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Author: Elias Kifle

AI warns Ethiopia the ‘anti-terrorism’ is law anti-civil rights

Posted on , Updated on by Elias Kifle

(Amnesty International) — Reacting to the news that the Ethiopian [rubber-stamp] Parliament has today passed an Anti-Terror Proclamation in Ethiopia, Amnesty International warns that the law could restrict freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and the right to fair trial, with serious implications in the run up to Ethiopia’s 2010 parliamentary election.

Although the Ethiopian government tribal junta in Ethiopia faces legitimate security concerns, any anti-terror legislation must be in accordance with international human rights standards. [To most Ethiopians there is no worse terrorist than Woyanne.]

“The Government of Ethiopia {www:Woyanne} has a history of stifling dissent and it is worrying that this law now risks further violating Ethiopia’s obligations under international human rights law,” said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International’s Africa programme director. “The Anti-Terror Proclamation is expected to provide Ethiopian authorities with unnecessarily far reaching powers which could lead to further arbitrary arrests”.

Based on earlier drafts of the law previously made available to Amnesty International, “acts of terrorism” are vaguely defined and could encompass the legitimate expression of political dissent.

The law defines “acts of terrorism” as including damage to property and disruption to any public service, for which an individual could be sentenced to 15 years in prison or even the death penalty. Thousands of protesters, political party leaders, journalists and human rights defenders were arrested and detained following the disputed November 2005 elections in which the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) retained political power.

Ghana’s democracy dividends

Posted on by Elias Kifle

Akwaaba, President Obama: But what will he say to Ghanaians?

By Edward Kutsoati

Last year, in the midst of the “Obama fever,” another event – by no means as historic as President Barack Obama’s election victory, but remarkable nonetheless – was shaping up in Ghana. In December 2008, Ghanaians went to the polls, for the fifth successive time since the country returned to constitutional rule in 1992, to elect a new president. The outcome: the closest election ever. About 9.5 million votes were cast in a runoff that saw John Atta-Mills beat out Nana Akuffo-Addo by only 41,000 votes. Yes, only 41,000 – less than one-half of a percent.

Even more striking is that the elections resulted in a peaceful transfer of power from the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) to the National Democratic Congress (NDC), without a single loss of life. It is the second time in 8 years that such a transfer of power has occurred in Ghana; the first in January 2001 when the NDC lost to the NPP. And in case you were wondering, Ghana is in sub-Sahara Africa, where election results are expected to be disputed and often trigger violence.

For Ghana, this a testament of the progress made in a relatively short span of two decades, and a powerful signal to the world that a new and stable political climate is finally emerging. There are already some dividends: There is now a more open society which, with the help of an increased coverage of mobile phones, is becoming more engaged in social, political and economic issues; a freer press is helping to put a check on government excesses; and an increase in investor confidence is stimulating direct investments. And all that is expected to receive a further boost when President Obama pays a 2-day visit on July 10 – 11, 2009, his first to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since assuming the office of the President of the USA. Given Obama’s iconic status, his visit will be seen as an endorsement of the progress in Ghana.

From Ghana, President Obama is likely to implore other African nations, such as Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Kenya, his ancestral country, to follow Ghana’s trail. That is fine, but this is not the time for gloating. Let’s make no mistake about this: Although encouraging, the economic condition in Ghana is pretty far from what’s needed to, first, achieve all of the MDGs, and provide a robust economic environment that will unleash individuals’ “entrepreneurial spirits.” The basic growth-promoting infrastructures (quality education, safe health care, clean portable water, affordable and reliable energy) remains beyond the reach of many Ghanaians; annual per capita GDP is at US$550 – not that much different from the average income at independence in 1957 – yet incomes are much more unequal today. To get an idea of how unequal incomes are becoming, consider this: Daily Graphic, on June 17, carried a story of squatters at Agblogbloshie, a slum just outside downtown Accra, digging themselves deep into filthy waters to collect, for re-sale, diesel oil leaking out of a nearby factory plant. That same week, Villaggio Vista, the luxury residential complex at the Tetteh Quarshie Circle, Accra, showcased their 3- and 4-bedroom condos: asking prices start from $525,000, with the high-end units priced in the mid-$800,000. Such inequities make it difficult to sustain economic development.

So what should Mr. Obama say to Ghanaians, Africans and their leaders? Whatever is Mr. Obama’s policy agenda for sub-Saharan Africa, or the purpose for this visit (there is talk of the “pot” of oil that Ghana recently struck), most observers will agree that it is in the interest of Africa and the world that “success stories,” such as Ghana’s, do not lose the momentum and the gains made so far. Each time progress is derailed in any part of the continent, the consequences have always been tragic. What Africa really needs now is a “develop and hold strategy”: Simply put, the progress in Ghana must be complete and sustainable. That means it must be underpinned by strong institutions that not only protect civil and property rights, but also hold the government to account. The deals made with multinational firms in its extractive industries (e.g., gold, timber, and now oil), must be fair, transparent, and have a chance to stimulate the economy. A positive message from Mr. Obama on these issues will energize civil society groups, think tanks and NGOs (such as the CJA, CDD and WACAM) who have been calling for reforms that promote better opportunities for all.

More power to the people!

With so many land-locked nations, rugged landscapes, weak institutions and some harmful cultural practices, there is no question that sub-Saharan Africa faces huge developmental challenges. In many places, these constraints were compounded by colonial policies that not only deprived the continent of some of its able young men and women, but also nurtured the worst extractive institutions, and drew artificial lines of boundaries that, if not caused, certainly reinforced mistrust among nations and neighbors. Mr. Obama will see, perhaps for the first time, some of the legacy of the slave trade when he visits the Cape Coast Slave castle. I have no doubt in my mind that he will categorically condemn the slave trade and colonialism.

But we need to move on. Ghana may have been pushed to ground, but we must find smart ways to get up. No amount of foreign aid can achieve as much as our own initiatives. These must start with reforms that empowers and inform citizens to make the right choices; and one of the most needed now is a constitutional amendment that gives individuals the right to choose their own District Chief Executives (DCEs), the equivalent of city mayors, and regional ministers. Back in 1992, the framers of our constitution thought that, for a relatively young democracy, it was necessary to have the president appoint all city mayors so as to promote a cohesive national development agenda. Furthermore, it was argued that direct elections will divide, rather than unite, communities since too many were uninformed to make the right decisions. Hogwash!

Ghanaians know that the real reason for this flawed decentralization set-up is so that the President can have 167 DCE- and 10 regional ministerial-posts as “jobs for the boys.” But this is a bane of our development. Direct elections of DCEs will not only promote competition of ideas, but also ensure that our local governments become more accountable to the people. More importantly, the elected DCE will refuse to take the fall for any policy failures of the central government, creating an automatic checks and balance within the governing hierarchy. Cognizant of the impact of their decisions on their communities, people will seek the information needed to make the right choices; without blaming anyone for their own their mistakes. When individuals are marginalized from the most important decision-making processes, they blame others for what goes wrong, and often resort to violence. This is, arguably, the most powerful case for direct elections of DCEs.

However, alone, it cannot be the panacea. Elsewhere, I have argued that by leveraging the expanding coverage of mobile phone networks, the central government can create an efficient accounting and auditing systems to promote transparent local and central governments.

Fair deals and equitable distribution of resource rents

At the start of Ghana’s economic reform programs, the path to growth was expected to be paved with the rents from the extractive industry (gold, timber, and now oil). Foreign direct investment responded to powerful incentives that were packed into the new Mining Act of 1986. But two decades later, the hope for mining to become a catalyst for economic growth has been more or less unfulfilled. Yes, there have been some gains, but they seem to be outweighed by large negative consequences. For example, inadequate protection of property rights has led to paltry sums of compensation to farmers who lose their cocoa lands to mining concessions. Consider this: it is estimated that a cocoa tree yields about half-bag of beans each year, a GHc50 (Ghana cedis) value, and a tree can last for about 40 – 50 years. Yet, average compensation is about GHc10 per tree.

And this is just the beginning. Mining firms continue to pay one of the lowest royalty rates in the world: 3% of profits; with very little going to the mining communities who have to deal with huge negative externalities of mining activities – frequent cyanide spillage into water bodies; lost of farmlands with little, or no, alternatives, etc. Interestingly, a decent portion of the royalty is given to local chiefs and their traditional councils “to maintain the dignity of their stools.” Huh? It is time to get serious and build the capacity to negotiate for fair deals. In an increasingly competitive global economy, Ghana’s only edge may lie in its natural resources, and we better make the best out of it.

God’s messengers

Finally, if President Mr. Obama feels emboldened enough to be politically incorrect, he could take a swipe at the growing number “men and women of God” promising better economic outcomes to innocent Ghanaians. Collectively, these “crooks masquerading as prophets,” have succeeded in instilling so much fear into Ghanaians such that they have nowhere to turn to except give their next dollar to a pastor. Along the way, pastors continue to sow and nourish seeds of mistrust among family members and neighbors. You lost a job? Blame that witch of an aunt. Recently got denied a visa by the US Embassy? The neighbor’s ‘voodoo’ was responsibly for that too.

With so much fear and little trust among neighbors, how can the nation build the social capital to enhance economic relations and growth? 75 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt recognized the devastating effect of fear at the height of the depression when he told Americans that “the only thing they had to fear was fear itself.” Religion can be a powerful tool for good. Unfortunately, it has become a weapon of mental enslavement of millions of Ghanaians, and it is time Ghanaians themselves of these chains, completely.

Ghana is great nation with lovely people, rich culture and so much potential. It needs good and honest leaders. In his inaugural speech, President Obama admonished Americans “to set aside childish things …. .; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” No group of people needs this poignant message more than the political, traditional and spiritual leaders of Ghana and the continent of Africa.

(Edward Kutsoati is Associate Professor of Economics at Tufts University and a regular columnist for www.AfricanLiberty.org. He can be reached at [email protected])

Lufthansa plane en route to Ethiopia catches fire

Posted on by Elias Kifle

Sana’a, Yemen (NewsYemen) — Yemeni families gathered at the Sana’a Airport Friday night over news that a Lufthansa plane caught fire due to emergency landing at Frankfurt International Airport few minutes after taking off from the same airport.

The incident resulted in the flight delay from 09:00 pm on Friday until 01:00 am on Saturday (local time), said sources at the Sana’a Airport.

A Lufthansa plane, A330, which was en route to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, had to abruptly land again due to a technical fault, some passengers who arrived on board another plane told NewsYemen.

The front tries of the plane exploded and the plane started sliding on the ground and then a small fire caught the plane, but firemen could put it out, said a passenger.

Frequent Airbus incidents raise more questions on the level of safety of the Airbus planes as four similar emergency landing incidents occurred last month in Russia and Australia and one Air France crashed on June 1 with 228 on board and finally the Yemenia airliner A310 crash on June 30.

Israeli prison is filled with Ethiopians – Cynthia McKinney

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Cynthia McKinney Letter from an Israeli Jail

This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children; I had a suitcase full of crayons for children.

While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis highjacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver three tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, US-supplied F-16s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full-scale, outright genocide. US-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to Al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water… It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime… I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color and paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream… like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better… The once proud, never-colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel, only after they arrived Israel told them, “There is no UN in Israel.”

The police here have license to pick them up and suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christians. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for six months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and “yes we can” were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to [write one]. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the US have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] What are you willing to do?

Let’s change the world together and reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle.

This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

(Cynthia McKinney is a former Democratic US congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia, McKinney served six terms in the US House of Representatives, from 1993-2003, and from 2005-2007. McKinney’s remarks are transcribed here from a telephone call received by WBAIX.org.)