro tribes themselves often supply slaves, being forced to sell their children or women to pay debts or taxes. The Italian Consul at Dessieh wrote in September 1931 that, during the previous two months, 35 cases of buying and selling of slaves had come to his knowledge. They involved 55 slaves of both sexes, of whom he gave a detailed list, noting that, to his knowledge, the majority of these cases had occurred in Addis Ababa. In 1932, in Gondar, the rich Dedjatch Aialeu Burru kept 600 slaves in his own Gebbi, two-thirds of them being women ; Dedjatch Wond Beussen Kaza owned about 400 slaves, in addition to whom he had another 300 outside his Gebbi, at Debra Tabor, forming the so-called “ liberation camp ”. These latter represented the equivalent either of fines unpaid by their owners or of unsuccessful raids by Shiftas. Their “ liberation ” consisted in working in the gardens for the Dedjatch and his numerous retinue, under the same conditions as any other slave. It was calculated that, in 1932, the number of slaves in the western part of the Ethiopan plateau was approximately the same as in previous years—about one fifth of the population. The Italian Consul at Gondar was able to state that up to that year, notwithstanding the procla mations of liberation, no demand for liberation had been made to the proper authorities in the provinces of Dembea, Takussa, Chelga, Wolgait, Tsegede, Wogera, Amora, Gedel Infraz and Furka. Indeed, he added that it was by no means uncommon for the slaves themselves to refuse their freedom, lest they might be carried off by raiders immediately afterwards.
The State, Donations and Private Rearing of Slaves.
A characteristic feature is the conception that a liberated slave belongs to the State, so that most legal proceedings end in the confiscation of the slave, or his value, for the benefit of the State or the chief trying the case, who takes the slave for himself. When a slave is killed or wounded, if the authorities intervene, it is not to protect this human being, but to see that the compensation or blood-money is paid to the authorities and not to the owner. Such confiscation takes place in the event of escape or maltreatment ; the chief who tries the case keeps the slave for himself. Mention should also be made of the case of D edjatch Banja, Chief of Oubba, who, not long before July 1931, sent as a present to Dedjatch Mesfen, Chief of Alefa and Kwara, two slave girls and four male slaves, the latter being subsequently sent by Mesfen as a present to the Negus together with the local taxes. Another typical case dating from the same period is that of a debtera (doctor) who, having presented Ras Hailu with a manuscript copy of a liturgical book, received in exchange a male slave, with a written and stamped certificate showing that he was a present from the Ras. Private slave-breeding farms still exist in Gojjam and the Galla regions : the slaves, like the live-stock, form part of the family inheritance ; they are given as dowry, and frequently as presents. Certain it is that the steps taken by the Government to provide for liberated slaves are universally admitted to be ridiculously inadequate. In any case, the Government can do no better, because i°r many years past it has been spending all its revenue on arms and ammunition.
The Horrors of Domestic Slavery.
One extenuating circumstance urged by the Abyssinian Government, which has impressed ®any too indulgent or ill-informed Europeans, is that slaves in Ethiopia are treated in patriarchal ashion. This, however, is a hasty generalisation from isolated cases. It is generally known that m°st female slaves are employed in housework, grinding corn, fetching wood and drawing water ; rnale slaves, on the other hand, are treated as members of the establishment, following their owners — 50 — as part of the caravan when travelling, watching the cattle, carrying food and tilling the land Female slaves are often their owners' concubines. Naked or in rags, they live on the crumbs fro their master’s table, in a state of complete material and moral destitution. Their children gro up like beasts. There is no reticence of word or deed in their presence; they become habituated to falsehood, immorality and deceit, and are subjected at an early age to the most humiliating exhausting and enervating tasks; they have no comfort in family life, because marriage amon? them is reduced to mere copulation. When they are old or sick, they are abandoned or isolated in sheds. The terrible existence of a slave may be summed up as the loss of all human personality the absence of all individual thought or character. The slave is reduced to an undernourished working-machine, controlled by the whip. A fit of bad temper or a sense of affront on the part of their brutal owner may lead to inhuman punishments which there is nobody to check. A great many travellers have noted the singular punishment invented by the Abyssinians, w hich consists in hanging the slave up by his feet, head downwards, and setting fire to dry peppercorns underneath him, so that he is slowly suffocated by the acrid vapours they emit.
In H arrar, it is public knowledge that a slave owner, Ato Dagno, in 1929, beat a sixteen-year-old boy slave to death, hung him up by his feet from the ceiling, and smoked his head with pepper and then buried him on his estate. Although this crime was notorious, the machinery of justice was never set in motion.
In 1930, also in H arrar, in the house of Azzaj Sinegiorgis, who still belonged to the Emperor’s Gebbi in 1932, a female slave named Merato, who claimed her freedom, was drowned in the household well by Sinegiorgis’s wife, named Turunesk.
It is not easy to forget the horrors related in two reports, one to the Foreign Office, in 1931 and the other to the British Consul at Gore (Ethiopia), by an Italian, Dr. Lanzoni, who spent fifteen years in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and in Abyssinia and was also attached to the medical service in Kamaran. He begins by observing that the new Emperor himself and the Empress have so many slaves that they do not know how many they have, and that slaves are still being given to them as presents ; he then remarks that, in certain tribes raided by the Abyssinians, the latter are so hated, and the people defend themselves so desperately, that they will exchange a ten-year-old boy for a Gras rifle, and recounts the following incidents, in two of which he had to intervene as a doctor : (1) he had noticed that, in all the slave luggers he met with in the Red Sea, apart from a large head of sail to allow of speedy escape, there was also a disproportionate amount of ballast in the form of heavy stones, which, in the event of pursuit, are tied to the slaves’ feet, especially in the case of children, so that they will sink at once; (2) a female slave who was found with a male slave was so severely scalded with boiling water in the abdomen by her master that she died; (3) another female slave, on the same grounds, was burnt in the same part of her body by her master with a red-hot iron until she died.
It is also notorious that slaves are maltreated, inhumanly beaten and tied up for long periods, as the master’s caprice may dictate, for the most trivial reasons. The slaves do not ap p eal to the authorities, because their appeals would not be upheld and they would merely incur serious reprisal . When life becomes insupportable for a slave, there is nothing for him to do but ru n away. If, however, he is recaptured, he is restored to his owner, who then keeps him tied up indefinitely. The owner also retains the right to recover a slave even after many years. In October 1932, Ras Kebbede, with the consent of the central Government, sent a sub-chief to recover tw elv e slaves who had escaped from his power six years earlier and had already settled in Dessieh as serfs in the Gebbi.
The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society's Enquiry.
As the years went by after the undertaking of 1923 to secure complété abolition, and nothing was done, and as it became clear that the Negus would do nothing, an increasingly strong desire developed in the League of Nations that this undertaking should at length be properly observed, while world opinion became more and more disillusioned by Abyssinia’s obvious incapacity to stamp out such an enormous scandal and anachronism.
Accordingly, the long-established and respected Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society of London, which has been in existence for more than a century, decided in 1932 to send Lord Noel Buxton, a former British Minister of Agriculture, and Lord Polwarth to discuss with the Emperor Haile Selassie how best to bring about the complete abolition that had been promised ten years earlier.
The first statements made to The Times by Lord Noel Buxton on April 9th, 1932, immediately on his return from his mission, showed at once that nothing was to be hoped for. We may quo e the following remarks : “ Slavery in those parts goes with an absence of anything that we shou call government. The State machinery is weak, being little more than mediæval. R e s p e c t to law is in its infancy. It is true that agents of the law are now to be found in the capital, b u t the authority is extremely slight. Possibly, the unique conditions of slavery which exist in Abyssinia may be brought to an end in another generation. This question will be debated by th e spec Committee set up by the League of Nations. The abominable cruelties which are known to occu are more serious than raiding and kidnapping, but the latter still continue. The effect oi Emperor’s edicts has been merely to make the traffic a trifle less open. It is to be f e a r e d that great Abyssinian lords will not hand over their lands to the State, like the Japanese. Ethiop — 5i —
has engaged foreign experts solely to meet foreign criticism. The Emperor is animated by ideas and motives infinitely superior to what might have been expected in th e hereditary king of such country. But he is hampered by many obstacles, owing to th e absence of helpers and th e national vanity of his people. It is thought by some that a rapid reform would produce a revolt.” In short, Lord Noel Buxton found that nothing, or practically nothing, of any value had been done, and that there was no hope that anything would be done, despite the ideas by which, as he said, the Emperor was animated.
Slavery the Basis of the Economic System.
The long report subsequently submitted by Lord Noel Buxton and Lord Polwarth to the Foreign Office and to the League of Nations confirms in greater detail these first impressions and everything we have said in the preceding pages, but some of their statements must be quoted textually: “ Slavery in Abyssinia is fundamental to the whole economic system. The rich men have large numbers of slaves running into thousands, and even servants of Europeans have one or two. The priests always have slaves and are dependent on them for their food and carrying of water, etc. Slaves are employed, not only in domestic service, but also in cultivating the soil and in every form of hard labour. Part of their duty consists in following their master on foot, carrying a rifle when he rides on his mule. We ourselves saw retinues of up to fifty but were told that some of the big chiefs were followed by as many as five hundred. Concealment of the slave market is often found necessary and the transfer is conducted under the pretext of a gift. Payment is arranged through a series of transferees. Another kind of trade is that in slaves who h a v e been recently caught and enslaved, and require to be moved to a distant district. This may need a month’s journey and professional traders are to be found at the destination. Small caravans are formed of three or four captured boys or girls who are transferred from north to south or from south to north, by roads some of which are quite near the capital, but the usual traffic routes are avoided. “ There is also the well-known case of the removal of captured negroes from the south-west and west to the coast. These caravans are said to be much reduced in size, but are nevertheless met in considerable numbers, and we have heard from Europeans whose word we trust and who have recently come by chance upon caravans of considerable numbers ; lately, in a district not far from Addis Ababa, one of over fifty boys was recorded, the children being in a terrible state of emacia tion. The caravan passed at night and a woman was shot in the immediate neighbourhood, presumably because she attempted to attract the attention of the passers-by. The shot was heard and in the morning the remains were found, nothing but the head having been left by the hyenas.” " It is impossible ”, says Lord Noel Buxton, “ that the trade can be extirpated entirely without making a end of slavery itself, nor is it possible without a highly efficient police (such as does not exist) that the catching of new slaves can be ended.” The Mission was received first of all by Ministers of the Negus, who denied that the enslave ment of negroes still continued. “ But, ” remarks the author of the report, “ they are either ignorant of the facts or deficient in a sense of truth.” Raiding in parts such as Ivafa is indeed reduced, but because “ the population is almost exterminated “ In other parts ”, the writer goes on to say, " the conditions continue in a modified form, taxation being sometimes paid in boys and girls, children being sold in exchange for rifles, or villages being raided. Till the system by which the Governors and the soldiers are rewarded is altered, it will not change, slavery will continue . . . and where slave raiders are in strong force and the Governors have not the physical means to break up slave-raiding bands, these will continue . . . The denial of trouble by those in authority is a disquieting feature . . . We have also the proof that boys who are not the sons of slaves are captured in non-negro districts. In this connection, when we were in Abyssinia, a judge pronounced a sentence of ten years, which would have been impressive if we had not otherwise heard that kidnappers can generally get out of gaol with a payment. The kidnapping of girls as they go to fetch water from a village is common. There seems no reason why kidnapping should not be as general as is asserted.” Lord Noel Buxton then deals in detail with the edicts of the Emperor in regard to slavery, but states at the outset th at “ it is impossible to say how far these laws are known outside the neighbourhood of the capital, and to what extent they are in practice carried out. The above-mentioned legal provisions, if properly administered (and that is doubtful now), would result in a very gradual diminution of slavery. All, indeed, remain sceptical, although the Emperor’s sincerity is admitted. He appears to possess the mentality which we associate with European ethics in a degree which is singular in the ruler of an Eastern State, whose traditions are those of violence, disunity and incompetence.” The Mission proposed the appointment in the Slavery department of a foreigner as adviser. The Ministers replied that, in eleven or twelve years, slavery would have practically ceased, and that such a nomination would not be tolerated by public Opmion. Lord Noel Buxton remarks, however : “ Public opinion can hardly be said to exist as ere is no Press except an Official Gazette, and the mass of the people are illiterate.” The Ethio- P'ans also declined the suggestion that the Anti-Slavery Society of London should send someone to investigate, with the remark that, if this was the price for the support of public opinion in Europe, 1 was too high a price to pay. In short, they repudiated the idea of anyone’s going to inspect. The two envoys were also received by the Emperor, but declared that they left with a feeling °t %feat disappointment. “ We felt that all we had really secured amounted to no more than Promises, that none of the proposals affected the general body of slaves born or acquired before — 52 —
1924, and that the total abolition of slavery must be a very slow process.” Here is another not worthy statement : “ It is true that there have been cases of capital punishment of slave catch but some attribute this to the cynical competition of the Governors, themselves in the tra/’ leading them to extinguish competition.” And then, further on: “ There is an excuse forth slowness of progress. It is stated that the evil of slavery has been greatly exaggerated" and as excuse it is added that the very fact of poverty mitigates the harshness of slave status, because all classes share the extreme simplicity of life.” The greatest of the difficulties is the association of slavery with religion ; Ethiopian Christianity is hardly capable of »oni,; lower without ceasing to be Christianity, and the influence of the Church is paramount It defends slavery, and is unaffected by the disintegrating movements which weaken the Churches in other lands. It is noted that the practice of Church customs is of extreme importance in social life. When a man dies, masses are ordained for his soul for a prolonged period, and this necessitates the employment of a priest, a sort of domestic chaplain to the family. The maintenance of the priest requires the services of slaves, and to deprive the family of slaves would arouse feelings akin to religious passion. Moreover, there would be the opposition of the military class planted in all parts of the country on the feudal model, and rewarded by land with the provision of slaves Ethiopian development is too backward to admit of public feeling against slavery, or even against the trading in slaves. Ethiopian Ministers claim to have ended raiding and trading, but the claim is false, and the case is made worse rather than better by the fact that the claim is partly based on ignorance. There is an evident fear that enquiry would add to foreign condemnation. Government, moreover, does not exist, and the prevention of crime is absent except in or near the capital. There is no regular police force to combat raiding and the propensity to stealing is common, and “ to steal human beings is almost as easy as to steal cattle ”. After emphasising the frequent scandal of child slaves put in chains and women treated with gross brutality, Lord Noel Buxton concludes with a serious statement : “ There is a special reason for losing no time in the fact that the Emperor himself constitutes an abnormal opportunity. If anything were to happen to him there wrould be little means of reform, and slavery might remain so long as Abyssinia was an independent State It may be mentioned that Lord Noel Buxton sent an amended copy of his own report to the Ethiopian Government. This constitutes a document of authoritative British origin w hich fully confirms the report of the Italian diplomatic and consular agents in Ethiopia and makes it clear that slavery cannot be abolished unless there is a fundamental change in the conditions of the country, which cannot come about so long as government is non-existent, inchoate and impotent.
Official Documents.
There are, however, other documents of an official character containing still graver charges against the Ethiopian Government.
Memorandum by the French Government.
The following passage is taken from a memorandum on slavery which was sent to the League of Nations by the French Government on August 18th, 1923: “ The steps formerly taken by the Ethiopian Emperors (Theodoros, Johannes and Menelik), and the efforts now being m ade by Ras Tafari, have not succeeded in abolishing this scourge. There are two customary methods of obtaining slaves in Ethiopia. Some are carried off by Moslem slave-dealers, but the majority are handed over to the higher Abyssinian authorities by minor native chiefs, in payment of taxes. In the case of the Moslem traders, the transaction is nearly always concealed under the fiction of a gift.” At the time when the French memorandum was drawn up, it was commonly thought that open slave-markets were disappearing ; but that Government, referring to the findings of Dr. Montandon, the well-known Swiss traveller and a keen supporter of the anti-slavery campaign, pointed out that Jimma and Gore were still the starting-points of convoys of slaves for the interior and the coast. As regards the destination of the slaves, the French Government remarked that. “ Not all the slaves are sent to the Ethiopian court or to the chiefs or soldiers of Shoa. Some of them, generally of the Gore tribe, are sent to Tigre, and particularly to Wollo, by conductors of caravans coming from these districts with loads of salt to the Western G alia territories. Others take th e road eastwards and are embarked for Arabia. These caravans, of which Dr. Montandon (who m et one at Mocha) has left us a description, follow special tracks in order to avoid Abyssinian posts, or else travel by night. They proceed towards the districts of Tonuga or Erkeh, w hich have always harboured this traffic, and form there they go to various points on the coast across Aussa, whose Sultan is in league with the slave-merchants. The unfortunate slaves thus b ro u g h t from overseas chiefly consist of young women intended for Arabian harems and young men, who in former times were subjected to emasculation before embarkation.” The French G o v e r n m e n concluded its memorandum as follows: “ On November 9th, 1918, an Imperial Decree w as issued, expressly drawing attention to Menelik’s Decrees, on the prohibition of the sale and purchase 0 slaves, and two slave-dealers were caught in the act and hanged at Addis Ababa in I92‘
Nevertheless, so long as certain of the higher chiefs indulge in slave raids in order, as they preten • to put down rebellion or punish refusals to pay taxes, so long as others at Addis Ababa itself accep or bestow gifts of slaves, and so long as leading Abyssinians do not liberate their slaves in their o"n lifetime, thus setting an example to all, the evil may become less, but will not disappear. — 5 3 -
F u r th e r, with reference to the revelations regarding slavery in Ethiopia in the articles published i,v Major Darley, of the British army, which appeared in the Westminster Gazette in 1922 and made great sensation, it was stated in the above-mentioned French memorandum th a t “ unfortunately these are substantially true ”, and Major Darley considered that, " instead of the position getting idler, H has> in fact’ bec0™e worse of recent years, owing to the death of Menelik (1913). There followed three years of civil war ; this led to the taking of a large number of prisoners and to the growth of corruption and other irregularities, which brought about an enormous increase ju the slave population. In the capital, Addis A baba, there are more slaves than free men. If the same proportion prevails throughout the country, the number of slaves in th e whole of Abyssinia would he something like 5,000,000; not 2,000,000, which is the usual conservative estimate.” M ajor Darley stated that he passed through one district on a second visit after ten years. O n th e occasion of his first visit, this area was remarkably prosperous, with a dense population. Into this area surged the slave-raiders and everything was changed. “ To-day it is possible to march through this district for days without meeting a single human being ; th e terraces are still th ere, but th e people who should be sowing and reaping are either dead or slaves in th e capital. The whole countryside is abandoned to the jackals and the hyenas.” Other important documents were sent to the League, such as the letter of September 8th, JÇ23, from the Italian delegate, stating that a caravan of 150 slaves which had recently reached the coast by an indirect route in order to avoid payment of the tax of thirty thalers "per slave imposed by the Chief of the Aussa Province had been attacked by armed men of that province at the instigation of Dedjatch Yaio; thirty slaves had been killed and mutilated and all the women carried off and handed over to the Dedjatch. Correspondence was exchanged between the British Government and Dr. Montandon, who had sent the Foreign Office his pamphlet on slavery in Ethiopia. In the covering letter, he stated that his evidence was supported by that of Majors Athill and Darley of the British army, which represented “ links in the uninterrupted chain of facts relating to slavery in Ethiopia ”. Here we may note in passing that the Foreign Office took exception to Dr. Montandon’s quotation of a statement by Dr. Schrenk regarding the alleged British desire to annex Jimma, Kafa, Ghimirra and Maji, and, in a letter dated September 5th, 1923, it stated that : “ A study of the Tripartite Agreement of 1906 and the Anglo-Italian Protocols therein referred to will, however, show that the south-west part of Abyssinia, east of longitude 350 E. and north of latitude 6° N., falls within the Italian sphere of influence. This delimitation places within the Italian sphere all the provinces mentioned by M. Schrenk. . . .” There is also another highly authoritative document of which, as Lady Simon points out in her volume “ Slavery ”, only part was published by the League. The latter, in 1932, appointed a Commission to conduct an enquiry into the whole question of slavery, and Lord Lugard was given the task of preparing a memorandum on slavery in Abyssinia. The Commission, however, decided that it could not be issued in full to the public, and only some of the contents are disclosed in the Minutes of the Commission. The enormities and horrors reported regarding slavery in Ethiopia were probably such as to make it more prudent not to publish them. Nevertheless, the contents divulged are sufficiently grave. Lord Lugard first drew attention to the capture by H.M.S. Cornflower in 1922 of a dhow containing no fewer than sixteen Abyssinian slaves huddled together. He then pointed out that, in the following year, Ras Tafari issued his edict under which slave-dealing was subjected to heavy penalties, and later a second edict under which all children were to be born free and all slaves were to be given their freedom seven years after the death of their master. Lord Lugard emphasised the extreme probability that the latter part of this edict would be ineffective in practice. In any case, the Heir to the Throne had himself admitted that such a plan would take many years to mature. Lord Lugard went on to deal with the above-mentioned memorandum of the French Government, from which he quoted the following opinion : " So long as the chiefs indulge in slave raids in order, as they pretend, to put down rebellion or punish refusals to pay taxes, the evil may become less, but it will not disappear ”, This grave statement by the French Government was followed by a still graver statement by Lord Lugard himself : “ There is reliable evidence of recent date that many thousands of slaves (an estimate which appears to be trustworthy says 10,000) are brought by Abyssinian traders to the north-western districts where slaves are purchasable at any time in the markets.”
Opposition to the Abolition of Slavery.
But the most important feature of Lord Lugard’s report is his conclusion as to the real basis °f slave-owning as a property in Ethiopia—namely, that it is an integral part of the religion of the country, so that opposition to the abolition of slavery comes principally from the priesthood, which considers itself the guardian of the Mosaic law and regards slavery as an institution decreed by Jehovah. Abolitionists ”, he observes, “have therefore to reckon, not merely with a system of slavery upon which the economic life of the country depends, but also one which is interwoven, not only with the social customs, but also with the religious convictions of the people.” And he ends his report as follows : The attempt to abolish property in slaves, and to carry out the terms of the edict, must involve a c°niplete change in the social life of the people of Abyssinia. This would be strongly opposed by 1e owners of slaves. That there will be fierce opposition to the enforcement of the edict is beyond a‘l possibility of doubt, and it is well known that, in Ethiopia, this opposition will be practically ^versai. ' We will die rather than give up our slaves ’, a chief is reported to have said to a turopean." — 54 —
Literature on Slavery in Ethiopia.
The Charges brought by Lady Simon.
Among the many British writers who have dealt with the gravity of the slavery phenomen in Ethiopia, special mention must be made of Lady Simon, who, in 1929, published a lavish/- documented volume entitled “ Slavery The following passages are taken almost word for word from that book, which deals with slavery in all parts of the world and includes a long chapter on Ethiopia, the country in which slavery is most widely prevalent. The following observations taken from the preface by Sir John Simon, until recently His Britannic Majesty’s Secretary 0{ State for Foreign Affairs, are particularly striking: “ In the new international order, the liberties which some communities enjoy make it intolerable that there should be men, women and little children of other races who are still in actual bondage. The modern problem of slavery is not national but international, and this monstrous and hideous thing must be swept away by the leadership and pressure of the League of Nations. In pursuing this crusade, the conscience of the wrorld working through the instrument of international action, will not rest until it be ended.” Ethiopia, as the author notes, is among the most backward parts of the world, and there the problem is immense and urgent; human beings are a mere property—a property to be raided, to be tortured to be sold in the market to the highest bidder. The wife may be sold and parted from her husband or vice versa, the mother may have her baby taken away to become the property of another, children may be separated from their parents ; in short, slavery ignores the ties of motherhood and father hood and enforces the right to break up families for market reasons. Even if it is said to be practised as a patriarchal institution, it produces an endless crop of tragedies. Attempts are made to justify slavery on the ground that the slaves themselves do not object to their bondage, but, as the author points out, they have no alternative. She goes on to quote the words of Lord Lugard, the former British Governor of Nigeria, to whom the credit for suppressing slavery in that country is due, and who stated that: “However inevitable in the earliest stages of development the institution of slavery may be, its moral results are undeniably disastrous. To the slave-owners, the exercise of despotic power, without external check, in all the relations of daily life is demoralising. Self- control is weakened, susceptibility to harshness or even cruelty, as well as immorality, is encouraged, and indolence becomes natural. To the slave, the effect is hardly less demoralising. He is deprived of the dignity of manhood. He is without responsibility and without incentive to work other than the fear of punishment. His status approximates to that of his m aster’s cattle. By perpetuating the institution of slavery, the African is denied the opportunity of rising to a higher plane of individual and corporate responsibility and progress in social life. The abominable traffic in slaves is a crime against the human race, and the abolition of slavery in all its forms is a moral obligation upon the League of Nations.” Lady Simon goes on to say that, in Ethiopia, slavery exists in every one of its v ariai forms, “ from that of the little household slaves of the Christian priests to the wretched, mutilated boys and girls who are carried across the sea and sold in the slave-markets of Arabia; from the ‘ long line ' of slaves carrying gifts from the rulers of Ethiopia to passing visitors, to the suffering gang yoked and chained together, and driven by the crack of the whip through the country or to the coast ports for sale as human merchandise ; from the slave community of a village, whose tasks are limited to the social requirements of the community, to the conditions that exist along the borders of the provinces—conditions which, as the author points out, a Brirish Foreign Office paper has described as ‘ hell ’ ”. She adds that, in all circumstances of the slave life of Ethiopia, the condition of property is the dominating fact. Every traveller mentions the cruelties inflicted upon these pack-animals along the undeveloped roads and tracks of the Ethiopian hinterland. The existence in Ethiopia of slavery is denied by no one; the volume of evidence is substantial, and, the author states, comes from four sources : (1) the accounts of travellers; (2) the W hite Papers of the British Government and similar publications of countries that have diplomatic relations with Ethiopia; (3) the impartial reports issued by the League o f Nations; (4) the open and un ashamed admission (see page 89) made by the Ethiopian authorities, that slavery is not on1}’ tolerated, but is an accepted and (as they contend) a necessary institution throughout the territories of this great country—a country that covers an area as large as France, Italy and Greece c o m b in e d . Lady Simon goes on to say that “ slavery is so interwoven in the warp and woof of Abyssinian life that the conviction grows that Abyssinia will only be able to free herself from the shackles 01 this institution by the aid of the generous co-operation of other nations ”. The author, stating that it seems certain that the slave population in Ethiopia exceeds two millions out of ten million inhabitants, adds that, according to some authorities, it i s v e r y muai greater. She continues : “ It is admitted in Abyssinia that slavery exists everywhere ; indeed, it15 openly asserted that the whole economic structure of the country reposes on slave-owning. Kas Tafari, the mouthpiece of the great Rases of Abyssinia, has frankly admitted all this and a great deal more (see page 14). He has stated th at he is incapable at present of dealing single- handed with the situation and that, with the best of intentions, it will take him years to abolis even slave-dealing, much less slave-owning. ”
British White Papers.
The writer then goes on to the two British W hite Papers (1925, Cmd. 2553, and 1928, Cmd. 32Ijj which we have had occasion to mention, and on which it may be desirable also to give the op of this British lady. The authoress emphasises the fact that the Government of the United lung — 55 —
:s in possession of a very large volume of information concerning conditions in the Ethiopian hinterland, and states that they can only b e described as “ hell There is the pitiful case related by Captain Cochrane at Moyale, who, when in the unhappy position of having no supplies, was asked to give refuge to a large body of terror-stricken men, women and children fleeing’from Ethiopian raiders. H e was obliged unwillingly to send them back, not being able to feed them, but warned the Ethiopian chief, over the border, to beware of indulging in revenge, and, at the same time, notified the British Legation, which, however, did not approve of his action. This is the opinion expressed by the captain and reproduced in one of the White Papers : " I w ill say practically every (I say every) Abyssinian on the frontier has a slave or slaves Imagine, then, how m any the chiefs and governors must have !
Lady Simon mentions the m any raids recorded in these W hite Papers. That of 1928, as already noted, mentions 139. And the authoress refers, by way of commentary, to the opinion expressed by Sir John Maffey, Governor of the Sudan, in which he sa id it was probable that not all incidents had been reported. Some of these raids were carried out by bands numbering as many as 700 armed men, vigorously led by well-known Ethiopian rulers or their deputies. For exemple, one such notorious raid was the incursion into the Fung Province of at least 360 men armed with rifles, led by Fitauraris Fantu, Oda and Wasanna, all officers of the local ruler, Dedjazmatch Biru. Fifteen slaves were captured, including one woman. Another raid into Kenya was led by one Alemayu, son of a Fitaurari.
Sixteen more formidable raids, in which many were killed, mutilated and captured as slaves, were carried out in British territory. In seven of these alone, upwards of 10,000 head of live-stock were captured. The most serious, in which there were 170 men armed with rifles and many with other arms, occurred in 1925, lasted two months in the Sudan territory, and covered an area of 200 square miles; it was under the personal direction of Fitaurari Zallaka. Ras Hailu of Gojjam, who was then the most powerful Ethiopian chief after Ras Tafari and ruled over two millions of subjects, was privy to the attack.
Lady Simon expresses herself as follows (page 34) in regard to these savage raids : “ Every Government Book—White, Grey and Blue—every traveller’s publication, every newspaper article dealing with the country discloses this fundamental fact.”
The authoress adds: “ Nobody challenges the good intentions of Ras Tafari, but”, she asks, “ why, in the meantime, is there still the very greatest difficulty in obtaining information with regard to the steps taken by the Abyssinian Government to bring about abolition ? In 1927, it was reported to the League of Nations that, in the three-year period 1924 to 1926, in the capital and the provinces together, only 1,009 slaves were liberated; what is this figure out of more than two million ? And, in those three years, only 164 slave-traders were convicted in the capital and twenty-six in the provinces.” It is the duty now of civilisation to ask what steps must be taken to deal in Ethiopia with this situation. The latter cannot be prolonged indefinitely without involving international complications (page 38). What, she asks, has happened to the undertaking entered into in 1923 to secure the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms by land and sea ? It is for the League of Nations now to ascertain why the Ethiopian Government has not carried out this task. And the writer finally insists on the necessity of establishing a Civil List of Emoluments which would lead to the repression of corruption and bribery and put an end to a situation under which the A byssinian rulers’ main source of influence and revenue is slavery ; abolition must begin with the rulers ; the most powerful Ethiopian families must cease to be the centre of the lucrative traffic in slaves. In short, she observes in conclusion (page 261), no excuse can be urged and there nre no mitigating circumstances for this supreme offence against the human race.
Other British Opinions.
Among British authors who really know Ethiopia may be mentioned Major Henry Darley, whose book, “ Slaves and Ivory ”, already referred to, was published in London in 1926. He says that once, on a journey, he counted on the raiders’ trail more than fifty slaves dead or dying because no food had been given them, dying by the way of hunger or thirst. That, the author says, he and his companions actually saw, and they saw, too, hundreds of thousands of square miles utterly depopulated by Ethiopian raids (page 27). These raids were constantly happening and, during the last six months to which he refers, there were several, especially into Kenya ; in one of them, indeed, the raiders penetrated more than 120 miles into British territory. While the depopulation of the border was going on, there was also an absence of adequate Ethiopian police forces. Every traveller, he says, who has been in direct contact with that country confirms hese conditions. Slave-owning, slave-raiding and slave-trading have permeated the national life 0 Ethiopia (page 28). According to these two authors, even the Regent of Abyssinia (now Emperor) 15 n°t unwilling to receive gifts of slaves. Only a few days previously he had received a gift of |5° slaves (page 28), most of whom were children, of either sex, between the ages of six and fourteen, 1 a w them were adult women with babies at the breast. And even the European abitants of the capital could hardly avoid becoming slave-owners. The two authors go on to d/ll -an8s slaves, marching in misery, the men chained together in rows, the women and Ptv,- lagging themselves along by their side, could be seen then by any traveller in Southern Ethiopia. - 56 -
There is a remarkable passage also in Oscar Baum’s book " Savage Abyssinia ”, which ? extensively into the question of slavery. This author, who has no illusions on the subject, exprès J himself frankly to Ras Tafari: “ I pointed out that, if Abyssinia does not make some deft n't move towards the abolition of slavery, and do it soon, a European Power might gain the conse t and popular backing of the civilised world in a plan to take over and administer that hi^hi desirable country." And it is worth while to reproduce the following passage from a despatch to the Foreie Office from Sir R. Coryndon, a former Governor of Kenya, who, having been in those parts has had experience of slave raids by the Ethiopians: he said that, although the Abyssinian raids’into the neighbouring British territories were carried out chiefly with the object of capturing live-stock or game, if there was the slightest opportunity of capturing women or children, they immediately did so, though fortunately that could no longer happen often. It may be well also to mention another passage in a recent book by Sir Arnold Hodson (who was for thirteen years British Consul in Ethiopia, and to whose books we have already referred). Con firming Captain Yardley’s observations regarding the depopulation of many Ethiopian districts where there had once been thousands of inhabitants and where now, owing to raids, there were only a few hundreds, he wrote that he had heard from eye-witnesses of the horrors perpetrated- great bodies of men, women and children were snatched from their native villages and exposed to all the hardships of long marches across arid and cold regions; some in chains and practically without food or clothing, and the weak and exhausted were left to die by the roadside. These raids, however, were still happening, and his blood boiled when he read in articles on the slave trade that they were exaggerations and that the slaves were well treated and looked after. Ras Tafari was sincerely desirous of arresting the traffic, but it was notorious that he stood alone in the pursuit of that purpose. All the chiefs without exception would say that they would never, on any consideration, release their slaves. Indeed, one could not but marvel at the way in which the Ethiopians had managed to gain admittance to the League of Nations and had succeeded in hoodwinking the Powers in regard to that question of slavery. . . . There was no question which was preferable : to be killed or to be carried off as a slave. It may be noted also that the Ethiopian Government decided subsequently to appoint an English Adviser to the Slavery Department, but that he sent in his resignation as soon as he found what the organisation was like. The Secretary-General of the Bureau for the Abolition of Slavery, Lijj Alemaio Tenna Gashau, son of the Governor of Addis Ababa, was arrested in 1933, at the demand of his chief, on a charge of embezzlement and extortion, after threatening to arrest many people for slave-trading if he was not paid sums of money ; for having appropriated slaves on the pretext of registering them and liberating them, whereas he subsequently made presents of them to parents and friends ; and, lastly, for having appropriated 27,000 thalers, the proceeds of fines inflicted on slave-traders. If we consult the report of the debate on slavery in Ethiopia in the House of Lords on July 17th, 1935, in which Lord Lugard, Lord Noel Buxton and other experts took part, we find further confirmation of what we have said. It shows that Ethiopia, the main centre of slavery, has done very little to redeem herself in the eyes of the world. Lord Polwarth recalled the fact that when the Negus, after Ras Hailu was convicted of treason, had to liberate at Addis Ababa upwards of a thousand of the Ras’s slaves, his subordinates took advantage of it to dispose of them themselves. Lord Arnold referred to what had recently been reported by a British officer on board a British cargo liner, who, on August 15th, 1933, had seen in the Red Sea a dhow in distress packed from end to end with twenty rows of slaves numbering 200 in all. Considerations and facts of this kind have been repeatedly noted by the League of Nations Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery. The latter, in its report of May 1935, stated that in Ethiopia the slave trade is still being carried on, and that it is facilitated by the existence of soldiers stationed in the western and south-western regions of Ethiopia who are not paid by the Negus and are not subject to any discipline.
The documents show:
(a) That Ethiopia recognises slavery as a legal condition ;
(b) That raids for the capture of individuals for purposes of slavery are continuing on a large scale, especially in the southern and western regions of Ethiopia ;
(c) That the slave trade is still practised ;
( d ) That the Ethiopian Government participates directly in theslave trade bya c c e p t i n g slaves in payment of taxes and allowing detachments of regular troops to capture new slaves ; (e) That, in addition to slavery proper, there exists the institution known as “ gebbar , to which the populations of non-Ethiopian regions are subject, and which is a form of servitude akin to slavery ; (/) That the Ethiopian Government has taken no account of the recommendations made to it by the Committee of Experts on Slavery, more particularly as regards the abolition 0 the legal status of slave, as appears further from the report submitted to the League of Nations in May 1935. — 5 7 —
B. TRAFFIC IN ARMS AND AMMUNITION.
SUMMARY.
The Ethiopia11 Declaration of 1923 and the Treaty of Paris of 1930 between Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Ethiopia — Violations of the Convention concerning the control of the traffic in arms and ammunition (improper sale of arms) ■— Non-fulfilment of obligations under the Paris Treaty of 1930 — Foreigners prohibited from being in possession of arms.
Declaration of 1923 and Treaty of 1930.
Ethiopia has to answer for a further breach of the specific obligations entered into as a condition for her admission into the League of Nations. It relates to the Convention for the Super vision of the Trade in Arms and Ammunition. This breach has a twofold significance. In the first place, it confirms the cynical indifference shown by Ethiopia for her international obligations and the undertakings assumed towards the League of Nations. But it also substantiates, in one particular respect, the policy of warlike preparation pursued by the Addis Ababa Government, to cope with which the obligation of supervision over traffic in arms and ammunition had been expressly formulated, an obligation from which Ethiopia has nevertheless arbitrarily decided to free herself in order to hide the development of her armaments. Under the Declaration of 1923, Ethiopia is obliged, however, “ to conform to the principles set forth in the Conventions relating to supervision of the traffic in arms and ammunition and the Protocol signed at St. Germain-en-Laye on September 10th, 1919, and, in particular, to the stipulations contained in Article VI of the said Convention ”. In application of this specific undertaking entered into by Ethiopia on her admission to the League of Nations, negotiations were opened between the three adjacent Powers and Ethiopia herself to control and restrict the import of arms in those East-African territories in which, under previous diplomatic Acts, the necessity of reducing the traffic in war material to a minimum and making it subject to the fullest guarantees had been recognised. This necessity was specially urgent, because Ethiopia, under cover of the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928, had initiated a policy of intensive armaments. The three Powers wished to give a further proof of their desire to assist what appeared to be the programme of the reigning Negus, by reserving to him alone the power to receive and control imports of arms. Accordingly, on August 21st, 1930, a Treaty was concluded at Paris between Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Ethiopia, to regulate the import of arms, ammunition and implements of war into the last-named State. Article 2 of this Treaty provides that arms and ammunition covered by Category I (A) imported into Ethiopia may be used only by the Government or by public authorities responsible to the latter. The Ethiopian Government, however, proceeded in 1931 to sell cartridges to private individuals on a large scale. Such sales were bound to produce dangerous repercussions, especially in the border zones. The representatives of Italy, France and the United Kingdom, rightly concerned at this illicit traffic in cartridges, when depositing the instrument of ratification of the Treaty, presented to the Ethiopian Government an identical note verbale, dated February 19th, 1932, No. 87-72 (document ^0. 66), in which they directed its attention to this sale of cartridges and expressed the hope that similar sales would not occur again in future. The Ethiopian Government did not reply to this note until September 24th, 1932. Not being in a position to deny the sale of the cartridges, it claimed that they were old cartridges, filled with black powder, which could be used only for rifle practice. But it is desirable to examine on a wider basis how the Treaty has been applied by the Ethiopian Government. Giving an incorrect and quibbling interpretation of Article 15, paragraph (b), of the Treaty, the Ethiopian Government denied emphatically the right of foreign consuls to import arms for the use of their guards. As regards Italy, the Ethiopian Government opposed the import of forty-five rifles for the consul s guard at Debra Markos. Notwithstanding the repeated and insistent representations of the Royal Legation at Addis baba and the collective representations of the Diplomatic Corps, to which reference will be made ereunder, the dispute has not yet been settled.
Non-fulfilment of Obligations under the Treaty.
th ^rance and the United Kingdom, after the deposit of the instrument of ratification of e :reaty. issued special regulations for the transit of arms consigned to Ethiopia; they published gularly, at the end of every quarter, the details of such transit; they took internal measures for e execution of those regulations. Ethiopia herself published, on May 19th, 1932, an Edict and gulations for the traffic of arms in Ethiopia, but this publication merely gave rise to serious ,vi^frva^ons on the part of the Diplomatic Corps. In point of fact, the Edict was published 0ut any previous agreement with the foreign Missions. It threatened anyone contravening - 58 - the provisions of the Edict with very severe penalties, including the death penalty, and decl those provisions applicable to foreigners. It thus constituted a violation of Article 7 0f u Klobukowski Treaty, which provides, in mixed offences, for the application of the national n 1 law of the foreigner accused. * In order to sum up the terms of the dispute between the Diplomatic Corps and th e Ethion' Government regarding the interpretation of Article 15 of the Treaty and the non-applicahiiv to foreigners of the Edict on traffic in arms, two collective notes are annexed which were present ^ to the Ethiopian Government in June 1934 (documents Nos. 150 and 151). On December 7th, 1932, the Ethiopian Government informed the Diplomatic Corps at Addi Ababa that its budget for the year 1933 included the sum of ten million French francs for the purchase of arms, in conformity with the Declaration annexed to the Treaty of Paris of A ugust 21st 1930, of the same date. ’ This first communication was the only one of its kind. The Ethiopian Government, contrary to its undertakings, did not make similar returns regarding the further appropriations for this purpose for the years 1934 and 1935. From July 1933, the Ethiopian Government, moreover, communicated quarterly statistical returns of imports and exports of arms in Ethiopia, but this communication ceased a year later— that is to say, in June 1934—and no further statistics were published. Even in respect of the considerable quantities of arms recently imported by the Ethiopian Government, there has been no communication either of the budgetary credits or of the statistics, this being a fu rth e r breach of the provisions of the Treaty. Towards the end of March 1934, the British Minister directed the attention of his Italian and French colleagues to the fact that, in flagrant violation of Article 6 of the Treaty, the Ethiopian Government was not complying with the order to stamp, in the manner prescribed, any arms imported by it. The British Minister pointed out also, on November 6th, 1934, to his colleagues that, in recent statistics of arms imported into Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Government, again in violation of the provisions of the Treaty of Paris, had omitted to include in its returns th e import of machine-guns supplied by English firms, and that, when this omission was brought to the notice of the Ethiopian Minister for Foreign Affairs, the latter bad defended himself by saying th a t the Customs statistics were compiled by the Ministry of Commerce and that that Ministry m ight have made a mistake. At the meeting of the Diplomatic Corps on July 7th, 1933, the French Chargé d’Affaires, M. Baelen, informed his colleagues that a large quantity of cartridges was being offered for sale on the public square of Addis Ababa by Ras Desta, the Emperor’s son-in-law, himself. It appeared indeed that, a few months earlier, the Emperor had given Kanyazmatch Tecle Markos, Director-General of the Ministry, and his own private secretary, Ate Taddese Mesheshia, 3,600,000 cartridges, with the right to sell them. In spite of the Legations' protest, the Ethiopian Government and the Emperor, disregarding the prohibitions laid down in the Treaty of Paris, supplied their trusted followers cheaply with large quantities of cartridges taken from the Government stores, with the right to sell them again to private persons. According to other information, a further quantity of three million cartridges was sold to Kanyazmatch Wolde Yohannes, in June 1934, with the right of resale to private persons.
Foreigners prohibited from being in Possession of Arms.
B ut there is more. The Ethiopian Government, which had made such insistent representations to the Diplomatic Corps with a view to the recognition of the applicability to foreigners of the famous Edict on traffic in arms, claimed that foreigners must observe the provisions of Article 14 of the Edict, to the following effect: “ No person may be in possession of firearms unless provided with a permit to carry arms issued by the Government This claim of the Ethiopian Government appeared legitimate to the Legations, and foreigners in possession of arms complied with the provisions of this article and obtained permits to carry arms. No such obligation, however, was imposed on Ethiopian subjects, who were all known to be in possession of arms. Consequently, very few Ethiopian subjects, if indeed any, have permits to carry arms. The absurd situation thus came about that the obligation to be in possession of a permit to carry arms constitutes the rule for foreigners and the exception for Ethiopian subjects.
It may be concluded that the Ethiopian Government, although it has affixed its signature to the Treaty of Paris, has systematically violated the principal clauses of that instrument, invoking its provisions only in order to prevent the import of arms intended for the consular guards or to stultify the regime recognised for foreigners under the Klobukowski Treaty. This failure to fulfil its obligations calls to mind all the attempts and efforts that Ethiopia has been making for years to obtain an outlet to the sea. Eleven years ago, on July 2nd, 192 . the French review “ La Dépêche Coloniale ” wrote as follows, in regard to Ethiopian claims to a free zone in the port of Jibuti : “ . . . In order to consolidate this regime, in order to support this barbarous recrudescence of xenophobia, are we ourselves to renounce w hat belongs to us and establish in our port of Jibuti an Ethiopian zone in which arms contraband and t e slave trade will be carried on ? ” — 5 9 —
V. BARBARISM IN ETHIOPIA.
SUMMARY.
Emasculation and traffic in eunuchs Cannibalism and bleeding of infants — Life of lepers — A typical case of xenophobia — Barbarous law — Punishments — Ethiopian prisons.
The horrors of slavery and the “ gebbar ” system do not exhaust the picture of Ethiopian barbarism. Emasculation and, Traffic in Eunuchs.
It is well known that it is the Ethiopian practice to cut off the sexual organs of the wounded or captured enemy and treat these as trophies. Not only conquered warriors but also boys and infants are subjected to emasculation. As recently as last May, in the Ethiopian raid against Italian Dancalia, wounded natives and some captured children were emasculated. In the villages may be found, as a memorial of the deeds accomplished by the warriors, triumphal arches adorned with male genitals which are preserved by being covered with a layer of maize chaff and then whitened with lime. These trophies are also hung round the circular beam at the top of the inner ceiling of a hut, so that they may be dried and fumigated by the smoke from the cooking operations. Besides the mutilation of the male organs practised by the Ethiopians in war, there is the still flourishing traffic in eunuchs in Ethiopia. From among the captured slaves, children are chosen who are considered specially suitable, and they are castrated. The great Ethiopian chiefs have eunuchs in their houses, and there are still some to be found even in the Imperial Gebbi.
Cannibalism and Bleeding of Infants.
Another atrocity known to be practised in Ethiopia is cannibalism for purposes of magic, and the bleeding of infants (see Conti Rossini, " Aethiopica ”). Among other proofs that such practices persist—even now, when Ethiopia is a Member of the League of Nations—is the quite recent episode reported by Marcelle Prat in the Journal of August 8th, 1935. A little girl was ritually slain with a view to sprinkling the body of an old dying chief with her blood and so restoring him, as the belief is, to life. Tortures. For cannibalism, it will suffice to quote the case of the Tishana, who ate a courier of the British Consulate at Maji. This is how the British Consul in question describes the deed 1:
" Haili was taking letters, in company with another man, from Maji to Addis Ababa. Passing through the Tishana country, they were surprised by the natives, and Haili was captured. He was taken alive to the chief’s village, where he was kept for five days. Each evening there was feasting and dancing while he was brutally tortured, until on the fifth night he died. His body was then divided up and eaten.”
What the tortures were to which allusion is made in the above passage is explicitly stated by Sir Arnold Hodson in his book " Where the Lion reigns ”, page 29:
“ I heard terrible stories from the Dedjatch of the brutality of the Tishana to their prisoners. They first gouge the prisoners’ eyes out of their sockets, then they prick them to make them run, and the whole tribe yells with laughter if the blinded man stumbles and falls. When they have had enough, they skin the whole face of the prisoner, and, fastening the skin which they have taken on to pegs, they throw them to each other. Finally, when the prisoner is dead, either they eat him, or they introduce into the two sides of his head two sticks tied together with a cord, and hang him up on a tree.”
These barbaric practices of the Tishana have not been abolished by the rule of the Ethiopian Governor in that country. The pitiless hunting of Tishana women and children by the Ethiopians for slavery has kept the population in a state of absolute barbarism. Here is a picture of the tortures which the Ethiopians practice on the Nilotic Shangalla tribes (the race to which the Tishana belong), according to the testimony of Major Darley:2
" Scattered here and there were the bodies of some of the Shangallas slain in trying to escape. Outside the town, and along the track of the retiring Abyssinians, the corpses were much more plentiful than in the town. “ The Shangallas had all been piled high with the loads of their masters, and if they sank down under their loads, and refused, or were unable, to go further, they were either clubbed
1 H o s d o n : “ Seven Years ”, page 164. ' Slaves and Ivory ”, page 73. — 6o —
on the head, or speared. I suppose this was intended to encourage the others, and food too scarce to waste on weaklings. There was no waste of ammunition in these cases, and n 'f evidently had no place in the Abyssinian’s category of virtues.” ' -
One might mention also the carelessness, or rather indifference, of the authorities in regard to the most elementary public services, such as allowing the hundred thousand lepers of Ethioni to rove at large. Lepers, as Paul Gilson relates in the Petit Journal of August 2nd last, go without hindrance to wash their extremities in the public fountains and gutters, and accost passers-bv to beg for alms.
A Typical Case of Xenophobia.
To this state of barbarism is added the blindest hostility and distrust towards foreigners of the civilised nations. Such xenophobia assumes forms which are sometimes tragic and sometimes ridiculous. It will suffice to mention a typical passage recounted by Mr. Gerald Campbell, formerly British Chargé d’Affaires at Addis Ababa and afterwards Consul-General at San Francisco"1
“ The Abyssinians at one time had the idea of using the natural resources of the country to make their own cartridges. “ There happened to be an Australian prospector on the spot, and they thought they would send him to a place where copper had been reported and get him to say whether it would be good enough for them to use at the Government cartridge factory. They gave him a passport to proceed to this place without hindrance. He went there and began digging, but th e local officials at once stopped him and said: ‘ You are allowed to proceed here without hindrance, but you are not allowed to dig ’. A message was sent back to the capital, a month away, asking for permission for him to dig; the authorities, after thinking it over for a month, gave the desired permission, which reached the man after yet another month had elapsed. He again began to dig and saw some promising specimens, which he put into his pocket to smelt in his tent. This action did not escape the watchful eyes of the local officials, who immediately arrested him and took him a journey of several months round northern Abyssinia, because they said he was allowed to dig but not to take anything away. In fact, this violent xenophobia and this obscurity of thought were among the causes which rendered any economic initiative in Ethiopia impossible.”
Barbarous Law.
The state of barbarism which exists in Ethiopia is accompanied by an equally barbaric system of law. The characteristics of Ethiopian civil law are well known, for example, in the matter of obligations. A creditor has the right to keep his debtor bound to him with a chain. We quote the actual words of the American traveller Baum in his book “ Savage Abyssinia ” (New York, 1927, pages 59 and 60) :
“ Mr. Osgood, Head of the American Expedition, at the station of Addis Ababa, when trying to pass between two natives, was stopped by a heavy chain which struck him in the chest. He stopped in surprise and saw that the ends of the chain, which was 12 or 15 feet long, were fastened to the wrists of two natives, and it was turned and twisted round them. We learned afterwards that the men chained thus are not criminals, but only creditor and debtor, chained together to prevent the flight of the debtor and to prevent the creditor from having recourse to methods worthy of Shylock. These two sportsmen chained together were there at the station to watch the arrival of the train, and were enjoying the spectacle. The heavy chain did not incommode them. But not all creditors and debtors are like that. As far as we could make out, it is left to the discretion of the creditor. If he has reason to believe that the debtor is intending to escape with his money, or even to go into temporary retreat in the hills, he can bring his man before one of the tribunals which sit in the streets, and have himself chained to the debtor. In that case the chain cannot be removed unless the debt is paid. This means that the couple are bound together for weeks and months, sleeping together and going through the whole routine of their daily life together. This custom is not usual except in the larger cities.”
Criminal law is by tradition based on the law of talion, which is applied with the punctilious minuteness characteristic of the Ethiopians. There were recently built at Addis Ababa premises which were considered comparatively modern for the purpose of executing the death penalty. They consisted of a large wooden building containing a frame to which the condemned was bound, the rifles of the executioners being fixed on stands and aimed at the frame. The family of the condemned person had to witness the execution from a kind of stage and had to take charge of the body afterwards.
1 H o d s o n : “ Seven Years ”, page 104. — 6i —
Punishments. But, besides this execution by shooting arranged in the building at Addis Ababa, the most barbarous punishments are employed in the interior of the country. When Marcel Griaule, the French ethnologist and explorer (see his recent volume, “ Les Flambeurs d'Hommes , was in Gojjam, he witnessed a terrifying spectacle—the torture by slow burning of an Ethiopian guilty of having attempted the life of a Ras of the Empire. The guilty man's limbs were tightly bound in strips of muslin impregnated with honey w'ax ; he was then slowly
b u r n t like a living torch in the presence of the person he had attacked, while the great chiefs of the province were allotted as an honour the task of preventing the tormented man, who was filling the air with his shrieks, from escaping from the raging pyre, by prodding him with their lances. The author goes on to narrate that, during the summary trial of the case, the wife of the Ras had intervened to object that, in reality, Ethiopian law reserved that torment only for a person who had killed a king, whereas that was not the case in this instance. A feature more than curious for a State Member of the League of Nations is the list of rewards to which the chiefs were entitled for the honour of acting as executioners. They are : Fitaurari Alamayo, chief of Damot, decorated with the Order of Solomon : twenty-five human phalli, five elephants, ten lions and three rhinoceroses. Fitaurari Shambal, chief of Achifer : fifteen human phalli, three elephants, ten lions. Kanyazmatch Shifara, chief of the Gumz: thirty human phalli, five buffaloes. Kanyazmatch Engheda Work, called “ the destroyer ”, chief of the Abitar: fifteen human phalli. Another terrible torture, of which an eye-witness’s account is given by Sir Arnold Hodson,1 is the following : " She (a woman guilty of murdering her husband) was to be taken to the high road, buried up to her neck, and left there till she died. “ The sentence was duly carried out. A friend of mine who happened to ride past the place saw her there, and heard her calling out to the boys driving loaded donkeys to market : ‘ Please be careful, or your donkeys will kick my head ’. Incredible as it may sound, she survived the heat, and the flies, and the attentions of stray dogs, and many another torture, for three whole days, when a large stone was dropped on her head, squashing it as flat as a pancake. The stone was not removed but remained there as a sign.” There follows another example of the practical consequences of the present barbaric state of Ethiopian laws. In 1931-32, the French author, Marcel Griaule, already mentioned, conducted a scientific mission which landed at Dakar in order to cross the whole of Africa to Jibuti. Having reached the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, he passed through Gallabat, in Ethiopia, direct to Gondar, and from there to Lake Tsana. Although the Negus had accepted, in virtue of Ethiopia’s membership of the League of Nations, the Convention of St. Germain-en-Laye, by Article 11 of which he is obliged to protect, [without distinction of nationality, religious, scientific or charitable institutions and under takings, and to make the property and collections of such missions an object of special sollicitude, Professor Griaule’s first experience was to have the motor-car in which he had travelled seized by the Ethiopian Customs, and to have the engine of a motor-boat, which he required for excursions on Lake Tsana, dismounted and sequestrated; he was told that he could only use oars for his boat. When passing through the Sudan, he had engaged a negro as a paid servant, and had already had him in his service for some time. While he was wintering at Gondar, an Ethiopian recognised the negro as a slave of his who had fled ten years before, and claimed either that he should be restored or that Marcel Griaule should pay the price asked for him. Marcel Griaule refused, and after much dispute the parties agreed to refer the case to the Italian Consul for an arbitral award. The consul, on January 23rd, 1932, decided, in virtue of the recent Imperial edicts on slavery, to reject the Ethiopian’s claim ; but the effect of the award was that the former owner of the slave invoked and claimed in his favour the application of a provision of the Fetha Naghast, whereby (see Guidi's translation, 1898, page 304), if the possessor of a fugitive slave does not restore him or pay the price asked to the former owner, the holder of the slave must himself become the slave of the former owner ; in other words, the Ethiopian owner claimed that Marcel Griaule, of the University of Paris, should become his slave !
Ethiopian Prisons. Finally, the horrors of Ethiopian prisons should be mentioned. The Italian Govern ment possesses a set of photographs, dated Septem ber 30th, 1932, taken by the Italian Consul during a visit to the prisons of Harrar, one of the principal Ethiopian centres. Persons accused and persons under sentence were confined together indiscriminately there. Women, men and children were thrown together promiscuously, all in chains. Even a boy of 12 was wearing chains. One prisoner, bent double, had his right hand chained to his feet, which were fastened ogether with another chain. Three prisoners were chained together, their right hands being c amed to their feet. Some other prisoners were chained together by the feet. Some boys were also Tinned *n the same manner. There was the most revolting promiscuity among the prisoners. ere was also a child with tuberculosis of the bones. One slave was sent to serve a sentence Riposed not by a judge but by his master. Another prisoner, who was awaiting trial for having ruck someone a blow without serious consequences, was subjected to a terrible penalty of especial
Seven Years”, page 193. — 62 —
severity, because his father had been sentenced to a fine of 1,200 thalers for having refused cede some property of his to the Government ; it was expected that, if the son continued t vf tortured, his parent would consent. Prisoners sentenced for theft were to remain chained f eight years. A female slave had been sentenced for having married without her master’s conse ? This nightmare prison, in which excrement, filth and refuse were left lying on the stone fl0n ' was also used as a madhouse; there was a completely naked madman, his feet tied with a sin f rope to prevent him from moving, who shared the horrible food given to the other prisoners 6
Such are the barbarous customs and archaic laws in force to-day in Ethiopia. Surely the League of Nations must consider that a State such as Ethiopia, in which barbarism is still systematic, is unworthy to stand side by side with civilised nations. CONCLUSIONS
In this memorandum, the Italian Government has, in the first place, set forth the state of Italo-Ethiopian relations and has shown how Ethiopia has failed to carry out the obligations undertaken under the special Conventions with Italy. In the second place, it has given ample evidence of Ethiopia’s failure to fulfil her engagements entered into when she became a Member of the League of Nations. The Italian Government thought it necessary to do this, both because the Council could not appreciate the relations between Italy and Ethiopia in all their aspects without taking into account Ethiopia’s general situation as a Member of the League, and also because Italy is the nation whose rights and interests are most directly affected by Ethiopia’s failure to fulfil her obligations as a Member of the League. The Covenant has set up among the Members of the League a system of obligations and rights which are interdependent. No Member of the League can invoke rights arising from the Covenant when it has not fulfilled its own obligations—that is to say, when it has shown that it has not fulfilled the conditions laid down by the Covenant as essential for a State having the status of League membership, and when it has failed to fulfil the general and special obligations incumbent upon it through membership of the League. Moreover, it would be contrary to every principle of law and justice to claim that Members of the League are bound to observe the rules of the Covenant in their relations with a State Member which has placed itself outside the Covenant through a breach of its undertakings. The admission of Ethiopia to the League was a political act based on the belief that, through participation in the system of international co-operation represented by the League, Ethiopia could be led to make by herself the efforts necessary to approach, even though only gradually, the level of civilisation of the other peoples belonging to the international community. The idea that the League is in itself a system that promotes the progress of the nations belonging to it is not in accordance with historical facts, except on the essential condition that the countries entering the League are capable of guiding themselves towards civilisation. The position in this respect is not the same for all peoples. The League has to remember what the facts of history are and how they vary. Ethiopia has shown that she does not possess the qualifications necessary to enable her to obtain, through participation in the League, the impulse required to raise herself by voluntary efforts to the level of the other civilised nations. The League would be defeating its own ends and its own mission if it did not take to heart this lesson of experience. Ethiopia has systematically violated all the treaties concluded with Italy. She has rendered impossible any pacific and friendly economic and civilised collaboration with Italy. On the contrary, inspired by deliberate and particular hostility towards Italy, devoid of any adequate organisation, and incapable of controlling her own people or the populations subject to her, Ethiopia constitutes an immediate and constant danger to Italy, inasmuch as she imperils the security of the Italian colonies in East Africa. This danger has increased now that the Ethiopian Government has used the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of Amity of 1928 as a means of arming itself against Italy, as it has been doing to a disquietingly increasing extent. These arms include some which Italy herself—showing the complete absence of any aggressive intention on her part—had supplied to the Negus to enable him to ensure internal order. By her conduct, Ethiopia has openly placed herself outside the Covenant of the League and has rendered herself unworthy of the trust placed in her when she was admitted to member ship. Italy, rising up against such an intolerable situation, is defending her security, her rights and her dignity. She is also defending the prestige and good name of the League of Nations. ® RDI USRI ^ The Abyssinian State within its historic frontiers. Mb’Qua/a _
©flDUR ' L.Assafc The southern States afterwards subjugated (with ?<*%£. ta k ilfa d the dates of conquest). ♦
u l t a n a t o \DEL RIRU /)fZ 4 303 j
Ï ULTANATO TERU COSTA
Echelle 1: 4.000.000
GIBUTI
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/ n B u rt oQulalt (HJNAGHih r/c&yJ4&. Sassabanen f S I ' L t y ^ét/re/n DEGLI olH»r*rdiÿxt) Curah Ortu/lute conqh tb sstn >EL G1MHA' yrl*~*m^6opo IS Jnn‘ di e « » ^ y 0 k POPOLt 2,1 ON I CONSO in e rt/' 1837 Ivitti [LOTI CHE 0 66er/rt QBurdodi r*»# «#/ /5W »A OA/7A, o Mega vMtnfcmer llo jale Sectional Elevation of the Ethiopian Massif - Soif and Inhabitants Chart VIII from the Awash to the Akobo via Addis Ababa, Jiran in Jimma, and the Gurafarda (i.e., approximately from E.N.E. to W.S.W.) Scale o f heights (1 millimetre = 120 metres) Scale of distances (1 centimetre = 30 kilometres) 120,000 1...... ' ' " 3,OOOflOO Rivers which flow to the South of the Elevation are indicated by continuous lines; those which flow to the North, by dotted tines Rainfall: 11 i111 i1 ' i i j i i i i i i i i i i i M l I I I l I ' k I I I I I (fo r 3-4 months, heavy) for 6 months (less heavy) _____ IV i H tm ainly forest uhi ff/fr ram i Sea - level OmO 0 in o Races (peoples): Nigritis:> Hamlto-nigritian Ham itic Ham /tic (galla) Semitized Ham itic Hamitic (yamhv (ghimirra) (kaffecho) (amhara) (Danakll) Languages : nmito-mgritians 'Hamito-n/grftians (Diroo and Ham itic Hamitic (galla) Semitic Ham itic (yambo) (gurafarda £ shako) Beneshi (kaffecho) Religions : (AmhariQ (D anakil) Pagans Moslems i Pagans Christians Moslems Social condition ; Montandon i9!2 Slaves Serfs Subjects Rulers Tributaries Geographical and Ethnographical Chart o f Southern Ethiopia (taken from “ Au pays Ghimirra”, by G. 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