DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — Ethiopian opposition leaders jailed in a brutal crackdown following 2005 elections have signed a document accepting partial responsibility for the violence in exchange for their release, senior U.S. and Ethiopian officials said.
Only some of the 38 political detainees, whom Amnesty International has called prisoners of conscience, have agreed to sign the document. Others, including the senior opposition leaders, have refused, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are involved in the discussions.
Those who signed could be freed within days, the officials said.
Negotiations on the prisoners’ release have proceeded despite their conviction last week on charges including “outrage against the constitution” and aggravated high treason in a trial that human rights groups and some U.S. officials condemned as a sham. The prisoners are to be sentenced in July and could face the death penalty.
The prisoners’ families have accused the United States of softening its criticism of Ethiopia’s human rights record because the country is a key military ally in the fight against terrorism in the Horn of Africa.
The 2005 elections were generally hailed as free and fair, and the opposition made significant gains. But when opposition members took to the streets to protest some of the results, Ethiopian security forces, including sharpshooters, responded with massive force, arresting about 30,000 protesters and killing at least 193 people.
That the Ogaden has been neglected by the current regime in power in Ethiopia is not in question. That what is unfolding in Ogaden amounts to war crimes is what the world is beginning to see placing upon it a moral obligation to intervene.
Since 1994 the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has appealed to the international community to hear the cries of countless victims of the current Ethiopian regimes systematic repression of our people. Today, the Ogaden is one of the most underdeveloped areas in the world not because of a lack of resources, but a deliberate policy of suppression against civilians and an open hostility to the wishes of the people of Ogaden to have legitimate institutions serving the needs of the people.
The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Release dated 19 June 2007 and authored by Seyoum Mesfin, a senior member of the ruling Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) which also heads the government was a knee jerk reaction to the uncovering of this regimes dirty little secret in Ogaden. The same regime that professes to be moving Ethiopia toward a more democratic order is also the same regime that has planned and executed a campaign of terror against the nomadic cattle herders and villagers of Ogaden.
The Ministry made several claims in its Press Release which have no basis in reality and are designed to spin what was clearly accurate reporting by the New York Times. At one point, Seyoum Mesfin compares the New York Times journalist to an intelligence agent leaving one to wonder whether his government is sending a veiled message to the United States. Since a free press has become a rare commodity in Ethiopia, it comes as no surprise to us that Seyoum Mesfin would consider any journalist as an intelligence agent.
The Press Release made mention of the word terrorist in conjunction with the ONLF so many times that it was clear that this was the only message this regime was trying to convey through this statement. The statement makes no mention of the fact that the ONLF was actually part of the government when the marxist regime of strong man Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown in Ethiopia. It further ignores that fact that in the first elections held in Ogaden in 1992, the ONLF won 84% of seats in the regional parliament with additional seats being won by parties holding a platform similiar to the ONLF.
This regime seems to have forgotten that following those elections many of our parliamentarians were arrested and some killed including an attempt on the life of the then ONLF chairman in 1994 resulting in the massacre of 81 civilians at the hands of TPLF militia.
The TPLF led regime in Ethiopia also conveniently forgets that despite its campaign of terror against our people, the ONLF has always maintained a policy of welcoming direct dialogue subject to the presence of a neutral third party in a neutral country a position that the TPLF has rejected due to its unwillingness to have a third party present.
Instead, the TPLF has left no stone unturned to convince the international community that the ONLF is a terrorist organization despite being the only organization enjoying widespread legitimacy and support from the people of Ogaden. It seems that it has become fashionable for this regime to label anyone who opposes its policies as terrorists in order to divert attention from the legitimate grievances of the people.
The TPLF, itself an armed liberation movement labeled as terrorists by the previous regime before taking power themselves is fond of referring to the recent operation in Obole as a terrorist act, yet when members of the opposition asked the regime to furnish the names of Ethiopian civilians harmed in the operation, it did not, resulting in a vote of condemnation supported only by the ruling party members. Are we to believe that the 90 or so members of the opposition who refused to support the resolution were not people of conscious, or did they see the sinister motive of the TPLF led regime to seek to label a legitimate organization as terrorists in order to continue to justify their abuse of our people and continued neglect of Ogaden.
If the regime is justified in claiming a massacre, why did it refuse the calls of opposition parliamentarians to provide a full and detailed report following an investigation? Why are even the hand picked parliamentarians from the region silent about what took place other than the so-called regional President who claimed that Eritreans attacked the oil exploration facility, a claim that even his masters in the TPLF thought too sensational to make themselves.
The fact of the matter is that senior leaders of this regime had personal ties to the oil exploration facility at Obole, a factor which contributed to our selection of that target. In addition, our people were forcefully removed from grazing lands without compensation and with little warning. In short the ONLF targeted this regimes armed forces and not oil workers or civilians. The ONLF as a matter of policy and principle does not target civilians a claim the TPLF regime cannot make given its current record. It is this regime that has practiced a policy of assassinations, torture and intimidation. It is the TPLF that has acted as judge and jury in Ethiopia.
That the ONLF has joined hands with a diverse array of organizations with drastically different platforms forming the Alliance for Freedom & Democracy (AFD) demonstrating a commitment to peace through dialogue and calling for an all inclusive conference to chart a new political future for Ethiopia is also conveniently forgotten by this regime. The member organizations of the AFD were able to overcome their political differences in order to work together for a better future, something the TPLF has demonstrated that it is incapable of doing.
At every turn, this regime has labeled any initiative of the people as being hatched in Eritrea as though the people have no aspirations of their own. As though the desire for justice is imported and not homegrown. Are we to believe that all the victims of this regime are controlled by Eritrea? Are we all in a mass comma feeling nothing ourselves and needing to be directed from abroad?
Is it soo hard to believe that civilians have been massacred in Ogaden away from cameras by the TPLF when this regime did not hesitate to massacre civilians in the Streets of Addis Ababa after a rigged election in front of cameras?
What the New York Times reported and the world is now beginning to see is a human catastrophe this regime will do anything it can to conceal. That is why western journalists are denied entry into Ogaden. That is why the TPLF regime is desperate to label the ONLF as terrorists. That is why even the recent census was never initiated in Ogaden. That is why the rigged elections of 2005 did not even take place in Ogaden until several months later when the machinery of the TPLF was fully in place and ballot boxes were often found in army barracks.
The current regime in Ethiopia does not want the world to hear the cries of our people. It is a slow genocide away from the cameras and global attention. At this very moment there is a widescale crackdown taking place against throughout Ogaden. Trucks carrying food are being denied entry into towns like Degah-Bur, Qabri-Dahar and Gode. Several of the the very traditional leaders this regime claims to have been envoys of peace in their Press Release now find themselves in prison. Over thirty political prisoners have been loaded on trucks and driven out of Jijiga with no word on where they have been taken. Many of our civilians are leaving major towns because of this state of siege and seeking refuge with the ONLF. It is to put an end to these atrocities and many more that the ONLF struggles for in partnership other members of the AFD.
The ONLF calls upon the European Union and the United States in particular to hold this regime to account for its war crimes against the people of Ogaden and countless other political prisoners and prisoners of conscious who currently languish in Ethiopian jails including the duly elected leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) who were unjustly convicted of fabricated crimes simply because they won their seats in parliament and the countless members of the OLF,SLF and EPPF who are detained, tortured and harassed by this regime simply because they exercised their right to freedom of association. We further call upon the human rights organizations to defy the ban placed on them by the TPLF authorities and come to Ogaden to see for themselves the plight of our people.
The moral burden rests on the shoulders of the worlds leading democracies. While the people have spoken on their views of this regime, it is up to freedom loving people everywhere and their governments to make sure their voices are heard. To do anything less would be to turn away from the very aspirations for democracy and rule of law that they seek to expand accross the world.
Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)
Foreign Affairs Bureau
Jijiga, Ogaden
20 June 2007
Tegbar League’s executive committee in Addis Ababa today has called on the people of Ethiopia to rise up in unison for a nationwide civil disobedience to force the Woyanne dictatorship free our leaders.
The call is made to citizens through out the country to participate in the civil disobedience by blocking roads and major highways in the month of August unless the Woyanne dictatorship releases the legitimate representatives of the people of Ethiopia from jail.
It is the duty and obligation of a people to protect its legitimately elected leaders. In our case, we Ethiopians have allowed our leaders to languish in jail for over a year now. We must say no more.
An Internet watchdog on Tuesday accused Ethiopia of blocking scores of anti-government Web sites and millions of Weblogs in one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest cases of cyber-censorship.
Web monitor, the OpenNet Initiative, said the Horn of Africa country was stopping citizens from viewing opposition-linked Web sites, and blogs hosted by Blogger, an online journal community owned by Internet search engine Google Inc.
Ethiopia dismissed the report as “a baseless allegation”.
“We may have technical problems from time to time,” Information Ministry spokesman Zemedkun Tekle. “But we have not done anything like that and we have no intention of doing anything like that.”
The OpenNet Initiative — a partnership between Harvard Law School, and universities of Toronto and Cambridge and Oxford — said it had gathered proof of interference.
“We have run diagnostic tests using volunteers in Ethiopia which indicate that they are blocking IP addresses,” OpenNet research director Robert Faris said, referring to the unique numeric addresses of Web sites.
“The evidence is overwhelming that that is what they are doing. … Most of the sites that we found blocked were related to freedom of expression, human rights and political opposition,” he said by telephone from the United States.
The allegations could be embarrassing for the Ethiopian government, which is a major ally of the United States in Africa and has been criticised for a post-election crackdown on opposition that killed nearly 200 people in 2005.
“I think it’s a decision that makes the Ethiopian government look extremely hostile to free speech and to open political discourse,” said Ethan Zuckerman, research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society in the United States.
The Ethiopian blockages are part of a growing global trend, Faris said.
“As recently as five years ago, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia were the only countries that were filtering the Internet. Now we have found two dozen,” he added.
The full list of countries will be published in a book later in the year titled ‘Access Denied: the Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering’ published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Part of an initial report on the findings, that will be presented at a conference in Cambridge later this month, has been seen by Reuters.
OpenNet found some filtering of pornographic and political Web sites in Islamic North African countries including Tunisia.
Some pornographic and anti-Islamic sites were also blocked in Sudan, although the Web sites of many human rights groups critical of the situation in Darfur remained visible.
But it found no evidence to back up reports of online censorship in Eritrea and Zimbabwe. Ethiopia was the only widespread campaign identified in sub-Saharan Africa, the OpenNet report said.
“We are very interested in Ethiopia because it is a very recent entry into this field. Its internet penetration is very low but it is still going to the trouble of blocking the internet. That shows the lengths that the regime is willing to go to,” said Faris.
Ethiopia has one of the world’s lowest Internet access rates — only two out of every thousand Ethiopians were logging on in 2003, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s latest Human Development Report.
But it also has one of Africa’s healthiest blogging scenes, fuelled by a handful of anonymous writers in the capital Addis Ababa and the large communities of politically active Ethiopians in the United States and Europe.
Bloggers like Nazret.com (http://nazret.com/blog) published the first eyewitness accounts of political unrest that followed controversial national elections in 2005. Resident bloggers including Seminawork (http://seminawork.blogspot.com) have provided daily updates of the ongoing trial of opposition politicians. Ethiopundit (http://ethiopundit.blogspot.com) and Carpe Diem Ethiopia (http://carpediemethiopia.blogspot.com) are among a long list of Diaspora bloggers well known for their scathing political commentary.
Ethiopian bloggers have started displaying ‘Blocked in Ethiopia’ badges on their websites and swapping technical tips on how to get round the filters. Other sites currently inaccessible in Ethiopia include the home page for the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (http://www.kinijit.org) and 39 out of the 61 Ethiopian weblogs tracked by GlobalVoices, a website that reports on weblogs outside the West part-funded by Reuters.
OpenNet said many of the sites were caught in a blanket blockage of blogs hosted by Google’s Blogger service, home to many millions of blogs across the world, most of them nothing to do with politics.
OpenNet said it found evidence of the blockage by recruiting volunteers who ran programs on their computers inside Ethiopia scanning the network run by the state monopoly provider Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation. The results were then emailed back to OpenNet for analysis.
The scans followed the individual units or “packets” of digital data that get sent out whenever an internet user types a web address into a browser’s address box. “We found that the packets were dropped at the same place… Any packet associated with a particular IP address was dropped. You get a ‘time out’ message when you try to access the site. Your request never leaves the country…It is the simplest and bluntest way of blocking,” said Mr Faris.
Gulf Weekly — IT has been a week of mixed fortunes for sports in Bahrain. Where top cueist Habib Subah flattered to deceive at the Asian Snooker Championship in Pakistan by failing to make the quarter-finals, Maryam Yusuf Jamal flourished in Europe setting the year’s best time for the mile and winning the 1,500 metres race at the Oslo Golden League in the same week.Subah’s performance was heartbreaking while Maryam’s heartening with the World Athletics Championships around the corner.I have not met Maryam, who is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, but her story has always inspired me, in the same way that Olympic champion sprinter Wilma Glodean Rudolph’s did.
For a refugee who fled Ethiopia to escape political oppression, Maryam has done remarkably well. Born Zenebech Tola in Arsi, the village that also gave world long distance champion Haile Gebreselassie to athletics, Maryam sought asylum with her husband and coach Tareq Yaqoob (former Mnashu Taye) in Switzerland in 2002, according to the IAAF’s official web site.
Belonging to the ethnic Oromo group, the single largest group in Ethiopia but sidelined in mainline politics, Maryam began running at a very late stage, and out of compulsion rather than choice: to reach school which was a good 15 miles away and across hilly terrain.
But her precocious talent was evident right from the beginning. She even met the qualifying standards for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, but the Ethiopian Athletics Federation denied her permission to represent her home country.
Disappointed and desperate, Maryam sought Swiss citizenship, and failed. She even signed multiple citizenship papers with four other countries – Canada, Turkey, France and Bahrain. Maryam finally chose Bahrain nationality in 2005.
“We chose Bahrain because we knew some people living in Qatar, also athletes, who told us that Bahrain is a good place to be in,” I remember Maryam telling Bahrain TV soon after becoming a Bahraini citizen.
I am purposely recounting this story here… because there is no need to hide it anymore. Maryam is representing Bahrain legally after fulfilling all the IAAF rules and regulations, just like many other sports personalities around the world. And Maryam is laughing all the way to the tape, unlike others who have failed to fulfill their promises in their adopted countries.
The most famous example in the latter category is cricketer Graeme Hick, who coincidentally scored this 40,000th first-class run on Sundayplaying for Worcestershire in the English County Championship.
If you remember, England lovingly nursed and nourished Zimbabwe-born Hick as he completed formalities to switch alliance in the late 80s. But as a Test batsmen for England, Hick was a major disappointment. He just could not repeat his prolific county success at international level and remains an enigma to this day.
By contrast the 22-year-old Maryam has done more than enough to justify Bahrain’s faith in her. She made her mark winning the 3000m gold in Oslo in 2005, and since then has won three major gold medals in 1,500m for Bahrain apart from the golden double (800 and 1,500) at the Asian Games in Doha last year and a series of other honours around Europe in events ranging form 800m to cross country championships and half marathons.
But her sensational international exploits kicked an internal storm as well when a Bahraini MP raised objections to her dress code.
Maryam has overcome it with a change of sponsorship, and is now all set to go for gold at the World Athletics Championship to be held in Osaka, Japan, from August 25 to September 2.
Clocking the best time (4:22.34) of the year for the mile in Geneva earlier last week and winning the 1,500m with a time of 4:01.44 on Friday in Oslo should boost Maryam’s confidence further.
But the road ahead is still tough as she is way behind the year’s best time of 4:00.48 (set by Gelete Burkha of Ethiopia in Eugene, June 10, 2007).
The moot question is can Maryam break the barrier and make a mark at the world level. Rashid Ramzi did it at the 2005 World Athletics Championship in Helsinki winning a golden double, but many other leading Bahraini sports figures have stumbled outside the GCC and Asian circuit. Snooker champion Subah himself is a prime example.
Maryam too failed in her bid for world glory at the 2005 Helsinki Championships, finishing fifth in the 1,500m with a time of 4:02.49 against the winning time of 4:00.35 (Tomashova Tatyana of Russia).
Since then Maryam has broken the four-minute barrier with a personal best of 3:56.79 which again is below the world and Asian record of 3:50.46 set by China’s Yunxia Qu way back in 1993.
Maryam, however, has expressed confidence of winning in Osaka. She looks in the best shape among the present lot of 1,500m runners and is joint No 2 in the world. Let’s hope to see her as No 1 in Osaka.
On June 11, 38 prominent opposition leaders in Ethiopia were found guilty of multiple capital crimes, including treason and “outrages against the constitution.”The developments were the latest outrage in Africa’s third most populous nation. Since contested elections in May 2005 resulted in surprisingly strong showings by opposition parties, hundreds of opposition political leaders, students, lawyers and others have been killed or arrested.
The most recent convictions and the overall human-rights crackdown since the 2005 elections have been condemned by worldwide human-rights groups (Reporters without Borders recently ranked Ethiopia second worst on the African continent for press freedoms behind Eritrea). But that’s been largely overshadowed in major U.S. media more focused on Ethiopia’s military intervention in Somalia against the Islamic Union of Courts—with U.S. militarysupport.
More than 8,500 miles away in Portland, 54-year-old Lulit Mesfin is among the leaders in the fight in America to free the prisoners in her native country and sanction the Ethiopian regime for its abuses. In recent weeks, she has made some headway.
Mesfin, who came to America in 1972 to study in Los Angeles, is secretary of the 10-member Ethiopian-American Council of Portland. She is one of the leading Ethiopian-American activists fighting for democratic rule in her home country of 77 million people.
Days after the June 11 convictions, Mesfin successfully lobbied U.S. Reps. David Wu and Earl Blumenauer (both D-Ore.) to be among the half-dozen co-sponsors of HR 2003. The resolution calls for the release of the political prisoners, conditions U.S. foreign policy on Ethiopia to improvements in human rights, and directly sanctions human-rights abusers there.
Mesfin’s influence is also felt in Salem. Earlier this month, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed off on a similar Ethiopia-human rights resolution passed by the House and Senate. Mesfin testified at two hearings on “Joint Memorial 3,” saying of the resolution, “If President Bush considers democracy is good for Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia and Ukraine, it ought to be good for Ethiopia as well.”
Oregon becomes the second state along with Massachusetts to pass Ethiopia-related human-rights resolutions.
Although the actions of the Oregon Legislature or even the U.S. Congress may not mean anything to Ethiopia’s leaders, Mesfin says it’s important to agitate for such actions because it “gives hope to Ethiopian citizens and shows the [Zenawi] government that people are watching.”
And it certainly gives hope to Hiwot Nega, an Ethiopian living in New York, that at least somebody in the United States is paying attention. Her brother, Dr. Berhanu Nega, one of the most popular opposition leaders in Ethiopia, was elected mayor of the nation’s capital city, Addis Ababa, in 2005—and among those subsequently arrested en masse.
He is one of the 38 who now face a possible death sentence.
“My family, here and those inside Ethiopia, is indebted to Lulit for her work,” Nega says. “We hope it leads to a more free society—it only can come from people like Lulit.”
On June 11, 38 prominent opposition leaders in Ethiopia were found guilty of multiple capital crimes, including treason and “outrages against the constitution.”The developments were the latest outrage in Africa’s third most populous nation. Since contested elections in May 2005 resulted in surprisingly strong showings by opposition parties, hundreds of opposition political leaders, students, lawyers and others have been killed or arrested.