Founding members of the Awassa Children’s Project, a gutsy Ethiopian street-orphan theater company, will give a presentation of their street theater techniques 6:30 p.m. Sunday at Project Artaud Theater. Tesfaye Biche, Migbar Kassa and Antenah Hameso, now adults, were street orphans in the war-torn, AIDS-ravaged city of Awassa in southern Ethiopia – near the Sudan border – when they formed their own street theater company, creating shows such as “The AIDS Education Circus” and “The Female Mutilation Show.” Years later, their company has grown to include an orphanage and an art school, among other projects.
Biche and former Bay Area actor Kris LeFan have also formed the Sherkole Refugee Theatre Company in the Sherkole Refugee Camp, touring border refugee camps with “The Landmine Awareness Show.”
Donations will be requested to help support the companies’ work.
More information is available at awassachildrensproject.org, and a short film of the Awassa group can be seen below:
A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates.
Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.
Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”
The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.
The drama over the Iran Deyanat comes as speculation grew this week about whether the South African Navy would send a vessel to join the growing multinational force in the region.
A naval spokesman, Lieutenant-Commander Greyling van den Berg, told the Sunday Times that the navy had not been ordered by the government to become involved in “the Somali pirate issue”.
About 22000 ships a year pass through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden, where regional instability and “no-questions-asked” ransom payments have led to a dramatic rise in attacks on vessels by heavily armed Somali raiders in speedboats.
The Iran Deyanat was sailing in those waters on August 21, past the Horn of Africa and about 80 nautical miles southeast of Yemen, when it was boarded by about 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. They were alleged members of a crime syndicate said to be based at Eyl, a small fishing village in northern Somalia.
The ship is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military.
According to the US Treasury Department, the IRISL regularly falsifies shipping documents to hide the identity of end users, uses generic terms to describe shipments and operates under various covers to circumvent United Nations sanctions.
The ship set sail from Nanjing, China, at the end of July. According to its manifest, it was heading for Rotterdam where it would unload 42500 tons of iron ore and “industrial products” purchased by a German client.
At Eyl, the ship was secured by more pirates — about 50 on board, and another 50 on shore.
But within days those who had boarded the ship developed mysterious health trouble.
This was also confirmed by Hassan Allore Osman, minister of minerals and oil in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia.
He headed a delegation sent to Eyl when news of the toxic cargo and illnesses surfaced.
He told one news publication, The Long War Journal, that during the six days he had negotiated with the pirates, a number of them had become sick and died.
“That ship is unusual,” he was quoted as saying. “It is not carrying a normal shipment.”
The pirates did reveal that they had tried to inspect the ship’s cargo containers when some of them fell sick — but the containers were locked.
Osman’s delegation spoke to the ship’s captain and its engineer by cellphone, demanding to know more about the cargo.
Initially it was claimed the cargo contained “crude oil”; later it was said to be “minerals”.
And Mwangura has added: “Our sources say it contains chemicals, dangerous chemicals.”
But IRISL has denied that — and threatened legal action against Mwangura. The company has reportedly paid the pirates 200000 — the first of several “ransom instalments”, but that, too, has been denied.
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali pirates holding a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks reiterated their demands for a $20 million ransom on Tuesday and denied three of their number had died in a shootout.
A maritime group monitoring the situation had earlier said three pirates were killed in a shootout between rival gunmen on the MV Faina, seized six days ago in the most high-profile of a wave of hijackings off lawless Somalia this year.
“We want $20 million ransom from the ship and we are 53 Somalis,” said Sugule, the spokesman of the pirates onboard the Ukrainian ship, which is being shadowed by U.S. navy vessels.
“I will not talk about mediators or negotiation because we are at risk. I will not name where we are particularly but we are on the coast of Somalia,” he told Reuters, adding the pirates would stay on board until their demands were met.
The capture of the MV Faina has sparked controversy over the destination of its cargo and thrown a spotlight on rampant piracy in one of the world’s busiest shipping areas connecting Europe to Asia and the Middle East.
The East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, monitoring the hijacking via relatives of the crew and contacts with pirates, had earlier said that factions had argued over whether to free the cargo and crew.
But the pirates denied there had been any fighting.
“There are two American warships near us but we have neither fought nor communicated with them,” Sugule said.
Two other pirates and a regional leader had earlier told Reuters there had been no shootout. Sugule said one of the 21 crew members had died due to illness.
The U.S. navy has said the ship, which was heading for Kenya’s Mombasa port, was carrying T-72 tanks, grenade-launchers and ammunition ultimately bound for south Sudan via Kenya.
Kenya says the weaponry was for its own military.
Taking advantage of chaos on shore, where an Islamist-led insurgency has raged for nearly two years, Somali pirates have seized more than 30 ships this year and attacked many more.
RICH PIRATES
Most attacks have been in the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and north Somalia, a major global sea artery used by about 20,000 vessels a year heading to and from the Suez Canal. The pirates have also struck in the busy Indian Ocean waters off south Somalia.
With U.S. and French military bases in the area, many are unhappy with the lack of international action.
“If civil aircraft were being hijacked on a daily basis, the response of governments would be very different,” top shipping trade bodies and transport unions said in a joint statement.
“Yet ships, which are the lifeblood of the global economy, are seemingly out of sight and out of mind.”
As well as using ransom money to build new homes and take new wives, the increasingly rich pirates have bought speedboats, satellite phones and other equipment to aid their trade.
“There is a striking similarity between the actions of these unscrupulous pirates and the activity in ‘blood diamonds’ in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the civil wars in these countries,” said U.N. envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah.
“No ship, big or small, civil or military, is spared. With the seizure of the Ukrainian ship, a new line has been crossed.”
U.S. analyst J. Peter Pham, of Madison University, called for a united international naval response, more attention to solving Somalia’s civil conflict, and better protection equipment on board commercial vessels.
“Many have done little aside from being prepared to pay ransoms which only perpetuate the cycle of violence,” he wrote in a new report on the Somali piracy phenomenon. (Additional reporting by Stefano Ambrogi in London, Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi and Abdiqani Hassan in Bosasso; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
UNITED NATIONS: Ethiopia’s Woyanne foreign minister on Monday called for the U.N. to deploy peacekeepers to neighboring Somalia, where Islamic militants appear to be gaining strength.
Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin’s comments came just days after an attack on an African Union peacekeepers’ base in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, killed at least 11 civilians.
Mesfin urged the U.N. Security Council to deploy a peacekeeping mission “as soon as possible,” or provide resources to strengthen the current AU mission, which includes about 2,600 peacekeepers.
He praised the AU peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi, who arrived in Somalia last year.
“It is never too late for others to follow their example,” Mesfin told world leaders during his speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
Ethiopia Woyanne, whose troops helped push the Islamists from the Somali capital in December 2006, says that it wants to withdraw.
A U.N. peacekeeping force including American troops met disaster in Somalia in 1993, when militiamen shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters and battled U.S. troops, killing 18. The battle was recounted in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”
A popular restaurant manager shot by a longtime friend Sunday night says he has no idea what provoked the attack.
According to witnesses, the gunman entered Meskerem Ethiopian restaurant as usual and greeted the manager, Muhaba Mohamed, with a hug. Everything seemed normal between the longtime friends, according to people who knew them.
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“I know both of them, they grow up together, they’re like one family,” said Rezene Sium, a friend of Mohamed’s.
Sium said he was outside at the time of the shooting, but witnesses told him there was no provocation. At some point, the gunman drew the pistol and fired one shot in Mohamed’s neck. After shooting Mohamed, the man fired two shots in the air and then shot himself in the head, police and witnesses said.
Several people at the bar attempted to stop the gunman, but the efforts were unsuccessful, according to Graham.
Sium says he’s talked to the wounded restaurant manager who is recovering at Howard University Hospital. Sium said he talked to Mohamed, who has no idea why his friend shot him.
D.C. police say they have no plans to close the restaurant or suspend its liquor license because it has no history of violence.
Two people were shot, one of them fatally, inside a popular Adams Morgan restaurant late last night. A few hours earlier, two other men were shot and seriously wounded not far away in a separate incident in a part of Northwest where gunfire also seemed unexpected.
The second of the two incidents occurred about 11 p.m. after what police said was an argument inside Meskerem Ethiopian Restaurant, in the 2400 block of 18th Street NW. The block that is at the heart of one of the city’s major dining and entertainment areas.
In that incident, according to initial police accounts, one of the two men shot the other, and then turned the gun on himself.
An employee of the restaurant said she heard a man with what appeared to be a small silver-colored handgun say “everybody don’t worry” after the initial shots.
“I was scared maybe he would kill me,” the employee said.
The man with the gun was pronounced dead at 11:38 p.m. at Washington Hospital Center, authorities said.
The man he shot was also taken to the hospital center. Details of his condition were not available early today, but authorities said he was still breathing.
The subject of the argument could not be learned immediately.
When ambulances and other emergency vehicles arrived on 18th Street late last night, among those who tried to find out what was happening was the manager of another restaurant.
Suleyman Gunes of the Left Bank said he saw people who apparently had been inside Meskerem standing silently outside. They “looked shocked” and sad, he said.
Elissa Bernal, of Silver Spring, who was visiting Adams Morgan with a friend said, “I don’t think I’m coming here again.”
Earlier yesterday, two men were shot and severely wounded near 14th and T streets NW, in a gentrifying section of the city where such incidents have long been rare.
The gunfire occurred about 4:20 p.m. in an alley near the intersection, authorities said.
One man was taken to a hospital with a chest wound. Despite being hit in the head, the other apparently drove himself to Howard University Hospital in a car with bullet holes in the windshield, said D.C. police Inspector Jacob Kishter.
Details were not available last night. Kishter said police knew of no motive: “We’re trying to figure that out.”
The site, in an area that is becoming increasingly known for dining, entertainment and upscale housing, struck many as surprising.
“It’s pretty unusual,” Kishter said.
Ramon Estrada, who lives in the 1400 block of T Street and is an advisory neighborhood commissioner, also described the shooting as a “very unusual” event on a pleasant autumn afternoon.
It’s a “great neighborhood,” he said. “We were all surprised.”
Another resident said lesser crime, including car theft, is not rare there. But a serious shooting was, she said.
One former T Street resident now living in the Chevy Chase section of upper Northwest said, “I am as amazed that it would happen there as I would be here.”
