The Oromo Liberation Front’s (OLF) radio Amharic service on its May 6 broadcast commented that the recent land “transaction” between TPLF and Sudan is a mutual agreement benefiting both regimes.
Sudan according to the commentary will hand opponents to TPLF and make sure its land including the one it was given by TPLF as a “gift” not to be used as a military base by TPLF’s opponents.
We have seen another deal between Puntland administration, Somalia and TPLF that resulted to the handling of ONLF high officials for exchange of guns. There was no land transaction between Puntland and TPLF this time because Puntland has no strong army to challenge ONLF. However, we can not rule out that possibility for the future.
The long term goal of the land “gift” to Sudan according to the OLF commentary is to plant a long term conflict between Sudan and Ethiopia mirroring the Badme “fiasco” which took the lives of tens of thousands of Ethiopians.
It went further and challenged all opponents of the regime to come together and remove this regime to detonate all the bombs planted inside and outside Ethiopia before it takes our people and country for a devastating conflict among ourselves and with neighboring countries.
Woyannes, who have accused Norway and Qatar of supporting terrorism, and Ethiopian Review and other media of genocide, is now going after Amnesty International, one of the most respected human rights organizations, for exposing the war crimes of Meles Zenawi’s occupation forces in Somalia. Reuters and other media are smearing Ethiopia’s name by associating Woyanne and its evil deeds with Ethiopia, or calling it Ethiopian government. Woyanne is not a government or a political party. It is a gang of murderers, thieves and rapists — it is a criminal enterprise acting as a government or ruling party.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia Woyanne accused Amnesty International of a smear campaign against it on Wednesday after the rights group said Ethiopia Woyanne troops in Somalia had killed civilians by slitting their throats.
Thousands of Ethiopia Woyanne soldiers are stationed in Somalia where they are helping the government fight Islamist-led insurgents.
In its second report on abuses in Somalia in two weeks, Amnesty said on Tuesday that all parties to the conflict had committed abuses.
However, it said it had received an increase in reports of violations of Somalis by Ethiopia Woyanne troops, with allegations of gang rape and civilians having their throats slit among the most common.
“This is an outright and deliberate lie, fed to Amnesty by groups affiliated to al Shabaab, groups that use the cover of human rights to promote their terrorist agenda,” Ethiopia’s Woyanne Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement.
“It is deplorable that Amnesty International has lent itself to an obviously disgraceful smear campaign against the armed forces of Ethiopia Woyanne, using highly emotive, even racist language.”
The ministry accused Amnesty of ignoring widespread human rights abuses by the al Shabaab, including assassinations of political and religious leaders, desecration of dead bodies and the cutting of throats of Muslim clerics who oppose it.
Al Shabaab is the armed wing of a sharia courts movement that ruled most of southern Somalia for six months in 2006 before being ousted by allied Somali-Ethiopian Woyanne forces.
Ethiopia Woyanne said the timing of Amnesty report was designed to help al Shabaab “in the recruitment of terrorists by deliberately inciting hatred and animosity based on lies” and to derail talks due to start in Djibouti on Saturday.
The United Nations has brokered tentative peace talks due to begin on Saturday between 15 officials sent by Somalia’s interim government and a similar number of delegates from the Eritrea-based Somali opposition.
Amnesty urged Ethiopia to read its report and study the allegations against its troops, rather than issue accusations.
“In light of the devastating testimony we received from ordinary Somalis who have been the victims of brutal attacks by all parties to the conflict, we expect the Ethiopian Woyanne government to support a call for an international independent commission into the serious crimes being committed,” a spokesperson said.
Last month Amnesty said Ethiopian Woyanne troops killed 21 people in Mogadishu’s Al Hidaaya mosque, adding that seven of the victims had their throats slit. Ethiopia Woyanne rejected the report and said its forces had never been involved in such incidents.
(Additional reporting and writing by Katie Nguyen in Nairobi; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Jon Boyle)
(IFEX) — Musicians are the latest target in Cameroon’s quest to silence critics of the recent constitutional amendments that eliminate term limits for the President, report the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) and the Network of African Freedom of Expression Organizations (NAFEO). Elsewhere in Africa, Ethiopian police have detained an editor and seized a magazine over the cover story of a pop icon, say the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists Association (EFJA) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Lapiro de Mbanga, a prominent Cameroonian protest singer and a known member of the opposition party Social Democratic Front, was arrested on 9 April and accused of masterminding February’s riots against the high cost of living. According to MFWA sources, Mbanga’s arrest was tied to a song he wrote called “Constipated Constitution”, which warns President Paul Biya of the amendments’ dangers.
Joe La Conscience, who also wrote a song condemning the amendments of the constitution, was arrested in March and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, allegedly for arranging an “unlawful” sit-in at the U.S. Embassy in Yaoundé. La Conscience was reportedly protesting against the closure of leading broadcasters Equinoxe TV and Radio Equinoxe in connection with their coverage of the ongoing crisis. The day after his non-violent protest, security forces stormed his home in Loum and killed his 11-year-old son, say news reports.
The Constitutional Amendment Bill, adopted by the National Assembly in Cameroon on 10 April, allows an unlimited number of presidential mandates, which critics say empowers President Paul Biya to continue to rule for life. The amendments also grant immunity to the President for any acts committed by him during his time in office.
Freemuse, a free expression organisation for musicians and composers, is leading a campaign in support of the two arrested singers. Get involved, at: http://www.freemuse.org/sw26753.asp
Meanwhile, a magazine with a cover story about the imprisonment of Ethiopia pop singer Teddy Afro was seized on 2 May and its editor and three support staff were themselves jailed, a move coinciding with World Press Freedom Day, says the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists’ Association (EFJA).
Ten thousand copies of the monthly entertainment magazine “Enku” were impounded by police on 2 May, the day before it was due to hit the newsstands. The publisher and deputy editor of the magazine, Alemayehu Mahtemework, was put in jail, along with three support staff.
CPJ says that police impounded the paper allegedly after receiving a tip from an informant at the printer that the cover story could lead to “incitement”.
The story focused on the trial of reggae star Teddy Afro, whose real name is Tewodros Kassahun. Kassahun was arrested and charged last month with causing the death of a young man in a hit and run accident in November 2006.
Kassahun’s popular song, “Jah Yasteseryal”, became a popular anthem of anti-government protesters during unrest following the disputed 2005 parliamentary elections, according to local sources.
Despite releasing 15 Ethiopian journalists who were jailed on trumped-up anti-state charges last year in connection with a brutal 2005 media crackdown, Ethiopian authorities have not relented in their long-standing pattern of repression of independent media through intimidation and arrests, CPJ says.
guardian.co.uk — Soldiers, insurgents and bandits are routinely attacking Somalian civilians, carrying out murder, rape, and robbery on villagers, and destroying entire districts, Amnesty International said yesterday.
Gang rape and throat cutting — referred to locally as “killing like goats” — is prevalent. Incidents of gouging out eyes, beheadings and castration have also been reported. Amnesty’s report is based on interviews with scores of traumatized refugees who fled the war-ravaged country, where 6,500 civilians have been killed in the past year.
Unarmed civilians are reported to be caught up in the battle between Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers and Somalian government troops fighting the remnants of the Islamic Courts Union, which was ousted by Ethiopian Woyanne forces in 2006. Amnesty said the blame for civilian deaths was shared by all parties but it highlighted an “increasing incidence” of gruesome methods employed by Ethiopian Woyanne forces following incidents in which the bodies of several Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers were dragged through the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, by Islamist insurgents.
Ethiopia’s government Woyanne dismissed Amnesty’s report as unbalanced and “categorically wrong”. A spokesman said hundreds of Ethiopian Woyanne troops had died fighting the Islamist insurgency.
Guled, a 32-year-old refugee, described seeing neighbors with their throats slit, and their corpses left in the street. “Some had their testicles cut off,” Guled said, adding that a newly married woman who lived next door to him was raped by more than 20 Ethiopians. Another interviewee told Amnesty of a report that Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers had cut the throat of a young child in front of the mother. “Even schools are being used as cemeteries, because people cannot take bodies outside the city,” Galad, a 60-year-old journalist, was quoted as saying.
Michelle Kagari, the deputy director of Amnesty’s Africa Programme, said: “The people of Somalia are being killed, raped, tortured; looting is widespread and entire neighbourhoods are being destroyed. The testimony we received strongly suggests that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity have been committed by all parties to the conflict in Somalia and no one is being held accountable.”
The Amnesty report said: “Among the most common violations reported were an increased incidence of gang rape, and scores of reports of a type of killing locally referred to as… ‘killing like goats’.”
It quotes Butaaco, a 30-year-old refugee from Mogadishu, as saying: “I saw girls get raped in my neighborhood and on the streets. I saw people get slaughtered. I saw people killed in their houses, their bodies rotting for days.”
Somalia has been in a state of chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre after 21 years in power and then turned on each other. Last year, Islamist militants took control of most of southern Somalia, including Mogadishu. Ethiopia Woyanne sent in troops in December 2006 and ejected them. Since then, Mogadishu has been caught up in a guerrilla war between the government and its Ethiopian Woyanne allies and the Islamist insurgents. Up to 1 million Somalians are internally displaced.
