BY STEPHANIE HEINATZ
dailypress.com

Yacob Hailemariam will speak at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Studio for the Healing Arts on Colley Ave. in Norfolk about human rights in Ethiopia and democracy there.

The event, put on by the Tidewater Peace Alliance and Amnesty International Hampton Roads Group 633, is part of the 3rd annual Light in the Dark: Festival for Peace.

Yacob was a business law professor for 20 years at Norfolk State University and has worked for the United Nations as a senior legal advisor in West Africa and a senior prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, according to an event press release.

In 2004, Yacob, an Ethiopian, returned to his home East African country to run for parliament.

“During the campaign he became a very popular public figure and was chosen to chair the international relations committee of the leading opposition party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy,” according to his biography. “He was elected to parliament by an overwhelming majority on May 15, 2005.”

The current administration, led by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared victory in the election, however.

Mass protests erupted and hundreds of people were killed.

Yacob was arrested on Oct. 31, 2005 and charged with treason, inciting violence, and genocide. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Yacob was released in July and reunited with his family in Hampton Roads in October.

O.N.L.F Statement

Armed forces of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) led regime captured by the ONLF in recent months have reported on several occasions that they were under direct orders to hang villagers in “trouble spots” throughout Ogaden as part of a continuing collective punishment campaign against civilians.

This brutal practice is increasingly becoming the terror tactic of choice for TPLF regime troops in the Ogaden and is well known to our nomadic population.

The international community and the United Nations in particular must not sit by idly as the TPLF regime sanctions the barbaric hanging of our people simply because of their ethnicity.

The UN must therefore act on the recommendations made in September of this year by its humanitarian fact finding mission to Ogaden and immediately constitute an independent investigation team to visit Ogaden and look into cases of torched villages, rape and now, public hangings of innocent civilians from trees.

The ONLF pledges to cooperate with the United Nations in gathering evidence of genocide in Ogaden.

Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)

Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers

NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers have forcibly drafted hundreds of civilians to fight separatist rebels in the desolate, predominantly Muslim Ogaden region in a shadowy military campaign supported by the Bush administration, according to more than a dozen refugees and former recruits who’ve fled to neighboring Kenya.

The untrained and ill-equipped draftees — including students, camel herders and tribal leaders who’ve never fired weapons in combat — are being thrown into pitched battles with ethnic Somali guerrillas and often suffer heavy casualties, the refugees and ex-recruits said.

Men who resist joining these civilian militias — known as “dabaqodhi,” or “puppets” of the government — are beaten, locked up in military prisons or killed, the refugees said in interviews. When recruits perform poorly in combat, as they often do, they’re abused and accused of aiding the rebels, refugees said.

The accounts offer a disturbing glimpse into the U.S.-backed Ethiopian Woyanne government’s months-long battle against an ethnic Somali separatist group known as the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The fight has been conducted virtually in secret in the dry, craggy eastern region that’s home to about 4 million mostly ethnic Somali nomads.

The refugees’ accounts also have renewed questions about the Bush administration’s unflinching support for Ethiopia’s Christian-led atheist government, its main African ally in the war on terrorism. Ethiopian Woyanne troops, with U.S. military support, invaded neighboring Somalia last December to oust a hard-line Islamist regime and have been bogged down by a stubborn insurgency there ever since.

Some U.S. and Ethiopian Woyanne officials think that Islamist fighters from Somalia are aiding the ONLF. On a recent visit to Ethiopia, Jendayi Frazer, the ranking State Department official for Africa, said Ethiopia had a right to defend itself and that allegations of civilian killings were unsubstantiated.

An Ethiopian Woyanne government spokesman, Zemedkun Tekle, said the allegations were untrue. “The policy of the country to recruit soldiers is on a voluntary basis,” he said. “In our country, no one is forced without his will to join the military.”

“They came into my school one morning and selected 20 boys and put us into military barracks,” said Abdirahman Ali Hashi, a lanky, bookish 23-year-old who described how government troops plucked him last February from his 10th-grade classroom in the town of Degehabur.

With no training other than a cursory lesson on how to fire their AK-47 rifles, they were sent to the battlefield to guide Ethiopian Woyanne troops who didn’t know the terrain, Hashi said. But the guerrillas outgunned them.

Hashi said that soldiers killed another draftee, a childhood friend named Mohammed Abdullah, after their unit came under heavy fire from rebels near the village of Hurale.

“They said he was keeping secrets and accused him of being a member of the ONLF,” Hashi said. “When he replied, they used the handles of their guns to beat him. He became unconscious. Then they shot him.”

For much of the year, Ethiopia Woyanne barred journalists and international humanitarian agencies from the region. In recent weeks, however, several relief organizations have been allowed to return, and groups investigating the conflict said they’d also heard accounts of civilians being press-ganged into military service.

“Forced recruitment of militia members is one of a number of very credible allegations of abuses that we’ve heard coming from the Somali region” of Ethiopia, said Leslie Lefkow, a senior researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch. “There’s no question that there has been abuses taking place for many years, but there seems to have been a very serious escalation this year with the government’s intensified (military) campaign.”

After visiting the Ogaden, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes warned Wednesday of a potentially “serious humanitarian crisis” and recommended that Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi investigate allegations of human rights abuses.

According to former recruits and human rights groups, village elders are forced to produce a quota of fighters from their clan, or tribe. The fighters generally aren’t paid or given uniforms, and clans are required to furnish their own weapons. In years past, some elders said that military commanders diverted U.N. food rations from hungry villagers to pay off men who helped recruit fighters.

“They tell you to bring your young boys and give them your guns,” said Abdullahi Hassan Mohammed, a 70-year-old clan leader from the Kebredehar district. “They will come to you every morning and demand this, or they will kill you.”

Since then, the military and the rebels have boasted of winning major battles and capturing or killing dozens from the other side, accounts that have been impossible to verify.

Relief agencies warned of worsening nutrition as government soldiers imposed a blockade on food and humanitarian aid, which they only recently began to lift. Last week, U.S. officials pledged to double humanitarian aid to the Ogaden by sending $45 million in emergency food to the region.

Azaria & Hendekea

By Lynn, realityexploits.com

The show began with the teams leaving Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands. We found out that the exertion from the last leg of the race cause Ron to get a hernia and he required medical attention. We’ll see if he’s able to complete the race…or even another leg of the race.

The teams left the last pit stop, and found out that they had to fly nearly 3000 miles to Ouagadougou, Birkinafaso. Wow! I had never even heard of this new country in West Africa. Once there, they had to take a taxi to the train station to get the next clue.

Some of the teams were starting to feel the stress of the race and it was beginning to cause conflict between the team members. As usual, the teams started to pile up at the airport ticket counter, struggling to figure out the best flights and book them first. They found out that there was only one available flight going there that day.

One very good thing was that Ron admitted that he had been far too hard on Christina during the last leg of the race and he realized that he would have to be more encouraging with her if they had any hope of winning the race. (Parenting is a tough job, and it’s great that he was able to see his mistake. Good for you, Ron!)

Nathan & Jennifer were the only team that was able to make it onto an earlier flight that had been completely booked. That gave them a huge advantage. All the other teams were on the second flight that left 40 minutes later.

The second flight with all but one team on it had mechanical problems and delayed them so much that they thought they had missed the connecting flight. They would have been delayed an entire day to wait for the next flight. Nathan & Jennifer weren’t thrilled to see them all make onto the flight at the last minute. So, all the teams arrived together in Birkinafaso.

Once the teams found the next clue they had to travel by train to a place called Bingo, in the middle of the African Savannah. They had to get off the train in the middle of nowhere. Then they had to find the next clue.

All the teams got to the train station and then wait until the next day to get on the same train. The teams found the clue and it was a Road Block, a task that only one person could perform. They had to milk a camel. They would have to get enough milk to reach a line in a bowl, then drink it all before they would get the next clue.

I had to laugh when Jennifer yelled at Nathan to be gentle because he was handling nipples. LOL! Some of the girls were having trouble with being afraid of the giant beasts, but they all kept at it. TK finished first and the next clue told them that each team would have to lead four camels along a marked path in the Savannah to a group of nomads.

The first three teams found out that they were going the wrong way and had to turn back. It cost them some time, but they made it to the next clue ahead of most of the rest anyway.

The next tack was a Detour, a choice between two tasks. They had to choose between “Teach It” or “Learn It”.

In Teach It, they would have to choose a local child who can’t speak any English and teach them 10 words.

In Learn It, the teams would have to learn the local language words for 10 items, taught to them by a local child.

Azaria & Hendekea are originally from Ethiopia, so they seemed more at home with the task of learning the local language. They finished first. The next clue told them to follow a marked path to the next pit stop.

In the mean time, a big storm blew in and spooked the camels, where Julia & Marianna and Jason & Lorena still were trying to finish the camel milking task. The storm made it even harder. Lorena became a basket case. I hope she can pull herself together to finish the leg…

The team arrived at the pit stop in this order:

1. Azaria & Hendekea (They won a five-night trip to Bermuda.)
2. TK & Rachel
3. Nathan & Jennifer
4. Kynt & Vyxsin
5. Ron & Christina
6. Nicholas & Donald
7. Shana & Jennifer
8. Lorena & Jason
9. Marianna & Julia (They were eliminated.)

I’m sad to see another all-girl team eliminated. I keep hoping every season that there will be an all-girl winning team. Oh, well, there’s still a bit of hope this season. And Ron did an amazing job of being more supportive this leg of the race. I’m proud of him. I still like Kynt & Vyxsin as well as Azaria & Hendekea. It’s still anybody’s race. What an amazing season so far!

OPEN LETTER
Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center

To: H.E. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General, the United Nations
To: H.E. Alpha Oumar Konare’, Secretary-General, the African Union
To: H.E. Javier Solana, Secretary-General, the the European Union
To: President George W. Bush

The Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that brings together all the nationalities of the Horn, calls for immediate and effective intervention by the international community to overcome the deteriorating situation in Somalia. Without such intervention, over one million Somalis are at a great risk of suffering a humanitarian disaster that could be worse than Darfur. To have a realistic chance of success, we believe that such intervention must have, at a minimum, the following elements:

1) Deployment, within 2008, of an adequate United Nations (UN) peacemaking and peacekeeping force that does not include frontline states. This crucial element needs an effective and a sustained action by the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, the African Union, and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to ensure the deployment of the force as a matter of urgency. The continued military intervention by Ethiopia, whose government had undertaken to leave Somalia within “weeks”, only fuels the insurgency which has been having a devastating effect on the people of Somalia.

2) Simultaneous withdrawal of Ethiopian forces.

3) Establishment of a security corridor for humanitarian relief convoys from Merca and Mogadishu ports to the 30km stretch between Mogadishu and Afgoye where over 350,000 people who fled their homes in Mogadishu are braving the elements out in the open.

4) A negotiated ceasefire between the warring factions followed by UN assistance in ensuring that a conducive environment prevails for free and fair elections in 2009, when the current mandate of the TFG expires.

Desired Outcome: A Somalia at peace with itself and its neighbors; a Somalia in which its people have the chance to choose their own government; and a Somalia that is able to stand on its own feet and protect its long coastline and borders so as not to become a haven for foreign terrorists.

It is now clearly evident that continued occupation of Mogadishu and southern Somalia by Ethiopian forces would only fuel further violence and exacerbates the humanitarian situation. While Somalis in general are divided over the issue, a significant majority in Mogadishu and the surrounding areas consider the occupation of their capital by Ethiopian forces as the ultimate insult and an affront to their dignity and pride. They will continue to resist it and are willing to take casualties. The relative calm in the Kilometer 4 area of Mogadishu occupied and patrolled by the Ugandan Peacekeeping contingent is a clear indication that Somalis would be more receptive to deployment of forces from non-frontline states. The recent agreement by Nigeria to send a contingent of peacekeeping troops to Somalia is a positive development. Many more countries are likely to follow suit if urgent and intensive diplomatic pressure is applied and immediate financial and logistical assistance provided.

Background:
Following is a brief chronology of events in Somalia:

1) In 1991, Dictator Siad Barre was overthrown, after 22 years of brutal rule. Somalia has not had a functioning government since.

2) Over 15 reconciliation conferences failed to bring about peace.

3) The current Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was selected in 2004 by participants of a reconciliation conference held in Kenya.

4) The TFG has not been able to assert its authority since its inception.

5) In June 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) wrested control of Mogadishu and much of Southern Somalia from a group of warlords that had ruled various enclaves of the capital and the south.

6) In December 2006, the TFG, with the help of the Ethiopian army, drove the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) out of Mogadishu and much of the south.

7) At the time, most Horn of Africa experts predicted that, based on the history of conflict between the two countries over the years, the direct intervention by Ethiopia was likely to make the situation worse.

8) On January 19, 2007, the African Union (AU) agreed to the deployment of an African Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to achieve initial stabilization. Several African countries were to contribute troops to AMISOM. However, only Uganda has so far deployed a contingent of 1500.

9) On February 20, 2007, the UN Security Council passed resolution 1744 in support of AMISOM and ordered contingency planning for deployment of UN peacekeeping forces to replace AMISOM in six months and aim at long term stabilization and post-conflict reconstruction.

10) On November 7, 2007, in a report to the Security Council, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon concluded that deployment of the planned UN peace keeping force would not be feasible due to the security situation. He suggested a “coalition of the willing” in which individual countries contribute troops to a peacekeeping force.

11) On November 20, 2007, the UN Security Council agreed that contingency planning for possible deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission in Somalia should continue.

12) Piracy along the Somali coast continues to pose a serious threat to commercial shipping and is preventing humanitarian relief supplies from reaching the 350,000 people who had fled their homes and are camping out in the open in and around Mogadishu and Afgoye.

13) On November 19, 2007, French naval vessels escorted ships carrying 3000 tons of relief supplies to the port of Merca.

Sincerely,
Kidane Alemayehu
President
Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center
4002 Blacksmith Drive, Garland, TX 75044
www.hafrica.com, Email: [email protected]