Articles fulminating against Hailu Shawel’s signing of the code of conduct proliferate on Ethiopian websites. For these articles, the unilateral and hasty agreement with Meles while other opposition groups, such as Medrek, are still in contention about some important issues, constitutes nothing less than betrayal on Hailu’s part. This act of sabotage suggests, according to some articles, a prior agreement with the Meles regime promising Hailu a post in the future government in exchange for his contribution in dividing and weakening the opposition.
I am not yet ready to endorse this kind of analysis, though I admit that the agreement looks fishy indeed. I also wonder why those who used to oppose Hailu’s leadership of the AEUO are surprised at the “betrayal”: not only they should have expected his reversal, but also they should have seen it as a blessing in disguise finally precipitating his discredit among his own followers. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the agreement rests on a common interest: as it stands, it keeps Birtukan in jail to the delight of the EPRDF, Hailu, and his cronies; it also handicaps the rising multinational opposition known as Medrek.
Rather than adding to the general consternation, I would like to express my surprise at the ferocity of the criticisms, as it seems to reveal an expectation that I thought people had put behind them once and for all. To give a huge importance to negotiations with Meles strikes me as a naïve attitude. If anything, the reversal of the 2005 elections, the violent crackdown of protesters, and the imprisonment of the leaders of Kinjit have underscored the futility of reaching agreement with the present regime. So long as an autonomous power able to enforce mutually agreed documents is not in place, negotiations mean nothing. Those who blame Hailu Shawel seem to say that a fair and just election is possible in Ethiopia provided that the correct agreement is reached. In other words, it is hoped that tough negotiations will force Meles to respect the agreement. Is there an Ethiopian of sane mind really ready to give Meles such a vote of confidence?
The only broker that could have forced Meles to stick to the agreement is the international community. That is why some commentators argue that the signing of the code of conduct removed the possibility of obtaining more concessions in the direction of fair election from Meles through the pressure of the international community, not to mention the fact that said agreement with a major opposition group provides him with some “democratic” respectability.
I find the argument weak. The 2005 elections have taught us that the international community is unwilling to accompany its verbal condemnations with concrete punitive measures. Meles know this more than anybody else, especially now that the American administration seems again reluctant to add deeds to words. As to the democratic appearance that Meles might put on, I don’t think that Western governments are so gullible that they will fail to see that the agreement is yet another maneuver to divide and cripple the opposition.
Does this mean that the best option is not to participate in elections that we know are but fake? Such a conclusion would miss that elections have their own dynamics that even the most repressive regimes cannot totally control. They create events that lead to unforeseen outcomes, as witnessed by the 2005 elections and the recent Iranian elections. Moreover, fake elections generate deep frustrations that compel people to look for alternative forms of expression, perhaps even to show their discontent through non-cooperative forms of resistance, such as strikes and demonstrations.
My position is thus the following: let us continue to play the game of elections, but without creating the illusion that something decisive that would have brought victory was jeopardized by Hailu’s “betrayal.” Such an implication entertains the illusory hope that fair elections are possible under the TPLF. Instead, the elections should serve us to emphasize the extent to which the TPLF government does not even respect its own constitution. For, negotiations would have been unnecessary if the constitution had any force of law. Repeated exposures of the regime’s inconsistencies can convince people to try alternative means so as to have their voice respected.
One thing is clear: everything depends on the goal that each opposition party sets to itself. If an opposition party targets the toppling of the TPLF, then I understand that it sees negotiations as a means of creating the optimal condition for its success. Unfortunately, such a goal is unrealistic: assuming that victory is still possible, it will only lead to a repeat of the 2005 crackdown. By contrast, if an opposition party pursues the modest goals of increasing its seats in the parliament and becoming an opposing partner of the government rather than an expeller standing outside it, I understand that such a party sees negotiations with the TPLF from a different angle. This political option looks more realistic: it is based on a long-term strategy of being part of the government that it means to influence while strengthening the party and removing insecurity from those who now control power in the case of a loss of majority in the distant future.
I am not suggesting that Hailu Shawel has opted for the long-term strategy for the simple reason that I have no information concerning his motives. I raise the issue because I want us to be clear about our expectations. Put otherwise, when opposition parties decide to participate in elections, they must tell us clearly what their objectives are. If, under the present conditions, their main objective is to oust the TPLF government by winning the majority of votes, I tell them that they are obviously using the wrong method, and so should adjust the means to the end by, for instance, embracing armed struggle. Hence my question to those who castigate Hailu Shawel: What do you expect from the coming elections?
The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), an Ethiopian rebel group that is operating in eastern Ethiopia, is reporting more Woyanne regime casualties in a renewed offensive that took place since November 10. The following is a military communique:
Military operations related to the 10 November 2009 offensive have concluded in Ogaden. In total, 6 military vehicles belonging to the regime have been destroyed thus far by ONLF forces. The death toll from all fronts now stands at 985 of Woyanne regime troops killed, including 12 officers, with a large number wounded.
Military hardware was captured on all fronts of the offensive, including small arms, ammunition, communications equipment and other materials of intelligence value.
By all measures, the 10 November offensive has resulted in a resounding defeat for Meles Zenawi’s regime where our ONLF deployed.
Reliable sources confirm that the regime is now planning a counter-offensive and intends to target civilians in particular. The regime plans to resettle civilians by force and particularly target
communities near the active fronts of the 10 November offensive.
Orders have also been issued by the regime to deny international food aid to large areas of Ogaden. This denial of international food aid to the civilian population for political reasons and the forceful planned resettlement of the people into what could lead to modern day concentration camps is unacceptable and clearly a war crime.
Donor nations bear a responsibility to hold the regime accountable for their humanitarian assistance which is being used to subjugate rather than support the civilian population of Ogaden.
The regime continues to deny these actions but is clearly fearful of independent media coming to Ogaden to see for themselves the resounding victory of ONLF forces during the 10 November offensive.
The ONLF welcomes all independent individual journalists and international media organizations who wish to come to Ogaden and report on events here.
ONLF challenge the regime to allow independent media into Ogaden if it has nothing to hide from the international community.
WASHINGTON DC (VOA Editorial) — The United States is committed to helping people in need all over the world, and it takes this mission very seriously. With billions of dollars spent on humanitarian, economic and other forms of assistance every year, the U.S. wants to be sure that the aid is properly and effectively distributed. So it is that U.S. officials are concerned about recent reports that the Ethiopian government may be politicizing humanitarian assistance ahead of next year’s national elections.
Amid wide-spread food shortages caused by a long-running drought across much of East Africa, Ethiopia receives considerable aid from the U.S. and other nations. It is estimated that more than 6 million of the country’s 80 million people rely on aid to survive, with another 7 million relying heavily on on the Productive Safety Net Program, a food-for-work program administered by the government and supported by foreign assistance.
A spokesman for the major opposition political coalition, the Forum for Democratic Dialogue, recently complained that the government was allowing only ruling party members to take part in the Productive Safety Net Program. To eat, he said, desperate people are forced to join the ruling party. A top government spokesman, however, flatly denies the charge.
Though unproven, the allegations echo a similar charge by the opposition that in 2005 officials in Oromiya denied food aid from international donors to residents of some communities that had voted for opposition candidates in elections that year.
The U.S. Government is aware of the recent complaints. All U.S. government humanitarian assistance agencies have monitoring systems in place to prevent or expose such activity which we are continually reviewing and working to improve. Discussions are also taking place with nongovernmental partners to ensure full compliance with the U.S. strict monitoring standards. USAID personnel in Ethiopia are increasing field visits to observe distribution dynamics with specific attention to these allegations.
The U.S. is committed to the people of Ethiopia and ensuring that its humanitarian aid does reach those most in need.
(The McGill Report) — Okwa Omot is sleeping safely in a warm bed at his home in Washington, D.C. this week. That is something of a miracle considering that only a week ago –- and for 107 days before that -– he was sleeping on freezing cold concrete floors in Ethiopian prisons, accused of treason and threatened with execution.
The 32-year-old hotel housekeeper and U.S. citizen had traveled to Ethiopia in July to visit family members he hadn’t seen for nine years.
Instead, he was arrested for inciting revolution and shut away in prison.
He was released last Tuesday after friends in Minnesota and U.S. Embassy officials in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, worked for weeks to convince Ethiopian authorities that Omot posed no threat to their government.
The prison system of Ethiopia is one of the world’s great, dark secrets.
The Ethiopian government denies that systematic human rights abuses occur there, even as , with support from the U.S. State Department, claim that Ethiopia runs one of the most brutal penal systems on earth – a system that is a linchpin in a dictatorship that rules Ethiopia through raw fear under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Omot’s experience supports that bleak view of Ethiopia’s prisons, and the story of his three-month ordeal offers a rare inside glimpse into that world.
Ethnic Cleansing
On July 26, Omot was arrested near the village of Dimma, Ethiopia, by nine Ethiopian police who grabbed him under a tree where he was resting.
“We heard you were coming,” the police told him. “We know that in America you plot against Ethiopia, but we have our supporters in America too, and they told us to expect you.”
Omot is a member of the Anuak tribe, whose indigenous territory straddles southeast Sudan and western Ethiopia. Since 1991, when the present Ethiopian regime took power, the Anuak have been the target of intense ethnic cleansing by the Ethiopian government according to Human Rights Watch and other groups.
Omot fled that ethnic cleansing in 1992, spending three years in refugee camps in Kenya before settling in the U.S. in 1995. He became a U.S. citizen last year.
Never politically active, Omot raised suspicions on his recent trip by entering Ethiopia not through airport customs in Addis Ababa, but rather by the traditional Anuak way, which is walking across the border from an Anuak village in Sudan, to the Ethiopian Anuak village of Dimma.
Old-Timers
Omot feared for his life every moment in prison.
‘“You will die like a dog now there is no one to defend you,”’ Omot recalls his jailers in Dimma taunting him. “They said, ‘In America, black people are treated like slaves and there are no white people who will come from America to save your life.’ I told them, ‘Did you see that in America we now have a black president?’ They said ‘Shut up!’”
After five days in Dimma, Omot was moved to a bigger prison in the town of Gambella, the capital of the western state of the same name, and the heart of the Anuak’s indigenous homeland.
The Gambella prison has for many years housed hundreds of Anuak men accused of plotting against Ethiopia.
Although Omot was not able to count the number of prisoners himself, old-timers in the prison told him there were 475 prisoners being held there, of whom only 20 or so were not Anuak.
“One night a group of soldiers came to me and said ‘We are going to teach you something,’” Omot recalls. “They blindfolded me and shoved me into a pickup truck. When they took off my blindfold they pushed me to the ground and I was surrounded by dead bodies. They were mostly skeletons but with pieces of clothing still stuck on.
“The soldiers told me, ‘Unless you confess you will look like those bodies. You will die just like they did. We will kill you right now.’”
Independent Reports
Instead of collapsing, Omot became calm.
“‘A man can never live to 200 years,’” Omot told his captors. “‘Life comes to an end for everyone. I have nothing to tell you. If you want to kill me, kill me.’ They put the blindfold back on and drove me back to the prison.”
Another day in Gambella, Omot was snatched from his cell and taken to the office of Omot Olom, the governor of the region.
Olom is deeply feared among the Anuak as a planner of one of the worst massacres ever carried out against their tribe, on Dec. 13, 2003, when uniformed Ethiopian soldiers moving door to door executed some 425 Anuak men and boys in Gambella on a single day.
The fact of the massacre, and Olom’s involvement in it, have been corroborated by independent reports including a 2004 report by Genocide Watch, and a 2005 report by Human Rights Watch connecting Olom to “crimes against humanity” committed against the Anuak.
Now meeting Olom face-to-face, Omot again feared for his life.
“He called me an American terrorist,” Omot said. “He said, ‘Omot, we know your history. You killed Ethiopian people before you left to live in America, and you have been sending money from America to kill Ethiopians. And now you are coming back to support terrorists living in Gambella. We are either going to kill you or destroy your passport.’”
Maekelawi Prison
A ray of hope appeared for Omot when a consular official from the U.S. embassy, who had been alerted to Omot’s arrest by Anuak friends living in Minnesota, flew from Addis Ababa to visit him in the Gambella prison.
That visit saved his life, Omot said. Thanks to the embassy’s intervention, he was transferred to the Maekelawi federal prison in Addis Ababa, where U.S. embassy officials were able to visit him more often.
But his trials were not yet over, as Maekelawi is an infamous dungeon of horrors.
Tales of torture, extrajudicial execution, solitary confinement in shackles, and brutal conditions at Maekelawi are legion in Ethiopia.
Tens of thousands of street protesters, journalists, and opposition politicians over the years have spent long stretches in Maekelawi – sometimes never leaving.
Lights Off
At Maekelawi, Omot was thrown into a dark basement cell, which he shared with another inmate.
“It was cold as a refrigerator,” Omot said. “I thought I was going to die from the cold. I had one thin blanket but I needed much more to stay warm.”
In his 17 days underground, the dim overhead lights mysteriously went off on four different occasions, after which each time he heard shuffling sounds in the darkness.
His cellmate told him that when a person died in prison, the lights were turned off while the body was picked up and taken away.
Michael Gonzales, a U.S. embassy spokesman in Addis Ababa, confirmed that Omot is a U.S. citizen and that a consular official in Addis Ababa met with him in Gambella and the Maekelawi prison in Addis, to win his release last week. Senior U.S. embassy officials also contacted Ethiopian officials on Omot’s behalf, Gonzales said.
Apee Jobi, an Anuak American who lives in Brooklyn Park, MN first alerted the U.S. embassy in Ethiopia about Omot’s arrest in early August, and worked with embassy officials towards his release.
Jobi said Omot’s arrest and imprisonment was standard operating procedure today in Ethiopia, as part of the system of fear that supports the regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Many ethnic groups in Ethiopia are suppressed using these tactics, Jobi said.
“From the point of view of the government, loyalty means innocence,” Jobi said. “But if you are a stranger, you are guilty. But it doesn’t mean you have committed a crime.”
The Beta Israeli Sigd festival falls on the 29th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan. It is the 50th day, starting with Yom Kippur (analogous to counting 50 days from Pesach to Shavuos), and is a festival unique to the Beta Israel community.
For their forebears in Ethiopia, the Sigd was a religious holiday renewing their covenant with God and expressing longing for Zion. But for many among the thousands marking it in Jerusalem on Monday, the festival was more of a day of ethnic pride.
“The sigd is very empowering,” said Aviva Nagosa, 32. “It is the only thing left that joins us all together.”
While in Ethiopia, the Sigd highlighted the uniqueness of the Beta Yisrael — the ancient Jewish community — amongst their Ethiopian neighbours, today it defines them as a distinguished group among other Israeli Jews.
The government last year recognised Sigd as an official Israeli holiday, meaning no one gets penalised for taking time off work to attend. And indeed the buses came from all over Israel.
As white turbaned holy men, or kessim, holding up colourful umbrellas, recited prayers in the ancient Ge’ez language, Natan Biadglin, a 25-year-old Ethiopian youth counsellor from Haifa, said that “Ninety-five per cent of people here do not understand Ge’ez.”
Still, the prayers are significant as a part of the community’s heritage.
“Young people need to know where they come from. This strengthens them and helps them because Israelis do not accept them so much.”
White-robed women prostrated themselves at key points of the prayers and a kes offered blessings — this time in Amharic — for peace, livelihood and “that god will hear our prayers”.
Soldiers given the day off strained to take pictures of the holy men with their cellphones and cameras.
Despite some gains, Ethiopian Jews remain the poorest segment of Israel’s Jewish population and are at times stereotyped as a social burden. The sense of not being accepted by other Israelis was accentuated in September when religious schools in Petah Tikva refused to accept Ethiopian children.
“Even if they do not accept us at work or in school, we are here,” Shlomo Mola, an MK from the Kadima party, told the gathering. “We do not need a kosher certificate from anyone.”
Some in the crowd walked up to the kessim and gave them money, fulfilling vows they made during last year’s Sigd to donate money if their prayers came true. “Today I made a vow for next year,” said Tzahi Ezra, 36. “My mother is sick and if she becomes healthy, I will bring her here.”
The word Sigd is from the semitic language Amharic for prostration and the root letters s-g-d are the same as in Mesgid (etymologically related to Masjid in another semitic tongue – Arabic), one of the two Ethiopian Jewish terms for synagogue. During the celebration, members of the community fast, recite Psalms, and gather in Jerusalem where Kessim read from the Orit. The ritual is followed by the breaking of the fast, dancing, and general revelry. In February 2008 MK Uri Ariel submitted legislation to the Knesset in order to establish Sigd as an Israeli national holiday, [2] and in July 2008 the Knesset officially “decided to formally add the Ethiopian Sigd holiday to the list of State holidays.”
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — The state-controlled news service, WIC, reports that a former general manager of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and two other individuals received stiff prison sentence for corruption.
(WIC) – The Federal High Court sentenced three corrupt offenders on November 16 and 17 to rigorous imprisonment ranging from 5-9 years and ordered them to pay from 1, 000-15,000 birr in fine.
According to a press release the Federal Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (FEACC) sent to WIC, the court found Tibebu Robi, former General Manager of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia at the China-Africa Avenue Branch guilty of misappropriating 400, 000 birr and 1,000 USD, which went missing.
The Court, therefore, sentenced him to nine years of rigorous imprisonment and fined him 15,000 birr on 16 November 2009.
Similarly, Aklilu Alemayehu, former Head of the Customers Service Department with the same Branch, was found guilty of being part of the above-mentioned crime and was, therefore, given eight years of rigorous imprisonment. He was also fined 10, 000 birr.
In a related development, the Court found Genet Tadesse, former Employee of Kebelle 07/14 was found guilty of embezzling 18,514 birr. As a result, it sentenced her to five years of rigorous imprisonment and fined her 1,000 birr. FEACC filed the charges in 2008.
(The McGill Report) — Okwa Omot is sleeping safely in a warm bed at his home in Washington, D.C. this week. That is something of a miracle considering that only a week ago –- and for 107 days before that -– he was sleeping on freezing cold concrete floors in Ethiopian prisons, accused of treason and threatened with execution.
The Beta Israeli Sigd festival falls on the 29th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan. It is the 50th day, starting with Yom Kippur (analogous to counting 50 days from Pesach to Shavuos), and is a festival unique to the Beta Israel community.