Some of the leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit) have gathered 300 people and formally created a new party named Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) today in Addis Ababa. See details at Kinijit North America’s web site here.
Let’s go straight to the crux of the matter: UDJ by its actions and positions had demonstrated itself to be a political party without a popular base. It is a fake party without popular constituency — like Beyene Petros’s UEDF, Lidetu Ayalew’s EUDP, and the many other useless political groupings whose only benefit is to make Woyanne look legitimate or democrat.
UDJ, in particular, is a great disappointment, because it had a potential to position itself as a genuine opposition party by doing things such as:
1) Keeping its former name Kinijit.
2) Not accepting the legitimacy of the Woyanne-dominated Election Board.
3) Ignoring Woyanne’s ban on public meetings.
4) Speaking out against Woyanne atrocities through out Ethiopia, particularly the wholesale massacres of Ethiopians in Ogaden.
5) Demanding the resignation of Meles Zenawi and all Woyanne top leaders…
They may risk arrest and other dangers by doing the things mentioned above. But if they present themselves as leaders, what else do they expect? If they are afraid of arrest, they should stay home. How many times other leaders of ‘peaceful struggle’ were jailed, beaten up, and killed? How many times Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mandela, San Suu Kyi, and others were arrested, beaten up, and assassinated because they refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the tyrannical system that brutalized and enslaved their people. San Suu Kyi of Burma gets arrested almost every other week. On the other hand, take a look at what the UDJ leaders are doing:
1) When Woyanne told them that they cannot use Kinijit as their name, they said, ‘yes, master’ and changed their name, submitting themselves to the illegitimate regime.
2) After they changed their name, Woyanne still refused to give them legal status. But they continued to beg the dictatorship through Western diplomats.
3) When Woyanne security agents banned their meeting, they run to U.S. and U.K. ambassadors for help. Woyanne said yes to its puppet masters, U.S. and U.K. diplomats, and allowed UDJ to meet, but only inside their office. Without any hint of resistance, they accepted Woyanne’s condition and held their meeting in their office today.
4) In the past 10 months, when millions of our people faced death from starvation as result of Woyanne’s mismanagement of the country’s resources, when tens of thousands of fellow Ethiopians were slaughtered in Ogaden, when a neighboring country, Somalia, was pillaged by Woyanne occupation forces in the name of Ethiopia, when high commodity prices caused so much suffering, when large tracts of land were given away to Sudan in a secret deal, not a word of concern was expressed by the UDJ leaders. The only criticism we hear coming out of the mouths of UDJ leaders these days is directed at freedom fighters who raised arms to defend themselves and their people from the Woyanne brutal dictatorship.
It is because of all these reasons and more that Ethiopian Review believes UDJ is another fake party by any measurement.
Let’s call a spade ‘spade’. UDJ is Fake.
NOTE TO KINIJIT NORTH AMERICA: Not a penny of the money collected in the name of Kinijit from Ethiopians in the Diaspora should be given to UDJ, because UDJ is not Kinijit and doesn’t stand for the principles that Kinijit upheld. It would be a betrayal of public trust on the part of Kinijit North America to give any of the money under its controls to UDJ.
UN NEWS
As part of its Knowledge Sharing initiative, the UN Country Team in Ethiopia has organized a discussion forum on the theme “Biofuel, a viable alternative source of Energy?” on Thursday, 5th June 2008 at Sheraton Addis from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. In his opening remarks, Mr. Fidele Sarassoro, the UN Resident Coordinator, UN Humanitarian Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, remarked that “Bioenergy is emerging as a top priority as countries face the triple challenge of ensuring energy security, food security and sustainable development.” He also further reminded the message from Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, addressed on the World Environment Day of June 5, that our dependence on carbon-based energy has caused a significant build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
During the discussion forum presentations has been carried out on different ongoing practices and experiences of the Government, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), UN, Private Sector and Research Institutes by different panelists. The discussion forum has been attended by His Excellency Mr. Mekonnen Manyazewal State Minister of Finance and Economic Development, His Excellency Dr. Abera Deressa, State Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, UN Agencies working in Ethiopia, Civil Society Organizations, and Governmental sector offices.
The forum was the first edition of the UN Country Team Knowledge Sharing initiative which is part of the effort of the UNCT in Ethiopia to promote and create space for exchange of ideas, information and knowledge.
By Scott Baldauf, The Christian Science Monitor
Tshwane, South Africa — More than three weeks after beginning, South Africa’s xenophobic attacks continue as the nation’s leaders urge communities to begin bringing African immigrants from other countries back into their communities.
Just days after a Mozambican man was burnt alive in the township of Atteridgeville, and police raided a camp near the nation’s capital, swinging clubs and firing rubber bullets and injuring dozens of the nearly 1,500 Somalis, Ethiopians, and Congolese inside, President Thabo Mbeki made a renewed appeal for the violence to stop. More than 62 have died since the violence began.
Speaking at a ceremony commemorating Youth Day on Monday, Mr. Mbeki praised the past efforts of South African youth in the liberation struggle that ended the racist system of apartheid. But, he added, “at the same time, we must admit that all of us have been humiliated and shamed by the small number of young people who took it upon themselves to lead criminal attacks against the Africans living among us.”
Kgalema Motlanthe, the ruling African National Congress party’s No. 2, reinforced the message at a speech in Soweto: “The current situations suggest that we are sinking into a flood.”
While few predicted the anti-immigrant attacks, the warning signs have been present for years. Attacks against Somali shopkeepers alone have led to hundreds of deaths in sporadic violence since 1994, say Somali groups. The government doesn’t track attacks based on national origin.
Anger about the government’s inability to create jobs or to deliver electricity or drinking water to burgeoning townships has spilled over into open protests, complete with roadblocks, burning tires, and residents wielding clubs. Now, angry citizens have taken their frustrations out those who arrived in South Africa to make a little money, and succeeded.
“We’re talking about the poorest of the [South African] poor, and there was no pressure valve, and so when the pressure grew, and you lit a match, the whole thing blew,” says Adrian Hadland, director of democracy and governance programs at the Human Sciences Research Council. Dr. Hadland recently conducted focus groups in townships for a report for the government on the causes of and solutions for xenophobic attacks.
In the focus groups, “People describe themselves as being in a state of siege. Food is more expensive. Housing is more expensive. Jobs are harder to find. You would already be looking for a scapegoat, and then you have migrants arriving, most of them better educated, some of them with access to money,” he says. The violence is “nothing new, but what is new is how the violence spread so rapidly, and nationally.”
Tito Mboweni, the Reserve Bank Governor, said earlier this month that poor South Africans spend half of their income on food alone. “Food and petrol prices are the main contributors to inflation, but in recent months, more generalized price pressures have emerged as well,” said Mr. Mboweni.
While government officials like President Mbeki are urging citizens to allow the migrants to return, Hadland says that few South Africans want reintegration to begin until the government meets some of their demands for better service and less corruption.
Judging from the mood at a transit camp for migrants north of Tshwane, as Pretoria is now called, few migrants would return to their former homes and businesses anyway without assurances for their safety.
On Saturday, violent clashes between camp dwellers – most of them Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Congolese – and local police left dozens injured when police used clubs and fired rubber bullets to bring a restive crowd under control. Tensions rose, camp dwellers say, after a policeman demanded cigarette from a camp dweller, and when he was refused, he insisted on searching the boy for drugs.
More police were called in to search the camp for weapons, but when police entered a tent that had been designated as a mosque, camp dwellers pushed them out, and the violence began. Camp dwellers say that three persons – one Ethiopian and two Somalis – were killed during the Saturday raid, but pol ice took away their bodies. Police confirm only that some of the camp dwellers were injured.
“I am encouraged to see the situation is under control,” Tshwane Executive Mayor Gwen Ramokgopa told a community meeting after the police raid. She said the raid occurred after a female police officer was “held hostage” within the camp, a charge the camp dwellers deny.
“For 15 years, Somalis have been killed in robberies, their shops burnt, but the government did nothing,” says Abdul Abbas, a spokesman for the Somali community in the camp. “Then when the xenophobic attacks started, they did nothing again. They saved our lives, but they did nothing to save our shops. Then they bring us here, and now the police are fighting us. We are fed up.”
Yitbarak, a young Somali whose shop in a Johannesburg township was burned by angry mobs 23 days ago, says that conditions in the camp are abysmal, that it’s not safe to leave. “The government says they are going to protect us, but it is the police who are attacking us,” he says. “The police tell us, ‘Go home, this is not your country. This is South Africa.’ ”
Elmi Hissa, an elderly Somali shopkeeper, says that she has been robbed more times than she can remember in the past 10 years, and each time moved to a different community – from Johannesburg to Durban to Cape Town to Kimberly to Pretoria – in the hopes that the local people would accept her once they got to know her.
“For 10 years I was patient, but now I’m tired,” she sighs.
“You struggle hard, you work hard, and after that people take it from you. You go to police and they say, why don’t you go to your own country?” The reason she doesn’t go back, she says, is that there’s a war in Somalia that has already claimed seven of her children. “Sometimes I think until I cry,” she says. “South Africa is not the place to stay anymore. You can’t stay with people who don’t want you.”
Lukmaan Abdullah, a young Somali clothing salesman, fled Somalia just two months ago, when warlords came to take him as a soldier. His parents sold the house they were living in in order to pay for his transportation to South Africa, hoping the young man would be able to make enough money to help the family survive.
The day he arrived, however, the xenophobic attacks began, and Mr. Abdullah has spent the past 23 days in this camp. “When I left Somalia, the rockets were hitting the market where I worked. When I came here, the xenophobic attacks had just started. If I go back now, there will be no other way but to work with the warlords. They will force me, without a doubt.”
MOGADISHO, Somalia — A roadside bomb killed two policemen in Mogadishu just minutes after a convoy carrying Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed had driven past, reports said Wednesday.
Yusuf has been targeted several times in recent months, including by a mortar attack on his plane as he flew to Djibouti to meet with UN officials there to push for a peace deal.
Three other people were injured in the latest attack, the BBC reported.
Somalia and some opposition figures earlier this month agreed a cease, but insurgents battling the transitional government have rejected the deal.
Violence has continued unabated and fighting in Mogadishu Tuesday killed at least seven people.
The deaths came as the insurgents late Tuesday attacked government and Ethiopian Woyanne troops searching for weapons in people’s homes.
The UN’s refugees chief on Wednesday also called the plight of Somalis packed into a border camp in Kenya a desperate cry for peace in their homeland.
At the sprawling camp in Dadaab where nearly 200,000 refugees people are sheltered, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said Somalia is one of the world’s worst crises, and the international community has ignored it for too long.
The Somali crisis is in the same league as Afghanistan, Iraq and Darfur, said Guterres as he toured the camp for Somali refugees in eastern Kenya, 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Somali border.
“We need to improve these living conditions for Somalis until peace allows them to go back,” said Guterres.
The conflict in Somalia seems to have grown more wretched every year since 1991, when warlords toppled Mohamed Siad Barre.
Source: Alalam
MOGADISHU (Xinhua) — A senior Somali police commander and two of his bodyguards were killed by a roadside bomb Wednesday shortly after the arrival of Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf backto Mogadishu, a Somali government official confirmed to reporters on Wednesday.
Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Mohamed Wasuge, head of the Western Section of Mogadishu police command and two of his bodyguards died as they were taking part in the security operation for the return of Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who came back from an official visit to Djibouti, Deputy Mogadishu Mayor for Security Affairs Abditetaf Shaweye said.
The blast occurred shortly after the president arrived in the capital. The commander’s vehicle was reportedly destroyed by the huge explosion which could be heard in much of the Somali capital.
The Somali president attended a regional summit in Addis Abba, the Ethiopian capital, before he went to Djibouti for an official visit. Peace talks between the Somali transitional government and opposition members were recently concluded in Djibouti.
No one has claimed for the assassination of the senior Somali police commander but Shaweye said that insurgents were behind the blast.
“The anti-peace forces who often disrupt the social peace and security are behind this heinous act but the security forces will pursue the perpetrators and put them before the law,” Shaweye said.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Drought-ravaged Ethiopia should improve its “backward” farming systems to curb acute food shortages, which have left millions of people in need of urgent humanitarian aid, a top World Bank official said on Wednesday.
About 4.5 million Ethiopians need emergency food aid due to poor seasonal rains and high food prices in the vast east African country, according to the United Nations.
“Ethiopia has registered commendable economic growth over the last three or four years,” Justin Lin Yifu, chief economist and senior vice-president of the World Bank, told reporters on a visit to Addis Ababa.
“However, some parts of the country have been experiencing drought due to the backward farming system in the country.”
Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation, needs $325 million to provide 400,000 tonnes of food, especially in the country’s hard-hit south and south eastern regions bordering Somalia and Kenya, according to the United Nations.
About 85 percent of Ethiopia’s 81 million population rely on subsistence farming and “this needs to be revisited,” he said without elaborating.
“Given good weather conditions, diverse natural resources and huge labour in Ethiopia, I don’t think it would be difficult to bring about a real change in the country”, he said.
Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Editing by Wangui Kanina
