Declan Walsh: The traffic lights in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, offer one of the city's most disturbing sights. As cars come to a stop, hordes of beggars rush from the roadside to tap the closed windows for a little spare change.
Many suffer terrible disfigurement - one time I was confronted by a woman who, with a beaming smile, grasped my coins with two fingerless stumps.
On day last month, though, Addis Ababa's beggars mysteriously disappeared. It was no coincidence that it happened on the eve of the annual African Union summit. So as African leaders were whisked in cars from the sparkling new airport to the opulent Sheraton Hotel, they were spared any discomfiting sights.
According to local human rights activists, the beggars were rounded up forcibly and trucked to a remote camp far from the city. The same thing happened before last summer's World Cup, when the paupers had to be removed to make way for a giant TV screen in a downtown square.
Not that you would have heard much about it, though, from the many Westerners stationed in Addis Ababa. Some angry aid workers considered making a statement, then thought better of it. As one put it privately: "We know that our lives can be made very difficult, very quickly, if you say the wrong thing."
In Ethiopia where Western countries spend over a billion euro every year and Ireland is increasing its assistance, there is a selective silence.
Western money does enormous good in Ethiopia. This year alone it will be crucial in staving off famine for over 11 million vulnerable people in one of the world's poorest nations. Ireland is among the most prominent donors. Last year it gave €19 million, this year it is €28 million. Yet there is a marked reluctance to use this generosity to protest at human rights violations.
The beggar sweep was by no means the most worrying event of last year. In the early summer police opened fire on political protesters and carried out a pogrom lasting a week in villages in the southern Tepi and Awasa regions. According to officials figures about 140 people died.
Privately, some aid organisations put the figure as high as 400. Ireland and other alarmed European countries sent delegations to investigate afterwards, and some police were fired. But apart from some private diplomatic démarches, the matter was quickly forgotten.
The government of Mr Meles Zenawi hates criticism. A slew of rules and restrictions have stifled civil society and opposition groups.
A new press laws allows officials to effectively spike stories they don't like and imprison journalists who disobey.
Then there is Eritrea. A remote strip of mountainous land sparked a war between the two neighbours in 1998 that cost an estimated 100,000 lives in brutal trench warfare.
Many donors slowed aid to a trickle during this period in protest at a government that valued buying bullets over food. Ireland did not. The then Minister of State for Development, Ms Liz O'Donnell, argued that even the poorest countries had the right to defend their sovereignty, and so Irish aid continued throughout the conflict. It is something for which Ethiopian politicians remain grateful to this day.
In contrast GOAL director, Mr John O'Shea, issued an attack on the war at around the same time. It very nearly resulted in his aid agency being expelled, saved only by a direct appeal from Minister O'Donnell.
Since then Irish aid has soared and the relationship between the two countries has tightened, even as street children are roughed up and protesters die. Yet the Ethiopian government is not some brutal crackpot regime. Mr Zenawi is seen as a sharp, savvy operator, who is intensely interested in pulling his vast, impoverished country into the 21st century.
His government comes up with impressive anti-poverty plans and works hard to implement them. Corruption is relatively low. Most Ethiopians live in fear of poverty, not their own government.
There are cynical possible explanations for the West's "blindside" tendency. One is that the US, by far the largest donor, needs Ethiopia as a strategic partner in its fight against terrorism. Mr Zenawi is, basically speaking, a good bet. And like a rather tetchy friend, he responds to private appeals rather than public denunciations. But is it not ordinary Ethiopians, not suited diplomats and donors officials, who should be deciding this question? While Western aid undoubtedly does enormous good, it should not make the government more responsive to donors than to their own citizens.
For Ireland's part, there needs to be greater recognition that aid to Ethiopia can have subtle political as well as humanitarian impacts. And that sometimes, perhaps that largesse could be leveraged to save ordinary citizens from bullets as well as life-threatening hunger.