By Claire Martin
Denver Post Staff Writer
05/30/2007
With one child dead and the other dependent on life support, Gezaee and Mulu Kahsay spent Tuesday shuttling in a daze of grief between the church and the hospital.
“The doctor told us there is nothing he can do,” said the children’s uncle, Johannes Haile. “We have asked them to give us until tomorrow. If some kind of miracle happens, that’s what his mother is thinking. Maybe his brain will wake up.
Ngiste Gebrezgi, left, a friend of the victims’ family, weeps as she walks to the home of Bethlehem and Yakob Kahsay, supported by one of Bethlehem’s classmates. Bethlehem’s drowning at Raintree East in Aurora hit the Ethiopian community hard. (Post / Lyn Alweis)
“Our Bethlehem,” he said, “she was so brave.”
Wrapped in white veils, wailing, grieving women from Denver’s Ethiopian community surrounded the parents and relatives of Bethlehem Kahsay, 16, who drowned Monday in an apparent attempt to save her 11-year-old brother as he struggled in a subdivision pool.
Dozens of people gathered at the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church near downtown Denver, trying to console the children’s father, Gezaee, and mother, Mulu.
Already the Kahsays are weighing the prospect of taking their daughter’s body back to Ethiopia for burial, but, as Haile observed, as refugees, “we don’t have a lot of financial resources.”
Bethlehem was wearing street clothes when her body was found Monday near her brother, Yakob, who was wearing swim trunks, leading to speculation she tried to save him.
Bethlehem and Yakob immigrated to the United States last fall, joining their father, who has lived in Colorado for 10 years, and their mother, who arrived here a little more than two years ago. Gezaee Kahsay works in United Airlines’ catering department. Mulu Kahsay works part time at a hair salon and as a cook, said Haile.
Bethlehem, a sophomore at Overland High School, was an exemplary student and a capable member of the girls soccer team, Haile said. While she loved American rock music, Bethlehem knew how to make excellent injera, the traditional Ethiopian flatbread, and other dishes, including the popular chicken stew, doro wat
Haile described Yakob as an energetic boy who loved splashing in the pool, less than a30-second walk from his parents’ town home in the Raintree East subdivision. He has a special knack for math – though his uncle also wryly recalled that Yakob needs reminders to finish his homework before turning on his favorite ninja cartoons.
The children attended the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church with their parents. Bethlehem showed a special interest in her faith. Hours before she drowned, she had talked to Haile on the phone, asking him to bring her a Bible in Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, so she could study it more closely.
“The family has really been going to the church a lot, because that’s where the support system is for them,” explained Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center spokeswoman Angie Anania
Anania said she could not comment on Yakob’s prospects for recuperating. She also said the hospital had Yakob’s last name listed as Gezaee and police said that was also Bethlehem’s last name. Haile, however, said their last name was Kahsay.
“Obviously, our pediatric specialists are working with the family and doing whatever they possibly can for Yakob,” Anania said. “They’re focused now on what’s going to happen here in the next 24 hours.”
At the East Raintree complex, neighbors expressed dismay and sympathy for the family. Jesse Reggans Jr. described Beth lehem as a devoted big sister who often accompanied her brother on the short trek from their doorstep to the mailboxes that abut the pool area.
Several neighbors put arrangements of candles and flowers alongside the pool fence.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or [email protected].
MOGADISHU, May 30 (Reuters) – A roadside bomb blast tore through a convoy carrying Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops in a central Somali town on Wednesday, seriously wounding five soldiers, a security source said.
Baladwayne resident Osman Adan said he could see thick black smoke billowing from the scene of the explosion, which the security source said was caused by a remote-controlled landmine.
“An Ethiopian [Woyanne] truck was blown up. … The Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops immediately opened fire indiscriminately with heavy machine-guns … I do not know if any soldiers were wounded or killed,” Adan said, adding that two civilians were hurt in the shooting.
Ethiopian [Woyanne] soldiers cordoned off the area after the blast and carried out door-to-door searches in nearby streets, he said.
The security source in Mogadishu said one Ethiopian [Woyanne] truck was destroyed by an anti-tank mine.
“There were five troops on board. There were seriously wounded,” said the security source, who asked not to be named.
Insurgents from an ousted militant Islamist movement have increasingly adopted the tactics of Iraqi guerrillas since the interim Somali government and its Ethiopian [Woyanne] allies forced them out of the capital Mogadishu in December after a brief war.
The rebels have struck government buildings, convoys and Ugandan peacekeepers patrolling for the African Union (AU).
Most attacks have taken place in the seaside city, and local media said a Somali soldier was shot dead by unknown gunmen late on Tuesday near its sprawling Bakara Market.
On Monday, a senior court official from Baladwayne was also killed by gunmen in Mogadishu. His funeral was taking place on Wednesday in the town, 190 miles (300 km) north of the capital.
President Abdullahi Yusuf’s government is struggling to impose central rule on the Horn of Africa nation, in anarchy since warlords kicked out dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Ethiopia [Woyanne] says it wants its forces to leave once the AU force is up to strength, or at least at half its planned 8,000 troops.
But other African nations have been wary of sending more soldiers, especially after four Ugandan peacekeepers were killed two weeks ago by a roadside bomb targeting their convoy.
Wednesday , May 30, 2007 By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN
Associated Press Writer
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) – Ethiopian troops shot and killed five bystanders Wednesday after a land mine exploded as their convoy passed through the center of a western Somali town, police said.
A remote-controlled land mine detonated in the town of Belet Weyne as the last vehicle in the convoy, a water tanker, passed.
“Then the Ethiopians opened fire on civilians,” police Col. Yusuf Aden told The Associated Press by telephone from Belet Weyne, 180 miles north of the capital, Mogadishu. “Five people, all of them passers-by, were killed and three others were wounded.”
It was the first time an Ethiopian army convoy has been attacked outside the capital, where Ethiopian trucks have been frequently targeted. The Ethiopian troops are backing Somalia’s fragile government against radical Islamic insurgents.
The explosion rocked the town center, and huge plumes of smoke rose into the sky, said Ali Iid, a witness. The Ethiopian soldiers fired in all directions, then controlled movement at the site for 10 minutes before driving off, Iid told the AP by telephone.
“I saw five people lying in the street, including a woman,” he said.
Somalia’s U.N.-backed transitional government was sidelined by a radical Islamic group until Ethiopia’s military intervened in December and turned the tide.
Insurgents linked to the Islamic group have vowed to wage an Iraq-style guerrilla war, saying the government is allowing Ethiopia to occupy the country.
The government claimed victory over the insurgents last month after battles in Mogadishu that killed at least 1,670 people and drove a fifth of the city’s 2 million residents to flee.
Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991, when warlords ousted longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another.
VOA News Unidentified gunmen have killed a top Somali intelligence official in the latest attack on figures from the country’s interim government.
Authorities say the official, Ahmed Mohamed Odaysge, was shot in Mogadishu’s Hamarweyne neighborhood Wednesday.
On Tuesday, a gunman shot and killed the chairman of a court in central Somalia who was visiting the capital.
The government has been unable to fully stop the violence in the Somali capital despite declaring victory over Islamist insurgents last month.
Meanwhile, witnesses in the central town of Beledwenye say at least four civilians were killed Wednesday when Ethiopian troops opened fire on a crowd of people.
The witnesses say the Ethiopians fired indiscriminately into the crowd after a land mine went off under their military convoy. Officials say several Ethiopian soldiers were injured in the blast.
The Somali interim government is struggling to impose its authority in the Horn of Africa nation, which has gone 16 years without an effective central government.
The government has scheduled a national reconciliation conference for June 16. But the government has warned the conference may be postponed for a second time because of insufficient funding from Western nations.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP.
After Washington, it is Africa’s turn to bid farewell to Tony Blair. His parade started in Libya yesterday, will gather steam in Sierra Leone and will finish in South Africa. Libya’s abandonment of its nuclear programme must count as a coup for British intelligence and diplomacy, and the military intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 was equally decisive. Mr Blair can safely bask in the reflected glow of both success stories.
But a look at the countries that Mr Blair is not visiting on his final tour is instructive. Ethiopia, the country where Mr Blair launched his campaign against poverty, is off the itinerary. The shine has worn off its prime minister, Meles Zenawi, a member of Mr Blair’s Commission for Africa, after elections two years ago ended in mass arrests and Ethiopian tanks rumbled into Somalia to oust the Islamic Courts, opening fire on civilians in Mogadishu. There will be no visit to Uganda either, after its president Yoweri Museveni, another Africa commission member, changed the constitution to remain in power indefinitely. Both leaders found it easier to talk about the principles of good governance for other countries than actually applying them to their own.
By making his tour, Mr Blair is inviting the question that all G8 leaders gathering next week in Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast will be challenged with: what did the commitments made to Africa at the G8 conference in Gleneagles actually achieve? The legacy is mixed: 18 countries in Africa have benefited from debt cancellation, and in Ghana and Malawi it has made a real difference. The money saved has respectively made education free and trained 4,000 extra teachers. Oxfam has no hesitation in calling this a significant victory. But 17 of the world’s 41 poorest countries are still struggling to meet the G8’s conditions, and other countries with crippling debts, such as Kenya, remain excluded. Even now the world’s poorest countries still pay the richest $100m a day in debt repayments.
The gap between promise and delivery remains wide in the field of aid. Oxfam calculated that the G8 will miss its target of increasing annual aid levels by $50bn by 2010, with a shortfall of $30bn. This is not Mr Blair’s fault. Since 1997 British expenditure on aid has more than doubled and, with 0.47% of GDP now spent on aid, Britain is moving credibly towards the UN-agreed target of 0.7% by 2015. But aid from Italy and France is falling, and aid from Germany, the US and Japan far short of what was promised. If G8 countries were like priests, most would have to retake their vows.
Aid works where it is properly delivered, but giving the cotton farmers of Mali access to world markets would be even better. Hot on the heels of the G8 meeting comes a critical decision by trade ministers – the last chance to conclude WTO talks by the summer and to agree cuts in agriculture subsidies and tariffs. This round of talks risks being hijacked by a familiar row between Europe and the US about whose subsidies should be cut first. On his first visit to Brussels as French president, Nicolas Sarkozy signalled that he would protect the interests of French farmers and resist attempts to cut supports while US farmers benefited from the same policies. Mr Sarkozy said it was “goodbye to naivety”. It could also be goodbye to a good deal on trade for Africa.
There are other areas of the Gleneagles agenda where the outcome has fallen short of expectation. Both Darfur and Zimbabwe remain woeful, questioning Africa’s ability, either military or diplomatic, to sort out its problems. That should not be a reason for the G8 to walk away from its commitments, or to move on to other agendas. Mr Blair, along with Gordon Brown, has put African poverty on the international agenda and kept it there. That does not mean that he is leaving with the task of solving it anything like finished.
SANA’A, 30 May 2007 (IRIN) – The Oromo people in Yemen have called on international organisations and rights groups to guarantee their rights and ensure their security in the country. Their representatives told IRIN they lead miserable lives in Yemen and live in fear of deportation. Mohammed Mousa, 27, an Oromo who has an ID card from the Somali community, is able to work in a sewage plant in Sana’a. He told IRIN that in April a group of young Yemeni men attacked him after he received his salary. “They beat me harshly until my head bled. They took all my salary [about US $50] and fled. Had I run away and refused to give them the money, I would have been accused of theft. And if I’d gone to the police station, they would have arrested me as I don’t have a card. It’s a life of degradation,” he said. Mona Tareq, a 35-year-old woman from the Oromo community in Sana’a whose husband died a few days ago of kidney problems, said they did not have enough money for the surgery he needed. Mona now lives alone and said she knows nothing about her five children in Ethiopia. “I am cut off from my family. And if I return home, I will be killed [by the Ethiopian government] because I am opposed to it,” she added. Persecution Oromos say they come to Yemen because the Ethiopian government is persecuting them. “We have come to Yemen in order to escape persecution, torture and killings by the Ethiopian government,” Jamal Abdowaday, an Oromo leader in Sana’a, told IRIN. The Ethiopian authorities, however, deny this, saying the Oromos in Yemen are economic migrants. Deportation Ameen Mohammed, an official at the Yemeni Immigration Authority, told IRIN the Yemeni government does not treat Oromos the same as they treat Somali asylum seekers. “They [the Oromos] are economic migrants. The authorities deport those who come to Yemen illegally,” he added. Very few Oromos have refugee cards. Most carry cards issued by the Somali community in Yemen, Abdowaday said, adding: “Oromos live in fear of being deported to Ethiopia by the Yemeni authorities because they are not treated as refugees.” He said that when Oromos arrive in the country, the authorities arrest them and then deport them, which is why they prefer not to go to refugee camps. According to him, the Oromos – like the Somalis – come to Yemen by sea. “They are smuggled in. Some are arrested by Yemeni coastguards and others disembark from boats and go unnoticed,” he said. Discrimination allegations Oromos say they are mistreated by the locals. “We are subject to harassment, arrests, and discrimination,” Abdowaday said. “Our children can’t go to school. They are deprived of education… They have become like animals confined in small rooms. They can’t play in the streets for fear of being beaten or harassed by local children,” Abdowaday added. When they are abused they are scared to complain to the police for fear of deportation, as they have no official documentation or refugee cards. Even when they want to rent a house, landlords ask for ID or refugee cards, which most of them lack. Ameen Mohammed denied there was discrimination against Oromos: “There is no discrimination against them. We apply the law to them if they violate it. When they get into trouble we apply the law, and they receive justice if they are harassed. Also, when they are detained after arriving here illegally, we check to see if they really qualify for refugee status. If they do, we grant it to them.”
