(AFP) – About 200 would-be immigrants from Ethiopia and Somalia are dead or missing after two boats they were travelling in sank off the coast of Yemen on the weekend, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said yesterday.
One boat with 148 people on board sank on Saturday near the Yemeni coast after an argument between traffickers in charge of the vessel, killing at least 58 people with 37 still missing, the UNHCR said.
Another boat with 270 passengers hit a rock and sank on Sunday as it was trying to evade a Yemeni security patrol. Only 173 passengers were able to swim to shore and the rest, including a number of children, remain missing.
“The survivors of the second boat told us that the traffickers were violent with them during the trip,” said UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Tort.
“The passengers were violently roughed up and one man, who could not bear the beating any longer, jumped overboard and drowned,” she said.
The number of illegal immigrants traversing the Gulf of Aden shot up dramatically between September and December, UNHCR said.
More than 1,400 clandestine immigrants have died in the zone this year.
Woyannes in Sweden disguising themselves as Eritreans have announced that they have created an alliance against the Government of Eritrea. Read the following news posted on Walta, a Woyanne news agency.
_________________ Eritrean political, civic organizations in Sweden form united front for democratic Eritrea
Addis Ababa, December 18, 2007 (WIC) – Eritrean political and civic organizations in Sweden have agreed to form a united front ”to fight the dictator and its supporters in Sweden.”
According to a press release sent to WIC, the Eritrean civic and political organizations in Sweden have conducted a series of meetings under the banner ”In support of our oppressed people, unite our efforts against the dictatorship.”
The meeting ” discussed deeply the plight of the Eritrean people and confirmed that Eritrea is now in a downward spiral of poverty and unrest. The politics in Eritrea is poisoned and need urgent cure and be transformed for the wider health of the Eritrean people, ”the release said.
After evaluating the past campaign and peaceful demonstrations they realized that the best option to fight the dictator and its supporters in Sweden is to build a common united broad front, it further noted.
The meeting finally formulated a comprehensive plan of action capable of strengthening the suffering people, weakening and then destroying the dictatorship and building a durable democracy in Eritrea, according to the press release.
The meeting also elected a five-person interim board leading the process of common understanding and its implementation, it was learnt.
The current leadership split within the CUD has become the object of an intensive and partisan quarrel among the supporters of each faction. The divided Ethiopian diaspora wallows in the exercise of one-sidedly blaming one faction for the split, while little effort is made to know its real cause. As is usual among Ethiopian political activists, what prevails is not the need to get correct information before taking side, but rather the propensity to support one side to the discredit of the other. Unfortunately, such an approach neither brings about reconciliation nor gathers momentum for the prevalence of one faction. On the contrary, it simply widens the split with further misunderstandings and confusions. Yet owing to its remoteness from the actual battle field, the Ethiopian diaspora should have refrained from taking side so as to emerge as a force of reconciliation.
In view of the fact that the split seriously undermines the effort to bring positive change in Ethiopia, all the more distressingly since the outcomes of the last national election seemed to show the end of the tunnel, I have painstakingly endeavored to understand the real causes of the split. This explains my silence in the face of the debacle of the great hope that the Kinijit movement had generated. Despite my sustained effort to understand by extensively reading whatever is posted on the web regarding the split as well as talking to influential people, I am little advanced. Where I long for reasons and analyses, I find venomous attacks, name callings, character assassinations in the outdated style of Leninist political discourse.
Yet only three months ago, most activists and observers had just praises and concern for the jailed leaders of the CUD without any distinction. How could one smear so vehemently what one had admired recently without a moment of pause to allow reflection and critical assessment to take place? Worse yet, I read here and there complaints of individuals blaming some websites for refusing to post their articles. Nothing is more distressing than to see the ugly face of censorship reappearing at the very time when we need information and open debate. Crises do not disappear because we silence people; instead, animosity and biased outlooks grow and spread.
Several people have suggested that the deep cause of the split is power conflict among the top leadership of the movement. I don’t rule out the explanation, even though I don’t understand how leaders would go to the extent of wrecking a movement that they have worked so hard to create even as the violent reaction of the present regime shows clearly that victory will require more sacrifices and greater unity and mobilization. The only way the suggested explanation makes sense is through the assumption that one faction considers the other faction as a weak partner. In thus thinking that it can go on without the other party, the major party can opt for the breakup, especially if the partnership only results in the marginalization of its leaders.
We need to understand this concern and especially refrain from alluding to a concealed dictatorial tendency. What the crisis shows is that the CUD has a structural problem that must be resolved. We need to find a democratic framework for reconciliation based on a fair assessment of the respective strength of each partner while carrying a provision for the protection of the rights of minority parties. But it serves no purpose other than division to ignore the forces in presence in the name of an abstract and, for that matter, illusory unity, just as it is useless to call for a return to unity so long as the problems persist. Needless to say, the concern should also include Lidetu and his faction, since his volte-face was actually the first expression of a burgeoning crisis.
That is why I place this plea for an honest and instructive debate. I ask all those who have first-hand information or knowledge about the crisis to speak up, not for the sake of blaming one faction, but for the sake of informing us. I implore that those who write cease to assign a hidden intention to this or that leader so as to reflect on the structural issues with an eye to proposing solutions. I invite those who run the popular websites to open a chapter for this kind of assessment. My belief is that if we do this review well, that is, if the diaspora conducts an honest and fair analysis of the crisis, the exchange could result in a rapprochement, perhaps even recommend an inclusive conference with the promise that the correct appraisal of problems could turn the diaspora into a force of reconciliation. The correct approach is not to blame individuals, but to alter the structural conditions that created the crisis in the first place.
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Prof. Messay Kebede can be reached at [email protected]
Shawel Consulting, Hailu Shawel’s family business based in Addis Ababa, is one of the few thriving companies in Ethiopia that are successfully competing with Sebhat Nega’s EFFORT and Al Amoudi’s Midrock.
ER Research Unit in Addis Ababa has learned that recently, the Woyanne regime’s deputy prime minister, Addisu Legesse, has helped Hailu Shawel’s company, Shawel Consulting Firm, land a lucrative contract in the ‘Amhara Killil’ to upgrade Bahr Dar Airport.
Shawel’s Consulting Firm started to get lucrative government contract particularly since 2006, according to ER Research Unit.
Prior to 2006, the company and Hailu Shawel’s family were on a downward spiral financially, sources told ER Research Unit. Until the Summer of 2006, the Shawel family could not even keep up with the mortgage of their $600,000 house in Edina, Minnesota. Ato Hailu’s close family friend in Los Angeles, Ato Moges Brook, had to pay over $15,000 mortgage from Kinijit’s account that he and Shaleqa Yoseph Yazew control.
Hailu Shawel’s $600,000 house in Edina, Minnesota
Recently, however, the family business is thriving. On top of the airport upgrade contract in the “Amhara Killil,” Hailu Shawel’s firm is currently working on another multimillion dollar construction project to build a large shopping mall. ER Research Unit is working to get more details and photos of this project.
Ato Hailu Shawel and Company have also been promised by Woyanne that they can freely operate in any part of Ethiopia and prepare for the next election as long as they do not use the name Kinijit. Ato Hailu has accepted the offer, but had to find a pretext to withdraw from Kinijit without causing himself and his group a public backlash. Before he departed for the U.S., he held meetings with former AEUP officials and created various committees that are assigned the task of reorganizing AEUP.
Asked by Kinijit officials Bertukan Mideksa and others why a bank account was opened under AEUP and the office rental contract was also renewed under AEUP, Ato Abayneh Berhanu and other colleagues of Hailu Shawel answered that Woyanne would not allow them to operate under Kinijit. When making such a decision, Ato Abayneh did not bother to consult with the Kinijit executive committee.
Currently, Ato Hailu Shawel and Company are busy preparing to participate in the upcoming local elections in April 2008 under the AEUP banner. Several teams have been dispatched to various woredas (districts) through out the country to re-open AEUP offices. Even the exiled Dr Taye Woldesemayat is returning to Ethiopia to help with preparations for the upcoming elections. He told Hailu Shawel’s supporters at the Paltalk’s Diaspora Room on Sunday that he is planning to go to Ethiopia soon.
All this is done by Hailu Shawel and gang while lying to the public that Kinijit is united. What these fools don’t know is that, after they help Woyanne destroy Kinijit, Woyanne will turn on them. Woyannes have promised themselves never again to allow the 2005 type of election where international observers will be present.
All Hailu Shawel’s corruption, business dealings with Addisu Legesse and other Woaynnes, reorganizing of AEUP, the campaign to dismantle Kinijit, etc. are not secret to Wzt. Bertukan and her friends. It is just that they are too timid to expose them. Wzt. Bertukan and crew are too nice to be politicians. Why don’t they open a book store and smile all day? They have turned out to be ragdolls in the face of an all out assault by the AEUP feudalists-Woyanne-EPRP unholy alliance. As far as ER is concerned, they are toast — unless they clean up their act and start fighting back.
