Ethiopia’s main opposition, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) says the struggle in Ethiopia is a struggle for democracy, and it hopes the United States will stand on the side of those fighting for democracy in Ethiopia.
In July this year, the Ethiopian government pardoned and released from prison 38 of the country’s top opposition leaders. They had been arrested and charged with treason in a government crackdown following the 2005 parliamentary elections. Now a five-man delegation of the opposition CUD is in the United States.
Spokesman Hailu Araaya told VOA that the delegation is here to thank the Ethiopian Diaspora for its support.
“You know we have been in prison for almost 21 months, and the Ethiopians in the Diaspora have been helpful, so supportive in many ways such as diplomatically, financially and so on. So we wanted to come to this country to meet them face-to-face and say thank you to them. The other thing is there is a struggle going on in Ethiopia to establish democracy there, and this democracy needs the support of the people not only in Ethiopia but also outside Ethiopia. And we are here to discuss with them how best we can work together to promote the struggle for democracy in Ethiopia,” he said.
Araaya said the delegation has been meeting with members of the U.S. Congress, and he hoped similar meetings could be arranged with Bush administration officials.
“Yes we have met with Congressman Donald Payne (chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa), and tomorrow we are going to meet other senators. And we hope that some program could be worked out for us so that we would have the opportunity to meet some of the people in the State Department,” Araaya said.
At a forum in Washington recently to mark Ethiopia’s third millennium, one speaker said current U.S. Ethiopia relations were frustrating the quest for democracy in Ethiopia.
Araaya said current Ethiopia-U.S. relations are good, but he hoped they would get better with U.S. support for the struggle for democracy in Ethiopia.
“I think Ethio-American relations are good at the moment. We hope that they will keep improving because the United States is the supporter and champion of democracy, and the struggle going in Ethiopia is to establish democracy in Ethiopia. We see no reason why the United States will not stand on the side of those forces that are struggling for democracy. I remember when President Bush made the inaugural speech, he said that the United States will be standing on the side of those who also fight for democracy. And we hope that the United States will keep its word and be on the side of people, parties that are determined to establish democracy in their respective countries,” Araaya said.
When the Ethiopian government pardoned and released from prison 38 opposition leaders in July, the government said the opposition leaders had signed statement of apology.
Araaya confirmed the opposition did sign a statement to be released from prison.
“Well we were released on pardon basis. We were pardoned. As you said yes, we did sign a document and then on basis of that document, a pardon board reviewed our case and then presented to the president of the country, and the president issued a pardon declaration. And so we are released with all our full rights that a citizen should have,” Araaya said.
Araaya said the opposition leaders signed the statement voluntarily with an apology to the Ethiopian government.
“We signed it voluntarily. We apologized to the people, to the government. Yes, we did. That’s what the paper said, and that’s what we signed,” he said.
Ethiopia’s next elections are in January 2008. Araaya said the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy would like to field candidates, but for now, it wants to concentrate on rebuilding.
“In principle we would like to participate in any kind of election. But as you know, we just came out of prison, and while we were in prison, our offices were closed and most of our activists were dispersed because of the harassment and other problems. So now what we’re trying to do is to regroup ourselves and also to obtain a certificate of recognition as a party,” he said.
On this month’s Sierra Leone presidential run-off election in which opposition candidate Ernest Bai Koroma defeated incumbent Vice President Solomon Berewa, Araaya said the Ethiopian opposition was proud of the performance of Sierra Leone Election Commission Chairwoman Christiana Thorpe.
“In the first place, we are very happy, we are proud of the electoral board in Sierra Leone. I wish our board would do the same thing. We hope the day will come when our electoral board would do the same. But I just wanted to say that we are very encouraged by what happened in Sierra Leone. And it could be a good moral symbol, very encouraging to us as opposition parties and also our electoral board would examine the Sierra Leone case and learn something from it,” Araaya said.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP): The United Nations said Wednesday that the situation in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region has “deteriorated rapidly,” and called for an independent investigation into the humanitarian issues there.
The U.N. sent a fact-finding mission to the Ogaden in the country’s volatile east from Aug. 30 to Sept. 6.
“The mission observed the recent fighting has led to a worsening humanitarian situation, in which the price of food has nearly doubled,” the U.N. said in a statement released late Wednesday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
The mission also called for a substantial increase in emergency food aid to the impoverished region where rebels have been fighting for increased autonomy for more than a decade.
The U.N. mission was sent after months of fighting that followed a crackdown ordered by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The government says the rebels, who killed 74 members of a Chinese-run oil exploration team, are terrorists, funded by its archenemy Eritrea.
The rebels have accused the Ethiopian Woyanne government of genocide — a charge the government denies. In a statement on Sept. 13, the front said the government was punishing civilians for the rebel activities and that the fact-finding mission had not visited areas where war crimes were being committed.
“The Ethiopian regime’s policy in Ogaden continues to be a campaign of state-sponsored terror that largely avoids engagements with ONLF forces and instead focuses on collectively punishing our civilian population,” the statement said. “Victims of the regime’s war crimes include victims of rape, torture, gunshot wounds and those fleeing burnt villages,” it said.
The front called on the international community to stop “yet another preventable African genocide,” and urged the U.N. to investigate further in the region, saying the recent trip had been too tightly controlled by the government.
Bereket Simon, the special adviser to the prime minister dictator, dismissed the rebels’ claims after the statement was issued last week.
“They said it is good that the U.N. has sent the fact-finding mission. And now when the facts from the ground are found to be not supporting their claims, they are fighting the fact-finding mission,” he said.
The group is fighting for greater political rights for the region, which is ethnically Somali.
1) The former chairman of Kinijit North America Shaleqa Yoseph Yazew, and Ato Moges Brook, who is the shaleqa’s friend of over 30 years from their EDU days. These two individuals are long time friends of Hailu Shawel and have close family ties. The two individuals allegedly have diverted over $1 million of Kinijit’s funds to accounts they personally control.
2) Former president of the Ethiopian Teachers Association (ETA), Dr Taye Woldesemayat, who once proudly announced in a public meeting that he did not vote for Kinijit in the 2005 elections. Last month, the ETA executive committee fired Taye (see here) for, among other things, not handing over financial and other forms of assistance he had received on behalf of the ETA from teachers’ association in other countries.
3) Radio talk show host and former abiyot tebaqi (Derg’s revolutionary guard) Merchaw Sinishaw who used to torture high school kids suspected of being EPRP members.
4) Woyanne web sites.
5) EPRP web sites such as asimba.org.
6) Millionaire businessman Solomon Bekele who is now practically out of the group because of his recent change of heart.
What made these groups with conflicting interests come together?
For Shaleqa Yoseph and Ato Moges, who formed this unholy alliance, their sole and overriding objective at this point is to create diversion through chaos so that the Kinijit leadership will be unable to conduct an investigation into their corruption. They have found a perfect weapon in the unemployed and power-hungry Taye Woldesemayat. Shaleqa Yoseph put Taye on salary and is sending him from city to city falsely presenting himself as the head of Kinijit in the Diaspora. Now all Shaleqa Yoseph and Ato Moges are doing is just sit back and watch Taye carry out their mission.
Before accepting the invitation to join the shaleqa group, Dr Taye was busy attending EPRP- sponsored public meetings and attacking the jailed Kinijit leaders. After being anointed as chairman of the Kinijit International Council (shaleqa’s Trojan horse), Dr Taye brought with him several of his friends who are either members of or have close ties to EPRP. In short, the KIC is an EPRP outfit that is being financed by Shaleqa Yoseph and Ato Moges with the money they stole from Kinijit.
The KIC serves two purposes and two different interests:
1) to create diversion for Shaleqa Yoseph and Ato Moges;
2) to facilitate the Taye-EPRP take over of Kinijit.
For Shaleqa Yoseph and Ato Moges, it is a matter of covering up their corruption — not a quest for power. For Taye and EPRP, it is a matter of hijacking Kinijit. Both of them are exploiting Ato Hailu’s poor health and shaky state of mind.
The Shaleqa-Taye-EPRP plan
This is what will happen in the next few weeks:
1) Ato Hailu and friends (the shaleqa group), with the help of the EPRP media, will start labeling members of the Kinijit executive committee as Woyanne agents and sympathizers. They will say that Ato Hailu signed the apology letter that got him and others out of jail after being pressured by the other Kinijit officials. They will talk about how Ato Hailu is the only leader with the conviction to stand up against Woyanne, bla bla bla…
2) Next, after gauging the effectiveness of their propaganda, Ato Hailu will declare that he has dismissed most of the Kinijit executive committee members. He believes, and is being told by the shaleqa group, that he has the power to decide any thing on behalf of Kinijit by himself.
3) In about six month or less, Hailu Shawel will announce that due to his poor health he is unable to remain as chairman and will appoint Taye Woldesemayat to replace him.
Ethiopian Review has been informed about this plan from a source inside the shaleqa group who is against it. According to the source, all the mediation, negotiation, excuses, etc. are just delaying tactics to buy time until Dr Taye and crew prepare the ground for the next step.
Some parts of this plan are already being implemented. They have started making various accusations against the executive committee members in private meetings with small groups of individuals. Soon EPRP media outlets will be filled with attacks against Kinijit Vice President Bertukan Mideska and the other members of the executive committee.
The effort to save Hailu Shawel
The concern of many people is not that Kinijit will be harmed or divided because of what Shaleqa Yoseph, Ato Moges, and Dr Taye are doing now taking advantage of Ato Hailu’s condition. Last Sunday’s successful public meeting in Washington DC has demonstrated that individual leaders may come and go, but Kinijit will move forward because it is built on principles rather than personalities. Kinijit supporters were also reassured that the Kinijit leadership is united and intact. The concern of most Kinijit supporters now is not Kinijit’s integrity or viability, but Ato Hailu’s legacy. It would be indeed unfortunate if the first chairman of Kinijit leaves the party without proper farewell, even worse, in disgrace.
Ato Solomon Bekele and a few others who became aware of the Shaleqa-Taye-EPRP plan are now making an effort to save Hailu Shawel from disgracing himself in such a way. Ato Hailu’s legacy and their own reputation is at stake. Ato Solomon has been imploring Hailu Shawel to re-establish contacts with the executive committee and attend public meetings together. In a further attempt to change Ato Hailu’s mind, yesterday, Solomon Bekele had arranged a meeting between Hailu Shawel and Aklog Lemeneh, chairman of Kinijit North America chapters. During the meeting yesterday (Tuesday), Ato Aklog advised him that he is making a grave mistake and that he should change course before more harm is done. He invited Ato Hailu to join the delegation at the scheduled public meeting in Boston this coming weekend. Ato Hailu said he will think about it. Don’t count on that.
Over the weekend, some prominent Ethiopians who reside in the Washington DC area, including Ambassador Ayalew Mandefro and Dr Gebreye Wolde-Rufael, had a chance to meet with Ato Hailu. They begged him to reconcile his differences with the executive committee — to no avail. Ato Hailu kept repeating to them the false information he is being fed by Dr Taye and the shaleqa group. These individuals left the meeting terribly disappointed.
It is Ato Hailu’s frailty that Taye and the shaleqa are exploiting to their advantage. He is now completely encircled by the shaleqa group and has very limited access to individuals outside of the group. They carry his phone so unless he makes calls himself, no one can reach him by phone other than selected individuals. Many long-time friends of Ato Hailu are unable to reach him. When some individuals get a chance to see him, the people Dr Taye put around Ato Hailu, such as Assefa Dires, get nervous and find some reason to interrupt the meeting. All Ethiopian media are prevented from interviewing him. The only media personality who is allowed to interview Ato Hailu is Merchaw. Taye and the shaleqa have managed to control Ato Hailu’s every movement. He is now virtually a hostage. As a result, the likelihood that the effort of Solomon Bekele, Aklog Lemeneh and other will succeed is little to none.
According to inside sources, the shaleqa group held a meeting Monday night with Ato Hailu. They proposed to him to take a break for two weeks and then come back to Washington DC for a meeting on Sept. 30 with invited individuals only. Similar closed meetings would be held in other cities, too, according to the proposal. Dr Taye argued that public meetings that are open to every one would expose Ato Hailu to insults. Ato Hailu agreed and has accepted the proposal. This morning Hailu Shawel went to Reagan Airport accompanied by Shaleqa Yoseph, Solomon Bekele and Merchaw Sinishaw and took off for Minneapolis.
Why Shaleqa, Taye and EPRP will not succeed
It is because the Kinijit central committee members are united in their stand against any form of lawlessness and dictatorship inside the party. With the exception of Shaleqa Getachew Mengiste, who is currently in South Africa on a working visiting leading a Kinijit delegation, none of the other executive committee members approve what Ato Hailu is doing now. Some try to portray that the leadership crisis inside Kinijit is caused by a conflict between “the Hailu and the Berhanu factions.” This is far from the truth. There is no such a thing. The leadership problem is caused by the disagreement between Ato Hailu and two or three individuals on one side, and the whole Kinijit leadership, on the other. Simply put, the root cause of the leadership crisis inside Kinijit is Hailu Shawel’s recent dictatorial behavior that is encouraged and promoted by the shaleqa group. The strongest opposition to Ato Hailu’s disregard for the executive committee decisions is coming from members of his own former party, AEUP.
The Kinijit leadership has so far been extremely patient with Ato Hailu and his crooked friends. But not for long. The leadership needs to take steps to protect the party’s credibility and integrity.
More than the leadership, the people of Ethiopia would not allow the Shaleqa-Taye-EPRP plan to succeed. Taye and his EPRP buddies will be challenged and confronted every step of the way with the same vigor and energy Woyanne is being fought. In short, the Taye-EPRP plan to hijack Kinijit has a snowball’s chance in hell.
As to saving Ato Hailu’s legacy, it is in his hands and the hands of those who truly care for him, if he has such friends around him. The effort has already started by some. Let’s hope they will succeed.
The Kinijit Support and Development Organization in Norway (KSDON) announces the forth coming visit of a 5 member high-level delegation of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit).
We believe that Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia have been longing for an opportunity to receive, meet and confer with the delegation. The delegation headed by Ato Muluneh Eyuel, the General Secretary of the party, will spend 3 days in Norway meeting supporters, Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia, Norwegian government officials and others.
The delegation will arrive at the Gardermoen (Oslo) International Airport on Thursday, the 20th of September 2007 at 12:30 local time.
The committee is organizing a grand and warm public reception due to them upon their arrival at the airport. Means of transportation (a bus) has been arranged and the bus will leave for the airport at 11:00 a.m.
We will be gathering in front of our community house to take the bus to the airport. Thus, the committee calls on all Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia to show up for this grand reception and be part of the warm welcoming ceremony at the airport.
There will be a public meeting at Lakke gate skole on Saturday, the 22nd of September 2007 starting at 13:00 (1:00 p.m.). You (all Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia) are also invited to attend the meeting, be part of the discourse and reaffirm your support to the democratic struggle in Ethiopia.
_________
Kinijit Support and Development Organization in Norway
Organisasjonsnr. 988964905, Osterhaus gate 27, 0183 Oslo, Norway.
Tel. 004721383779 E.Mail: [email protected].
I had fallen in love. Ethiopia does that to people. It sneaks up on you with its lush, mountainous landscape, its delicious coffee, its beautiful people as warm and welcoming as any in the world. And before you know it, you’re sitting in a restaurant in New York or Nairobi, and all you want to do is speak Amharic, taste injera, and drink honey wine.
The trouble with love, though, is that sometimes it isn’t mutual.
In recent months, reports have begun to spill out of Ethiopia detailing human rights abuses and misuse of food aid in its eastern Ogaden region. Human Rights Watch issued a report urging Ethiopia to stop “abuses [that] violate the laws of war.”
The U.S. government considers Ethiopia Woyanne an important ally in the war on terror, since it shares borders with Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia, the latter invaded by Ethiopia this past Christmas with Washington’s approval. Ethiopia has not been able to extricate itself from Somalia, and the military has been accused of possible war crimes there. Mogadishu even has a new nickname: “Baghdad on the Sea.”
In addition to sending nearly half a billion dollars in aid money to Ethiopia Woyanne every year, more than to any other sub-Saharan African country, the United States also supplies the Ethiopian the Woyanne fascist military with funds, arms, and special forces training from Army Rangers.
Yet with all the recent negative attention focused on Ethiopia, it is easy to forget that the country had been on the right track. In 2005, poverty was down, growth was up, the local press was flourishing, and the capital, Addis Ababa, was brimming with hope and excitement about upcoming elections.
When the results of those elections were made public, however, many felt that something was amiss. The opposition, enormously popular in the capital, came up suspiciously short. They called the elections fraudulent. Many election observers agreed. Protests took place throughout the country.
At this moment, with the international community watching, Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi and his ruling party had a chance to show the world that it was indeed a burgeoning democracy. Instead, it took several steps backward and made Western leaders like Tony Blair, who’d appointed Zenawi to his Commission for Africa, look foolish.
During post-election demonstrations, at least 30,000 40,000 people were arrested, and more than 100 were killed. Snipers were used on protesters. All the top opposition leaders were arrested, as was the mayor-elect of Addis Ababa.
I, too, was arrested. At the time I was working for a regional African newspaper, and I had been caught taking photos of federal police beating young boys. For 12 hours I sat on a dirt floor in an old customs house, and, because I am American, I was largely ignored. The detained Ethiopians were beaten and forced to crawl over sharp rocks and hop up and down on bloodied feet. The lucky ones were released after a few weeks. Others were taken to rural prisons and not heard from for months.
The crackdown was remarkably effective. Fledgling newspapers were shut down, and their editors jailed along with the opposition leaders. Average Ethiopians once again became hesitant to speak out in public about anything potentially sensitive. Government agents are everywhere, friends would whisper to me when I tried to initiate conversations about politics.
Initially, I scoffed at their reluctance to talk and told them they were being dramatic. I did not understand that after this short period of euphoria and political engagement, Ethiopia had quickly sunk back into an era of repression and suspicion, an atmosphere of fear exactly like the ones that had defined the country’s previous regimes, one socialist and one monarchic.
Just how naive I was in 2005 did not become clear, however, until this summer, when I began reporting on the region of Ethiopia known as the Ogaden.
The Ogaden is a hot and unforgiving landscape populated almost entirely by ethnically Somali pastoralists; it takes up a large swath of the Somali region of eastern Ethiopia. Depending on whom you ask, it has a population of 4 million or 7 million people.
Long ignored, the government has started to pay closer attention to the region in recent years, not only because of security concerns posed by rebel groups and Islamists from neighboring Somalia, but also because it has realized it has a valuable asset in the possible oil deposits there.
In April, an Ogadeni rebel group attacked a Chinese-run oil field and killed more than 70 Chinese and Ethiopian workers. After the attack, the Ethiopian military swooped in and vowed “to hunt down” the rebels. They began this effort by closing all roads into the region to commercial and humanitarian traffic, and then terrorizing the civilian population.
When three journalists from the New York Times traveled to the region to try to understand why the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a relatively unknown group, had lashed out so violently, they were detained by the Ethiopian military, threatened, had all their equipment confiscated, and were finally released without charge five days later.
Because I was contributing reporting to the Times, the Ethiopian Woyanne government began to pay attention to me as well. I would later discover that my phone had been tapped months earlier, and there were rumors that I was being followed. While I knew I was under some kind of surveillance, I also knew that I had to begin reporting in earnest on the Ogaden, and so I sought out people who had fled that region and had ended up in Addis Ababa.
In Addis, there are several neighborhoods populated by ethnic Somalis, and one was made up almost entirely of internally displaced people from the Ogaden. I started spending time there, meeting secretly in living rooms with cautious, veiled women and angry men, young and old.
They would tell me their stories and show me their scars. One elderly woman even removed her hijab, exposing her shoulder and back, to show me the grotesque, deep scar hidden there. Ten months earlier, she had been stabbed with a bayonet by an Ethiopian soldier. “He asked me to stand up, and I guess I did this too slowly for him,” she said, focusing her rheumy, blue-rimmed eyes on mine. “He meant to hit my face.”
Every person I interviewed had a similar story. Their villages had been burned. Their men and women had been jailed, tortured, and raped. Many had been killed. One student I spoke with said, “There are only two options for us: Join the rebels or flee.”
After a Times piece detailed these accusations, aid workers and officials within the government became more willing to speak about other things that were happening in the Ogaden, but none would comment on the record or meet publicly. They were afraid to jeopardize their operations in the country. The government had effectively cowed not only the civilian population, but also aid groups, the United Nations, and foreign embassies.
In addition to having my phone tapped, I was now sure I was being followed by plainclothes intelligence agents. On several occasions, after I exited a taxi, the driver would be interrogated by police.
One day, two men in civilian clothes identifying themselves as police officers showed up at my house and questioned my cook, a 15-year-old girl who’d just finished the eighth grade and knew nothing about my work. She was shaken by the experience, and I knew things had changed.
I began to consider leaving Ethiopia. My love for the country collided with my ever-increasing fear and disdain for those who were making my life, and the lives of those who knew me, difficult. For the first time in two years of living in this beautiful place, I was afraid to leave my home. The government’s goal was intimidation, and it was working.
Everyone around me told me to leave, including the U.S. ambassador, who offered to escort me to the airport. It was not an official expulsion, but there was a real chance that I would be arrested and charged under local laws if I stayed. The next day, I reluctantly bought a ticket and packed my bags.
Early on a Saturday morning, I hailed a taxi to take me to the American Embassy. As we pulled away from my house, I noticed my landlord looking out from his door. He had seen me put luggage into the taxi, and I knew he would immediately call the police with this information.
Earlier that week, I had learned that the man I had lived not 200 yards from for two years, the man I paid my rent to and chatted amiably about America with, was an unofficial government spy. In 2005, he had identified and turned in dozens of neighborhood people he suspected of supporting the opposition party. He even appeared on the state-run TV channel urging the ruling party and the police to more effectively punish the city’s young people.
I urged the taxi driver to hurry. At the embassy, I was greeted by the ambassador, who shook my hand and tossed my suitcase into the trunk of his waiting SUV. “I wonder if there’ll be any Ethiopian intelligence guys waiting for you at the airport,” he said, chuckling.
There were not. Only glassy-eyed airport employees and passengers going about the business of waiting. I boarded the plane, and without any fanfare except my own nervous breathing, flew away from Ethiopia—the country I loved that, in the end, didn’t love me back.
______ Will Connors is a freelance writer unsure of where he’s headed next. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and BBC.com.
The Woyanne regime has arrested the following prominent Somalis elders in the city of Dire Dawa, eastern Ethiopia, in the past few days and took them to an unknown location, probably to Jijjiga, according to the Ethiopian Somali Advocacy Council:
1. ADEN ALALEH ABDI
2. MOHAMED AHMED HOUSSEIN
3. MOHAMED KALIF HOUSSEIN
4. ABDILLAHI MOHAMED OMAR
5. ABDI WALLI HASSAN
6. ABDIRAHMAN HOUSSEIN ABDI
7. MOUSSEH ABDILLAHI HASSAN
8. MOHAMED BOUDEYE MOHAMOUD
9. MOHAMED HASSAN OMAR
10. IBRAHIM AHMED ABDILLAHI
11. ABDILLAHI IBRAHIM MAHAD
12. HACHINE ABDI ADEN
13. HINDA ABDILLAHI HASSAN (the only lady in the group)
14. KOSA OMAR BODEH
15. HOUSSEIN ALALEH ALI
