CALGARY, CANADA — A Toronto-based mining company has donated $100,000 to care for 43 Ethiopian children whose adoptions to Canadians were jeopardized following the bankruptcy of an Ontario-based agency.
The money will keep the Addis Ababa orphanage afloat until those children come to Canada to live with their new families, authorities said.
When contacted Saturday in Toronto, Yamana Gold Inc.’s CEO Peter Marrone said his company made the $100,000 donation after its vice-president of communications Jodi Peake, who adopted an Ethiopian boy last year, told him of the bankruptcy and plight of the children in the Addis Ababa orphanage.
“My immediate reaction was the protection of the children, that the children were taken care of,” Marrone said.
That bit of good news came as 40 adopting parents met Saturday in Calgary during an emotional meeting to get answers and plead with Alberta’s head of adoptions to help complete their adoptions with Cambridge, Ont.-based Imagine Adoption, which was placed into bankruptcy July 13.
“We cannot be pushing through paperwork faster than normal because then it could appear that we might be kidnapping children that should be staying in Ethiopia,” Anne Scully, who oversees all domestic and international adoptions for Alberta Children and Youth Service, told the crowd who was emotional, heated and tearful at times during the two-and-a-half hour meeting.
Scully said the province is working closely with Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, as well as Canadian Citizenship and Immigration, to get answers and move adoptions forward as efficiently and quickly as possible.
“I wish we had better answers, more answers,” Scully said.
In a news release, bankruptcy trustee BDO Dunwoody promised — if all regulations had been followed — to manage all 400 outstanding Canadian adoptions regardless of their state of completion.
“It’s really about being effective. These (parents) have a serious problem and they need to advocate,” said Michael Greene, an immigration lawyer offering advice at the meeting.
He said the government, the bankruptcy trustee and other agencies clearly want to help their families and that’s in their favour.
“I think there’s hope for them,” Greene said.
Of the 64 Alberta families who were clients of the agency, six had been matched with overseas children. Of those, five adoptions have been finalized through the courts.
Those families must now wait for passports or visas to be issued by the High Commission in Nairobi.
“I would like them to do more for the families but I just don’t know what that ‘more’ is,” said Shawn Bertin, 37, said after the meeting. He and his wife Dolores, hoped to adopt an Ethiopian child.
Dolores took some comfort in connecting with the other local families who’ve also been effected.
“We’ve been feeling isolated. It’s good to know we’re not alone,” she said.
Other families were just happy to have Scully addressing their concerns in person.
“We still have a little bit of hope and we’ll continue on until someone tells us not to,” said 35-year-old Alison Bruha, whose was expecting to be matched with an baby boy from Ethiopia imminently when the agency went under.
“The bottom line is we want our families completed,” added Tammy Vlieg, 36, who started the process with her husband to adopt an Ethiopian infant or two siblings 20 months ago.
The couple are also in the midst of finalizing the domestic adoption of their five-month-old daughter Josina, who they received two days after she was born.
“If I didn’t have my daughter I would be a basket case,” Vlieg said.
Waterloo Regional Police launched a fraud investigation last week into Kids Link International, which operated as Imagine Adoption.
The agency has a nearly $400,000 operating shortfall and an additional $800,000 expected claim by families, according to bankruptcy documents.
Vatican — Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Fr. Theodorus van Ruijven C.M., apostolic prefect of Jimma-Bonga, Ethiopia, and apostolic administrator of Nekemte, Ethiopia, as apostolic vicar of Nekemte.
The Vicariate of Nekemte has 6.5 million people of whom 45,000 are Catholics, served by 32priests and 48 religious. The bishop-elect was born in Rijswijk, Holland in 1938 and ordained a priest in 1964.
At the same time the pope appointed Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu, apostolic nuncio to Angola and to Sao Tome and Principe, as apostolic nuncio to Cuba.
Source: Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
Addis Ababa (Reuters) — Ethiopia’s long-serving Prime Minister tribal dictator Meles Zenawi said early this month he was looking forward to relaxing after a retirement from power that he hopes will be agreed soon with his ruling party.
So who might replace him? Following are the three names most widely touted, and a summary of main opposition figures:
SEYOUM MESFIN
Physicist Seyoum has been Ethiopia’s foreign minister since Meles came to power in 1991. Fiercely loyal to the prime minister, he used his weight as a well-regarded former rebel fighter to help Meles purge their Tigryan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of dissidents in 2001.
Respected for his skill as an international negotiator, he is considered a contender by the Addis Ababa diplomatic community. [Seyoum’s negotiating skill has so far resulted in turning the Horn of Africa region into a war zone.]
GIRMA BIRRU
Trade Minister Girma may prove the perfect compromise candidate. Despite making up only 6 percent of the population, the Tigryan ethnic group, of which Meles is a member, dominate Ethiopia’s political establishment.
The Amhara ethnic group have traditionally ruled the country and are likely to lobby for one of their ruling party members to take over should Meles resign.
Girma is an Oromo — an ethnic group which, though Ethiopia’s largest in number, have never held power. [This is false. Reuters need to get its fact straight. Also Girma is not an Oromo. He is just Hodam.]
TEWODROS ADHANOM
Educated in Britain, Tewodros has been health minister since 2005 and has a string of achievements under his belt — including a significant reduction in Ethiopia’s child mortality rate — that have won him international respect. [Ethiopia currently has no functioning health care system. Hospitals are short of basic drugs such as antibiotics.]
The opposition is unlikely to win elections due for 2010. Its leaders were jailed after Meles blamed them for street violence after a disputed 2005 poll and they have made little impact since their release in a 2007 pardon deal.
They say that is because of government harassment but Meles denies that. Some of their key figures are:
BIRTUKAN MIDEKSA
The charismatic former judge leads the Unity for Democracy and Justice party. She was imprisoned in December after the government said she violated the terms of the 2007 pardon. Meles says there is no chance she will be freed before the 2010 poll.
SEYE ABRAHA
Once nicknamed the “TPLF’s Strongman”, Seye was defence minister from 1991 to 1995. He fell out with Meles in 2000 and was jailed for corruption. He insists his imprisonment was politically motivated. Recently released, he is involved in a coalition of opposition groups going up against the government in 2010.
BERHANU NEGA
Berhanu is an economist who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in the 2005 election then jailed shortly after. He fled to the United States after his release where he formed “May 15th”, an organisation named after the date of that poll. The government says Berhanu planned a recent plot to overthrow it and has charged 32 men it says were receiving money from him to buy weapons and bombs. He says the accusations are fabricated.
(Reporting by Barry Malone, Editing by Andrew Cawthorne [a 6th grader can write a better, more truthful report than these two.])
Nairobi (BBC NEWS) — The first undersea cable to bring high-speed internet access to East Africa has gone live.
The fibre-optic cable, operated by African-owned firm Seacom, connects South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique to Europe and Asia.
The firm says the cable will help to boost the prospects of the region’s industry and commerce.
The cable – which is 17,000km long – took two years to lay and cost more than $650m.
Seacom said in a statement the launch of the cable marked the “dawn of a new era for communications” between Africa and the rest of the world.
The services were unveiled in ceremonies in the Kenyan port of Mombasa and the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.
School benefits
The cable was due to be launched in June but was delayed by pirate activity off the coast of Somalia.
The BBC’s Ben Mwangunda in Dar es Salaam says five institutions are already benefiting from the faster speeds — national electricity company Tanesco, communications company, TTCL, Tanzania Railways and the Universities of Dar es Salaam and Dodoma.
The BBC’s Will Ross in Nairobi says the internet revolution trumpeted by Seacom largely depends on how well the service is rolled out across the region.
To the disappointment of many consumers, our correspondent says some ISPs (internet service providers) are not planning to lower the cost of the internet, but instead will offer increased bandwidth.
But businesses, which have been paying around $3,000 a month for 1MB through a satellite link, will now pay considerably less – about $600 a month.
The Kenyan government has been laying a network of cables to all of the country’s major towns and says the fibre-optic links will also enable schools nationwide to link into high quality educational resources.
But our correspondent says it is not clear whether the internet revolution will reach the villages, many of which still struggle to access reliable electricity.
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia’s regime has suspended the operations of 42 non-governmental organizations allegedly involved in activities that are “out of their mandate” in the Southern region of the country.
Ethiopia’s Southern regional state justice office chief Mr Yilma Meresa told this writer that those NGOs were out to interrupt the peace and development of the region.
Mr Yilma refused to disclose the name of the suspended organizations. However, he hinted that most of them were local NGOs.
The Nation has learnt that international humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and two local gender rights organizations are among the suspended NGOs.
The Ethiopian government moved to revoke the license of the NGOs following accusation of their alleged involvement in reporting human right abuses in the rural areas.
Ethiopian government publicly accused some NGOs of supplying “inaccurate” information to the United States’ State Department, which was published in March 2009.
Food aid
Meanwhile, United Nations humanitarian office in Ethiopia has warned that the number of people who need food aid in Ethiopia will increase to 6.2 million unless more food aid can be secured.
The recent number of people requiring food aid has been 4.9 million and now the country needs additional 390,000 metric tonnes of emergency food aid for the coming three months.
Ethiopia leads the region by registering an average 10 per cent annual economic growth, has been avowed to end hunger but has achieved less success.
Landlocked Ethiopia is also facing port congestion at port Djibouti which delays the flow of food aid to the country.
Recently, World Food Program (WFP) urged Ethiopian authorities to prioritize the transport of food aid rather than agricultural fertilizer, which is equally important for the second most populous African nation at 85.2 million (UN, 2008).
According to WFP, Ethiopia government agreed to prioritize transporting food aid and allocate more berths for ships to offload available food aid at port Djibouti.
Asmara – A total of 3 defecting Ethiopian soldiers who arrived recently in Eritrea opposing the TPLF regime’s racist policy said that the regime is increasingly taking harsh measures against members of the country’s Army who, embittered by the ethnic-based atrocities spoke up for their rights.
The soldiers are Mohammed Negeyo Suleiman, Alemeshet Zemenfeskudus, and Zele’alem Ejigu.
Private Zlealem stated that the TPLF regime gives promotion only to those Army members who are considered to be “trustworthy (loyal)” which in turn resulted in mistrust among members of the Army.
Meanwhile, private Alemeshet disclosed that the regime’s attempt to muffle the Eritrean mass media by expending millions of dollars has proven to be a futile effort and that the Ethiopian people in general and the Army in particular are able to follow the Eritrean media with clear frequency.
