(BBC) Addis Ababa — Ethiopia’s most popular pop singer, Teddy Afro, has pleaded not guilty to causing the death of a young man in a hit and run incident 18 months ago.
Thousands of young people mounted an impromptu protest after the High Court hearing, running through the streets, shouting, “Teddy is innocent”.
Unauthorised demonstrations are almost unheard of in Ethiopia and there was a heavy paramilitary police presence.
At a previous hearing, the noise of his fans almost drowned out proceedings.
This time the case was moved to a building at the back of the court area, well away from the crowd.
The singer appeared under close police guard, dressed in a pink t-shirt and looking subdued.
He spoke only to plead not guilty to negligent driving, driving without a licence, and failing to stop at the scene of an accident.
The incident in question took place in November 2006 and since then the singer, whose real name is Tewodros Kassahun, has been free on bail.
It is not clear why he was rearrested last week and has now been charged.
He was remanded in custody until next Tuesday.
As the news spread in the street that Teddy was going back to jail, the crowd erupted and a large group of youths started jogging past waving and shouting that the singer was not guilty.
The police chased them with batons until they finally dispersed into the surrounding streets.
This kind of demonstration has not been seen in Addis Ababa since the period after the elections in 2005 when Teddy Afro’s songs were playing everywhere and his music was the anthem of the anti-government protesters.
(VOA) – Residents in the Somali capital Mogadishu are expressing outrage and anger against Ethiopian Woyanne troops in the capital, whom they say massacred at least 10 people, including a senior religious leader, inside a mosque on Sunday. Human rights groups say they fear the incident could dramatically strengthen the 15-month-old anti-Ethiopian Woyanne insurgency and ignite more violence in a country that the United Nations calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu has the story from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi.
According to eyewitness reports, the victims inside al-Hidaya Mosque in Mogadishu’s Huriwa district were killed by Ethiopian Woyanne troops on the second day of intense fighting, which left more than 80 people dead in the war-ravaged capital.
The witnesses allege that Ethiopian Woyanne troops stormed the mosque on Sunday, shooting and killing Sheik Said Yahya, the mosque’s most senior religious leader. Eyewitnesses say several others were also shot and killed, and a handful had their throats slit, after the Ethiopians Woyannes accused them of supporting and training Islamist insurgents.
Mogadishu resident Mohamed Ali, 35, says the mosque killings have convinced him and many others that they must join the insurgency to end Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s occupation of Somalia. Ali says people now feel they must help in the fight against Ethiopian Woyanne troops no matter the cost. He says there is also rising anger at Somalia’s Ethiopia Woyanne-backed secular transitional government for doing nothing to protect the country and its people.
The director of the London office of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, Tom Porteous, says even if Ethiopian Woyanne troops had nothing to do with the killings in the mosque, they have committed human rights violations in the past and that has destroyed Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s credibility with Somalia’s people.
“Certainly, we have documented in the past extrajudicial execution by both the TFG [transitional federal government] and Ethiopian Woyanne forces,” he said. “We have documented the aerial bombardment of parts of Mogadishu by Ethiopian Woyanne forces. All this, of course, simply increases the anger of residents of Mogadishu, and the impact of these abuses is that it has actually made the problem of the insurgency much worse.”
Ethiopia Woyanne denies its troops have committed atrocities. The Somali government says military operations are conducted in self-defense, noting that Islamist-led insurgents often cause numerous civilian casualties by launching attacks at Ethiopian Woyanne and government troops in heavily-populated areas.
Sources in Mogadishu say the Hidaya mosque, one of the largest in Mogadishu, may have been targeted by the Ethiopians Woyannes because it had long served as a base for different Islamic groups, including al-Ittihad al-Islami, a militant Somali group the United States has labeled as a terror organization.
But the sources say in recent years, the Hidaya Mosque has been a place of worship for adherents of a mystical branch of Sunni Islam called Sufism. Most Somalis belong to the Sufi order, which has no ties to the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi movement embraced by members of al-Ittihad and its successor, the Shabab.
(AFP) – A transatlantic flight from Germany to the United States was diverted to Ireland after a two-year-old girl died on board, police said late on Tuesday.
The Lufthansa flight was en route from Frankfurt to JFK airport in New York when it declared a medical emergency and landed at Shannon Airport in the southwest of the country.
The passengers were taken off the plane to be interviewed by Gardai (Irish police) in an effort to establish how the child died.
A police spokesman said the flight had originated in Addis Ababa and had arrived in Ireland via Germany but he refused to comment on reports that the child was Ethiopian.
“We always have to make the necessary inquiries to ensure there was nothing suspicious about the death. We are still trying to establish what the circumstances are,” the spokesman said.
The UN refugee agency and its partners expect to resume the repatriation of Sudanese refugees from Ethiopia on 15 December with a first group of 613 leaving Bonga camp in western Ethiopia for their homeland.
Organized repatriation of Sudanese refugees from Ethiopia started in March 2006 and more than 21,000 have been assisted to go home before the operation was temporarily halted in May this year due to the rainy season and swampy road conditions.
With the mud fully dried up and the roads becoming fairly passable at least on the route to the Kurmuk corridor, UNHCR, together with the government of Ethiopia, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the World Food Programme (WFP), has finalized preparations to send home a total of 1,800 refugees from Bonga camp to the Blue Nile State of south Sudan before the end of 2007.
Sherkole camp, which uses the same Kurmuk corridor, will soon restart the return operation. Repatriation from Fugnido and Dimma camps through the Pagak exit point is expected to resume at the beginning of 2008.
“With the resumption of the return movement at this point in time, we, together with our partners, expect to assist the return of approximately 30,000 Sudanese refugees between now and the whole of 2008,” said Mr. Ilunga Ngandu, UNHCR’s Regional Liaison Representative for Africa.
Mr. Ngandu added that this would enable UNHCR to close at least two of the four camps sheltering Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia before end of 2008.
Tomorrow’s convoy of 11 buses and four trucks is scheduled to cross into Sudan’s Blue Nile state, after an 820-kilometre-long journey. The returning refugees will have to spend three nights on UNHCR-built transit points on the road before reaching home.
Before leaving Bonga, a camp of more than 7,000 Sudanese refugees, the returnees will receive a reintegration package of blankets, jerry cans, sleeping mats, a water filter and a sanitary kit for girls and women.
They will receive more supplies at Kurmuk, including plastic sheeting, mosquito nets, plastic buckets, kitchen utensils and soap. Upon arrival in Sudan, a reintegration package comprising three months of food, seeds and agricultural tools will be provided by the World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization.
Close to 400 of tomorrow’s returnees are aged under 18 years, which indicates that most were probably born and raised in Ethiopia. The main influx of southern Sudanese to Ethiopia came in 1987.
Since January 2005, after the ex-rebel force SPLM and the government of Sudan signed an accord ending a two-decade war, the UNHCR has supported the return of some 70,000 to South Sudan from neighboring countries, including some 21,000 from Ethiopia. More than 90,000 are believed to have returned on their own.
At the moment Ethiopia hosts 36,850 Sudanese refugees in four camps. Some 20,000 Eritrean and more than 23,000 Somali refugees also reside in the country.
(Yemeni Times) — Yemeni-Ethiopian relations date back to ancient times. References such as wall inscriptions confirm that the kingdom of Saba extended throughout Yemen to Ethiopia, known at that time as the kingdom of Axum, which later ruled Ethiopia (also called Abyssinia) and the southern Arabian Peninsula.
The Axumite kingdom’s rule continued until Himyarite King Saif Bin Dhi Yazan drove the Axumites out of southern Arabia. However, despite this upheaval, some relations remained between the two kingdoms.
Because of the two civilizations’ integration over the years, intermarriage resulted in Yemeni and Ethiopian mixed blood.
Yemen and Ethiopia enjoyed extensive trade relations during medieval times. Yemeni merchants exported incense, luban (natural frankincense), gemstones and animal skins to Ethiopia, while Ethiopians exported clothing, farm equipment, weapons, spices and cattle to Yemen. Trade relations between Yemen and the African Horn at that time were stronger than those between Yemen and other Gulf countries.
In times of crisis, Yemen provided a safe haven for Ethiopian refugees and Ethiopia in turn accepted Yemeni immigrants during times of political upheaval.
Dr. Hussein Fouly, an Ethiopian researcher specializing in Yemeni-Ethiopian relations, noted at a lecture this past February in Sana’a that there is a rich but under-explored history between the two countries.
Because he had a difficult time obtaining information about Yemeni-Ethiopian relations, Fouly did his own research based on a few fragments of information and much personal effort.
He explained that Yemenis and Ethiopians intermixed for two main reasons: first, because of Yemenis’ ability to integrate and second, because of the Ethiopian civilization’s welcoming attitude toward foreigners in their land throughout the 20th century.
Yemenis became the largest Arab community in Ethiopia, boasting the most speakers of Ethiopian languages such as Amharic. Yemenis rooted themselves in the country during the 1920s by becoming shopkeepers, sweet sellers, launderers and butchers. Additionally, the Yemeni community founded Arab schools that graduated scholars like Sheikh Abdullah Taher, who later was appointed governor of Jijiga and eventually led a military coup in eastern Ethiopia in the 1930s.
Fouly also mentioned those Yemenis who had a role in spreading Islam in Ethiopia, like Abdulrahman Ba-Wazir, who financed building Addis Ababa’s oldest mosque, Al-Noor Mosque.
During Italy’s 1936 invasion of Ethiopia, the Italians brought in numerous Yemenis to work as builders. Yemenis became rich through trade during this time. One of them, Sheikh Hussein Al-Amoudi, was the first to bring the qat trade to Ethiopia.
Yemeni people’s departure from Ethiopia is attributable to two specific incidents, the first of which occurred in 1969 when a bomb was discovered on an Ethiopian plane, which had been placed there by Ethiopian liberation forces in Syria. Arab communities were blamed for the bomb, which led to a wave of anti-Arab sentiment.
The second incident was the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, which implemented a program of nationalization that seized private assets and companies, turning them into state-owned enterprises. Because of this, Yemenis were forced to exit the country, leaving their possessions to the Ethiopian regime.
Despite this, Yemeni immigrants who have returned from Ethiopia still have positive memories of the nation where they were treated as citizens.
Sana’a University history professor Abdullah Fadhl says the Yemeni community was forced out of Ethiopia in the 1970s for political reasons because they were spreading Islam among the Ethiopians against the wishes of the new regime.
However, these Yemeni-Ethiopian mixed peoples who returned to Yemen face discrimination, either because of their Arabic or their skin color, and locals of both countries treat them as outsiders. For example, Yemenis call them Ahbush, the plural of the Arabic word Habashi or Ethiopian, while they are called Arabco, or Arabs, in Ethiopia.
These mixed Yemeni-Ethiopians sometimes are denied identity cards because of their darker skin and imperfect Arabic, a matter that causes them many problems.
Because Yemen’s history is intertwined with that of Ethiopia’s, these so-called Yemeni-Ethiopian ‘newcomers’ actually aren’t new at all; rather, they share our lineage and they deserve to be recognized as such.
