EDITORS’S NOTE: Meles Zenawi admitted yesterday in the parliament that he signed a border agreement with Sudan, but as usual he lied that no body was displaced as a result. Members of the fake parliament did not dare to point out to him that agreements with foreign countries must be approved by them. We wonder what explanation Woyanne cadres and sympathizers will come up with now after telling us that there is no border deal with Sudan.
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APA-Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) The demarcation of the Ethiopia-Sudan border will not displace anybody on either side, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zewani told parliament on Wednesday.
He said Sudan and Ethiopia have agreed that the border demarcation, to start in the near future, will not displace any individuals from the land they occupy.
“We, Ethiopia and Sudan, have signed an agreement not to displace any single individual from both sides to whom the demarcation benefits,” he said.
The border between Ethiopia and Sudan dates back to 1907 when Sudan was under British colonial rule.
The two countries have so far been unable to physically identify their borders.
Recent reports said that Ethiopian farmers were displaced by Sudanese troops at two border areas but Meles told the parliament that this was land that was occupied by Ethiopia in 1996, which was given to two investors by the Ethiopian government, and Sudan complained about it.
“We have given back this land, which was occupied in 1996. This land before 1996 belonged to Sudanese farmers. There is no single individual displaced at the border as it is being reported by some media,” Meles said.
By Tsegaye Tadesse (Reuters)
ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi said on Wednesday he would keep troops inside neighbouring Somalia until “jihadists” were defeated.
In a move supported by the United States but providing a target for militants, Meles sent thousands of troops into Somalia in late 2006 to help the nation’s struggling government topple an Islamist movement that had captured most of the south.
Since then, allied Ethiopian Woyanne-Somali troops have faced near-daily attacks in an insurgency drawing comparisons with Iraq and undermining stability across east Africa.
“When we exit from Somalia, it will be at the time when we are convinced that there is no imminent danger to our country,” Meles told [the fake] parliament. Ethiopians are anxious about the financial and human cost of their intervention.
Both Ethiopia, which is the Horn of Africa’s main military power [with 6 million starving children] and sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation, and Washington say Somali insurgents have links to al Qaeda.
“Ethiopian Woyanne forces did not enter Somalia to control the country, but to make sure that extremist forces will not be in power in that country,” Meles added lied.
“The Islamic Courts Union in Somalia declared jihad against Ethiopia twice along with all sorts of anti-peace forces… It was our responsibility to resolve the huge wave of jihadists.”
Meles, and U.S. officials, say foreign militants have poured into Somalia to join the conflict. The Ethiopian leader has in the past said Ethiopia has about 4,000 troops in Somalia, but locals say the real number is far higher.
REBELS “NEUTRALISED”
During a question-and-answer session in the Ethiopian legislature, Meles made no reference to an explosion that killed five people late on Tuesday in Addis Ababa.
Authorities said the blast on a minibus, the latest in a string of such explosions in the Ethiopia capital, was caused by “terrorists” but did not elaborate.
In the past, it has blamed neighbour and foe Eritrea for fomenting trouble inside Ethiopia, an accusation Asmara derides as a smokescreen to distract attention from internal problems.
Meles said Ethiopian Woyanne troop presence in Somalia was enabling the government to negotiate with clan leaders and hopefully bring reconciliation to a nation mired in conflict since the 1992 toppling of a military dictator.
Turning to domestic affairs, he said Ethiopian rebel group the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which operates in a region on the border with Somalia, had been largely “neutralised” by a military offensive going on for a year.
“There is no organised ONLF operation in the Somali region. It has been neutralised,” he said. “There may be a few individuals and we are picking them one-by-one.”
The ONLF denies that, saying despite a campaign of terror in the region, the army has not defeated it.
(Editing by Andrew Cawthorne) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on th e top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/) ([email protected]; +254 20 2224 717)
EDITOR’S NOTE: African countries need to boycott the 2010 Soccer World Cup to be held in South Africa. Those idiot ingrates have already forgotten that without the support of Ethiopians and other Africans, they would still be slaves to the white apartheid regime.
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South Africans Take Out Rage on Immigrants
Barry Bearak and Celia Dugger, New York Times
Marauders strike as the powerless make scapegoats of the defenceless
The man certainly looked dead, lying motionless in the dust of the squatter camp.
His body seemed almost like a bottle that had been turned on its side, spilling blood. His pants were red with the moisture.
Nearby was evidence of what he had endured. A large rock had been used to gouge his torso. Embers remained from a fire that had been part of some torture. Pieces of a burnt jacket still clung to the victim’s left forearm.
Then, as people stepped closer, there was the faintest of breath pushing against his chest.
“This guy may be alive,” someone surmised.
As if to confirm this, the man moved the fingers of his right hand.
The jaded crowd neither rejoiced nor lamented. After all, the horrific attacks against immigrants around Johannesburg had already been going on for a week, and in their eyes the victim was just some Malawian or Zimbabwean, another casualty of the continuing purge.
This nation is undergoing a spasm of xenophobia, with poor South Africans taking out their rage on the poor foreigners living in their midst. At least 22 people had been killed by Monday in the unrelenting mayhem, police said.
But the death toll only hints at the consequences. Thousands of immigrants have been scattered from their tumbledown homes.
They crowd the police stations and community centres of Johannesburg, some with the few possessions they could carry before mobs ransacked their hovels, most with nothing but the clothes they wore as they escaped.
“They came at night, trying to kill us, with people pointing out, this one is a foreigner and this one is not,” said Charles Mannyike, 28, an immigrant from Mozambique. “It was a cruel and ugly hatred.”
Xenophobic violence, once an occasional malady around Johannesburg, has become a contagion, skipping from one area to another.
The city has no shortage of neighbourhoods where the poor cobble together shacks from corrugated metal and planks.
Since the end of apartheid a small percentage of the nation’s black population – the highly skilled and politically connected – has thrived. But the gap between the rich and poor has widened.
The official rate of unemployment is 23percent. Housing remains a deplorable problem.
“That’s fueling the rage at the bottom,” said Marius Root, a researcher at the South African Institute of Race Relations.
“There’s the perception that they’re not enjoying the fruits of liberation.”
Here at the Ramaphosa settlement on the East Rand, a squatters colony southeast of the city, six immigrants have been killed in the past two days – or perhaps seven if the man found in the dust on Monday does not survive.
“We want all these foreigners to go back to their own lands,” said Thapelo Mgoqi, who considers himself a leader in Ramaphosa.
“We waited for our government to do something about these people. But they did nothing and so now we are doing it ourselves, and we will not be stopped.”
A familiar litany of complaints against foreigners are passionately, if not always rationally, argued: They commit crimes. They undercut wages. They hold jobs that others deserve.
George Booysen said that as a born-again Christian he did not believe in killing. Still, something had to be done about these unwanted immigrants.
“They are bad people,” he said. “A South African might take your cellphone but he won’t kill you. A foreigner will take your phone and still kill you.”
Beyond that, he said, immigrants were too easy to exploit.
“White people hire the foreigners because they work hard and do it for less money,” Booysen said. “A South African demands his rights and will go on strike. Foreigners are afraid.”
South Africa has 48million people. It is hard to find a reliable estimate of the number of foreigners in the mix.
Most certainly, not all immigrants push ahead of South Africans economically. But Somalis and Ethiopians have proved successful shopkeepers in the townships.
Zimbabweans, who make up the country’s largest immigrant group, benefited from a strong educational system before their homeland plunged into collapse, sending an estimated three million across the border to seek refuge here.
Schoolteachers and other professionals – their salaries rendered worthless by Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation – come to work as housekeepers and menial labourers.
These days the nights and early mornings belong to Ramaphosa’s marauders. On Monday, soon after dawn, they were boldly celebrating their victories.
Stores belonging to immigrants had already been looted, but there were still fires to set and walls to break down. There was dancing and singing.
Then the police arrived, quick to fire rubber bullets. Rocks were tossed by the mob in counterattack, but in order to triumph they really only had to be patient. The police didn’t stay long. They can’t keep up with the widespread frenzy.
Those left behind by the nation’s post-apartheid economy commonly blame those left even further behind, the powerless making scapegoats of the defenceless.
Many South Africans consider themselves at a disadvantage with their own nation’s employers.
“If you have a surname like mine, you can’t get a job,” said Samantha du Plessis, 23, a coloured woman. “I’ve been looking for a job for four years. All the employers want to hire foreigners.”
So there is a nationalistic sense of jubilation in the neighbourhoods where the immigrants have been dislodged.
“The Maputos, we don’t want them around anymore and we’ll never have to worry about them again,” said Benjamin Matlala, 27, using a common term for people from Mozambique.
Matlala, who is unemployed, lives in Primrose, now emptied of its foreigners. The sections they lived in are being dismantled.
First the belongings of the fleeing immigrants – their mattresses, blankets, clothes and cooking utensils – were looted.
On Monday the dwellings themselves were torn apart by dozens of eager men. It wasn’t difficult. Walls of thin metal were knocked over with a few hammer blows.
Wooden posts were easily pulled from the ground. Picture frames were tossed into a heap of rubbish.
Matlala had managed to get a shopping cart, which he filled with scrap metal. Each load, he said, would fetch R40 in trade.
He was hoping for three loads, more money than he had made in a long time.
By Ruth Sinai and Yigal Hai, Haartz
The state comptroller found numerous failings in steps taken by the state and local authorities to absorb Ethiopian immigrants. The government decided back in 1999 that a committee was needed to coordinate between ministries and with the many organizations that deal with Ethiopian Jews, but did not establish the committee for eight years. Lack of coordination severely undermined the efficiency of programs to aid immigrants, and of the budgets allocated for them.
For example, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry conducted a demographic survey of the immigrant community between 2000 and 2003, which could have been of immense help to the Social Affairs Ministry, which for years had no data on families in need of assistance.That survey finally took place in 2006, more than 20 years after Ethiopian immigration began. An inter-ministerial committee was set up only last year, and this year a national program for absorbing immigrants was unveiled, which for the first time established the principle of adapting services to cultural needs.
The comptroller found that through 2006, most social workers dealing with the community were not Ethiopian, and had not received cultural sensitivity training.
(AFP) — ADDIS ABABA: Donned in bright red trunks with a mouthguard to protect his teeth, Molla Getachew works on his footwork as part of a daily early-morning routine in a steamy gym in southern Addis Ababa.
With him is Solomon Zinna, a 31-year-old coach who is preparing Molla for the biggest challenge of his career in only three months time – the Olympic Games in Beijing.
The 24-year-old flyweight is the only boxer to have qualified for the tournament from Ethiopia, a country more associated with slender and wiry athletes than for pound-for-pound fighters in a boxing ring.
“God willing, I hope to perform very well and follow in the footsteps of our athletes who have achieved a lot throughout these years,” said Molla.
Diminutive but well-built, Molla has over 50 bouts under his belt, including ten defeats in his nine-year amateur career. His coach however, believes Molla’s athleticism and work ethic could give him the edge in Beijing.
“He is very athletic and strong, his belief in hard work could help him become the most successful Ethiopian in Olympic history,” said Solomon. Despite hailing from a rough neighbourhood in the capital’s Abnet district, where several friends took up boxing, Molla’s heart lay on the football pitch for the best part of his childhood.
He only took an interest in boxing at the age of fifteen, when an unexpected trip to a national championship left him so captivated that he had to climb trees and elude security guards to watch other bouts.
Within weeks, he had signed on to a local project and never looked back.
Molla said his journey to Beijing started in Algeria at the All-Africa Games in July last year, when his inexperience led to an early first round exit at the hands of a Cameroonian fighter.
Bitter over the unsavory defeat a motivated Molla went on to clinch his Olympic berth after a string of impressive results against Seychellois and Zambian opponents during the African Olympic qualifying tournament held in the same country in January this year.
He’s now hoping to shake off Ethiopia’s dismal showing at the Olympics by emulating the success of the country’s fleet-footed athletes.
Ethiopian boxers have featured in all but two editions since the 1960 Olympics in Rome but have only been able to reach the quarter-finals twice in 11 attempts.
In the meantime, Molla and his coach have devised a rigorous four-hour-per day training schedule at a newly inaugurated training facility of the Ethiopian Boxing Federation.
Inside, the thumping sounds of taped fists pounding heavy punching bags reverberate across the yellow-painted concrete walls.
Darting in and out, pint-sized unknowns square-off with sparring partners as trainers send out instructions.
Drenched in sweat, Molla, who fights in the 51kg division, bounces lightly from toe to toe. On the other side of the corner, his ex-trainer Tasew Gebretsadik who coached him through the continental qualifying tournament casts a wary eye on his former protegì.
Gebretsadik, a veteran Ethiopian boxing coach, however believes the Olympics might be a tall order for the unheralded boxer despite his determination to succeed.
“The boy could be psychologically affected since he’ll be participating on the biggest competition of his life,” said Tasew.
Weeks after securing a place in Beijing, a bitter wrangle broke out among members of the federation after the national body decided to replace the coaching staff including Tasew.
Furthermore, four boxers who trained alongside Molla disappeared two months ago in an apparent attempt to get asylum in Namibia after participating in another qualifying competition in Windhoek.
But despite the setback, Molla remains confident.
“I’ve prepared very well. I’m in the right state of mind to be successful in Beijing,” he says.
