BAHRAIN — FIFTY-SIX women suspected of working as prostitutes have been arrested in two hotel raids. Most of the women are housemaids trying to earn extra cash, Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) acting director general Brigadier Tariq bin Daina said. The women are of different nationalities and many are in the country illegally, he added.
“After investigation, the police concluded that most of the arrested women work as housemaids,” said Brig bin Daina, who is also acting director general of Crime Detection and Forensic Science.
“Many are illegal with expired visas and some are runaways.
“We will now investigate who is behind the racket and those who assist in the illegal activity.”
The GULF DAILY NEWS (GDN) has confirmed that one of the hotels raided was the Concorde International Hotel in Gudaibiya.
Forty-two women were arrested in that hotel alone on Friday night.
A spokesman for Future Hotel Management, which runs the hotel, confirmed that Labour Ministry and Interior Ministry officials raided its premises.
However, he denied there was prostitution taking place inside the hotel.
“Six Ethiopian waitresses who work at our coffee bar were taken into custody, despite their legal status and all papers being in order,” he said.
“These women, who are new to Bahrain, were scared when they saw the police and tried to run.
“We can’t blame them for it.
“They were caught and the officials told us that even though they have proper papers they will have to be taken.
“We were told that the women will be released in a couple of days.”
The hotel has sublet most of its services and claimed it was not responsible for activities inside outlets managed by other companies.
“We have sublet all of the hotel’s outlets except room-service and a coffee bar,” said the spokesman.
“So we are not aware and don’t have any control over what happens in the other outlets.”
He also said an Indian woman who was visiting the hotel with her husband was also arrested during the raid, despite protests by a hotel official.
“There is no logic to this raid,” claimed the spokesman.
“Not every woman who enters a hotel is a prostitute.
“The police also took with them a female guest who was at the coffee bar with her husband.
“When the hotel’s public relations officer objected to this and explained the woman was not even a staff member, but a customer, the police said that she will have to be taken anyway for being there.
“The helpless husband could do nothing but watch his wife being taken away.
“We are trying to change and renovate the hotel and it is not fair for authorities to do this.
“What upsets us most is that these women who were taken away are legal residents with all their papers in order.”
The case has now been referred to the Public Prosecution.
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — Bombs have exploded in two hotels in a southern Ethiopian town, killing three people and wounding five, security and government officials said Wednesday.
“Two bombs blew up in two hotels last night. The second blast occured just three minutes after the first,” said Tamrat Abera, police chief for the town of Negelle Borena.
Information ministry spokesman Zemedkum Tekle had earlier mentioned only one blast taking place on Wednesday and gave a casualty toll of three killed and five wounded.
Negelle Borena is a small town located 595 kilometres (320 miles) south of the capital Addis Ababa, in the Oromo region, where rebels have fought for years over claims of marginalisation by the government.
“Some had their legs blown off. There was also serious damage to private and public property,” Tamrat told AFP. “We are undertaking a massive manhunt as we have been given details of what the bomber looked like.”
He said that the first bomb went off in a hotel called Kidane Mihret and the second in Shuferoch hotel, just a few yards away.
No armed group has yet claimed responsibility for the bombings.
The twin bomb attack came as the regime of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi celebrated Wednesday the 17th anniversary of former president Mengistu Haile Mariam’s ouster.
On May 20, a bomb went off on a minibus near the foreign ministry in Addis Ababa, killing six people, including a US national.
The authorities, who made several arrests, blamed last week’s explosion on Eritrea and the Oromo Liberation Front.
Three people were also killed and 18 wounded in bomb blasts at petrol stations in Addis Ababa on April 14.
JEDDAH — Officials of the Passport Department rounded up more than 50 violators of residence and labor regulations in late-night operations in two working class neighborhoods of Jeddah yesterday.
The arrested included those who forged iqamas (residence permits), health cards and other official documents. The officials also arrested Filipino, Syrian and Chadian nationals who were living in the Kingdom legally but were employing or sheltering illegal residents. Housemaids that had run away from their sponsors were among those arrested.
Immigration officials carried out the operations in the Nuzlah and Faisaliah districts after midnight because most of the violators preferred to work in the night for fear of detection during the daytime.
The officials raided a number of illegally run car workshops, electronic repair shops, CD copying shops, beauty salons and tailoring houses. Ethiopian women peddlers of medicated oils and incenses were also arrested.
The officials also arrested illegally staying laborers hiding in some old buildings. While a few of them disappeared in the darkness, several of them were found hiding under beds and inside shelves. Some women were seen pleading for mercy from the officials saying that they were not committing a crime but earning the money to feed their children back home.
Brig. Muhammad Al-Asmari, director of the Passports Department for the Makkah province, supervised the operations.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It is not new for Meles to bite the hands that feed him. We have seen what he did to Eritreans after they helped him come to power. Without the money he is currently getting from the World Bank, this tin-pot dictator cannot survive one week. But it is good to see that he is attacking the World Bank — an organization that is a major source of Africa’s misery.
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Ethiopia’s tribal dictator Meles Zenawi on Tuesday denounced economic policies imposed on African countries in the 1980s by the World Bank and charged that they rather delayed the continent’s development.
“Economic liberalization policies were a failure and delayed Africa’s development. These choices neglected investments in infrastructure, education and training,” he said in the Japanese city of Yokohama during an international symposium on Africa’s development organized by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Zenawi urged African countries to conduct “more pragmatic policies” to accelerate their economic growth by investing in infrastructure to ensure their sustainable development.
“There is no sustainable economic growth without reliable and performing infrastructure. Over the past few years, African countries have been achieving economic growth, but the inadequacy of infrastructure is likely to ruin their efforts,” the Ethiopian Prime Minister said.
“Our partners are exerting pressure on us, but they do not leave us room for man oeuvre to enable us to design and work for our own development.”
Zenawi hailed Japan’s support to Africa, urging the continent to build on its economic model.
“In Ethiopia, we built on Asia’s economic experience in general,” he said before a large audience made up of African and Asian delegates who are in Japan to attend the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on Africa’s Development.
The views of the Ethiopian dictator are shared by the other organizers of the symposium, namely the former president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Ronald Kaberuka, the head of state of Tanzania and current chairman of the African Union (AU), Kikwete Jakaya Mrisho, and JICA Director, Mrs Sadako Ogata.
Mrs Ogata deplored the lack of investment in the field of infrastructure, saying JICA had not sufficiently taken into account the importance of infrastructure in development policies.
The four organizers of the symposium stressed the importance of the private sect or, as it must play a major role in economic development in Africa.
“Economic growth should not be reduced to mere figures. It must be felt by the population,” the former Mozambican president added.
The President of the AfDB, Kaberuka, said African countries must clearly define their economic policy and work by order of priority.
“There is need to reform the bureaucracy to modernize it and make it more competent,” he said.
“We cannot do everything at the same time. We must move in stages,” Kaberuka said, advocating a reform of the bureaucracy to modernize it in a bid to make it mo r e competent.
Ethiopian Television Network interviews Ethiopian Review publisher Elias Kifle. This is Part I of a 4-part video. The rest of the interview is available at ETN.
By Peter Clottey, VOA — Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says the country would not be a haven for criminals under its leadership. This comes after President Robert Mugabe’s government reportedly said former Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam will be protected in Zimbabwe despite being sentenced to death by an Ethiopian High Court. Mengistu, has lived in exile in Zimbabwe since he was overthrown in 1991, is unlikely extradited to Ethiopia to face punishment unless Mugabe loses next month’s election run-off. The Ethiopian government has however, not formally requested Mengistu to be extradited. From Harare, MDC international affairs secretary Eliphas Mukonoweshuro tells reporter Peter Clottey that the imminent MDC government would review the case of the former Ethiopian leader before taking any action.
“The position of the MDC is that it will accept people running away from other countries seeking refuge in Zimbabwe. If they are not needed by any country for crimes committed, then they would be free to stay in Zimbabwe. But Zimbabwe can never be a haven of criminals under an MDC government. If Mengistu has not committed any crime anywhere to the satisfaction of the incoming MDC government, then he has nothing to fear at all,” Mukonoweshuro pointed out.
He said the opposition party would review the case against the former Ethiopian leader to determine its next line of action.
“When the MDC comes to power, the MDC government will study the case pertaining to Mr. Mengistu. If it is satisfied that Mr. Mengistu has not committed any crime anywhere, of course, his refugee status would stand. But if Mr. Mengistu has committed crimes anywhere in any part of the world of course the MDC government would take that into consideration in deciding whether Mr. Mengistu has to remain as a guest in Zimbabwe or not,” he said.
Mukonoweshuro said it was important for the party to ascertain the full scope of the case against the former Ethiopian leader.
“We cannot prejudge the situation, and as a movement and a political party, at the present moment we do not have the facts pertaining to Mr. Mengistu’s case. But what we are saying is that the MDC government through the ministry of justice would have to study the papers, would have to convince ourselves whether or not there is a genuine case against Mr. Mengistu. And if there are no genuine cases he could stay, but if there is a genuine case, then of course the MDC government would not allow the country to become a haven for criminals who are wanted elsewhere for serious crimes,” Mukonoweshuro pointed out.
He described as ludicrous accusations by the government that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is a sellout.
“It’s very unfortunate because these are allegations, which are made without any substantiation at all. Mr. Museka’s statement did not chronicle where the MDC in particular and where the MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai has sold out to anybody. We have never been a government of this country and therefore there is no record to sustain those allegations,” he said.
Mukonoweshuro said the government is using the tactics of division to divert attention from the suffering of the masses.
“This is the tragedy in Zimbabwe. Instead of focusing on the issues that can resolve the crisis, people resort to mudslinging. It’s time that Zimbabweans, it’s time that SADC (Southern African Development Community) and Africa realize that no amount of mudslinging could ever even begin to punt in place the ingredients to resolve the crisis that has engulfed this country for the past 10 years,” Mukonoweshuro noted.
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Mengistu Death Sentence Kindles Expectations for His Extradition
By Howard Lesser, VOA — Ethiopia’s supreme court is awaiting confirmation from President Girma Woldegiorgis of this week’s death sentence against former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. The court overturned a previous life sentence on genocide charges for the Marxist lieutenant colonel and 17 of his associates, who were first punished last year after a decade-long trial. Donald Levine is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Chicago and the author of two widely cited books on Ethiopia, “Wax and Gold” and “Greater Ethiopia”. He says that Ethiopians believe the current government has a strong political stake in the new sentence.
“The current regime believes that it needs to be seen as very strong. They believe that the demonstration against them in June, 2005, following the election called for brutal, extreme, repressive measures and ever since, they felt they needed to be seen as very tough. The prosecution appealed only in July the sentence that had been handed down in January of the previous year. I’m really surprised and bothered that it took so long to bring this trial to conclusion,” he noted.
Mengistu overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and assumed absolute control after a bloody coup in 1977. In 1991, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe offered him refuge in Zimbabwe, where he has lived ever since. With the 84-year-old Mugabe seriously challenged with political changes in Zimbabwe after next month’s (June 27) presidential election run-off, Donald Levine sees a possible new opening for Ethiopians hoping to achieve Mengistu’s extradition.
“Not right now, but if President Mugabe is replaced, then his successor may well extradite him if requested to. If the evidence is reviewed, I think if a new government comes to be in Zimbabwe, that they would be wanting to abide by the standards of international law and would consider that he should be extradited,” said Levine.
For a new generation of Ethiopians, many of whom were born after the fall of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime, the process of coming to terms with the return and execution of an internationally recognized brutal war criminal could epitomize a momentous national experience. Professor Levine says that even though young Ethiopians lack direct personal contact with the troubled past, they have without doubt incorporated the tragedy into their sense of national consciousness.
“Those who were not born at the time, I’m sure have learned from their families about what happened during those years and I don’t know a single Ethiopian at home or abroad who doesn’t regard his (Mengistu’s) regime as absolutely horrible. Probably, almost everyone, even if generally they don’t believe in the death penalty, would say, well in this case, it’s deserved,” he pointed out.
The test of whether Africans living outside of Ethiopia, especially in Zimbabwe, will pass up seizing an opportunity for international justice or pursue it may rest in the hands of Zimbabwe voters and the Mugabe government. University of Chicago sociologist Donald Levine concludes there is no question that the crimes of the Mengistu era should not be overlooked by Zimbabweans.
“No way. The reason they’ve given him a home there is that he helped Zimbabwe during their liberation struggle. But on the merits of his own case and the horrible crimes of which he was guilty, I see that they would certainly have no reason to protect him any further,” he said.
As for Ethiopians’ stake in the Zimbabwe crisis, Professor Levine says he thinks Ethiopians would like to see Zimbabweans overcome President Mugabe’s resistance of the democratic process, much as many of them would like to see greater reform in their own country. In addition to wanting President Mugabe ousted for that reason, he says, they are also interested in seeing Mengistu Haile Mariam extradited back to Ethiopia to face justice.
