On Sunday, Nov. 5, at 10:30 pm, a sophomore student from Admas College was killed by a federal police officer on Bole Road.
According to sources, Bereket Hadgu, 24, was shot through the back while walking with friends, who were talking and laughing loudly. No words were ever exchanged between the policeman and his victim.
The officer, who has reportedly been taken into custody, has claimed that the gun “misfired” while he was hitting another student with the butt of the weapon. However, witnesses confirm that the shot was fired intentionally and without provocation.
The body of the student was returned Monday to his parents in Mekele, Northern Ethiopia.
afrol News, 2 November – A recent survey reveals that a large majority of Ethiopian women believe that the harmful practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) should be discontinued. Data also shows they are getting it their way. While 80 percent of Ethiopia’s women were circumcised in 2000, by now only 38 percent cut their daughters.
A country-wide study conducted in Ethiopia last year by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia and the US survey companies ORC Macro and Measure DHS has now been released. The 433-page report – an updated national Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) – gives special weight to women’s reproductive health, therefore also including data on harmful practices such as FGM.
The survey reveals a rapid turnaround in Ethiopia regarding society attitudes towards harmful practices, and a strong victory for the many gender organisations fighting FGM in the country.
Interviews conducted with over 14,000 women and over 6,000 men showed that both FGM prevalence and acceptance was quickly dwindling. While in 2000, some 80 percent of all Ethiopian women older than 15 years were circumcised, this had gone down to 74 percent in 2005. This seemingly small reduction however only reveals how the practice of FGM started decreasing a decade ago, as most girls are cut at young age.
While their mothers were almost certain to fall victim to the knife, young Ethiopian girls by now are likely to avoid FGM. Indeed, only 37.7 percent of those women that were circumcised themselves said they had passed the harmful practice on to one of their own daughters – down from 52 percent in 2000. During the last few years, therefore, more than 60 percent of Ethiopian girls have avoided FGM.
This is also reflected by the question to Ethiopian women whether the practice of FGM “should be continued”. Only 31.4 percent favoured continuation – down from 60 percent in 2000 – while an overwhelming majority of almost 70 percent was against. Among the youngest age group (15 to 19 years), only 22.9 percent favoured continuing the practice of FGM and among Addis Ababa women, only 5.6 percent were in favour.
In all but one region, the trends towards rejecting FGM were clear, although the urban and the educated parts of the population has gone farthest in changing their attitudes. Thus, around 65 percent living in the capital or having at least secondary education are circumcised, contrasting 76 percent of rural women, 77 percent on non-educated women or more than 90 percent of women in the Somali and Afar regions.
The rural impact of anti-FGM campaigns nevertheless was strongly documented in the survey. In the Somali region, where 97.3 percent of all women over 15 years are FGM victims, only 28.1 percent of mothers say they have passed the practice on to their recent daughters. The Somali region is culturally close to Somalia, where FGM is almost generalised. In the culturally related Afar region, on the other hand, 85.1 percent of mothers had cut their daughters.
According to Dr Stanley Yoder, an anthropologist with ORC Macro and author of FGM chapter in the Demographic and Health Surveys, FGM practices in Ethiopia “range from a symbolic tiny cut on the clitoris to the partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia and partial closure of the vaginal area (infibulation).” This most harmful form of FGM has been inflicted on 6.1 percent of women nationwide, while it remains the usual form in the Somali and Afar regions.
In some countries, like Egypt and Ethiopia, FGM is an ancient practice, predating Islam. In some parts of West Africa, on the other hand, the practice of FGM began only in the 19th and 20th centuries, and is wrongly understood as being part of Islamic practices. By now, it forms part of traditions in 28 African countries.
LONDON – The London School of Economics is embroiled in a row over academic freedom after one of its lecturers published a paper alleging that African states were poor and suffered chronic ill-health because their populations were less intelligent than people in richer countries.
Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist, is now accused of reviving the politics of eugenics by publishing the research which concludes that low IQ levels, rather than poverty and disease, are the reason why
life expectancy is low and infant mortality high. His paper, published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, compares IQ scores with indicators of ill health in 126 countries and claims that nations at the top of the ill health league also have the lowest intelligence ratings.
Paul Collins, a spokesman for War On Want, the international development charity, said the research ‘runs the risk of resurrecting the racist stereotype that Africans are responsible for their own plight, and may reinforce prejudices that Africans are less intelligent’.
Collins added: ‘The notion that people in poor countries have inferior intelligence has been disproved by much research in the past. This is another example, which other academics will shoot down.’
Philippa Atkinson, who chairs the LSE student union’s 85-strong Africa Forum and teaches in the school’s Department of Government, said the paper ‘reflects the now discredited theories of eugenics, which should have been left behind’.
‘Eugenics was a very influential discourse for centuries,’ she said. ‘It’s the discourse that colonialism and racism in America until the Sixties were based on, and was part of the basis of apartheid too. Nobody could prove that there are racial or national differences in IQ. It’s very, very controversial to say
that national IQ levels are low in Africa, and completely unproven. It’s a surprise that the odd person would try to bring it back,’ she said.
However, she said the research contained some interesting ideas and merited serious consideration, and stressed that academics such as Kanazawa should not be deterred from exploring controversial subjects.
The reaction to Kanazawa’s paper will reopen the simmering debate about whether academics are entitled to express opinions that many people may find offensive.
The Observer revealed last March that Frank Ellis, a lecturer in Russian and Slavonic studies at Leeds University, supported the Bell Curve theory, which holds that black people are less intelligent than whites. He also believed that women did not have the same intellectual capacity as men and backed the ‘humane’ repatriation of ethnic minorities. Initially, the university backed Ellis, despite protests by students and teaching staff, but he took early retirement in July.
Kanazawa declined to comment on either War on Want or Atkinson’s allegations about reviving eugenics because, he said, other academics had come up with the national IQ scores that underpinned his analysis of 126 countries. In the paper he cites Ethiopia’s national IQ of 63, the world’s lowest, and the fact that men and women are only expected to live until their mid-40s as an example of his finding that intelligence is the main determinant of someone’s health.
Having examined the effects of economic development and income inequality on health, he was ‘surprised’ to find that IQ had a much more important impact, he said. ‘Poverty, lack of sanitation, clean water, education and healthcare do not increase health and longevity, and nor does economic development.’
The LSE declined to offer any opinion on Kanazawa’s conclusions but defended his right to publish controversial research. A spokeswoman said: ‘This is academic research by Dr Kanazawa based on empirical data and published in a peer-reviewed journal. People may agree or disagree with his findings and are at liberty to voice their opinions to him. The school does not take any institutional view on the work of individual academics.’
Kate Raworth, a senior researcher with Oxfam, said it was ‘ridiculous’ for Kanazawa to blame ill health on low IQ and ‘very irresponsible’ to reach such conclusions using questionable and ‘fragile’ international data on national IQ levels.
Rumit Shah, chairman of the LSE student union’s 52-member Kenyan Society, said lack of education was probably one reason why many Kenyans die young. Aids, tuberculosis and malaria were key factors too.
Kanazawa’s article was a ‘misrepresentation’ of the true causes of ill health in Kenya, added Shah. ‘It portrays a bad picture of Kenya, because not everyone in Kenya has an IQ of 72. If there was more education, Kenyans would be wiser about their health.’
I felt compelled to write this short article after listening to an eyewitness video clip posted on Ethiopian Media Forum regarding religious conflicts that reportedly took place in the Jimmaa and Ilu-Abbaa-Boora zones of Oromia. I will briefly summarize the major political patterns demonstrated by the Woyane regime in the last 15 years in order to put into context the current political developments unfolding in Ethiopia, including this unprecedented religious conflict.
For any objective observer patterns in Woyane’s political behavior in the last 15 years indicate one basic fact, i.e., their strategy for ensuring endless dominance on Ethiopian state machinery is solely based on the infamous old approach of divide and rule, historically used by colonialists and later widely adopted by minority regimes across the world. During the heydays of the Woyane regime in the 1990s, the Woyane political elites cleverly charted out every conceivable lines along which the Ethiopian society can be partitioned. The first easy pick was to capitalize on the historic inequalities and repressions perpetrated by successive Ethiopian governments, chiefly directed at the peoples of the South. They cleverly manipulated these genuine grievances to pit the two largest ethnic groups (Oromo versus Amhara) against one another. Encouraged by Woyane’s rhetoric of correcting the historical injustice, the oppressed nations and nationalities immediately moved to demand for their legitimate places in the political life of the country. As this was not the intended outcome of the Woyane tactics, the regime was forced to tone down its original rhetoric, forced to expel independent political organization from the transitional government and forced to put cap on what the Woyane-made ethnic organization (PDOs) could demand for their peoples. These measures hinted the first sign as to what the Woyane regime is all about. It sent a shockwave across the files and ranks of the PDOs leading to expulsions or otherwise voluntary departure of well-versed members of these organizations, essentially turning these organizations into collections of opportunistic individuals who go to any length to please the regime and virtually out of touch with the aspirations of their respective peoples. Failing to rally the mass, these incompetent PDOs, ruling the regions, unleashed terror on their own people further alienating the mass. Unable to effectively function, the PDOs finally resorted to producing inflated statistics about their governments’ performances, falsely claiming an unprecedented popularity of their governments. This led the Woyane elites to believe that their tactics were working and their regime is comfortably seated and is ready to take on the next challenge.
Without carefully validating the reports filed by the PDOs, the Woyane elites foolishly embarked on their next move, which was aimed at gaining more trust from their Western financiers— earning the much needed international legitimacy. It is a common knowledge that the Western nations have been unconditionally supporting the Woyane regime, solely basing their logic on the carefully worded promises made by the regime about its commitments to democratizing Ethiopia. The Woyane felt that it is time to move beyond mere promises to showing something tangible in order to secure continued support from the West and also to counter accusations from opposition groups about its undemocratic practices. To this end, the Woyane elites carefully planned which opposition political organizations it would allow to participate in the 2005 elections and how much room it will allow for these organizations to maneuver. For obvious reasons, it picked the opposition groups that draw much of their supports from the Amhara ethnic group, without knowing the depth of public detest for its policies among non-Amhara ethnic groups. It also decided to use the Addis Ababa city election as its showcase, taking a well-calculated risk of loosing significant seats to the opposition in return for well-executed showcase that would secure Western confidence. Every step of the plan was wrong, as it was based on false reports filed by PDOs about the level of support the regime enjoyed among various ethnic groups. What happened in the aftermath of the 2005 elections is a too recent an episode and doesn’t need to be elaborated it here.
Panicked by the results of the elections, the Woyane picked up its old dividing tactic all over again, but this time around, they took it further by bring in the interhamwee rhetoric. It is aimed at separating the people of Tigray from the opposition groups, on the one hand, and to scare the world about the possibility for interhamwee style genocide in Ethiopia if the Woyane regime is removed from power. In a nutshell, they wanted to tell the world that the current regime is indispensable as the only regime that could play a balancing act between peoples of varying interests. They even went on charging the opposition leaders with ridiculous crimes as serious as treason and genocide to proof their claims. These measure finally brought to light what kind of beast the Woyane regime is.
The opposition groups quickly realized what this regime has in store for the country and promptly moved to counteract its plans. They made a great deal of compromise and created a broad alliance, AFD, to seal the cracks the regime sought to exploit for its malicious agenda of pitting ethnic groups against each other.
On its part, the regime appeared to have realized that the newly created understanding between various political organizations has effectively killed its old tactic and thus appeared to have embarked on yet another poisonous tactic with far reaching consequences. First, it jumped onto Somalia’s internal affairs in order to secure its position in the so-called “War on Terror.” In order to justify its actions in Somalia, the regime appeared to have decided to create connections between developments in Somalia by manipulating the delicate balance that existed between various religions in Ethiopian for centuries. Eyewitness reports coming from the fields indicate that in the religious conflicts that reportedly occurred in the Oromia zones of Jimmaa and Ilu-Abbaa-Boora, some of the perpetrates of the alleged crime were in army and police uniforms (click here listen to video eyewitness report)
Given the behaviors of this regime (highlighted above) and its recent adventure in Somalia, it is highly probable that the regime is behind such crime. No one in his/her right mind would underestimate the ramifications of such mindless acts. Therefore, it is high time that all political organizations and religious groups raise their voices against such acts before things get out of hand. If not cut short, it will be the deadliest political bomb used so far in Ethiopia and the region.
The Washington DC Chapter of Coalition for Unity & Democracy Party (CUDP/Kinijit) held a highly successful town hall meeting at the Unification Church yesterday (Oct 29). Hundreds of Kinijit members and supporters (the two halls were filled to capacity) gathered to listen explanations from the Kinijit officials about the recent leadership crisis.
At the start of the meeting, the acting chairman of Kinijit International Leadership (IL), Dr Moges Gebremariam, briefly discussed the crisis, and explained that it is now under control. He also took full responsibility for allowing the problem to fester for so long. He made a heartfelt apology to all Kinijit members and supporters who depended on the leadership to lead the party according to its stated principles.
Secretary General of the Kinijit International Leadership (IL), Ato Berhane Mewa, talked about the recent leadership crisis that shook the party to the core. Ato Berhane said that the Kinijit IL made decisive decisions and took corrective measures based on Kinijit’s rules and procedures, as well as its fundamental principles.
Chairman of the Washington DC Metro Kinijit, Ato Yilma Adamu, the Kinijit NA Treasurer, Ato Berhanu Yimer, the Auditor, Ato Tesfaye, and other officials took turns to share their thoughts and answer questions from the audience.
The willingness to discuss every thing openly on the part of the acting chairman and all the officials turned a potentially quarrelsome meeting into a productive discussion on how to rebuild the party. Tough questions and comments were thrown at the leadership from the audience, but they were done in a supportive spirit. The anger and frustration were directed at the former chairman, Shaleqa Yoseph, and his friends, particularly Dr Seyoum Solomon and Dr Almaz Seyoum. Some demanded legal action against the Shaleqa, who reportedly had misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars of Kinijit’s funds.
ER has recently uncovered that, in addition to diverting $250,000 to an unknown account under his personal control, the Shaleqa had withdrawn over $25,000 using an ATM card for his personal use (such as grocery, expensive hotels and restaurants, parking, plane tickets, etc.) without the authorization of the treasurer or consent of the executive committee. He sent less than that amount to support the families of jailed Kinijit leaders and members in the past eleven months. Over $50,000 that supporters donated in checks since last November have not been deposited in the official bank account. It is not known where the checks have disappeared. Large amounts of money that were collected in cash have also not been deposited in the official bank account. Additionally, the Shaleqa, who incorporated the organization under his own name using his own residential address, had failed to file the required tax forms for the two employees Kinijit NA had hired. As a result, it is likely that he is in jeopardy of an IRS action.
Yesterday’s Kinijit meeting in Washington DC signals the revival of the party, which still has a significant reserve of political capital. The leadership was reminded not to take the goodwill of the people for granted, to be humble, and when faced with problems, to consult with members and supporters. To replace the funds misappropriated by Shaleqa Yoseph and his cohorts, the Kinijit DC Metro chapter presented a plan to raise $1 million in a short time.
In two weeks (Nov 11-12), all eyes will be on Atlanta. Kinijit NA will hold a conference of all its chapters throughout North America. Is said to be the most important conference for Kinijit since its top top leaders were thrown in jail last November.
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct. 18, 2006 — (AP) Ethiopian security forces massacred 193 people _triple the official death toll _ during anti-government protests following elections last year, a senior judge appointed to investigate the violence said Wednesday.
Unarmed protesters were shot, beaten and strangled to death, said Wolde-Michael Meshesha, who was vice chairman of a government-backed inquiry but said he has fled the country after receiving threats. He said he believed the Ethiopian government was trying to cover up the findings.
Ethiopian officials refused to comment on the claims.
“This was a massacre,” Wolde-Michael said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “These demonstrators were unarmed yet the majority died from shots to the head.”
“There is no doubt that excessive force was used,” said Wolde-Michael, who left the country last month after receiving anonymous death threats, leaving his wife and five daughters behind. He is now claiming asylum in Europe and would not disclose his exact whereabouts out of fear for his safety.
Last year’s elections were followed by a government crackdown on its opposition and increasing questions about its commitment to democracy.
A draft of the inquiry team’s report, which was to have been presented to the Ethiopian parliament in early July and has since been obtained by the AP, says among those killed were 40 teenagers, including a boy and a girl, both 14. The two were fatally shot.
Six policemen were also killed in the June and November 2005 riots, bringing the overall death toll to 199. Some 763 people were injured, the report adds. Wolde-Michael says the figures could be higher because many people were too afraid to speak out.
The government claimed at the time that 35 civilians and seven police were killed in November and that in June, 26 people were killed.
Ana Gomes, who was the European Union’s chief observer during the May 2005 elections, told the AP the report “exposes the lie” that the Ethiopian government is moving toward democracy.
“It is time the EU and U.S. realize that the current regime in Ethiopia is repressing the people because it lacks democratic legitimacy and is actually weak,” she said by e-mail after reading the report. “It is driving Ethiopia to more poverty, conflict and war.”
Wolde-Michael and the other commissioners spent six months interviewing more than 600 people, including Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, police officers, witnesses, and other government officials.
According to Wolde-Michael, Meles said he did not authorize police to use live bullets.
The inquiry’s mandate was to determine whether excessive force was used. In early July, shortly before completing its report, the team held a vote and ruled eight to two that excessive force was used.
The vote and comments of the commission members were recorded on video, a copy of which has also been obtained by the AP.
“Many people were killed arbitrarily,” said inquiry chairman and supreme court judge Frehiwot Samuel, who is also believed to have fled Ethiopia, was heard saying on the video. “Old men were killed while in their homes and children were also victims of the attack while playing in the garden.”
An Ethiopian Orthodox priest, Estatiose Gebrekristos, was recorded as saying, “Based on my eyes, ears and knowledge the actions taken were 100 percent wrong.”
But two of the commission members said the government responded appropriately.
“I consider the motives of the protesters was to overthrow the government,” Elias Redman, vice president of the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Council, said on the video. “I therefore fully support the action taken by the police.”
The prime minister said at the time that demonstrators were trying to overthrow his government in an Ukraine-style revolution. Prior to the unrest he had banned all demonstrations and announced on state television he had put security forces under his direct control.
Wolde-Michael, who was appointed a judge by the current government in 1994, said the inquiry team came under intense pressure once the ruling party learned of its findings.
Electricity to their offices was cut and at one point their office was surrounded by security forces, he said. The team was also summoned by the prime minister, two days before the report was to be released, and told to reverse its findings, Wolde-Michael added.
Wolde-Michael said police records he saw showed 20,000 people were rounded up during the anti-government protests.
Of them more than 100 opposition leaders, journalists and aid workers are on trial for treason and attempted genocide.
Meles was once thought to be one of Africa’s more progressive leaders. However his reputation suffered in the aftermath of the elections. The EU and U.S. Carter Center expressed serious concerns over the vote.
In January of this year, Britain withheld $87 million in aid because of concerns about the government’s handling of the unrest.
Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, and more than half of its 77 million people live on less than $1 a day.
