Kangaroo court judge Leul Gebremariam has ordered the arrest of Teddy Afro’s lawyer, Ato Million Assefa today. On the judge’s order, and publishers of AddisNeger newspaper, Ato Mesfin Negash and Ato Girma Tesfaw, have also been arrested today in Addis Ababa, according to Ethiopian Review sources.
Judge Leul ordered the arrest of the lawyer and the newspaper publishers after they published a report last Saturday that Ato Million was about to lodge a complaint against the judge and the translator for Menilik Hospital to the board of judicial administration.
Publisher Mesfin Negash and Deputy Publisher Girma Tesfaw were picked up by police in the morning and brought before Judge Leul for hearing in the afternoon. After answering some questions, the judge released the deputy publisher, but ordered the chief publisher to return to jail and come back to court tomorrow.
The lawyer, Ato Million Assefa, was arrested later tonight local time.
Ato Million is a Woyanne sympathizer who is also said to be one of authors of the new restrictive press law that was recently passed by the rubber-stamp parliament.
Teddy Afro’s friends and fans are puzzled why Million was hired to represent the popular singer. Legal expert say that Million has so far done a poor job of representing Teddy in and outside of the court.
Ethiopian Jewish groups in Israel say there are still about 8,000 falash mura in Gondar, Ethiopia, seeking to move to Israel
(Telegraph.co.uk) By Ben Lynfield in JERUSALEM — The move evoked a furious reaction from leaders of the 120,000-strong Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel, who said the “discrimination” and “prejudice” of the Israeli government would strand thousands of people in Africa and thwart family reunifications.
Government spokesman Mark Regev said the step “will enable us to focus more effectively and invest resources on the successful integration of Ethiopian immigrants”.
He added that the government was abiding by a cabinet decision in 2003 to bring to Israel a total of 17,000 Ethiopians, known as falash mura, who are descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity but who consider themselves Jewish.
In accordance with the quota, the falash mura have been flown to Israel at a rate of about three hundred a month since 2003, with the last group of 61 of them arriving yesterday.
Israel mounted major operations – codenamed Moses and Solomon – to bring thousands of Ethiopian Jews to the country in 1984 and 1991, depicting the immigration as fulfilment of the biblical prophecy of a gathering of Jewish exiles to Zion.
But the Ethiopian community of about 120,000 immigrants and their descendants is the poorest sector of the Israeli Jewish population and is beset by unemployment and school drop-out rates, although there have also been success stories.
In an affirmative action to make up for their impoverished background the government has underwritten their mortgages.
Ethiopian Jewish groups in Israel say there are still about 8,000 falash mura in Gondar, Ethiopia, seeking to move to Israel.
“It is inconceivable that the descendants of Jews and Jews, who need to emigrate, should have the door shut on them,” said Danny Kasahon, director of a coalition of Ethiopian lobbying groups.. “There are many families here who have parents or children in Ethiopia waiting to come to Israel.”
“This is discrimination. It cannot be defined by any other word. It could be based on prejudice,” Mr. Kasahon added.
Mr Regev denied the charge and said there could still be family reunifications “on a case by case basis”, but added that “collective mass immigration is behind us.”
Ethiopians for Obama will hold our next meeting at Bahir Dar Waterfront Gourmet Ethiopian Restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. The entire second floor has been reserved for Ethiopians for Obama and Obama’s African-American Virginia Constituency Director will be in attendance.
We will discuss ways that we will be working with the campaign to ensure a massive Ethiopian-American turnout in the state of Virginia. There is an unbelievable amount of enthusiasm for Senator Obama within the Ethiopian community–we need to turn this enthusiasm into action. Our turnout–our vote–could be powerful in helping to elect Senator Obama our next president. Please plan on attending and taking part in this historical campaign.
Event Details:
Place: Waterfront Gourmet/Bahir Dar Ethiopian Restaurant
Address: 5 Cameron Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
(On the waterfront in Old Town Alexandria)
Phone: 703.518.5106
Date: Sunday, August 10th
Time: 5:00 PM
If is vital that we have a large turnout for this event, please take an hour out of your weekend to attend. Conference call in number will be provided for those who want to dial in from those who are not near the DC metro area.
Email [email protected] and request dial-in number if you would like to participate via conference call.
NEW YORK, August 5, 2008 – A professor at The Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) is beginning an intensive program in Ethiopia this August to eradicate intestinal worms which affect as much as 50 percent of the population in Africa.
BGU Professor Zvi Bentwich, who heads the Center for Tropical Diseases and AIDS in Israel (CEMTA), believes there is a possible connection between the AIDS epidemic in Africa and intestinal worms, one of the many Neglected Tropical Diseases which affect nearly one quarter of the world’s population.
Prof. Bentwich believes that intestinal worms can affect the immune system in such a profound way that it has a major impact on one’s susceptibility to HIV and tuberculosis, and in coping with these diseases when they are already there. “As head of the largest AIDS center, I dealt with a large number of Ethiopian HIV and AIDS patients, and through them became aware of the magnitude of this problem in Ethiopia,” he says.
The first stage of the operation to deworm about 30,000 people from three separate locations in Ethiopia begins in August. In the fall, the research project will focus on the town of Mekele in northern Ethiopia with approximately 250,000 inhabitants.
The program combines the provision and administration of antihelminthic medications, a few pills every four to six months, with hygiene education and information on how to protect populations from exposure to the parasites.
“NTDs are one of the most evident hallmark signs of poverty and neglect, significantly contributing to the persistence of this situation in a very large number of countries in Africa, Asia and South America,” Bentwich explains. “They have been largely neglected by the Western developed countries, since they are practically nonexistent there. “It costs much less than what it takes to fight the more recognized epidemics like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.”
BGU is partnering with Global Network for the Fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases to help populations across Africa, including Ethiopia. The project is being funded by an international coalition of nonprofit organizations.
About Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and American Associates
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is a world-renowned institute of research and higher learning with campuses in Beer-Sheva, Sede Boqer and Eilat in Israel’s southern desert. It is a university with a conscience, where the highest academic standards are integrated with community involvement, committed to sustainable development of the Negev. Founded in 1972, this year marks American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s 36th year of support, helping BGU develop the bold new vision for the Negev: the focus of the future of Israel. For more information, please visit www.aabgu.org.
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For more info contact: Andrew Lavin, A. Lavin Communications
Tel: 212-290-9540, email: [email protected]
VOA’s Amharic program has interviewed leaders of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), Dr Bayan Asoba and Ato Lencho Batti, on the leadership split. Click below to listen [forward to 33:00].
(JTA) — The era of large-scale Ethiopian aliya is over, the Jewish Agency for Israel said. The last official airlift of Ethiopian Jews was scheduled to land in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, bringing to an end a state-organized campaign which began almost 30 years ago and brought in around 120,000 immigrants from the east African nation.
The Jewish Agency said its emissary to Addis Ababa had been recalled, though Jerusalem officials could still be sent out to help an estimated 1,400 Falash Mura, or Ethiopian crypto-Jews, apply to immigrate as part of efforts to reunite them with relatives already in Israel.
“But we will no longer be seeing anything on the scale of Operation Moses or Operation Solomon,” agency chairman Zeev Bielski told Israel Radio, alluding to major missions to bring in Ethiopians by air and sea in the 1980s.
He called on the government to reinvest its energies in helping the Ethiopian community in Israel, many of whose members live in poverty and complain of inadequate social integration.
Ethiopians for Obama will hold our next meeting at Bahir Dar Waterfront Gourmet Ethiopian Restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. The entire second floor has been reserved for Ethiopians for Obama and Obama’s African-American Virginia Constituency Director will be in attendance.