(The Sunday Independent) – Thomas Chamiso, 32, an Ethiopian refugee, ran the Thembikosi Trading Store in Zwelethemba township, Worcester, South Africa.
A month ago, he was one of 50 foreigners who were chased out of town by local residents.
Chamiso and his four cousins fled Zwelethemba with only their wallets and cellphones. They lost their refugee permits, business papers, financial records, identity documents and driver’s licences.
They slept on a municipal lawn for three nights before finding temporary lodgings in Bellville. The Cape Town Refugee Center, which is funded by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), gave the men a month’s rent and food money. After that, they were on their own.
“Maybe we will sleep on the street. What will we eat? We have nothing. How can I start a business again? I have nothing left, nothing. Who will give us money?” Chamiso said.
“We have lost our humanity in Worcester.”
As one drives from the bustling town of Worcester, where hundreds of street vendors clog the pavements selling cheap Chinese imports, through the industrial area and into the peaceful township by the only access road — a bridge over a waterless, pebbled river bed — it is hard to imagine that this place, where the shacks have neat gardens and children play in the streets, could have been the scene of violent all-night looting of 23 foreign-owned shops.
Foreigners, about 20 from Somalia, 15 from Ethiopia and a handful from Zimbabwe, the Congo, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, were driven away on the night of March 7.
The violence is said to have erupted after two shooting incidents in which a teenager was killed and a woman was injured. Two Somalis were arrested in connection with the shootings, one on a charge of murder and one on a charge of attempted murder. Both were released on bail and are to appear in the Worcester magistrate’s court on April 25.
In the aftermath of the shootings, locals looted all the foreign-owned shops in the township.
Abdi Nur Abdi, who owns the now-flattened shop where the teenager was killed, said the same group of youngsters had robbed the shop three times.
He said he had reported the cases to the police, but that the police had done nothing to protect his shop.
Joyce Tlou, the co-ordinator of the Human Rights Commission, lamented: “What if next time it is women, or old people, or the disabled? Why are there double standards when foreigners are involved?”
Tlou said it was important to teach police officers across the country about their duty to protect refugees — who had the same rights as citizens — apart from the right to vote or run for office. One of the first organisations to offer aid to the affected refugees was Islamic Relief.
Abdi and a large group of fellow Somalis also asked the University of Cape Town’s Law Clinic to take up their case.
Fatima Khan, the refugee rights project co-ordinator at the law clinic, appointed a team of lawyers and researchers to investigate the case.
She said the refugees’ case would be taken to the Equality Court.
“Our intention is to seek compensation for our clients as well as force police to be informed that it is unconstitutional to refuse protection to a person on the basis of nationality.
“Furthermore, it is true that the police did not arrest anyone even though they knew of and witnessed the theft or looting. Items as big as fridges and counters were stolen, and police have made no attempt to investigate or recover stolen goods.”
Worcester municipal representatives, local community leaders, NGOs, lawyers and religious leaders have met refugees and the community to discuss how the situation can be resolved.
But those ejected from Worcester seem to be stuck in a political quagmire while they wait for answers and aid.
Sifiso Mbuyisa, the director of social dialogue and human rights in Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool’s office, said it was difficult to resolve the situation because the refugees and migrants were not homogeneous, and even the Somali community was divided.
Since all those affected were not sticking together, the government and the NGO sector did not have a single forum to communicate with and to provide assistance to.
Mbuyisa, who is a trained conflict mediator, said that he had encouraged the Zwelethemba Somalis and the Islamic Relief representatives, whom he had met on Friday, to get together all those who were affected to lobby the government.
Similarly, different departments in the national government and the various levels of government were also acting separately and, therefore, their efforts were also not co-ordinated, he said.
South African shopkeeper “Lani” Rasi, whose parents own Vukuzenzele spaza shop, said that it was as though the community “were just hungry for violence”.
He believed it would be safe for the foreigners to return, because the mayor and local pastors had told the community to reconcile with them.
At one of two community meetings held since the attacks, community members said the foreign shop owners could come back on condition that they did not open shops next to South African shops, that they employed South Africans “for the sake of communication” and that they involved themselves in community affairs by attending community meetings, Worcester police spokesperson Mzikayise Moloi said.
Moloi said the Somalis would be given an opportunity at the next community meeting to explain their needs and side of the story.
Members of the local community policing forum and religious leaders had offered to act as mediators.
Moloi said the perception of many locals that Somalis were murderous and intent on “killing our children” was an issue that needed to be dealt with.
“Locals don’t acknowledge how many people their children have killed,” he said.
Problems with troubled and unemployed youths were dealt with at a provincial government meeting in Worcester last week. Unemployment is rife in the township, which is home to about two thirds of the town’s population. Many foreigners said the police had failed to protect them, incited violence and had refused to take their statements or follow up on initial affidavits about what they had lost, even after they had told the police where to find their stolen belongings.
Moloi said he had heard of complaints about the police, but he said that no one had provided any proof of incitement by a police officer.
“If there was such a police officer, people must come forward with information. We must remove any bad apples. If they (the community) are not happy with how the police dealt with the situation, they must not just complain, they must come and speak to the station commissioner. Many are blaming the police, but they don’t understand South African law,” said Moloi.
Worcester mayor Charles Ntsomi said he was aware of complaints about the government and the police’s inadequate response to the situation.
He said he had encouraged the police to recover “at least one fridge to restore some trust in the police”.
Ntsomi, of the ANC, said if councillors who had failed to assist the foreigners were to be disciplined and suspended, by-elections would have to be held that could tip the delicate political power balance in the council, as had happened in Stellenbosch.
Also, the allegedly xenophobic community was a valued part of the electorate, he said.
“We are close to election time now.”
Ntsomi said many organisations had come to assess the situation, but none had offered any help.
“They (the ejected foreigners) must register their cases with social development. They can also come to me and apply for emergency relief, because we have some funds, although these are very limited and intended for shack fires, floods and so on.
“Winter is around the corner.”
Ntsomi said assistance for the foreigners was the responsibility of the national government.
Hector Yebo, of the Breede Valley Youth Desk, said anti-xenophobia workshops might be hosted in Zwelethemba before the end of the month. The municipality would provide a venue and funds. From there, the initiative would be branched out to Roodewal, the traditionally coloured area, he said.
The Cape Town Refugee Centre and the Human Rights Commission were also planning to hold workshops in Worcester.
“We would like to see that all the NGOs working in Worcester are supported. We also need to start advocating human rights and talk to South Africans about foreigners’ rights,” said the refugee centre’s director, Christina Henda.
She said the refugees were “highly traumatised, angry, irritable, distrustful and confused”, and needed urgent debriefing.
UNHCR protection officer Monique Ekoko has conducted interviews, the Cape Town Refugee Centre and the Scalabrini Centre have visited Worcester a few times to assess the situation, Africa Unite has made a proposal to the municipality that anti-xenophobia and empowerment workshops be held for township youth, and the UCT Law Clinic has taken statements from several witnesses to draw up a list of affected foreigners and their losses, among others.
The clinic is also investigating claims that the police have been negligent in protecting the foreigners’ property or have been actively involved in inciting violence.
Duncan Breen, of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa, said the Worcester attacks seemed to fall into the same pattern as other recent xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
“There appears to have been tension building for a while, and it just took a trigger to ignite into mob violence,” Breen said.
“One of the common challenges we see is that many foreign nationals and South Africans have very little interaction, which allows negative stereotypes of foreign nationals to remain unchallenged.”
One Somali man said all he wanted was to see someone taking action, instead of just asking a number of questions.
“Please take pictures of my shop for me,” Chamiso asked last week. “I am too scared to go back there.”
A press photographer duly obliged and visited the shop, but all that remained was a small brick back office and the facade, sporting the name of the shop, starkly silhouetted against the bright blue sky.
The space where the shop had once been was being used as a messy open-air storage area for building materials.
The property owner, known in the neighbourhood only as Bacingele, sells shack-building materials. He had a deal with Chamiso to rent him the space for eight years.
When the looters tore down the structure that had been built by some Ethiopian cousins, Bacingele also suffered damage of about R5 000 to his property.
“I was fighting to keep my stuff. They took my zincs (sheets of corrugated metal). They just took everything… a mob of more than 100.”
He asked how his former tenants were doing in Cape Town and took a R20 note from his pocket.
“Give this to Thomas (Chamiso) and tell him to buy a cooldrink. Tell him they must come back. We miss them,” he said.
An elderly neighbour, who leaned over the garden fence, said that he also wanted the shopkeepers to return.
“They were good people and their prices were good. We bought on credit. Where must I buy my bread and airtime now?”
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Ethiopian rebels denied on Tuesday government allegations that Qatar was supporting them, after Addis Ababa Woyanne cut diplomatic ties with the Gulf State and accused it of backing terrorism and destabilising the region.
Ethiopia Woyanne, a U.S. ally and the biggest military power in the Horn of Africa, said on Monday it had earlier expressed concern in private about Qatar’s “hostile behaviour” several times.
It said Qatar was backing its arch-foe Eritrea, as well as helping Islamist insurgents in Somalia and Ethiopian freedom fighters like the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
But the ONLF said that the charges were designed only to divert attention from what it called an “unfolding African genocide” by government forces in its remote eastern region.
“Qatar has played a constructive role in Africa , the Arab world in general and the Horn of Africa in particular,” the rebel group said in a statement.
“If there has been a destabilising factor in the Horn of Africa, it has been the regime currently in power in Ethiopia.”
The statement from Addis Ababa on Monday said Qatar’s hostile behaviour “included the output of its media outlets”, a presumed reference to the Al Jazeera Arab satellite TV network.
Al Jazeera has in recent days been broadcasting reports on the conflict in the Ogaden region that have been critical of the military’s role against local rebels.
Qatar, a member of the OPEC group of major oil producers and the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, is also an important American ally and hosts a large U.S. military base.
On Monday, a Qatari government official in Doha dismissed the Ethiopian Woyanne accusations as “frivolous and irresponsible” and said the emirate had always done its utmost to fight terrorism.
———————- ER expresses heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to the government of Qatar for standing with the oppressed people of Ethiopia.
More from AFP >>
Ethiopia Woyanne announced Monday it was severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing the Gulf Arab state of supporting armed opposition groups across the Horn of Africa region.
It cited Qatar’s “strong ties” with Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s arch-foe Eritrea, and alleged Qatari support to armed opposition groups within Ethiopia as well as to Islamist insurgents in Somalia, where Addis Ababa Woyanne sent troops in 2006 to prop up a weak government.
“The Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Woyanne has decided to break diplomatic relations with the State of Qatar,” said a government statement received by AFP.
“Ethiopia has displayed considerable patience towards Qatar’s attempts to destabilise our sub-region and, in particular, its hostile behaviour towards Ethiopia,” the statement said.
“Qatar has now, however, become a major source of instability in the Horn of Africa and more widely,” it added.
“All those who are prepared to foment instability in Ethiopia and undermine the country’s security have been given support and encouragement by Qatar.”
It went on: “This has gone beyond Qatar’s strong ties with Eritrea. It has indeed provided direct and indirect assistance to terrorist organisations in Somalia and other areas.”
“Whether in Somalia and in other parts of the Horn of Africa — including within Ethiopia — Qatar has been one of the most important supporters of terrorism and extremism in our sub-region.”
The statement also accused Qatar of using its “media outlets” to undermine Ethiopia.
On April 11, the Ethiopian Woyanne foreign ministry had already sharply criticised the Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera for airing a series of TV reports on Ethiopia’s restive Ogaden region.
The Ethiopian Woyanne authorities have imposed a news blackout on the vast area populated by Somali-ethnic Muslims and slapped touch restrictions on humanitarian work.
The foreign ministry had been particularly upset by a report on the activities of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
“Al-Jazeera is using inaccurate and misleading information, fabricated by opposition elements backed by a state which makes no secret of its efforts to destabilise not only Ethiopia but also the entire sub region,” it had said.
“It is hard to ignore the fact that Al-Jazeera broadcasts out of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Qatar is a close ally of Eritrea. It would be totally unrealistic to imagine that any Al-Jazeera program on Ethiopia could be anything other than seriously biased.”
BOSTON — Dire Tune outkicked Alevtina Biktimirova after a back-and-forth last mile to win by 2 seconds in the closest finish in the history of the women’s race. Robert Cheruiyot, of Kenya, and Tune, of Ethiopia, each earned $150,000, the biggest in marathon history.
Robert Cheruiyot is well-versed in the Boston Marathon course, with four victories in five attempts.
Abderrahime Bouramdane visited for the first time on Monday, learning what thousands before him have learned at Heartbreak Hill, 20 miles in.
“Up,” he said, “is the problem.”
Cheruiyot pulled away from Bouramdane as they entered the Newton Hills, reaching the crest of Heartbreak Hill with a 27-second lead and coasting to the sixth-fastest time in Boston Marathon history.
Cheruiyot won in 2 hours, 7 minutes, 46 seconds to become the fourth man to win the race four times.
“This was the hardest,” he said. “Boston is not a very easy course, it’s very difficult. I enjoy running the hills.”
Although he repeatedly checked his watch as he ran alone, Cheruiyot did not challenge the course record of 2:07:14 he set two years ago.
His problem: No one to race with.
Tune finished in 2:25:25. She ran side-by-side with Biktimirova into Kenmore Square, and appeared to give up an edge when she nearly missed one of the final turns.
Tune quickly composed herself and took the lead before the last turn, but Biktimirova caught her and regained the lead briefly. Tune pulled ahead for good in the last few city blocks and beat the Russian to the line.
“I was fighting until the end,” Biktimirova said. “And in the end I just didn’t have enough speed.”
The previous closest women’s finish came two years ago, when Rita Jeptoo beat Jelena Prokopcuka by 10 seconds. Jeptoo finished third this year, 69 second behind Tune.
Cheruiyot’s third straight victory gave Kenya its 15th men’s title in 17 years; Kenyans also finished sixth through ninth. But Cheruiyot’s countrymen struggled more than usual overall, with just the one man in the top five – the fewest since 1992 – and one woman in the top 10.
Cheruiyot couldn’t say whether the performance was related to the postelection violence back home, in which some of his country’s top runners have been killed and threatened. Cheruiyot missed two months of training because of the unrest before his coach moved their camp to Namibia.
“My training has been going well despite the problems in Kenya,” he said. “When something happens, you have to forget and train.”
Bouramdane finished 1:18 back and fellow Moroccan Khalid El Boumlili came in third, another 1:31 back. Nicholas Arciniaga, of Rochester Hills, Mich., was 10th to give the Americans a top-10 finish for the fourth straight year.
Cheruiyot pulled away from a pack of four at the base of the Newton Hills, running the 19th mile in 4:37. He passed defending women’s champion Lidiya Grigoryeva, with the two No. 1 bibs running side-by-side, just before the 24-mile mark.
Cheruiyot remained on a record pace as he approached Kenmore Square before slowing over the last mile. Although his course record remained intact, he still beat his winning time of 2:14:13 in last year’s monsoon-like conditions.
“Myself, I tried to push,” he said. “Last year, I wanted the race to be faster.”
The race came a day after the U.S. trials featured the top American women running for a berth in the Olympics. Deena Kastor, Magdalena Lewy Boulet and Blake Russell finished in the top three to make the U.S. team that will go to Beijing.
With the three new Olympians serving as grand marshals, more than 25,000 runners left Hopkinton under a cloudy but calm sky and temperatures in the 50s – a major improvement over last year’s rain and wind that threatened to scuttle the race.
Among those in the event’s second-largest field: cyclist Lance Armstrong and astronaut Sunita Williams, who ran a simulated Boston Marathon last year while in orbit on the International Space Station.
Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times on the strength of his work in the mountains. When he started preparing for Boston, his third marathon, some race veterans told him the hills weren’t as difficult as their reputation made them out to be.
“They were wrong,” said Armstrong, who finished 496th in 2:50:58. “They are harder, and they do come at a difficult time in the race.”
Top finishers
The top five men and women at Monday’s Boston Marathon:
WASHINGTON – On April 22, 2008, former World Bank employee, Ramendra Basu, a national of
India and a permanent legal resident alien of the United States, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for conspiring to steer World Bank contracts to consultants in exchange for kickbacks and assisting a
contractor in bribing a foreign official in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, announced
Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division.
In addition to the 15 month prison sentence, Judge Richard Roberts of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sentenced the defendant to two years supervised release and 50 hours of community service. Basu pleaded guilty on Dec. 17, 2002.
Basu previously cooperated with U.S. and Swedish authorities and then moved unsuccessfully to withdraw his guilty plea. Basu admitted that between 1997 and 2000, while a World Bank Trust Funds Manager, he conspired with a Swedish consultant and others to steer World Bank contracts for business in Ethiopia and Kenya to certain Swedish companies in exchange for kickbacks amounting to $127,000.
Basu also assisted the Swedish consultants in bribing an official of the government of Kenya by, among other things, arranging for $50,000 to be wire transferred to an account outside the United States for the benefit of the Kenyan official.
In a related case, co-conspirator and former World Bank Task Manager Gautam Sengupta, a national of India and a permanent legal resident alien of the United States, pleaded guilty in February 2002 to the same charges and was sentenced in February 2006. In addition, the Swedish consultants were prosecuted and convicted by the government of Sweden.
The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney David Bybee and former Trial Attorney Thomas McCann Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, with substantial investigatory assistance provided by the World Bank.
(SA) Mogadishu – Nine more bodies have been found in Somalia’s war-riven capital after a weekend of clashes. Eight decomposing corpses lay near Al-Hidaya Mosque in northern Mogadishu and another was spotted near a stadium in the south of the capital, bringing the toll from the two days of fighting to 56.
Local resident Asad Mohamoud Moalim said that “no one dares go closer, let alone (conduct) burials”.
“We prayed to Allah to get us out of this hell. We were trapped in the battle area, but this morning we got a chance to flee,” said Fortun Mohamoud Iro, a mother of three, adding that she saw several bodies near the mosque.
No clashes were reported on Monday in the capital. Mogadishu’s heaviest fighting in two months erupted on Saturday between Ethiopian Woyanne forces and Somali insurgents.
Death-toll in Somalia battles rises to 85
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – The death-toll from battles between Somali insurgents and allied Ethiopian-Somali Woyanne troops rose to 85 on Monday, leaving corpses on the streets and deepening the Horn of Africa nation’s humanitarian crisis.
After mortars and machine-gun fire rocked Mogadishu over the weekend in the worst fighting for months, the insurgents seized the southern coastal town of Guda, killing four Somali [puppet] soldiers and wounding at least seven more, locals said.
“The town is under their control at the moment,” politician Omar Abdullahi Farole told Reuters from the area.
That attack at dawn on Monday added to at least 81 people dead in Mogadishu over the weekend.
The rebels have in the last few months launched an increasing number of hit-and-run raids on small towns — seizing control from local government-allied militias, only to melt away before reinforcements arrive.
Insurgents took another town, Dinsor, in south-central Somalia, on Monday. And they imposed sharia law on another locality, Wajid, taken in the same area at the weekend.
“They warned the public against erecting illegal checkpoints, smoking cigarettes, chewing (the narcotic leaf) khat and watching movies,” Wajid resident Aden Abdirahman said.
TRAPPED IN MOSQUE
Once again in the city’s violent history, bodies lay on the streets uncollected.
“This morning as I was trying to escape the fighting which I feared might restart, I saw four dead men I knew lying in the neighbourhood,” resident Hussein Abdulle said by telephone.
Another resident, Abdulahi Mohamud, said at least 20 people — mostly women and children — were trapped in a mosque where Ethiopian tank crews had dug deep defensive trenches.
“Two Somalis who have been beheaded are also lying there,” Mohamud said from the northern district of Huruwa.
Meanwhile, police on Monday arrested an editor with the Shabelle radio station accusing him of airing false information regarding the fighting.
“He reported that insurgents attacked and seized Gulwade compound where police are staying. It was a lie since no fighting took place there. We will put him on trial for airing false reports to the public,” police commander Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdullahi told Reuters.
Colleagues gave the editor’s name as Abdi Mohamed Ismail and said he was arrested on his way to the office early on Monday.
The Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation, a local group which tracks the violence, says at least 81 people were killed and 119 wounded in the clashes on Saturday and Sunday.
Its researchers estimate that some 6,500 residents were killed last year by fighting in the capital alone, while 1.5 million were uprooted from their homes.
Aid workers say 250,000 civilians sheltering in squalid conditions just outside Mogadishu represent the biggest group of internally displaced people in the world.
About ten supporters of the disgraced former opposition leader Hailu Shawel held a protest rally outside a hall where Dr Berhanu Nega was meeting with Ethiopians in Toronto, Canada. A bunch of dumb asses. Why don’t they protest against Woyanne thugs?
