Kinijit Washington DC Chapter will hold a Grand Public Meeting in remmembering June 8 2005 Massacre by Meles Zenawi’s Agazi/Fascists troops. We should never forget the Martyrs, the true sons and daughters of Ethiopia who were gunned down by Woyanee troops. As we commemorate this historical day in our history, we need to also take this opportunity to stand up for freedom, democracy and justice which our compatriots died for.
Date/Time: June 8, 2008, 2:00 PM
Place: Unification Church, 1610 Columbia Road NW, Washington DC
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND — Ethiopian Jews have long been trying to assimilate into Israeli society to little avail but now Annapolis’ Kol Ami congregation is here to help.
The Bestgate Road-area synagogue is the first in the United States to partner with the Family Education Initiative to support Ethiopian Jews.
For that help, the congregation received a fundraising visit last week from Rabbi Yafet Alemu, an Ethiopian who has overcome the difficulties of immigrating and now wants to help his countrymen.
The majority of the Ethiopian Jewish population came to Israel in the mid-1980s and early 1990s following persecution in Ethiopia, where Christianity is the most prominent religion. Since then, according to Rabbi Alemu, many have had difficulty adjusting to Israel’s more advanced society.
“There must be a bridge to help them to transfer,” Rabbi Alemu said.
This need led Rabbi Alemu, 47, to found the Equal Opportunity for Ethiopian Jews in Israel in 2004, of which FEI is a part.
FEI has tutoring programs, designed to help the struggling population that in 2004 had a high school dropout rate of 40 percent, which according to Rabbi Alemu happened because Israel’s population is generally better educated than the Ethiopian immigrant population. That inequity carries over to economics, with most Ethiopians significantly poorer than the average Israeli.
The program also has mentoring programs designed to curb the community’s domestic violence problem. Rabbi Alemu estimated that 25 percent of women killed by their spouses in Israel are Ethiopians, although Ethiopians only make up about 2 percent of Israel’s population.
There are other programs aimed at improving the lives of Ethiopians in Israel, but these programs, according to the FEI, focus on the children rather than the entire family. Adults, therefore, are left without the necessary skills to succeed in Israel.
Their inability in many cases to be good role models for their children has led to drug and alcohol abuse among the population as well as high rates of violence and crime, which Rabbi Alemu said was not typical of their community back in Ethiopia.
FEI “helps [family members to understand each other” in order to help repair strained family relations that are common among Ethiopian immigrants, Rabbi Alemu said. “The program is prepared by [Ethiopians using our culture,” Rabbi Alemu said, adding that he thinks that factors into the program’s success.
The program currently serves about 9,000 people, Rabbi Alemu said.
“We have a choice,” he said, “To leave it as it is or take responsibility.”
The Kol Ami congregation began donating to FEI this year.
Since they started donating, about 25 other Jewish congregations in the United States have decided to follow suit, he said.
Rabbi Alemu immigrated to Israel in 1983, spending 28 days crossing Ethiopia into Sudan, where he received political asylum and was transported to Israel by the International Red Cross.
He left Ethiopia because he was facing prison time for trying to go to Israel.
He felt he would certainly be killed in prison, and so he prayed, and decided he had to try to escape Ethiopia.
“I cried to God as a child cries to his father,” Rabbi Alemu said, “God covered me from being exposed [during my escape .”
After coming to Israel, Rabbi Alemu received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Tel Aviv University and then enrolled in rabbinic school, becoming the first Ethiopian to be ordained in Conservative Judaism, also known as Masorti Judaism, in Israel.
He also specialized in community education at the Mandel Educational Leadership School before founding EOEJ.
FEI now has partnered with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which is an organization of synagogues that practice Conservative Judaism in the United States and Canada. FEI is run on a donor matching program, which means it relies on fundraising to continue its programs.
Rabbi Alemu said he is optimistic about the new partnership.
“Together we can do something very strong,” Rabbi Alemu said.
The interview Ethiopian Review publisher Elias Kifle gave to ETN on May 24 is being received positively by the Eritrean community. Click here to read some of the comments.
Continuing its Nazi style agenda, the TPLF government has introduced its next tactical chapter on systematic massacre of Oromo civilians. The trained commandos of the Ethiopian government, who are backed by bombs, AK 47s and other heavy artillery, have continued their massacre of Oromo civilians killing mothers, burning children alive in locked houses, amputating those they could catch alive and destroying their properties, in Western Oromia, Eastern part of Wollega.
In this area of Western Oromia, Oromos have lived side by side with the Gumuz people peacefully until recently. The TPLF regime has systematically and maliciously turned the Gumuz against Oromos. Specifically on May 17, 2008 marked the beginning of13 days and counting of violence that claimed the lives of more than 400 people in its first two days. The Gumuz militia backed by TPLF regime, attacked unarmed civilian Oromos burning down their houses while cutting open pregnant mothers’ wombs, amputating elders and children and forcing thousands to flee their homes. There have been more deaths and injuries as the issue has escalated and no attempts were made by the government to contain it.
Hospitals can only accept those who are on the verge of dying while those who are severely injured are being turned down. Thousands of people are living in an open soccer field, away from the center of the conflict areas, where they hope to seek refuge, with no money or food to survive. Most have been forced to beg on street for daily survival.
The TPLF regime trained and armed Gumuz militia with AK-47 and heavy machine-guns and ordered them to commit indiscriminate killings of unarmed Oromo civilians of East Wallagaa. The worst part of the story is the fact that the Oromos were not allowed to bear arms and those who possessed firearms in the past were forced to disarm prior to the staged incident. The Gumuz militia is said to be so heavily armed that the local police could not hold them off using their sticks and police uniform.
Ever since it came to power, the TPLF/EPRDF regime has applied the outdated ‘divide and rule’ policy to weaken peoples’ struggles for freedom and justice by sowing seeds of disharmony among friendly neighboring peoples. The TPLF regime’s track record of the past 17 years of tyrannical rule is full of such evil intrigues that instigated bloody conflicts among people of Ethiopia. It has become a common living situation for Oromos to be terrorized by the government for being nothing other than Oromos.
It was just about a year ago when the government sponsored a daylight killing in Easter Oromia, in a place called Gaara Suufii, where civilians were indiscriminately massacred and their dead bodies were fed to hyenas. Who could forget the daylight killings of Oromo refugees in Kenya by the Ethiopian government agents to suppress the opposing voices that fled their homeland and live in refugee camps to start over life?
Fresh in our memories is also are the outrageous story of the heinous crimes committed against Oromo refugees in Puntland’s Bosasso city of Somalia on February 5, 2008, where 65 Oromo refugees were bombed to death in daylight, while over 100 were also wounded, sponsored by no one other than Ethiopian government.
From time to time, over the last 17 years, the TPLF regime instigated a series of disputes between Oromos and Sidamas, Oromos and Somalis, Oromos and Gedaos, Anywaks and Nuers, Oromos and Amharas, Oromos and Oromos, now Oromos and Gumuzis.
The International Oromo Youth Association (IOYA) deeply condemns the massacre of Oromo civilians by the TPLF backed Gumuz militia.
Therefore IOYA:
1. Calls on International community to pressure the Ethiopian government to help stop the massacre of civilians and bring to justice those who are responsible
2. Calls on the International Red cross and other humanitarian agencies to provide food and shelter for those who have been displaced as a result of the conflict
3. Calls on Ethiopian government to allow the Oromos to arm themselves in order to defend themselves and keep their families safe
4. Calls on all Oromos and friends from around the world to come together and join hands in an effort to support the devastated communities overcome this ongoing nightmare
Justice for the Oromo People
Justice for All
International Oromo Youth Association
FROM:
Ethiopia and Sudan Border Issue Committee
P.O. Box 656 Tucker, GA 30085; e-mail:[email protected]
TO:
President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir
President of the Republic of the Sudan
Khartoum, Sudan
Your Excellency:
We, the representatives of Ethiopian political, professional, civic, social and cultural organizations, would like to bring to Your Excellency’s attention worrisome developments concerning the demarcation of the common boundary between Ethiopia and the Sudan. We are gravely concerned that this important subject which affects the lives and welfare of millions of Ethiopians has been approached, at least on the part of the purported representatives of Ethiopia, in total secrecy and in complete disregard of relevant treaties and the historical rights of Ethiopia.
We wish to register our protest in the strongest possible terms that any attempted boundary settlement your government reaches with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), will neither bind the rest of the country, nor achieve a stable or durable settlement of whatever outstanding differences might exist between our countries regarding the location of our common boundary. On the contrary, any such settlement is bound to be a continuing source of friction and an unnecessary obstacle to furthering and deepening the economic cooperation and cultural exchanges that currently exist between our two countries.
Lest our concern about the cession of Ethiopian territory appear unfounded, we wish to refer your Excellency to the pages of The Sudan Tribune (May 9, 2008) wherein it is reported that highly placed officials of your government have stated, without contradiction from any other source, that farmers in Eastern Sudan have “got[ten] back disputed lands from Ethiopia.” We have no reason to doubt the veracity of this statement. In fact, we have confirmed its truthfulness from the very farmers in the area who have been forcibly evicted from their farms as well as those who have been illegally taken across the border into the custody of your government. We have confirmed as well that these individuals are now languishing in Sudanese prisons under conditions that violate internationally accepted human rights norms. By what right can your government justify the abduction of the citizens of another country from their homes and farms?
The sole basis for this outrageous conduct and your government’s tenuous assertion of jurisdiction over Ethiopian territory is the Prime Minister’s collusion with your government to permanently alienate our ancestral land. If indeed this is your sole justification for seeking to exercise sovereignty over our territory, please be forewarned that any deal you make with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi concerning cession of Ethiopia’s territory cannot stand. Simply stated, the territory ceded is not the Prime Minister’s to give nor does Ethiopia recognize the validity of any claims Sudan may lay against Ethiopian territory. As your Excellency is well aware, the Prime Minister avowedly represents only the Tigray people (if, indeed, that).
Your Excellency knows too that the ceded territory has always been an integral part of Ethiopia historically, culturally and economically until the Prime Minister decided to barter it away in exchange for certain sectarian and shortsighted advantages inuring to the sole benefit of the TPLF. Although these advantages have not yet been made public, they are not difficult to fathom.
The history of relations between Ethiopia and Sudan reveals that there has never been any serious border or territorial dispute between the two countries. We are, of course, keenly aware that Ethiopian and Sudanese governments have reached agreements in principle in the past to demarcate the common boundary between their two countries. But an agreement in principle to demarcate the boundary is a far cry from a decision to give away what is legitimately ours on the basis of a colonial-era and imaginary line that Ethiopia has never accepted as a legitimate basis for drawing the common boundary. We also find it surprising and disconcerting that the Republic of the Sudan, which after all is the biggest country in Africa, and which has a highly favorable land: man ratio, seeks territorial aggrandizement at Ethiopia’s expense.
Your Excellency, we wish to reiterate to you that Meles has no power and authority to cede sovereign Ethiopian territory without the consent of the people of Ethiopia. Nowhere does even the tailor-made constitution imposed by the TPLF on the Ethiopian people give Meles the authority to cede sovereignty. Neither the national parliament nor the affected states of the federation have debated or ratified his decision to cede our lands. As a matter of fact, the whole process of territorial cession was guarded with the utmost secrecy by Meles until the inhabitants of the affected region were one day forcibly removed from their farms and their homes, and their farming equipment and their crops were vandalized by Sudanese troops. This is certainly no way to demarcate an international boundary. It is a process we have witnessed before in the context of the Eritrea-Ethiopia boundary dispute. Both reveal the same flawed process at work, one that is so tainted with fraud and so devoid of legitimacy that it could never yield a valid, stable and durable settlement of a contested international boundary.
Equally egregious is the treatment of Ethiopian refugees in the Sudan. The Republic of the Sudan is party to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 U.N. Protocol Governing the Status of Refugees, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, and the Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. Yet, in violation of all these international instruments, Ethiopian refugees who were granted political asylum by the Sudanese Government, and who had lived in the Sudan for many years, were mistreated, imprisoned and tortured and eventually handed over to the Ethiopian regime, where they are now languishing in prison. We now can see that this was done as a prelude to and as part of the border deal. Apparently, the TPLF considered it expedient to secure the custody of those individuals whom it regarded as likely to raise a national hue and cry over the alienation of Ethiopia’s territory. Some of these individuals hail from the disputed area, are very familiar with the historical boundary, and would not accept any unilateral modification without stiff resistance.
We therefore urge the Government of the Sudan to:
Withdraw its army, police and security forces from Ethiopian soil;
Respect Ethiopia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity;
Release all our citizens who have been forcefully abducted and taken to the Sudan;
Pay reparation for all the loss and destruction suffered by our citizens as a consequence of its unlawful actions; and
Offer a formal apology for its actions.
Sincerely,
Ethiopia and Sudan Border Issue Committee
CC:
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Perky coffee drama is one of the most anticipated films to target Ethiopian-Americans, but also reaches home audiences through language of love and the American Dream.
LOS ANGELES – The highly anticipated independent Ethiopian-American drama “13 Months of Sunshine” will premiere in Culver City (suburb of Los Angeles), on June 5, 2008 at 6:00pm at the Culver Plaza Theater located at 9919 Washington Blvd., directly across from Sony Pictures Studios. The red-carpet event will feature stars of the film and producers in pre-show interviews, as well as leaders in the Ethiopian business, political, and religious community.
Ethiopian director and writer Yehdego Abeselom and award-winning producers Jeremiah Lewis and Jeff Bartsch (2005 Progeny Festival Best Director, “Zero Sum,” 2004 Progeny Festival Third Place, “Mosquito
Man,” 2008 168 Festival, Best Film, “Stained”) have already seen “13 Months”–their first feature film–premiere to critical success in Ethiopian capital city Addis Ababa, setting a record for being the first Ethiopian film to play alongside such Hollywood blockbusters as “I Am Legend,” “Hitman,” “The Game Plan,” and “Enchanted.”
Set in and filmed on location in Los Angeles, Abeselom “skillfully teases out the subtle differences between the new and the old immigrant community and socially untouchable taboos in the Ethiopian community in this brilliantly shot film,” says The Ethiopian American.
Starring Sammy Amare as Solomon and Tsion Fikreselassie as Hanna, the story revolves around the two entering a false marriage lasting a year and a month. During that time, their relationship goes from casual to serious as they learn to live with each other, but find that outside influences threaten to tear them apart.
The film is in Amharic accompanied by English subtitles, runs 102 minutes, with original music composed by Jason Solowsky and a relevant mix of hit Ethiopian artists such as Rehaset, Burntface, Bole2Harlem,
and Besu.
“13 Months of Sunshine” undergoes a limited release in theaters beginning June 6.
