ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Harambe Newspaper editor Wosenseged GebreKidan has been taken to the notorious Kality prison today after he told the court that he doesn’t have 3,000 birr to pay for bail.

The U.S.-financed regime in Ethiopia has brought charges against Wosenseged for publishing a report about lack of participation in the April 2007 local elections, which, according to the prosecutor, violates the “press law.”

Wosenseged is one of the journalists who were released from jail in July 2007 along with the top leadership of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (Kinijit) after signing a pardon request letter that was prepared by mediators.

Many of the journalists who were released in July 2007 have fled Ethiopia fearing further persecution. Several members of Kinijit are also forced into exile.

Read more in Amharic:

በይቅርታ የተፈታው ጋዜጠኛ ወሰንሰገድ ወደቃሊቲ እስር ቤት ተመለሰ

(ኢትዮጵያን ሪቪው) – ምርጫ 97ን ተከትሎ በተፈጠረው ውዝግብ ከቅንጅት አመራሮች ጋር ህገ መንግስቱን በኃይል በመናድ ወንጀል ታስረው በምህረት ከተፈቱ ጋዜጠኞች መካከል አንዱ የሆነው ጋዜጠኛ ወሰንሰገድ ገብረኪዳን ከተፈታ ከአንድ አመት ከስድስት ወር በኋላ ዛሬ ወደቃሊቲ ወረደ፡፡

የአውራምባ ታይምስ ዋና አዘጋጅ አቶ ዳዊት ከበደም በተመሳሳይ ክስ በነገው ዕለት ከፍተኛ ፍርድቤት 10ኛ ወንጀል ችሎት እንደሚቀርብ ለማወቅ ተችሏል፡፡

EDITOR’S NOTE: The only reason the vampire regime in Ethiopia will not liberalize the telecom industry is that it wants to limit the people’s access to information.

By Jason McLure | Bloomberg

Ethiopia’s tribalist dictatorship will pursue membership of the World Trade Organization, though it has no plans to liberalize its telecommunications and financial-services industries to gain access, Trade Minister Girma Birru said.

Ethiopia is currently fielding questions about its trade policies from countries including the U.S. and Canada, as it attempts to negotiate entry into the global trade regime, Birru said in an interview on Feb. 17 in the capital, Addis Ababa.

The Horn of Africa nation, twice the size of Texas and with a population of 82.5 million, applied for membership of the Geneva-based trade arbiter in 2003. The country is counting on membership to open new markets to boost its $25.1 billion economy.

“Primarily we will join the WTO not to make others happy, but to make our economy work,” Birru said. “So to the extent it helps our economy we will liberalize things, but if it’s not going to assist our goals in trade and development we will not liberalize. Why do we have to?”

The country’s protected telecom and financial industries will be points of contention in the talks with WTO-member countries including the United States and United Kingdom, Tewodros Mekonnen, a researcher with the Ethiopian Economic Association, said in a phone interview on Feb. 19.

“I don’t see any plan” to break up or sell Ethiopian Telecommunications Corp. to private investors, Birru said. “If there are some problems it has nothing to do with ownership. It has only to do with management. Management and ownership don’t necessarily go together.”

Private Investors

Ethiopia has resisted pressure from the World Bank and trade partners like the U.S. to sell the telecommunications company to private investors.

Ethiopian Telecommunication’s monopoly enables it to charge $35 for a mobile-phone SIM card, which is required to obtain a mobile-phone number. In neighboring Somalia and Kenya, which have private mobile services, cards cost less than $5.

A 1-megabyte per second Internet connection costs more than $2,000 a month in Ethiopia. In South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy, a similar service costs between 600 rand ($59) and 760 rand, according to the http://www.mybroadband.co.za Web site.

“In Ethiopia, if there is any problem I don’t think it’s the price,” said Birru. “It’s the quality of the service. This has to be improved. And to improve this I don’t think it would be wise to privatize it.”

Ethiopia’s government is reluctant to sell the company because it is profitable and is expanding services to rural areas, Newai Gebre-Ab, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s top economic adviser, said yesterday in an interview.

Cash Generator

The company is “generating a lot of money and that money is being put to good use for development of infrastructure,” Gebre- Ab said.

Birru also said the Ethiopian central bank lacks the capacity to regulate large foreign financial institutions. The country is also unsure whether foreign banks would play a positive economic role in the country. As a result, the country is unlikely to liberalize the financial-services industry.

“At this stage, given the capacity that we have in terms of managing things and supervising them at the National Bank level, I don’t see why we’d allow that,” he said.

Ethiopia’s three state-run retail banks control about two- thirds of the capital in the country’s banking industry, according to the National Bank of Ethiopia. Until last year, no bank in Ethiopia could process MasterCard transactions. Banks in the country are also reluctant to lend to businesses that cannot provide real estate as collateral.

By Paulos Milkias

Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provision of international law be enforced.” – World War II Nuremberg Tribunal

Darfur is not the only case of international intervention in an African human rights dilemma. During the last two decades, Africa had several crises that needed international attention. The conflicts in Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Liberia devastated entire communities. Of particular concern to the international community was the widening conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which spilled over into the neighboring countries of the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia—several of which were already experiencing humanitarian emergencies of their own. Even after a shaky peace accord was signed in the DRC, humanitarian conditions did not improve significantly, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) had to deal with known human rights abusers.

While humanitarian emergencies continue to proliferate in Africa, a question with far-reaching implications arises: what is to be done regarding Darfur? Are there justifications for the Sudanese government’s position that no international organization can interfere in its own internal affairs? And if intercession is contemplated, what constitutes a sufficiently just cause to warrant intervention? All these depend on several factors: the intentions of the interveners, whether interventions are a last resort, who and what might be a legitimate target of intervention, reasonable prospects for success, and proper authorization.

The issue of just cause requires that severe suffering warranting help has arisen. These include such threats to vital interests as indiscriminate killings, torture, rape, and displacement of people. These would count as significant threats to human dignity and normal life. When such activities are widespread, and the state either perpetrates the injustices or does nothing appropriate to end the suffering of people, it would be reasonable to suggest the just cause threshold has been attained. These were undoubtedly present in ICC’s Darfur case.

Sudan has vehemently opposed what it considers intervention in its domestic affairs by the ICC. The Sudanese government has rejected the ICC’s request that war crimes suspects Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb be arrested and handed over to them. They consider the action an intrusion into their national affairs and have dubbed the ICC “a tool for [imposing] the culture of superiority.” But they could not stop the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) from publishing a notice for the arrest of Harun. Sudan’s Justice Minister Ali al-Mardi said that any attempts to arrest Harun and Kushayb through INTERPOL would be treated as “kidnapping and international piracy.”

This opposition to the ICC’s adjudication represents both practical and fundamental hurdles. On one level, there is no possibility for an international tribunal to operate without a state’s cooperation in turning over defendants and evidence and permitting investigation within its own territorial boundary. If the government of President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir shields its citizens from the ICC, the court would be hard pressed to carry out its prosecution.

On another level, criminal proceedings by international tribunals have rarely fulfilled victims’ expectations of universal justice. The international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia were both severely criticized as being too remote, too sluggish, and biased in their choice of defendants. The prosecutions were accused of sparing the most senior defendants from the local courts where they might be tried in accordance with local standards and within view of the local population that had witnessed the atrocities, and where, just like their subordinates, they could face the death penalty if convicted. This of course could not be expected in the Sudan, where the chain of command in the crime stretches up to President Bashir himself whom the ICC is now seeking to prosecute.

The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, after a through study of international law and conventions, determined that it may be appropriate for supranational bodies to intervene in what are normally considered the domestic affairs of a state for the purpose of protecting people who are at risk. The commission’s report pinpointed principles on which its prominent jurists reached consensus and which it believes to be “politically achievable in the world as we know it today.” The cardinal principles the commission considered legitimate were stated in the following words:

State sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself… However, where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression, or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of nonintervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.

The report does not deny that sovereignty is important, but it calls attention to what sovereignty entails. For the jurists, sovereignty is not best conceived of in terms of control but rather in terms of responsibility. Government officials are responsible for assuring the safety of citizens and for advancing their welfare. The commission did not find genuine support for a view that sovereignty necessitates unlimited state power over its own citizens, but instead acknowledged that “sovereignty implies a dual responsibility: externally—to respect the sovereignty of other states—and internally—to respect the dignity and basic rights of all the people within the state.” The report noted in its conclusion that “sovereignty as responsibility has become the minimum content of good international citizenship.”

The general responsibility to safeguard peoples’ welfare requires the implementation of three specific tasks. In the first instance, it entails a responsibility to prevent or to contend with the root causes of conflict that puts people at risk of requiring humanitarian intervention. Contending with the root causes can mean putting to an end political repression. In the second instance, it entails a responsibility to respond aptly when there is a pressing human need. A fitting response may call for sanctions, international prosecutions, or military interventions. And last but not least, the responsibility to protect people in distress demands a responsibility to rebuild by providing the right kind of help with recovering, reconstructing, and setting in motion a process of national reconciliation.

Regarding the issue of proper type of authorization for interventions, there is no better or more appropriate body than the United Nations Security Council that charged the ICC to take up the Darfur crisis. By its very design, the Security Council bears a primary obligation to deal with all requests for emergency authorizations and it has to do that within an appropriate time period, particularly when they entail urgent, large-scale crises like Darfur. There is clear tension between the goals of nations shielding themselves from outside interference and international goals of responding to victims who suffer in humanitarian crises; but when it comes to respecting sovereignty and respecting the welfare of individuals who are in distress, the matter should definitely be resolved in favor of protecting the vulnerable individuals who suffer in humanitarian crises.
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Paulos Milkias, Ph.D., is a former Canada Council Doctoral Fellow, is Professor of Humanities and Political Science at Marianopolis College/Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Specializing in political science, he earned his MA and PhD from McGill University in Montreal and his BA from Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is currently co-editor of North-East-African Studies and associate editor of the journals Horn of Africa and the International Journal of Ethiopian Development Studies.