(Afar Human Right Organization) — The TPLF army continues its terror and intimidation on the Afar civilian. One of the latest victims was a 16 years old school boy Ibrahim Mohamed Suula. July 13, 2008 the army shot dead Ibrahim at village of Urissi near Gewani. Ibrahim was one of brilliant students in Gewani Boarding School and at the time he was visiting his parents during the school vacation. He was watching over the family’s cattle there an unprovoked army sniper shot him to death. The other boy with him got wounded but managed to escape.
The woreda officials made a claim to hold the perpetrators accountable for the killing; however the army officials responded by stating “the national army has the right to kill who ever they want to kill” The magnitude of arrogance, disrespect for the human life and dignity, and human right violation by armed forces has caused outrage and bitterness among Afars.
The case of Ibrahim is the tip of the iceberg. The number of Afar civilians that have been killed by the army since 1991 is estimated to be more than 4000, but not a single case was legally tried and held accountable. Consequently, the national army stationed a long the Djibouti – Addis high way in Afar region is harboring more that 4000 individuals responsible for killing of innocent civilians. Some sources from the local community reported that the army is using the Afar pastoralists and their livestock to train their marksmen. A motiveless assassination of Ibrahim was also believed to be part of this exercise, which is against all international treaties and the code of armed forces.
The question is which stand to take on the national army that intimidate and terrorize its own rather than protecting them?
Afar pastoralists are on their native land and move around with their livestock to make their livelihood on some of the harshest terrain in the world. The huge army settlements in Afar region have exposed the Afar community for daily confrontation with the army and, therewith for brutal harassment and human right abuse as a result. An additional factor that threatens the livelihood of the Afar pastoralists is the confiscation of 120,000ht grazing land for state owned sugar plantation, which displaced 500,000 pastoralists. Supplant Afars pastoralists are now forced to move to the neighbouring agrarian communities such as Amharas, Oromo and Tigreans; which in turn is instigating new conflicts between Afar and their neighboring brothers.
Afar Human Rights Organization strongly denounces the killing of Ibrahim and other civilians!
Afar Human Rights Organization (AHRO) calls up on:
United Nation, AU, EU, Arab league, Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International to investigate human rights abuses in the Afar region.
For further inquiry and support please contact “Afar Human Right Organisation” [email protected]
Press Release
International Oromo Human Rights Conference
The Oromo American Citizens Council (OACC) The mission of the OACC is to educate and motivate Oromo Americans and others to participate in the social and political processes locally and nationally and to work to prevent violations of fundamental civil and political rights in Ethiopia and around the world. The OACC was founded in 2002, in part, to raise awareness and advocate against abuses of human rights in Ethiopia based on ethnic background on behalf of the estimated 15-20,000 Oromos in Minnesota
International Oromo Human Rights Conference titled “Can a Democratic Government Work in a Multicultural Society? This Conference is intended to inform and provide a forum for discussion on the very serious human rights and political challenges in Ethiopia and surrounding countries in the Horn of Africa.
Where: University of Minnesota Mayo Memorial Auditorium, 425 Delaware Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455
When: Thursday, July 31, 2008 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Contact: Oromo American Citizens Council
651-917-0430 (w) or 612-275-0970 (m) or [email protected]
Distinguished panel members include
Bulcha Demeksa, Member of Ethiopian Parliament and Chairman of Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM)
Asfaw Beyene, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, San Diego State University
Alemayehu G. Mariam, Professor, Department of Political Science, California State University-San Bernardino
Guled Kassim, Institute for Global Civic Empowerment
Obang Metho, Director of International Advocacy, Anuak Justice Council
August Nimtz, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota
Special Invitation to Media:
All media are invited to attend the conference; a separate press section will be provided. Any advance publicity, calendar or event listings, and media coverage is welcome. The OACC would be happy to arrange interviews with the conference speakers.
For additional information please contact the OACC or visit the OACC website: http://www.oromoamerican.org/whatsnew.html.
Oromo American Citizens Council
1821 University Avenue W., Suite 336S
St. Paul, MN 55104
651-917-0430
www.oromoamerican.org
EDITOR’S NOTE: When is Meles Zenawi’s turn? Oh, never mind. Prof. Mesfin Woldemariam said let’s forgive him.
(CNN) — Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has been arrested after more than a decade as a fugitive from war crimes charges, the U.N. tribunal that charged him announced Monday.
Radovan Karadzic in 1995.
Karadzic, 63, was the Serb political leader during the 1992-1995 war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina’s secession from Yugoslavia. He is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the law of war.
No details of his arrest were immediately available. But the chief prosecutor for the U.N. tribunal, Serge Brammertz, called it “an important day for the victims” and congratulated Serbian authorities for taking him into custody.
“It is also an important day for international justice, because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice,” Brammertz said.
He said authorities “in due course” will determine when Karadzic is to be transferred to the tribunal at The Hague.
His arrest leaves former Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander, as the top-ranking war crimes suspect still at large.
Karadzic, a onetime psychiatrist, declared himself president of a Serb republic within Bosnia after the former Yugoslav republic declared its independence in 1992.
Backed by Serb-led Yugoslav troops, the Bosnian Serbs launched a campaign against the country’s Muslim and Croat population that introduced the world to the term “ethnic cleansing.”
In 1995, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia accused Karadzic and Mladic of leading that campaign, ordering the roundup of thousands of non-Serb civilians into camps where they were killed, tortured or sexually assaulted.
Karadzic is also charged with genocide in connection with the killings of nearly 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, the worst European massacre since World War II.
The following is translated from French to English. It is taken from a Djiboutian newspaper, La Nation
Djibouti has just been given 5,000 hectares of agricultural land by Ethiopia.
President Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti has returned to the capital yesterday after a working visit to Ethiopia in 48 hours. The purpose of his stay in Addis Ababa focused on the formal concession of agricultural land with an area of five hectares, from the Ethiopian authorities.
The field, located in Bale in the Oromo region, will be used to grow wheat crop.
The concession is part of a government strategy adopted in 2005 designed to meet the food security of the country. The objective remains more than ever a national priority insofar as the price of basic food commodities have experienced successive increases over the past months.
LONDON (Reuters) – When Haile Gebrselassie was taking distance running to new levels a decade ago few could have imagined that even before he had retired he would be eclipsed by another Ethiopian, Kenenisa Bekele.
If, as expected, the two men line up for the 10,000 meters final in Beijing it will be world record holder, Olympic and triple world champion Bekele who will be the hot favorite.
Bekele, 26, has a remarkable record of consistency, winning championship titles, setting world records and dominating cross country running over the past six years.
This year he regained the world cross title to make it 12 wins in 13 attempts over the two senior distances.
His 10,000 meters world record of 26 minutes 17.53 seconds, set in 2005, is more than five seconds faster than Gebrselassie’s world mark of 1998 – itself half a minute better than William Sigie’s 1994 mark that he first surpassed in 1995.
Bekele also has the 5,000 world record of 12:37.35, previously held by his compatriot, a double Olympic champion at 10,000.
His style is modeled on Gebrselassie too. Both men destroy their opponents with their finishing speed and it is not unusual for Bekele to post a 53-second final lap.
In Athens four years ago the Ethiopians tried to run as a team to help Gebrselassie challenge for a third gold but, injured, he dropped off the pace leaving Bekele to blast through the last lap to win.
Eight days later Bekele just missed out on the double when he was outkicked by Hicham El Guerrouj over the final 50 meters of the 5,000. Despite that setback 2004 remained an annus mirabilis for Bekele.
Within four days of the new year, his fiancee, 18-year-old Alem Techale, died while the two were running together.
Bekele recovered to win double gold again at the world cross country three months later and in that August won the second of his three consecutive 10,000 world titles.
In 2007, he married Ethiopian actress Danawit Gebregziabher. She watched him in championship action for the first time when he reclaimed the world cross title in Scotland this year.
He has carried that form on to the track with the fourth-fastest 10,000 meters – 26:25.97 – in an almost solo effort at the Prefontaine Classic in the United States in June.
With only six days between the 10,000 and 5,000 finals in Beijing, Bekele had said he planned to run only the longer distance but it now looks possible he could double up.
Four-times 10,000m world champion Gebrselassie is putting everything into that race after opting out of the marathon after concerns over the air quality.
EDITOR’S NOTE: African Union makes such a demand because it represents Africa’s parasitic dictators such as Meles Zenawi, Robert Mugabe, and others who are waiting their turn to face similar indictments. AU doesn’t represent the people of Africa.
(Peter Clottey, VOA) — The African Union (AU) has called on the United Nations Security Council to suspend the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for Darfur war crimes. The AU contends that the indictment would not only destabilize the country, but also undermine efforts to resolve the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Darfur. The African Union’s Peace and Security Council, which recently met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, reportedly also requested creation of a panel of eminent Africans to come up with recommendations on how to address issues of accountability and reconciliation raised by the Darfur conflict. El- Ghassim Wane is the spokesman for the African Union. He tells reporter Peter Clottey from Addis Ababa that the African Union would not condone impunity for human rights abuses.
“The Peace and Security Council deliberated and decided on the matter in light of two considerations. The first one is of course the unflinching commitment of the African Union to combating impunity, and ensuring that those responsible for human rights violations in Darfur are brought to book. The second element is the need to preserve the gains made in the peace process and ensure our efforts, which we are jointly deploying with the UN, especially in Darfur. And it is in light of that that the Peace and Security Council made this request to the UN to defer the process initiated by the ICC,” Wane noted.
He said the African Union is in the process of coming up with a commission to address the issue of accountability and others over the Darfur crisis.
“There is also a decision requesting a commission to put in place within one month an independent high level panel made up of distinguished Africans to come up with in-depth and concrete recommendations on how best to address the issues of accountability, combating impunity, reconciliation and healing in Darfur,” he said.
Wane denied that the African Union delayed raising concerns when recommendations were made to the Security Council before the ICC requested President Bashir’s possible indictment.
“There is really no a late move as such. As you are aware, the UN Security Council referred the matter to the ICC through resolution 1593. We as AU, there is a referral to the ICC, but there is also a request that was made through the AU to support efforts at reconciliation and healing in the Sudan. And on the strength of that resolution we undertook a number of initiatives. We organize a number of meetings and came up with recommendations of how we could push forward this agenda of combating impunity,” Wane pointed out.
He said President Bashir’s indictment would not help efforts to resolve the crisis in Darfur.
“But what we believe is that under the current circumstances and given the security of the process in Sudan, given also the process being made in the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed between the government and the SPLM (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement), really we believe that the application by the prosecutor of the ICC wont be helpful to the peace process,” he said.
Wane said the African Union wants those who perpetrated crimes to be fully dealt with.
“We made a request not only for the deferral of the process and the way within the framework of the ICC, but the Peace and Security Council also did also come up with a roadmap on how to address the issue of impunity, accountability, and the issue of reconciliation and healing. It is our hope that the high level panel that the chairperson of the commission requested to be set up will be able to come up with concrete recommendations that would take into account the genuine concerns of all those who believe that the perpetrators of human rights violations in Darfur should be brought to justice,’ Wane pointed out.
