By Xan Rice | Mail & Guardian

At noon every Sunday an old Toyota sedan donated by supporters of Ethiopia’s most famous prisoner pulls up near a jail on the outskirts of the capital.

A 74-year-old woman in a white shawl and her four-year-old granddaughter — the only outsiders the prisoner is allowed to see — step out for a 30-minute visit.

Most inmates at Kaliti prison want their relatives to buy them food. But Birtukan Mideksa, the 35-year-old leader of the country’s main opposition party, always asks her mother and daughter to bring books: an anthology titled The Power of Non-Violence, Bertrand Russell’s Best, and the memoirs of Gandhi, Barack Obama and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese political prisoner to whom she has been compared.

Birtukan, a single mother and former judge, was among dozens of opposition leaders, journalists and civil society workers arrested following anti-government demonstrations after the disputed 2005 elections.

Charged with treason for allegedly planning to overthrow the government — accusations rejected by independent groups such as Amnesty International — the political leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment. After spending nearly two years in jail they were pardoned, but Birtukan was rearrested in December 2008 for challenging the official version of circumstances that led to her release. Her pardon was revoked, her life sentence reinstated.

“My child did not do anything wrong — she had no weapon, she committed no crime,” said Almaz Gebregziabher, Birtukan’s mother, in her house on a hillside in Addis Ababa after visiting her daughter one recent Sunday. “I want the world to know that this is unjust.”

Many Ethiopians agree. Birtukan’s treatment has cast a shadow over elections due in May. Opposition parties and international human rights groups said the case is proof of the authoritarian government’s stalled progress towards democracy.

It is also evidence, they said, of the double standards of Western donors when dealing with Meles Zenawi, the prime minister, a major aid recipient and ally in the “war against terror”. Although Zenawi makes no attempt to hide his disdain for Birtukan — talk of her release is a “dead issue”, he said in December — he denies the case is political.

But a look at her history with his regime shows why few people outside his party believe him.

Birtukan excelled at university and was appointed a federal judge in Addis Ababa. In 2002 she was assigned a case involving Siye Abraha, a former defence minister who had fallen out with Zenawi and was accused of corruption. Birtukan released him on bail — a rare show of judicial independence in Ethiopia — but when Abraha left court he was immediately rearrested and jailed.

Birtukan’s relatives said she joined opposition forces before the 2005 elections and was arrested and released in 2007.

Upon her release she set about bringing together the various opposition groups from 2005 and helped found the Unity for Democracy and Justice, of which she was elected chairperson. Her age and gender made this extraordinary.

In November 2008 Birtukan told an audience of Ethiopians in Sweden that her pardon had come as a result of negotiations rather than an official request made through legal channels. Although people who were in jail with her said this reflected the truth, the government said it equated to denying asking for a pardon, and sent her back to jail.

And there is no sympathy from the government. “She was advised to obey the rule of law,” said Teferi Melese, head of public diplomacy at the foreign affairs ministry in Addis Ababa. “But she broke the conditions of her pardon, thinking her friends in the European Union could get her released.”

That foreign embassies, including Britain’s, which have been refused permission to visit Birtukan, have barely made a public complaint about the case appears to back opposition complaints that when it comes to Ethiopia, donors favour stability over democratic reforms or human rights.

“The government says the more we make noise the more difficult it will be to get her [Birtukan] out,” said one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Are we going to risk our entire aid budget for one person? No.”

By Assta B. Gettu

African leaders gangsters have come in great numbers with great enthusiasm to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa to get some more training in the art of robbery from the master of swindle, Meles Zenawi and his wife Jezebel.

Each one of these plunderers will introduce himself/herself to the chief thief, Meles Seitanawi, with pride and self confidence that they are all from Africa and that they have come to Addis Ababa to accomplish some pressing issues that their country, Africa, is facing today, and after the chief thief has recognized all of his guests and welcomed them to this beautiful city of Addis Ababa, whose old name, to some Oromos, is Finfinne, they will go quietly to their proper seats.

They have agreed that no camera is allowed while they are discussing certain and sensitive issues such as land dealing, export, import, investment, and one’s own assets. They all have agreed to talk about the pressing issue first, and they found out the urgent issue is how to protect their own personal assets.

Having mentioned some of the names of foreign banks where to put one’s own assets, they suggest that some African leaders with big assets – over a billion dollars – should put their assets in a safest foreign bank in the names of their own friends or families instead of their own names to avoid litigation from their own countries.

Next, they discuss about their personal safeties when there is a government change in their countries. They promise and swear in the name of God or Allah that they will keep their promises to grant a safe place to any African leader who flees his country for his safety and for the safeties of his own family, and whatever crime he may have committed and how much money he may have looted, he will be granted a safe haven in one of the African states.

Case in point, Mengistu Haile Mariam is still alive and enjoying life with his family in Harare, Zimbabwe; Al Bashir of Sudan, after he has been indicted by the International Tribunal Court for genocide against the Darfuri, is still in power and governing his country. Taking these two extraordinary examples and putting their prides on them, these Africans robbers feel more confidence on each other and are determined to loot their country and transfer their money to foreign banks. Again and again, they have promised to stick together to improve their own personal lives and the lives of their own friends and to isolate those who disagree with them and condemn them as advocates of terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

They claim they have the right to rent or give some of their fertile lands for foreign investors who can develop the land and hire more domestic workers and produce more food for the African hungry children and more revenues for their government, and this is one of the quickest ways to swindle money in the form of foreign investment, land development, and unfair taxation of the new companies.

The long term effect of land development is overshadowed by the short term of productivity from this rent-free land given to foreign developers. The long term effect is destroying the ecosystem of the land and changing the life styles of the inhabitants of the land and evicting them from their ancestral land without compensating them for the great lose of their land, their grazing pasture, their grave land, and their historical, cultural, religious, and recreational areas.

Engulfed with personal interests, avarice, lust, and power, these African robbers or leaders think less about their people and think more about themselves. They have come and gathered here in Addis Ababa to find some effective ways to hide their assets instead of sharing them with their own people, to protect their criminal friends rather than bringing them to justice, and to advocate democracy and the rule of law instead of continuing to run their countries in the same old and barbaric ways.

Winding up their unproductive discussions (of course the discussion is very fruitful for their personal interests) for the common people of Africa, and especially for Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, these daily and nightly robbers or leaders of African states have profusely expressed their deep gratitude to the unsparing hospitality of the Ethiopian people and especially the smiling faces, giggling, and kindness of the Addis Ababa beautiful damsels.