(EMF) — Ginbot 7 Movement for Justice, Freedom and Democracy (Ginbot 7) is about to launch a fund raising campaign, its public relation official told EMF. According to the official, the fund will be used to carryout opposition activities in Ethiopia.
In addition to its online fund-raising program using PayPal.com (an online payments service), funds are being raised through several activities, including Internet forums.
Meanwhile, Ginbot 7 leader Dr. Berhanu Nega’s interview with EMF has been re-published in Ethiopia on the monthly Awramba Times Magazine. Sources said, over 10,000 copies were sold-out within an hour after the magazine hit newstands on Friday morning.
BEIJING — Matthew Tegenkamp of the United States has run the fastest time in the preliminary round of the Men’s 5000m at the National Stadium.
Tegenkamp’s time of 13:37.36 minutes put him ahead of Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge at 13:37.50 and Ethiopian Tariku Bekele who ran in 13:37.63.
Kipchoge is renowned for performing on the big stage, something he proved by winning gold at the 2003 World Championships and silver at the same event in 2007.
This round one result will reinforce Tariku Bekele’s standing as one of the pre-race favorites. The reigning World Indoor Champion sits second on the world lists for 2008 with 12:52.45. Beijing was the site of his World Junior Championship victory in 2006.
Tariku’s older brother, Kenenisa Bekele has also qualified for the final and will aiming to win the 5000m / 10,000m double and deny Bernard Lagat of the United States the chance to win another international title in the Men’s 5000m in the final on Saturday, August 23.
Lagat will want to redeem himself after a sub-standard performance in the 1500m with a repeat of his victory in the event at the 2007 world championships.
BEIJING (AFP) — Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele on Wednesday cruised into the final of the men’s Olympic 5000 metres to keep his bid for an elusive long-distance running double on course.
Bekele finished third in his heat and advanced to Friday’s final where he will seek to emulate the 5000/10,000m double last achieved by compatriot Miruts Yifter in the 1980 Moscow Games.
The Ethiopian, who won his second consecutive 10,000m Olympic gold on Sunday, was happy to coast along at the back of the pack as Swiss Philipp Bandi set the early, slow pace.
Abdelaziz Ennaji el Idrissi of Morocco and Belgium’s Monder Rizki took up the running with four laps to go, before Kenyan-born US runner Bernard Lagat hit the front.
James Kwalia C’Kurui then darted away, taking a 20-metre lead into the final lap.
But the Kenyan-born Qatari faded in the final straight and was caught by Lagat, who failed even to make the 1500m final in his own ambitious bid for a double.
“I proved to my fans that I’m doing my best to win a medal in the final,” said Lagat.
“I’m happy I won. I wasn’t going out there to win but I thought when I was leading ‘why not just go and win it?’
“I missed the 1500m so to win in the 5000m is my only objective.”
Kenyan Thomas Pkemei Longosiwa finished in the fourth and final automatic qualifying berth ahead of Australian Craig Mottram.
After his speedy breakaway, C’Kurui fired out a warning to his rivals from Africa.
“If it’s a fast race, I will go fast,” he warned. “If it is a slow race I will win. It’s not just about Kenya and Ethiopia for this event.”
American Matthew Tegenkamp was a surprise winner of the first heat, winning the race to the line in a five-man sprint to clock 13:37.36.
Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge, Bekele’s younger brother Tariku and Eritrean Kidane Tadesse followed him home.
“I didn’t want to let the race get away from me like it did in the 1500m,” said Tegenkamp. “I had to be aggressive and I am happy I won.
“I felt strong and pushed it all the way, I had some problems with my left achilles and I lost a few weeks of training, it’s good now it has been looked after well by the USA staff.”
The second heat winner was Edwin Chruiyot Soi of Kenya, who outsprinted Moses Ndiema Kipsiro of Uganda to the line, with Ethiopian Abreham Cherkos finishing third.
Bahrain’s Rashid Ramzi, who won the 1500m on Tuesday, elected not to race.
(Doctors Without Borders) — Mumishene was not yet two years old. The doctors in the intensive nutrition center at Shinshicho had struggled long and hard, even resuscitating him several times. But on a Sunday morning, as day broke, this little boy died. A low keening funeral song surrounded the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) vehicle as it bore Mumishene and his mother back to their village. The family wept as they learned the sad news and soon they were joined by the whole of the community. His fragile body shrouded in a few blankets, they carried Mumishene through an Eden of dark green maize and lighter green banana leaves.
Why, in the midst of this symphony of colors, with the life-force of nature burgeoning all around, are children visibly dying of malnutrition? Why are tragedies like Mumishene’s afflicting this apparently prosperous region of southern Ethiopia?
Samuel, an Ethiopian member of MSF’s team at Tunto, in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), explains: “Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking a lot with the parents of malnourished children. They tell me that for five or six months there was not a drop of rain. Hunger started to set in. Some of the farmers around here managed to grow a scant crop of ginger to sell to traders, but they’ve no food to eat. The staples have become very expensive at the market. Compare the prices with last year—100kgs of maize, for example, has shot up from around 360 to 800 Ethiopian Birr ($37 to $82 US). The same with fertilizer—it is simply too expensive for the farmers. Now that we’ve got some decent rainfall, the maize and other crops are growing again. But we’ll have to wait until the next harvest, in September or October, before we see any sort of improvement”.
In urgent need of food aid MSF started an emergency relief operation in the southern Ethiopian regions of Oromiya and SNNPR on May 13, 2008. Since then, the teams have been constantly reassessing the needs in this area. Confronted by rapidly escalating numbers of severely malnourished patients, MSF has set up a total of 51 outpatient nutrition centers and five hospitalization centers. For children suffering from moderate malnutrition, other centers offering supplementary nutritional feeding were rapidly set up. By early August, more than 20,000 patients with severe acute malnutrition had been admitted into this nutrition program and about 8,500 children suffering from moderate malnutrition had received nutritional and medical help.
“The patients in MSF’s care are just the tip of the iceberg,” explains Rosa Crestani, MSF’s emergency coordinator. “We are treating the most severely ill patients, but many others are suffering from hunger. They have exhausted their food stocks and right now they depend totally on food aid brought in from elsewhere. Food aid urgently needs to get through to these people so that they don’t slip into acute malnutrition as well”.
In the Siraro district of Oromiya region, MSF has contributed to reduce the occurrence of severe malnutrition by taking a comprehensive approach. Carrying out both therapeutic feeding programs and carefully targeted distributions has brought the number of patients in MSF’s programs down from 1,251 to 971 over the last four weeks.
“An organization like MSF has neither the capacity nor sufficient stocks of food aid to employ this strategy in all the affected areas,” says Crestani. The teams have opened some supplementary nutritional programs where every two weeks families receive cooking oil and 14kgs of flour.
“Many are so desperate they’ll do anything!”
MSF’s temporary rural centers are literally besieged by villagers. In the village of Ajora, in SNNPR, dozens of children wait barefoot in the mud, shivering in the freezing rain. Several are admitted onto MSF’s nutrition program, but many are turned away. “It’s very difficult to send children back home because they’re not malnourished enough, when you can plainly see that they are hungry and that their whole family needs help,” says Dr. David de Souza, simultaneously trying to control the crowd and identify the patients at greatest risk. “Many are so desperate, they’ll do anything to receive a little food.”
Some patients cover vast distances to come to MSF’s centers. “We even have patients who speak the language of distant regions like Wolayita or Hadyia,” continues de Souza. “These are areas where the humanitarian needs are comparable to here, but where the amount of aid is clearly still insufficient.”
To reach people who have not yet received assistance, MSF teams are still exploring new areas, like the Amhara region in the north, or the Somali region in the east of the country. MSF also set up new feeding programs in Afar region in the north, and around Chencha, Dita, Duna, and Bursa in SNNPR. Alarming rates of severe malnutrition had been reported in these areas.
As things stand, the agricultural, economic, and climatic conditions mean that there could be a gradual improvement in some areas, while in other areas the situation could continue to deteriorate. This is exactly what is happening on the highlands of SNNPR, where the crops will probably not be harvested until October. MSF teams will have to continually adapt their activities as the needs change, closing some centers and opening other new ones.
The last drops of the rain shower fall to the ground at Ajora. Shafts of light pierce the lowering clouds, illuminating the lush green of the fields. Southern Ethiopia seen like this is a million miles from the clichés of famine—dust-bowl landscapes and the white bones of dead cattle. But the crowds jostling at the entrances of MSF’s clinics are a sharp reminder that even here, there is a desperate shortage of food.
At the intensive nutrition center at Shinshicho, the regular blips of the artificial respirator show that death is never far away. But MSF doctor Karianne Flaatten, an intensive care specialist, prefers to dwell on the children who will make it through. Here, as she well knows, they are the overwhelming majority. “This 15-year-old boy weighed no more than 20kgs,” she says. “He was like a skeleton—he couldn’t even open his eyes. For two weeks we were here at his bedside every day. Eventually, he started to look like a boy again. It really made me so happy; a shadow had transformed into a human being! Malnourished children always look somehow old and sad, and so adult. But with good nutritional treatment, before long they start to smile. You can start to look these children in the eye again.”
MOGADISHU (Xinhua) — Fourteen people including four Ethiopian soldiers Woyanne mercenaries were killed and 20 others wounded on Wednesday in separate clashes between insurgents and Somali government forces and foreign forces in south and central Somalia, witnesses and local media reports said.
Somali insurgents launched an attack on the Ugandan contingent of the African Union peacekeepers in K4 area in the south of Mogadishu, the capital. An exchange of heavy artillery fire between the two sides continued for nearly an hour.
“Three people died and four others were wounded in our neighborhood,” said Ali Hassan, a witness in K4 area where the fighting was concentrated.
A number of stray shells and bullets hit in neighborhoods far away from the battle areas in south Mogadishu where two more civilians were killed and five others were wounded, local media reported.
Major Bridgye Bahuko, spokesman for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said the attack was carried out by what he called “anti-peace elements,” adding that his contingent suffered no fatalities.
Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack which comes a day after UN Security Council extended for another six months the mandate of the AMISOM peacekeepers who now number nearly 2,600 out of an 8,000-strong AU peacekeeping force authorized last year.
Separately, two Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers were reportedly killed by an insurgent ambush in Gubta neighborhood in northwest Mogadishu after the troops fanned into the area.
Witnesses said two other Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers were also killed in grenade attack in the central Somali town of Beledweyn where sources said two civilians have also died while three others were wounded in the attack by unknown assailant against an Ethiopian Woyanne army checkpoint.
Meanwhile in the southern port city of Kismanyo, three people died and eight others were wounded after a grenade attack on a pickup truck used by local militia missed its target. Gun battle between suspected insurgents and local militia ensued and spread to other parts of the city before it died down.
Bellissima’s owner, Hayat Ahmed
[Photo: Tesfalem Woldes/IRIN]
ADDIS ABABA (IRIN) — Bellissima, on bustling Gabon Street in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, could be just another upmarket café, except that each order comes with a packet of ‘Sensation’ condoms, and is served in ‘Sensation’ cups by staff wearing ‘Sensation’ T-shirts.
“I wanted to link business with a message for sexually active people,” Bellissima’s owner, Hayat Ahmed, 26, told IRIN/PlusNews. “I am the brand ambassador for ‘Sensation’ condoms in Ethiopia, and I want to spread the message that condoms can protect you from HIV/AIDS.”
Hayat, a former beauty queen, has been involved in HIV/AIDS campaigns since she was crowned Miss Ethiopia in 2003 and subsequently named an HIV/AIDS ambassador.
Her face adorns billboards and she regularly appears on Ethiopia’s only television station promoting condom use. “When I walk down the road even children recognise me,” she said. “But they do not call me Hayat; they call me ‘Sensation’.”
Modelled on ‘condom bars’ in Asia, Bellissima handed out six boxes of condoms, each containing 48 packets of three-in-a-pack, within two days of opening its doors.
The free condoms have elicited mixed reactions, with older patrons tending not to like the idea, while younger ones love it and sometimes ask for a second packet.
“We have had young people come in and ask ‘Is it true that you actually give free condoms?’ and when we say, ‘yes’, their faces brighten up and they quickly order,” said one waiter. “But we have also had people who get shocked when we bring the bill with a condom, some saying we are promoting immorality.”
Guests do not have to take the packs home when they leave the restaurant. “It is your choice to take it or leave it,” Hayat said. “We also plan to set up condom vending machines in the toilets.”
Her campaign is supported by social marketing groups such as the non-profit organisation, DKT-Ethiopia, which sold almost 60 million condoms in 2007 and also launched a coffee-flavoured version of Sensation condoms. Ethiopia is widely thought to be the birthplace of coffee and is drunk nationally.
Hayat intends to open more cafés in the capital and other towns, and continue promoting various anti-HIV strategies, including abstinence and faithfulness. She might even expand the ‘condom bars’ concept to other African countries.
“A lot of people in Ethiopia are ashamed of talking about or using condoms,” said. “Yet some companies put condoms in their toilets and when you go to look, each day, the boxes are empty. I don’t care if the condoms are used behind closed doors or in public – as long as many people use them.”
Ethiopia’s HIV prevalence is estimated at over two percent among sexually active people aged 15 to 49. A report by the Federal HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office in March noted that between 2000 and 2005, condom use among males increased from 30.3 percent to 51.9 percent, and among females from 13.4 percent to 23.6 percent.
According to Ethiopian government data, half the public sector institutions and 20 percent of private businesses have mainstreamed HIV/AIDS prevention in their operational policies.
However, Philopos Petros, head of the Ethiopian Civil Service College’s HIV/AIDS management unit, noted that “There are still educated people exposed to HIV and dying of AIDS,” and said greater awareness was necessary.
“One person cannot change the world, but I want to make a contribution,” Hayat said. “I have a name and the will, and I will use that.”
