Memher (Preacher) Zebene Lema has started out as a charismatic young preacher at the Ethiopian Orthodox Medhani-Alem and St. Mary churches in DC and Maryland. Then he opened his own bible class so that he can keep all the donation from his students. After making loads of money, 2 years ago he went to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa to get married at the Sheraton Hotel — Al Amoudi’s whorehouse. The fake patriarch, Ato Gebremedhin (formerly Aba Paulos), was the guest of honor. (Zebene says he did not invite him.)
Following the wedding, Ato Gebermedhin’s lackeys awarded him Abune Petros’ Cross. It is the cross this great Ethiopian hero and religious father used to compel the people of Ethiopia to resist Fascist Italy’s invasion in 1935. Italians executed Abune Petros. Now Memher Zebene walks around with Abune Petros’ cross in his pocket. He has been advised by Ethiopians inside the country and abroad to return the Cross to the Church, as it is a national treasure. He arrogantly refused.
After returning from his lavish wedding at the Addis Sheraton (a favorite spot for Arab sheiks to molest underage girls), all the money and fame became too much for Memher Zebene to handle. The “servant of God,” became a power-crazed thug who insults the elderly and antagonize senior Orthodox Church priests.
Zebene is currently using his blind young followers to harass and intimidate church leaders in the Ethiopian Community. Any one who criticizes Zebene is labled “pente” (a follower of the Pentecostal denomination) by him and his followers. Ironically, Zebene attends classes at the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington DC, which is run by adherents of the Baptist and Pentecostal denominations.
If Zebene keeps up what he is doing, he will soon become Ethiopia’s Jimmy Swaggart. He is bringing upon himself his own downfall through corruption and hubris.
Zebene just needs to follow what he preaches, and he can save himself. He is indeed a talented preacher. He started out great, particularly attracting young Ethiopians to the Church, but sudden fame and wealth have corrupted him.
The following article about Memher Zebene is sent to Ethiopian Review by a concerned Ethiopian and member of the Orthodox Church in Washington DC.
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” – Matthew 2:18
His name was Herod, but latter they called him Herod the Great. The contemptuous referred to him formally, as Herod I. He was born in Jericho. His father was a high-ranked {www:Idumaean} officer. At the age of 25, he was already appointed Governor of Galilee. Although “gentile” by origin, he publicly confessed to adhere to Judaism. But most never considered him as a true Israelite, specially the scribes; and that created in him a consuming feeling of rejection with which he had to fight all his life – half a century ago, the Edomites were forced to Judaism (or leave their place) when the Maccabean John Hyrcanus conquered their regions. Since then, it was never easy to judge whether an Edomite had truly converted.
In 43 BC, his father conspired to murder Caesar. The young Herod, a shrewd mathematician, decided to collaborate with the Romans and poisoned his own father -– with a professional aloofness. His own life had been sought by so many, by friends and by enemies alike, but he plied the troublesome tides of Near Eastern politics with uncanny success. Josephus describes him as a mad man, “a man … of great barbarity towards all men equally, and a slave to his passion … for from a private man he became a king; and though he were encompassed with ten thousand dangers, he got clear of them all.” [F. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 17, chapter 7].
Perhaps he was notoriously known to mankind as the monster of the first Christmas -– for the murder of the children of Bethlehem, according to Matthew 2:16. But in his record of murder, the list is endless -– his wife, her mother, her grandfather, two brothers-in-law, three of his own sons, and uncountable foes as well as subjects.
Among his people, he was vicious and lonely, often depressed and paranoid. But for the Romans, Herod was an extraordinary leader, a crucial bridge between the Jew and the gentiles; an indispensable ally…
But Herod was also a colossal and passionate builder of highways, fortresses, palaces, temples, and aqueducts — in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, and beyond the river Jordan. He built the magnificent port of Caesarea; and renewed the great temple of Jerusalem (Herod’s temple).
It will be unfair to compare this monstrous figure with contemporary tyrants, including our own Meles Zenawi. To do so will be an overstatement. But I have been reading lately a book written by W.H. Auden [W.H. Auden, For the time being, Faber and Faber, 1964]. In this book, Auden tries to fathom what threads of reasoning were woven in the mind of Herod at the eve of the Massacre of the Children of Bethlehem. To my own great surprise, and quite involuntarily, I was unable to discard the image of our own “Prime Minster,” the present day tyrant of Ethiopia…
On this fateful day, Herod begins his reasoning thus:
“Because I am bewildered, because I must decide, because my decision must be in conformity with Nature and Necessity…”
Then Herod, as if to clear the way for a clean confrontation with his own ambition, begins to honour the people who were most significant in his life – his father, his mother, his nurse, his brother, his professors, and his secretary.
Why should someone die tomorrow? Remarkably, thoughts flow like a river. Herod sums up the situation soberly, like a seasoned politician, I mean, like our Meles, when he was confronted by the decision to kill innocent people with live bullets and sharpshooters. Herod counts his achievements, not to praise himself, of course, but to justify his case for staying on power.
“…The highway to the coast goes to straight up over the mountains and the truck-drivers no longer carry guns. Things are beginning to take shape. It is a long time since any one stole the park benches or murdered the swans…” [W.H. Auden, For the time being, Faber and Faber, 1964].
Then he tries to imagine what will happen if he let go of power:
“…if this rumor is not stamped out now… Reason will be replaced by Revelation …Idealism will be replaced by Materialism… Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish.” [W.H. Auden, For the time being, Faber and Faber, 1964]
Herod does not stop there. He knows that fear of disorder, real or imagined, is not a necessary prerequisite to hold fast to power. This time, he tries to count the unfinished work. If everything were accomplished, then there would be no need for a transformer:
“In twenty years I have managed to do a little. Not enough, of course. There are villages only a few miles from here where they still believe in witches. There isn’t a single town where a good bookshop would pay. One could count on the finger of one hand the people capable of solving the problem of Achilles and the Tortoise…”
Unfinished work gives him purpose in office. And an excuse not to process one’s own guilt. But in the end, Herod has to return to himself.
“I have worked like a slave. Ask anyone you like. I read all official dispatches without skipping. I have taken elocution lessons. I have hardly ever taken bribes. … I have tried to be good. … I am a liberal. I want everybody to be happy…” [W.H. Auden, For the time being, Faber and Faber, 1964].
As much as I dislike comparing Prime Minster Meles with Herod the Great, I cannot escape the images I picture in my mind as the Prime Minster stares out of the window on the eve of the massacre of Addis in that fateful November Day, 2005. Besides, I find great and irresistible parallels between the two men. It is common knowledge that many Ethiopians do not consider Meles as one of them. Secondly, Meles feels rejected by the intelligentsia, notably by the Addis Ababa University.
The unconcealed bitterness reveals itself in his manifest contempt to and rejection of the intelligentsia. As if to compensate the void, the last two decades have seen world class intellectuals and Nobel laureates in Addis giving lectures and seminars at a high cost to our leaders. Several American and British scholars have been invited to drop by just for tea on their way to India or South Africa.
Josephus tells us Herod was choleric in temperament. Any one who has been with Prime Minster Meles for a while knows his choleric temperament. Moreover, psychologists tell us that many tyrants are choleric in temperament. According to Tim Lahay, choleric leaders have a remarkable ability to see their destination, but they don’t know how to reach there [T. Lahay, Spirit controlled temperament, Tyndale House Publishers (Revised edition), September 7, 1994]. Well, one needs little to add to this statement, as far as the leadership in Addis is concerned.
The {www:TPLF} leadership has been, and deservedly, proud of its construction. For the killing of the innocents; the imprisonment of the multitudes; and the ruthless dealing with opponents, the relentless justification is its hard work. And this has been most gladly and thankfully taken by our diplomats in Addis.
Most important of all, Herod had no real friends. The people he counted as friends were remote, in Rome, and he sees them only occasionally. As if to purchase their love, his gift to them was always expensive and rare. But truly speaking, these were not his friends. Once a friend who knew our Prime Minster well told me that he has no real friend. He has his {www:TPLF} comrades, for certain. And he has his “friends” in the West. But “ordinary” Ethiopian friend, he has none. That is unfortunate and that is the cost of the road he chooses to go through.
Josephus tells us that Herod was suffering from an excruciating pain. He describes his illness as “fire glowing”, “which did not so much appear to the touch outwardly, as … inwardly”, “ulcer”, a pain in the “colon”; “an aqueous and transparent liquor… in his feet and at the bottom of his belly”, “his genitals were rotting, and produce worms”, etc.
Based on these descriptions, some medical experts believe that Herod had chronic kidney disorder, potentially complicated by Fournier gangrene. Others report that the visible worms and putrefaction are likely to have been scabies, a contagious ectoparasite skin infection characterized by superficial burrows and intense itching [H. Ashrafian, Herod the Great and his worms. Journal of Infection, Volume 51, Issue 1, Pages 82-83]. Scholars also believe that Herod suffered throughout his lifetime from depression and paranoia.
Since we have little access to the private life of Our Prime Minster, it is hard to say much about his illness. But recent report about repeated treatments to different counties cannot be ignored. For many are longing for change.
“Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” Matthew 3:20.
Should this be the only way we Ethiopians in the Diaspora get back home?
STILLWATER, MN (Stillwater Gazette) — Tabor Wolde stepped up — the fifth kicker in a shootout for Mahtomedi High School in the Class A Minnesota soccer semi-finals earlier this month — and confidently struck the ball low and fast, past the goalkeeper to give his team a 5-4 shootout victory. His team went on to win the state championship, where he scored another goal.
Seven years ago, he didn’t know the Minnesota High School soccer tournament existed. At just 10 years old, Wolde, his sister Addis, then 12, and their mother fled Ethiopia to the United States.
They escaped in the shadow of the death of their father, Mamo Wolde, an Ethiopian world champion runner and Olympic Gold medalist.
They were able to come to the United States with the help of Joel and Marty Button, of Stillwater. Joel, then the head of a boarding school in eastern Iowa, read about the two in a Runner’s World article about their father, and helped the two children secure visas to come to his school, while their mother came to Minnesota and worked to get political asylum.
Their father, Mamo Wolde [wearing #70 on the photo], won gold at the marathon during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. He was a national hero in Ethiopia, and the story of his gold medal became legend there.
But when he returned, the government went through terrible turmoil, during which a new regime took over. Years later, when the government shifted again, Wolde was accused of murder and imprisoned without charge for more than a decade. The case had little ground, so little, in fact, that Amnesty International demanded his release.
His case became a passion of fellow Olympian and sportswriter Kenny Moore, who wrote about the case several times and was able to create political pressure for Ethiopia to free Wolde, which they finally did in 2002. But just months after he was released from prison, he died from a variety of ailments, including bronchitis and liver problems, according to his obituary in the New York Times.
Today, living in Stillwater, Addis and Tabor are flourishing. Tabor has excelled in soccer at Mahtomedi High School. Addis, now a freshman at Bethel College, has decided to study medicine.
Addis’ acclimation to the U.S. has gone well, but her biggest test since moving to the United States wasn’t a cultural but a health issue.
In April 2008, Addis, who ran cross-country in high school, started to feel sluggish and tired after every run.
“Before that, when I ran, I felt so good and refreshed,” she said. “After, when I’d run, I’d be exhausted and then sleep.”
She went to the doctor, who told Addis, then a junior, that she was pregnant. But more tests found a mass, a malignant tumor. It was ovarian cancer. The next day, she was in surgery, and for the next three months, she underwent chemotherapy.
“She was the star of Children’s Hospital,” said Marty Button. “The politest, and she looked the best in a gown.”
Addis says the experience helped her grow.
“I learned a lot from it,” she said. “I think it happened for a reason. It made me stronger.”
While it gave perspective to a then 17-year-old who had already been through a great deal, it gave her an interest in medicine.
“When I was sick, the nurses and the doctors were wonderful,” she said. “I thought, ‘Maybe I want to be a nurse and make people who are sick feel better and feel happier.'”
Tabor, 17, is much more focused on soccer, something he’s done all his life.
“I’ve played since I could walk, I just kicked around outside in street soccer,” he said. Outside of high school he plays with the St. Croix Celtics club, and he hopes to play in college or on an academy soccer team.
The two say they are used to life in the U.S. now, they’ve been trick-or-treating on Halloween, they’ve gotten used to ice cold winters, and even taken on snow blowing chores.
But there were definitely adjustments.
“Back home we are very close. If you are friends there, you walk with each other holding hands, even guys do it,” Addis said. “Here its a different story. It’s like ‘Whoa, you’ve got your space and I’ve got my space.’ It was very different.”
While they’ve embraced life here, there are still a longing to return to Ethiopia, at least for a visit.
“I miss it – definitely,” she said. “The people, I still have my whole family back there, my cousins, my aunts, my older brother.”
They are in touch by phone, but they’ve not gotten to see that part of their family since coming to the U.S.
The two would like to return to Ethiopia, but they are still a few years off from becoming U.S. Citizens.
“We don’t know what would happen,” said Joel Button. “Because they are here because they are here via political asylum, if they go back (to Ethiopia), their country won’t look too favorably on them. So, they aren’t going to go over until they get citizenship.”
While its hard, the siblings say that’s for the best.
“It’s tough, but its OK,” Addis said. “When holidays come, like for Christmas or new years we used to do a lot of stuff there and the whole family would gather.”
The family of Bashir Makhtal, a Canadian citizen, continue to face persecution in Ethiopia. “This isn’t just something personal with respect to Bashir Makhtal, although he clearly is one of the figures at the center of this drama,” said Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, which has monitored Mr. Makhtal’s case since his arrest. “It’s family-based persecution, and I think that also underscores the nature and the severity of the repression the Ogadeni population is experiencing in Ethiopia.”
KENYA — During the first month of her imprisonment in Ethiopia, Rukiya Ahmed Makhtal was blindfolded and beaten. “You are Makhtal’s family,” she recalled her persecutor saying. “If you are Makhtal’s family, that means you are one of the problems.”
Ms. Makhtal, 53, is the older sister of Ethiopian-born Bashir Ahmed Makhtal, the Canadian citizen and former Toronto information technologist who has spent the past three years in Ethiopian prisons. Convicted of terrorism-related charges, he was sentenced in August to life in prison, but is scheduled to appear before an appeal court today. His family, who maintain his innocence, say they have been persecuted because of the actions of his grandfather.
After spending 14 months in various Ethiopian prisons where she says she was bound, blindfolded and badly beaten, thrown in isolation, raped and told she would be executed, Ms. Makhtal was at last transferred to a crowded low-security prison where family scrounged for 1,000 birr (roughly $80) and paid the guards to look the other way while she walked through the prison gates and, like so many of her kin, away from Ethiopia for good.
For two days, she trudged across the Ethiopian desert, struggling from poor health and the wounds on her body, trying to blend in with a train of nomads and fearful she might be spotted before reaching the border.
During the past year, others in Bashir Makhtal’s family have trickled into Hagadera, a notoriously squalid and overcrowded refugee camp at Dadaab in Kenya’s North Eastern Province.
Ms. Makhtal, who is asking for resettlement in Canada as a refugee and whose case is being followed by Amnesty International, is now among 16 people sleeping in the sand under scant shelter, all of whom say they are related to Bashir Makhtal and the victims of persecution in Ethiopia.
Bashir Makhtal and his sister, Rukiya, are the grandchildren of a founding member of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, a separatist movement in the ethnic Somali region of eastern Ethiopia, though both deny having been involved in the group.
“He was my grandfather,” Ms. Makhtal says. “We didn’t even know him.”
After an April, 2007, ONLF attack on a Chinese oil field at Abole in eastern Ethiopia that left 70 Chinese and Ethiopian workers dead, Ethiopia drastically stepped up a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in the region.
A 2008 Human Rights Watch report accuses Ethiopian soldiers of burning down entire villages, mass detentions and even demonstration killings, “with Ethiopian soldiers singling out relatives of suspected ONLF members,” and of conducting widespread “military attacks on civilians and villages that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Abdi Mohamed Ahmed, 29, who says Ms. Makhtal is his aunt and who denies ever being involved with the ONLF, remembers the night in late 2007 the Ethiopian National Defence Forces came for his family, circling his house before dragging out his entire family, beating them and hauling them off to different jails.
“They used to tie our eyes, torturing and beating. They used to tie our hands and legs together and they hang us up from the ceiling. And everybody was alone.”
This was when Bashir Makhtal’s sister, his older brother Hassan Ahmed, and several of their children were also arrested.
Last Thursday, Hassan Ahmed Makhtal, who had been imprisoned for 22 months and was serving a life sentence, died in the Ethiopian capital after being released early to receive medical attention. A press release issued by the Ogaden Human Rights Commission claims he “died from wounds sustained during his detention,” though the cause of his death could not be independently verified.
According to several family members, two of Hassan Makhtal’s children – a 27-year-old son and a 25-year-old daughter – were beaten to death in military prisons less than a month after their arrest in 2008.
“They are not targeting ONLF. Our army is very strong now,” said Abdirahman Mahdi, a central committee member of the separatist group, who spoke during a recent interview in Toronto. “What they do is they target the weak spot, the civilians, the women and children.”
“This isn’t just something personal with respect to Bashir Makhtal, although he clearly is one of the figures at the centre of this drama,” said Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, which has monitored Mr. Makhtal’s case since his arrest. “It’s family-based persecution, and I think that also underscores the nature and the severity of the repression the Ogadeni population is experiencing in Ethiopia.”
Mr. Makhtal was arrested by Kenyan authorities in December, 2006, as he attempted to flee the suddenly rising violence in neighbouring Somalia, where friends and family say he had travelled for business.
He was among 90 prisoners, including American, British and Kenyan nationals, who were forcibly deported, in violation of both Kenyan and international law, first to Mogadishu and then to Ethiopia. While every other Western country managed to secure the release of its citizens, Mr. Makhtal, the only Canadian arrested, alone remains in Ethiopian custody.
Said Makhtal, Mr. Makhtal’s cousin in Hamilton, Ont., says he’s optimistic about tomorrow’s outcome, but added: “I don’t know how much more I can count on the Ethiopian court system.”
In the meantime, many of Mr. Makhtal’s family are left to wait in the refugee camp while Amnesty International Canada puts forward their case to the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi.
“The life of Hagadera is too difficult,” Mr. Ahmed said. “There is no life, there is no health. There is not even enough water, the air of that place is not even good.”
“And still this moment we live under fear because there may be Ethiopian security,” he added, pointing out that Kenya already delivered his uncle, Mr. Makhtal, to Ethiopian authorities.
“Obviously, Canada continues to face difficulties in ensuring the safety of Mr. Makhtal himself,” Mr. Neve said. “At least we do have the opportunity to try and ensure safety for these other family members.”
I couldn’t sleep all night. I kept turning and tossing to no avail. What was bothering me was what I heard on VOA yesterday afternoon. VOA is Voice of America for those of you not in the know. I found out I can listen to VOA on my smart phone and things haven’t been the same. My phone has become my best friend. I can surf the web, send email, watch You Tube, shoot a video, listen to the radio and oh yes talk too. My phone has become indispensable. Back to my story.
Dispersed among the many important stories of the day I heard the announcer discussing food, rather the lack of food in East Africa. Looks like the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) was passing out the plate to collect donations to feed poor Africans and the pledge from the Europeans fell short and the director and African delegates were crying about the indifference of the rich countries. This is what you call aggressive begging. It takes balls to sit on such virgin land and blame others for your own stupidity so I didn’t pay that much attention to the story.
What came next was what piqued my interest. UNFPA (UN population fund) was discussing the state of human population growth. According to them there are eighty-two and half million Ethiopians. Plenty of us if you ask me. On the other hand the Ethiopian government count shows seventy-three point nine million Ethiopians. Quiet a discrepancy wouldn’t you say. We are talking about eight point six million Abeshas an accounted for. Now you know why I couldn’t sleep.
I don’t mind if we are missing a few thousand of us. You know how African borders are. It is possible the day or week of the count some have ventured far following rich grazing grounds or even gone to the market in a neighboring country. It is also possible so many are escaping and temporarily situated in Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea or Djibouti. I doubt if they will stop for the census bureau to be counted. Believe me eight point six million is not a small number. For crying out loud it is larger than a whole bunch of countries entire population.
Staying up all night has its rewards. As the sun was rising over the rolling hills of East bay, the birds chirping signaling a new day the answer came to me, we Ethiopians have a problem with numbers! We just don’t know how to count. That is not idle talk my friend, I got proof.
Let us just start with famine. According to the UN, US Aid, Oxfam and other professionals who do this sort of stuff for a living there are over ten million Ethiopians in need of food. According to the Meles regime the number is less than four million. It sort of bizarre to haggle over the number of your own people condemned to die of hunger but that is what has become of our country. Why this obsession with numbers you might ask. It is because the TPLF regime is always interested in the degrees of suffering of our people.
They start with the great famine of 1973 and compare that with the famine of 1983 and arrive at the startling conclusion that says less are dying thus we are doing better. With TPLF the question is not how to avoid famine but how to manage famine. Thus they spend time, energy and try our patience playing with numbers.
How about the much heralded 12% growth. Again it is a number TPLF throws with abandon gets quoted by Reuter or Bloomberg ergo it becomes a fact. The question is does reality on the ground jive with fantasy in the collective brain of TPLF cadres? I am afraid not. Putting up some concrete structures using Diaspora money, paving roads with IMF and Chinese loans is not an example of sustainable growth. It is just feel good economics or voodoo economics. The numbers are repeated again and again purposely to etch them in our mind.
Even the so-called Federal budget is not immune to this number challenge we face. After the 2005 elections the TPLF regime was printing money as if it was going out of style. The money was used to bribe the different EPDRF minions and buy their temporary loyalty. When the Federal Audit Report showed the truth about the minority regimes borrowing of billions of Bir the Prime Minster was not amused. Our fearless leader called the report a ‘junior accountants error’ and rejected the findings. His handpicked teams of investigators were able to shift a few zeros and bring the report in line with his wishes.
The mother of all ‘number challenged’ problems was the 2005 general elections. It was a situation where electorate and the ballot were in complete and total dis-harmony. It took more than six months of the best TPLF cadre’s brain to reconcile what really happened with what was supposed to happen. Even our favorite Woyane Bereket Semeon’s Wollo constituency was in disarray. The second balloting ordered by TPLF showed more people than what turned out to vote during the first free and euphoric election. Go figure that out!
Numbers and facts came to clash during the recent ‘Tekeze dam’ inaugaration. The prime Minster was proud and precise when he said Tekeze was built by “berasachin genzeb” Again does this jive with reality or does it leave many un answered questions. According to some knowledgeable sources ‘The Tekeze Dam Project financing is by China National Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Company (CWHEC), 49pc, and China Gezhouba Water and Power (group) Ltd, 30pc, and Sur Construction, subsidiary company of EFFORT, 21pc. (TPLF) So what is it? Does it belong to us or the bond holders? Is this a new formula of financing? Questions, questions.
I will leave you with one number problem we encountered a while back as told by our own Tamagne Beyene. He tells it a whole lot better but I will do my best. The TPLF radio, yes they used to have a radio station during their armed struggle for the liberation of Tigrai, in its reports of their heroism was throwing increasable numbers regarding the number of Derg solders they have killed. Unfortunately when the numbers were added up at the end of the day they showed that they have killed more solders than all the Derg military combined.
The question for us is shall we get out of this numbers business? Shall we bring in outsiders to do any and all counting business in our country? Can Ethiopians be trusted with numbers or is it a localized TPLF problem? No matter it still leaves us with eight point six million Ethiopians out there with no one to claim them. Misplacing that many Abeshas is nothing to sniff at, I want my people accounted for.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Bureau of African Affairs Karl Wyckoff and Woyanne Foreign Affairs Minister Seyoum Mesfin held talks on Thursday in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.
On Friday, in a meeting with reporters, Mr Wyckoff expressed concerns about the restrictions on opposition parties in Ethiopia ahead of elections next year, which is scheduled to be held on May 23, 2010.
“The US is concerned by what we see as reduction in political space and the ability of opposition parties to operate and do what opposition parties should do,” Karl Wyckoff, who arrived is in Ethiopia for an official visit, told reporters.
The Forum for Democratic Dialogue in Ethiopia (FDD, or Medrek in Amharic) has also accused Meles Zenawi’s regime of arresting its members and supporters in a bid to discourage its following ahead of the polls, a charge the government has repeatedly denied. (Sources include AFP, Reuters)
The following is how the ruling party Woyanned-owned WIC reported Wyckoff’s visit:
Addis Ababa (WIC) Minister Seyoum Mesfin held talks with US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Bureau of African Affairs, Karl Wyckoff here on Thursday.
The two officials discussed ways of enhancing bilateral relations between the two countries, according to Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
They also exchanged views on the efforts being made by the government of Ethiopia to ensure peace in the Horn of Africa particularly in Somalia.
Speaking on the occasion, Seyoum said America and others need to extend the necessary support to the Somali Federal Transitional Government.
He also informed the US official that Ethiopia has been making efforts to ensure peace in Somalia.
Seyoum also briefed the official on the upcoming national elections.
He said the government of Ethiopia has been striving hard to make the forthcoming election peaceful, democratic and fair.
Wycoff said told journalists after the talks that America and Ethiopia have longstanding friendly relationships.
He further said America and Ethiopia have discussed on various issues ranging from economic development to human rights as well as democratic issues.
They also talked on regional and sub-regional issues including the Horn of Africa and Somalia.
He said IGAD and AU are good partners of America in ensuring stability in the Horn of Africa and Africa as a whole.
Expressing appreciation to economic development Ethiopia has registered in the last couple of years, Wycoff said America would work with the government of Ethiopia in this regard.
They escaped in the shadow of the death of their father, Mamo Wolde, an Ethiopian world champion runner and Olympic Gold medalist.