ULU (IRIN) – Charles Opira was 10 years old when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducted him as he walked to school in Gulu, northern Uganda, in 2000. He recalls fleeing rebel captivity in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in June:
“I was abducted from Atede village in Gulu when I was 10 years old; the rebels immediately took me to Southern Sudan where I was trained in how to fire a gun. I spent most of the years I was a rebel in Southern Sudan where we were commanded to raid the Dinka people for food and animals.
“I suffered a lot while in the bush; one of [LRA leader] Joseph Kony’s bodyguards hated me so much, he beat me a lot, saying he would kill me.
“Later, in 2006, we left Southern Sudan and went to the Garamba forest in Congo. We were the first to go with [deputy LRA commander] Vincent Otti and Okot Odhiambo to Congo. We cleared the way for Kony who later joined us.
“We finally settled in Congo and started growing crops for food.
“Then LRA rebels and the government of Uganda started peace talks. Everybody in the rebel camp was happy because we hoped we would finally go home.
“In 2007, things started getting bad, Kony became so angry and started killing some of his fighters. He said some rebels were betraying him. Any time Kony could order your killing.
“Eleven of us decided to escape. We left at 7am one day in June. Kony then ordered other rebels to follow us.
“They followed us for one week but we managed to evade them by hiding in the forest. At times we climbed up a tree and slept there and we could see our pursuers on the move, searching for us.
“Other civilians in Congo kept attacking us but we ran all the time to avoid being caught. When we met an elderly man who was working in his garden, we asked him to take us to Congolese soldiers. They took us to UN soldiers stationed at Kilowa [north-eastern DRC]. We handed over our guns to the UN soldiers and they gave us food. We were brought to the rehabilitation centre in Gulu.
“At the centre, we were treated well and reunited with our families. On the day I reached home, I cried a lot; everything was different and I felt so bad because of the past. I also found that my mother had died a few days earlier.
“Life is now getting better; I am working for a construction company in Gulu. Every month they pay me 120,000 shillings [US$80]. The work is hard but the money helps me to buy food and help my brothers in school.
“Next year I will begin farming in my village; right now all I want is to forget the past.”
MONROVIA – Police in Liberia have arrested two students aged 19 and 20 with 2.8 million US dollars in counterfeit bills, the commander of the Liberian National Police in the port of Buchanan said Friday.
“They were picked up in the streets of Buchanan following a tip off from a good citizen,” commander Jeremiah Tehteh.
“The two boys told us that they were doing this because of hardship. We are still investigating to get to the source of the money,” Tehteh said.
Both the US dollar and the Liberian dollar are commonly used currencies in the West African country.
“Here you can use the US dollar everywhere to buy. So these people don’t go to the bank. They go in the market, on the street and any other place where their product cannot be easily detected,” the police chief explained.
He said that it was the second time in a few months the Buchanan police came across such a counterfeiting scheme.
Three months ago they seized $250 000 in counterfeit notes.
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US president-elect Barack Obama is considering naming former first lady Hillary Clinton — his onetime rival for the White House — as his secretary of state, US news media reported on Friday.
Two unnamed Obama advisers told NBC News network that Clinton, now a senator for New York, “is under consideration” for the post.
According to NBC, Clinton flew to Chicago — where Obama is based — on Thursday, but an adviser said it was on personal business.
Obama sources confirmed to CNN that Clinton was being considered, but her spokesperson Philippe Reines was non-committal when asked.
“Any speculation about cabinet or other administration appointments is really for president-elect Obama’s transition team to address,” Reines told CNN.
Clinton, 61, has extensive foreign policy experience from her time in the senate, where she serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and indirectly when her husband Bill Clinton was president from 1993 to 2001.
Several big names have been mentioned in the press as possible Obama secretaries of state including another former Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry; New Mexico governor and former UN ambassador Bill Richardson, a favorite of the Latino community; and moderate Republican senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel.
The Obama transition team has not said publicly who may be under consideration for cabinet positions, but has insisted no announcements would be made this week.
According to the Washington Post, Clinton’s name emerged because the Obama camp “is not overly happy with the usual suspects” contending for the job.
During the bruising Democratic presidential primary Clinton tore into Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience, describing some of his proposals such as talking to Iran as “dangerous and naive.”
Obama in turn constantly reminded voters that Clinton approved legislation authorizing President George W. Bush to invade Iraq, a vote she never publicly rejected.
Once Clinton lost the Democratic presidential nomination, the former first lady campaigned fiercely for Obama.
She was asked at a New York event on Monday if she would consider taking a position in the Obama administration. “I am happy being a senator from New York, I love this state and this city,” Clinton said, according to CNN.
“I am looking at the long list of things I have to catch up on and do. But I want to be a good partner and I want to do everything I can to make sure his agenda is going to be successful,” Clinton said.
Seraw case U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty (hands in the air) and lawyer Elden Rosenthal (right) recount their experiences in the case of Mulugeta Seraw, an immigrant from Ethiopia, to mark the 20th anniversary of the black man’s death at the hands of Portland skinheads who used a bat to beat him to death. The crime prompted the enactment of Oregon’s groundbreaking hate-crime law. It also set the stage for a civil trial that financially crippled one of the nation’s most influential racists. [STEPHANIE YAO/THE OREGONIAN]
PORTLAND, OREGON – Twenty years after local skinheads beat to death a Portland State University student from Ethiopia, the lawyer who helped win a $12.5 million civil judgment against a white supremacist for inciting the attack said Thursday that society shouldn’t assume such violent racism is a thing of the past.
“I’m here to say that even though we have elected an African American president, there is an irreducible 1 percent the population that hides under the rocks,” Elden Rosenthal said.
“The value of the case was that we shined a light under those rocks for a couple of weeks in Portland.”
MULUGETA SERAW Fatally beaten in 1988
Rosenthal spoke during a presentation in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty, who as a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge presided over the civil trial in 1990 of Tom Metzger, a California TV repairman who founded the group White Aryan Resistance.
The criminal case
Two of the three men who attacked Mulugeta Seraw remain in prison, according to Oregon Department of Corrections records.
Kenneth M. Mieske, 43, is serving a life sentence for murder at the Oregon State Penitentiary. His earliest possible release date is Jan. 16, 2024.
Kyle H. Brewster, 39, sentenced to 20 years for first-degree manslaughter, completed his sentence in 2002, but got into trouble last spring for assaulting a public safety officer in Umatilla County and was returned to prison. Brewster is serving his time at the Oregon State Penitentiary. He could be released as early as Dec. 17.
Steven R. Strasser, 40, also sentenced to prison for manslaughter, completed his sentence Nov. 19, 1999, and was released. Strasser remains on parole through Multnomah County.
On Nov. 13, 1988, three skinheads attacked Mulugeta Seraw on a street in Southeast Portland. Two years later, a Multnomah County jury returned a verdict against Metzger and his son, John, for organizing and inciting the attack.
Rosenthal explained how the civil case came to be. He said Dave Mazzella, a recruiter for the Metzgers who had worked with the Portland skinheads, walked into the office of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League in Santa Ana, Calif., and said he had information about a murder.
The league put Mazzella in contact with Morris Dees at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Mazzella became the Seraw family’s star witness, Rosenthal said, providing the link between Tom Metzger, his son and the Portland skinheads.
Metzger represented himself in the case and worked to remove judges he thought were Jewish, so he was probably surprised to find himself before Haggerty, who is African American. Haggerty talked about the unprecedented security at the trial. The Metzgers, Rosenthal and the judge were all given 24-hour police protection.The city has made “a lot of progress” since then, said Randy Blazak, a Portland State sociology professor and chairman of the Coalition Against Hate Crimes. A major change since the Seraw case is that the Portland Police Bureau has a detective dedicated to bias crimes, he said.
The city also reacts strongly to racist activities, he said, recalling a cross-burning in Southeast Portland in 2001 that prompted community outrage.
“Portland is still associated with this crime; that’s why it’s important to promote inclusion,” Blazak said. “We still have racist skinheads. We haven’t put all that in the past, we’ve just changed how we respond.”
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Advancing ever closer to Somalia’s beleaguered capital, heavily armed militants declared Thursday that they will use strict Muslim rules to bring their lawless country back under control.
The latest conquest by the Muslim militants came late Wednesday in Elasha, just 10 miles from the capital of Mogadishu.
The insurgents now control most of southern and central Somalia, with the crucial exceptions of Mogadishu and the city of Baidoa, where the parliament for Somalia’s weak, U.N.-backed government sits.
Further complicating the situation, [the Woyanne regime in] Ethiopia, which has backed Somalia’s government in its fight against the groups, has pulled back from some positions as part of a peace deal with moderate Muslims.
The insurgents, who are fighting to enforce Shariah law in Somalia, are not a homogeneous group. Elasha was seized by a group of relatively moderate fighters.
But the most militant faction, al-Shabab, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group because of its leaders’ alleged links to al Qaeda, controls the most territory.
Al-Shabab in recent weeks carried out a public execution by stoning, reportedly that of a 13-year-old gang-rape victim.
“We inform you that from today on, all areas under our control will be ruled by Islam,” al-Shabab commander Sheik Abukar told residents of Merka on Thursday, one day after seizing that town.
While the land may be green and crops are growing, there is not enough food to go around in Ethiopia. Though innovations in therapeutic feeding products keep people alive, Susan Braden of Save the Children points out that the underlying conditions of starvation still remain.
Two years ago, I visited northern Ethiopia’s historic trail, which included stops at Lake Tana, Gonder, Axum and Lalibela.
At the time, I was both entranced by Ethiopia’s history as one of the foremost kingdoms of the ancient world — and overwhelmed by its poverty. Wherever I went, I was encircled by visibly malnourished children.
Nothing to eat
Over the past month, I went back to Ethiopia, but this time to the Southern Nations Nationalities Peoples Region (SNNPR) in the Great Rift Valley below Addis Ababa.
Like most African countries, Ethiopia is also a net food importer, and the price of food on the global market has skyrocketed.
What I saw did not differ that much from what I had seen in the north two years earlier.
The area is green, raining at times and crops are growing. Yet, people don’t have enough food to eat. To cope, families are reducing their daily intake of food and selling off their livestock.
Children are migrating to surrounding towns and cities to find work and food. Out of a population of 82 million people, 6.4 million are in need of emergency assistance, and approximately 84,000 children will require therapeutic feeding between now and the end of the year.
Another 7.2 million people are already receiving food assistance from the government’s safety net program. What is going on? Why are so many people going hungry?
Global turmoil and drought
The reasons vary by region, but basically come down to bad weather and high food prices, coupled with high birth rates and poor land management.
The delayed onset and poor performance of the March to May rains, combined with drought conditions the previous two planting periods, have resulted in below normal harvests throughout most of the country.
In addition, although Ethiopia has an agriculturally based economy, like most African countries, Ethiopia is also a net food importer — and the price of food on the global market has skyrocketed.
The reason for the high price of imported food includes bad weather in major food-producing countries, high petroleum prices and therefore rising fertilizer and transportation costs, which are then transferred onto the consumers.
The diversion of grain into biofuels and livestock feed are also factors in the increasingly high food prices globally — as are the trade policies of some countries. The poor are, of course, the least able to bear the increased cost. The average annual income in Ethiopia is $108 U.S. dollars.
Feeding the hungry
Meanwhile, unlike in Ethiopia’s famine of 1984, the international community now has the ability to reverse malnutrition in severely malnourished children almost immediately with a product called “plumpy’nut.”
The area is green, raining at times and crops are growing. Yet, people don’t have enough food to eat.
This is a high protein, high energy food designed by a French scientist in the late 1990s. It comes in a small tinfoil package and is now used in relief operations all over the world.
It is an amazing product because it is easy to transport, use and digest, and it reverses malnutrition in the severely malnourished within two to four weeks.
A child’s future
In one health center I visited, there was a mother with twins, one of whom was healthy and the other starving. If the child in question survives, and the statistics on plumpy’nut suggest it will, the two children could well grow up to be virtually indistinguishable in terms of their overall health.
Yet, how will these children grow up? The overall situation in Ethiopia is not likely to change anytime soon. Families are large. According to the CIA World Factbook, most households have six children. Jobs are scarce. Unemployment among Ethiopia’s youth hovers around 60%.
The land does not produce enough food for everyone to live on, and farmers cannot sell it or use it as collateral to take out a loan because under the Constitution, all land belongs to the state, which provides long-term leases to the tenants. The price of imported food is also likely to remain high because the variables that make them high are not likely to change.
Without any options
So what is Ethiopia to do? What will become
The land does not produce enough food for everyone to live on — and farmers cannot sell it or use it as collateral to take out a loan.
I met a woman in another therapeutic care center who was herself fending off starvation with plumpy’nut.
She was 27 years old, but looked as though she was in her 40s. She worked as a maid in another family’s house and was HIV positive.
When asked about her children, she said she had two, one of whom had been at the center but was now fine.
She paused — and then added that she was looking to give up her children because she could not take care of them.
