I remember asking ZOS that same question a long time ago and they where as surprised to see this code as you are.
The only reason we could think of is that whoever originally wrote it was using one of the game launchers that allowed to circumvent the security system of the api (which is obviously against the TOS) to call protected and private functions just as normal functions from addon code and everyone else just copied it without understanding it.
Guess nobody bothered updating the wiki afterwards.
