NAIROBI — A Canadian citizen imprisoned in Ethiopia for more than two years has been brought before a court in Addis Ababa unannounced and presented with the testimony of six witnesses who prosecutors had previously been unable to produce.
Ethiopian-born Bashir Makhtal, who was scheduled to appear later this month, was hauled into a courtroom yesterday for the second consecutive day, where he heard the testimony of six witnesses, who failed to appear last month during a public session.
Mr. Makhtal’s Ethiopian lawyer, Gerebe Amiak Tekle, confirmed that six people testified regarding Mr. Makhtal’s alleged involvement in an Ethiopian separatist movement.
But according to Mr. Makhtal’s family, the judge expressed frustration with the strength of the witnesses’ testimonies.
Family members said – information that could not be corroborated – that the witnesses did not know Mr. Makhtal and may have been paid to appear in court.
Mr. Makhtal was arrested by Kenyan authorities in late 2006 while attempting to flee fighting in neighbouring Somalia.
He was later sent to Ethiopia, where he was held without charges and in solitary confinement for more than two years. For most of his detention, he was denied consular access.
Though Mr. Makhtal has recently been allowed consular access and his case has been brought before a civilian court, the trial has so far drawn criticism from legal and human-rights experts.
They believe he is unlikely to receive a fair trial under existing circumstances.
In an apparent indication that he was no longer receiving consular services, the judge cautioned prison wardens last month that Mr. Makhtal was entitled to them.
Meanwhile, Mr. Makhtal’s Toronto-based lawyer, Lorne Waldman, has filed a lawsuit in Canada challenging the provision of non-humanitarian Canadian aid to Ethiopia as inconsistent with the federal Accountability Act.
“I am just not optimistic that an attempt to pressure the Ethiopians in Canadian courts will benefit Bashir,” said Canadian Transport Minister John Baird, who has taken an interest in the case.
“His case is taking place in Ethiopia, and that needs to be where we focus our efforts.”
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (UNHCR) – Over the past two decades, UNHCR has helped more than 600,000 Somali refugees in the eastern lowlands of Ethiopia. Providing them with enough water has always been a problem, with the UN refugee agency facing funding shortfalls, meager and difficult to access underground reserves, and competition from locals for the scarce resource.
That’s as true today as it was in 1991, when Somalia started disintegrating after the fall of the Siad Barre regime and people began fleeing. Most of the refugees eventually returned home, with just 16,000 remaining in Kebribeyah camp. But renewed conflict in Somalia has led to fresh influxes, prompting UNHCR to open the Aw Barre and Shedder camps in 2007 and 2008 respectively.
Under UNHCR’s emergency guidelines, a person needs at least seven liters a day to survive and 20 liters a day to ensure their well-being and good health. Currently, that minimum standard of 20 liters is not being met in any of the three camps, but UNHCR believes that projects now under way should ensure that this target is reached and that access to water outlets is improved.
To meet the needs of Kebribeyah, the former Hartisheik camp and local communities, UNHCR in 2004 opened a pipeline to transport water from the well watered Jarar Valley, some 20 kilometers away.
But, as UNHCR Representative in Ethiopia Moses Okello noted, “Even this huge project does not guarantee an adequate supply of water to every family in the camp. Technical problems, and the high cost of managing the system, mean occasional failure to meet the minimum daily standard of water.”
To resolve this problem, the UN refugee agency and the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation have been working to connect the Jara Valley water supply system to the national electricity grid, which will make it cheaper to power the system than using fuel-guzzling generators. Okello believes this will solve many of the problems related to running the facility.
Meanwhile, to meet daily needs in the Aw Barre and Shedder camps, UNHCR had to truck large quantities of water from a nearby town, drill boreholes and construct a distribution network to ensure that refugees did not have to go far to get access to water.
Okello said that thanks to special funds made available for water and sanitation projects by UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, “We have been drilling and interconnecting half a dozen boreholes in the two camps. So far we have managed to provide a daily average of 12 litres per person in the two camps.”
It is a work in progress. But Okello said he was optimistic that the minimum standard per person of 20 litres a day would be achieved in all three camps once the various water projects had been completed.
Somali refugee Rahma Mohammed Jamale, who fled to Ethiopia to escape conflict in Mogadishu, was one of the first residents of Shedder camp when it opened in May last year. She said it was initially tough finding enough water for herself and her six children.
“We had only two water points for a whole zone and that meant queuing up for hours to get a jerry can of water,” she said, adding that the situation was much better but more work was still needed to increase the water supply for the camp’s 6,600 refugees and Ethiopians living nearby.
Jamale said the improved water situation meant that children in the camp were spending more time in school and less time lining up for water. “But for this positive development to be sustained, it is up to us refugees to guard the system against misuse,” she added.
Carlsbad, CALIFORNIA – The Carlsbad 5000, home of the current 5km World Bests, has announced the professional field for the elite invitational on Sunday, 5 April. Defending men’s champion Maregu Zewdie of Ethiopia will attempt to win back-to-back titles after a thrilling finish in last year’s race, in which only two seconds separated the top five finishing times. Zewdie, owner of two team Gold Medals from the World Cross Country Championships, will be challenged by a group of American runners led by Californian Scott Bauhs.
Bauhs, a two-time national champion and a participant in last summer’s U.S. Olympic Trials, won his pro racing debut at the Synaptics Elite Athlete 5-K in San Jose with an unofficial time of 13:37, the fastest for an American on the roads last year. He also finished sixth at the 2007 Rock ‘n’ Roll San Jose Half Marathon in 1:03:04, the top U.S. finisher in the race by over a minute.
“To say I’m fired up about running Carlsbad would be an understatement,” said Bauhs, who will wear an Adidas uniform for the first time at Carlsbad. “My training partners will tell you that I won’t quit talking about the event and I got even more excited when I found out who was running. Between the blazing fast Ethiopians, ‘Fam’ (Anthony Famiglietti) and the Aussies, it is going to be a great race and a perfect way to start the season.”
The men’s field features two Carlsbad champions including 2006 winner Abreham Cherkos of Ethiopia. Cherkos, the former world junior champion over 3000m, finished 5th in the Olympic 5000m final at Beijing last summer and owns a PR of 12:54 for the distance. Fellow Ethiopian Ali Abdosh comes to Carlsbad with PR of 13:01:44 and a successful 2008 season, including a 5000m victory at the Adidas Track Classic. Also expected to contend for the title is Shedrack Korir of Kenya, the 2007 world championship 1500m bronze medalist in Osaka. He has a PR of 13:09 over 5000m and was the 2006 Kenyan national 1500m champion.
The non-African international challenge will likely be led by former University of Arkansas star Alistair Cragg of Ireland. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Cragg competed in the 1500m and 5000m track events, his second Olympic 5000m final.
Australian Collis Birmingham comes to Carlsbad having set a 5000m PR of 13:16 in Melbourne earlier this year, which is the world’s fastest outdoor time in 2009. These athletes join previously announced U.S. Olympians Anthony Famiglietti and triathlete Jarrod Shoemaker in the stellar lineup of runners including 8 Americans.
Kiros leads the women’s field
The women’s field for Carlsbad is equally impressive. The international competition challenging U.S. Olympians Christin Wurth-Thomas and Shannon Rowbury will be led by Aheza Kiros of Ethiopia. Kiros was part of the Ethiopian national team who went to the 2007 World Championships in Osaka. She has a PR of 15:09 for 5000m and finished 3rd at Carlsbad in 2007.
U.S. 10,000m Champion Katie McGregor looks to be in good form after recently finishing second at the USA 15k Championships. A five-time qualifier for the U.S. World Cross Country team, McGregor is a national champion in the 25k, 10k road and 10,000m. She spent the second half of 2008 training for the ING New York City Marathon, recording a top-10 finish and personal best time of 2:31:14. Marisol Romero, the Mexican national champion over 1500m, rounds out the favorites in the international field.
Ethiopia, Africa’s largest coffee producer, will start exporting beans itself after closing the warehouses of six of the country’s largest exporters, which it claims are stockpiling coffee and contributing to a shortage of foreign currency.
A drop in export income, because of a poor coffee harvest, weak world prices and a ban on Ethiopian beans in Japan, is being exacerbated by stockpiling, Eleni Gabre-Madhin, chief executive officer of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, said on March 27.
Today, the Horn of Africa nation said it would start exporting coffee via the state-owned Ethiopian Grain Trade Enterprise in a bid to improve the situation.
“Ethiopian Grain Trade Enterprise knows that it has the capacity to do this and it has a very good opportunity to fill this export gap,” said Berhane Hailu, the company’s general manager, by phone from Addis Ababa today.
The company has started trading coffee on the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange and is in talks with foreign buyers about exports, he said.
Ethiopia suspended the licenses of six of the country’s largest exporters last week after accusing them of hoarding coffee and illegally selling export-grade beans on the country’s domestic market.
The country has experienced shortages of hard currency over the past year, with the nation’s reserves falling to as little as $850 million, enough to cover just one month of imports, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on March 19. The shortfall has led to rationing and shortages, including cement and medical supplies, because companies can’t import goods or raw materials.
Foreign Currency
Ethiopian Grain Trade Enterprise may use the foreign currency from coffee exports to purchase and deliver wheat to Ethiopia’s urban poor as part of a government program to subsidize food prices, Hailu said.
Ethiopian coffee shipments have dropped more than 10 percent to 76,674 tons during the first eight months of the country’s fiscal year, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Trade Ministry.
The country has earned $221.7 million from coffee exports over the period, short of a government target of $446.7 million. Last year, the government also blamed rising food prices on hoarding by traders.
Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen) has distanced itself from an Ethiopian hydroelectric dam project on the Omo River that experts believe could wipe out Lake Turkana.
Yesterday, KenGen Public Relations Manager Mike Njeru said their mandate is to generate, not to buy electricity.
He said they were, therefore, not involved in allowing Ethiopia to build a hydroelectric power dam across River Omo. The river is the lake’s main tributary.
“KenGen does not feature anywhere in this matter because we generate and sell power to Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC). Actually, like Uganda’s Owen Falls Damat Njija, another project on the Ethiopian side would be a competitor to KenGen.”
Yesterday, The Standard reported project to construct a dam across River Omo in Ethiopia.
Initiate dialogue
The story threw experts into a spin, saying such a scheme would destroy Lake Turkana’s ecosystem.
Efforts to reach KPLC were futile.Head of public relations at National Environmental Management Authority (Nema) Ruth Musembi responded in an email saying: “The Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act upholds the principle of international co-operation in managing environmental resources shared by two or more states. Nema will co-ordinate relevant ministries and the Kenya Wetlands Forum to initiate dialogue with Ethiopia.”
A Ministry of Water official Rossella Njaya said they were concerned with the new development.
“Consultations have been going on between the two countries even before it was highlighted in the media,” she said.
Ms Njaya said the ministry had expressed their concern and requested a joint committee between the two countries.
“We agree the project can bring problems to Kenya. We have appointed three experts to be on the negotiation committee,” she said.
Pressed to be more specific, she said: “Perhaps the right person to comment on this is the minister. But she is out of town.”
GONDAR, ETHIOPIA (JDC) – Azanaw Musaw Tegegne, an eighth grader, says that before JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) installed the fresh water tap in his village in Gondar, Ethiopia, most people drank water from a nearby stream. Like hundreds of villages around rural Ethiopia, Gondar’s Gabriel kebele (area similar to a neighborhood) had no access to potable water for drinking, bathing, or cooking during the region’s extended dry seasons and droughts.
Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. In rural parts of country, only 11 percent of the population has access to clean water while just 7 percent has access to adequate sanitation facilities. During the rainy season, the population’s water supply is procured from nearby springs, streams, and shallow wells. When the dry season comes, these water sources dry up, forcing villagers to collect water from sub-standard, often polluted, wells and streams.
The health hazards are enormous: 90 percent of all preventable diseases such as malaria, cholera, yellow fever, hepatitis, typhoid and diarrhea can be attributed to underdeveloped and ill-protected water supplies. Waterborne diseases claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians each year.
Limited access to safe drinking water not only results in poor health, but also causes serious developmental problems. Collecting water is back-breaking work that drains precious energy and restricts involvement in productive activities and community affairs for many women and children in every village. On average, rural villagers spend four to six hours per day collecting water from sources that can be as far as 10 kilometers from their homes.
Over the last 25 years, JDC has built dozens of potable water wells throughout Gondar and the surrounding countryside with guidance from the Ethiopian Water Works Construction Authority and the local government in Gondar. Funding for this effort has come from international NGOs, as well as private donors and foundations. The Ground Water Development program has produced hand dug wells, protected springs, taps, micro-dams, and latrines.
JDC originally built wells in areas that served large numbers of Jews (the Felas Mura population awaiting immigration to Israel) but also supplied water to the non-Jewish villagers. By 2008, as JDC constructed a dozen wells across Gondar through its International Development Program (JDC-IDP), new water projects served 100 percent non-Jewish populations.
As JDC-IDP’s larger goal is to provide assistance that will leave communities stronger and self-sustaining in the long run, each project engages and is facilitated by local village water committees, who solicit local manpower for some labor and materials used in the construction process. JDC-IDP also provides the villagers with training on the importance of drinking the clean water and encourages behavioral change to improve overall health. Whenever possible, in addition to building the wells, JDC-IDP constructs communal latrines to facilitate a safe, sanitary human waste disposal system (as open air toilets are widely known to contaminate the town’s clean drinking water). Community education and involvement contributes tremendously to the success and long-term sustainability of these projects.
With safe, fresh, local water sources for drinking, cooking and sanitation available in his village for the first time, Azanaw Musaw Tegegne no longer needs to travel great distances to collect water. Freed of this chore, he will now be able to finish eighth grade at the newly built JDC-IDP school in his hometown of Gabriel, Gondar—one of 10 schools JDC-IDP has built in the region in the past 18 months.
That last fact is important, as Ethiopia has an adult literacy rate of barely 36 percent. Azanaw will be one of the just 23 percent of teenage boys and 13 percent of teenage girls enrolled in secondary schools. (Only 55 percent of all boys and 47 percent of all girls are enrolled in primary schools; 38 percent will not reach the fifth grade.)
Committed to making a difference in the development of Ethiopia’s educational system and securing a future for some of the most vulnerable people on the globe, JDC-IDP has been repairing and building schools for some of the poorest Ethiopian children across the Northern Gondar region since 2000.
At a celebration in appreciation for JDC-IDP’s donation of a hand water pump to one local village, the Chairman of the Gondar City Council, Asmamaw Yosuf, said, “Really, you have reached at the [root] of the problem. The people have no words to appreciate your donation. [We have] seen the enthusiastic dances praising to your organization.”
NAIROBI — A Canadian citizen imprisoned in Ethiopia for more than two years has been brought before a court in Addis Ababa unannounced and presented with the testimony of six witnesses who prosecutors had previously been unable to produce.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (UNHCR) – Over the past two decades, UNHCR has helped more than 600,000 Somali refugees in the eastern lowlands of Ethiopia. Providing them with enough water has always been a problem, with the UN refugee agency facing funding shortfalls, meager and difficult to access underground reserves, and competition from locals for the scarce resource._.jpg "Maregu Zewdie")
Carlsbad, CALIFORNIA – The Carlsbad 5000, home of the current 5km World Bests, has announced the professional field for the elite invitational on Sunday, 5 April. Defending men’s champion Maregu Zewdie of Ethiopia will attempt to win back-to-back titles after a thrilling finish in last year’s race, in which only two seconds separated the top five finishing times. Zewdie, owner of two team Gold Medals from the World Cross Country Championships, will be challenged by a group of American runners led by Californian Scott Bauhs.
Ethiopia, Africa’s largest coffee producer, will start exporting beans itself after closing the warehouses of six of the country’s largest exporters, which it claims are stockpiling coffee and contributing to a shortage of foreign currency.
Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen) has distanced itself from an Ethiopian hydroelectric dam project on the Omo River that experts believe could wipe out Lake Turkana.
GONDAR, ETHIOPIA (JDC) – Azanaw Musaw Tegegne, an eighth grader, says that before JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) installed the fresh water tap in his village in Gondar, Ethiopia, most people drank water from a nearby stream. Like hundreds of villages around rural Ethiopia, Gondar’s Gabriel kebele (area similar to a neighborhood) had no access to potable water for drinking, bathing, or cooking during the region’s extended dry seasons and droughts.