More than 100 dissident soldiers stormed the Ministry of Information in the small East African nation of Eritrea on Monday and read a statement on state TV saying the country’s 1997 constitution would be put into force, two Eritrea experts said.
The soldiers held all of the ministry workers – including the daughter of the president – in a single room, said Leonard Vincent, author of the book “The Eritreans” and co-founder of a Paris-based Eritrean radio station. The soldiers’ broadcast on state TV said the country’s 1997 constitution would be reinstated and all political prisoners freed, but the broadcast was cut off after only two sentences were read and the signal has been off air the rest of the day, Vincent said.
By late afternoon there were indications the soldiers’ attempt would fail. A military tank sat in front of the Ministry of Information but the streets of the capital, Asmara, were quiet, and no shots had been fired, said a Western diplomat in Eritrea who wasn’t authorized to be identified by name.
Vincent stopped short of calling it a coup d’etat and said it wasn’t immediately clear if the action was a well-organized coup attempt or what he called a “kamikaze crash.”
Later Monday government soldiers surrounded the ministry, an indication the action by the dissident soldiers had failed, said Martin Plaut, a fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in Britain.
“It looks like it’s an isolated attempt by some soldiers who are completely frustrated by what is going on. But it wasn’t done in a coordinated manner,” Plaut said. “They did seize the television station, they did manage to put this broadcast out, but the government is still functioning calmly. There is nothing on the streets.”
Eritrea is an oppressive and politically isolated neighbor of Ethiopia and Sudan situated on the Red Sea that broke off from Ethiopia in the 1990s. The U.S. government’s relations with Eritrea became strained in 2001 as a result of a government crackdown against political dissidents, the closing of the independent press and limits on civil liberties, conditions that the State Department says have “persisted to this day.”
U.N. slams Eritrea for Islamic militant support
Isaias Afworki has ruled the country as president and head of the military since 1993.
If the power grab attempt by the dissident soldiers fails, they are likely in for severe punishments, Vincent and Plaut said.
“People call it the North Korea of Africa and that is accurate, so you either win or you’re dead, and I think these people are dead,” Plaut said. “One can’t be absolutely sure but that’s what it looks like.”
Reports from Eritrea say a group of around 100 soldiers have surrounded the ministry of information in the capital, Asmara.
State TV has also reportedly been taken off air in what some have described as a coup attempt.
The city is said to be calm with no shots having been fired.
Eritrea’s government has been criticised by human rights activists as one of the world’s most repressive and closed countries.
The websites of key Eritrean state and ruling party media are currently operating erratically, with the site for the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) party inaccessible.
A statement has reportedly been read out on state radio and television calling for the implementation of the country’s 1997 constitution.
President Isaias Afewerki has ruled the country as a one-party state since independence from neighbouring Ethiopia in 1993.
Meet MetEC – the misleadingly named Ethiopian Metal and Engineering Corporation that has come to dominate the Ethiopian economy in less than one year.
Headed by Brigadier General Kinfu Dagnew, MetEC now controls 15 industries and 100 factories. It has its fingers in everything from the so-called Grand Renaissance Dam to arms factories, to a spanking new fertilizer factory, to ten sugar factories, one of which presumably requires the tearing down of Waldiba Monastery.
MetEC is the latest creative move by TPLF to tighten its grip and to control every aspect of the life of Ethiopians. It entrenches a patronage system that gives a larger stake to the military while guaranteeing the survival of the regime.
Disguised as economic development, the move is also further evidence of unabashed wealth transfer from a much-suffering population held hostage to an unrepresentative ethnic minority that has created a police state with the blessing of foreign powers. Many of the foreign backers also benefit from various illicit deals with the secretive regime.
The bigger fish gulp the smaller ones
By Yonas Abiye | Ethiopian Reporter
Recently, a flock of Ethiopian celebrities were fighting to voice their experiences on their visit to one of the government owned military industrial complexes.
Some were even tight-lipped regarding their surprise to what they witnessed for the first time. Leaving aside most of the things they said, they were heard talking in an almost common utterance, which nowadays is being considered by many to be a cliché: “I didn’t ever think such projects were being undertaken in this country…”
All were saying after these artists of the capital were invited visit to the country’s emerging biggest industry complex, the Ethiopian Metal and Engineering Corporation (MetEC).
MetEC, of course, has been on top of the country’s agenda. That is the case when one wants to trace the hottest talk among politicians, media and pundits in the past few years especially before and since the commencement of Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), the nation’s current five-year development.
Established a year ago and entrusted with several government projects worth billions of Birr, MetEC, run by a high ranking military officer, General Kinfu Dagnew, involves several projects including the electromechanical work of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the erection of a turnkey fertilizer and 10 sugar plants in various parts of the country.
MetEC is engaged in the design, manufacturing, upgrading and maintenance of different products and services of the defense industry including upgrading combat aircraft and helicopters, tanks, vehicles and weapons.
It is believed to be playing a pivotal role in helping the country’s ambitious development plan of transforming itself into a middle income country by making contributions to the industrial development sector.
The corporation was originally mandated to undertake the design, manufacturing, development, and supply for projects for both state-owned enterprises and the private sectors seeing to ease the burden of steering the nation’s drive to an industrial economy, including subcontracting various projects to domestic construction firms.
However, it is now being said that it is swelling too much by amassing every development sector while undermining local and private companies.
The fatter it gets the less able it is at running projects properly, say observers.
“The very idea of the corporation’s establishment and it’s vision is good for foreseeing the country’s prosperity. The problem is to assure how its management capacity is reliable to run such huge commitments,” observes say.
Some also believe the actual trend of the corporations and wide engagement in multi-sectors is undermining other local companies, leaving them frustrated and incompetent.
“The huge fish are swallowing the smaller and tiny fish.”
In the past five months alone, MetEC has inaugurated over three factories. Corporation Board Chairperson and Minister of Defense Siraj Fagessa said the Corporation is “spearheading the realization of the Ethiopian Renaissance.”
The Corporation is a sub-contractor of the electro-mechanical work of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Project. This work is mainly undertaken by the Ethiopian Power Engineering Industry, which is one of the industries under the Corporation.
The Ethiopian Power Engineering Industry inaugurated a wire and cable factory which is one of its eight factories built in the Modjo town at a cost of 200 million Birr to produce electric cables that can carry 400 and 500 KV, especially for the power transmission of the Grand Renaissance and Gibe III dams.
Similarly, the Corporation also inaugurated a heavy truck assembly factory, which is operating under the Bishoftu Automotive Industry.
Siraj once said the Corporation is facilitating the industrialization process. It works by bringing together local micro and small enterprises as well as medium industries with foreign companies facilitating the transfer of knowledge and technology.
There is also a new armament factory that was the third factory inaugurated a few months ago.
Currently, MetEC runs 15 industries and about 100 factories.
As part of its expansion, the Corporation has also agreed to replace the electric meters operated by the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation. The project is valued at nine billion birr and is expected to replace electric meters with new ‘smart’ meters.
The new ‘smart’ digital meters are expected to automatically register electric consumption and report back to EEPCo without requiring manual reading like the analog meters currently being used.
However, MetEC has failed to deliver the commitment it owes to EEPCo. As a result, the latter had to make an urgent and alternative deal with an Indian company. This also cost EEPCo more than USD 27 million.
Critics claim that these transformers could have been done by other local companies if MetEC hadn’t weakened them.
It is to be remembered that the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation is requiring all factories in Ethiopia to install devices that guarantee efficient use of power.
The Metal and Engineering Corporation has snatched the responsibility to produce the devices known as power factor correctors. The efficiency devices will be made available to all factories eventually on a one-year interest-free credit arrangement, according to EEPCo Officials.
The efficiency devices are expected to adjust the difference between real power and apparent power in the use of electricity to a ratio of one.
However, still, private companies face a setback from the device being manufactured by MetEC, which forces them to pay the electric bill, including the power leakage due to inefficient power meter.
MetEC is also building Yayu Coal Phosphate Fertilizer Complex project, 600km west of the capital in the Illubabor Zone, Oromia Regional State. It is one of the two fertilizer factories that the federal government wants built at a total cost of 2.8 billion Birr.
A consortium of public manufacturing enterprises, which are under the control of MetEC, include Dejen Aviation, Bishoftu Automotive and Locomotive, Hibret Machine Tools Engineering Complex, Homicho Ammunition Engineering Complex, Gafat Armament Engineering Complex, Power Engineering, Hitech Industry, Metal and Fabrication Industry, Adama Garment Industry, Ethiopia Plastic SC, and Nazareth Tractor Assembly Plant.
Ethiopia will be among the top failed states, according to a report by the Director of National Intelligence, an umbrella organization of US intelligence agencies.
Entitled “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Trends”, Ethiopia is among the top 15 states expected to disintegrate and become ungovernable in the next fifteen years.
The separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia is said to have ushered in the era of disintegration of African states along tribal and ethnic lines. “The secessions of Eritrea from Ethiopia and South Sudan from Sudan are seen in retrospect as precursors of this era in which the boundaries across the Sahel are redrawn. States fragment along sectarian, tribal, and ethnic lines. “
Ethiopia can be transformed but the change we seek should start from within our own souls and hearts
Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE)
December 25, 2012
Dear Colleagues and Friends;
As many of our fellow Ethiopians of Christian faith gather with family and friends over the next days to celebrate one of the most important of Christian holidays, we in the SMNE (the Board Members, Task Force Leaders, Volunteers and Interns) want to extend our warmest greetings. Whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish or of another belief, this can be a time to reflect on how we might bring good will, encouragement and help to others we know or meet as well as to those—some of whom are loved ones—who are struggling back home in Ethiopia or in another foreign country throughout the world where they may have sought refuge. The real stories of these people tell us of the great effort it takes to just survive. All of the problems we Ethiopians are facing within the country or outside of it are because we lack freedom, justice, security and prosperity in our homeland.
If we had a government which cared about all the people and gave them equal opportunity, we may not be hearing the heartbreaking stories of Ethiopians suffering throughout the world as they seek a better life outside their country that boasts of double-digit economic growth.Please open this links below to view the sad and shocking details of the numbers New Arrivals in Yemen Comparison 2009-2012 and difficulties being faced by these Ethiopians and others from the Horn of Africa.http://www.solidaritymovement.org/downloads/121221-New-Arrivals-in-Yemen-Comparison-2009-Nov-2012.pdf Those remaining in Ethiopia have a daily struggle to just provide for themselves and their families.
Ethiopia has become a country where the poor have been neglected while those with power go after the most vulnerable for the little they have. Land is confiscated in the rural areas and homes are bulldozed down in the cities. The people are displaced and forgotten. The disparity of power, voice and control has created an impenetrable ceiling which obstructs the majority from ever rising above it despite hard work, perseverance and talent.
The message of Christmas is that Christ came for all—that there is no obstruction or favoritism. This same principle of serving all people as equally valuable and worthy of justice and opportunity—rather than just ethnic group or elitist group—should also apply to the Ethiopian government if a society is going to be healthy, successful and prosperous. In fact, Christianity teaches that those who push others aside and trample on their rights will be last, at best, while the meek and poor of the world will be first.
Those of us of Abrahamic faith backgrounds—Jews, Muslims and Christians—can embrace the rightness of this kind of justice, liberty and dignity for all people. It is also a universal value. Look at the struggle of Ethiopian Muslims right now as many rise up to seek freedom to worship without government interference—a right enshrined in the Ethiopian Constitution—but also a God-given principle. God has always wanted hearts freely and wholly given to Him—not forced or manipulated. Nothing short of that really means anything to Him. This is why no genuine religious group wants the government to appoint their leaders. Now, many Muslim leaders are locked up in jail for demanding such freedom as well as dignity, truth and the respect for human rights.
Countless other courageous and principled Ethiopians share their plight. Just this week, Eskinder Nega, Reeyot Alemu, Woubshet Taye and Mesfin Negash were honored with awards from Human Rights Watch for their brave efforts to freely express themselves in one of the most repressive countries for journalists in all of Africa. The first three are imprisoned but Mesfin Negash was forced to leave the country. He is one of many Ethiopians who have left the country to escape imprisonment or other harsh consequences for speaking the truth.
We grieve as we hear repeated reports of the young Ethiopian women and men who are so desperate to support their families and to find a future for themselves that they become easy prey for human traffickers, unscrupulous maid recruiters or exploitive employers; often ending up living under such deplorable circumstances in some Middle Eastern countries that they have been driven to take desperate actions; sometimes against others, sometimes against themselves.
As you can see from the map of the Mixed Migration in Horne of Africa and Yemen linked below http://www.solidaritymovement.org/downloads/121221-November-2012-Map.pdf. At great risk of harm, over the last year, tens or hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have embarked to places unknown only to end up in dire, if not deadly, situations. You can also see the link to learn more about the Regional mixed migration summary for November 2012 covering mixed migration events, trends and data for Djibouti, Eritrea/Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Puntland, Somalia, Somaliland and Yemen. http://www.solidaritymovement.org/downloads/121221-RMMS-Monthly-Summary-November-2012.pdf
Just reading the news over the last few months will tell of Ethiopians detained in Yemen, Tanzania, Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Malta, Libya, Israel, Norway, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. We in the SMNE try to do our best to help where there are problems but the need is overwhelming and is impossible to adequately address.
As Ethiopians gather together here in the Diaspora, many worry about family members at home or are feeling a loss because some of their loved ones are missing from their tables. They may not know their whereabouts or may not know about the conditions of these family and friends because they are imprisoned or have left the country. Some may have died.
Even though the situation appears grim, we can still be hopeful. When we first look, we may miss the light at the end of the tunnel, but look again. God has not abandoned us, Ethiopians. He is still sovereign over the earth. With God’s help, Ethiopia can be transformed but the change we seek should start from within our own souls and hearts, changing us and then leading us to educate those who have taken the property, opportunity, freedom, justice and dignity from others and think it is okay.
There is a penalty within the person who commits these crimes—it is a lost soul. When we lose our souls, we have nothing but darkness and emptiness, regardless of our material possessions. We should not be blinded by short-term pleasures so we lose our way in this life. Part of losing our way is turning away from the pain and misery of our fellow Ethiopian brothers and sisters when we can help do something about it. They are us—part of the body of Ethiopians, part of our family.
On the other hand, not a single Ethiopian leader or organization can plant freedom in the minds of Ethiopians where the people have cooperated in their own enslavement to fear, passivity and inaction. That flawed image of ourselves does not come from God but is grounded in the feudalism of Haile Selassie, the communism of Mengistu and the dehumanizing ethnic tribalism of Meles Zenawi—all dictatorial regimes that sought to control the people through fear, terror, division and the devaluing of others. These lies about ourselves have made us forget our God-given human worth, dignity and potential, endowed to each of us through our Creator.
Fear is a powerful but well-used tactic of any repressive regime and freedom can only emerge in Ethiopia as people begin to reclaim their God-given dignity. This includes reclaiming the God-given dignity for others; putting humanity before ethnicity or any other distinctions and caring about each and every human being for no one will be free until all are free. Hope alone cannot do the work. Neither can it be done by the SMNE or other groups alone. Instead, with God’s help, each of us can contribute our share to transform Ethiopia into a hospitable home for its people. May God remind us to see others as we see ourselves and may we listen closely to God’s call to stand up for righteousness as the best path to a New Ethiopia.
Dear Colleagues, Friends and Esteem Supporters;
At this time will you please consider making a donation to the SMNE. Part of working together to reach this goal of making Ethiopia a real home for our people is by doing our share. No matter how much you believe in this effort, we in the SMNE must raise a significant amount of support to cover the expenses of this work. Can you consider giving a regular monthly gift of $20 or more or an end-of-the-year donation to cover a budget short-fall and to launch new efforts in 2013? You may use a bank/credit card for this transaction. This is the best option for international donors. Here is the link: http://www.solidaritymovement.org/donate.php for those who choose to donation/recurrent donation and enter an amount. Please encourage others to contribute $20 a month or more. We have been trying to find 120 people who can contribute $20 a month. Is there any way you can help us spread the world? We cannot do it without you. Whatever you can do to help will be greatly appreciated. Please see our website for instructions for online giving or send a check or money order to: SMNE, P.O. Box 857, Stillwater, MN 55082.
May the light of Christmas encourage and empower us to never give up and to never lose hope like the powerful lyrics in the recent inspiring song sung by Jamaican-born and Bronx-raised Garrison Hawk, two of the most brilliant musicians of our time, Gigi and Teddy Afro, “Survival 2013!”. Here is the link to the Survive lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUAGXnUX2Wo.
Another song beautifully sung by a talented Ethiopian vocalist, Hanisha Solomon, calls us to come together not only as Ethiopians but as Africans. Here is the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLOpZfJrOdo That song, “Africa Unite,” reminds us that what binds us together is stronger than what separates us. Music is a powerful weapon if used to reach our hearts and souls for what is right and good. May you have a blessed season.
