The Washington DC-based Addis Dimts radio reports that a group of armed men has attacked Woyanne targets in North Shoa. Click below to listen [forward to 13:00].
[podcast]http://www.ethiopianreview.info/audio/addis_dimts07-27-08.mp3[/podcast]
The entire executive committee of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) has been relieved of its duties and replaced with a provisional executive council today.
Majority of the OLF national council members has passed a vote of “No Confidence” on the executive committee in order take the organization out of the current paralysis and stagnation due to an irreconcilable disagreement inside the executive committee.
The main source of the disagreement revolved around the vision and performance of the organization. The new OLF leadership is said to be committed to advancing the interest of Oromos, as well as all Ethiopians.
The new leadership will focus on intensifying the armed struggle against the Meles regime and playing a key role in unifying and democratizing Ethiopia in collaboration with other opposition forces, according to Ethiopian Review sources.
Leaders of Ginbot 7 Movement and other forces have been briefed of this development by the new OLF leadership.
There had been an ongoing and heated internal debate inside the OLF leadership for quite a while over strategy and the overall political platform of the organization, leading to today’s revolutionary change.
Key leaders of the change that is taking place inside OLF include Dima Nego, founding member and first chairman; General Kemal Gelchu, chairman of the OLF forces high command; Ahmed Hussein, founding member and former Minister of Foreign Trade; Lencho Letta, former deputy secretary general of OLF; General Hailu Gonfa, head of the OLF army’s training and deployment; Lencho Bati, former OLF spokesperson; Hassan Hussein, head of foreign relations; and Ibrahim Mume, coordinator of OLF supporters and members in the Diaspora.
Despite its military and political strength, OLF had been unable to wage a consistent and forceful campaign against the regime of Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne). Oromos are currently one of the most persecuted peoples in Ethiopia. The overwhelming majority of prisons in Ethiopia are filled by Oromos who are suspected of supporting OLF. Most Ethiopian refugees in Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, Somalia, Yemen and other countries are Oromos. And yet, OLF has been unable to protect Oromos from all these atrocities even though it has a professional army, and an experienced political leadership.
The new OLF leadership strives to change that and work to end the Woyanne brutal regime in collaboration with all opposition forces, according to ER sources close to the OLF.
As you know, Ethiopian refugees are enduring very deplorable conditions in several countries. Our refugees in Yemen say they are treated like a “trash,” as are those in Libya prisons. Many die on the way as they escaped political persecution or the grinding poverty in our country. To raise global awareness over the plight of Ethiopian refugees, concerned Ethiopians have launched Save Ethiopian Refugee International (SERI).
SERI has now launched a petition drive to persuade UNHCR to treat Ethiopian refugees as fellow human beings, and give them due legal protection.
Please sign the petition today. Click here to sign.
EDITOR’S NOTE: When it comes to Africa, news agencies like Reuters do not question reports provided to them by the corrupt governments. Revenue from coffee in Ethiopia, for example, is stated as $525 million. This figure is a fabrication, according to ER sources. The correct figure could be as high as $800 million. Millions of dollars are an unaccounted for because they were siphoned of by the Meles crime family.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s export revenues hit a record $1.5 billion in 2007/08 (July-June), just shy of the official target, while the import bill was $4.7 billion, a top trade official said on Wednesday.
In the previous financial year, Ethiopia paid out $3.9 billion for imports ranging from industrial machines to fuel, said Girma Gelelcha, head of the Trade Promotion Department.
“The 2007/08 export revenue registered a 25 percent growth over the $1.2 billion earned in 2006/07 but failed to meet the planned income of $1.6-$1.8 billion,” Girma told Reuters.
Ethiopia, which depends heavily on development aid, says its farm-based economy has been growing by 10 percent for the past five years and hopes agriculture will help end pervasive poverty among its 81 million people.
Coffee was Ethiopia’s top export in 2007/08, earning $525.2 million, followed by oil seeds worth $221.1 million, cereals at $141.6 million and flowers at $111.7 million.
Khat, narcotic leaves that are popular in Horn of Africa countries, earned the country $108.3 million, leather and leather products bagged $101 million while gold fetched $94.1 million, Girma said.
The leading importers of Ethiopian goods, especially coffee, were Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Netherlands and Japan.
Ethiopia has received some $755 million from western donors in loans and grants this year to expand sectors such as agriculture and hydropower generation. China has also been investing heavily and plans a $713 million industrial park in Ethiopia.
Addis Ababa
The air is thick with pollution and the spicy sweet smell of eucalyptus wood smoke. You’re as likely to see a sophisticated professional walking down the street with a briefcase as you are a peasant wrapped in a dirty gabi running a small herd of oxen. Or goats.
Blue and white mini-bus taxi cabs jammed with people behind steamy windows careen down the streets next to miniature cars 50 years old and still running.
Our SUV stops and children or disabled people or just poor people rush to the window saying, “Birr, money, money, birr…” People everywhere walking, carrying impossibly large loads on their backs or their heads, pushing wheelbarrows full of tomatoes, or firewood, or old shoes. Dirty feet in broken rubber sandals, mud sidewalks. Tiny walk-up corrugated metal stores selling spices in plastic bags. Or meat. (That’s a horsehair fly swatter the meat seller has in his hand there.)
Scenes that didn’t make sense. An ancient sewing machine with a man sewing dozens of burlap sacks together – right in the city.
The view of the neighborhood across the street from our 4 star international hotel window.
Source: Susan at homecake
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council is planning to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border between Eritrea and Ethiopia after Eritrea forced out most of the U.N. troops, diplomats said on Tuesday.
The mandate for the 1,700-strong force expires on Thursday and a draft resolution circulated at the United Nations by Belgium calls for an end to the mission.
The resolution, which council diplomats said would be put to a vote on Wednesday, calls on the two sides “to show maximum restraint and refrain from any threat or use of force against each other, and to avoid provocative military activities.”
The United Nations withdrew its peacekeeping force from the border in February after Eritrea cut off fuel supplies. The force had been in place since 2000 after a two-year war between the Horn of Africa neighbours that killed some 70,000 people.
Eritrea is angry that the United Nations has been unable to enforce a ruling by an independent boundary commission awarding the bulk of disputed border territory to Eritrea.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned in April that the withdrawal of the peacekeepers could spark renewed conflict on the 1,000-km (620-mile) frontier.
Eritrea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Araya Desta, told Reuters Asmara did not want a military confrontation with Addis Ababa Woyanne but was fed up with what he described as an illegal occupation of Eritrean territory.
“We have a right to take our land, to do anything possible to take back our territories,” Desta said. “I don’t envisage at this stage any use of military force to do that.”
The Brussels-based think-tank International Crisis Group said last month the armies of the feuding neighbours were “less than a football pitch” apart, risking a catastrophic new war.
Asmara says a November 2007 “virtual demarcation” of the border by the now-defunct boundary commission ended the issue. Ethiopia Woyanne says Eritrea is illegally massing troops on the border in a supposedly demilitarized zone and it wants to discuss the border demarcation further.
The Eritrea-Ethiopia dispute is part of a set of regional tensions that extends into Somalia, where Ethiopian Woyanne troops are supporting an interim government, and into Djibouti, whose forces clashed with Eritrean troops last month.
(Editing by Chris Wilson)