JOHANNESBURG (AP) – The International Criminal Court’s decision to pursue a sitting head of state on war crimes charges puts others around the world on notice, but it’s also raising questions about which leaders are being targeted.
International human rights organizations accuse Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi of crimes against humanity
African and Arab nations say they will support Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, fearing the warrant issued against him Wednesday will bring even more conflict in Darfur, where up to 300,000 people have died since 2003, and further destabilize Sudan.
And they question why only Africans have been charged since the ICC — branded “the white man’s court” by Sudan’s information ministry – began its work six years ago. A temporary court, the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, indicted Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 while he was still president of Yugoslavia.
The chairman of the 52-state African Union has accused the court of “double standards,” asking why no cases have emerged from conflicts in the Caucasus, Iraq or Gaza.
“The African states were the strongest supporters of establishing the ICC. It wouldn’t have been possible without them. But there has been a significant shift in the past year,” said Christopher Hall, senior legal adviser to Amnesty International.
Outside Africa, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo is investigating possible cases in Colombia, Georgia and Afghanistan as well as a Palestinian request for charges against Israel for its actions in Gaza.
In Africa, those considered possible targets of the court are leaders in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Chad, Ivory Coast, Rwanda and Central African Republic.
Even among the Africans, the court’s choices are questioned. Why is it prosecuting former Congolese warlord and vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba for alleged crimes his fighters committed in Central African Republic, and not the ousted Central African leader who invited Bemba’s forces?
Why not the many other Congolese warlords whose forces all are accused of gross atrocities, including those of President Joseph Kabila? And what about the leaders in Rwanda, Uganda and other African countries that sent troops to Congo?
“It’s a very uneven path,” said Reed Brody, legal counselor for Human Rights Watch. “We’re still in a situation where if you are powerful or protected by the powerful you can avoid a reckoning.”
South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said African leaders are behaving shamefully and dismissed concerns that the court’s action would impede promoting peace.
“Are they on the side of the victim or the oppressor?” Tutu asked in a column in The New York Times. “Rather than stand by those who have suffered in Darfur, African leaders have so far rallied behind the man responsible for turning that corner of Africa into a graveyard.”
Al-Bashir’s presidential adviser, Mustafa Osman Ismail, branded the world’s first permanent international court to investigate war crimes “one of the tools of the new colonization” aimed at destabilizing the sprawling oil-rich nation.
Sudan is Africa’s biggest country, covering an area the size of Western Europe and bridging the continent’s northern Muslim Arabs and southern Christian and animist Africans in a union riven with conflict since independence from Britain in 1956.
In Darfur, the war began in 2003 when rebel ethnic African groups, many of them Muslim, took up arms against the Arab-dominated government they accuse of discrimination and neglect. Up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been forced from their homes in what the United States calls a genocide.
Those who argue that amnesty is a more powerful weapon for peace, though, point to Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, who defaulted on a peace agreement after the court issued an arrest warrant against him.
In recent months, Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army is accused of killing more than 1,500 civilians in northeast Congo and driving some 100,000 from their homes.
“There is a balance between attaining justice and sustainable peace,” Uganda’s Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa said Wednesday.
While another rebel leader, Bosco Ntaganda, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, Congo chose rather to treat with him and integrate his fighters into the national army. The move appears so far to have diminished the most powerful rebel threat in eastern Congo.
Sudan has reportedly said that African nations opposed to al-Bashir’s arrest warrant would pull out of the ICC in protest, but none had done so as of Thursday.
Thirty of the court’s 108 member states are African. And every indictment it has brought acted on requests from African members â Uganda, Congo and Central African Republic. Al-Bashir’s arrest warrant is the exception, initiated by the U.N. Security Council.
That in itself shows hypocrisy, critics say, given that three of the council’s five permanent members — China, Russia and the United States – refuse to join the international court.
The precedent set by the court Wednesday could extend to former U.S. President George W. Bush, amid charges his officials were the architects of criminal detention policies that led to torture in Iraq and at Guantanamo detention center in Cuba. But that is an extremely remote prospect. The Security Council is unlikely to order that while Washington is a veto-wielding permanent member.
“The world’s justice looks with one eye,” complained Taher Nunu, spokesman for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that Israel has been battling in Gaza.”
(Michelle Faul is the AP’s chief of African news.)
BANTU, Ethiopia — This year, impoverished children in one Ethiopian village have something they’ve never known before—hope for the future.
Children attending the Bantu school, founded by Buckner International and Bright Hope, receive two meals a day, two school uniforms, daytime clothing, shoes, schoolbooks and supplies, personal hygiene materials and medical treatment.
“The people in this community earn about $11 a month,” said Bright Hope project manager Nebiyou Tesfaye. Isolated on a muddy dirt road, the community is occupied by farmers, walking barefoot with large bales of crops on their backs, and dozens of small children.
Ethiopian [puppet] President Girma WoldeGiorgis gave the land in Bantu to Buckner in 2006 to build the school for the community. But it’s much more than just a school.
“We are the ones who provide them with food, showers, soap, drinking water, clothes, shoes, vaccinations, everything,” Tesfaye said.
At the school, 200 children ages 4 to 7 learn everything from math to English in eight classrooms.
After morning classes end, all the children line up single file with their hands on each other’s shoulders to walk across the way to the dining hall. There they receive their largest meal of the day—a bowl of rice.
Café manager Fikru Gebremariam said most of the children do not have food at home.
“Food is important for the children because it builds their bodies and makes them strong,” he said.
Marta Admasu, the principal of the school, explained the community’s growing excitement since the school opened.
“We are experiencing great happiness at this time. The children have food, soap, shoes, toothbrushes, clothing. Because of this, they feel very happy.”
In addition to education, Tesfaye said, they help the community by “teaching them about sanitation and how to prevent disease and infection.”
Future plans for the school include building a house for guests and mission teams who choose to work with the children short term. They also hope to give the school “international” status, teaching American and British curricula, along with others, to promote future growth opportunities for students. The school’s ultimate goal is for every child to go to college.
“We desperately need books for the teachers and for the students,” Tesfaye said. “We need workbooks and educational books. If we want them to go to college, they need to read.”
Kyle Henderson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Athens, is part of the Buckner E-Team, a group of churches that helped support construction of the new school project and attended the inauguration in February.
Two years ago, he stood on an empty field with a group of pastors and the president of Ethiopia in the same location where a thriving school and community center resides today.
“I got to stand in a completed school with hundreds of children being reached,” Henderson said. “They recited English letters, numbers and animals. In just a few months, these kids have moved from dirt floors and no teaching aids to qualified teachers, in excellent facilities, and a new future.”
LAWRENCEVILLE – Detectives are searching for a fourth suspect, known on the streets as “Money Mark,” in the murder of Lilburn convenience store owner Tedla Lemma, an immigrant from Ethiopia.
Loran Zemedu Araya, suspect in the killing of Tedla Lemma
Another suspect in the killing, Loran Zemedu Araya, of Atlanta (also an Ethiopian native), recently told investigators of the unidentified man’s involvement while implicating another man — Marshae Brooks — in the crime, a detective testified in Brooks’ probable cause hearing Friday.
Brooks, of Riverdale, tied up the disabled man in his bedroom while two other men stole big-screen televisions and other valuables from Lemma’s upscale Kenion Forest Drive home, Gwinnett police Det. G. Lorenzo said Araya told a panel of investigators and attorneys last month.
Lemma was hog-tied, beaten and gagged so tightly he suffocated, police have said.
A Gwinnett Magistrate Court judge forwarded a single count of murder against Brooks to Superior Court for prosecution. He remains at the Gwinnett County Jail.
Lorenzo said phone company records indicate Brooks’ cell phone was used in the vicinity of Lemma’s home March 25 last year, the day he died.
Araya and Brooks join a third alleged accomplice – Quincy Jackson, of Riverdale – who, like Araya, has been in custody since July. Brooks and Jackson were roommates, the detective said.
Brooks first told investigators he’d never set foot in Gwinnett County, but later changed his story to say he was in the home but did not hurt or bind Lemma, said Lorenzo. He claimed he was in the neighborhood visiting model homes for “decorating tips.”
After switching his story, “(Brooks) said at one point he even tried to untie (the victim),” the detective said. Brooks told police didn’t call 911 because he feared he would be blamed.
Police say Araya, a former Lilburn resident, knew most of the victims. Her parents once sold a package store to Lemma’s family.
At the time of his death, Lemma, 51, a well-heeled convenience store owner from Ethiopia, was paralyzed from a robbery when he was shot in the head several years ago.
Brooks had long been a suspect in the murder, but detectives lacked evidence to arrest him, Lorenzo said.
Araya told investigators she pulled a vehicle into Lemma’s garage and waited while the three men ransacked the home. She said Brooks later admitted to her he bound and gagged Lemma, the detective said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: IMF and the World Bank are financiers of genocidal regimes such as the one in Ethiopia. Their blood money is fueling many of the civil wars in Africa. They claim that Ethiopia’s economy is the fastest growing in Africa while 15 million Ethiopians are facing starvation and less than 2 percent of the population has access to electricity.
By Yonas Abiye | Daily Monitor
Addis Ababa — Ethiopia’s economic growth could slow to 6 percent in 2009 as the world slowdown is likely to hit its coffee export, tourism, and transportation the country’s leading foreign exchange earners, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday.
This is seen to largely contradict with the 12.8 percent economic growth maintained by the government.
Last month, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said he saw only a 0.6 percent slide from the 12.8 percent economic growth last year owing to the world economic downturn, and said that was not to be considered significant compared to the economic achievements the country is registering, “in the face of the global financial crisis” “It is projected that the global crisis will continue to prevail for the next two or three years, on our side there is a hope that our economy will continue to grow at the same pace,” Meles told a press conference at his office.
But what did the IMF say on Wednesday?
The IMF said the country is one of the vulnerable countries to the unfolding crisis and it is expected to register only about 6% economic growth.
It said Ethiopia is in fact among the poorest the global financial crisis will weigh heavily on and it called for the international community to act “urgently” and “generously” to avoid devastating effects.
Speaking during a round table with the media and stake holders IMF Country Representative Sukhwinder Singh admitted the country was one of the fastest growing non-oil producing countries in Africa.
All the same, the country was no exception and will certainly be affected by the global downturn which is playing its ugly faces in all countries of the world-rich and poor, he said.
He said the impact on Ethiopia will be as bad as a six percent slash from what it managed to register last year.
The decline in export demand of coffee and its decreased price by 19%, the depreciation of effective foreign exchange rates by 30% last year, less tourism and revenue from airway transport are cited as the major factors behind the country’s poor economic performance this year.
85% of exports are going to industrial and emerging market countries who are already suffering major import declines.
He, however, indicated that the country could grasp positive advantage with the lower oil and fertilizer price at the global market.
He noted that in the middle of the year, USD 220 million Ethiopia incurred for importing oil has now gone down to USD 75 million.
He highlighted that, due to the shock induced by global crisis, economic growth projection in pre-crisis and at present is greatly varies.
The IMF forecasted the growth in SSA to be 5% a little bit earlier but it now expects only 3%, Sukhwinder said.
Current account balance in Ethiopia as elsewhere in SSA is worsening and it is currently -5.4% (while it is -2.6% in SSA) with low reserve level but risks are mounting, he said.
“We need 25 billion dollar concessional financing for Ethiopia and SSA as a whole who are most affected countries” he said.
He further indicated that Ethiopia has the highest inflation rate in Africa outside Zimbabwe (26%) and much weaker in fiscal reservation. The average in SSA is 2%.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Srauss-Kahn on Tuesday heralded that after first striking the advanced economies and then emerging markets, a third wave of the global financial crisis has begun to hit the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries, threatening to undermine recent economic gains and to create a humanitarian crisis He also called on the international community to act urgently and generously to avoid the potentially devastating effects of the global financial crisis on the most vulnerable countries. Similarly, the report by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that the world’s poorest countries including Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, Rwanda and Bangladesh are unable to insulate their citizens from the crisis, with an estimated 43 out of 48 low-income countries incapable of providing a pro-poor government stimulus According to UNESCO, reduced growth in 2009 will affect the 390 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living in extreme poverty and a loss of income around USD 18 billion (USD 46 per person).
ILO last month on its part announced that Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the three East African countries that have reaped from the Western economic growth, are suffering from the reduction of prices in the West as supermarket chains take unilateral commodity price cuts.
Saudi Arabia has announced the arrival of the first food crop harvested in Saudi-owned farms abroad, in a sign that the kingdom is moving faster than expected to outsource agricultural production.
Rice, harvested in famine-hit Ethiopia by a group of Saudi investors, was presented to King Abdullah recently and comes as other countries are still in the early stages of investing in overseas farms.
Maso Aliyi mourns his dead child, Shibre Aliyi, at his home in the village of Kararo in Ethiopia. Shibre had spent almost a month at a therapeutic feeding center. A lack of rain in the main February to April wet season has left at least 75,000 Ethiopian children under age 5 at risk from malnutrition, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which also asserts that some eight million people need urgent food relief and another 4.6 million need emergency assistance (Oct. 2008)
The Ethiopian origin is likely to raise concerns about the trend to outsource food production to poor African countries, some of which suffer from chronic hunger.
In the past year the United Nations World Food Programme has helped to feed 11m people in Ethiopia, which has suffered crop failures and food distribution problems.
Some analysts argue that foreign investment in agriculture, even if earmarked for export, could ultimately help poor countries, providing them with employment, infrastructure, access to agricultural technology and export tax revenues.
However, western agriculture officials familiar with the Saudi plans say they are sceptical that the kingdom’s investment in food production overseas will help poor countries such as Ethiopia.
Riyadh has also provided the most detailed account to date of food-security plans known as the “King Abdullah initiative for Saudi agricultural investment abroad”.
Since the oil-rich kingdom announced last summer that it planned to grow “strategic food commodities” overseas and phase out the water-intensive production of domestic cereals, few details had emerged.
But in a note posted on its foreign affairs website, Riyadh has disclosed that it will “provide credit facilities to Saudi investors in agriculture abroad”, with the focus on “countries with promising agricultural resources and having encouraging government”. It did not say how much money it would make available in credits.
Hail Agricultural Development, a Saudi company, said last month that it would invest in agricultural production in Sudan, with the government providing 60 per cent of the funding.
The Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank said this week that it was looking at investments to support agriculture, including the production of rice to be exported back to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi officials have so far visited Turkey, Ukraine, Egypt, Sudan, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brazil, South Africa and Ethiopia, while delegations from other countries, including Australia, have visited Riyadh to discuss possible investments.
The investments “should be long-term through ownership or long-term contracts”, and Riyadh expects the “liberty of selecting the crops”.
The pursuit of foreign farm investments is the clearest sign of how last year’s price spikes in commodities such as rice, wheat and corn, and the global food crisis that ensued, are reshaping the politics of agriculture.
The move is not only a response to high prices, but also to the export restrictions imposed by leading providers of commodities – including India, Russia, Argentina and Vietnam. These exporters banned overseas sales to keep their local markets well-supplied and some of the restrictions remain in force.
After unblocking access for the past week to web sites that are deemed critical, Meles Zenawi’s dictatorial regime in Ethiopia has made them inaccessible again starting yesterday.
Ethiopian Review associates in Addis Ababa confirmed today that all of the previously blocked web sites once again cannot be opened using the Internet service provided by the state-run Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC).
The U.S.-financed regime of Tigrean People Liberation Front ({www:Woyanne}) has made it illegal for private companies to provide Internet services in Ethiopia.
The government-owned telecom monopoly, ETC, is run by a former Woyanne intelligence officer named DebreTsion GebreMichael whose primary responsibility is to restrict access to information technology to as many people as possible. As a result, currently, there are only 30,000 Internet subscribers in Ethiopia out of 80 million people. Ethiopia has the least developed Information Technology infrastructure in the world, which is done intentionally by the vampire Woaynne regime.
BANTU, Ethiopia — This year, impoverished children in one Ethiopian village have something they’ve never known before—hope for the future.
By Yonas Abiye | Daily Monitor
After unblocking access for the past week to web sites that are deemed critical, Meles Zenawi’s dictatorial regime in Ethiopia has made them inaccessible again starting yesterday.