If there were any doubters about the viciousness and callousness of Zenawi’s dictatorship, those doubts must now be dispelled by the recent conviction of Tewodros Kassahun (a.k.a. Teddy Afro) in the kangaroo court of the despot [1].
Without regard to the strength of the evidence presented by the defendant [2], Zenawi ordered the excessive punishment of the artist, demonstrating to the world once again his ruthlessness and cruelty in treating innocent civilians that he perceives as a threat to his authoritarian rule.
As has been widely reported[3], there was gross inconsistency between the date the autopsy record showed when the alleged victim had died and the time when the hit and run purportedly took place. Ironically, in the dictator’s premeditated agenda to use the tragic death of the victim for vindictive political purpose, the sham judicial system has turned a blind eye to the investigation and prosecution of the “real” perpetrators of the enigmatic crime.
Behind the travesty of justice is, of course, the sinister motive of the dictator to send a signal of terror to future artists, and to divert attention from the pressing issues of the day – poverty, famine, human rights, war and sectarianism.
However, the bogus proceedings and the ensuing imposition of draconian measures have resulted in unintended consequences. The controversies surrounding the dubious arrest and sentencing of the artist have further damaged the already ugly image of the dictator even among those sections of the population that have been willing to give the tyrant the benefit of the doubt.
The members of the Millennial Generation have hitherto watched the toxic ethnic policies of Zenawi with measured skepticism, and played relatively marginal and passive roles in the fragmented struggles against sectarianism and authoritarian rule. They have now been stunned and rudely awakened by the brutality of the way the dictator has treated their idol, who has only been known to them through his extraordinary music and message of love, harmony and justice.
This is a generation that has its future in jeopardy thanks to the destructive policies of Zenawi that are designed to foment inter-ethnic animosity, to subject the population to perpetual famine, ignorance and diseases, and to promote nepotism and corruption over meritocracy [4]. This is also a cohort that is endowed with the 21st century skill set, and the temperament, drive and energy required to present an effective and credible resistance against tyranny and ethno-centrism.
The vigorous awakening of the Millennial Generation thus marks a watershed moment in the ongoing struggle that has so desperately lacked the active and passionate involvement of the youth. The anger and determination for change aroused now in this generation is a phenomenon that has not been seen since the nascent awakening movements of the 60’s and the 70’s. As the sacrifices of the youth were instrumental three decades ago to weaken Mengistu Haile-Mariam and eventually make him lethally vulnerable to the attacks of the opportunist parasites, Afeworki and Zenawi, there is no alternative to the leadership role that must be assumed by the Millennial Generation to bring to an end the current plague engulfing the country.
To the rest of the population, Zenawi has re-affirmed his trademark insensitivity and disdain for civility, at a time when many are still seeking answers to the numerous crimes and intransigencies of the dictator, including the massacre of innocent civilians [5], the stolen victory of the people in the 2005 elections [6] the genocide against the various ethnic groups [7], the use of famine as a stealth instrument of repression [8], and the adventurous war being waged in Somalia to curry favor from the West [9].
To those in the Diaspora who have guilelessly been transferring hard-currency to the repressive machinery of the dictator in the name of “investing in the homeland”, the plight of Teddy Afro shall serve as a reminder that their actions are not only emboldening the dictator, but are also lending him leverage to extend his spiteful control over their freedom. Every dime that goes for the purchase of a ticket from the TPLF controlled airline, or to acquire real estate at ridiculous prices, or to get other products and services from the network of business enterprises owned by the tyrant and his henchmen, is one more dime spent to perpetuate tyranny and to yield one’s freedom to a ruthless despot. In the current economic downturn, when the tyrant is desperate for hard-currency, uncritical transfer of funds to his coffers is a blatant expression of insensitivity to the plight of the people the money is used to exploit and repress.
To opposition groups, who credulously have been playing the treacherous game of cohabitation with the tyrant, the conviction of Teddy is a signal to refrain from participating in a political process without well-established groundrules that guarantee fairness, and without securing accountability for that tragedy that blemished the 2005 elections. The recent events in Kenya and Zimbabwe have provided a proven template for dealing with dictators that are addicted to manipulation of elections as a means of perpetuating their tyrannical rules. The people of Ethiopia expect and deserve no less in return for their votes, and they will no longer tolerate opposition leaders who will betray their trust and thwart their aspirations for democracy and justice.
To ethnic-based freedom fighters who have fallen to the dictator’s poisonous trap of sectarianism, the plight of Teddy shall serve as a catalyst to re-examine their agenda and to stand in unity against oppression and authoritarianism. Dictatorship can only be crushed with a united front of all the oppressed people – a front founded with the singular goal of establishing a united and democratic Ethiopia that guarantees equality, liberty and social justice to all of its citizens.
To those in the military who are prepared to pay the ultimate price to preserve the sovereignty of their country, the shameless conviction of an innocent artist should be a wake-up call to question their allegiance to a vicious despot. As products of a great people, with a glorious history, they have a momentous responsibility to use their organization, power and discipline to liberate their people and save the country from total destruction and disintegration.
To the sons and daughters of Tigrai, who have thus far paid blind loyalty to a manipulative dictator, let the injustice of Teddy serve as a clarion call to join their brothers and sisters in the fight against tyranny and sectarianism. In the current African reality, no ethnic-based rule can bring lasting peace and prosperity; no minority can advance its interests at the expense of the suffering of the vast majority; and no military might or wealth can protect a privileged few from the wrath and retribution of an oppressed mass.
Napoleon Hill wrote: “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” Thus, even through this most evil of acts against the artist have come unintended opportunities – the further alienation and isolation of the despot and the dramatic awakening and determination of the Millennial Generation. It is the responsibility of all those who care for freedom, liberty, and democracy to seize these opportunities, and to bring an end to decades of repression in Ethiopia. The time has indeed never been more auspicious than now to rekindle the fighting spirit of the people of Ethiopia:
Those in the Diaspora should mobilize their immense resources to bring together the fragmented opposition groups, and to re-ignite the drive to pass HR3000 in the US Senate. The incoming US administration and leaders like Senator Russ Feingold, who has a clearly articulated view of the danger of pampering dictators [10], are eager to restore America’s image as a symbol of hope to oppressed people around the world. Without submitting to unrealistic expectations, the Diaspora should present a counterforce against the onslaught of attacks by Zenawi’s lobbyists to trap the Obama administration and maintain control over the career diplomats.
Opposition groups inside and outside of Ethiopia should resist the temptation to participate in any future elections orchestrated by Zenawi in the absence of strict and enforceable preconditions for free and fair elections. They must vigorously oppose any elections that are marred by fraud and violence, and be prepared to boldly apply the recent lessons from the elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe to protect the votes of the people.
The youth should altruistically assume its fundamental responsibility to fight for freedom and social justice, and ferociously protect its future, heritage and history. The passion and anger aroused by the ruthless treatment of Teddy Afro must be harnessed and channeled to a worthy cause of establishing a just Ethiopia where all citizens enjoy liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness sans ethnicity.
The Ethiopian Woyanne army, which had announced it would pull out of Somalia by the end of the year, is reportedly establishing new bases in central Somalia and has yet to withdraw from key positions in the capital Mogadishu. In recent days, Addis Ababa Woyanne has hinted it would extend the deployment of its forces in response to intensified efforts by militant Islamists to take over key towns.
Somali journalist Abdikarin Bulhan tells VOA that Ethiopian Woyanne troops on Monday took control of the border town of Balanbal in the northern Galgadud region and established a new base on the town’s outskirts.
Bulhan says 10 truckloads of Ethiopian Woyanne troops moved into Balanbal, about 15 kilometers away from the border, following reports that militant Shabab fighters had taken over Galgadud’s provincial capital Dusamareb, the town of Mataban in the Hiran region, and the commercial city of Guri’el within in the past two days.
The journalist says the Ethiopians Woyanne occupation forces shut down businesses and cut communications in Balanbal after they took control of the town.
Further south in the Bay region, residents in the town of Burhakaba report that Ethiopian Woyanne troops, armed with artillery and other heavy weapons, established a new military base there after forcing Islamist fighters to abandon the town on Sunday.
The Ethiopian Woyanne foreign ministry said on Saturday that the government was willing to briefly delay troop withdrawal to allow some 3,000 African Union peacekeepers currently deployed in Somalia to take over security.
The African Union says it does not have enough troops on the ground to take over security from Ethiopia Woyanne and has requested troops from the United Nations.
Shabab at forefront of insurgency
Burhakaba lies 30 kilometers south of the provincial capital of Baidoa, where Somalia’s transitional parliament is based, and is on the road that links Baidoa to the capital Mogadishu.
Several bombings, blamed on the Shabab, have killed and wounded dozens of people in Baidoa in recent weeks. The Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist organization because of its alleged ties to al-Qaida, has been at the forefront of a two-year, Islamist-led insurgency against Ethiopia and the secular U.N.-backed government it has propped up in Somalia since late 2006.
The Islamists have regained control in most parts of southern and central Somalia in recent months. But the movement is divided between moderates and extremists, prompting concerns that if Ethiopia Woyanne pulled out of Somalia, violence among Islamist groups could further deepen the humanitarian crisis in the country.
Fighting between Ethiopian Woyanne and Somali troops and insurgents is estimated to have killed as many as 10,000 people, displaced more than 1 million and plunged 3 million others into dire poverty.
Human Rights Watch report condemns all parties involved in conflict
A new report by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch group, released on Monday, condemns all sides in the conflict for causing Somalia to descend into the worst chaos it has seen since the fall of the country’s last government in 1991.
The report’s author, Chris Albin-Lackey, tells VOA that major donor nations supporting the Ethiopian– Woyanne-backed government have never properly addressed repeated allegations of human rights abuses and war crimes committed by government and Ethiopian Woyanne troops against thousands of Somali civilians.
Albin-Lackey says in the perceived absence of justice and in the belief that the West continues to support Ethiopia Woyanne and the government unconditionally, Somalis are increasingly turning to radical Islamists, hoping the Shabab and their allies can restore law and order.
“The bottom line is that Ethiopia Woyanne, the transitional federal government, and insurgent forces have all managed to do more damage to the civilian population of Somalia than to one another,” he said. “At the same time, the international community as a whole has completely failed to intervene effectively in Somalia and, in fact, a number of key international actors, including the United States, have in some cases actually made the situation worse through some of their actions. These past two years of violence and brutality are the primary reason why the extremist groups, including al-Shabab, have gained so much power.”
The Shabab functioned as the military wing during the Islamic Courts Union’s brief six-month rule and aims to impose strict Islamic laws in Somalia.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (APA) – Over 20 millions Ethiopian muslims on Monday celebrated the 1428th Eid al-Adha Arafa colourfully here in Addis Ababa and other parts of the country.
In Addis Ababa where there is a big number of muslim community, the celebration of the day started early with prayer ceremony held at the Addis Ababa stadium and in the street in the presence of over 200,000 worshippers.
The prayer ceremony ended in solemn processions along the main streets chanting praises to Alah with great religious fervor.
Haji Umer Edris, president of the Addis Ababa Islamic Affairs Supreme Council appealed to the Muslim community to actively participate in fostering the culture of co-existence, peace and harmony and in the economic development of Ethiopia.
He also called on the Muslim community to discharge their obligatory religious duty of sharing with the needy.
The day is still being observed with various activities throughout the country.
Ethiopian Television (ETV) broadcast live the celebration ceremony from Mekka, Saudi Arabia.
There are around 25 million Ethiopian Muslims in the country, comprising about 34% of the 76 million population.
Nairobi, Kenya (HRW) – All parties in the escalating conflict in Somalia have regularly committed war crimes and other serious abuses during the past year that have contributed to the country’s humanitarian catastrophe, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch urged the United States, the European Union, and other major international actors to rethink their flawed approaches to the crisis and support efforts to ensure accountability.
The 104-page report, “So Much to Fear: War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia,” describes how the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the Ethiopian Woyanne forces that intervened in Somalia to support it and insurgent forces have committed widespread and serious violations of the laws of war. Frequent violations include indiscriminate attacks, killings, rape, use of civilians as human shields, and looting. Since early 2007, the escalating conflict has claimed thousands of civilian lives, displaced more than a million people, and driven out most of the population of Mogadishu, the capital. Increasing attacks on aid workers in the past year have severely limited relief operations and contributed to an emerging humanitarian crisis.
“The combatants in Somalia have inflicted more harm on civilians than on each other,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “There are no quick fixes in Somalia, but foreign governments need to stop adding fuel to the fire with misguided policies that empower human rights abusers.”
Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, and a UN peacekeeping operation withdrew in failure in 1995. The years since have been violent and chaotic. In December 2006, Ethiopian Woyanne military forces intervened to back Somalia’s weak TFG against a coalition of Islamic courts that had won control of Mogadishu. In the past two years, the conflict has escalated dramatically, and internationally backed peace talks have failed to make any impact on the ground.
The report draws on interviews with more than 80 witnesses and victims of abuses, who described attacks by all the warring parties in stark detail.
Each party to the conflict has indiscriminately fired on civilian neighborhoods in Mogadishu on an almost daily basis, leveling homes without warning and killing civilians in the streets. Insurgent forces have regularly carried out ambushes and roadside bombings in markets and residential areas, and launched mortars from within densely populated neighborhoods. Ethiopian Woyanne forces have reacted to insurgent attacks with indiscriminate heavy rocket and artillery fire, with devastating impact on civilians.
TFG security forces and allied militia have tortured detainees, and killed and raped civilians and looted their homes, sometimes in the context of house-to-house joint security operations with Ethiopian troops. Ethiopian Woyanne forces, who were relatively disciplined in 2007, have been more widely implicated in acts of violent criminality this year. Insurgent forces have threatened and murdered civilians they view as unsympathetic to their cause and have forcibly recruited civilians, including children, into their ranks.
The full horror of these abuses can be captured only through the stories of Somalis who have suffered through them. Human Rights Watch interviewed teenage girls raped by TFG security forces, parents whose children were cut to pieces in their own homes by Ethiopian rockets, and people shot in the streets by insurgent fighters for acts as trivial as working as a low-paid messenger for TFG offices. One young man described watching a group of Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers rape his mother and sisters in their home. “And I was sitting there helpless,” he said. “I could not help my mother or help my sisters.”
For many, the worst of it is being caught between all three sides at once. One young man was given an ultimatum by radical Islamist Al Shabaab fighters in his neighborhood to join them or face retribution. Days later, he came home from school to find that his mother had been killed and his house destroyed in an unrelated artillery bombardment.
“The world has largely ignored the horrors unfolding in Somalia, but Somali families are still left to confront violence that grows with every passing day,” Gagnon said. “Even those who try to flee find that the violent abuses follow them.”
Hundreds of thousands of Mogadishu’s poorest residents, lacking the money to travel further, have congregated in sprawling displaced persons camps along the Mogadishu-Afgooye road, but the indiscriminate fighting they fled has followed them there.
Tens of thousands of Somali refugees have also fled the country this year. Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camps are now the largest concentration of refugees anywhere in the world, with nearly 250,000 inhabitants. But the journey itself is perilous. Human Rights Watch interviewed many refugees who had been robbed, raped, or beaten by freelance militias as they fled Somalia. Kenya’s border with Somalia is closed, leaving refugees at the mercy of abusive smugglers and corrupt Kenyan police.
Hundreds of Somalis have drowned trying to cross the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, often after being forced overboard or abandoned at sea by traffickers.
The United States, the European Union, and governments in the region have taken few positive steps to address the worsening situation in Somalia, and have too often taken actions that have made it worse.
Ethiopia Woyanne is a party to the conflict, but has done nothing to ensure accountability for abuses by its soldiers. The United States, treating Somalia primarily as a battlefield in the “global war on terror,” has pursued a policy of uncritical support for transitional government and Ethiopian Woyanne actions, and the resulting lack of accountability has fueled the worst abuses. The European Commission has advocated direct support for the transitional government’s police force without insisting on any meaningful action to improve the force and combat abuses.
In recent months, the conflict has increasingly spread into neighboring regions and countries in the form of bombings and other attacks – precisely what Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s military intervention in 2006 sought to prevent. During the latter half of 2008, there have been suicide bombings in the previously more stable semi-autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland, as well as rampant piracy on the high seas, and kidnappings across the border in Kenya.
“The Somali crisis is not just a nightmare for its people, it is a regional threat and a global problem,” Gagnon said. “The world cannot afford to wait any longer to find more effective ways of addressing it.”
Human Rights Watch called for a fundamental review of policy toward Somalia and the entire Horn of Africa in Washington, where the Obama administration will have an opportunity to break with the failed policies of its predecessor, and in European capitals. It also called for the establishment of a UN-sponsored Commission of Inquiry to investigate violations of international law, map the worst abuses, and lay the groundwork for accountability.
The regime in Ethiopia has imprisoned the renowned artist Tewodros Kasahun (Teddy Afro) on the pretext of a traffic accident that is supposed to have happened some 2 years ago. The vindictive regime had filed a pile of fabricated charges against the artist over a year ago that include causing a fatal accident on a pedestrian, driving without a license and for not assisting the victim at the seen of the accident… Read more
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) – Ethiopia began inviting tourists to visit its dwindling elephant herd on Monday as part of efforts to boost income from tourism.
The Babile wildlife sanctuary near Harar, 560 km (350 miles) east of Addis Ababa, is the first in Ethiopia to offer visits specifically aimed at seeing elephants, whose numbers have been ravaged by poaching and decades of neglect.
There are around 300 in Babile, which is also home to a national symbol: the rare black-mane lion, depicted on Ethiopia’s currency.
The government has invested heavily this year in hotels, airports and other infrastructure, hoping to boost tourism earnings by 15 percent to around $200 million.
Harar was an ancient trading hub and a centre of Islamic scholarship in the Horn of Africa.
(Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Kevin Liffey)
