Sam Ghebreyesus’ father called his son’s cellphone several times Friday night to set a time to pick him up from work at a southeast Dallas gas station and convenience store.
Each time, the phone just rang and rang.
“He never answered,” Mr. Ghebreyesus’ cousin Tesfa Kidane said.
Around 10 p.m., the father drove to the station and found a cluster of police cars. An hour earlier, police said, three men had entered Haskell Food Store, at Haskell Avenue and Dolphin Road, robbed Mr. Ghebreyesus and shot him in the chest.
People walking to the store saw the three men run in different directions, said Joe Lopez, 12, who lives in the neighborhood. The customers called 911 after finding Mr. Ghebreyesus on his back behind the cash register.
Police said they had some leads, though the two security cameras outside the store were inoperable.
“It’s a mystery at this point,” said homicide Lt. Craig Miller.
Joe, who went outside when he heard sirens at the station, saw paramedics roll Mr. Ghebreyesus out on a gurney, his arms grasping his chest.
The 26-year-old Dallas man died later at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.
“We were friends,” Joe said.
He had met Mr. Ghebreyesus last year, and they would hang out and talk at the station. If Joe didn’t have money for a candy bar, Mr. Ghebreyesus would let him pay later.
Around noon Saturday, some of Mr. Ghebreyesus’ family arrived at the station. Yellow crime scene tape blocked the doors, but Mr. Kidane peeked through the thick black bars covering the windows.
“He was a real nice kid,” Mr. Kidane said. “Family-oriented.”
Mr. Ghebreyesus loved his family, never missing a birthday or forgetting a gift, Mr. Kidane said. He said Mr. Ghebreyesus planned to work at the gas station until he could save enough money to attend community college.
Mr. Ghebreyesus also was close to the children of another cousin, Goitom Zeru, especially Mr. Zeru’s 26-year-old son in Washington, D.C.
“He always took them around,” Mr. Zeru said. “He told them to be good and to stay in school.”
Two people pulled in front of the gas station a few minutes past noon Saturday and placed flowers on the ground below the yellow tape. Mr. Zeru, who had just made a phone call, stood with his back to the store and cried.
ADDIS ABABA – Holoager Kasa gathers her older children around her. Subalo is 7 and Bainchjlem is 5. The three-month old, Dastayo, is fastened in a carrier on her back. They are dressed for the final stretch of their voyage.
In the last 10 days, Kasa has been staying with some 50 other Ethiopians in a small compound near the Israeli Embassy in Addis Ababa. In two hours they will board the bus that will take them to the airport.
Her husband, Tafso, is out making last-minute purchases. Holoager’s delicate face registers incomprehension when asked how she obtained a permit to go to Israel. “I have two brothers and sisters and an uncle in Israel,” she says. “One of them applied for me, and five years ago I was called to Gondar for an interview.”
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She does not know where her Israeli relatives live or where she is supposed to stay once she arrives, but they told her it was near Jerusalem. She doesn’t speak a word of Hebrew and the only thing she knows about Judaism is Sabbath, but she knows that in the past her family was Jewish.
Tafso is Christian, but his wife says that he agreed to covert to Judaism in Israel, and this made their trip possible. Asked what she expects in Israel, she says, “I don’t know. I just want a good life.”
She will miss nothing from her life in Ethiopia.
Kasa’s family is one of the last to leave Ethiopia for Israel. Only 474 Falashmura with permits to immigrate to Israel remain in Gondar – eight more flights. The Jewish Agency office in Addis Ababa is to be shut at the beginning of June. More immigrants to Israel have passed through this office in recent years than through any other Jewish Agency office in the world – 300 a month, 4,600 a year.
“However, throughout 2007 we brought only one woman to Israel,” says Jewish Agency envoy Uri Conforti.
He says that 95 percent of the immigrants to Israel in recent years have been Jews according to the halakha, while the rest have Jewish parents or grandparents. The former receive a blue immigrant card on arrival, and that is replaced by an identity card a few days later. The others receive a green immigrant card, and only after a year and a half are they eligible for citizenship, after converting to Judaism. Then they also receive their Israeli housing grants and be eligible to vote.
The Ethiopians are a calm, reserved people. Unlike immigrants from the West, they don’t sing Hebrew songs, wave flags, kiss the holy soil and weep when they arrive. They have already been through a complex process to get to this point. They have waited for a long time, sometimes years, before receiving a date to report to the Jewish Agency’s compound at Gondar. They are photographed for the travel card, interviewed about their medical condition, briefed about travel arrangments to Addis Ababa, the capital, and receive an allowance for expenses and lodging on the way. Every Sunday a busload of immigrants, accompanied by paramedics and an armed guard, leaves the compound.
The immigration candidates are sent to a private hospital for x-rays of their lungs, to make sure they don’t have tuberculosis. If they do, their trip to Israel is delayed for preliminary medical treatment. In a clinic operating out of the embassy compound, the immigrants are vaccinated against various diseases. Their medical files will be sent to an Israeli health maintenance organizations (HMO).
The would-be immigrants are shown films to prepare them for life in Israel. They learn what a toilet bowl, refrigerator, stove and disposable diapers are, as well as how to open a bank account and what an HMO and absorption grants are.
At the airport’s entrance, they are briefed about regular stairs and moving stairs, the latter of which they are warned not to use, to avoid accidents. They sit quietly by the gate. Nobody goes to shop in the duty free. The immigrants are afraid to use the toilets on the planes and the Jewish Agency envoy makes sure they all go to the airport toilet before the flight.
On the Ethiopian Airlines plane they are seated in the back, by the galley. Holoager and Tafso are enjoying every moment of this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Once they have landed at Ben-Gurion airport, the mothers are led to a diaper-changing corner. The rest are ushered into small rooms, sign for immigrant cards and receive their first immigrant grant, based on the size of their family.
The biggest opposition party that participated in Ethiopia’s nationwide elections Sunday is planning to boycott the second part of the voting, charging the first half was rigged. Another, larger opposition group had pulled out even before the first vote. VOA’s Peter Heinlein in Addis Ababa reports the withdrawal of the two largest opposition factions would clear the way for Ethiopia’s ruling party to take control of local councils nationwide, and to increase its majority in parliament.
The leadership of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement voted Monday to join a boycott when Ethiopia votes in critical municipal elections next Sunday.
The OFDM had been the largest opposition party participating last Sunday, as Ethiopians voted for the first time since 2005, when post-election protests turned deadly. Two hundred people were killed in the violence, and thousands were jailed, including most opposition leaders.
OFDM leader Bulcha Demeksa says his party had decided not to join the boycott for the first part of the vote.
But Monday, he accused election officials and the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front of massive intimidation and rigging, and said his party would join the boycott.
“We went in for the sake of peace and stability in our country,” said Bulcha Demeksa. “We did not want to be the cause of any crisis. But when the government shows no willingness to cooperate, and wants to be the only party which governs ethiopia, then we have no hope. We cannot work with this kind of party. We have to quit and show the world we are not able to work with them.”
Bulcha says preliminary results indicate his party did not win a single race Sunday in which it entered a candidate. Official results were not immediately available, but reports from political leaders indicate the ruling EPRDF and its allies won huge majorities.
Bulcha told VOA his party was not just defeated, but obliterated. He says as a result, he may be silenced in parliament because he no longer commands the minimum ten seats necessary to be considered a party.
He accused the EPRDF of using the elections as a means of instituting one-party rule in Ethiopia.
“This is happening because the EPRDF wants to be the only party ruling Ethiopia,” said Bulcha. “We’ve heard it. They’ve said they believe in the so-called dominant party. They want through semi-legal means to eliminate all the political parties in Ethiopia and remain the only political party that keeps power in Ethiopia.”
National Election Board office chief Tesfaye Mengesha told VOA Monday that Sunday’s turnout compared well with the 2005 vote. He said 24 million had cast ballots. It is not clear what percentage of the voting age population that represents, because there is no current census information available for Ethiopia, but the total voting age population is estimated to be roughly 40 million.
VOA reporters found polling stations nearly empty for the most part, but election board official Tesfaye attributed that to the addition of thousands of new locations that made voting faster.
The Chief of the Political Bureau of the EPRDF, Bereket Simon, on Monday expressed general satisfaction with the election. He declined further comment until results are announced. Asked when results could be expected, he quipped, “it will be quicker than in Zimbabwe.”
Earlier, Bereket denied there had been any intimidation or vote-rigging. He said the election board had investigated opposition complaints and found them to be without merit.
Prime Minister Dictator Meles Zenawi’s EPRDF is almost certain to sweep next Sunday’s elections, too. The party fielded nearly four million candidates for about 3.8 million positions being contested. The 32 opposition parties combined were able to register only a few thousand candidates. Opposition leaders complained in advance that as many as 98 percent of their prospective candidates had been rejected by election officials.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia Woyanne blamed rebels backed by arch-foe Eritrea on Tuesday after two bombs killed three people and wounded more than a dozen in the capital.
The attacks in Addis Ababa late on Monday came a day after the nation held the first round of local, regional and federal elections that have prompted opposition claims of harassment.
“This is the work of the enemy, trying to disrupt Ethiopia’s ongoing democratic elections,” Information Minister Berhan Hailu told Reuters. No arrests have been made yet, police said.
Ethiopian state media said the explosions tore through two petrol stations in the city at the same time, killing and wounding residents who were queuing to buy fuel. Bloodstains and charred clothing lay at the scene of one of the blasts.
Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi, blamed the attacks on separatist rebels.
“The early stages of our investigation indicate that organisations like the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front, who are organised and financed by the Eritrean government, are responsible,” he told Reuters.
The government has often blamed rebels backed by Asmara for attacks in the past. Eritrea routinely rejects the charges.
(Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Writing by Lisa Ntungicimpaye; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
ASMARA, April 15 (Reuters) – Eritrea has cut off diesel supplies to U.N. agencies in the Red Sea state, but the move may not be politically-motivated, the world body said on Tuesday.
The step comes just weeks after U.N. peacekeepers were forced to withdraw from the Eritrean-Ethiopian border over a petrol stoppage. Eritrea says the whole country faces shortages.
“When we sent our cars to the petrol station, we were told that there was an order not to supply fuel to U.N. agencies,” said one U.N. official who asked not to be named.
“Given the fuel shortages in all other sectors of the economy, it’s not targeting the U.N., nor is it political,” the official said, adding that the majority of the world body’s long-distance vehicles used diesel.
The official would not speculate on how long the cut-off might last. The Eritrean government was not immediately available for comment.
All diplomats and foreign bodies receive a fuel ration each month from the government. The Red Sea state has regular petrol supply problems mainly due to shortages of foreign currency.
But Eritrea also has frosty relations with the United Nations, which it accuses of failing to force arch-foe Ethiopia Woyanne to implement a 2002 border ruling — part of a peace deal that ended their 1998-2000 war.
The diesel stoppage comes only weeks after Asmara shut off fuel supplies to a 1,700-strong U.N. force, causing a near complete withdrawal.
(Reporting by Jack Kimball; Editing by Richard Balmforth) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/)
The establishment of the Joint UN Teams on AIDS in Ethiopia has emerged within the larger context of both UN reform and international efforts to improve aid effectiveness. The imperative to create Joint UN Teams on AIDS comes directly from the June 2005 recommendations of the Global Task Team on Improving AIDS Coordination among Multilateral Institutions and International Donors. In September 2005, the UN General Assembly endorsed the recommendations of the Global Task Team and the UN Secretary-General directed all UN Resident Coordinators to establish Joint UN Teams with one Joint Programme Support.
A series of joint programming exercises carried out in 2005 and 2006 within the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) process for Ethiopia provided a good foundation for the establishment of the Joint UN Team on AIDS with one Joint Programme of Support.
The Ethiopian Context
The development of the Joint Programme for Ethiopia and determining the contents of the programme involved various processes and consultations with different stakeholders among the UN partner agencies, national authorities and partner organizations. The planning process involved Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis of UN agencies. The SWOT analysis was used to supplement information collected during the 2006 UN mapping of human and financial resources. Both the mapping and SWOT analysis gave insight to the varied organizational characteristics and operational dynamics of the twelve organizations involved in the proposed Joint UN Team on AIDS
with One Joint Programme of Support. UN and affiliated agencies participated and committed themselves to action are UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, WFP, WHO, UNESCO, UNHCR, FAO, World Bank, ILO, IOM and UNAIDS.
This process helped in the development of the Joint UN Team’s terms of reference as well as processes and systems for strategic planning and prioritizing of the limited resources for the Joint Programme of Support. Against the UNAIDS Division of Labour for Technical Support, the organizations have also assessed their capacity to provide technical support for 18 support areas. (See Annex A for a breakdown of which UN organizations are responsible for the 17 technical support areas.)
The division of labour provides an opportunity to not only improve coordination in providing technical support to Ethiopia—whether to government, cooperating partners or civil society—but in also establishing single points of enquiry or ‘entry’ for these stakeholders. Furthermore, this rational division of labour encourages enhanced specialization and clearer differentiation among the UNCT members.
Ethiopia’s Joint Team on AIDS: Functions
The Joint UN Team on AIDS’ primary purpose is to provide coherent interagency technical inputs to the UNCT for optimal support of the UN system to the national response. The Joint UN Team will work along the four UNDAF outcomes on AIDS plus the emergency response and UN learning strategy. The Joint Team works under the authority of the UN Resident Coordinator System and the overall guidance of the UNCT. The team is facilitated by UNAIDS Country Coordinator (UCC) and currently consists of 70 UN staff working on AIDS (35 full time and 35 par time) as nominated by the UN Heads of Agency, as per criteria agreed upon… Read more [pdf]
