Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Addis Journal) — The popular Ethiopian singer Teddy Afro has appeared before Court of Cassation this morning to hear a decision on an appeal filed by the prosecutor protesting the reduction of his prison terms from six to two years.
But Teddy left the courtroom without hearing a final word and his case was adjourned for July 16, 2009. The presiding judge said the document was presented to them only today and they need extra days to examine.
The singer who was convicted on charges of hit and run incident began serving a six-year prison term on December 5, 2008, but the term was later cut to two years.
Prosecutors filed an appeal saying the review resulting in the sentence imposed by the judge was inappropriate and the two-year term was too lenient for the offense.
If the two year term decision is upended, Teddy is expected to leave the Kaliti jail on September 2009.
Cynthia McKinney Letter from an Israeli Jail
This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children; I had a suitcase full of crayons for children.
While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis highjacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.
At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver three tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.
During Operation Cast Lead, US-supplied F-16s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full-scale, outright genocide. US-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.
The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to Al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water… It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.
The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime… I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?
Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.
I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color and paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.
But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream… like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better… The once proud, never-colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.
My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel, only after they arrived Israel told them, “There is no UN in Israel.”
The police here have license to pick them up and suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christians. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.
The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for six months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and “yes we can” were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.
It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.
We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to [write one]. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the US have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.
What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?
Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] What are you willing to do?
Let’s change the world together and reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.
I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle.
This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.
(Cynthia McKinney is a former Democratic US congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia, McKinney served six terms in the US House of Representatives, from 1993-2003, and from 2005-2007. McKinney’s remarks are transcribed here from a telephone call received by WBAIX.org.)
Addis Ababa (Addis Journal) – Head of the Dessie Ethiopian Orthodox Church Diocese, Aba GebreSelassie, was arrested on charges of ‘inciting violence’ that caused the death of three people in the town last week, according to Addis Neger.
Police in Dessie town have shot and killed two young people who were among the crowd demonstrating to demand authorization to rebuild St. Arsema church, five kms away from the town. Another elderly woman reportedly fell off from a cliff.
Around ten thousand Orthodox Christian followers have been walking to the mayor’s office when the police started firing.Several other people were hurt in the violence.
Los Angeles (AP) — The more than 1.6 million fans who registered for tickets to Michael Jackson’s memorial service will wait until Monday to learn if they received one of the 11,000 tickets for Tuesday’s ceremony.
The two-day registration period for the service at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles ended Saturday. Another 6,500 tickets will be given away for the Nokia Theater overflow section next door.
Fans had to register for free at between 10 a.m. Friday and 6 p.m. Saturday for the random drawing of 8,750 names.
Each person selected will receive two tickets and will be notified by e-mail after 11 a.m. Sunday.
Before the drawing, officials at AEG, the owner and operator of the Staples Center, will “scrub” the entries to eliminate duplicates and any suspected of being made by automated systems or “go-bots,” said Jackson family spokesman Ken Sunshine in a statement.
Winners will receive a unique code and instructions on how to pick up their tickets at an off-site distribution center on Monday.
At the distribution center, they will receive the ticket and a wristband that will be placed on their wrists at that time.
Fans must have both the ticket and the wristband to enter Staples Center on Tuesday.
Wristbands that have been ripped, taped or tampered with will be voided.
Sunshine said those steps are being taken to prevent ticket-scalping.
City officials are preparing for massive crowds. Assistant Police Chief Earl Paysinger says anywhere from a quarter-million to 700,000 people may try to reach the arena, even though a wide area around Staples Center will be sealed off to those without tickets.
City Councilwoman Jan Perry strongly urged people to stay home and watch the memorial on TV.
The ceremony will not be shown on Staples’ giant outdoor TV screen and there will be no funeral procession through the city.
No details were given about the actual memorial events, which come as the nation’s second-largest city struggles with a $530 million budget deficit. Perry said the cost of police protection for “extraordinary” events like the memorial is built into the Police Department’s budget, but she still solicited help for “incremental costs.”
Last month, donations covered about $850,000 of the city’s $1 million cost for the Los Angeles Lakers’ NBA championship parade.
Critics had blasted the idea of using city money when it is considering layoffs to close its budget gap.
Addis Ababa (AFP) – Ethiopia’s tribal junta has criticized the Human Rights Watch (HRW) over its report that the country’s draft anti-terrorism law would violate human rights.
“HRW’s so-called analysis is replete with harsh generalisations,” Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said in a statement Friday.
“It cannot be considered a credible commentary on compatibility of the draft law with Ethiopia’s human rights obligations.”
The US-based watchdog on Tuesday said the law, currently before parliament, broadly defined terrorism, risked muzzling political speech and encouraging unfair trials.
The law presented by the government of [warlord] Meles Zenawi is to counter the activities of some separatist groups.
In recent months, Ethiopia’s [rubber stamp] parliament has passed a series of laws tightening up on the activities of non-governmental organizations, associations and the local media, while most political opponents are in prison or living in exile.
The African Union’s (AU) decision not to help arrest Sudan’s president will not affect the International Criminal Court’s work, its prosecutor says.
Luis Moreno Ocampo told the BBC Omar al-Bashir was still a wanted man and that it was up to each African state to decide whether to arrest him.
Mr Bashir was indicted over alleged atrocities in Darfur in March.
But on Friday an AU meeting in Libya agreed a resolution saying they would not co-operate in his arrest.
In a statement, the AU pointed out that its request to the UN Security Council to delay Mr Bashir’s indictment had been ignored.
Mr Ocampo told the BBC that the AU decision was no victory for Sudan or Mr Bashir. “No-one is saying he’s innocent,” he said.
He said each of the 30 African states that signed up to the Rome treaty establishing the court would have to decide for themselves whether to arrest the Sudanese leader.
And he added that only the Security Council could suspend or lift the indictment against Mr Bashir, not the ICC.
The court has indicted the Sudanese president on two counts of war crimes – intentionally directing attacks on civilians and pillage – as well as five counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and torture, all related to the conflict in the Darfur region.
He denies the allegations, saying the state has a responsibility to fight rebels.
Botswana has confirmed it will not abide by the AU’s decision to ignore the arrest warrant.
Foreign Minister Phandu Skelemani told the BBC the AU decision had been rushed through without a vote, and countries could not be expected to renege on treaties “because of a sulk”.
– BBC
