By Ayanawo Farada Sanbatu
Haaretz
Eighty Ethiopian immigrant children, whose families transferred in recent months from absorption centers to permanent homes in Petah Tikvah, are still looking for schools that will agree to accept them for the upcoming school year .
The immigrants cannot be accepted to state secular schools as they have yet to finish their conversion process. The state-religious schools — where they are supposed to finish the conversion process — are not willing to accept them either, since the local authorities are concerned that they will scare off other students to private religious schools, leaving only the poverty stricken children in the state-religious schools.
Private religious schools in Petah Tikva are also unwilling to receive them.
“It is inconceivable that independent religious schools, which receive funding from the Education Ministry and the local authority, will refuse to accept children to their schools”, the Ethiopian immigrants said on Tuesday.
“If the schools would refuse to receive children from other communities, the public would shout out. All our children want to do is go to school and then the army to serve their country. But when the state needs to supply them with the education they deserve, they turn a blind eye.”
Abraharm Nagosa, Chairman of an umbrella group of Ethiopian immigrant organizations, said “the Education Ministry has abandoned the Ethiopian immigrant children once again. I call upon the education minister to address this issue herself and ensure that all citizens of the state receive the equal education they deserve.”
The Education Ministry responded, saying “the ministry is aware of the issue and is dealing with it. A meeting took place Tuesday with the local authority and in the next few days a second meeting will take place between all the relevant parties in order to find a suitable solution to the matter.”
The Petah Tikva local authority said in response that “director-general of the Education Ministry Shmuel Abuav met Wednesday with Mayor Yizhak Ohayun to discuss the matter and it was decided that the Abuav would summon the principals of the private schools in order to convince them to accept the children.”
Ethiopian Review and EMF conducted a press conference with Kinijit North America auditor, Ato Tesfaye Asmamaw. Ato Tesfaye, a senior accountant with the U.S. Federal Elections Commission, has also served as the auditor of Kinijit North America. Ato Tesfaye has informed us that he has finished preparing a comprehensive report to be presented to the Kinijit executive committee in Addis Ababa. The report exposes the rampant corruption that went on inside the Kinijit North America committee under the leadership of Shaleqa Yoseph Yazew, in collaboration with his long time friend since their EDU days, Ato Moges Brook of Los Angeles. Between these two individuals, according to the auditor, $700,000 – $1.2 million dollars have been stolen, wasted, or unaccounted for. This figure doesn’t include funds collected in cash that had nevere been deposited in a bank account. Some of the wasteful expenses include $4,000 for just one restaurant bill, $6,000 for unauthorized trip to Kenya, etc. Only $23,000 have been sent to Ethiopia to assist the families of the jailed leaders. But even this money was not given to those who needed it. The money was distributed to the shaleqa’s and Ato Moges Brook’s friends who didn’t need the money.
According to Ato Tesfaye, the Internal Revenue Service and the State of Virginia have now launched investigations in to the financial improprieties by the shaleqa and group of friends.
Shaleqa Yoseph and group have shamed themselves and the party they were put in charge of. They betrayed their party and the people of Ethiopia. What is more sad and telling about all of us is that these individuals are being tolerated and allowed to continue holding leadership positions inside the party. We are condemning the corrupt Woyanne regime, but at the same time, we are tolerating outright stealing of public funds inside Kinijit.
After learning all the hard facts about the corruption that went on inside Kinijit and yet the top leaders fail to take strong actions, then the problem will not be with the shaleqa and his cohorts alone. Kinijit’s name will be irreparably tarnished as a corrupt party.
Click here to listen the full interview with Ato Tesfaye Asmamaw.
NW DC Community Fights Back With Heist Video on YouTube
By Clarence Williams and Elissa Silverman
Washington Post
The two masked robbers saunter into a corner market in LeDroit Park, each pointing a gun at the store clerk. The clerk runs behind the counter, but the thugs have him.
As one empties the cash register, the other holds the clerk against the floor, a knee and a handgun pressed into his back. The thief pistol-whips the clerk before standing up and kicking him. Then he walks out with his partner.
The incident, caught on the store’s video camera, took a little more than four minutes at about 1 p.m. on an overcast and sultry Tuesday. And it’s all there on YouTube (click here to watch).
LeDroit Park is fighting back.
“I want the mayor, council member and the police chief to see this video,” Simon Mahteme, owner of LeDroit Park Market, tells the camera. “I’m tired of it. It’s not human behavior. I’m trying to make an honest living.”
The July 10 robbery was the latest of 10 break-ins and armed robberies since October at the market, considered the heart of the community. A customer, outraged by constant vandalism in the historic Northwest neighborhood, posted the footage on the popular video-sharing site in hopes that a viewer would identify the robbers.
Late last week, police charged a 17-year-old. They are not saying whether YouTube played a role, but the video got the attention of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier.
Fenty and Lanier, along with a sizable retinue of their deputies, listened last week as about 100 LeDroit Park residents demanded increased police presence. Fenty (D) said he had heard about the video clip on YouTube, and Lanier has seen it.
“If this is one way that more people will see a potential suspect that will identify him, then I think it has some redeeming value,” Fenty said in an interview.
The community’s crime-fighting campaign isn’t over with the YouTube salvo: It has raised $4,500 to buy a video camera for the building’s exterior, and residents and police are working together to connect it to the city’s network of crime cameras.
Among the issues to be worked out: Who would own and maintain the camera? And although some residents want to use the camera to monitor the goings-on at the store, police say the tapes can be used only after a crime has been committed.
LeDroit Park, with its ornate Victorian houses and narrow streets, has a small-town feel. More than a half-century ago, the tiny neighborhood was home to Ralph Bunche, a Howard University professor who would later become the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and Duke Ellington, who lived there before rising to jazz greatness.
Today, as the fabled neighborhood recovers from decades of decline, many residents point to Mahteme and his little corner market as the community’s spirited heart. So they all felt victimized by the break-ins and robberies.
“Any one of us could have been in that store and been the victim of that crime,” Myla Moss, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, said of the most recent armed robbery. “It’s just unnerving.”
When Mahteme, an immigrant from Ethiopia, bought the store at Fourth and T streets six years ago, he resisted the bulletproof glass and metal bars that armor so many other urban markets. His shop sports a fresh coat of mint-green paint, with cream-colored “eyebrows” painstakingly painted over its windows.
Inside, pictures of restored neighborhood homes share pride of place with a neon Budweiser sign. There’s a deli on one side and racks of wine, along with the usual necessities. Customers’ toddlers dawdle in the aisles, playing with the merchandise as staffers smile.
“The market is kind of the epicenter for the community,” Moss said. “Everyone goes there.”
Moss, a lobbyist for dental schools, moved to LeDroit in 1999 because “I didn’t want to be a Beltway bandit, living in my car. I wanted to live in the birthplace of black intelligentsia.”
Andrew Dreschler, an executive at an opinion research firm, is part of the new wave of younger professionals who have renovated neglected houses and populated LeDroit’s brick sidewalks once again.
While house-hunting in 2005, Dreschler decided to buy a home in the neighborhood after walking into the corner market with no security glass or bars on its windows, sharing Mahteme’s dream of a safe, urban haven.
“I moved into this neighborhood because of this store,” Dreschler, 32, said.
The notion of safety — and Mahteme’s resolve not to surrender to fear — didn’t last.
Before last fall, Mahteme’s market had been burglarized twice in several years. But one morning in October, three robbers barged in, one pointing a gun in Mahteme’s face and striking him in the right eye with the weapon. It was only the beginning of a sad series of break-ins and robberies.
“After I got robbed [in October], I didn’t want to come back, believe me,” Mahteme said. “But after I opened that door, everybody [in the neighborhood] followed me. These are good people.”
In early December, he gave in and installed metal bars over the windows. They didn’t have the effect he expected.
On New Year’s Eve, his security camera captured a burglar kicking in the plate-glass front door, lifting the bars behind the glass by a few inches and urging a boy to climb inside.
“It was just like a mother giving birth,” Mahteme said.
The child then unlocked a side door, and the camera videotaped the pair grabbing all the merchandise they could carry; no cash was on the premises.
When Mahteme didn’t file insurance claims for fear of losing his policy, neighbors raised $800 to help him replace the broken glass.
“It was amazing, these people,” Mahteme said. “They didn’t have to do it.”
Neighbors speak of a recent surge in break-ins and armed robberies throughout the neighborhood, although police statistics indicate that the rate of those crimes has declined from each of the previous two years.
In addition, resident Michelle Sforza said, juveniles have assaulted passersby, and construction sites have been vandalized.
“You can be assaulted for just being on the street,” she said. “It’s not hard to imagine someone getting really, really hurt.”
At Mahteme’s market, new shatter-resistant glass shows pockmarks and spider-web cracks from would-be burglars and vandals. And each week, Mahteme sees youths who he suspects have robbed him, walking into his store.
But every morning, Mahteme keeps opening the doors of his elegantly restored market.
“I can’t give up. I can’t pack up and go,” he said as he stood outside the store just before closing one recent night.
“These people want me to stay.”
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia August 1, 2007 (ENA – state controlled) – The Federal High Court [kangaroo court] has sentenced five leaders and members of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit) from four to 16-year rigorous jail terms.
In its session held here on Wednesday, the Second Criminal Bench of the Court sentenced Lieutenant Girma Amare to 16 year rigorous prison term and other defendants Kidist Bekele and Mebratu Kebede to 15 year-prison term each.
Editor of Addis Zena, Wosen-seged Gebre-kidan and Editor of another tabloid called Hadar, Dawit Kebede received 4- year behind bar each.
The charges in which Lieutenant Girma Amare, Kidist Bekele and Mebratu Kebede were convicted were heavy and they should have been sentenced either to life in prison or death, the Court said.
According to the decision, the convicts incited violence in Kirkos and Addis Ketema sub-cities here in the capital following the May 2005 national election.
Prosecutor witnesses had testified that Lieutenant Girma in particular to have instigated violence and stoned and set ablaze the office of Kebele 13/15, a city bus, government vehicle and a shop while preventing the movement of people.
The Court said Kidist was convicted of supplying petrol for setting ablaze the stated properties while attacking police members and preventing the movement of people.
However, the Court had sentenced the convicts to the stated jail term taking into consideration these attempts had failed to materialize.
The stated editors were convicted of instigating violence claiming that the national election was fraudulent and the incumbent state could not form a government with rigged vote and the public should not accept the outcome of the elections, among others.
Though the convicts were supposed to get up to 10-years in jail each, they were sentenced only to 4-year imprisonment each.
The Court postponed its verdict on other members of the CUD leaderships for August 6, 2007.
By Scott A. Morgan
American Chronicle
We all noticed last fall when the American Voters decidely threw out a Republican Congress and replaced it with the Democrats. But it is becoming clear that if WE expected a change in how things are run in Washington we were sadly mistaken.
Like in the last Republican-controlled Congress, a Bill that was designed to address the internal climate in an African Country that is an ally was introduced. Sadly it appears that it is travelling down the same road. If certain people have their way this legislation will not see the floor to be voted on.
H.R. 2003, which deals with Freedom Democracy and Human Rights in Ethiopia, was reintroduced in the House after a journey that had some treachery in it. After clearing the House International Relations Committee (now the Foreign Relations Committee) it was tabled by then Speaker Hastert. Now, under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, it may suffer the same fate as it did in the last Congress.
The Current Government in Ethiopia has a serious image problem. Its actions were recently criticized in a report by Human Rights Watch. It released 38 political prisoners that were mainly members of the Political Opposition after an unfair trial. And the Red Cross was asked to leave the Ogaden region of the country. Also the country faces increasing scrutiny after its U.S.-backed incursion in to Somalia.
What did this African country do to try and shore up its image? It has retained one of the most powerful lobbyist groups in Washington — DLA Piper. Already the group has sent two former members of Congress, Dick Armey and Richard Gephardt, to lobby the Speaker in an effort to prevent this bill from being voted on. The government in Addis Ababa could lose substantial economic and military aid if this bill passes.
The fact is that this attempt at a backroom deal could backfire. The Congress has an even lower approval rating than the President. If this occurs, then who knows how much the average citizen will trust their member of Congress. The Ethiopian Diaspora here in the United States are organizing an effort to bring this bill to the floor so it can be voted on. Maybe Americans themselves should join this effort so that people can be heard and not the lobbyists. Isn’t that supposed to happen in the House anyway?
