In November 2005, when the Federal Police and Agazi special forces (Meles Zenawi’s death squads) went to Birtukan Mideksa’s home to arrest her, the Ferensay Legacion neighborhood of Addis Ababa rose up to protect her. In that confrontation between unarmed civilians and the heavily armed Woyanne forces, at least 5 people were gunned down and several were injured. Birtukan escaped to some embassy and later surrendered herself.

It was a different story yesterday when Woyanne thugs picked up Birtukan. It seems no body in the neighborhood cared, according to Ethiopian Review sources. Few people even show enough interest to talk about it. The people of Ferensay Legacion feel that Birtukan has betrayed them, as she betrayed all Kinijit supporters by breaking most of the promises she had made. Not only that, after she signed the letter of apology and was released from jail in July 2007, she didn’t even visit the families of those who were murdered by Woyanne death squads trying to protect her.

Some Addis Ababa residents, even her own supporters, say that, what Birtukan did is foolish. It’s like throwing herself from a cliff.

Others say that she seemed to have welcomed the arrest. She was about to lose control of her party, UDJ, due to worsening internal frictions. Inside sources told Ethiopian Review that a group of executive committee members had asked Birtukan to resign just a few days ago. Some of the most senior members of the UDJ leadership were quitting. So the argument goes that both Woyanne and Birtukan will benefit from this trumped up controversy. The only losers are Birtukan’s dimwitted followers who jump up and down over this game of shred between Birtukan and Woyanne.

It is obvious to any one with commonsense that Birtukan’s arrest is a smokescreen for Woyanne’s other troubles, particularly its withdrawal from Somalia after suffering a humiliating defeat. Although she has been the weakest opposition figure inside Ethiopia as far as criticizing the Meles dictatorship, she is a better target for Woyanne since she is relatively more popular in the Diaspora than any of the other Addis Ababa-based opposition leaders. Woyanne strategists have correctly calculated that her arrest would attract a lot of media coverage, which is what they want.

Woyanne is not satisfied with arresting Birtukan. EMF has reported today that UDJ members of parliament were summoned today by the speaker of the Woyanne rubber-stamp parliament and had been asked to distance themselves from Birtukan. Those ‘parliamentarians’ are opportunists. They will waste no time doing that.

(BBC) – One of Ethiopia’s main opposition leaders has been sent back to prison to serve a life sentence, after a pardon granted to her last year was revoked.

Birtukan Medeksa was among more than 100 people jailed for offences after controversial polls in 2005.

A dispute over the terms of her release caused her re-arrest.

Her colleague Berhanu Nega, who was also pardoned and now lives in exile, told the BBC it showed the government “was hell-bent on staying in power”.

The BBC’s Elizabeth Blunt in the capital, Addis Ababa, says Ms Birtukan was a former judge and one of the younger and more charismatic leaders of the coalition which did so astonishingly well against the ruling party in the 2005 elections.

Our reporter says that while in jail facing charges of treason, she became even more of a heroine, attracting widespread sympathy as a single mother separated from her baby daughter.

After the opposition leaders were pardoned and released last year, she emerged as the leader of a new coalition, the Union for Democracy and Justice (UDJ), painstakingly stitched together from various opposition groupings to contest elections in 2010.

The government news agency, quoting the ministry of justice, said her pardon had been revoked, since she had denied requesting her pardon.

Ms Birtukan’s problems started when she spoke to journalists abroad about the way the opposition leaders were released, our correspondent says.

She talked about negotiations which had taken place between the opposition and government, with the help of a panel of elders, before their pardon was granted.

The government prefers to lay emphasis on a document signed by the prisoners, regretting any mistakes they had committed and asking for pardon.

This implies that their release was part of a normal judicial process, rather than in any way part of a negotiated political deal.

Mr Berhanu, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in 2005 and now lives in the United States, says the aim of the government is to “humiliate” any opposition to its rule.

“What this is doing is to change the nature of the struggle,” he told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

“There is no other way to freedom and liberty in that country without getting rid of this government.”

Ethiopian Review’s 2008 Person of the Year will be announced on January 1, 2009. The decision has been made after taking readers’ suggestions into careful considerations. Stay tuned.

In keeping with its annual tradition, Ethiopian Review will soon announce The 2008 Person of the Year. Last year, we left it to readers to make the choice, and you chose Prof. Alemayehu Gebremariam.

This year the decision will be made by the Ethiopian Review editorial group, but we would like to hear your suggestions.

The selection is based on who made the most significant contribution for the betterment of Ethiopia in the past 12 months.

We accept nominations and suggestions. Please include explanations for your selection.

By Joe Michael

Can someone prove me wrong if I say the Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi is the worst dictator comparing to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe? I’ll bet no one can.

There is no question that Robert Mugabe is a dictator. However, when it comes to the intensity of the crimes he has committed against his own people, he is way less criminal than Meles Zenawi. Even at these defining moments, the falling Mugabe regime is not arresting or killing his own people. Observably, his political opponents are exercising their constitutional rights; they are assembling, they are freely expressing their views, they are protesting, etc. There is no local journalist that was arrested illegitimately and sent to prison for criticizing the Mugabe regime.

Was there any point in time in the Mugabe regime in which hundreds of citizens were killed and tens of thousands of opposition supporters were arrested for having different political views? Never. Not even when the oppositions won the general election.

Evidence could be gathered to prove Mugabe’s undemocratic regime. Zimbabweans could testify how their despot leader led them into poverty and diseases. The international community could also confirm the dictatorship of Mugabe’s regime. However, Mugabe didn’t mass murder, arrest, or torture his own people. With all the political games and conspiracies going on, there is no political prisoner in Zimbabwe.

On the other hand, we have been witnessing a murderer regime in Ethiopia that has been terrorizing its own people for the past 18 years. The regime has been arresting, torturing, and killing its citizens without any accountability whatsoever. Politicians, entrepreneurs, students, artists, philanthropists, journalist, teachers, tourists, etc. have been arrested in different occasions simply because they have different political views or because they have criticized the regime. Mothers and kids were killed in an indiscriminate murder and justice has not been served. So many citizens are in prison with out due process for no other reason than supporting opposition political parties.

There are many political prisoners in Ethiopia where as there is none in Zimbabwe. Many people have been murdered in politically motivated killings in Ethiopia than Zimbabwe. Significantly, today Zimbabweans could freely criticize Mugabe, could freely assemble, or join any opposition party they prefer, which has been impossible for Ethiopians.

Zenawi’s latest victim, the most prominent and peaceful opposition leader Judge Birtukan Mideksa has been re-arrested for no other reason than unifying the Ethiopian people. Birtukan and other opposition figures were unlawfully arrested for two years in 2005 and were released following a continuous pressure by the international community. Her new political party UDJ has been receiving supports from all over the country, which unquestionably was the cause for her re-arrest.

Apparently, Meles Zenawi is the worst criminal than Robert Mugabe. It is not fair for the international community to pressure Mugabe while accommodating Meles Zenawi and his uncountable crimes. Whatever punishment Mugabe gets, Meles Zenawi should get it twice over.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN | The New York Times

NAIROBI, Kenya — Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Somalia’s president who has been widely blamed for his country’s deepening crisis, resigned on Monday, casting Somalia into a deeper political abyss, but, at the same time, possibly creating an opportunity.

Mr. Yusuf blamed the international community for not doing enough to shore up Somalia’s transitional government, which has steadily lost control of much of the country to Islamist insurgents. “Most of the country was not in our hands and we had nothing to give our soldiers. The international community has also failed to help us,” Mr. Yusuf told legislators in Baidoa, Somalia’s seat of Parliament.

His exit will most likely kick off an intense, clan-based scramble for his post, which in reality has become increasingly irrelevant as the government has veered toward collapse. Somalia’s transitional government controls only a few city blocks in a country almost as big as Texas and it has been continuously beset by poisonous infighting.

Earlier this month, Mr. Yusuf, who has been president since 2004, tried to fire Somalia’s prime minister but the Parliament refused. Several of Somalia’s neighbors, including Kenya, then threatened to impose sanctions on Mr. Yusuf and his family, accusing Mr. Yusuf of being an obstacle to peace.

Mr. Yusuf, a former warlord who claims to be around 74 years old though he is widely believed to be several years older, has constantly rejected efforts to bring moderate Islamist opposition leaders into the government. Now that he is leaving, many Somalis hope there may be a way to rebuild the government and give the Islamists a meaningful role.

Under Somalia’s transitional charter, the speaker of the Parliament will take over the presidency for one month until the Parliament elects a new president. Several moderate Islamists could be candidates.

Over the weekend, fighting broke out between moderate and radical factions in the first obvious sign of tensions within Somalia’s Islamist community.

On Sunday, a powerful, newly militarized Islamist group declared a “holy war” against the more militant Islamist factions, and it seems to have the muscle to back up its threats. The group, the Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama, killed more than 10 fighters from a rival Islamist faction that was known as one of Somalia’s toughest in fighting over the weekend.

The group called on its followers to “prepare themselves for jihad against these heretic groups,” referring to some of the more hard-line factions and “to restore stability and harmony in Somalia and achieve a genuine government of national unity.”

Many analysts had been predicting that exactly this would happen: that as Somalia’s transitional government disintegrated, the Islamist insurgents of varying agendas would begin to slug it out themselves. This weekend’s violence is a strong sign that the infighting is under way.

An episode of grave desecration may have been what started it. In early December, fighters from the Shabab, one of Somalia’s most militant Islamist groups, ransacked the graves of moderate Islamist clerics who had been buried in Kismayo, a town the Shabab controls. On Sunday, moderate Islamist leaders brought this up and condemned the Shabab for such un-Islamic behavior.

“It is a politically motivated act, which can ignite a sectarian war,” warned Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed, one of the moderate Islamists, at a news conference in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.

On Saturday and Sunday, gunmen from the Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama group took back two towns that the Shabab had controlled, Guri’el and Dhusamareb, and they vowed to roll back recent Shabab gains in other parts of the country. Up until recently, Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama was known as a religious brotherhood of moderate Islamists and it did not have a formidable military wing.

Mr. Yusuf did not say what he will do now but many Somalis expect that he will return to his clan stronghold in northern Somalia. His militia has already fled the capital, with more than 100 soldiers loyal to Mr. Yusuf flying out on Sunday for northern Somalia. Several Somali politicians aligned with Mr. Yusuf also left for northern Somalia on Sunday, implying that Mr. Yusuf’s powerful sub-clan, the Majerten, may be pulling out of the government.