KHARTOUM, Sudan — A defiant Sudanese president rallied Arab supporters in Darfur Wednesday by saying no war crimes court or the U.N. Security Council can touch even “an eyelash” on him despite an international order for his arrest.
Speaking to thousands at a rally in the southern Darfur town of Nyala, Omar al-Bashir denounced the West for allegedly seeking to “create chaos in Sudan” and trying to split Darfur from the rest of the country.
This was al-Bashir’s second visit to Darfur since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest on March 4 on charges of war crimes in the western Sudanese region.
The Netherlands-based court accuses al-Bashir of orchestrating atrocities against civilians in Darfur, where his Arab-led government has been battling ethnic African rebels since 2003. Up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million have been driven from their homes.
Many fear the warrant could unleash violence against civilians and the joint U.N.-African Union mission in Darfur.
The Sudanese government responded to the warrant by expelling 13 large foreign aid agencies, most of them operating in Darfur, as al-Bashir accused them of spying for the ICC. The U.N. estimates that the expulsion threatens more than 3 million people with the loss of food aid, health care or suitable drinking water.
Al-Bashir again denounced the arrest warrant against him at the rally in Nyala, saying that his “holy fighters are ready to fight.” His speech was broadcast live on Sudanese state television and showed a smiling al-Bashir, speaking from a truck to chanting supporters, mostly tribesmen dressed in traditional white robes and turbans. Behind the crowd, a group of tribesmen paraded, galloping on horseback.
“No ICC or Security Council or any other party will change our path or touch an eyelash in our eye,” al-Bashir shouted. “The president of Sudan is not elected by Britain or America. Sudan is an independent country.”
He claimed the West seeks to create chaos in Sudan similar to Iraq, where he said U.S. forces “killed women and children, looted the country and planted sedition.”
“Those criminals want to do the same in Sudan,” he said, occasionally waving his cane. “We will not give them the chance to sabotage our country.”
Al-Bashir’s expulsion of aid groups has worried Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Tuesday on the Sudanese president to reverse the order or at least replace the groups with sufficient resources to address the humanitarian crisis.
In a signal the Obama administration intends to step up involvement in the African country, President Barack Obama settled on retired Air Force Gen. J. Scott Gration, a close personal friend with long experience on African issues, to be special envoy to Sudan, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.
Many Arab and African countries have lobbied in support of al-Bashir, although they have been somewhat frustrated with the Sudanese leader’s tough line. Ahead of the ICC warrant, the African Union in January announced its own high-level panel that would investigate Darfur atrocities.
The panel was launched Wednesday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki. However, it doesn’t have any judicial powers and its mandate remains unclear.
Sudan’s Ambassador to the African Union, Mohieldin Salim, said his government supports the panel’s work and believes it would “do everything good for Africa and for Sudan without any interference from outsiders.”
(Associated Press Writer Anita Powell in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia contributed to this report.)
OTTAWA, CANADA — Days before a Canadian businessman is to appear in an Ethiopian court to face terrorism charges, the government officials are sending “strong signals” that they are watching to see whether Bashir Makhtal has any hope of a fair trial — and if he doesn’t, they’ll be taking steps to bring the former Toronto businessman home.
“Thursday is going to be a very important day,” said Transport Minister John Baird on Tuesday. “What is required is that after two years of holding Mr. Makhtal with no charge, they now put up the evidence.”
Baird said he will be speaking to embassy officials Wednesday to ask that the Canadian ambassador attend Makhtal’s hearing in Addis Ababa, to underscore to Ethiopian authorities that “the government of Canada at senior levels will be watching this very closely.”
Baird took on the Makhtal case last year at the urging of Ottawa’s Somali community. Born in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, Makhtal is an ethnic Somali who immigrated to Canada in 1991.
The 40-year-old trader was arrested crossing the border between Somalia and Kenya in late 2006. He is accused of being an Islamic extremist. A month later, he was illegally deported to Ethiopia, where he was held for two years in solitary confinement with no access to a lawyer or to Canadian embassy officials.
Makhtal’s case was recently transferred to civilian court, where he finally heard the charges against him. The Ethiopian government alleges that he was a leader of the Ogaden National Liberation Front from 2003 until his arrest in 2006. As the head of a military and political training centre, he is alleged to have led 800 fighters into Somalia on a “terrorist mission.”
The ONLF is fighting for Ogadeni independence from Ethiopia, which considers the group a terrorist organization (the Canadian government does not). Makhtal has repeatedly denied any active involvement in the ONLF, and said he is being persecuted because his grandfather, Makhtal Dahir, helped found the ONLF decades ago.
The evidence listed on the charges includes the names of six witnesses, all of whom Makhtal’s lawyer and family believe were coerced into making statements against him. It also includes three pieces of documentary evidence, one of which is an ONLF news release claiming responsibility for an April 2007 attack on an Ethiopian oilfield.
The news release makes no mention of Makhtal, who had already been in solitary confinement for four months by the time of the attack.
Another piece of documentary evidence listed is the case number of an Ethiopian military court decision from the fall of 2008. Makhtal was brought before a secret military tribunal half a dozen times last year. He was blindfolded, the proceedings were in Amharic — a language he barely understands — and he was not allowed to have a lawyer present.
The evidence “underscores the fact that trials in Ethiopia, particularly in a political context and certainly when ONLF suspects are involved, generally fall far, far short of international standards,” said Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, adding that political trials in Ethiopia are “quite unpredictable.”
“I can’t say there’s a good chance a judge will look at the flimsy evidence and laugh it out of court and Mr. Makhtal will be a free man, because this could very well stretch out for many more sittings of the court,” Neve said.
Baird has previously said he would consider going to Ethiopia to press for Makhtal’s release, and members of the Makhtal family say they have been told that the minister plans to go in April.
“I’m hoping to welcome Mr. Makhtal home before then,” Baird said Tuesday. “But I’ve had good discussions with Lawrence Cannon, the minister of foreign affairs (about going to Ethiopia) . . . I’ll be speaking to that issue after I see what goes on Thursday.”
Baird met Tuesday with Makhtal’s cousin and main advocate, Said Maktal, to deliver the same message.
“At least now, after two years, I feel like the case is getting some attention from senior levels of government,” said Said Maktal. “I think it’s clear my cousin is never going to get a fair trial.”
Said Maktal said he asked the minister to make sure that, if he does travel to Ethiopia, he goes armed with a letter from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
“Meles Zenawi will not give it the attention it deserves unless it comes from the Canadian prime minster,” he said.
As if it is not enough that they have been decimated by the Democrats in the past couple of elections, the Republican survivors are now turning their guns on each other.
At the heart of these internal battles have been attacks on Rush Limbaugh by Republicans who imagine themselves to be so much more sophisticated because they are so much more in step with the political fashions of the time.
New Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele’s cheap shot at Rush’s program as “ugly” set off the latest round of in-fighting. That is the kind of thing that is usually said by liberals who have never listened to the program.
Regular listeners to the Rush Limbaugh program or subscribers to the Limbaugh newsletter know that both contain far more factual information and in-depth analysis than in the programs or writings of pundits with more of a ponderous tone or intellectual airs.
Why Michael Steele found it necessary to say such a thing– except as a sop to the liberal intelligentsia– is one of the many mysteries of the Republican Party. Steele has since apologized to Rush but you cannot unring the bell.
More important, the mindset it betrays is at the heart of many of the problems of the Republican Party, going back for years, long before Michael Steele appeared on the scene.
There has long been an element of the Republican Party that has felt a need to distance themselves from people who stand up for conservative principles, whether those with principles have been Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh or whomever.
The latest example is John McCain’s daughter, who has said how embarrassed she is by having to explain Ann Coulter to her friends. If it wasn’t for articulate conservatives like Ann Coulter, both the Republican Party and the country would be in even worse shape than they are now, for there are extremely few articulate Republican politicians who can make the case for any principle. Certainly Ms. McCain’s father is not one of them.
The only time John McCain led Barack Obama in the polls last year was after Governor Sarah Palin joined the ticket. The economic collapse doomed their candidacies but McCain would have had no chance at all with another inconsistent and inarticulate Republican like himself on the ticket.
Yet many in the Republican Party seem to have felt as embarrassed by Governor Palin as they have been by others who articulated principles, instead of trying to be in step with the fashions of the time– fashions set by liberals.
Maybe those Republicans who put a high value on being accepted in elite circles should be embarrassed by the narrowness of their elite friends, who disdain or demonize people whose principles they disagree with, instead of answering their arguments.
There has even been an undercurrent among some Republicans of a sense that it is time to move away from the image of Ronald Reagan, to update the party and court newer and less embarrassing segments of the voters than their current base.
There is certainly a lot to be said for inviting wider segments of the population to join you, by explaining how your principles benefit the country in general, and those segments in particular. But that is fundamentally different from abandoning your principles in hopes of attracting new votes with opportunism.
No segment of the population has lost more by the agendas of the liberal constituencies of the Democratic Party than the black population.
The teachers’ unions, environmental fanatics and the ACLU are just some of the groups to whose interests blacks have been sacrificed wholesale. Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos, and unaffordable housing elsewhere with building restrictions, are devastating prices to pay for liberalism.
Yet the Republicans have never articulated that argument, and their opportunism in trying to get black votes by becoming imitation Democrats has failed miserably for decades on end.
There seemed, for an all too brief moment, that Michael Steele might have been the one to provide such much overdue articulation– and possibly he still might, but only if he stays out of the Republican trap of trying to appease opponents by throwing supporters to the wolves.
NAIROBI, KENYA (Business Daily) – Kenya continues to lose out in the lucrative shipping industry as it continues to rely on ships for hire to transport its exports.
The hope that one day the country could own its own shipping line continues to remain a mirage despite its neighbour cashing in on the high freight.
The Ethiopian Shipping Lines (ESL) continues to carve a niche in the world’s shipping industry as Kenya National Shipping Line (KNSL) shows no hope of owning its vessels soon.
Maritime experts are now calling on the government to offer incentives to private entities interested to buy ships that could fly the Kenyan flag.
“The dream that the country would one day own a ship, which led to the formation of KNSL in 1989, has died,” says Wilfred Kagimbi, Kenya Maritime Authority chief surveyor and receiver of wrecks.
Mr Kagimbi says KNSL dream has been overtaken by time as other African countries which purchased their own vessels have already relinquished management to private hands.
Ethiopians from several European cities are mobilizing for a massive protest rally against Meles Zenawi — also known as the Butcher of Addis — in London where he will arrive on April 2 for the G20 meeting.
Ethiopian lawyers, in collaboration with the protest organizers, are also in the process of hiring a British law firm to file criminal charges against Meles under Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 of U.K. which authorizes the prosecution in Britain of any person who commits an act of torture anywhere in the world.
A representative of the organizers informed Ethiopian Review that some highly prominent Ethiopian lawyers in the U.S. and Europe are involved in the matter. The lawyers have prepared a comprehensive criminal case against Meles, which includes charges of torture and wholesale murder of unarmed Ethiopian and Somali civilians.
The April 2 protest in London is expected to attract the largest Ethiopian protest rally since 2005 when the Meles regime unleashed a campaign of terror against Ethiopians following the fraudulent May 2005 elections.
Further information: The organizers can be reached at [email protected]
Portrait of Ethiopian royal couple Prince Asfawossen and Princess Medferiashwork
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Princess Medeferiashwork Abebe, the wife of the late Crown Prince Asfawossen, has passed away on Sunday at the age of 84. The funereal ceremony was conducted at the Trinity Cathedral in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa yesterday in the presence of family members, dignitaries, and members of the Rastafarian community.
Hundreds of mourners gathered at the church to lay floral tributes where the princess was buried next to that of her mother, Wosenyelesh Mengesha, in accordance with her wishes.
The princess became one of the most popular members of the royal family, admired for her charm and her commitment for various causes.
Born in Dessie town in 1925 to her father Major General Abebe Damtew and her mother Wosenyelesh Mengesha, she began school with the private teacher, as it was the tradition with royal children then. She has studied reading and writing there before joining Etege Menen School.
During the Italian occupation, the princess was sent to Jerusalem in exile where she attended a boarding school. She returned to Ethiopia after victory. She married Crown Prince AsfaWossen, heirs to the Ethiopian throne.
She assumed various ceremonial duties and assisted her husband in various undertakings. Estifanos Menegesha, her nephew, told Addis Journal that she has been very supportive of her husband who was ruling under “the shadow Emperor HaileSelassie.” He described her as strong-willed and determined person.
A year before the Derg came to power, the princess headed to London accompanying her husband who was suffering from stroke.
After the demise of {www:Derg}, she has been coming back and forth and settled in Ethiopia three years ago. Estifanos said she was very religious who had devoted much of her time to charity works, including making financial contributions for monasteries like Gishen Maryam.
The princess was survived by three sons, Prince ZeraYakob, Princess Sihin, Princess MaryamSena and Princess SiferashBizu.
KHARTOUM, Sudan — A defiant Sudanese president rallied Arab supporters in Darfur Wednesday by saying no war crimes court or the U.N. Security Council can touch even “an eyelash” on him despite an international order for his arrest.
OTTAWA, CANADA — Days before a Canadian businessman is to appear in an Ethiopian court to face terrorism charges, the government officials are sending “strong signals” that they are watching to see whether Bashir Makhtal has any hope of a fair trial — and if he doesn’t, they’ll be taking steps to bring the former Toronto businessman home.
The hope that one day the country could own its own shipping line continues to remain a mirage despite its neighbour cashing in on the high freight.
Ethiopians from several European cities are mobilizing for a massive protest rally against Meles Zenawi — also known as the Butcher of Addis — in London where he will arrive on April 2 for the G20 meeting.