(Reuters) Egyptian police shot dead two migrants from the Ivory Coast and arrested six other Africans as they tried to slip across the border into Israel illegally overnight, Egyptian security sources said Wednesday.
“An Egyptian security patrol saw a youth of about 22 years old and a girl of about 18 trying to get over barbed wire dividing Egypt and Israel,” one of the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“When they were asked to stop, they refused and tried to flee in the direction of Israeli territory, leading police to open fire on them,” the source said.
The sources said Egyptian security men also detained four Eritrean women and two Ethiopian men who tried to enter Israel elsewhere along the border.
Sinai is a main conduit for traffickers trying to take mainly African migrants to Israel for work or asylum. Police have opened fire at many of the migrants, killing several last year.
Earlier this month, Egyptian police shot dead another migrant from Ivory Coast who was trying to cross into Israel. In December, people traffickers shot dead an Egyptian soldier in an exchange of fire at the border.
__________________ EDITOR’S NOTE
Shooting these poor unarmed civilians to death was a barbaric, criminal act on the part of Egyptian police. The only crime these poor immigrants committed was trying to earn a living in another country since they were unable to live their own country because of the parasite dictators who are in power.
Western policy towards Africa is ill-informed and inconsistent. That’s the message of Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, in his interview in the Guardian last week. And there’s some truth in what he says. But Meles should be careful what he wishes for.
If the west was better informed about the war crimes and human rights abuses committed by Meles’ military forces in Somalia and Ogaden, western taxpayers might balk at the thought that their governments are providing Ethiopia with hundreds of millions of dollars of military and economic aid.
And if western governments were more consistent and less selective in their reaction to human rights abuses around the world, they might be less inclined to turn a blind eye to Ethiopia’s failure to abide by international norms in pursuit of its military objectives in Somalia and Ogaden.
Last year, Human Rights Watch documented a disturbing pattern of abuses by all sides, including Ethiopia, in the dangerous armed conflict which erupted after Meles sent his army into Somalia to dislodge the Islamic Courts Union, a group which many say has links to international terrorists. In its subsequent struggle with Somali insurgents, Ethiopia has committed serious violations of the Geneva conventions including the carpet-bombing of residential districts of Mogadishu, the deliberate targeting of hospitals and arbitrary executions.
Human Rights Watch has also documented abuses by Ethiopian forces in its simultaneous counter-insurgency campaign against the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in the Somali region of southeastern Ethiopia. These include the systematic use of rape, torture and execution as a means of terrorising and collectively punishing the civilian population, a partial trade blockade of districts deemed sympathetic to the rebels and the destruction of villages.
There are good reasons why Ethiopia’s western backers do not jump to condemn Meles with the same speed with which they rightly condemn, say, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe or Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir. In his almost 20 years in power, Meles, a former rebel leader, has transformed Ethiopia from a war-torn, famine-prone dictatorship into a relatively stable state which combines elements of both democracy and authoritarianism. He has won plaudits from donors for poverty reduction and good economic stewardship.
Meles’ supporters also make allowances for the fact that he is the key regional player operating in a tough neighbourhood. Somalia is a failed state; Eritrea is a closed dictatorship that has picked fights with most of its neighbours; Sudan defies the UN and the international criminal court in their efforts to secure peace and accountability in Darfur; and now Kenya is slipping into its worst political crisis since independence.
But above all western politicians and diplomats warm to Meles, because they concur with his analysis that he is a bulwark against the spread of Islamist militancy in the Horn of Africa. Meles plays this card well. He is helped by the fact that the influence of political Islam is strong and growing among the large Muslim populations of the region. Furthermore, Islamist militants, some with links to international terrorist organisations, are operating in Somalia, Kenya and elsewhere in the Horn.
But, while these considerations can help to nuance the west’s diplomatic, economic and military relations with Meles, they can be no excuse for the war crimes and gross violations of human rights that Human Rights Watch has documented in Somalia and Ogaden. These unjustifiable acts are not only morally repugnant; they are also counterproductive. They serve to undermine international respect for the rule of law and they are likely to sharpen radicalisation and conflict in what is already one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
The west’s failure to acknowledge the reality of what is going on in these remote and inaccessible places and its failure to call for full investigations and accountability leaves the impression that when it comes to counter-terrorism, anything goes. It is a shortsighted policy that is already backfiring in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon – and it will backfire here too.
__________________ Tom Porteous has been the London director of Human Rights Watch since October 2006. As a journalist he worked for the Guardian (as Cairo correspondent from 1986-88) and for the BBC World Service. Between jobs in journalism he participated as a political officer in UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia and Liberia in the mid 1990s. He joined the UK Foreign Office in 2000 as conflict prevention adviser for sub-Saharan Africa but resigned in March 2003 over the Iraq invasion. He has written extensively on Africa and the Middle East.
Letter from Joel Simon, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, to Woyanne’s boss:
We are writing to express our great concern about the government’s denial of publishing licenses to five independent Ethiopian journalists freed last year from prison. We are calling on you to use all your influence to remove such administrative restraints, which contradict the government’s public assurances last year that former prisoners would be allowed to resume their work… Contunue Reading >>
African ‘leaders’ (mass murderers, thieves, and tyrants) are gathering in Addis Ababa for an AU summit. Agazi killers (well-fed Woyanne gunmen) and Federal Police are patrolling every corner of the city to guarantee the saftey of Meles Zenawi’s fellow tyrants. Read more from VOA >>
Regional Conflicts To Dominate A.U. Summit Agenda
By Peter Heinlein
(VOA, Addis Ababa) – frican leaders are gathering in Addis Ababa for a three-day summit that was to have been about spurring the continent’s economic potential. But as VOA’s Peter Heinlein reports from the summit site in the Ethiopian capital, the troubles in Kenya, Somalia and Sudan dominate the agenda.
The summit is attracting about 40 heads of state or government from the African Union’s 53 member states. Leaders from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Ghana’s John Kufour and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki will be there.
They will be joined, for the first day at least, by an equally distinguished group from the United Nations. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will address the opening summit session Thursday. He is accompanied by the Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno, along with his special representatives to conflict zones such as Darfur, Ivory Coast, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Ethiopia/Eritrea border.
And in a nod to the world body’s growing involvement in Africa, the summit is being held at the headquarters of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa.
The theme of the summit is industrialization, and the head of the U.N. Industrial Development Organization Kandeh Yumkella will be a key speaker. Many leaders attending the summit will be concerned about conflict and political turmoil.
Yumkella, a native of Sierra Leone, says he will tell those leaders that the long term, and most urgent solution to these conflicts is unleashing the power of the private sector to create jobs for the newly-arriving masses in Africa’s major cities.
“By 2050, half of Africa’s population will live in urban areas, a lot of them youth unemployed. That will create instability. We see the evidence already, of the youth heading up north to head for Europe, crossing from Senegal to the canary islands. It’s not just political instability. It’s a lack of hope and opportunity. And when you look at Liberia, Freetown, all the former conflict countries, the cities are packed with unemployed youth, some of them former child soldiers. So the urgency of job creation is critical,” he said.
Pre-summit discussions have focused not on economics, but on Africa’s trouble spots. U.N. peacekeeping chief Guehenno met with Sudanese and A.U. representatives about speeding deployment of the hybrid United Nations/African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki briefed southern African leaders on his efforts to ease Zimbabwe’s longstanding political crisis, and Kenya’s Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula spoke to his fellow ministers about his country’s post-election political turmoil.
Wetangula welcomed the A.U. mediation effort led by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan , and the support of the East Africa group of nations led by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. But he said ultimately, the necessary reconciliation can only be achieved by Kenyans.
“We have faith in the A.U. involvement. We have faith in the regional involvement of President Museveni as the chairman of the East African Community, but above all, this problem can be and must be solved by Kenyans themselves,” he said.
Somalia’s Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, two months into the job, addressed a pre-summit meeting of the Somalia Contact Group to present a new four-point peace plan. Those attending included U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazier and A.U. Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit. Afterward, Frazer hailed Mr. Hussein’s appointment as a positive step towards bringing stability to a country that has been virtually ungovernable since the early 1990s.
“The Contact Group meeting is important not only because it comes on the eve of the A.U. summit, but also because of the positive developments that are taking place in Somalia with the appointment of the new Prime Minister Nur Adde Hassan Hussein and the appointment of his new cabinet,” he said.
The African Union Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit says the long term objective of Prime Minister Gedi’s four points peace plan is to persuade the United Nations to send a peacekeeping mission to Somalia. A previous U.N. mission was abandoned in 1995 in the face of uncontrolled violence.
The summit is also expected to elect new leadership. Diplomats say Tanzania is likely to be chosen to replace Ghana as president of the organization. The post of A.U. Commission Chairperson is being hotly contested between Gabon’s Foreign Minister and former U.N. General Assembly President Jean Ping and Zambia’s highly-respected ambassador to Washington Inonge Mbikusita-Lewanika.
I got home and powered my computer. First thing is first; I always check the usual Ethiopian Web sites when I get home. When you are an Ethiopian you have to do that because you never know when the other shoe is about to fall. If you haven’t noticed we are a people full of surprises, not necessarily good ones either. So here I am surfing from site to site and on ‘ethioforum.org’ I saw a report about First advisor to the PM, Member of Parliament from Wollo (poor Wollo) his Excellency Ato Bereket Smeon. Well, at least that is how we know him. You see, with these TPLF folks you never know if it is the original name or a recently acquired one. I stopped in my tracks. I knew I was in for a treat. God bless Bereket, he did not disappoint me.
Ato Bereket always in my mind evokes the picture of Mohamed Said Al-Sahaf, the Information Minister of the dearly departed (may his soul burn in hell) Saddam Hussein. The U.S. media used to refer to him as ‘Baghdad Bob.’ If you remember during Gulf War II, Mohamed was famous for detailing the havoc the Iraqi army was causing on the ‘retreating’ U.S. forces. At one point, you can see the smoke rising from the bombing in the background and Baghdad Bob was giving ultimatum to the U.S. to surrender or perish. He was a comic figure with full military uniform, a ranger hat cocked to the right, Armani glasses and a friendly smile. He made the destruction bearable.
Ato Bereket is our own ‘Baghdad Bob.’ What the heck, let us call him ‘Addis Bob.’ Before the 2005 General Elections, he was full of bravado about how the TPLF juggernaut was going to annihilate the little Kinijit and render it useless. He was so sure of his victory, the Champagne was put on Ice months before the election. During the ‘Prague Spring’ in Addis when the TPLF decided to go head on against Kinijit in the famous debates, Ato Bereket was the point man involved in the negotiations. The record shows us he miserably miscalculated. The cadres were left naked in front of the Ethiopian people. The Ethiopian people said in unison ‘enezeh nachew ye mi gezune?’ This did not deter ‘Addis Bob’ from declaring victory. This is not the first time TPLF has turned defeat into victory. Let us count the ways (just the major ones please)
o There was the time when we were told that our cousin from the North was getting ready to invade and the ‘Politburo’ was laughing and moving the Army to the Eastern Front.
o Used all foreign currency reserves to buy arms from Eastern Europe and Korea, lost over 60,000 lives on the way to Asmara. Suddenly put on the brakes and agree to arbitration.
o Hire ferenji lawyers and got taken in for a ride and loose Badame. Never mind, declare a win and break out the Ice.
o They invaded Somalia claiming they will be back in Addis for Lunch. It is past dinnertime and no sign of them. They call it getting ‘bogged down in Mogadishu’
o Declare from the top of Ras Dashen that we will join the ‘middle income countries’ in a short time and few weeks later they were seen asking for leftover due to famine caused by a failed economic policy.
You can see my excitement when I read that dear old Bereket was having a POW Wow with his minions in London. Apparently He was returning from a trip to Paris after a little disinformation campaign on the current situation or may be a shopping trip. Whatever it was, you know we paid for it.
So our esteemed ‘First Advisor’ was explaining how TPLF was able to divide and conquer Kinijit. You can read the laughable details on ‘ethioforum.org’. There was no mention of the disappeared ballots, nor the declaration of state of emergency. The cold-blooded shooting of peaceful protesters was forgotten. The imprisonment of all the top leadership of Kinijit, over 30,000 Kinijit and OLF supporters, Human Right activists, civic leaders was erased from memory.
I told you Ato Bereket was not about to disappoint us. So he flies all the way to Europe — I guess he thought we can hear him better if he was closer — to tell us this fantastic strategy devised by the topnotch TPLF brains on the plan to destroy Kinijit. After all, this illegal and criminal acts perpetuated by his government he is talking about disrupting power lines and water service. He is discussing the strategy of moderate and radical Kinijit. Makes one wonder what kind of khat he has been chewing? Poor Bereket does not get it. It is just another miscalculation and blunder by the TPLF mafia. As obvious as the war with Eritrea was ultimately lost, as certain as the invasion of Somalia is an absolute failure, so will this premature talk of victory over Kinijit. You see what is not clear to Ato Bereket is that Kinijit is not just a party. Rather, it is a movement. It is the deep hunger of the Ethiopian people for Freedom and Democracy. It is a force that cannot be defeated by conventional means. As Birtukan said ‘Kinijit is spirit’ How do you fight the ‘spirit of Kinijit’?
It is possible to attract a few weak individuals to your camp. You can pass a law giving the name Kinijit to who ever you like. You can even donate the Kinijit symbol to your good friend. But isn’t that missing the point. What about the “Kinijit Spirit” The Ethiopian people are imbued with that. The spirit of Kinijit is woven deep inside our DNA. I know this will drive you crazy. Crazy with Kinijit envy. Crazy and helpless. All that Federal Police at your calling, all that Agazi force rearing for action but this force called Kinijit cannot be conquered. The more you rile against it, the more powerful it becomes. Resistance is futile! And we are watching you. We are watching Kenya, waiting and learning. We are not going anywhere. Enjoy it now; it might be your last trip outside of Ethiopia. HR2003 is around the corner.
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The writer, Ato Yilma Bekele, can be reached at [email protected]
The government must reexamine the eligibility for immigration of thousands of Falashmura and allow an additional 1,500 to move to Israel, the High Court of Justice ruled last week.
This decision constitutes a serious blow to the government’s plan to end immigration by the middle of this year of members of this community, who claim Jewish ancestry despite conversion to Christianity over the years.
“Justice has been done,” said Avraham Nagosa, who heads an umbrella organization for Ethiopian immigrants. “We said they haven’t finished and that they need to check whether there are more people who meet the criteria. We asked only that they do the basic thing of checking them. This High Court decision is the beginning, and ultimately all the 8,000 [Falashmura] left will be checked.”
However, the Interior Ministry downplayed the decision, saying: “The High Court accepted the state position not to open the lists. Nonetheless, it said the state would do well to determine whether there is room to expand the list of eligibles to 17,000. It is not an order, and the state was asked to announce within three months what it has decided. The matter has been transferred to the cabinet secretary for a decision.”
The government decided a year ago that by June, 2008 it would stop bringing over Falashmura and close its offices in Ethiopia.
The Foreign Ministry representative in the Ethiopian city of Gondar, who was responsible for investigating the eligibility of Ethiopians seeking to move to Israel, was recalled to Israel a few weeks ago.
Some 1,400 Falashmura in Gondar have already received approval to move here, and that group will be immigrating at a rate of 300 a month.
Ethiopian organizations in Israel, and their supporters the world over, have criticized the government plan to bring the Falashmura immigration to an end, arguing that there are more than 8,000 members of the community in Gondar who meet the government criteria for immigration.
In response to a High Court petition on the matter, filed by representatives of the Falashmura, Justices Ayala Procaccia, Miriam Naor and Edna Arbel issued an interim verdict last week stating that the government must allow an additional 1,500 Falashmure to immigrate because the government said in 2004 that there were 17,188 potential Falashmura immigrants, but only 14,620 have received permission to move here.
Government hurdle
One hurdle that the High Court decision puts before the government and Jewish Agency representatives in Ethiopia is that they won’t be able to begin the process of completing the immigration operation, as planned, because it will now continue through the end of the year.
A delegation of top officials from the government and Jewish organizations had been slated to travel to Ethiopia in two weeks to begin the process, but that mission has been delayed for now.
Another problem is that it will be quite difficult for the Interior Ministry to approve the immigration of 1,500 people without examining the eligibility of all 8,000 remaining Falashmura in Gondar.
