As the revolution clock is ticking in Ethiopia, the Meles regime is acting and behaving like any other dictatorship — intensify its repressive measures. This week, the ruling party’s security agents have started to gather parents and give them stern warnings to prevent their children from participating in any anti-government activities.
Two days ago, prominent Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega was taken to the Federal Police Headquarters where he was warned not to write any thing that may incite uprising.
The regime has tried to once again force Ethiopian Satellite TV (ESAT) off the air. But ESAT came back on air within 24 hours on a more secure satellite.
EthiopianReview.com and all other independent news web sites remain blocked in Ethiopia.
During the past few days, eyewitnesses at Woreda 23 told Ethiopian Review that officials from the Woreda police and Kebele 11 summoned some parents to the police station and threatened them that they will be sorry if their children participate in any protest. The Woyanne security agents warned the parents that Ethiopia is not Egypt and that there is a serious consequence for any one who engages in anti-government activities.
It’s true that Ethiopia is not Egypt because although Mubarak is a dictator he is not the enemy of the people of Egypt and the army is a national army. The Meles regime is an anti-Ethiopia entity and his ruling junta is a gang of blood thirsty thugs who have been committing atrocities through out the country for the past 20 years while receiving billions of dollars in assistance and loans from the U.S. and EU.
No matter how savage and barbaric Woyannes are, they cannot stop the people of Ethiopia from asserting their freedom.
SANA’A — Yemen security forces with clashed with Yemeni pro-democracy protesters on Friday and Saturday. The protesters were celebrating resignation of Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak. They are also demanding President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen to step down.
Princeton University Yemen scholar Gregory Johnsen told the VOA that some of the protests within the last 24 hours took place “outside the umbrella of the opposition JMP movement” indicating that public discontent could be spreading.
Eyewitnesses say that rallies took place spontaneously in parts of Sana’a, with demonstrators trying to rally in front of the Egyptian Embassy.
The Yemen Post newspaper editor-in-chief Hakim Almasmari says that government security forces skirmished with the crowds. A number of demonstrators were reportedly injured in the clashes. Almasmari adds that several people were also arrested.
Buses ferried ruling party members, equipped with tents, food and water, to the city’s main square to help prevent attempts by protesters to gather there, Fox News reported.
There were about 5,000 security agents and government supporters in the Sanaa square named Tahrir, or Liberation.
(Reuters) — Some 300 anti-government student demonstrators assembled at Sanaa University in Yemen on Saturday morning. As numbers swelled into the thousands, they began marching towards the Egyptian embassy.
“The people want the fall of the government,” protesters chanted. “A Yemeni revolution after the Egyptian revolution.”
But a group of government supporters armed with knives and sticks confronted the protesters at the central Tahrir Square. Scuffles broke out and the pro-government activists used traditional knives and batons to force the anti-government protesters to flee.
Two people were lightly injured, witnesses said.
The clash came after armed men forced around 300 anti-government protesters to quit an impromptu demonstration in the Yemeni capital on Friday night.
Yemeni authorities detained at least 10 people after anti-government protesters in Sanaa celebrated Mubarak’s downfall on Friday, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said.
The group said the celebrations turned to clashes when hundreds of men armed with assault rifles, knives and sticks attacked the protesters while security forces stood by.
“The Yemeni security forces have a duty to protect peaceful protesters,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “In this case, security forces seem to have organised armed men to attack the protesters.”
Yemen’s ruling party set up tents in Sanaa’s central Tahrir Square last week to occupy the space and prevent people from gathering in large numbers.
Party officials handed out small amounts of money to reward pro-government protesters on Saturday. Some used the cash to buy food or Qat, a mild green stimulant leaf that more than half of Yemen’s 23 million people chew daily and which has been cited as a deterrent to protest.
Following the successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that overthrew entrenched dictators, a new revolution has started in Algeria on Saturday, February 12, 2001. Instead of learning from Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia, Algeria’s dictator Abdelaziz Boutifleka is taking similar actions against pro-democracy protesters. Today he sent out on the streets of Algiers over 30,000 of his police to block protesters from staging demonstrations. And in the afternoon he disconnected the internet. His security forces are also rounding up journalists, and thugs hired by the regime are beating up protesters. Too predictable.
Today is named Day 1 of the Algerian Revolution. We wish the freedom hungry people of Algeria success in their fight against the dictatorship.
Ethiopia’s corrupt dictator Meles Zenawi is nervously awaiting his turn. The clock is ticking.
Latest developments in Algeria
(Telegraph.co.uk) — Mostafa Boshashi, head of the Algerian League for Human Rights, said: “Algerians want their voices to be heard too. They want democratic change. “At the moment people are being prevented from travelling to demonstrations. The entrances to cities like Algeria have been blocked.”
On Saturday at least 500 had been arrested by early evening in Algiers alone, with hundreds more in Annaba, Constantine and Oran taking part in the so-called February 12 Revolution.
“The police station cells are overflowing,” said Sofiane Hamidouche, a demonstrator in Annaba.
“There are running battles taking place all over the city. It’s chaos. As night falls the situation will get worse.”
Algeria police arrested hundreds of protesters who are demanding reforms at a rally on Saturday. Thousands of police in riot gear stopped the protesters from entering May 1 Square where the demonstration was called by a coalition of civic and political groups. However, a Small number of protesters succeeded in entering the square, shouting “Bouteflika out!”
(Reuters) — “It is a state of siege,” said Abdeslam Ali Rachedi, a university lecturer and government opponent. After about three hours, hundreds of people left the square quietly, with police opening up gaps in their cordon to let them through. Some 200 young men from a poor neighborhood nearby stayed on the square. Some threw objects at police.
“I am sorry to say the government has deployed a huge force to prevent a peaceful march. This is not good for Algeria’s image,” said Mustafa Bouchachi, a leader of the League for Human Rights which helped organize the protest.
The protest was not backed by the main trade unions or the biggest opposition parties. Nearly all members of Algeria’s radical Islamist groups, which were banned in the 1990s but still have grassroots influence, stayed away.
Officials with the opposition RCD party, which helped organize the protest, told Reuters the demonstrators totaled between 7,000 and 10,000 and that 1,000 people were arrested.
(CNN) — The demonstrations were mostly peaceful, with police rounding up protesters in small groups to break up the crowds, and anti-riot police gathered at the scene.
Khalil AbdulMouminm, the general secretary for the Algerian league, called the situation “very tense on the ground” and said police were preventing protesters from assembling, with authorities blocking all entrances to the capital.
Pro-democracy activists have declared Saturday, Feb. 12, “Day 1” of the Algerian Revolution against the regime of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The ctivists have defied a ban against public political gatherings and called a march in Algiers today in which thousands are expected to participate.
In response, the regime has brought 30,000 police officers into Algiers. Hundreds of armored vehicles are parked at key intersections of the capital.
(Bloomberg) — The Coordination for Democratic Change in Algeria, an umbrella group of human rights activists, unionists, lawyers and others, insists the march will take place despite numerous warnings by authorities to stay out of the streets. Buses and vans filled with armed police were posted at strategic points along the march route and around Algiers, including at the “Maison de la Presse,” a small village in Algiers where newspapers have their headquarters.
(Al Jazeera) — Protesters are demanding greater democratic freedoms, a change of government, and more jobs. The demonstration was set to begin at 11:00 am local time.
“We are ready for the march,” said Mohsen Belabes, a spokesman for the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) opposition party, which is one of the organisers of the protest. “It’s going to be a great day for democracy in Algeria.”
Mubarak’s resignation on Friday, and last month’s overthrow of Tunisian leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, have electrified the Arab world.
The rally is being organised by the National Co-ordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD), a three-week-old umbrella group of opposition parties, civil society movements and unofficial unions inspired by the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt.
(BBC) — Widespread unrest in Algeria could have implications for the world economy because it is a major oil and gas exporter, but many analysts say an Egypt-style revolt is unlikely because the government can use its energy wealth to placate most grievances.
Protest organizers in Algeria — who say they draw some of their inspiration from events in Egypt and Tunisia — say police may turn people away before they can reach the march in the capital, or parallel protests planned for other cities.
“Algerians must be allowed to express themselves freely and hold peaceful protests in Algiers and elsewhere,” rights group Amnesty International said in a statement. “We urge the Algerian authorities not to respond to these demands by using excessive force.”
In an attempt to head of anti-government unrest, the authorities have cut prices for sugar and cooking oil, bought huge quantities of grain to ensure bread supplies and promised to lift a 19-year-old state of emergency.
Many seem to give credit to the social media (Facebook, Twitter and blogs) for helping the Egyptian and Tunisian youths who brought down the entrenched dictatorships in their country, but there is not enough mention about the contributions made by Al Jazeera, except by the dictators themselves.
I used to dislike Al Jazeera for some of the anti-American vitriol that it some times broadcasts. It’s fine to criticize the U.S. for its often misguided foreign policy by some of its corrupt State Department officials who are propping up dictators such us Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi. However, the U.S. is a force for good in this world and doesn’t deserve to be demonized.
Having said that, Al Jazeera is becoming a respected and powerful news organization that is transforming the Middle East for the better. For the past few weeks I have been streaming its live video broadcast on the front page of EthiopianReview.com. I myself was glued to one my my computer screens that streams Al Jazeera Live 24/7. Its coverage of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt is by far the best and the most thorough. I also think that one of the reasons the revolutions in these countries were not as bloody as they could have been is that the live TV coverage of every incident may have made the military leaders aware that they will be held personally responsible for any bloodshed. The international community would be too sickened by televised massacre of civilians and would bring those responsible for the atrocities to the International Criminal Court, like the Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, Sudan’s Al Bashir, and Bosnia’s Radovan Karadzic.
A few years ago, Ethiopia’s vampire tyrant has kicked out Al Jazeera from Ethiopia, but it is still being watched by hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians.
We need to strengthen our own satellite TV, ESAT, if we want to minimize the bloodshed the Woyanne ruling junta is preparing to cause in the next Ethiopian revolution. ESAT, along with all the Ethiopian radio programs, web sites, and social media will play a critical role in not only facilitating and helping coordinate the struggle, but they also could help prevent massive atrocities in Ethiopia.
On behalf of Ethiopian Review, I extend my congratulations and well wishes to the people of Egypt.
Following the successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that overthrew entrenched dictators, a new revolution has started in Algeria on Saturday, February 12, 2001. Instead of learning from Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia, Algeria’s dictator Abdelaziz Boutifleka is taking similar actions against pro-democracy protesters. Today he sent out on the streets of Algiers over 30,000 of his police to block protesters from staging demonstrations. And in the afternoon he disconnected the internet. His security forces are also rounding up journalists, and thugs hired by the regime are beating up protesters. Too predictable.