OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – About 75 Ethiopian protestors attended a demonstration outside the Oklahoma City office of U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, saying he is blocking consideration of a bill (H.R. 2003) that addresses human rights in Ethiopia.
But a spokesman for Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, says the senator has not placed a hold on the bill, which has not yet reached the Senate floor.
The spokesman, John Collison, says he planned to meet with the protest leaders on Tuesday afternoon.
During the peaceful protest, held across the street from 1 of Oklahoma City’s major shopping malls, many demonstrators held U.S. flags, while others held the green, red, and yellow flag of Ethiopia.
The bill, which passed in the U.S. House, decries Ethiopia’s recent human rights record and opens the door for sanctions.
MONTE CARLO, Monaco – Haile Gebrselassie’s marathon world record of two hours four minutes 26 seconds was ratified Monday by the International Association of Athletic Federations.
Gebrselassie set the record at the Berlin Marathon on Sept. 30, beating the time of 2:04:55 set by Paul Tergat of Kenya in winning the same race in 2003.
The Ethiopian, a two-time Olympic 10,000-metre champion, started racing marathons five years ago. He set three world records in both the 5,000 and 10,000 in the 1990s, but no longer holds those marks.
The IAAF also ratified Vladimir Kanaykin’s world record in the 20-kilometre race walk. The Russian’s time of 1:17:16 replaces the 1:17:21 mark of Jefferson Perez, which was set in 2003.
Lorna Kiplagat of the Netherlands now officially holds the world half marathon world record after her time of 1:06:25 in Udine, Italy, on Oct. 14 was cleared by the IAAF. Elana Meyer held the previous record of 1:06:44.
Kiplagat also set the 20-kilometre record in the same race. Her time of 1:02:57 replaces her own record of 1:03:21 that she set in October 2006.
The legitimate Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo church in exile lead by his Holiness Abune Merkorios, Patriarch of The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewhahedo Church, successfully completed the Holy Synod’s 24th session in Columbus, OHIO on November 10, 2007. It was the first conference held in the new Ethiopian Millennium. Read the full statement. Click here.
UN envoy says Somali war crime suspects should face ICC
NAIROBI (AFP) — A United Nations envoy on Tuesday said Somali war crimes suspects should be prosecuted at the international Criminal Court in order to end impunity in the lawless African nation.
“People perpetuating crimes and violence are not being challenged before the International Criminal Court,” said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN secretary general’s special envoy to Somalia.
“I think the time has come to see what international justice can do to help Somalis,” he told a press conference in Nairobi, where he became the first top UN envoy to make such a call for trials before the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal.
Ould-Abdallah said investigations in Somalia should really go back to 1991 when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted, touching off power struggles that have defied numerous attempts to restore stability, but the ICC can only take up cases since it started work in July 2002.
“I believe in justice (in order to avoid) to avoid impunity,” said the envoy, three days after after holding talks with President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.
The call comes amid fresh bout of clashes between Ethiopian-backed Somali forces and Islamists in Mogadishu that have claimed dozens of lives and displacing at least 170,000 others.
“Somalis deserve a minimum of justice,” he said. “So, may be now, no investigation is being done but one day this investigation may be done as it has been in other conflicts,” he said.
“Why can’t Somalis make an internal effort to be like Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone (countries that have emerged from conflict). Where are the patriotic Somalis to ask why can’t we have peace like Angola, Mozambique?” said Ould-Abdallah.
In April, a European Union envoy asked Brussels to investigate whether Ethiopian and Somali forces committed war crimes in their recent crackdown on Islamist and clan insurgents in Mogadishu.
The EU envoy in Kenya, Eric van der Linden, urged his EU headquarters in Brussels to see whether “indiscriminate use of force in heavily populated areas amounted to war crimes”.
The envoy was referring to an April assault in which Ethiopian soldiers wrestled final control of the Somali capital from the Islamist militants after a bloody campaign that claimed hundreds of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands.
The Hague-based ICC on Tuesday announced a trial date for May next year for one of two warlords from the Democratic Republic of Congo currently detained in the city and has also indicted five Ugandan rebel commanders for war crimes.
Ethiopia sent thousands of troops into Somalia last year to help its government topple an Islamist movement that briefly controlled much of the country and is accused by Washington of links to Al-Qaeda.
Since then, hit-and-run attacks by remnant Islamist fighters have shaken Mogadishu.
Somalia has been without an effective government for the past 16 years.
Somali government [and Woyanne] soldiers Monday mounted a door-to-door search of a major marketplace in Mogadishu in search of Islamist insurgents as shell-shocked residents continued a massive exodus from the Somali capital.
The operation by Somali forces and their U.S.-backed Ethiopian Woyanne allies in the bullet-riddled Bakara market — a reputed insurgent hideout — follows some of the deadliest fighting in Mogadishu in months. The market had been virtually emptied of people until Somali officials ordered storeowners to return on Monday and open their stalls for security checks.
More than 114,000 people fled their homes over the past two weeks, according to United Nations estimates released on Friday. Humanitarian officials said that many more fled over the weekend after Islamists ambushed a convoy of Ethiopian Woyanne troops and dragged the dead body of a soldier through the streets, triggering a spasm of Ethiopian Woyanne reprisal attacks.
“Somalia’s worst displacement ever took place in the last few days,” said an official with a Western aid agency in Mogadishu who asked not to be identified for security reasons. “Nearly four districts of the city have been totally cleared out.”
Some 850,000 Somalis — perhaps one in six — are displaced within their own country, the most in years. Fewer than 10 percent of them are receiving any humanitarian aid, and most live in desperate conditions in makeshift refugee encampments scattered around Mogadishu’s outskirts.
The latest turmoil is producing a ghastly conclusion to an apocalyptic year, even for Somalia, which hasn’t had a functioning government in 16 years.
Last December, Ethiopian Woyanne forces supported by the American military invaded neighboring Somalia to oust a hard-line Islamist regime that U.S. officials claimed was linked to al-Qaida. Since then, the Ethiopians have faced stubborn resistance from fighters loyal to the Islamists, who’ve proved adept at ambushes and remote-controlled bombings.
Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s campaign has become an open-ended military intervention besieged by a stubborn insurgency, and Ethiopians Woyannes recently responded by sending in a surge of reinforcement troops. Human rights groups charge that the Ethiopian Woyanne forces are carelessly killing civilians.
Some Mogadishu residents said that the Ethiopians Woyannes retaliated brutally to last week’s fatal ambush, fanning out across the city in tanks on Thursday and spraying neighborhoods with bullets. Bodies lay in the streets overnight, where they bled to death as frightened residents barricaded themselves in their homes, witnesses said.
“We collected 16 bodies, mostly elderly people, women and children. They were shot in the heads,” said Daud Soleyman, a resident of the Hamar Jadid neighborhood who described the scene the morning after the Ethiopian reprisals. Ethiopian Woyanne forces returned that morning and again opened fire, Soleyman said, and it took hours to collect all the bodies.
Such tactics seem certain to fuel the insurgency.
“The Ethiopians Woyannes are becoming impatient, meaning that they now retaliate indiscriminately,” said the Western aid official. “That, of course, leads to more resistance.”
The African Union has deployed a vanguard force of 1,600 peacekeepers, but they’ve been confined to Mogadishu’s airport and seaport. No reinforcements appear to be forthcoming, and last week U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said the situation was too chaotic to send in U.N. forces.
Bush administration envoys have called for Somalia’s transitional government to make peace with its opponents, but the Pentagon, which has long worried about Somalia becoming a haven for terrorists, supports Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s presence in the country.
On Monday, a senior official of the European Union, the leading American diplomatic partner on Somalia, said that the Bush administration was sending conflicting signals.
“Sometimes we are surprised” by remarks made by U.S. officials, said Georges-Marc Andre, the European special envoy to Somalia. “There are some things that our American partners do not tell us directly.”
Ethiopians in DC hold a protest rally in front of the
Kenyan Embassy. [photo: Abraham Takele]
Ethiopians in DC met with Kenyan ambassador to the U.S., Mr. Peter N.R.O Ogego, today and lodged their protest against the murder of Ethiopians refugees in Kenya by Woyanne gunmen.
According to Citizen TV, a major Kenyan TV, ten Ethiopian refugees have been killed in the past few weeks alone. Many have been beaten, some were kidnapped by Woyanne gunmen. The victims are university students and journalists who fled to Kenya to escape Woyanne crackdown on protesters following the May 2005 elections.
The Kinijit DC Metro officials Ato Yilma Adamu, Ato Alemayehu Abebe and other representatives of the protestors appealed to Ambassador Ogego to impress upon his government to protect the refugees from Woyanne gunmen. Kenya, as in any other country, as an international obligation to protect refugees.
Ambassador Ogego told the protesters who were holding a demonstration in front of the Kenya embassy that they do not need to be outside. He said the Kenya embassy is their home, too, and they can came in and talk to him any time about their concern.
Happy with the ambassador’s polite reception and satisfied that the ambassadors is willing to communicate their message to his government, the protesters expressed their appreciation and dispersed.
What a contrast to the way Ethiopian protesters are treated by Woyanne embassy officials in DC and around the world. [More photos below.]
Ethiopians in DC hold a protest rally in front of the Kenyan Embassy
[photo: Abraham Takele]
Ethiopians in DC hold a protest rally in front of the Kenyan Embassy