Kinijit Washington DC Metro chapter is hosting a public meeting with Prof. Mesfin Woldemariam, UDJ council member, and Ato Asrate Tase, UDJ secretary general in Washington DC, July 6, 2008.
Place: Washington Marriott
Address: 1221 22nd Street NW, Washington DC
Date/Time: July 6, 2:00 PM
More info: 202 541 0556
ADDIS ABABA – As part of the annual, global celebration of an international day for refugees, UNHCR, with support form its partners, colourfully celebrated the 2008th edition of World Refugee Day on Friday under the theme “Protection.” The aim was to create greater awareness on the work of UNHCR to ensure that refugees enjoy international protection.
The Friday afternoon celebration at the African Union in particular drew a great number of representatives of the Addis-based diplomatic community, heads of UN agencies, government and African Union officials to mention a few. Statements calling for increased international support to refugees as well as to address the root causes of forced displacement in Africa were delivered by officials of the African Union, a representative of the Ethiopian government responsible for refugee matters as well as by UNHCR Regional Liaison Representative Ilunga Ngandu. Mr. Ngandu said he was himself an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) early in his life and knows it pretty well how it feels to be uprooted from home and get dispossessed of everything. He sounded an earnest call to African leaders to work on policies that effectively address forced displacement of people.
A refugee girl from Congo Democratic Republic and a refugee boy from Somalia also shared their experiences as refugees and the kind of support they were getting from UNHCR, the government of Ethiopia and other humanitarian organizations.
Refugee children sang in a choir while adult refugees set up stalls to display and sell products that were produced by themselves. The market was meant to show to the world what refugees were capable of doing while at the same time aimed to help refugees generate some income.
Also on Friday, a UNHCR documentary entitled “Working With Refugees,” was screened at the Alliance Ethio-Francasie cinema hall to a packed audience of students, diplomats, officials and refugees. The film described UNHCR’s mandate and role in the humanitarian filed and demonstrated the UN refugee agencies often immediate reaction to major emergencies. That was followed by a lively question & answer session that witnessed a very active participation from the audience
Refugee children who participated and excelled in a writing competition were also awarded and encouraged on the occasion.
UNHCR currently hosts more than 80,000 refugees in six camps. All the refugee camps also commemorated the day on Friday with various activities.
Courtesy: UNHCR Public Information Unit.
For further information please contact Mr. Kisut Gebre Egziabher, Senior Public Information Assistant UNHCR-RLO E-mail:[email protected]
The Gonder Mutual Association of Seattle has issued a statement denouncing the recent give away of Ethiopia’s fertile land to Sudan in a secret deal between Woyanne chief Meles Zenawi and Sudan’s al-Bashir.
The Association also condemned the arrest and displacement of Ethiopians from their land by Sudanese troops with the collaboration of Woyanne soldiers.
Click here to read the statement [pdf, Amharic]
The Messengers of the butcher of Addis Ababa, Meles Zenawi, had attempted to convene a meeting in Dallas on Sunday, June 22nd, at the Radisson Hotel located at Hwy 75 to spread propaganda about Ethiopia and their regime. They came prepared to deliver their well known talking points: the politics of Ethiopia is democratizing and is in good custody; leave the politics for us — just come home and spend money as tourists — send your remittances, and of course invest.
Zenawi’s stooges, Ato Hilawe Yosef (EPDRF’s campaign manager during the bloody 2005 election), Ato Demeke Mekonnen (so-called Vice President of the Amhara Regional State who is involved in orchestrating the regional cover for ceding of Ethiopian territory to the Sudan), and Ato Mulae Tarekegn, from the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC and their operatives amongst us know very well that it is impossible for them to sell this idea to Ethiopians. Their aim is clear. It is to go every where the Diaspora is and get a handful of people in a room for a propaganda consumption. Knowing this, the Ethiopian activists in Dallas came prepared to change their talking points.
The meeting ended in being a total fiasco as the Woyane representatives were forced to abandon their prepared speech and agenda of political stability and economic development in Ethiopia, and instead were forced by patriotic Ethiopians to go directly to questions and answers focusing on the Ethio-Sudan border, the on-going drought and famine and the grave dissatisfaction of the Ethiopian people with the endless lies, dishonesty and corruption of the dictatorial regime of Melesse Zenawi.
The Woyanne stooges were given an earful about the dreadful situation prevailing in Ethiopia: the lack of democracy and gross abuse of human rights; the famine that is afflicting 14 million Ethiopians; the ceding of sovereign Ethiopian territory to the Sudan; the EPRDF government’s lies about Badme and the loss of 70,000 Ethiopians in the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia; the grinding poverty prevalent in Ethiopia despite EPRDF’s false claims regarding development; and many other such important facts demonstrating the utter failure of the current regime in Ethiopia.
The response by the Woyane representatives was totally inadequate as they were teetering in shock at the strong opposition and incisive remarks and questions directed at them. Some of their responses were pitifully and obviously unconvincing. One of them alleged, for instance, that no land has been ceded to the Sudan, although the Sudanese government has confirmed to the contrary; and the very Ethiopian people whose land and property has been ceded to and occupied by the Sudanese have testified to that fact repeatedly on VOA. It was particularly tragic to note that according to the Woyanne stooges, the on-going drought and famine occurring in Ethiopia was an exaggeration and that it was a figment of imagination of the international community!
After expressing the bitter frustration of the Ethiopian people with the corrupt regime and dominating the forum which was organized by operatives of Woyane for three hours, most of the participants walked out in protest leaving the Woyanne representatives and their handful puppets extremely frustrated and confused. It was a good opportunity to identify their operatives among us conspiring to penetrate and silence the Diaspora under the guise of “consensus forum”. They need to be fully exposed and be under the watchful eyes of patriotic Ethiopians. We ask fellow Ethiopians in the Diaspora to challenge the TPLF propagandists where ever they come and most of all identify their operatives amongst us.
Let other Woyane meetings result in a total fiasco!
Ethiopian activists in Dallas
By Douglas McGill , TC Daily Planet
An Ethiopian A Woyanne government official seeking to distance himself from what he says is a continuing attempt by Ethiopia to eradicate an African tribe, has defected to the United States.
Obang Oman, who only three weeks ago visited Minneapolis as part of an official Ethiopian Woyanne delegation, was scheduled to return to Ethiopia on Sunday, June 8.
Instead, the night before, he fled his Washington, D.C. hotel, spent the entire evening in a 24-hour restaurant, and flew out early the next morning for Denver, Colorado. He has not announced his defection until today.
“I know what is waiting for me if I return,” Oman said yesterday. “They would try to arrest me or kill me. I fear for myself, my wife and my children. So what is the better thing to do? I decided to keep my remaining life.”
Anuak Genocide
Oman’s defection is the latest twist in the long-running saga of the Anuak tribe of Ethiopia, more than a thousand of whom live as refugees in Minnesota. According to Human Rights Watch and other international groups, the Anuak tribe has been the target of crimes against humanity and a campaign of genocide conducted by the Ethiopian Woyanne government.
Minnesota has the largest Anuak refugee population in the world.
Ironically, Oman came to the U.S. last month as part of an Ethiopian a Woyanne government delegation whose official purpose was to persuade Minnesota’s Anuak population that conditions are now safe enough for the Anuak to return to Ethiopia to invest, to start businesses and to raise their families.
As the Deputy Director for Agricultural Research in Gambella, the western state of Ethiopia where most Anuak live, Oman sat on a dais with five other high-level Ethiopian Woyanne officials at a May 31 meeting in Minneapolis. With the other officials, he promised more than a hundred Minnesota Anuak refugees in the audience that conditions in Ethiopia are now safe and secure.
Remarks Recanted
Today, Oman recants those remarks. He says that the governor of Gambella, Omot Olom, who is named as a key planner of the genocide in several human rights reports, had personally threatened his life in the past and would likely have jailed him or worse if he had not lied at the Minneapolis meeting.
“He expected me to lie,” he said, referring to Governor Olom, who was the highest-ranking member of the visiting delegation. “I don’t like to lie, but if I had refused he would have taken action.”
Oman said that his wife was evicted from their government housing in Ethiopia two days after his defection, and that he fears for her life and those of his three children.
Feisel Abrahim, Ethiopian a Woyanne government spokesman based in Washington, D.C. who was part of the visiting delegation to Minneapolis, denied that Oman’s wife had been kicked out of her apartment, that she or Oman’s children were in any danger, or that the Ethiopian Woyanne has any grievance whatsoever against Oman.
“This individual is looking for a better life rather than serving his people,” Abrahim said. “There is no way the government is after him. Most people when they come to the United States try to present themselves as political, that they will be tortured or imprisoned, but in actual terms it’s not true.”
Routine Torture
Michele McKenzie, an immigration lawyer for the Minneapolis-based Advocates for Human Rights, says that Ethiopian refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. have been one of the biggest portions of their clientele since at least 1991, when the present Ethiopian regime took power.
“It’s because of political repression,” McKenzie said. “It informs a level of fear that I would say is unique in the clients we deal with. The government routinely uses torture as a means of curtailing dissidents, and they don’t soft-pedal their tactics. It’s working for the Ethiopian Woyanne government to target people ethnically and it seems they are picking off the groups one by one.”
Oman, the official who defected, is an Anuak and is not named as involved in the Anuak genocide in any human rights report. He also was not employed by the government on December 13, 2003, the day on which some 425 Anuak men in Gambella were reportedly killed by uniformed Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers, in one of the worst massacres ever suffered by the Anuak.
Oman says his decision to defect was largely based on having grown sick of lying to distort and cover up the Ethiopian Woyanne government’s persecution of the Anuak tribe.
“Essentially,” he said, the government “is trying to eradicate the Anuak. I don’t want to lie. I decided I wanted to try to save the life of my community. I love them, I am from them, and I want to help save them.”
Last Warning
Oman says his relationship with Omot, the Gambella governor, turned sour in March, 2006 after he questioned the apparently arbitrary killing of two young Anuak men in Gambella by Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers. The regional military commander complained about him to Omot, Oman says, which prompted Governor Omot to personally threaten his life.
“He gave me a last warning,” Oman says. “He said ‘If you do that again you will be killed or arrested.’” Following that incident, Oman says he was demoted several times. He says he was ordered to join the visiting delegation primarily because the government needed to have an Anuak testify to the Minnesota Anuak that conditions are safe to return.
Several Minnesota Anuak, reached by telephone, said that Oman’s defection testified to the actual truth of conditions in Gambella today, as opposed to the optimistic line offered by the official delegation at the May meeting.
Causing Chaos
“His defection automatically contradicts that message,” said Apee Jobi, an Anuak who lives in Brooklyn Park. “It says that that Gambella is not really stable and that things are still really bad.”
Habtamu Dugo, an Ethiopian journalist seeking asylum in the U.S. after suffering several jailings and torture for publishing articles critical of the Ethiopian regime, says that many Ethiopian Woyanne government officials have defected to the U.S. in recent years.
“While they are in the regime, they do what they don’t believe in, and that haunts them,” Dugo said. “They get tired of seeing crimes committed against their own people, whom they say they represent. The time finally comes when they realize they are causing a lot of chaos. They feel guilty and they don’t want to be a part of the system, so they defect.”
By Dan Robson, The Star
BRAMPTON, ONTARIO — Yonatan Gezahegne Mekonnen, a city of Brampton resident, has been charged with failing to disclose his positive HIV status to a female he had consensual sex with.
Peel Police say a man put a 21-year-old female at risk of contracting the virus when they had sex throughout January and February of this year.
The man did not inform her of his positive HIV status, police say.
Yonatan, 24, was taken into custody and is charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault.