The Washington DC-based Addis Dimts Radio conducted an interview on Saturday with Prof. Ephrem Isaac and Prof. Alemayehu Gebremariam. The discussion had focused on H.R. 2003. Prof. Ephrem has admitted that he is lobbying against H.R. 2003, but was not clear what it is about since he said he did not read it. Click here to listen.
The Honorable Congressman Richard Gephardt
Former House Democratic Leader
c/o : Richard A. Gephardt Institute for Public Service
Washington University in St. Louis
Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
Dear Congressman Gephardt:
It was with a deep sense of betrayal and disbelief that we read a recent report suggesting that you might be involved in helping the Ethiopian dictator, Meles Zenawi, to derail the passage of a bill in Congress intended to protect the democratic rights of the people of Ethiopia.
If it is indeed true, your association with one of the most vicious dictators of the modern era would be inconsistent with your image as a leader who has dedicated his professional life to advancing the ideals of democracy and social justice.
Not too long ago, you declared to the world:
“One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, … The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth.”
The truth, in this case, is that Meles Zenawi has violated every tenet of human rights, committed crimes against humanity, destroyed the democratic aspirations of the people of Ethiopia, and mismanaged the scares resources of that country. More specifically:
Honorable Congressman,
In your commencement address to recent graduates of Washington University in St. Louis, you declared:
“The long nighttime of communism and totalitarianism is not over, but we are entering a new era where ordinary citizens everywhere are speaking out freely and are no longer afraid of murderous dictators.”
Unfortunately, if the rest of the world is marching out of the “nighttime of totalitarianism,” it is still pitch dark for the people of Ethiopia. According to a recent report, Ethiopia topped the list of the worst countries for press freedom, with more jailed and exiled journalists than any other country in the world. In 2006 alone, eight newspapers were banned, two foreign reporters were expelled and several websites were blocked.
As the rest of the world enjoys the “peace dividend” from the end of the “Cold War,” the people of Ethiopia are going through extremely severe economic hardships, thanks to the rampant corruption and expensive lobbying that are characteristics of Zenawi’s regime. A recent World Economic Forum report indicated that Ethiopia had slid to the rank of 120th out of 125 countries in 2006 in the Global Competitive Index, down from the 116th place it had occupied in 2005. Economic analysts point out that the number of Ethiopians on less than a dollar a day, has nearly tripled since Zenawi took power in 1991, i.e., relative to the record of the discredited communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
You once made the observation:
“It’s amazing what happens when you ask yourself this question before you speak or act. ‘How would I like this said or done to me?'” So, before you venture to work for Zenawi, the people of Ethiopia would wish to remind you of the above and to ask yourself: “How would I feel if I were an Ethiopian living under a dollar a day and my leader squandered the money on expensive lobbying?”
You have also been quoted as saying: “I think the most important thing in life, …., is credibility,…” Your demonstrated position against tyranny in Ethiopia would give more credibility to the mission of the Gephardt Institute for Public Service that you so generously helped to establish, and whose purpose you so eloquently described as an institute, “… to help spread freedom, democracy, and capitalism across the globe so we can better prevent the creation of terrorists.” The stand you now take in distancing yourself from a brutal dictator will certainly be a metric by which the image of this promising institution will be judged for a long time to come.
Honorable Congressman,
In the days and weeks to come, Ethiopian Americans and other Ethiopians in the US, who unlike their compatriots back home enjoy their freedom of speech, will be contacting you in thousands to ask you to disassociate yourself from a brutal dictator, and to stand on the side of democracy and social justice. They will be doing so, not out of impertinence, but in the full knowledge and conviction that, as a man of integrity, you will listen to the voices of the 70 million oppressed Ethiopians and be a part of their struggle against tyranny and injustice.
Sincerely,
Selam Beyene, Ph.D.
[email protected]
The Atlanta chapter of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit) sends a message of appreciation to members of the Kinijit International Leadership, which has dissolved itself after completing its mandate on Friday, July 27, 2007.
A U.N. report accused U.S., Ethiopia over Somalia
By Mark Turner at the United Nations and Barney Jopson in Kenya
Financial Times
Ethiopia is accused of killing civilians with white phosphorus bombs, the US navy of attacking suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Puntland, and Eritrea of delivering surface-to-air missiles to Islamist militia, in a startling new report on Somalia by UN arms monitors.
Warning that the number of weapons in Somalia now exceeds that during the early 1990s, when the failed East African state was engulfed in civil war, the UN monitoring group describes persistent instability in which anti-government Islamist forces are far from a spent force, and former warlords are reasserting themselves.
From late last year to mid-June, the UN analysts – whose previous report courted significant controversy with its contested claims of weapons and personnel flows between Somalia and the Middle East – conclude that an Ethiopian invasion and African Union peacekeepers have failed to stop massive arms flows into the country.
Furthermore, the latest period has witnessed a “drastic increase” in piracy off the Somali coast, and “pirate command centres” are operating “without hindrance” at many coastal landing points.
“In brief, Somalia is awash with arms,” the report says. “There is no clearly established authority that has the capability of exercising control over a majority (of the weapons).”
Some of the most dramatic claims implicate Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are believed to be conducting a proxy war in the country, through their respective backing of the transitional government and Islamist and clan-based militia.
During a battle on April 13 between the Ethiopian military, which remains in the country, and the Shabaab, elite forces from the Islamic Courts Union, “Ethiopian military forces resorted to using white phosphorus bombs … approximately 15 Shabaab fighters and 35 civilians were killed.”
Ethiopia denies the claims, saying it does not possess such weapons. The monitoring group obtained pictures of the area of impact of the bombs, and a soil sample analysed in Nairobi was consistent with their use.
Meanwhile, despite its conventional defeat by Ethiopia in December 2006-January 2007, the Islamic Courts Union has switched to guerilla and terrorist tactics, including suicide attacks and targeted assassinations. Recent arms seizures by the government “represent only a small fraction of the total arms belonging to and hidden by the Shabaab”.
Shabaab fighters shot down a Belarussian cargo plane in late March 2007 with an SA-18 surface to air missile, “reported to be a part of a consignment of six SA-18s that had been delivered by Eritrea”. The monitoring group has a video of the firing of the missile. Eritrea has denied involvement.
The monitors also say they received reports that on June 1 this year, the US Navy “attacked by firing several times at suspected al-Qaeda operatives near the coastal village of Bargal, Puntland, Somalia.”
When questioned, the US government said it had “conducted several strikes in self-defence against al-Qaeda terrorist targets in Somalia”.
Also of concern is the panel’s finding that “warlords are now among the most important buyers of arms at the Bakaraaha arms markets”, in Mogadishu, “and are trying to regain control over their former fiefdoms (which they lost to the ICU in 2006).”
“The warlords are currently trying to reconstitute and arm their respective militias, some of which consist of as many as 500 fighters.”
Separately, a long-awaited peace conference has entered its second week in Mogadishu as organisers seek to reconcile the country’s myriad clans, political factions and former warlords. But its success is likely to be hampered by the absence of two key constituencies: representatives of the the Islamic Courts Union and the powerful Hawiye clan. They refused to attend in protest against the continued presence of Ethiopian troops in the country and the interim government’s perceived lack of willingness to engage with its opponents.
By Elaine Jarvik
Deseret Morning News
Utah — Norm Perdue used to have a home office he called his “Ethiopia Room.” Those were the days when he was able to contain this project to one desk and a few walls.
[Sofia Kedir of the Mesgana Dancers performs a traditional Ethiopian dance. Her troupe will arrive in New York City this week to begin a second tour.]
These days, his Children of Ethiopia Education Fund has taken over his house and his life. COEFF, which he began in 2001 as a small nonprofit, now helps 800 girls attend school in a country where most girls either don’t get any education or are encouraged to drop out early.
[Norman Perdue]
But the number of children who could be helped seems endless, which is why photos of shy faces stare up from a pile of 150 applications in his Murray home. These are girls whom Perdue helped interview on a recent trip to Ethiopia; the next step is to match them up with sponsors.
Perdue used to be an official photographer for the Utah Jazz, so he knows how to take a good picture. But he also knows, in the world of nonprofits, that he’s competing with hundreds of other worthy projects, each with brochures and Web sites full of endearing smiles and touching stories.
So two years ago he helped audition the best dancers from the program’s 22 schools and launched the Mesgana Dancers. The troupe, he reasoned, could reach American audiences in a different way — less a plea and more a confirmation that his program is turning out girls destined for a future that doesn’t include prostitution or an early marriage. Although many of the students come from impoverished backgrounds, Perdue focuses on possibilities rather than pathos. “Mesgana” is Amharic for “gratitude.”
This week, Perdue and 10 members of the dance troupe, ages 7 to 12, will arrive in New York City to begin their second annual dance tour. This year’s is twice as big, with performances in 16 cities, including Chicago; Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; New York City; Salt Lake City; and Los Angeles. The tour is also sponsored by Ethiopia Reads, a nonprofit that describes its mission as “building a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books.”
As they tour the country, Perdue hopes the Mesgana Dancers will also unite Ethiopia’s sometimes factional immigrant communities. He is proud of a comment, made during last year’s tour, by the leader of an Ethiopian center in California: “I’ve never seen anything bring our community together like this.”
Perdue — known as “Mr. Norm” among the students and parents in Ethiopia — fell into all this one day in the summer of 2001 on a humanitarian trip with his wife, Ruthann, who is a nurse. It was then that he met a chatty 12-year-old girl named Kidest, an orphan who lived with her grandmother.
At the time, Kidest (whose name in Oromo means “the blessed child regardless of her bad circumstances”) was attending a Seventh-day Adventist school. Kidest’s grandmother was working several jobs to pay her tuition, but her health was failing and it looked like Kidest might have to drop out of school. Government-run schools in Ethiopia are free but are overcrowded and poorly run, Perdue says. The private schools, while modest, provide better teachers as well as sports and health programs.
When Perdue found out that tuition was less than $200 per year, he immediately cashed some travelers checks and offered to pay for Kidest’s schooling. When he got back to Utah, he told friends and co-workers what had happened and they offered to sponsor other girls. Six years later there are now more than 600 sponsors in 40 states on several continents.
Greg Farley of St. George became a sponsor and then joined COEFF’s board of directors. In the spring of 2006 he visited Ethiopia to see the project firsthand.
“We think we can prepare ourselves for a third-world country, but the poverty is so overwhelming,” says Farley. The Perdues, he says, “want to get more and more girls off the street. And they want to get enough money to make sure these girls get at least one good meal a day.”
Perdue has received a small grant that enabled him to quit his government job to work full time for COEFF. He travels to Ethiopia for a month several times a year to make sure the 22 private schools that COEFF girls attend continue to meet high standards.
Among COEFF’s accomplishments last year: All eight of the students who took the 10th-grade national exam passed, “an amazing accomplishment considering more than 90 percent of students fail the exam,” according to Perdue. COEFF also provided a second year of support for a school in rural Ethiopia, serving more than 250 girls and boys who would otherwise not get an education. The nonprofit also has begun a pilot project in Tanzania and hopes to eventually provide funds so young Ethiopian girls can attend college.
After last year’s Mesgana Dancers tour, Perdue says he received a few “hate letters” asking why he was spending so much time helping Ethiopians instead of American children. “Sometimes people are jaded about Africa,” he says, then adds, “I don’t want to say ‘prejudiced.’ But I feel it’s a world community now.”
The Mesgana Dancers will perform at Dixie State College in St. George on Aug. 24; the Murray Park Amphitheater on Aug. 29; at the Capitol Theatre on Sept. 1; and at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City on Sept. 4. For more information visit www.mesgana.com.
The Ethiopian set the records at the Golden Spike meet in June in Ostrava, Czech Republic. In both events, he broke 16-year-old previous marks set by Arturo Barrios of Mexico in La Fleche, France.
Gebrselassie ran 21 285m (12.77 miles) in one hour to surpass Barrios’ mark by 184m. He also finished 20 000m in 56 minutes, 25.98 seconds. Barrios had timed 56:55.6.
The IAAF also ratified Meseret Defar’s world record in the 5 000m. The Ethiopian ran 14:16.63 at the Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway, in June to beat her own mark of 14:24.53 set in New York last year.
Source: SAPA