EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a good news for the tens of thousands of Ethiopians whose land has been {www:confiscate}d and given to Karturi, an Indian Company, to grow crops for export. The Karturi farm has no benefit for most Ethiopians. The profit from the farms goes in to the pockets of Meles Zenawi and members of his ruling junta.
By William Davison
ADDIS ABABAB 6 (Bloomberg) — Karuturi Global Ltd., the Indian food processor that earns most of its revenue abroad, said it will replant its corn {www:crop} in Ethiopia after a {www:flood} destroyed its first planned {www:harvest} in the country.
The damage was caused by flooding on the Baro and Alwero rivers in the western Gambella region, Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, managing director of the Bangalore-based company, said in interview on Oct. 4 in Addis Ababa. A potential {www:harvest} of 60,000 metric tons of corn was lost after 12,000 hectares (29,653 acres) of land was flooded, he said.
“The waters started rising last Wednesday and have not stopped until Sunday,” he said. “Most of our {www:maize} is lost. We have taken a bit of a hit there.” The company said in a statement on Oct. 3 the loss was estimated at $15 million.
Karuturi, the world’s largest rose grower, in 2009 leased 100,000 hectares from Ethiopia’s government to grow sugar cane, palm oil, cereals and vegetables. The company may receive an additional 200,000 hectares if the government is satisfied with the first phase of the project, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
The project is “ahead of expectations” and will be completed by December 2013, and the government is “extremely satisfied” with progress, Karuturi said.
Ethiopia plans to transfer 3.3 million hectares of land to investors during a 5-year growth plan announced last year. About 350,000 hectares has been leased since Sept. 2009, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s website. The Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based research group, said in a report earlier this year that 3.6 million hectares has been rented by investors since early 2008.
‘Crazy Amount’
The flooding that breached specially built barriers near Karuturi’s plantations couldn’t have been predicted, Karuturi said. “This kind of flooding we haven’t seen before,” he said.
“This is a crazy amount of water.”
A second crop of as much as 15,000 hectares of corn will be planted when the waters {www:recede} and will be harvested around March, Karuturi said. A 200-hectare {www:sugar cane} nursery started by the company is expected to expand to 10,000 hectares before being sold in 2013, while 500,000 plants of palm oil will be ready after two years, he said.
To minimize transport costs, produce from Karuturi’s Gambella operations will be exported to South Sudan and other East African markets, rather than farther afield, Karuturi said. Crops will be paid for in dollars, bringing foreign exchange to the National Bank of Ethiopia, he said.
Two tug boats with the capacity to carry 600 tons each and which will transport crops along the Baro River that flows into South Sudan are expected to be operational within 18 months, Karuturi said. The company is forming partnerships with foreign companies to build rice and sugar processors on the farm, he said.
A statement released late afternoon by Apple Board of Directors announced that co-founder and longtime CEO Steve Jobs has passed away at the age of 56:
Statement by Apple’s Board of Directors
We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.
Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that
enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.
(Wired.com) — A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, it would be impossible to overstate Steve Jobs’ impact on technology and how we use it. Apple’s mercurial, mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he completely changed how we interact with technology. He made gadgets easy to use, gorgeous to behold and essential to own. He made things we absolutely wanted, long before we even knew we wanted them. Jobs’ utter dedication to how people think, touch, feel and interact with machines dictated even the smallest detail of the computers Apple built and the software it wrote.
(Gizmodo.com) — He changed the way movies are made, the way music is sold, the way stories are told, the very way we interact with the world around us. He helped us work, and gave us new ways to play. He was a myth made man.
By Martin Chulov and Ewen MacAskill
(The Guardian) — An armed insurrection inside Syria looks set to gather momentum after the failure to pass a UN resolution against president Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to dissidents in two key Syrian cities.
Activists from Homs and Hama, where mostly peaceful protests over the past six months have lately become more aggressive and armed, say the failure of the US effort to threaten sanctions against Syria has convinced some that diplomacy cannot protect them.
“There’s no way out of this except to fight,” said an activist from Homs. “For the people of Homs the international community are not with us and we know that for sure. Russia and China will continue to protect Assad and as long as that happens, he will hunt us down.”
Britain, France and the US are expected to seek a fresh resolution on Syria before the UN Security Council after Russia and China on Tuesday night vetoed a draft that threatened sanctions, a security council source said.
The veto by Russia, supported by China, provoked the biggest verbal explosion from the US at the UN for years, with its ambassador Susan Rice expressing “outrage” over the Moscow and Beijing move.
Rice also walked out of the security council, the first such demonstration in recent years. While walk-outs are common at the UN general assembly, they are rare in the security council.
“It will not go away,” the source said. “It will not be next week. We don’t have a date. But there are a number of ways the security council can get back to this.”
The vote was 9-2 in favour, with four abstentions: South Africa, India, Brazil and Lebanon.
Rice, who before joining the Obama administration established a reputation as an outspoken critic of the failure of the west to intervene in humanitarian crises round the world, said after the vote: “The United States is outraged that this council has utterly failed to address an urgent moral challenge and a growing threat to regional peace and security.”
Without naming Russia and China but making it clear they were the target of her words, she said: “Let there be no doubt: this is not about military intervention. This is not about Libya. That is a cheap ruse by those who would rather sell arms to the Syrian regime than stand with the Syrian people.”
She added: “This is about whether this council, during a time of sweeping change in the Middle East, will stand with peaceful protestors crying out for freedom – or with a regime of thugs with guns that tramples human dignity and human rights.
“We deeply regret that some members of the council have prevented us from taking a principled stand against the Syrian regime’s brutal oppression of its people.”
The resolution had been weakened considerably since the original text was circulated to the 15 security council members in early August seeking to impose sanctions.
The draft resolution on Tuesday only said the security council would “consider its options” in 30 days’ time if Assad failed to stop the violence and seek a peaceful settlement of the crisis. It said the options would include sanctions. To further water down the resolution in an attempt to make it more acceptable to Russia and China, there was no hint of military intervention.
In Homs, where government forces are routinely clashing with armed members of the opposition – many of them former soldiers who defected with their weapons – outgunned protesters are now openly seeking weapons from outside the country.
“We know that we will not see Nato jets above the skies of Damascus,” said one Homs resident. “It is us against them. No one else will help us.”
In Beirut, where aid supplies to Homs and Hama are co-ordinated, aid workers said they had been receiving more requests for weapons than for food or medicine. “Of course we can’t help with this. But it shows how much their priorities have changed.”
Alemayehu G. Mariam
Terrorism by “Anti-terrorism Law”
Lately, Meles Zenawi, the dictator in Ethiopia, has been rounding up dissidents, journalists, opposition party political leaders and members under a diktat known as “Anti-Terrorism Proclamation No. 652/2009”. This diktat approved on a 286-91 vote of the rubberstamp parliament is so arbitrary and capricious that Human Rights Watch concluded “the law could provide a new and potent tool for suppressing political opposition and independent criticism of government policy.”
The “anti-terrorism law” is a masterpiece of ambiguity, unintelligibility, obscurity, superficiality, unclarity, uncertainty, inanity and vacuity. It defines “terrorism” with such vagueness and overbreadth that any act, speech, statement, and even thought, could be punished under its sweeping provisions. Anyone who commits a “terrorist act” with the aim of “advancing a political, religious or ideological cause” and intending to “influence the government”, “intimidate the public”, “destabilize or destroy the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social institutions of the country” could be condemned to long imprisonment or suffer the death penalty. Making or publishing statements “likely to be understood as encouraging terrorist acts” is a punishable offense under the “law”.
Anyone who provides “moral support or advice” or has any contact with an individual accused of a terrorist act is presumed to be a terrorist supporter. Anyone who “writes, edits, prints, publishes, publicizes, disseminates, shows, makes to be heard any promotional statements encouraging, supporting or advancing terrorist acts” is deemed a “terrorist”. Peaceful protesters who carry banners critical of the regime could be charged for “promotional statements encouraging” terrorist acts. Anyone who “disrupts any public service” is considered a “terrorist”; and workers who may legitimately grieve working conditions by work stoppages could be charged with “terrorism” for disruption. Young demonstrators who break windows in a public building by throwing rocks could be jailed as “terrorists” for “causuing serious damage to property.” A person who “fails to immediately inform or give information or evidence to the police” on a neighbor, co-worker or others s/he may suspect of “terrorism” could face upto 10 years for failure to report. Two or more persons who have contact with a “terror” suspect could be charged with conspiracy to commit “terrorism”.
The procedural due process rights (fair trial) of suspects and the accused guaranteed under the Ethiopian Constitution and international human rights conventions are ignored, evaded, overlooked and disregarded by the “law”. “The police may arrest without court warrant any person whom he reasonably suspects to have committed or is committing a terrorism” and hold that person in incommunicado detention. The police can engage in random and “sudden search and seizure” of the person, place or personal effects of anyone suspected of “terrorism”. The police can “intercept, install or conduct surveillance on the telephone, fax, radio, internet, electronic, postal, and similar communications” of a person suspected of terrorism. The police can order “any government institution, official, bank, or a private organization or an individual” to turn over documents, evidence and information on a “terror” suspect.
A “terror” suspect can be held in custody without charge for up to “four months”. Any “evidence” presented by the regime’s prosecutor against a “terror” suspect in “court” is admissible, including “confessions” (extracted by torture), “hearsay”, “indirect, digital and electronic evidences” and “intelligence reports even if the report does not disclose the source or the method it was gathered (including evidence obtained by torture). The “law” presumes the “terror” suspect to be guilty and puts the burden of proof on the suspect/defendant in violation of the universal principle that the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Such is the “anti-terrorism law” that was used to arrest and jail Eskinder Nega, Debebe Eshetu, Andualem Aragie, Woubshet Taye, Zemenu Molla, Nathnael Makonnen, Asaminaw Birhanu, and Swedish journalists Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye and thousands of others over the past few months and years. In any country where the rule of law prevails and an independent judiciary thrives, such a “law” would not pass the smell test let alone a constitutional one. But in a world of kangaroo courts, rubberstamp parliaments and halls of vengance and injustice, the diktat of one man is the law of the land. So, 2011 Ethiopia has become George Orwell’s 1984: Thinking is terrorism. Dissent is terrorism. Speaking truth to power is terrorism. Having a conscience is terrorism. Peaceful protest is terrorism. Refusing to sell out one’s soul is terrorism. Standing up for democracy and human rights is terrorism. Defending the rule of law is terrorism. Peaceful resistance of state terrorism is terrorism.
Dictatorship is State Terrorism
Zenawi’s “anti-terrorism” diktat is intended to muzzle journalists from criticizing, youths from peaceably demonstrating, opposition parties from political organizing, ordinary citizens from speaking, civic leaders from mobilizing, teachers from imparting knowledge, lawyers from advocating scholars from analyzing and the entire nation from questioning his dictatorial rule. It is a “law” singularly intended to criminalize speech, police thought, outlaw critical publications, intimidate hearts, crush spirits, terrorize minds and shred constitutional and internationally-guaranteed human rights. When the State uses the “law” to silence and violently stamp out dissent, jail and keep in solitary confinement dissenters, opposition leaders and members, suppress the press and arbitrarily arrest journalists, trash human rights with impunity, trample upon the rule of law and scoff at constitutional accountability, does it not become a terrorist state?
“Softness to traitors will destroy us all,” said Maximilien Robespierre, the mastermind and architect of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. Robespierre justified the use of terror by the state to crush all opposition and those he considered enemies of the state: “Are the enemies within not the allies of the enemies without? The assassins who tear our country apart, the intriguers who buy the consciences that hold the people’s mandate; the traitors who sell them; the mercenary pamphleteers hired to dishonor the people’s cause, to kill public virtue, to stir up the fire of civil discord, and to prepare political counterrevolution by moral counterrevolution-are all those men less guilty or less dangerous than the tyrants whom they serve?” asked Robespierre rhetorically as he rounded up tens of thousands of innocent French citizens for the guillotine.
Zenawi once provided a definitive answer to his “enemies within and without”: “If opposition groups resort to violence in an attempt to discredit the election, we will crush them with our full force; they will all vegetate like Birtukan (Midekssa) in jail forever.” He is always ready to crush, smash and thrash his opposition. He described the leaders of opposition political coalition that won the 2005 elections as a bunch of “insurrectionists” (euphemism for “terrorists”): “The CUD (Coalition for Unity and Democracy) leaders are engaged in insurrection — that is an act of treason under Ethiopian law.” When 193 unarmed demonstrators were massacred and 763 grievously wounded by security officers, Zenawi shed crocodile tears but said they were all terrorists lobbing grenades: “I regret the deaths but these were not normal demonstrations. You don’t see hand grenades thrown at normal demonstrations.” His own handpicked Inquiry Commission contradicted him after a meticulous investigation: “There was no property destroyed. There was not a single protester who was armed with a gun or a hand grenade (as reported by the government-controlled media that some of the protesters were armed with guns and bombs). The shots fired by government forces were not to disperse the crowd of protesters but to kill by targeting the head and chest of the protester.”
Zenawi has demonized opposition groups as “terrorists” bent on “creating a rift between the government and the people.” He has put on “trial” and sentenced to death various alleged “members” of the Ginbot 7 Movement, and contemptuously described that Movement as an organization of “amateur part-time terrorists”. He has undertaken a systematic campaign of intimidation against his critics describing them in his speeches as “muckrakers,” “mud dwellers”, “sooty,” “sleazy,” “pompous egotists” and good-for-nothing “chaff” and “husk.” He even claimed the opposition was filthy and trying to “dirty up the people like themselves.”
In the police state Ethiopia has become, opposition political and civic leaders and dissidents are kept under 24/7 surveillance, and the ordinary people they meet in the street are intimidated, harassed and persecuted. The climate of fear that permeates every aspect of urban and rural society is reinforced and maintained by a structure of repression that is vertically integrated from the very top to the local (kebele) level making impossible dissent or peaceful opposition political activity. As former president and presently opposition leader Dr. Negasso Gidada has documented, the structure of state terrorism in Ethiopia is so horrific one can only find parallels for it in Stalin-era Soviet Union:
The police and security offices and personnel collect information on each household through other means. One of these methods involves the use of organizations or structures called “shane”, which in Oromo means “the five”. Five households are grouped together under a leader who has the job of collecting information on the five households… The security chief passes the information he collected to his chief in the higher administrative organs in the Qabale, who in turn informs the Woreda police and security office. Each household is required to report on guests and visitors, the reasons for their visits, their length of stay, what they said and did and activities they engaged in. … The OPDO/EPRDF runs mass associations (women, youth and micro-credit groups) and party cells (“fathers”, “mothers” and “youth”). The party cells in the schools, health institutions and religious institutions also serve the same purpose….
State terrorism is the systematic use and threat of use of violence and coercion, intimidation, imprisonment and persecution to create a prevailing climate of fear in a population with a specific political message and outcome: “Resistance is futile! Resistance will be crushed! There will be no resistance! ” State terrorism paralyzes the whole society and incapacitates individuals by entrenching fear as a paramount feature of social inaction and immobilization through the exercise of arbitrary power and extreme brutality. In Ethiopia today, it is not just that the climate of fear and loathing permeates every aspect of social and economic life, indeed the climate of fear has transformed the “Land of Thirteen Months of Sunshine” in to the “Land of Thirteen Months of Fear, Loathing, Despair and Darkness”.
Inspirational Thought from Nelson Mandela
Africa’s greatest leader, Nelson Mandela, was jailed for 27 years as a “terrorist” by the apartheid regime in South Africa. In 1993, three years after he left the notorious Robben Island prison, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Those jailed as “terrorists” in Ethiopia should draw great comfort and inspiration from the words of the greatest African leader alive:
I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists. I tell them that I was also a terrorist yesterday, but, today, I am admired by the very people who said I was one.
We should all express our admiration, gratitude and appreciation for today’s “terrorists” and tomorrow’s peacemakers, conciliators, hopegivers and nation-builders.
Free Eskinder Nega, Debebe Eshetu, Andualem Aragie, Woubshet Taye, Zemenu Molla, Nathnael Makonnen, Asaminaw Birhanu, Johan Persson, Martin Schibbye and thousands of other unknown and unnamed Ethiopian political prisoners.
Previous commentaries by the author are available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ andhttp://open.salon.com/blog/almariam/
