By Najum Mushtaq, Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
A new media law – six years in the making – has been passed by Ethiopia’s House of People’s Representatives. Its preamble declares that “the proclamation removes all obstacles that were impediments to the operation of the media in Ethiopia.”
But an analysis by Ethiopian journalists finds it actually clears the way for government to continue to harass and persecute the messenger when the message is not in line with the whims of the rulers.
The ‘Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation’, which purports to update and reform the first ever Ethiopian press law of 1992, has been a source of controversy ever since its initiation in 2002.
In countless meetings with the ministry of information — which regulates Ethiopian media — local and international activists have been lobbying in vain for revisions in the draft to make it compatible with international norms and conventions on press freedom. The version adopted by parliament last week seems certain to further restrict freedom of expression and intimidate journalists.
“We have come to understand… that the proclamation is incompatible with the (Ethiopian) constitution and other international human rights laws, conventions and agreements. It is a reversal and desecration of victories achieved by the repealed press law (of 2004),” says a resolution adopted Wednesday at the end of a UN-sponsored workshop of media practitioners in Addis Ababa organised by the Horn of Africa Press Institute (HAPI).
The workshop reviewed the new legislation and called for “a reassessment of all the provisions of the law” as it imposes “substantive restrictions with heavy burden and obligations” on journalists.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the new law is that the government has appropriated the right to prosecute defamation cases against the media even if the ostensibly defamed government officials do not initiate legal proceedings. Article 43 (7) of the proclamation says that defamation and false accusation against “constitutionally mandated legislators, executives and judiciaries will be a matter of the government and prosecutable even if the person against whom they were committed chooses not to press charge.”
This provision overrides the 2004 criminal law which had stated that cases of defamation would go to court only when the victims make complaints. Also, the compensation for moral damage caused by mass media has been raised from 1,000 birr to a crippling 100,000 birr — just over $10,000.
Journalists attending the workshop also pointed out that many restrictive measures had already been incorporated into other laws during the six-year debate on the media bill. For instance, the Criminal Code of the country which came into force in 2005 includes penal provisions for “participation in crimes by the mass media.”
In another example, the role and duties of the Ministry of Information were redefined in 2007 to give the government arbitrary powers to use registration and licensing procedures as a punishment for dissent. It also empowers the government to stop distribution of a newspaper if the attorney general deems a news item to be a criminal act.
And in a country where most of the established newspapers as well as radio and television channels are government-owned, the new law undermines the growth of the independent private sector by placing its fate in the hands of the information ministry.
“We understand that the regulatory authority itself is involved in the media and news making and has no institutional freedom,” the workshop resolution observed.
Banned journalists
The new law fits into a pattern of official persecution of journalists seen over the last three years. Soon after controversial 2005 elections, three newspapers and magazines belonging to the country’s largest private publisher, Serkalem Publishing House, were closed down as part of a widespread crackdown on media that dared to criticise the handling of the poll. Serkalem Fasil and her family were imprisoned for over a year.
Ten other independent publications were also forced to shut down, leaving hundreds of journalists unemployed.
Already this year, the government has forced two more magazines out of circulation using laws against disturbance to public order. One of them, Enku, a fashion magazine, was not only confiscated but its deputy editor, Aleymayehu Mahtemwork and three colleagues spent four days in jail for covering the trial of a popular pop star whose songs angered the government. Though he was released, the case against him remains pending and his magazine is yet to be revived.
Fasil recalls the recent history of media persecution by the state and observes and explains the apathy of the international community: “Much to the utter amazement of the of the Ethiopian public, the international community shrugged and moved on, perhaps writing off the democratic cause in Ethiopia as superfluous in light of the perceived danger posed by Islamic extremists in the Horn. Every single one of those papers is still closed, and almost all journalists that worked for them are either in exile or remain unemployed to this day.”
She told IPS that a few months after her acquittal she applied for new press licenses as prescribed by the press law and the constitution. “And though we were assured by the Ministry of Information that we had fulfilled all legal requirements and are entitled to the licenses by law, we were advised to pursue the issue at the prime minister’s office, which had extra-judicially interceded to block the applications. Ten months later, we are still patiently waiting for the application of rule of law.”
“The provisions of better laws are desirable,” she says, “but they will hardly matter if they are not binding and could be abrogated at will by government officials, as has been clearly established in our case.”
Signs are that the government intends to widen the scope of its assault on people’s rights. The current session of parliament is also taking up a bill to regulate non-governmental and civil society organisations. The banned journalists, it seems, will soon have more allies to share their adversity and join their struggle.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.
The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.
The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.
The “yellowcake” uranium transfer was requested by the Iraqi government at the encouragement of the U.S. government, Whitman said.
The United States approached Canadian company Cameco to bid for the material, according Cameco spokesman Lyle Krahn. He would not disclose the winning bid amount.
Krahn admitted that this was not a “routine transaction,” but he said the agreement was approved by the Canadian government and was carefully monitored.
The undertaking, named “Operation McCall” by Pentagon officials, was in the planning stages for months and was completed Saturday after the material had been in transit for weeks, according to Whitman.
He said yellowcake uranium is a commonly traded commodity used for nuclear power generation. It is not enriched and cannot be used without first going through a complicated enrichment process, he said, but because of the unstable nature of Iraq, the United States and the Iraqi government decided it should be moved out of that country. Iraq has no nuclear power generating plants.
The uranium was packed into 110 shipping containers moved by convoy from a facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. The containers were first moved to the secure International Zone in central Baghdad and then to Baghdad International Airport, where thery were loaded onto C-17 cargo planes.
It took 37 flights to move the shipping containers out of Iraq to a “third country,” Whitman said.
A Pentagon official who asked not to be named said that third country was Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean where the United Kingdom and the United States operate a joint military base.
From that third country, Whitman said, the containers were loaded onto the SS Gopher State, a U.S.-owned crane ship normally used to haul equipment in and out of war zones. The ship carried the uranium to Canada, where it was bought by Cameco, a private firm.
The uranium will be sent by truck to two processing plants in Ontario, Krahn said. Once it has been enriched for energy use it will be sold to power plant operators, he said.
The United States is Cameco’s largest customer, Krahn said, but he did not specify if the Iraq yellowcake would ultimately end up in the United States.
Whitman said the Department of Defense’s cost of securing and transporting the uranium from Tuwaitha to Canada was $70 million, and the government of Iraq had agreed in principal to reimburse the United States for part of that cost.
He said he could not say how much Iraq intends to repay the United States.
A former Toronto man who had joined Somalia’s fundamentalist insurgents was shot dead by Ethiopian Woyanne troops after he was surrounded and refused to surrender, rebel sources said Thursday.
The sources, who did not want to be identified because they did not have permission to speak, confirmed that Canadian Abdullahi Ali Afrah was killed on Tuesday during an attack on Ethiopian troops.
An Ethiopian A Woyanne military convoy was returning from Gureil, near the Ethiopian border, when Mr. Afrah — also known as Aspro or Asparo — and about 100 other insurgents attacked, although they were soon surrounded.
While most of the rebels retreated, Mr. Afrah was part of a small group that continued to fight. As they ran out of ammunition, some of the rebels took their own lives but the sources said Mr. Afrah was shot by the Ethiopians Woyannes.
Sixteen insurgents died in the gun battle. Twelve of them were members of Mr. Afrah’s Duduble clan, including his cousin, Moalim Farhan, who was described as leader of the insurgency in central Somalia.
The sources described Mr. Afrah as an active member of the Shabab, which is a designated terrorist group in the United States and which serves as the militia of the Islamic Courts Union, a Taliban-like fundamentalist group.
Although based in Mogadishu, Mr. Afrah had gone north to reinforce the Shabab fighters, the sources said. They said his duties also included organizing and co-ordinating the Shabab’s international fundraising efforts.
Mr. Afrah is a naturalized Canadian citizen who ran a money-transfer business in Toronto before returning to his homeland in the late 1990s. He is one of several Somali-Canadians who are believed to have left Toronto and Ottawa and joined Somalia’s insurgents. Although Somali and Ethiopian Woyanne officials have claimed to have killed several of the Canadians, Mr. Afrah is the first to be identified by name.
The Department of Foreign Affairs is still trying to verify media reports about the Canadian’s death. Ottawa has no diplomatic presence in Somalia, one of the world’s most dangerous countries. The closest Canadian mission is in Nairobi.
If the reports of Mr. Afrah’s death are accurate, he would be the latest Canadian killed while fighting abroad for an armed Islamist group. Rudwan Khalil of Vancouver was killed by Russian security forces in Chechnya in 2004. In 2003, Ahmed Khadr was killed in a gunfight with Pakistani forces. Toronto’s Hassan Farhat is believed to have died in Iraq.
Mr. Afrah was born in Mogadishu and moved to Canada in the 1980s. He worked as a carpenter and at a corner store before opening the Canadian branch office of Al-Barakaat, a money-transfer business whose Somali offices have been blacklisted for terrorist financing.
He returned to Mogadishu in the late 1990s and became second deputy chairman of the Shura Council of the Islamic Courts Union. With its Shabab militia, the ICU took control of the capital, Mogadishu, until it was repelled by Somali and Ethiopian Woyanne government forces in late 2006. Since then, the insurgents have been waging an Iraqi-style guerrilla campaign.
A former Somali rebel told the National Post last year he had seen Mr. Afrah at a training camp in Mogadishu firing an AK-47, but his apparent death in a rebel assault is the first indication he was actively fighting with the Shabab.
Fighting between the Islamists and government forces has devastated the former Italian colony, which borders Kenya, Ethiopia and Somaliland in the Horn of Africa. Thousands of Somalis have been forced to flee.
The African Union has sent peacekeeping troops to Somalia. On Tuesday, African leaders extended the mission for another six months but also urged the United Nations to take over the operation.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – ZTE Corp, China’s second-largest telecoms gear maker, said on Wednesday it has agreed to build a national network in Ethiopia.
The network, which will allow Ethiopia Telecommunications Corp to provide next-generation network services, will cover 14 major cities in the east African country including the capital, Addis Ababa, ZTE said in a statement.
ZTE had already won a deal last year to help ETC build an Internet protocol backbone network, the Chinese firm said.
Chinese telecoms gear makers such as ZTE and local rival Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] have made strides in recent years into more mature markets, and have long been established in emerging areas such as India and Africa.
(Reporting by Sophie Taylor; Editing by Keiron Henderson)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – An Ethiopian opposition party called on Monday for an official probe into what it said was a massacre of 400 women and children in the west of the Horn of Africa nation.
The government, which has put the number of dead at more than 20 from the ethnic clashes in May, called the version by the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) an exaggeration.
Fighting between different communities over scant resources and grazing is common in outlying areas of Ethiopia.
OFDM said in a statement that the incident happened in Hangar and Didesa Valley, about 600 km (373 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa.
“Between May 16 and 31, some 400 Oromo infants, children, women and men who lived in Hangar and Didesa valley were slaughtered by Gumuz citizens of Beneshangul region,” the party said in a statement.
“We appeal to the Ethiopian parliament to establish a commission and investigate the causes of the ethnic conflict and the massacre of the people of Oromo.”
Information Minister Berhan Hailu said the number “was an exaggeration”. “The government has apprehended the perpetrators and investigating further the cause of the violence that erupted suddenly,” he said, without giving an update on those killed.
“A reconciliation process is being undertaken to solve the problem faced by the displaced people.”
The OFDM, which has nine seats in parliament, said the regional government had ordered a news blackout, preventing people in the area from talking about the massacre.
“Innocent people were mowed down. Pregnant women were slaughtered and their bodies strewn around. Arms and breasts were severed and men were murdered and beheaded,” it said.
OFDM added that some 10,000 people were uprooted and left without shelter and appealed for urgent assistance.
Independent versions from witnesses in the region could not be immediately obtained.
The statement added that the government was “an accomplice”. The government rejected the accusation.
“While the government is handling the situation promptly, the statement by OFDM is tantamount to a call for reprisal action, which did not help the situation,” the information minister said.
Haregewine Messert, owner of Chez Hareg, has hired 20 extra
workers to help bake the hundreds of cakes and pastries that
have been ordered for the week.
(By Nikki Kahn, The Washington Post)
(The Washington Post) — Since opening her European-style Chez Hareg bakery in the District’s Shaw neighborhood last year, Haregewine Messert, an immigrant from Ethiopia, had neglected the little lot behind her shop, allowing it to become overrun with weeds.
But this week new gravel is on the ground. Patio tables have been arranged. And a fresh coat of paint covers a wooden fence that encloses the area. The reason for the renovation?
Twenty thousand soccer fans are expected in the Washington area this week to watch teams of Ethiopians from the United States and Canada compete. The annual tournament has become one of the largest gatherings of Ethiopians outside their homeland.
This year RFK Stadium is the venue, and hotel rooms throughout the region, including 600 at Prince George’s National Harbor, have been booked. Ethiopian-owned businesses have been making last-minute upgrades and hiring extra staff. Several in the District plan extended hours or have gotten temporary liquor licenses. A block party is planned Sunday along Ninth Street NW between U and T, an area that is home to many Ethiopian businesses, one day after the games end.
Washington is a city of visitors, and tourism is a key part of the local economy. Large events like presidential inaugurations and conventions result in packed hotel rooms and bustling restaurants, but also help publicize the city. Events such as this year’s Ethiopian soccer tournament demonstrate the diversity of the local tourism industry. Many Ethiopian business owners say they hope the event will bring a boost in business and that word about their establishments will spread well after the tournament ends.
“The main thing is to show the clientele coming here who we are and what we have,” said Henok Tesfaye, who owns the Etete restaurant on Ninth and U streets NW with his brother. “This is like advertising.”
Census figures show that about 31,000 Ethiopian immigrants — or about one-fifth of all those in the United States — live in the Washington area, though the Ethiopian Embassy says the local number is much higher.
“People take it as our second capital city, and people like to come and visit,” said Solomon Abdella, a longtime organizer of the event, now in its 25th year, and founder of the Ethio Maryland club, based in Silver Spring. “It is our city outside of Addis Ababa.”
The tournament has been hosted in the Washington area five times before, but it has grown since it last came to the region in 2002, when games were played on a high school football field in Hyattsville. Since then the tournament has been held in semiprofessional and professional venues, including the Georgia Dome in Atlanta in 2005, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 2006 and the Homer B. Johnson Stadium outside Dallas last year.
Elias Fikru, the owner of Nahom Records, will set up a booth outside of RFK, where organizers are planning to recreate a large African village with vendors selling the latest Ethiopian fashions as well as traditional artifacts. Sales at Fikru’s Ninth Street NW shop have been dismal in the past year, he said, with the pirating of his Ethiopian hits becoming more prevalent and the struggling economy leading his customers to refrain from CD purchases.
“I hope this is going to be good. I am expecting a lot of people,” Fikru said. “I am expecting a lot of visitors.”
Fikru’s isn’t the only business struggling with the economy.
Yeshimebeth Belay publishes a phone book for the local Ethiopian population and said that many of the restaurants and small businesses are having trouble.
“We have a lot of new businesses in our book, and that shows us businesses are growing,” she said. “Everybody is struggling, but they are holding on, and hopefully everybody is excited” for the soccer tournament this week.
Also gearing up is the Expo Restaurant & Nightclub on Ninth Street NW, owned by Abraham Tekle. Tekle, 54, is from Eritrea, which fought two bitter wars with Ethiopia, including one for independence.
Despite that history, Amanuel Abraham, 28, Tekle’s eldest son, has been working feverishly with his 16-year-old brother Adam in past weeks to complete a downstairs renovation of the restaurant in time for the soccer fans. The brothers are refurbishing the restaurant floor and adding a bar. Gone will be the dining tables, replaced with couches and sofas, creating what Abraham hopes will be a hip atmosphere.
“I have not seen any of that political divide,” Abraham said. “It is a big event for us as well. . . . We are extremely excited as a business, and so are our clientele.”
For her part, Messert, the owner of the Chez Hareg bakery, has hired 20 extra workers to help bake the hundreds of cakes and pastries that have been ordered for the special gatherings and parties planned throughout the week. She hopes to use the money she clears from the week to put down concrete or bricks in her back yard, making her temporary patio expansion permanent.
She envisions a backyard patio where customers can spend sultry summer afternoons drinking coffee, eating baked sweets and discussing the latest events of the old country.
