Melake Selam Sisay Ayele faced many challenges when he came to Columbus almost 20 years ago. He had a new home and was learning a new language.
Still, the Ethiopian priest’s concern was for the thousands of other refugees who also call Ohio home.
In 1992, he founded the Ethiopian Medhane-Alem Cathedral of Columbus, an Ethiopian Orthodox church in Victorian Village, and worked to make life easier for refugees.
“It was very difficult for him. He was already an old man and didn’t know English well, and he left some of his family behind,” said Seleshi Asfaw, director of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church Social Services. “But he had spiritual sons and daughters here.”
Ayele, who was 80, died June 29, and people are coming to Columbus from across the United States as well as Canada and Australia this week for funeral services. The final service will be Saturday at the cathedral.
His youngest child, Birhanelem Ayele, 24, of the East Side, said his father’s death is devastating for him and the wider community.
Ayele had seven children, four daughters and three sons, whose ages range from 24 to 50. Two live in Sudan, one in Australia and the youngest four in Columbus.
Ayele’s caring nature went beyond his immediate family, his son said.
Ayele was always a leader. He was a priest in Ethiopia, and ministered to many people through border wars, oppressive governments, famine and clashes between ethnic groups.
He was fearless through all his trials, his son said.
“He was never scared of death,” Birhanelem Ayele said. “I think it has to do with religion.”
Like many Ethiopian refugees, he ended up in Sudan where he started about 20 Christian churches, Asfaw said. Times were hard there, too. Food and water were sometimes scarce, and Ayele was leading a Christian congregation in a largely Islamic country.
“They saw him as Moses,” Asfaw said.
Ayele eventually came to Columbus, where some of his family already was living.
He quickly founded the church, which Asfaw said has about 700 members, and led the congregation until his death.
He was active in the social services organization that Asfaw leads and worked extensively with children at the church.
“It is a great loss for all the Ethiopians here in Columbus,” Asfaw said. “He was really a magnet, a center. He brought us together.”
Ayele hadn’t been back to Ethiopia for more than 30 years. When his son visited in 2005, he came back and showed his father video he took in the country.
All he could do was cry, Birhanelem Ayele said, because he missed his homeland so much.
Now his son is left to cope with his own heartbreak.
“Everything I had was taken away,” he said. “But there’s nothing you can do about it. He’s in the best place you could ask for.”
There were several services this week for Ayele. The final wake will be at 9 a.m. Saturday at the cathedral at 610 Neil Ave., followed by a eulogy. A burial ceremony will follow at St. Joseph Cemetery, 6440 S. High St.
APA-Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) Visiting Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday launched in Addis Ababa a pan-Africa e-network pilot project for tele-medicine and tele-education.
The $50 million pilot project will cover 17 other African countries.
“This is an initiative by India to use Indian expertise in information technology to bring benefits of healthcare and higher education to all countries of Africa, which aims at bridging the digital divide among 53 countries of the African continent,” Mukherjee said.
The project is funded and implemented by India in collaboration with the African Union.
The project will be used to network over 21 universities established in various parts of the country.
WASHINGTON, Jul 5 (IPS) – An intensified counter-insurgency campaign against Somali rebels and their suspected civilian supporters in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region is drawing growing criticism by human rights groups and concern from the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, a staunch ally of Addis Ababa.
The campaign, which some experts date to an April attack by the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) on a Chinese oil installation in which 74 people were killed, including nine Chinese, is causing immense suffering by the local Somali population, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW) which released a statement on the situation Wednesday.
“Ethiopian troops are destroying villages and property, confiscating livestock and forcing civilians to relocate,” according to Peter Takirambudde, HRW’s Africa director. “Whatever the military strategy behind them, these abuses violate the laws of war.”
But the campaign is also putting additional pressure on Ethiopia’s army at a moment when, much like U.S. troops in Iraq, it appears increasingly bogged down in a low-level guerrilla war in neighbouring Somalia and faces growing tensions along its still-contested border with Eritrea with which it fought a bloody conflict from 1998 to 2000.
Even Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi conceded last week that his government “made a wrong political calculation” when it intervened in Somalia late last year, driving the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) from power in Mogadishu and most of the rest of the country.
Since then, neither the transitional federal government (TFG) nor an African peacekeeping force — for which only about 1,500 Ugandan troops have been deployed so far — has been able to exert control over the capital, leaving an estimated 10,000 Ethiopian troops to maintain order in what most observers see as a deteriorating security situation in which anti-Ethiopian forces are steadily gaining strength.
“Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia has led to more instability and chaos in Somalia, and made Ethiopia more vulnerable in different fronts,” according to Ted Dagne, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Congressional Research Service here. “When your forces deployed on multiple fronts, it definitely weakens your strategic position.”
The Bush administration, which backed Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia and even carried out several attacks against specific “terrorist” targets in the country since the invasion, has declined to publicly criticise the ongoing counter-insurgency campaign in Ogaden.
At the same time, however, U.S. officials have privately expressed concern about the serious rights abuses, including murders, rapes, and the burning of villages, committed by the army and the possibility that its continuation could attract ICU, which Washington has accused of harbouring al Qaeda militants, and other anti-Ethiopian forces to the Ogaden, effectively transforming what are currently two distinct conflicts into a broader, regional war.
The Meles government has long insisted that links between ONLF and the ICU already exist, but that charge is questioned by independent experts here and strongly denied by the ONLF itself.
“The ONLF wishes to make clear to the international community that we are not, have not been and will not be a party to the ongoing conflict in Somalia as a matter of policy and principle,” it said last month.
The State Department has also rejected Ethiopian requests that it list the ONLF as an international terrorist organisation.
The Ogaden, which is dominated by the Somali Dorad clan and came under Ethiopian rule only in the mid-19th century, has been the scene of a near-constant tug-of-war between Somalia and Ethiopia since the former became independent in 1960. The conflict emerged into open warfare in the late 1970s when then-President Siad Barre tried unsuccessfully to realise a “Greater Somalia” by invading the region.
Barre was eventually forced from power in 1991, the same year that his Ethiopian nemesis, Haile Mengistu Mariam, was ousted in Addis Ababa and replaced by Meles and his Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front.
At the time, the ONLF joined the government but then left it when the Meles government launched its crackdown against the group in 1993 for advocating substantial autonomy or independence, both of which were permitted under Ethiopia’s new constitution.
Since then, it has waged a low-level guerrilla campaign that, until its attack on the Chinese installation this year, has gained almost no international attention, in part due to the remoteness of the region and obstacles placed by the government to human-rights monitors and journalists who wanted to travel there.
“The Ogaden is the forgotten tragedy,” according to Dagne, who noted that Ogadenis have remained loyal citizens under successive Ethiopian governments who have long suffered discrimination by Addis Ababa.
In recent weeks, Ethiopia’s counter-insurgency efforts in the Ogaden have intensified dramatically, according to HRW, which said thousands of civilians have been displaced, even in places where there is no known ONLF presence.
In tactics reminiscent of Sudan’s counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur, witnesses told HRW’s investigators that Ethiopian troops have burned homes and property, including the recent harvest and other food stocks, confiscated livestock and, in a few cases, fired on and killed fleeting civilians. In addition, they have arrested dozens of people in the larger towns, particularly family members of suspected ONLF members.
Bombing by Ethiopian warplanes has also been reported.
The government has also imposed a trade and food blockade on the region in an apparent effort to force thousands of people in rural areas to move to larger towns and thus deny the ONLF a support base, according to HRW, which also criticised abuses by the ONLF, including the attack on the Chinese installation and the killing of at least 28 civilians on a nearby farm.
“At this point, the question whether this is similar to Darfur is very difficult to say because of the inability of international human rights monitors, the press, and others to get full access to the region and find out exactly what’s going on,” Georgette Gagnon, a regional specialist at HRW, told IPS.
“But for the people suffering in the Ogaden, the situation is incredibly serious, and the government needs to rein in its troops and stop attacking civilians and burning them out of their homes,” she added.
The HRW report was anticipated by a lengthy, front-page article in the New York Times from the Ogaden three weeks ago which described a “reign of terror” by Ethiopian troops and depicted the ONLF as an indigenous movement with strong popular support.
The Times reporter, Jeffrey Gettleman, and two of his colleagues who contributed to the article were imprisoned for five days by the Ethiopian authorities after it was published and had all of their equipment confiscated.
The Meles dictatorship this week has agreed to give Sudan a large tract of fertile land near Atbara River in the Gonder region, northwestern Ethiopia. The agreement was not reported by any of the state- controlled media in Ethiopia. Even the rubber-stamp parliament was not informed about it, let alone give its consent. Ethiopians in the Gonder region were also unaware of this major development.
This is the second time for Gonder to lose a large fertile land. When the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (Woyanne) came to power in 1991, it appropriated the Humera farmland to the Tigray region. That decision continues to be highly controversial.
The latest land giveaway is even more significant both politically, economically and historically to Gonder, and Ethiopia, in general. The fact that it was done secretly without the consultation of even the rubber-stamp parliament may later on cause sever problems for the Meles regime.
According to observers, the give away Gonder’s fertile land to Sudan is intended to bribe the Sudanese government not to allow Ethiopian freedom fighters to operate in its territory.
If the above image of Meles Zenawi, shoulder to shoulder with two other Africa’s leaders, seeks to project an image of a statesman, below is another image of Zenawi. The image in the next caption was on display on 30 June 2007 demonstration in front of the office of the new British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown at #10 Downing Street. The image is a caricature, a work of art and not an actual photo of Zenawi. Thus its meaning is symbolic and therefore more powerful. This is important because the caricature of Zenawi in this image expresses the true sentiment of the Somali people in that demo in response to the unmitigated death and destruction Zenawi’s Tigre army has been wrecking in Somalia.
In today’s Africa, and in the shadows of Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, we have murderous thugs such as Meles Zenawi, Abdullahi Yusuf, Ali Mohamed Gedi, et al, who are murdering, maiming, looting and displacing the people of Somalia as they collect rewards of their crimes against humanity in the form of blood money and the false praises as payments of service rendered on behest of foreign forces. The image also makes other references such as UK, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Egypt, Algeria and Tanzania: these countries are part of an ad hoc committee known as The Contact Group for Somalia. They, too, have been complicit in Zenawi’s crime of genocide against the people of Somalia.
Sadly, as a political union comprising of independent African nations, the AU is dead. This is not to suggest that the ideal of Pan-Africanism is dead. Far from it: as long as African people and people of African descent continue to struggle for economic, political and social justice and the restoration of their human dignity, Pan-Africanism will remain relevant. But, as a political organization, the African Union (AU) is dead. On the specific issue of AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia, the current AU troops in Somalia is a mercenary army who are in Somalia’ soil to serve foreign forces determined to gain a total ownership over Somalia’s unexplored natural resources and install a puppet US friendly regime.
Somalis have no choice but to struggle for the liberation of their nation from the menacing grip of the unholy trinity of Zenawi’s Tirge army, US special forces and thuggish warlords of TFG. The AU has been collaborating with the forces currently menacing the people of Somalia. The Somali people are under the illegal occupation of the Tigre army of Meles Zenawi. It is the right and duty of all Somalis to struggle against the colonial takeover of their country. China has played a role in the project of death and destruction against the people of Somalia. Whilst the critics of western imperialism in Africa often point the accusing finger at the US’s meddling of the internal affairs of Africa, China’s meddling of the internal affairs of Africa has not receive a comparable scrutiny.
As a result, China has been able to quietly cultivate a network of dubious relationships with some of the must ruthless regimes in Africa, including Ethiopia’s dictator, Meles Zenawi, and the regime in Sudan. Second, whilst the US gives a cynical lip service to “the need to protect the human rights” of the local populations, China does not bother with such false pretenses. As a result, in Africa, China has been able to receive lucrative oil concessions and sweet deals from regimes in Africa with well documented gross human rights record such as Ethiopia and Sudan. In the specific case China’s oil drillings in Ogaden, China is implicated in Zenawi’s program of genocide against the people of Ogaden. This is because Zenawi’s program of death and destruction against the people of Ogaden, makes Ogaden “safe” for China to exploit the oil and natural gas in Ogaden. Thus, China, exploitation of natural resources of Ogaden and Zenawi’s program of the systematic liquidation of the people of Ogaden are linked.
It is pertinent to point out that while Ogaden is one of the most underdeveloped areas under Ethiopia’s control, China brought to Ogade Chinese workers to work in the Ogaden oil fields rather than hiring the local people. Thus, while China seeks promulgate its colonizing designs on Africa’s natural resources through the rhetoric of “bring development to Africa,” in reality, China is systemically undercutting Africa’s labour force by bring Chinese workforce to Africa rather than hiring local workers.
It is equally pertinent to point out that whilst Zenawi’s chosen tactic, in dealing with the Bush administration, is the need to fight “Islamic terror,” in order to ally himself and his tribal based Tigre regime with the US’s war against global terror, with China, Zinawi does not need to hide his ruthless human rights violations against the people of Oganden and other Ethiopian citizens. As a result, China and Zenawi have developed cozy relationship predicated on genocide, murder and exploitation of the people of Ogaden. Consequently, China might be exporting economic “development” to other parts of Africa but in Ethiopian occupied Ogaden, China brought in as well as has exacerbated Zinawi’ culture of gross human rights violations. It is in this specific context that China’s collusion with Meles Zinawi’s program of genocide against people in Ogedan must be critically examined, understood and contested.
It is on the basis of China’s collusion with Zenawi’s gross human rights violations against the people of Ogaden that I took a keen interest after reading about China’s donation of $600,000 to help African Unions peacekeeping effort in Somalia. This is relatively a small donation. However, I wanted to know what is the real motivation behind this pathetic gesture of goodwill, for as one of the five permanent members of the security council, China has endorsed the US sponsorship of Ethiopia’s illegal invasion of Somalia. Put differently, China has contributed the current death and destruction Zinawi’ Tigre army is wrecking against the people of Somalia. Second, the African Union has also endorsed Ethiopia’s illegal invasion of Somalia. Thus, by endorsing Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia, the African Union (AU) and UN Charters are in clear violation of Security Council resolutions 1724, 1725 and 1744.
The naked AU partisan in favor of Ethiopia and against Somalia is particularly insulting to ordinary patriotic Somalis. This is particularly so for Ethiopia’s illegal invasion of Somalia violates Somalia’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Absurdly, the AU has defended its backing up Ethiopia’s illegal invasion of Somalia as a way of restoring and “protecting” Ethiopia’s national sovereignty. To add more insult to Somalia’s collative injury, at present, the AU is using the destruction of Somalia to collect a “blood money” in name of “peacekeeping” duties in Somalia. This is clearly a cleaver way of creating employment opportunities for soldiers from some AU nations working in Somalia or might come at a later day, as a part of AU mercenary army occupying Somalia. Hence, the AU forces currently in Somalia are part of Zenawi’s Tigray mercenary occupation army which is currently killing, maiming, looting and raping the people of Somalia with impunity.
I have argued elsewhere reasons for Bush administration’s preference of AU “peacekeeping” force in Somalia over UN peacekeepers, for the former are willing to engage violent actions rights which are designed to subdue the Somali population in order to enhance the successful installation into the political power a group of thuggish warlord as a US puppet regime of TFG. In that work, I have also argued that, the US will try to seek the support of European Union nations to finance the bulk of UA peacekeeping force in Somalia. This option is still open. However, faced with gross human rights violations by the US backed Transitional Federal government and the Ethiopia’s occupation forces, EU member nations might be reluctant to give a full financial backing to the warlord regime of Yusuf and Gedi.
Some European nations, such as Italy, have openly expressed their opposition to Ethiopia’s continue occupation of Somalia. Italy has also pushed for more inclusive Somalia’s reconciliation process, which includes members of the defeated Islamists. It is not clear how this is going to happen since Islamists consider themselves a nonclanist organization and that the transition government has refused members of UIC a seat on the negotiating table unless members of Islamists are appointed by their clans. The clan based structuring of Somali political process is being frown upon not only by the Islamists, increasingly, ordinary Somalis are expressing their opposition to what they see as Zenawi’s designs of the systemic dismantling of Somalia’s national identity as a nation state with clearly marked territorial borders, social, cultural institutions and legal a system.
It is in this context that, increasingly, the Islamist in Somalia are being seen as a genuine nationalist force against US/Ethiopian foreign occupiers and TFG as a stooge serving the interests of its foreign masters rather than those of ordinary Somalis. Italy has also pledged a financial support to AU peacekeeping force in Somalia. However, Italy wants Ethiopian forces to completely withdraw from Somalia before African Union peacekeepers can take their place. This is significant for Italy is trying separate between occupation army of Ethiopia and peacekeeping force from other AU nations.
Whilst Italy has been demanding a complete Ethiopia’s troop pull out of Somalia, as the two main players currently contesting over the control of Africa’s natural resources, including oil and natural gas explorations and exploitations in the Horn of Africa, neither China nor the US has made similar demands of Ethiopia troop withdrawal out of Somalia. The US is the main player which is currently footing the bill for Ethiopia’s occupation of Somalia. With this small gesture, and probably more money to follow, China is now making an open investment to the Ethiopia’s occupation of Somalia. China’s eagerness to publicize its meager contribution to peacekeeping force in Somalia aims, primarily, at two main players: Ethiopia’s strong man, Meles Zinawi and his boss George W. Bush. Towards Zenawi, China is rewarding him for Zinawi’s ruthless suppression of the people of Ogaden so the China can safely exploit and appropriate oil resources from Ogaden. So this is China’s quid pro quo designed to appease Zinawi ruthless occupation of Somalia.
Towards the Bush administration, by contributing or seeming to be contributing to ,financially, AU peacekeeping effort in Somalia, China is aiming to struck another quid pro quo deal with the U.S so that, rather than fighting over it, China and the U.S might come to a mutually satisfactory agreement over the remaining oil and gas resources in Africa. So that the US might drop charges of human rights abuses against the regime in Sudan [i.e. Darfur]. The US might go along with China’s scheme for China can also use it’s own proxy agents who can bring charges of human rights abuses against the US’s backing of criminal warlords in Somalia or even against Zenawi Tigre army’s gross human rights record in Somalia. In the current scramble for Africa’s natural resources, human rights, war against “Islamic terror”, “development” and “democracy” are interchangeable metaphors which are capriciously deployed to advance imperialistic agendas.
Majority of Africans are willing to deny or minimize extent to which African tribes may have participated in the greatest genocide against humanity: The Transatlantic Slave Trade. Today, we cannot deny that African leaders are standing shoulder to shoulder with Meles Zenawi as his Tigre troops continue to commit war crimes and crimes of genocide against humanity against the Somali people inside Ethiopia’s occupied Ogaden and in Ethiopia’s occupied Somalia. Today, leading African nations are either openly or by their tacit conspicuous silences, supporting the Tigre colonization of Somalia. For the people of Somalia, the message is clear. The Somali people must and will struggle to liberate their country and victory shall be theirs.
Amina Mire, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Email: [email protected]
July 5, 2007 (LONDON) — White Nile said Thursday it has a joint study agreement with the Ethiopian Government’s Petroleum Operations Division, over the prospective East African Rift system in the southwest of the country.
The White Nile which was pulled out of South Sudan last month said its area of interest is in Southern Ethiopia in the Southern Rift Basins.
“As part of the exploration programme, ground geophysical surveys, including magneto-tellurics and gravity, have now been completed in the Omo River area to the north of Lake Turkana. This data is being used to determine basin disposition and depth in this critical area of interference between three proven petroliferous basin trends known as the Turkana Depression.
“Early results of the interpretation are encouraging and have revealed deep basins, potentially containing sedimentary section similar to that of the petroliferous Muglad and Melut Basins of Southern Sudan,” the company said.
It added the next stage in the development of the Company’s Ethiopian project is to finalise the interpretation of the data collected, which will identifying the areas that White Nile wishes to translate into a PSA. Following this the Company will design a reconnaissance 2D seismic programme to identify drill targets.
The company said Chairman Phil Edmonds has recently returned from a meeting in Juba, where he met Vice President of Southern Sudan government Riek Machar and Paul Mayom, the Minister of Interior and Chairman of Nile Petroleum Corp.
According to the White Nile both officials confirmed the proposed formation of a new oil consortium with regard to Block B in Southern Sudan comprising NilePet, White Nile, Total SA, Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company and Sudan National Petroleum Corporation, the state owned oil company of northern Sudan.
But reports from Khartoum denied such deal.
The White Nile chairman, Phil Edmonds, has requested that a White Nile board meeting be convened in Juba at the earliest opportunity, followed by a meeting with NilePet to discuss matters relating to further strengthening the relationship between NilePet and White Nile.
The Sudan’s National Oil Commission has pulled out the White Nile from oil consortium working in Block 5 in a meeting held last June. The Commission is co-chaired by the Sudanese president Omer al-Bashir and the First Vice President and president of the Southern Sudan government Salva Kiir.
Kiir had also, ordered the White Nile to freeze oil exploration in Jonglei state, last May, and formed committee to investigate the contract of White Nile oil company, headed by ex-England cricketer Phil Edmonds.
Melake Selam Sisay Ayele faced many challenges when he came to Columbus almost 20 years ago. He had a new home and was learning a new language.
