Ethiopian political and civic groups will block the Woyanne embassy in DC on Monday, July 2, 2007, to demand the immediate and unconditional release of the elected leaders of Ethiopia.
The rally starts at 9 AM this coming Monday in front of the Ethiopian Embassy, 3506 International Drive NW, Washington DC. For more info contact Kinijit-DC
By Sara Israelsen
Deseret Morning News
PROVO — The mental health of a man who bought high-powered guns illegally and told his roommates he wanted to kill police officers and U.S. soldiers will be reviewed against his wishes.
During an appearance Thursday in 4th District Court, prosecutor Donna Kelly asked Judge Gary Stott to order a mental-competency review for Kiddus Chane Yohannes, 20, who was arrested June 8 after police learned he had purchased guns illegally and was threatening violent attacks if given a chance.
“We have some concerns that he has mental-health issues, which raise questions as to his competency,” Kelly said.
However, Yohannes’ court-appointed attorney, Richard Gale, said Yohannes wanted to proceed with a preliminary hearing.
“He indicates he’s never received mental-health treatment and doesn’t believe he suffers from mental-health issues,” Gale said. “He would rather go further than delay it until August.”
Stott said he would allow the Utah County Attorney’s Office to proceed with the competency review. Yohannes will be in court again Aug. 2 at 8:30 a.m.
He faces five third-degree felonies, including unlawful possession of an ATM card and four charges of providing false information during a background check prior to purchasing a handgun.
Yohannes, a native of Ethiopia, is accused of purchasing several guns in October, including AK-47s, at pawn shops in both Orem and Provo, using false alien registration numbers.
Provo police officers had been investigating Yohannes after confiscating a gun from him, so when Orem officers began investigating Yohannes, the two agencies pooled their information.
Together, they discovered Yohannes had used two different numbers at various Utah County pawn shops. That information, combined with alleged threats to roommates and Yohannes’ obsession with execution-style Internet videos, led police to make an arrest for investigation of false information on a gun background check.
A search of Yohannes’ car revealed an imported Russian rifle, several rounds of ammunition, weapon parts and drawings of the weapons, according to the police affidavit.
Officials with the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification still aren’t sure how Yohannes was able to purchase guns with the two different numbers.
Sources close to the Woyanne-Qaliti mediation team in Addis Ababa have informed Ethiopian Review today that Meles Zenawi has decided to release the Kinijit leaders, but he wants to do it in his own terms, and at the time of his choosing.
Meles has informed the mediators, including the American ambassador in Ethiopia, that he will pardon the prisoners after the court sentences them next month on July 9. This is contrary to the agreement signed last week, according to the sources. Reportedly, the mediators are gravely concerned that he may not keep his word after the sentencing, too.
Meles is definetly feeling the heat. The U.S. State Department, which itself is under fire from the Congress, is putting a great deal of pressure on him. Europeans are doing the same. Meles seems to resents that, and said so yesterday at his rubber-stamp parliament. He described the pressure on him by Western diplomats as “shameful.” But he knows that not complying to the West’s demands will cause him to lose their alms. The Europeans are also considering imposing travel ban on Meles and other Woyanne regime officials. So Meles, who now feels cornered and humiliated by his Western backers, is in turn trying to humiliate Kinijit leaders by using their own words to have his court sentence them to long prison terms. If the pressure continues to mount, he will release them. Before that he will use what ever tactics he can muster to divert the West’s attention. If he succeeds, the prisoners will remain in jail indefinitely.
Meles and his Woyanne junta do not stop at just arresting or killing their enemies. Humiliation is part of the punishment they met out against their political opponents. Meles, after calling former prime minister Tamrat Layne to his office and persuading him to publicly admit mistakes if he wants to be free, threw him back to jail with long prison sentence by his kangaroo court. Former defense minister Seye Abraha is another victim of Meles and his crime family — Sebehat Nega, Bereket Simon, et al. Meles had repeatedly humiliated and frustrated the OLF leaders in the early 1990s by signing an agreement with them, to only change his mind before the ink is dry.
The Woyanne junta will continue to humiliate the people of Ethiopia and their leaders as long as they can do it with impunity. To believe that negotiation and diplomacy will work with Woyanne without the backing of a strong stick is to fool oneself. It is for this reason that if Kinijit International Leadership is serious about rescuing its leaders, it must mobilize the people of Ethiopia and start bleeding Woyanne’s nose.
By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
NAIROBI — Meles Zenawi said Thursday that his government “made a wrong political calculation” when it intervened in Somalia, where Ethiopian troops are bogged down in a fight against a growing insurgency.
Addressing Ethiopia’s Parliament, Meles said his government incorrectly assumed that breaking up the Islamic movement that took control of most of Somalia in June 2006 would subdue the country. He also said he wrongly believed that Somali clan leaders would live up to unspecified “promises.”
“We made these wrong assumptions,” Meles said on a day when a roadside bomb killed two Ethiopian soldiers in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and two aid workers were shot dead in northern Somalia.
Opposition members of Parliament have accused Meles of making the same mistake in Somalia that critics say the United States made in Iraq: launching a military intervention without having a political plan.
Many Ethiopian intellectuals and political leaders opposed the intervention because they said it would inevitably create the conditions for the sort of Somalia-based terrorist attacks that Meles intended to contain by invading the country.
In December, Ethiopian forces backing Somalia’s transitional government dislodged the Islamic movement, which was popular for the relative security it had brought after years of brutal warlord rule.
Ethiopia and the United States said the Islamic movement had been hijacked by extremists and accused it of harboring terrorists, including three suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, a charge the Islamic leaders denied.
Since January, fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian and Somali government troops has displaced more than half of Mogadishu’s population while the humanitarian situation has deteriorated. On Thursday, Amnesty International accused Kenya of blocking 141 trucks of food and other aid headed for more than 200,000 displaced Somalis suffering from “alarming levels” of malnutrition.
Many businessmen and civil society leaders in Mogadishu say that over the past two weeks, they have been unjustly labeled “al-Qaeda” and their homes and offices have been ransacked by Ethiopian and Somali troops.
One internationally known civil society leader, Abdulkadir Nur, said that troops plundered equipment in his offices and that his colleagues and relatives had been arrested without charge.
Nur said he is simply against what he considers an Ethiopian occupation.
“I do have the right to express my personal views,” he said in a statement. “And the transitional government has no right to abuse its power to destroy my livelihood, my personal property and abuse my colleagues and co-workers.”
Special correspondent Kassahun Addis in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.
ADDIS ABABA, June 28, 2007 (ST) — The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), armed wing of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), killed over 30 soldiers and captured nine others in an attack on Woyanne regime troops in eastern Ethiopia, a rebel radio reported.
The eastern zonal commander has said that on June 19, 2007, the OLA took a punitive strike against Ethiopian troops at a place called Fulale in the district of Boku, East Hararge Zone, killing over 20 soldiers and wounding 10 others. Besides killing and wounding Ethiopian soldiers in the attack on their base, the OLA captured nine soldiers.
In the attack, the OLA captured over 10 AK-47 assault rifles, six F1 grenades, over 350 firearm rounds as well as other materiel and turned them into an asset for Oromo liberation Army, reported the rebel radio Voice of Oromo Liberation.
On top of the military action against the Woyanne forces, the OLA stormed a jail and freed 12 OLF prisoners languishing in there.
On the same date, OLA operating in eastern zone expanded its activity. It overpowered and disarmed a large number of village militiamen the government had set up to fight the rebel OLA.
After subduing and confiscating many Kalashnikov rifles from the militiamen, the OLA explained to them the objectives of the Oromo liberation struggle spearheaded by the OLF, about the OLA military activities. The militiamen were then allowed to return to their home areas.
(ST)
By Dr. Getachew Workneh
Surely, help for Ethiopia will come from above with or without the support of the western powers, if we seek God in repentance. But, it is time to say enough is enough, stop negotiating with Hamman, and cooperate with God to hasten the day of our imminent liberation from tyranny.
God’s agenda for Ethiopia is in sharp contrast with TPLF agenda for Ethiopia. While the mafia group wants violence, bloodshed and chaos, God’s agenda is peace and prosperity. While TPLF wants to execute his cruel and inhuman goal of division and destruction, God wants to give us a glorious future and hope.
The current situation in Ethiopia appears to make God’s vision as far removed from us as the sky. The prevalence of HIV/AIDS, poverty, national disenfranchisement, and the resulting hopelessness is imposing incalculable damage to the nation. The government’s ethno-nationalist agenda is destroying us like a corrosive acid. Latent conflicts and hetred are everywhere in the country. Mounting cost of living is threatening the survival of the poorest section of the Ethiopian society. A spirit of evil and oppression is hovering over every one living in Ethiopia. Most serious of all is the country we love and our future generation is at stake. The nation finds itself in a seemingly hopeless situation.
The people of Ethiopia are at war with the amalekites of TPLF regime. The defeat and destruction of the Amalekites was on God’s agenda for Israel. Moses, the leader of the people of God, needed to fight them, at both physical and spiritual level, to win the battle over the amalekites. The new Ethiopia will be built on the tombs of our Amalekites. Thus, no let up until we see them utterly defeated and buried.
We can’t afford to be cheated by Zenawi any more. His grand cheatings over opposition leaders should lead us to a firm resolution. His tricks that helped him to postpone a national demonstration, pretending to be a peace lover just to survive and establish an illegal government in Ethiopia, should have given us a lesson. Yet we have not learned from our past mistakes. His court verdict carrying serious sentence to weaken the psychology and determination of opposition leaders in detention was aimed at terrorizing them to sign a ’deal’. If true, this has the intent of aborting legislative measures both by EU and some of the state department officials. Sounds a smart move? We do keep on making mistakes because we have not yet grasped the true nature of the enemy. We always expect him in the moral realm. But, he always operates in the immoral. As such, his actions and the motives behind them are clear.
What the TPLF mafia should know that the democratic process in Ethiopia, which started during May 2005, can’t be reversed. Playing games around opposition leaders is no longer an issue. The fact is the struggle for democracy will continue even without them on its own, because they have created so many leaders through their brave sacrifices. This is the issue that Zenawi and his friends should know. Their release is imminent, whether TPLF wants it or not.
No doubt, the attitude of western powers is seriously undermining the struggle for democracy in Ethiopia. Lack of support from western countries contributed to the failure of our peaceful struggle strategies to achieve our goals. Even if they consider themselves proponents of democracy and human rights, they did not seem to care about us. They preach democracy but they support dictatorship, and have deliberately done so to serve their own foreign policy agenda. They remain indifferent at a time when they could do something to help the struggle for democracy come to fruition. I think the words of mordecai to Esther, ‘’…for such a time as this,’’ should speak strongly to their conscience and that of ours in the diaspora. If we fail to act now, we will be held accountable for every misuse of our God ordained knowledge, money and political power. But, deliverance from Ethiopia and Ethiopians will surely come from God, with or without our participation.
We should therefore stop negotiating with Hamman and seek the face of God who promised a day of prosperity to Ethiopia. The evil nature of the enemy means that we cannot negotiate with it. Haman’s evil intentions had always been destroying the Jewish people. Zenawi and his associates share the same vision of destroying Ethiopia and Ethiopians ever since they came to power. It is time to do something to get rid of the devil that is sucking the blood of innocent Ethiopians. Instead of negotiating with Haman, mordecai and Esther chose to pray and fast to gain the favour of king Ahasuerus. We should seek God’s favour in our attempt to foil the enemy schemes and change the course of our nation in the right direction. Such should be our response to Zenawi and his terrorist regime.
From now on we should take the matter in our own hands. Negotiating with the devil has never worked and never will. It is time to understand that “ …for such a time as this,” applies to every one of us. This is true of the diaspora more than ever before. It is true of all churches of various denominations, and every individual who was born on the Ethiopian soil. I agree with Obang Metho that every one of us is a leader in the struggle for freedom and democracy for Ethiopia.
We should engage in fervent prayer and working with God to get the people of Ethiopia free. We need to humble ourselves before God and ask him to fulfill the promises He gave to us. We need to expect the fulfillment of the promises of God. With God’s help, the people of Ethiopia will be free. Here, I fully agree with the call of Obang in seeking God in prayer to break the power of the evil forces hovering over Ethiopia. God’s plan for us is one of peace and desired end. Help is near and on the way! Amen!!!
No doubt Ethiopia will prevail. Even if our present circumstances preach us defeat, our hope in God says we will be freed and librated. Let us be united in prayer and seek his mercy. The jaricho of dictatorship and enslavement will surely collapse before our eyes. The Haman of Ethiopia will face his judgment and God will turn his sins up on his head. God will frustrate his plans and rescue us from destruction and annihilation…amen! We have a promise from God that was not given to any nation in the world that says, “ Ethiopia will stretch its hands to God.” We will prevail. But, we all need to rise up and say enough is enough, and prepare for the battle and the inevitable victory.
The writer can be reached at: [email protected]