ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s [dictatorial regime] said on Friday a group led by an Ethiopian-American professor had planned to {www:assassinate} officials and blow up public utilities in a plot to topple the government.
Addis Ababa arrested 40 former and current army personnel and members of a disbanded opposition group last week from a “terror network” it said was formed by Berhanu Nega, an opposition leader now living in the United States.
“Several individuals were targeted for assassination,” Bereket Simon, head of information for Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government, told reporters, without saying who were the intended targets.
“They were intending to pave the way for street actions to overthrow the government,” he said, adding that the group had planned to target telecommunications and power sectors.
Some 200 opposition supporters were killed and hundreds arrested following the disputed 2005 parliamentary election.
Berhanu, now residing in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in that poll, but was arrested when the opposition disputed the results. He and other opposition leaders were released in a 2007 pardon.
Meles was initially hailed as part of a new generation of African leaders, but rights groups have increasingly criticized the rebel-turned-leader for cracking down on opposition.
Even though Meles has held power since the early 1990s, the recent arrests show his government is still sensitive to the opposition in the run-up to next year’s parliamentary vote.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous country has been eyed by foreign investors in agriculture, horticulture and real estate although it has recently suffered from high inflation and a fall in foreign exchange inflows.
SCURRILOUS
Berhanu’s group called the accusations “baseless”.
“No amount of scurrilous accusations, threats or blackmail by the regime will deter us from pursuing the cause of democracy and freedom,” it said on its Web site www.ginbot7.org last week.
Bereket said those arrested included a general.
The government may ask for Berhanu and others from the United States and Britain to be extradited, Bereket said.
“If a court of law adjudicates that they are {www:criminal}, then as with any criminal we would want their extradition,” he said.
Bereket said the group had received money to buy weapons from Berhanu and other diaspora opposition members.
Berhanu’s organisation “May 15th” is named after the date of the 2005 poll. He had made statements in the United States, where he teaches economics at Bucknell University, saying it wants to violently overthrow the government.
Opposition parties routinely accuse the government of {www:harassment} and say their candidates were intimidated during local elections in April of last year. The government denies it. (Editing by Jack Kimball)
For about half the world’s population, malaria remains one of the greatest threats to public health. It is a disease that causes poverty, disrupts the livelihood of families, and far too often, steals the future of Africa’s children. In tropical Africa, the disease kills nearly 3,000 people each day with young children and pregnant women at greatest risk.
World Malaria Day is observed April 25 to call attention to the disease and to mobilize action to combat it. On behalf of the American people, the U.S. government has taken extraordinary steps to curb the spread of this preventable and curable disease.
The President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), led and implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with the assistance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), represents a historic $1.2 billion, five-year expansion of U.S. government resources to fight malaria in Africa.
The strategy is straightforward. First, prevention: PMI supports indoor residual spraying to keep deadly mosquitoes at bay, the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets to provide personal protection from malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and preventive malaria treatment to expectant mothers during pregnancy. Second, treatment: PMI distributes new and highly effective medicines and trains health workers on the proper use of those medicines. Working with national governments, international donors and other stakeholders, PMI has helped to rapidly scale up these malaria prevention and treatment measures across 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
During the third year of PMI implementation, the United States reached more than 32 million people with malaria prevention and treatment measures in Africa. In 2008, PMI procured more than 6.4 million long-lasting mosquito nets for free distribution to populations at risk of malaria and a total of 15.6 million anti-malarial drug treatments. Indoor residual spraying activities covered 6 million houses and protected nearly 25 million people at risk of malaria.
In Rwanda, Zambia, and Tanzania we are beginning to see signs of major reductions in the proportion of people infected with malaria. In Rwanda and Zambia, there has been a striking reduction in deaths among children under the age of five. On the isles of Zanzibar in Tanzania, we have seen malaria infection rates drop to less than 1% throughout the population of 1 million. Malaria prevention and treatment measures are associated with and can contribute to these reductions. Regional and district-level impact has also been reported from Mozambique and Uganda.
Ethiopia was announced as a PMI focus country in December 2006 and started PMI program implementation last year, investing approximately $71 million over three years to help Ethiopia reach its goal of eliminating malaria by 2020. PMI-supported activities, planned in close collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia’s Federal Ministry of Health, are primarily focused on the Oromiya Region which bears the brunt of the country’s malaria burden. With support from the American people, PMI has helped spray over 1.7 million houses with insecticide, protecting 5.9 million Ethiopians from getting malaria. USAID is currently in the process of distributing nearly 590,000 insecticide-treated bed nets. We have also distributed 600,000 anti-malarial drugs to health facilities in the Oromiya Region.
Sustainability of malaria control programs is a critical goal of U.S. efforts. We are focusing on building capacity within host countries by training people to manage, deliver, and support the delivery of health services, which will be critical for sustained successes against infectious diseases such as malaria.
As a result of the support and progress in these critical areas, national malaria control programs are becoming more effective and accountable.
Partnerships with host country governments, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Bank Booster Program for Malaria Control, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and others have made these successes possible.
Successful partnerships with faith-based and community organizations are bringing tremendous value to malaria control efforts because of the credibility these groups have within their communities, their ability to reach the grassroots level, and their capacity to mobilize significant numbers of volunteers. PMI has supported more than 150 nonprofit organizations, over 40 of which are faith based.
Across Africa, children and their families are sleeping under bed nets; local groups are teaching mothers to take anti-malarial drugs when they are pregnant and seek proper treatment for their sick children. In schools and villages, community centers and places of worship, clinics and hospitals, optimism is growing that we can and will succeed in controlling malaria. We share that optimism. On World Malaria Day, the United States will continue to galvanize action and spur grassroots and private sector efforts to control the disease.
As I was waiting for the results of my AIDS test, the health lecture from my counselor, Anthony, was calm, explicit and informative. The five bodily fluids that can transmit the HIV virus. The proper way to open a condom package to avoid rips.
An AIDS clinic in Washington, D.C., a new ground zero in the American AIDS crisis, is no place for the squeamish.
The test itself looks like a pregnancy test, in its small, white, plastic momentousness. The swab at the end is run across the gum line; no blood is drawn. The results take about 20 minutes and are 99.1 percent accurate.
I was visiting Unity Health Care in Ward 7, an outpost of tidy medical professionalism in a poor section of the city. Here the talk of epidemics has nothing to do with swine flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes a health epidemic as “severe” when more than 1 percent of people in a geographic area are infected. The HIV infection rate in Ward 7 is at least 2.4 percent — higher than in Ethiopia, Ghana or Burundi. Among 40- to 49-year-olds in the District of Columbia, 7.2 percent are HIV-positive.
If 7.2 percent of all 40-somethings in America were infected with anything, there would be no other topic of national discussion — every alarm would ring, every clock would stop. In this case, the victims are geographically isolated, often poor, and thus largely invisible.
Unity Health Care provides services from dermatology to ophthalmology. Because of the stigma, few would come to a clinic that dealt exclusively with HIV/AIDS. Gebeyehu Teferi, the medical director of HIV services, sees the AIDS crisis in every form — intravenous drug users, prostitutes, men who have sex with men, and middle-aged women shocked by their diagnosis and the infidelity of their partners. “There are late, full-blown cases coming into the emergency room,” says Teferi. “People who say, ‘I don’t use drugs, or even drink.’ They forget about the sexual part of it.”
The staff at Unity recommends three changes to confront the epidemic. First, AIDS needs to be discussed at home. In prevention, there is no substitute for uncomfortable frankness. Neither self-interest nor morality is aided by ignorance.
Second, they argue for treating AIDS more routinely as an infectious disease. A positive syphilis test, for example, is reported directly from the medical lab to the local Department of Health. “If it is syphilis,” says Teferi, “there is a knock on their door to get them into treatment. If it is HIV, no one talks to them.”
Third, testing needs to be broader. People who know their positive status are more likely to change their behavior and get treatment for opportunistic infections. Early treatment also can reduce the virus to a nearly undetectable level in the body, drastically lowering transmission from mothers to children during childbirth and between couples in which only one partner is HIV-positive.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says an AIDS vaccine remains unlikely in the short term. But what if we were to begin treatment with AIDS drugs as soon as someone is diagnosed with HIV instead of waiting, as we now do, until later stages? Lower viral loads would inhibit transmission. “Treatment,” he says, “would be prevention.” According to the mathematical model Fauci has reviewed, the testing and treatment of 90 percent of those at risk could eventually eradicate — not just control, but eradicate — the disease in a geographic area.
The obstacles are immense. Would people take AIDS drugs when they are still feeling well? Would any community help promote testing on such a massive scale? Would it be cost-effective?
But even the attempt would have many good effects. It would encourage early care and effective prevention. And if everyone were tested, the stigma surrounding AIDS testing might decrease. It takes only 20 minutes.
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — A Canadian man facing terrorism-related charges in Ethiopia and in detention since 2006 will take the defence stand next month, a judge said on Thursday.
Bashir Makhtal, an Ethiopian-born Canadian citizen, is accused of inciting rebellion by aiding and abetting armed opposition groups in Ethiopia and being a senior member of a rebel group.
“The accused should now prepare his defence for next hearing on May 26,” said Adam Ibrahim.
The 40-year-old, who has denied the charges, is also accused of supporting Somalia’s Islamist movement ousted by Ethiopian forces in early 2007 when they intervened in the neighbouring country to prop up its embattled government.
Mukhtal was among some 150 people detained by Kenyan forces in 2006 on the border with Somalia as they fled the Ethiopian onslaught on the Islamists.
The trial has been postponed several times this year due to prosecutors’ failure to provide witnesses.
Owner Emu Kidanewolde displays some of the entrees on the menu. [Baltimore Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor]
Elfegne Ethiopian Cafe is a peach. Owned and operated, pretty much single-handedly, by former mortgage broker Emu Kidanewolde, this small and tidy 20-seat storefront cafe is more than just a great place to feast on inexpensive home-cooked Ethiopian food. Elfegne also acts as a de facto community center for the residents of Washington Village (aka Pigtown). It opens at 7 in the morning for breakfast (Kidanewolde will have been there for hours already, making homemade injera, the fermented Ethiopian bread staple) and stays open through dinner. When we visited, a few neighbors had dropped in for a bite to eat but also to keep Kidanewolde company and even lend a hand. This was the day when the Susan Boyle video went viral, and all of us in the restaurant ended up watching it together on one of the neighbor’s laptops.
This was actually the second time we had tried to eat at Elfegne. The first time we came, the restaurant had been commandeered by a single group for a party. That was discouraging, but it suggested this scenario: A few people had fallen in love with Elfegne, had told a few other people about it, and then felt strongly enough about it to invite more people there for a celebratory dinner. It was worth coming back for.
The menu here is simple and streamlined, with only about a dozen or so entrees. The most familiar Ethiopian menu items here are beef and lamb tibs (sauteed cubed meat), wot (stew) and kitfo (raw or rare beef), but only in their most typical versions. So, where another restaurant might have five or six versions of tibs, Elfegne has two. This is actually a kind of relief. Ordering from an Ethiopian menu can be arduous, but here it was easy. It was even simpler because some items are only available on certain days. Kidanewolde only makes the elaborate dulet, with lamb tripe, on Saturday and doro wot, a chicken stew, on Monday. Lamb wasn’t being served on the Thursday when we visited. This system made sense to us – it both eases the burden on the kitchen and lets customers know that their food is being made from fresh meat and poultry.
The thing to get here is the half and half, which gives you a choice of two half-sized dishes, which will be presented together on a platter-sized sheet of injera. One of these choices could be the vegetable combination – gently spiced lentils, yellow peas, collard greens – and the other a meat-based dish. The beef tibs is a fine choice. This is a deceptively simple dish, just cubes of beef sauteed with onions and green pepper in an awaze, the paste made from the berbere pepper. But Elfegne’s version really looked and tasted fresh and homemade.
Kitfo is a little more challenging in that it’s made, usually, from raw beef. Blended with herbed butter and garnished with a dried red-pepper powder, this makes for a tremendously rich and satisfying meal. Kidanewolde also offers a cooked version of kitfo, but if you can handle raw food, order it that way.
We liked our other dishes, too; the bozena shiro, a nourishing and savory meat stew made typically from a powder made of chick peas, but at Elfegne with fava beans; and the quanta fitfit, which tosses dried, jerkylike strips of beef with strips of injera, vegetables and seasoned butter. We enjoyed a refreshing lettuce and tomato salad before the main meal but made the mistake of filling up on too much fermented bread. Elfegne also serves smoothies, homemade ginger iced tea and the best cup of coffee I’ve had in a restaurant in months.
We want to go back to Elfegne for breakfast someday, for an omelet or a bowl of steamed cracked wheat, or the bowl of mashed beans and vegetables that our friend with the laptop says sustains him throughout the day.
Ethiopia — What do you get when you cross a donkey and a book? A mobile library! Yes, thanks to Liberian Yohannes Gebregeorgis, tens of thousands of Ethiopian children have learned to read.
Gebregiorgis, a native of Ethiopia, was taught to read by Peace Corps volunteers in his village. He was inspired to create the program Ethiopia reads while working as a children’s librarian in the San Francisco Public Library.
Gebergiorgis became cognizant of the importance of a good education after securing an education himself, and wanted the children in his native country to embrace the love of reading. He came up with the idea of a mobile library, that would deliver books to the different villages throughout Ethiopia. His program would help many Ethiopian children gain access to literature.
Together with author Jane Kurtz, they established the Shola Children’s Library, which has served thousands of children, connecting them to a wide range of educational programs like art, dance, sanitation and more.
In honor of literacy and Yohannes Gebregiorgis’s remarkable program, the Aurora Central Library will host a celebration on May 9th from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. There will be dancing, and you guessed it donkeys! So come celebrate a noble program and get down with the donkeys
Ethiopia — What do you get when you cross a donkey and a book? A mobile library! Yes, thanks to Liberian