The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor has told the BBC he will continue to push for Sudan’s leader to be charged with war crimes.
Luis Moreno Ocampo said there was strong evidence that President Omar al-Bashir was behind attacks on civilians in Darfur province.
The Sudanese government has rejected the allegations, saying the ICC’s case threatens peace efforts in Darfur.
A number of countries want the UN to block the attempt to indict Mr Bashir.
“We found evidence that al-Bashir himself was controlling the attacks on these people who normally live in Darfur,” Mr Ocampo told the BBC’s Arabic Service.
He said local people had been raped and killed by both the Sudanese army and Janjaweed pro-government militias.
Mr Ocampo said the attacks were continuing and that he could not ignore the alleged crimes.
He is to put his case before a ICC judges next week. In July, he asked the judges to issue an arrest warrant for Mr Bashir.
Opponents of the investigation argue that it is hindering efforts to establish peace in Darfur.
The African Union and the Arab League have said the investigation should be dropped.
African Union Chairman Jean Ping told the BBC it was unfair that all those indicted by the ICC so far were African.
“We are not against international justice,” he said.
“It seems that Africa has become a laboratory to test the new international law.”
But some Western countries, such as the US and the UK, say Mr Bashir’s government has backed militias accused of committing widespread atrocities in Darfur.
Up to 300,000 people have been killed and more than two million have been forced from their homes in Darfur since a rebellion began in 2003.
The International Criminal Court is expected to rule on how to proceed before the end of this year.
It can refuse to prosecute the case if it believes that doing so would be a threat to peace and security.
The African Union has already asked the UN Security Council to put a block on the case.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi said on Saturday he was concerned by the seizure of a Ukrainian ship off Somalia carrying military supplies and feared they would be used to further destabilize the region.
Speaking before a meeting in New York with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Meles said piracy off the coast of Somalia was a “very hard problem” and he hoped the international community would respond.
“We are very concerned about the level of piracy on the seas. It is related to the instability in Somalia,” he told reporters.
Somali pirates have demanded a $35-million ransom for the Ukrainian ship they had seized which was carrying 33 tanks, grenade launchers, ammunition and other military supplies destined for Kenya.
“They could be used to destabilize the region and the whole situation on the high seas is a matter of great concern for all of us,” Meles said.
“We very much hope the international community will respond.”
Pirates have captured more than 30 vessels off Somalia this year, making its waters the most dangerous in the world and threatening a major international shipping lane between Europe and Asia. The gangs seek, and often receive, large ransoms.
An Islamist insurgence in the south of Somalia, which has not had a functioning government for 17 years, has made it difficult for the struggling interim government to police the waters. Russia said on Friday it was sending a warship to the region to protect Russian ships and citizens.
(Reporting by Sue Pleming, Editing by Sandra Maler)
ADDIS ABABA (ST) – The state owned Ethiopian radio and TV agency (ERTA) reduced drastically earlier this month the majority of airtime of the Affaan Oromo TV program. The decision left some 60 Oromo journalist jobless and raised anger.
The Tigriga and the Afaan Oromo TV programs, which were run through the federal TV on a separate desk within the only national TV station, were made their airtimes shrunken on September 12 and transferred to the hands of regional states under a new agendum called “localizing” TV programs that allows regional governments to take control of the medias.
Two Oromo opposition groups told Sudan Tribune by telephone from Addis Ababa that the move is politically motivated and violates the ruling party’s, self own constitution and to the international treaties it has ratified too.
“This is a political motivated action of the ruling party which targets to put the Oromo people’s national political role out of the game by weakening their role from every angle by such undemocratic acts” Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement(OFDM) Chairman and parliament member, Bulcha Demeksa told Sudan Tribune.
“We are talking about the liberty of a language of more than 40 million people” Bulcha said. “This once again reveals the at most hatred and contempt the regime has for the Oromo people and their language Afan Oromo” he added.
The Oromo oppositions believes that the regular Oromiga programme was deliberately replaced by a local program known as STVO, which completely prepared by OPDO — one wing of the ruling coalition — cadres and used by the regime to broadcast propagandas of Meles-led government.
The Oromo People’s Congress (OPC) echoes the action as discriminatory and as having political agenda.
“The ruling party of Ethiopia has taken the Afaan Oromoo TV programme off the air without any consultation or prior notice” OPC chairman and MP Merrara Gudina said.
“The Oromo people were not given a chance for self-consultation ahead of practicing the so-called ‘localizing’ policy” he underscored.
“The ruling party fears that offering the huge Oromo people a wide and strong voices to the public will heighten political consciousness” Merrara said. He added that “the move as it, is clear like a crystal is aimed to paralyze the propagandas of the Oromo people by silencing them from every possible doors.”
The opposition groups said shrinking little of the Tigriga programme is to pretend that the measure doesn’t target only to the Oromos.
The Afaan Oromoo TV programme was launched in 1991 following the toppling of the Communist Derg regime as a part of the package of the then newly introduced democracy and freedom of expression.
As a result of the pressure from the Oromo people in general and the OLF in particular, the regime opened a one hour TV program for Afan Oromo as a gesture of attempting to restore freedom and justice for the suppressed Oromo nation.
Although this was seen as one positive step forward when compared to the previous Ethiopian regimes, it was clear for the Oromo people that this was no justice yet since the same amount of air time was given to the Tigriga language which is spoken by less than 7% of the population of the empire simply because the current rulers come from Tigray region.
A real justice for the Oromo people is to give the maximum air time for Afan Oromo, radio or TV, than any other language.Oromo oppositions strongly argue.
The fate of the former 60 employees of the Afan Oromo desk, who were said to have been laid off and have been holding demonstrations in protest at the action, is not known. Most of them have been placed under surveillance and their movements have been restricted within the Capital.
Opposing to the unjust decision the journalists, now off duty, have appealed to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s office, to the Ethiopian Parliament, to the OPDO office and to the so called Oromian president for the reversal of the decision.
Afan Oromo, is spoken by over 40% of the entire population of the nation. The Oromiya region is believed to house about 80 or so different languages.
He’s already the world record holder for the standard 42,195m marathon distance and has the two fastest times ever to his credit, but Haile Gebrselassie will be back at Berlin on Sunday hoping to shave yet another few seconds off of his world’s fastest time of 2:04:26 set on the same course one year ago.
But Gebrselassie admitted today that his preparations for Sunday’s real,- Berlin Marathon were not perfect. “I was in good shape until two weeks ago, when I started getting cramps,” he told race organizers at a press conference today. “But when you reach such a high level, you always get problems. I’m confident now, but I can’t predict a time.”
In Berlin last year, Gebrselassie still had four pacemakers with him as he passed 25 km in 1:14:05: Rodgers Rop, Andrew Limo, Philip Serem (all of Kenya) and Eshetu Wondimu of Ethiopia. Both Wondimu and Rop were able to hold on through 30 km (1:28:56), leaving Gebrselassie alone on the pavement to fight the clock. He sealed his record when ran ran the 5 km between 35 and 40 km in a blazing 14:30, a time good enough to win a typical collegiate 5000m race. He won by nearly two and one-half minutes over Kenyan Abel Kirui.
Gebrselassie, 35, has a special affection for the German capital, and said he might run the IAAF World Championships there next August. “Berlin is my lucky city,” he said. “I ran well in a junior Ekiden here years ago, and now I’m a marathon runner, I want to run in a world championships here.”
His nominal opponent on Sunday is Kenyan Charles Kamathi, the 2001 world 10,000m champion who ran a very solid 2:07:33 personal best in Rotterdam last April. But Kamathi knows that Haile will be running his own race.
“It’s a completely different event,” said Kamathi. “I won’t go with Haile and the pacemakers, I’ll go for a 2:06, 2:07 pace. But, if I see that there’s a chance to catch him, I’ll challenge.”
Top-10 Times Ever at the real,- Berlin Marathon (courtesy of Alltime-Athletics.com):
2:04:26 Haile Gebrselassie (ETH) 2007
2:04:55 Paul Tergat (KEN) 2003
2:04:56 Sammy Korir (KEN) 2003
2:05:56 Gebrselassie 2006
2:06:05 Ronaldo da Costa (BRA) 1998
2:06:15 Titus Munji (KEN) 2003
2:06:44 Josphat Kiprono (KEN) 1999
2:06:44 Felix Limo (KEN) 2004
2:06:47 Raymond Kipkoech Chemwelo (KEN) 2002
2:06:49 Simon Biwott (KEN) 2001
Please Join Us…
at Drexel University School of Public Health Grand Rounds with
Mehret Mandefro, MD, Director of Truth Aids
Physician, Medical Anthropologist, Filmmaker
“The Use of Digital Media in Public Health”
Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008, 4:30 PM
Geary Auditorium A (245 N. 15th St., First Floor, Philadelphia, PA)
Mehret Mandefro is a physician, medical anthropologist, filmmaker and Founding Director of TruthAIDS, a preventative health non-profit that uses digital media to teach about the societal determinants of health. As a public health trained physician her primary research interests includes the connection between health and human rights, the application of digital media in translation efforts.
She has worked as a public health practitioner in Kenya, Botswana, South Africa, Washington, D.C., and NYC on issues of access to care, community education efforts, and health workers training. Her prior fieldwork was conducted in Ethiopia analyzing HIV-positive women’s experiences with stigma, and the South Bronx, where she completed her internal medicine residency at Montefiore Hospital.
Mehret’s qualitative work about HIV/AIDS and gender equity in the South Bronx and Ethiopia is the subject of a feature-length documentary entitled All of Us that had its theatrical release in September 2008.
As a Health and Society Scholar, Mehret is advancing film as a method to teach and communicate about societal determinants of health. She directed, edited and wrote two short films as a first year RWJHSS Scholar for community based groups engaged in HIV prevention work in NYC and D.C. She is currently directing and writing a feature length documentary about the connection between violence prevention and cities as told through African American men in Philadelphia, and developing a TV pilot series for WYBE Channel 35 in Philadelphia on the societal determinants of health.
She received her M.D. from Harvard University, MSc in Medical Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a Fulbright Scholar, and A.B. in Anthropology from Harvard University.
There will be a very important public meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, Saturday, September 27. The meeting is expected to revive mobilization of support for Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) by launching the newly restructured EPPF International Council. The delegates, Ato Leuel Qeskis and Ato Assefa Hailu, both of whom sent by the EPPF leadership to Europe, after having spent several months with the fighters in the field, will discuss with Ethiopians in Germany — and those who are coming for the meeting from neighboring countries — about the need to rally around the EPPF fighters. The delegates will also disclose preparations made to strengthened the organization. Read more about the meeting below.
Exiled members of parliament, Ato Leul Qeskis and Ato Assefa Hailu, will hold a discussion with Ethiopians in Germany on Saturday, September 27, 2008.
The meeting will be broadcast live via Ethiopian Review Radio here.
Ato Leul Qeskis, a member of parliament from Gondar, and Ato Assefa Hailu, a member of parliament from Wollo, went into exile after the Meles dictatorship reversed the result of the 2005 elections and jailed the entire top leadership of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (Kinijit).
Instead of joining the rubber stamp parliament and give legitimacy to the Meles regime, the MPs left left their families behind and went into exile.
Both Ato Leul and Ato Assefa spent over 3 months in the field with fighters of Ethiopian People Patriotic Front (EPPF) as advisors before arriving in Asmara, Eritrea.
Currently, the exiled MPs are on a working visit in Europe on behalf of EPPF to discuss how Ethiopians can get involved in the struggle to bring an end to the terrorist regime in Ethiopia.
Frankfurt public meeting:
Place/Address: Frankfurt Am Main, Jugendherberger, Deutschherrnufer 12
Time/Date: Saturday, September 27, 2008, at 12:30 PM
More info: 01744115806 or 015776203683
The meeting will be broadcast live via Ethiopian Review Radio here.
