They guy is a Woyanne cadre. He was paid to do the anti-Christian instigation. Before Woyanne came to power there had never been any incident of religious clash in that part of the country.
(Compass Direct News) – Ethiopian judicial authorities Woyanne released a prominent local official accused of instigating deadly church assaults that left one Christian dead and 17 wounded last month in the Oromia region of Ethiopia.
Local Christians confirmed over the weekend that Hussein Beriso, house speaker of the Nensebo District Council, has been released on bail by a court in southern Ethiopia’s Oromo region. But 20 other Muslim suspects arrested over the machete attacks against two churches in Nensebo Chebi village on March 2 remain jailed, a local source said.
Evangelical leaders based in Werka district, where Nensebo is located, have reported that just hours after the attack Beriso forced local Christians at gunpoint to bury the one murdered victim, Tula Mosisa. But after church leaders protested, security officers from West Arusi Zone later exhumed Mosisa’s corpse and sent it to Awasa for an official postmortem examination.
Local Christians insist that Beriso was personally involved in “buying and distributing machetes” for Muslims involved in the simultaneous attacks, which occurred during Sunday morning worship services in the two village churches.
They also said the house speaker had made public comments against Christians in February, calling for local Muslims to resist any attempts to convince them to leave Islam. Both of Nensebo’s churches have members of Muslim upbringing who have converted to Christianity.
Church leaders also named two other local officials accused of perpetrating the violence: Zerihun Tilahun, head of Nensebo district’s militia, and his deputy, Sheik Kedir.
Ten days ago, all 21 suspects arrested over the attacks were taken to court in Shashemene town, 85 miles from Nensebo village. But since three judges were not present, as legally required for a full bench in the courtroom, the March 21 hearing was postponed until April 25.
The zonal government prosecutor stated after the hearing that once police investigations are completed, he expects to be able to file a “strong case” against the suspects.
Four of the culprits under arrest have reportedly confessed during police interrogations that they helped to kill Mosisa, 45, and wound 17 other Christian worshippers with machetes in the planned raids against the Kale Hiwot and Birhane Wongel Baptist churches in Nensebo Chebi.
Church leaders have named four individuals among the arrested suspects whom they accuse of leading the violent attacks: Gemeda Beriso, Kedir Beriso, Keru Mamona and Hajji Kuma.
Local Christians Support Victims
According to a report on Thursday (March 27) from Holland-based Open Doors International (ODI), the Nensebo attack has drawn Christians in the predominantly Muslim-populated area closer together.
“The local church and Christians from a neighboring city are taking care of the needs of the Nensebo Chebi victims,” ODI reported, noting that all of the wounded victims have been discharged from the hospital.
Although federal police are controlling the area and local administration officials have appealed to the wounded Christians and their families to return to Nensebo, most have opted to remain in Awasa for medical treatment.
The 5-year-old boy whose arm was cut to the bone had to be brought back to the Awasa hospital for a few days after his first release, when his wounds encased by a cast continued to bleed.
Two of the victims, married men with four children each, lost one of their hands, and a young policeman in the congregation trying to defend the worshippers was stabbed in his thigh and calf after being felled by a gunshot to his right arm.
Mosisa, whose head was nearly severed in one stroke by a razor-sharp machete, died instantly. He had left his wife and eight children in a village far to the north of Addis Ababa to find work as a farmer in Nensebo.
After the official autopsy was completed, his body was sent to his home village for burial.
In a letter obtained by Compass yesterday, the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of West Arusi Zone based in the Werka district appealed directly to the Conflict Prevention Committee in the federal government’s House of Representatives to ensure that justice was carried out in the Nensebo Cheli violence.
Dated March 15 and signed by 16 pastors and church elders, the five-page appeal noted that previous attacks had occurred in the region in 2000, 2005 and 2006, when Christian places of worship had been stoned and set afire by Muslims.
The letter appealed to the Ethiopian government to implement Article 27 of the constitution, which guarantees freedom of worship. In particular, it protested that local Muslims holding official government positions were openly opposing efforts of Christian churches to establish places of worship and follow their faith peacefully.
Not only should the government punish those who resort to violence, the appeal said, but a careful investigation should also be conducted to identify the local officials involved in inciting religious hatred.
Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader and President Mugabe’s government deny behind-the-scenes talks about a power-sharing deal in the wake of Saturday’s elections.
Behind-the-scenes negotiations between Zimbabwe’s ruling party and the main opposition party of Morgan Tsvangirai are under way in the wake of Saturday’s elections, according to several sources familiar with the discussions.
Under a proposed deal, President Robert Mugabe would step down, allowing his ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to share power in a government of national unity, a senior MDC official confirmed Tuesday evening.
The official said that military chiefs, who are allied to Mr. Mugabe and recently said they would not salute Mr. Tsvangirai if he was elected president, had approached the opposition with the proposal of a national unity government.
“Such overtures have been made, but they are still in their infancy. Our leader [Tsvangirai] is skeptical about Mugabe’s overtures because the old man is a skimmer and is cunning,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
A US State Department official said the talks followed projections showing Tsvangirai would beat Mugabe in the election but fall short of the 51 percent of votes needed to avoid a runoff, according to Reuters.
Both Mugabe’s government and Tsvangirai, however, denied Tuesday night that such talks are taking place.
If, in fact, Mugabe is negotiating his way out of office, it will be a sign of how far both the 84-year-old liberation leader and his once-powerful party have fallen.
A slow, decade-long collapse of the economy – under the weight of Western sanctions and self-destructive economic policies at home – has turned Mugabe into a deeply unpopular leader. Even Mugabe’s staunchest supporters, the military and security agencies, seem to have lost the will to rig elections in his favor or to enforce his will on the streets, observers say.
“My sense is that they were unable to rig these elections, in part because of a lack of capacity and motivation by ZANU-PF officials and the security agencies,” says Chris Maroleng, a Zimbabwe expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane as Pretoria, South Africa, is now called.
Key reforms prevented vote rigging
Electoral reforms, negotiated under the leadership of the South African delegation to the Southern African Development Community, forced electoral officials to count votes at polling stations and to announce the results at the polling stations, Mr. Maroleng adds.
This prevented ZANU-PF officials from stuffing ballots later on at the central counting offices in Harare. Once the votes were counted, Mugabe’s downfall was literally written on the wall.
In a press conference on Tuesday night, Tsvangirai declared victory of more than 50 percent of the vote and said that the tallies announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission jibed with MDC’s own figures from the polling stations. Tsvangirai joined other MDC spokesmen in denying any negotiations were taking place with ZANU-PF, adding that any such negotiations could only take place once ZEC had announced the final results.
‘A new Zimbabwe’?
“The vote on Saturday was a vote for change, for jobs, and to build a new Zimbabwe,” said Tsvangirai, the former union leader, at a press conference in Harare. “There is no way the MDC can enter discussions with ZANU-PF until ZEC announces the results.”
Even so, diplomats in Harare confirmed that negotiations were in fact going on. An African diplomat, who refused to be named, said the deal had been brokered by South Africa, but added that it was unlikely that the MDC would agree, considering Mugabe’s political history of reneging on agreements.
“Remember in 1987, Mugabe lured [the rival militia movement] ZAPU to form a government of national unity but went on to ‘swallow’ the party,” says the diplomat. “Tsvangirai is old enough to remember that.”
Experts say it would be naive to assume that Mugabe or the ZANU-PF will simply hand over the keys to the government after losing an election. These negotiations, if they are occurring, will be part of a longer process of ensuring that ZANU-PF continues to play a role in Zimbabwe’s government, even if the MDC takes power.
“I think that Robert Mugabe has lost the election, but he has not lost completely the House of Assembly,” says Gordon Moyo, director of Bulawayo Agenda, a coalition of civil society groups in Bulawayo. “So in these negotiations, he may be telling MDC: ‘You will not be able to pass any major constitutional changes through Parliament. We are going to block you.’ It would be better to have a peaceful transition.”
• A journalist who could not be named for security reasons contributed from Harare.
In Woyanne’s case, the solution is to invest in flowers for export to Holland. Guess who is in charge of agricultural policy in Ethiopia.
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By Peter Heinlein, VOA
A conference of African finance and development ministers thieves in Addis Ababa is examining ways of alleviating the impact of a worldwide rise in food and commodity prices. VOA’s Peter Heinlein reports the head of the U.N. World Food Program is attending, and is looking at an innovative project aimed at easing the burden on Ethiopia’s urban poor.
Terunesh Mengesha, 41, is chattering with other women about skyrocketing food prices as they stand in line to receive a 50-kilogram sack of wheat for the Ethiopian equivalent of about $9. At regular stores in Addis Ababa that same bag, enough to keep her husband and four children fed for two months, would cost $20.
After having her coupon stamped, she receives a big white bag imprinted with a red, white and blue American flag. The wheat subsidy program is run by the Ethiopian government, and funded by the U.N. World Food Program and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Speaking through a translator, Terunesh says the $9 she pays is almost her entire two-month income doing laundry. Her husband makes slightly more as a factory guard. She says all her neighbors are enrolled in the wheat subsidy purchase program, because it is the only way to balance their budgets.
“No one has a choice,” she said. “They all come here because the price is much easier for them to buy.”
Berhane Hailu, director of the Ethiopian government agency that operates the subsidy program, says it shields millions of urban poor people from the impact of commodity price hikes.
“Up to now, 825,000 heads of families are registered and hold the coupon and are users of this program,” he noted. “If we calculate five members in a family, 4.1 million people are benefiting from this program.”
Finance and development ministers from most African countries are at the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa conference this week to discuss the impact the global rise in oil and food prices is having on struggling African economies.
World Food Program Director Josette Shearan is at the conference, and while in Addis Ababa she went to see how the wheat distribution center operates.
“We are very concerned about the high prices globally,” she said. “It is having different effects in different countries, but we do think that this pressure will continue for some time, and it is important that we find ways to alleviate the pressure on the most vulnerable. Those who make less than $2 a day or $1 a day have less resiliency.”
Shearan says in today’s globalized economy, there is a growing need to protect impoverished countries like Ethiopia from price spikes caused by crop failures in other parts of the world.
“We are looking for innovative solutions to help countries and to partner with countries in alleviating the pressure on the most vulnerable people,” she added. “And so these price increases got aggressive globally about a year ago, and no country has been immune from those pressures.”
U.N. Undersecretary-General and head of the Economic Commission for Africa Abdoulie Janneh told the ministers’ conference that high oil and food prices challenge the continent to ensure essential goods are affordable, while not stifling the role higher prices play in increasing production.
The conference issued a statement Monday noting that rising prices of staple goods had been blamed for social disturbances in at least four African countries this year – Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal and Mauritania.
Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides a maximum of up to 55,000 immigrant visas each fiscal year to permit immigration opportunities for persons from countries other than the principal sources of current immigration to the United States. The Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) passed by Congress in November 1997 stipulates that beginning with DV-99, and for as long as necessary, up to 5,000 of the 55,000 annually-allocated diversity visas will be made available for use under the NACARA program. This reduction has resulted in the DV-2008 annual limit being reduced to 50,000. DV visas are divided among six geographic regions. No one country can receive more than seven percent of the available diversity visas in any one year.
For April, immigrant numbers in the DV category are available to qualified DV-2008 applicants chargeable to all regions/eligible countries as follows. When an allocation cut-off number is shown, visas are available only for applicants with DV regional lottery rank numbers BELOW the specified allocation cut-off number:
All DV Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed Separately
AFRICA 21,500 Except: Egypt:-17,900
Ethiopia:-14,150
Nigeria:- 9,900
ASIA:- 9,100
EUROPE:- 20,625
NORTH AMERICA (BAHAMAS) 11
OCEANIA:- 1,200
SOUTH AMERICA, and the CARIBBEAN 1,425
Entitlement to immigrant status in the DV category lasts only through the end of the fiscal (visa) year for which the applicant is selected in the lottery. The year of entitlement for all applicants registered for the DV-2008 program ends as of September 30, 2008. DV visas may not be issued to DV-2008 applicants after that date. Similarly, spouses and children accompanying or following to join DV-2008 principals are only entitled to derivative DV status until September 30, 2008. DV visa availability through the very end of FY-2008
cannot be taken for granted. Numbers could be exhausted prior to September 30.
C. ADVANCE NOTIFICATION OF THE DIVERSITY (DV) IMMIGRANT CATEGORY RANK CUT-OFFS WHICH WILL APPLY IN MAY
For May, immigrant numbers in the DV category are available to qualified DV-2008 applicants chargeable to all regions/eligible countries as follows. When an allocation cut-off number is shown, visas are available only for applicants with DV regional lottery rank numbers BELOW the specified allocation cut-off number:
All DV Chargeability Areas Except Those Listed Separately
AFRICA 26,700 Except:
Egypt:-20,500
Ethiopia:-16,000
Nigeria:-11,600
ASIA:- 10,500
EUROPE:- 23,500
NORTH AMERICA (BAHAMAS):- 12
OCEANIA:- 1,400
SOUTH AMERICA, and the CARIBBEAN:- 1,550
D. INDIA EMPLOYMENT SECOND PREFERENCE VISA AVAILABILITY
Section 202(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides that if total demand will be insufficient to use all available numbers in a particular Employment preference category in a calendar quarter, then the unused numbers may be made available without regard to the annual “per-country” limit. It has been determined that based on the current level of demand being received, primarily by Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices, there would be otherwise unused numbers in the Employment Second preference category. As a result, numbers have once again become available to the India Employment Second preference category. The rate of number use in the Employment Second preference category will continue to be monitored, and it may be necessary to make adjustments should the level of demand increase substantially. For more information on DV-2008 Results click here
