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Ethiopia

Meles Zenawi replaces Tigrean bodyguards

Posted on , Updated on by EthiopianReview.com

Ethiopia’s khat-addicted dictator has replaced many of his bodyguards from the Tigray ethnic group with Eritreans, according to Ethiopian Review Intelligence Unit sources in Addis Ababa.

Deputy security chief Esayas Woldegiorgis, Meles Zenawi’s Beria, who is Eritrean, has also been given authority over all security matters. Getachew Assefa, the current security chief, is relegated to being only a figure head. Esayas is responsible for torturing political prisoners and carrying out political killings in Ethiopia and neighboring countries.

Meles has decided to replace his Tigrean bodyguards because of the increasing dissension among Tigreans over the amassing of enormous wealth by him and his wife while the lives of most Tigreans have not improved despite all the construction projects that are underway in Tigray region. On top of that, Meles has recently invited Eritreans to come to Ethiopia, and those who arrived already have started marginalizing Tigreans both in politics and business.

Meles is fearful of revolt inside his own army that is dominated by Tigreans, so he recently forced 300 colonels and 13 generals to retire, as reported here.

Tigreans are also angry that Meles has pitted them against other ethnic groups. They fear that when a popular uprising explodes, Meles and his family will leave, while the average Tigrean, in whose name Meles is ruling, could face the wrath of other ethnic groups.

Inside the TPLF leadership, Eritreans are consolidating their power, as reported here. Currently, more than half of the TPLF leadership is Eritrean.

In the mean time, the Eritrean government itself is being infiltrated by Meles Zenawi’s agents who are undermining Isaias Afwerki’s administration with the intention of replacing him with a leader who is friendly with the Meles dictatorship or a puppet. Ethiopian Review will publish an investigative report on how TPLF agents are working to overthrow Eritrea’s president Isaias Afwerki. Stay tuned.

CPJ: Ethiopia’s courageous journalist pays heavy price

Posted on by Negash

Standing with Ethiopia’s tenacious blogger, Eskinder Nega

Eskinder Nega (Lennart Kjörling)

It would be hard to find a better symbol of media repression in Africa than Eskinder Nega. The veteran Ethiopian journalist and dissident blogger has been detained at least seven times by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government over the past two decades, and was put back in jail on September 14, 2011, after he published a column calling for the government to respect freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and to end torture in prisons.

Eskinder now faces terrorism charges, and if convicted could face the death sentence. He’s not alone: Ethiopia currently has seven journalists behind bars. More journalists have fled Ethiopia over the past decade than any other country in the world, according to CPJ.

Eskinder could easily have joined them. In February 2011, he was briefly detained by federal police and warned to stop writing critical stories about Ethiopia’s authoritarian regime. The message was clear: it’s time to leave. Eskinder spent part of his childhood in the Washington D.C. area, and could have returned to the U.S.

He didn’t. Instead he continued to publish online columns demanding an end to corruption and political repression and calling for the security forces not to shoot unarmed demonstrators (as they did in 2005) in the event the Arab Spring spread to Ethiopia. That’s landed him back in jail–where he could remain for years in the event he avoids a death sentence.

Since then a group of journalists, authors and rights activists have organized a petition calling for the release of Eskinder and other journalists unjustly detained by Ethiopia’s government. Among the signatories are the heads of the U.S. National Press Club, the Open Society Foundations, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The petitioners also include Maziar Bahari, the Newsweek journalist jailed by the Iranian government for four months in 2009; three former BBC correspondents in Ethiopia; development economist William Easterly; the Christian Science Monitor‘s Marshall Ingwerson and others.

The campaign also included a letter published in The New York Review of Books, contacts with the U.S. State Department, press releases, and media interviews. Still, making an impact is difficult. Eskinder was just one of 179 journalists jailed worldwide as of December 1, 2011, according to CPJ data. In addition, Ethiopia is viewed as a strategic partner for the West in combating terrorism and instability in East Africa, making Western governments less likely to press Zenawi on human rights abuses.

People have asked me why we should try to help someone who could have saved himself by fleeing the country. It’s a good question. I suspect that even if he were to be released tomorrow, Eskinder would stay in Ethiopia and continue writing and publishing online–at the risk of being thrown back in jail.

After all, this is a reporter whose wife, journalist Serkalem Fasil, gave birth while they were both in jail following the 2005 elections. When they were released in 2007, Serkalem and Eskinder were banned from reopening their newspapers. To survive, they rented their house in central Addis Ababa to a team of Chinese telecom workers and moved to a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.

Like many good journalists, Eskinder is stubborn to a fault. Standing for free speech in Ethiopia can seem a Sisyphean task, but if Eskinder is principled enough to risk more years in jail – and possibly the death sentence – it’s our obligation to stand with him.

The Practice of Reconciliation

Posted on by Sioum Gebeyehou

This is Ethiopian Review Policy Research Center’s series on From Dictatorship to Democracy extracted/quoted from books and articles published by Albert Einstein Institution and similar sources.

The principle of Transformative Reconciliation states that:

1. Human rights violation (crime) causes harm and reconciliation and reconstruction should focus on repairing the harm.
2. The people most affected by the crime should be able to participate in its resolution.
3. The responsibility of the government is to maintain order and of the community is to build peace.

To View the overview of the practice of Transformative Reconciliation CLICK: the practice of reconciliation

Religions as Agents of Reconciliation

Posted on , Updated on by Sioum Gebeyehou

This is Ethiopian Review Policy Research Center’s series on From Dictatorship to Democracy extracted/quoted from books and articles published by Albert Einstein Institution and similar sources.

In the last decade there has been heightened awareness of the relationship between violence, religions and reconciliation and much attention has been paid to the role of religions for the contribution of reconciliation processes

In the popular imagination, this idea is linked with prominent figures such as Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and John Paul II. Anthropologists have stressed the importance of religious actors in mediating grassroots conflict, contributing to healing after conflict and to the integration of society.

To view the religious based reconciliation process CLICK:
Religions as Agents of Reconciliation