ADDIS ABABA (Reuters ) – An Ethiopian [kangaroo] court has sentenced six members of the Benishangule-Gumuz community ethnic group to death and another 97 to prison terms for the massacre of Oromo villagers last year, a state agency reported on Thursday. [The Woyanne tribal junta that is in charge of the kangaroo court massacres Oromos every day. It is likely that the massacre was carried out by Meles Zenawi’s death squads and is being blamed on innocent people.]
The 103 had been charged with genocide for killings that took place in May 2008. They gunned down or speared to death 93 members of the Oromo tribe, the state Woyanne-run Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported.
The two groups have for centuries lived side by side in western Ethiopia.
“The court found guilty the 103 members of the Benishangule-Gumuz after examining documents, pictures and video tape evidence presented by the prosecution and after the accused failed to exercise their right to defence,” ENA said.
Those that escaped the death sentence were handed prison terms ranging between six years to life imprisonment with hard labour.
(Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse, editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura)
ADDIS ABABA (MSF) — Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health has also reported patients suffering from acute watery diarrhea in several other regions of the country.
Since August 19, joint Ministry of Health and MSF teams have been providing medical care to patients with acute watery diarrhea in and around the capital city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In collaboration with Ethiopian health authorities, MSF has set up a total of eight treatment facilities within Ministry of Health structures in the city. These treatment facilities are located in Yekatit 12 hospital, Ras Desta hospital, Zewditu hospital, Sint Petros hospital, Akaki health centre, Kaliti health centre, Bole and Kotebe Youth centre.
In total 5,178 patients have been cared for by medical teams from August 19 to 31 in Addis Ababa, of whom five have died. This very low mortality rate has been achieved thanks to the quick mobilisation of the Ethiopian health authorities and MSF. Over the last few days, the number of daily admissions to these treatment facilities has been decreasing.
People suffering from acute watery diarrhea have contracted the disease mostly by drinking unclean water. If left untreated, they run a risk to become dehydrated. While most severe cases need to be hospitalised and receive intravenous therapy, people who are moderately sick can be treated with oral rehydration salts only.
Since the beginning of July, MSF has also been responding to a watery diarrhea outbreak in the northeastern region of Afar. In two months, the team, in collaboration with the health authorities, has provided care to 570 patients in two treatment facilities.
Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health has also reported patients suffering from acute watery diarrhea in several other regions of the country.
Additional staff have been sent to Ethiopia to augment the MSF teams on the ground.
Kenenisa Bekele may receive a huge check this Friday at the sixth and final meet of the IAAF Golden League. Bekele will be racing the 5000 meters at the Memorial Van Damme meet in Brussels. Should he win the race, he may be pocketing up to $1 million dollars.
The IAAF Golden League, which includes six meets over the course of the summer, offers one of the largest cash prizes in athletics. In order to claim the million-dollar purse, an athlete must win their event in all six Golden League meets.
Kenenisa Bekele is one of three athletes still in the running for the jackpot. Sanya Richards and Yelena Isinbayeva have also won their respective events. If all three athletes win in Brussels, they will split the million-dollar jackpot, which is still a pretty hefty payday.
Bekele has attracted a great deal of attention over the summer for his dominating performances. He won both the 10000 and 5000 meters at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, and many have called him the greatest distance runner of all time. Just yesterday, Ian Chadband at the Telegraph said, “Bekele is the Bolt of distance running, a record breaker, a ground breaker, a supreme champion who is well nigh unbeatable when he chooses.” Most believe that Bekele will move up to the marathon, where he could very likely be a contender to break Haile Gebrselassie’s world record.
So will Bekele win his share of the jackpot on Friday? It’s not smart to bet against him. On Friday, you can watch the action in Brussels on the live feed at UniversalSports.com, which starts at 12:50 p.m. in Dallas.
Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Immigration Department has deported two remaining Ethiopians whose arrest caused controversy after a defense lawyer was allegedly beaten up and thrown into custody by police over the weekend.
The deportation of the two Ethiopians early this week follows another deportation of a DRC national on Sunday, in what their lawyer Innocent Kalua said is a violation of a court order the High Court in Blantyre granted last week.
The foreigners’ lawyer said in an interview Thursday that the Immigration’s action to deport the two gives him more grounds to pursue committal to prison proceedings against chief immigration officer Elvis Thodi.
“The Immigration’s action is clear contempt of court. They have gone against a High Court order,” said Kalua.
The deported DRC national is Johan Mitterand and the two Ethiopians are Bashir Abute and Tego Lubako.
Kalua said there was a bail application at the High Court in Blantyre which was set for Wednesday, but it had been overtaken by events following the deportation of the remaining two Ethiopians.
“Now we are just waiting for the date from the High Court to commence the committal to prison proceedings,” Kalua said.
Thodi was not available for comment and the Immigration spokesperson Prudenciana Makalamba said he was in Mozambique and was expected back Thursday.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Egyptian government must be held accountable for such savage act. They keep shooting at poor Ethiopians seeking refugees as stray dogs. It is immoral and also against international rules on protecting the rights of refugees.
ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – Egyptian police shot and killed an Ethiopian migrant near the border with Israel on Tuesday, seriously wounded a women he was traveling with and arrested eleven others, medical and security sources said.
A security source said an Egyptian patrol spotted 13 migrants attempting to cross the barbed wire border with Israel. When ordered to stop they fled towards Israeli territory and police opened fire, the source said.
The man who died was shot in the head. He did not have identification documents on him. An 18-year-old Eritrean women was shot in the chest and was transferred to a hospital in Egyptian Rafah, where her condition was reported as critical.
The other migrants, ten Ethiopians and one Eritrean, were detained. Egypt has arrested scores of African migrants, mostly from Eritrea and Ethiopia, in recent months and has killed at least eight this year.
Analysts and aid workers say the flow of migrants from the Horn of Africa through Egypt to Israel has increased as it has become more difficult to travel on other routes, such as via Libya to Europe. [ID:nLS359973] (Reporting by Yusri Mohamed; writing by Alastair Sharp; editing by Robin Pomeroy)
ADDIS ABABA (Bloomberg) — At least 34 people died in Ethiopia following a suspected cholera outbreak, with more than 4,000 sickened in the capital, Addis Ababa, in the past two weeks.
The disease has infected as many as 1,000 people a day in the past week, Dadi Jima, deputy director of the state-owned Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute, said in an interview today. He declined to say the disease is cholera.
The government has not “fully confirmed” the type of illness, Dadi said. “We usually report it as acute watery diarrhea.” The spread of the disease has been exacerbated by heavy rains in the Horn of Africa country, he said.
Cholera, mainly spread through contaminated water and food and poor sanitation, causes acute diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to death. The illness is considered to be endemic in “many countries” and the pathogen that causes the disease can’t currently be eliminated from the environment, according to the Web site of the World Health Organization.
The United Nations humanitarian agency said six cholera- treatment centers capable of treating 180 people a day have been dispatched to the country. The UN has also sent drugs for the treatment of more than 1,500 severe cases and 600 mild cases of acute water diarrhea, as well as water-purification tablets, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an e-mailed statement.
Of the 34 who have died in Ethiopia, seven fatalities were in Addis Ababa, Dadi said. He didn’t provide figures for the number of people affected nationwide, adding only that the disease had been reported in 31 districts.
If untreated, cholera can kill a healthy adult in as little as five hours, according to the WHO.
(Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg at [email protected].)
