The two masked robbers saunter into a corner market in LeDroit Park, each pointing a gun at the store clerk. The clerk runs behind the counter, but the thugs have him.
As one empties the cash register, the other holds the clerk against the floor, a knee and a handgun pressed into his back. The thief pistol-whips the clerk before standing up and kicking him. Then he walks out with his partner.
The incident, caught on the store’s video camera, took a little more than four minutes at about 1 p.m. on an overcast and sultry Tuesday. And it’s all there on YouTube (click here to watch).
LeDroit Park is fighting back.
“I want the mayor, council member and the police chief to see this video,” Simon Mahteme, owner of LeDroit Park Market, tells the camera. “I’m tired of it. It’s not human behavior. I’m trying to make an honest living.”
The July 10 robbery was the latest of 10 break-ins and armed robberies since October at the market, considered the heart of the community. A customer, outraged by constant vandalism in the historic Northwest neighborhood, posted the footage on the popular video-sharing site in hopes that a viewer would identify the robbers.
Late last week, police charged a 17-year-old. They are not saying whether YouTube played a role, but the video got the attention of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier.
Fenty and Lanier, along with a sizable retinue of their deputies, listened last week as about 100 LeDroit Park residents demanded increased police presence. Fenty (D) said he had heard about the video clip on YouTube, and Lanier has seen it.
“If this is one way that more people will see a potential suspect that will identify him, then I think it has some redeeming value,” Fenty said in an interview.
The community’s crime-fighting campaign isn’t over with the YouTube salvo: It has raised $4,500 to buy a video camera for the building’s exterior, and residents and police are working together to connect it to the city’s network of crime cameras.
Among the issues to be worked out: Who would own and maintain the camera? And although some residents want to use the camera to monitor the goings-on at the store, police say the tapes can be used only after a crime has been committed.
LeDroit Park, with its ornate Victorian houses and narrow streets, has a small-town feel. More than a half-century ago, the tiny neighborhood was home to Ralph Bunche, a Howard University professor who would later become the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and Duke Ellington, who lived there before rising to jazz greatness.
Today, as the fabled neighborhood recovers from decades of decline, many residents point to Mahteme and his little corner market as the community’s spirited heart. So they all felt victimized by the break-ins and robberies.
“Any one of us could have been in that store and been the victim of that crime,” Myla Moss, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, said of the most recent armed robbery. “It’s just unnerving.”
When Mahteme, an immigrant from Ethiopia, bought the store at Fourth and T streets six years ago, he resisted the bulletproof glass and metal bars that armor so many other urban markets. His shop sports a fresh coat of mint-green paint, with cream-colored “eyebrows” painstakingly painted over its windows.
Inside, pictures of restored neighborhood homes share pride of place with a neon Budweiser sign. There’s a deli on one side and racks of wine, along with the usual necessities. Customers’ toddlers dawdle in the aisles, playing with the merchandise as staffers smile.
“The market is kind of the epicenter for the community,” Moss said. “Everyone goes there.”
Moss, a lobbyist for dental schools, moved to LeDroit in 1999 because “I didn’t want to be a Beltway bandit, living in my car. I wanted to live in the birthplace of black intelligentsia.”
Andrew Dreschler, an executive at an opinion research firm, is part of the new wave of younger professionals who have renovated neglected houses and populated LeDroit’s brick sidewalks once again.
While house-hunting in 2005, Dreschler decided to buy a home in the neighborhood after walking into the corner market with no security glass or bars on its windows, sharing Mahteme’s dream of a safe, urban haven.
“I moved into this neighborhood because of this store,” Dreschler, 32, said.
The notion of safety — and Mahteme’s resolve not to surrender to fear — didn’t last.
Before last fall, Mahteme’s market had been burglarized twice in several years. But one morning in October, three robbers barged in, one pointing a gun in Mahteme’s face and striking him in the right eye with the weapon. It was only the beginning of a sad series of break-ins and robberies.
“After I got robbed [in October], I didn’t want to come back, believe me,” Mahteme said. “But after I opened that door, everybody [in the neighborhood] followed me. These are good people.”
In early December, he gave in and installed metal bars over the windows. They didn’t have the effect he expected.
On New Year’s Eve, his security camera captured a burglar kicking in the plate-glass front door, lifting the bars behind the glass by a few inches and urging a boy to climb inside.
“It was just like a mother giving birth,” Mahteme said.
The child then unlocked a side door, and the camera videotaped the pair grabbing all the merchandise they could carry; no cash was on the premises.
When Mahteme didn’t file insurance claims for fear of losing his policy, neighbors raised $800 to help him replace the broken glass.
“It was amazing, these people,” Mahteme said. “They didn’t have to do it.”
Neighbors speak of a recent surge in break-ins and armed robberies throughout the neighborhood, although police statistics indicate that the rate of those crimes has declined from each of the previous two years.
In addition, resident Michelle Sforza said, juveniles have assaulted passersby, and construction sites have been vandalized.
“You can be assaulted for just being on the street,” she said. “It’s not hard to imagine someone getting really, really hurt.”
At Mahteme’s market, new shatter-resistant glass shows pockmarks and spider-web cracks from would-be burglars and vandals. And each week, Mahteme sees youths who he suspects have robbed him, walking into his store.
But every morning, Mahteme keeps opening the doors of his elegantly restored market.
“I can’t give up. I can’t pack up and go,” he said as he stood outside the store just before closing one recent night.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia August 1, 2007 (ENA – state controlled) – The Federal High Court [kangaroo court] has sentenced five leaders and members of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit) from four to 16-year rigorous jail terms.
In its session held here on Wednesday, the Second Criminal Bench of the Court sentenced Lieutenant Girma Amare to 16 year rigorous prison term and other defendants Kidist Bekele and Mebratu Kebede to 15 year-prison term each.
Editor of Addis Zena, Wosen-seged Gebre-kidan and Editor of another tabloid called Hadar, Dawit Kebede received 4- year behind bar each.
The charges in which Lieutenant Girma Amare, Kidist Bekele and Mebratu Kebede were convicted were heavy and they should have been sentenced either to life in prison or death, the Court said.
According to the decision, the convicts incited violence in Kirkos and Addis Ketema sub-cities here in the capital following the May 2005 national election.
Prosecutor witnesses had testified that Lieutenant Girma in particular to have instigated violence and stoned and set ablaze the office of Kebele 13/15, a city bus, government vehicle and a shop while preventing the movement of people.
The Court said Kidist was convicted of supplying petrol for setting ablaze the stated properties while attacking police members and preventing the movement of people.
However, the Court had sentenced the convicts to the stated jail term taking into consideration these attempts had failed to materialize.
The stated editors were convicted of instigating violence claiming that the national election was fraudulent and the incumbent state could not form a government with rigged vote and the public should not accept the outcome of the elections, among others.
Though the convicts were supposed to get up to 10-years in jail each, they were sentenced only to 4-year imprisonment each.
The Court postponed its verdict on other members of the CUD leaderships for August 6, 2007.
We all noticed last fall when the American Voters decidely threw out a Republican Congress and replaced it with the Democrats. But it is becoming clear that if WE expected a change in how things are run in Washington we were sadly mistaken.
Like in the last Republican-controlled Congress, a Bill that was designed to address the internal climate in an African Country that is an ally was introduced. Sadly it appears that it is travelling down the same road. If certain people have their way this legislation will not see the floor to be voted on.
H.R. 2003, which deals with Freedom Democracy and Human Rights in Ethiopia, was reintroduced in the House after a journey that had some treachery in it. After clearing the House International Relations Committee (now the Foreign Relations Committee) it was tabled by then Speaker Hastert. Now, under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, it may suffer the same fate as it did in the last Congress.
The Current Government in Ethiopia has a serious image problem. Its actions were recently criticized in a report by Human Rights Watch. It released 38 political prisoners that were mainly members of the Political Opposition after an unfair trial. And the Red Cross was asked to leave the Ogaden region of the country. Also the country faces increasing scrutiny after its U.S.-backed incursion in to Somalia.
What did this African country do to try and shore up its image? It has retained one of the most powerful lobbyist groups in Washington — DLA Piper. Already the group has sent two former members of Congress, Dick Armey and Richard Gephardt, to lobby the Speaker in an effort to prevent this bill from being voted on. The government in Addis Ababa could lose substantial economic and military aid if this bill passes.
The fact is that this attempt at a backroom deal could backfire. The Congress has an even lower approval rating than the President. If this occurs, then who knows how much the average citizen will trust their member of Congress. The Ethiopian Diaspora here in the United States are organizing an effort to bring this bill to the floor so it can be voted on. Maybe Americans themselves should join this effort so that people can be heard and not the lobbyists. Isn’t that supposed to happen in the House anyway?
Remedan Yuya fled Ethiopia to escape the hardship and strife brought upon the Oromo people by the Ethiopian government. Dr. Negasso Gidada, an Oromo himself, served as president of that government from 1995 to 2001. He is currently a member of the Ethiopan parliament.
[Photo by Ryan Callahan] Dr. Negasso Gidada, president of Ethiopia from 1995 to 2001, speaks Thursday at the second annual International Oromo Human Rights Conference in Coffman Union’s Great Hall at the University of Minnesota.
“When I saw him, what I feel, (he is) somebody who tried to kill me, who tried to hunt me back home, I escaped from that,” said Yuya, an activist and Oromo Studies Association member. “My sisters, my brothers, my mom, my father, because of him, disappeared. Then, how can I tolerate (him) over here?”
Last week, hundreds of Oromos attended two conferences at Coffman Union to discuss human rights issues facing the Oromo community in Ethiopia.
Gidada spoke at both conferences; Yuya attended one.
“When Sept. 11 happened, I was a student in college. I was made sick by that day because of all the people dying in America,” Yuya said. “That’s the same I feel when I see (Gidada).”
The situation in Ethiopia
The Oromo people have faced persecution in Ethiopia since a transitional government gave way to the
Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front in the mid-’90s, under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the TPLF have remained in power ever since.
“We had party members in the countryside who were beating people, for example taking out the whole village, maybe about 5,000 people, and have them sit down in the sun for five days,” Gidada said. “(They were) accusing them of hiding the (Oromo Liberation Front) people and they were violating the human rights of the whole village.”
The Oromo Liberation Front works for the human rights of the Oromo people. In Ethiopia, membership in the group is viewed as illegal by the governing regime.
Gidada said while he was president there were approximately 25,000 Oromos held as political prisoners for five or six years.
“I know that in 2000, when the new president was elected … he gave amnesty to about 1,000 people,” he said. “The rest, we don’t know where they are.”
The U.S. Department of State issued a human rights report on the Ethiopian government in 1999. The report said the government’s human rights record “generally was poor,” and despite improvements, “serious problems remain.”
In the Ethiopian government, the presidency is mainly a symbolic position which serves as head of state, but Gidada said he participated in all decisions made by the ruling party.
Gidada said he is prepared to accept personal and collective accountability for human rights violations.
“How many have died … are crippled … in prison and how many have run away to other countries because of the brutality of the government, I do not know exactly,” he said. “What I can only say at the moment is I am very sorry.”
Last week’s conferences, The International Oromo Human Rights Conference and the Oromo Studies Association annual conference were both co-sponsored by the University’s Oromo Student Union.
There are an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Oromos living in the Twin Cities and more than 90 percent have refugee status, according to the Oromo Community of Minnesota.
Oromo students react
Oromo Student Union secretary, Hussein Waliye, lived in Ethiopia while Gidada was in office. Waliye said his father was imprisoned “pretty much for being Oromo.”
“Every time and anytime they want, they’d just put him in jail,” he said. “Every night, even though we were little kids, we would be sitting in the house wondering what’s going to happen to our dad.”
Eventually the government gave his father a final notice to leave the country. Officials threatened him, saying if they suspected he was involved with the OLF, he would be killed.
Gidada also played a role in the formation of the current government during four years of transitional government. Because of this, Waliye said Gidada has significant responsibility.
“Him coming here and saying sorry and then criticizing the current government doesn’t make any sense to me, because he’s the one that put this government in place,” he said. “I have more blame on him than any Ethiopian president that came after him because without him (they) wouldn’t be able to stand on their feet today.”
Oromo Student Union President Gada Beshir said he once shared that distrust of Gidada and other members of the regime. But a trip to South Africa changed his mind. There, he studied the way that country reconciled following years of apartheid.
“Going to South Africa, personally, that changed me around 180 degrees,” Beshir said. “I would like to see a true reconciliation commission based on the South African model that brings the society together.”
Despite his optimism for the future of Ethiopia, Beshir admits Gidada’s apology is not enough for him to forgive.
“As a student leader, I decided to tolerate him and accept him,” he said. “When it comes to the excuse and apology that he made in front of the public, I just know that’s not enough.”
Community reaction
Oromos make up nearly 40 percent of the Ethiopian population, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.
Because he is Oromo, Gidada’s role was part of the reason why the regime was able to gain power, Nuro Dedefo, chairperson of the OLF in the United States, said.
“Because he held that status (he) gave legitimacy for the TPLF regime,” Dedefo said. “He’s a doctor, he should know better man, he should know better.”
While Gidada’s position was largely ceremonial, Dedefo said the former president could have done much more while in power.
“He should speak up for the human rights violations committed against the Oromo people,” he said. “Once he left the office, whatever he says doesn’t fly in my eyes because of the action that government committed. He was part of the regime; he is responsible.”
Barbara Frey, director of the University’s human rights program, was seated alongside Gidada on the panel held Thursday at the International Oromo Human Rights Conference.
“I found it quite extraordinary that the president chose to come here knowing that he would probably face criticism from his own ethnic community,” she said. “It was a very powerful, the most powerful moment in the event, when he personally apologized for his role.”
President of the Oromo Studies Association Dr. Gobera Huluka, said Gidada brought a necessary point of view to the conference.
“I am the most idealistic person who believes in the free flow of ideas,” he said. “That is the only way we can understand our enemy; we can understand ourselves and we can understand our friends.”
Watch a video of interviews with Dr Negasso and other participants of the conference. Click here.
The corner store was quiet when the gunman strode in. The clerk behind the counter, who in moments would be shot and killed, was finishing things up for the evening. A stocker was stacking boxes. A customer, a 56-year-old woman, was emerging from the bathroom.
The gunman held some sort of assault rifle and wore something over his face, says the woman, who is not being identified for her protection.
He pointed his gun at the woman’s face. Then he turned and walked around the counter toward the clerk, 48-year-old Tadessa Kebede, nicknamed Shorty because he stood about 5-foot-4. Mr. Kebede, who at that moment may have been thinking about getting home to his pregnant wife, came to the U.S. from Ethiopia about 25 years ago as a refugee.
The woman saw the gunman swing his weapon toward Mr. Kebede’s head just as the stocker pushed her back into the bathroom.
“Oh, my God, we’re fixing to die; we’re fixing to die,” the woman repeated to herself, as she and the stocker huddled in the bathroom and heard at least one gunshot. When it was quiet again and the gunman was gone, they came out.
The stocker peered over the counter. “I believe Shorty’s dead,” he told the woman. It was about 9:30 p.m. Monday.
In minutes, Mr. Kebeda’s wife got a call from a close friend who had gotten word of the shooting.
They rushed to Baylor University Medical Center together and soon heard from doctors that Mr. Kebede was dead. He suffered a gunshot wound in his torso, police said.
The friend, 29-year-old Jenet Yimina, on Tuesday described Mr. Kebede as “very nice, very sweet, very giving.”
He has worked various jobs, and he recently finished school to be a nurse’s aide, she said. But mostly on his mind was the baby girl his wife is to give birth to in a couple of months.
Back where Hall Street meets Munger Avenue, near the parking lot of the Quick Save Food Mart, word of what happened spread among residents of Roseland Townhomes, a subsidized housing complex that backs up to the store.
“If you were short a few pennies, then he would let you go and tell you not to worry about it,” one of the store’s regulars, Liz Starks, said in front of several television news cameras.
Dallas police investigators, who walked the neighborhood looking for tips, said people were forthcoming. Mr. Kebede was well liked, they said, and people there want to see the killer caught.
Police said the gunman came into the store with another man, and they robbed the store of its cash register.
Schepps Dairy, which often puts up rewards in crimes such as this, offered $10,000 to anyone who leads Dallas police to the killers by calling 214-671-3661 with information.
A few miles away at a small Dallas apartment, family and friends like Ms. Yimina brought food and gathered to console Mr. Kebede’s wife.
“I wish they’ll find who did it,” Ms. Yimina said. Getting shot might be a fitting punishment for the killer, she said. “I know it’s not going to bring his life back, but …” Her voice trailed off.
“You can rob a store, but you don’t kill people,” she said. “You just take what you want, and go.”
(Reuters) – British soccer idol David Beckham and his wife Victoria have joined French President Nicolas Sarkozy on a list of world’s best-dressed people compiled by Vanity Fair magazine.
The fashionable British duo, who have just moved to Los Angeles, were listed by the magazine as one of the world’s 10 best-dressed couples alongside Hollywood star couples Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.
The newly-elected French president made the 68th annual list for the first time, along with Michelle Obama, the wife of US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and former soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata.
“It’s not just about how much someone spends, it is about having real elegance, style, and individuality,” Vanity Fair special correspondent Amy Fine Collins said in an interview.
The September issue of the magazine, which hits national newsstands on August 7, gave nods to musical, literary and philanthropic icons alike, whether known for their brains or their beauty.
The magazine said it searched beyond the silver screen and fashion runways to select 61 stars of style for the list.
Rocker Lenny Kravitz and former Giants running back and television commentator Tiki Barber both made the list for the second time after being selected in 2001 and 1998 respectively.
It was the second consecutive appearance for the perpetually black suit clad author Fran Lebowitz and actress Renee Zellweger.
Some well-known offspring were also been named to the list – Ivanka Trump, real-estate developer and daughter of Donald Trump, and Bee Shaffer, Columbia University student and daughter of Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
The annual issue, started in 1940, tallies the votes of more than 1,000 tastemakers, from retailers to editors, fashion designers, restaurant owners and hairdressers.
“It’s a democratic system like electing a president,” Collins said.
“There is a committee like the electoral college that reviews the results, and chooses the top contenders.”
Adding to its egalitarian style, the list doesn’t rank its winners from greatest to least.
The fashion industry was represented by Ethiopian-born model Liya Kebede and American fashion designer Tory Burch.
Vanity Fair also elected a few names to its Best Dressed Hall of Fame for people showing consistently classic taste.
Among this rarefied group were silver-haired newscaster Anderson Cooper and US movie star George Clooney, famous for his clean white shirts and salt-and-pepper tresses, and filmmaker Sofia Coppola.
[Photo by Ryan Callahan]