Land seizures by the Ethiopian regime, with the pretext of modernizing the country, is really intended to tear down the foundation of the Ethiopian society. Today, entire communities in Ethiopia are being forced out of their land and neighborhoods, and pushed into internal displacement and exile. Land and property owners are evicted by governmental decrees, and often paid only a fraction of what their properties are worth in compensations. Others are relocated at distant sites, far away from public transportation and commercial centers; or are housed in ill-designed urban concrete slums. In the rural areas, millions of subsistence farmers are resettled from one part of the country to another, with devastating economic, social, and environmental results.
Villages and communities are more than simple living spaces, serving the citizens as access to means of livelihood, community interaction, and as nucleus of family and social support systems. Systematically, these centers of culture and history are being destroyed by the Meles regime. In the current wild, frantic and desperate atmosphere of land grab, whole villages and districts are wiped out overnight. In Addis Abeba, the old communities of Piazza, Kazanchis and Lideta have already been bulldozed over. Not even old church cemeteries, like Kedus Yosef, have escaped destruction. Poor farmers from Harar are being actively settled in Wellega, where the new settlers are destroying what little remains of the natural resources of the country, aggravating the already severe environmental degradation of the Ethiopian landscape.
The regime’s current land policy schemes render the people needier than they were before their evictions from their homes and communities. The regime’s assertions that resettlement and evictions are necessary to bring modernization and improvement in public health, transportation, schools, agricultural, and so forth are unsubstantiated. The fact is that all resettlement plans, including the Derg’s villagization programs, have been utter failures in Ethiopia.
Notwithstanding these facts, and in lock-step with the Derg, the current regime has made property ownership in Ethiopia restrictive. The state owns the land, and the citizens own only the improvements made on the land. By design, ownership of the improved property is ambiguous, because the government can remove anyone off a property at any time, and at will. The pretext of the removal is a decree by officials that a certain property or a neighborhood is necessary for “investment.” Since the ruling party cadres have strong incentive to make money from investors, they often use militant and brutal tactics to force the people off their land, or to remove them out of their buildings.
At the heart of this inequity lies in the fact that the Ethiopian people do not have the right of land ownership. By default, regime officials enjoy easy access to the land, enabling widespread corruption and arbitrary land seizures. In the cities, there hangs an overwhelming sense of uncertainty and fear that ones’ property could be snatched away at any time. In the country sides, the regime is in the business of leveraging and selling hundreds of thousands of hectares of farm lands, virgin forests, fertile valleys, highland meadows and floodplains, often for as little as US$1 per acre. The beneficiaries of this largess are Pakistanis, Turkish, Indian, Israeli, Saudi and Ethiopian Diaspora investors, all in cohort with the officials.
Today, among regime and ruling party officials, reaching to the highest echelons of power, and including the wives and relatives of those in high places, there prevails a sense of harried entitlement, unrestrained corruption, and nepotism that is hastening the process of land seizures and evictions. Since the evictions in Ethiopia are of massive scale, implemented in a rushed time frame, and made without adequate planning and resources, thousands of years of tradition, culture, history, and the natural environment of the country are being obliterated. The result is that whole populations of dispossessed, landless, and impoverished citizens are scattered all over the entire country.
Regime officials and their cronies, at all levels, vie with each other trying to get as much of the land as possible, turn quick profits for themselves and families, and move on to the next piece of land. As a rule, the regime offers a small fraction of the property value as compensation, and hardly ever any adequate relocation assistance to tens of thousands of citizens affected by evictions. When citizens receive any payment, it is often very little. Besides, contrary to the regime’s assertions, there is never any consideration given to the loss of income, loss of businesses, lack of adequate transportation, access to markets, proper schools for children, public health, or care for the elderly.
Land is often confiscated by ruling party officials for dubious investment schemes. In Dejen, atop the Abay River, the otherwise pristine and clean mountain air is now polluted by a cement factory spewing toxic dusts into the air. This cement plant is a Pakistani investment scheme, built on confiscated land. The cement plant, imported in disassembled parts from Pakistan, is entirely run by Pakistani workers, except for a few local day laborers.
To the West, whole stretches of the fertile valley of the Baro River, vast swathes of the arable land, are given to Pakistani and Saudi investors. To the east, there are scheme to build sugar factories in Metehara with borrowed money from India, using Indian equipment, and Indian skilled labor. In this particular case, even before these sugar projects were ever launched, there are lawsuits currently underway in Indian courts. The Indian courts are hearing allegations of corruptions, implicating senior officials of the Ethiopian regime.
In the highland meadows of the central region, there are large tracks of fertile farm lands, confiscated from poor farmers, and now fenced off for various investment schemes. Dotting the hills and plateaus of the plains, huge, empty flower producing warehouses are found stretched for miles on end. In the south and the northwest, there are large scale mining and timber concessions given to Saudi investors, where heavy machinery are actively plowing away the virgin soils, and lying to waste hundreds of thousands of acres of hardwood forests. The ancient lowland bamboo forests of Beneshangul-Gumuz are given away at fire-sell prices to dubious companies from India, funded by borrowed money from the state-owned banks.
The Awash Basin has been rendered toxic by industrial spillage and chemical run-offs, all related to ill-conceived investment schemes; the ancient rain forests of the South and Northwest are being decimated by logging and mineral extractions; the Omo and the Boro Rivers are severely threatened by large-scale industrial farms, and ill-designed water projects; the highland meadows of the central regions have been depleted by soil erosion; and there continues the obliteration of our villages, cities, communities and neighborhoods. Even our cemeteries have become fodders to the prevailing greed and avaricious grabbing.
Ethiopia’s beggar despot who survives on Western handouts is provoking Egypt by throwing accusations that Mubarak’s government is supporting Ethiopian rebel groups, according to Reuters (see below). We are accustomed to seeing dictators pick fights with external “enemies” when ever they feel the heat from domestic troubles. It is thus not surprising that Meles is going after Egypt since he is currently facing growing public anger and simmering tension that could explode any time. Meles uses the Nile issue only as a political tool, not as a matter of Ethiopia’s national interest. It is to be remembered that when Meles came to power he went to Cairo and signed an accord (read here) with Mubarak that gives Egypt a veto power over any agreement on Nile. Regarding his chest beating, let’s not forget that it took only 3,000 Somali ragtag fighters to kick his 20,000 troops out of Somalia. If war erupts between Egypt and Woyanne, which is highly unlikely, Ethiopians will be neutral spectators. — Elias Kifle
Ethiopian PM warns Egypt off Nile war
By Barry Malone
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Egypt could not win a war with Ethiopia over the River Nile and is also supporting rebel groups in an attempt to destabilize the Horn of Africa nation, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in an interview.
Egypt, Ethiopia and seven other countries through which the river passes have been locked in more than a decade of contentious talks driven by anger over the perceived injustice of a previous Nile water treaty signed in 1929.
Under the original pact Egypt is entitled to 55.5 billion cubic meters a year, the lion’s share of the Nile’s total flow of around 84 billion cubic meters, despite the fact some 85 percent of the water originates in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya signed a new deal to share the waters in May, provoking Egypt to call it a “national security” issue.
Meles said he was not happy with the rhetoric coming from the Egyptians but dismissed the claims of some analysts that war could eventually erupt.
“I am not worried that the Egyptians will suddenly invade Ethiopia,” Meles told Reuters in an interview. “Nobody who has tried that has lived to tell the story. I don’t think the Egyptians will be any different and I think they know that.”
The five signatories of the new deal have given the other Nile Basin countries one year to join the pact before putting it into action. Sudan has backed Egypt while Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi have so far refused to sign.
“The Egyptians have yet to make up their minds as to whether they want to live in the 21st or the 19th century,” Meles told Reuters in an interview, referring to the fact the original treaty was negotiated by colonial administrators.
“So the process appears to be stuck.”
“FISH IN TROUBLED WATERS”
Stretching more than 6,600 km (4,100 miles) from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean, the Nile is a vital water and energy source for the nine countries through which it flows.
Egypt, almost totally dependent on the Nile and threatened by climate change, is closely watching hydroelectric dam construction in the upstream countries.
Ethiopia has built five huge dams over the last decade and has begun construction on a new $1.4 billion hydropower facility — the biggest in Africa.
Meles accused Egypt of trying to destabilize his country by supporting several small rebel groups but said it was a tactic that would no longer work.
“If we address the issues around which the rebel groups are mobilized then we can neutralize them and therefore make it impossible for the Egyptians to fish in troubled waters because there won’t be any,” he said.
“Hopefully that should convince the Egyptians that, as direct conflict will not work, and as the indirect approach is not as effective as it used to be, the only sane option will be civil dialogue.”
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in July called for a scheduled November meeting of the nine countries to be attended by heads of state. Meles said that would not happen now.
The last meeting of all sides ended in stalemate and angry exchanges between water ministers at a news conference in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
“Ask the Egyptians to leave their culture and go and live in the desert because you need to take this water and to add it to other countries? No,” Egyptian Water Minister Mohamed Nasreddin Allam told Reuters at that meeting.
The photo below is incorrectly reported as showing destroyed trees in Ethiopia. However, the report about trees being cut in a massive scale to clear lands for flower farm is correct. Not only trees, according a VOA report yesterday, close to a million people are being uprooted from their land in 4 regions of Ethiopia. Their land is being leased by the ruling party Woyanne to foreign corporations. Listen here:
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Nov. 23, 2010
The Meles ethnic apartheid regime has given a land in western Ethiopia that is the size of the State of Rhodes Island (765,000 hectares) to an Indian corporation named Karuturi Global. Thousands of Ethiopians who used to live and earn their living on the land have been displaced, and a few of them are hired by Karturi at meager salaries.
The photo below shows how the forest in south western Ethiopia is being destroyed to make space for flower farming for export to Europe. When asked about the impact of clearing trees to grow flowers in such a massive scale, Woyanne minister of agriculture Abera Deressa said: We in the Ministry of Agriculture are developing an environmental code of practice for the private sector… We are advising them not to cut trees, they have to manage soil erosion.”
Obviously the stupid minister doesn’t know what he is talking about. Trees are being cleared as shows above and the impact on the environment, as well as the people in the region, is incalculable. Every independent study also indicates that after a few years of growing flower, the land will be useless.
Germany Radio (DW) reports that the administration of Ato GebreMedhin (formerly Aba Paulos, who is also known as Aba Diabilos) has shut down the Holy Trinity College in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa after students complained that, among other things, the food they are served is poisoned.
Ato Gebremedhin is a Woyanne cadre who was installed as Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church by Meles Zenawi’s Marxist junta to systematically destroy the 2000-year-old Church.
In solidarity with the Addis Ababa Holy Trinity College, students at the Kisate Berhan College of Theology in Mekele have boycotted classes.
Ethiopian Television (ETV) that is currently under the control of Woyanne propaganda chief Bereket Simon has been falsely using Aster Aweke’s name, according to associates of the popular singer.
For the past several days, ETV has been using Aster and other Ethiopian singers for promoting the ANDM (a puppet organization for Woyanne) that had thrown a lavish party in the town of Bahir Dar to celebrate its 16th anniversary last week.
Aster Aweke’s associates told Ethiopian Review today that she has been out of the country for the past several months and that even if she is in the country she would never perform at political events that are organized by the ruling party.
ETV was also showing Aster on its Ethiopian New Year show last September without her approval, according to her associates who are managing her concerts.
Ethiopian Review has independently verified today that Aster in fact did not go to Bahir Dar to sing, and that ETV has been using her name illegally without her permission.
This is a good news. Ethiopian Review is a great fan of Aster Aweke, and we will continue to support her as long as she doesn’t let herself be used by Meles Zenawi and his genocidal junta that is currently brutalizing the people of Ethiopia.
It is any one’s right whether or not join the struggle to liberate Ethiopia from the grip of the Woyanne vampire regime. Those of us in the struggle get upset and jump into action only against those who allow themselves to become tools for the enemy.
We are satisfied by the answer we received from Aster’s camp and that we wish her a successful concert in Atlanta.
In the mean time, enjoy this song by Aster:
The following is a poster of Aster Aweke’s concert to be held in Atlanta this coming Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2010
The 10th Great Ethiopian Run was held Sunday in Addis Ababa in which over 30,000 people took part.
During the past few years, opponents of the ruling Woyanne junta used the event to express their frustration with the regime since public demonstrations are banned in Ethiopia.
This year, Woyanne wanted to use the event to promote its own agenda of ruling the country unchallenged. So instead of the usual open registration that lasted until a few days before the race, registration forms were sent out to state employees, ruling party members, and groups and businesses that are affiliated with the regime. Registration was closed several weeks before race day.
During yesterday’s race, every individual who was interviewed by the state-controlled ETV talked about Meles Zenawi’s “5 year transformation plan,” which actually is a plan to loot and pillage Ethiopia for 5 more years. Any one who watched the TV coverage of the race Sunday can conclude that it was a Woyanne political event that has been orchestrated by its propaganda chief Bereket Simon.
Meles and Bereket, however, did not fully succeeded in keeping opposition activities out of the event. During the run, thousands of pamphlets commemorating the 5th anniversary of the Ethiopian election massacre were distributed along the race route and other parts of Addis Ababa. An Ethiopian Review source has sent one of the copies shown below (click on the image to enlarge).
The 10th Great Ethiopian Run was held Sunday in Addis Ababa in which over 30,000 people took part.