In 2011 Ethiopian Review, the longest running independent Ethiopian journal, celebrates its 20th year in service. It is a milestone period in the journal’s history and a special occasion for those of us who have labored hard to keep it going. As the editor-in-chief, in deciding who to select as Ethiopian Review’s Person of the Year, this time I have decided to look at our own accomplishments and recognize those who have been there through thick and thin over the years. While there are many individuals — too many to list here — who have been providing valuable support to Ethiopian Review, for their enduring contribution special recognition goes to: (In alphabetical order)
Wzr. Meseret Agonafer, who is a fountain of inspiration and moral support, as well an authentic example of a genuine friend.
Ato Elias Wondimu, who once served as the managing editor and after launching his own publishing house, Tsehai Publishers, continued to consult on the editorial direction of the journal.
There is another person who deserves even greater appreciation, for without his consistent moral support and advise there would not have been Ethiopian Review. He is my own father Kifle Seifu.
My father is currently in the US. I, along with my sister and brothers, have brought him and our mother here a few months ago after witnessing Woyanne going after the families of its opponents. He had already survived an attack about 15 years ago by Woyanne gunmen who sprayed his house in Addis Ababa with machine gun bullets. He returned fire taking down (wounding) one of the shooters. It was nothing short of a miracle that he survived the attack. He spent 3 months in jail and was released with the help of the American charge d’affairs in Addis Ababa and Ted Dagne at the U.S Congressional Service.
After he was released, for the past 15 years, Woyanne made sure that my father could not do any business in Ethiopia. Every venture he tried was blocked. After a long legal battle, about 4 years ago, three different courts, including the supreme court of Ethiopia ruled that properties (worth over 63 million birr) that Derg confiscated from my father returned. Woyanne refused to obey the court order and told my father that his properties would be returned under one condition: That he must stop his son from publishing critical opinions and reports about the ruling junta on Ethiopian Review. My father’s answer was unequivocal no. I’m proud of him for that to no end.
I don’t know any one who has worked so hard through out his life as my father did. One time when he was working as a contractor on the Ethiopian Air Force base in Debre Zeit he collapsed due to sleep deprivation. It was normal for him to disappear for several months at a time exploring mines in some of the remotest parts of Ethiopia.
Kifle Seifu, 2010
He is now 84 years old and after all the hard work through out his life he doesn’t have a penny in the bank. During the Derg era its prime minister FikreSelassie Wogderes, and security chief Tesfaye WoldeSelassie confiscated (robbed) most of his properties. The Woyanne junta that replaced the Derg refused to return his properties ignoring court orders, and made sure that he doesn’t earn a living in Ethiopia.
There are countless others who have lost much more than properties in the hands of the two barbaric regimes. They have taken away the lives of so many innocent Ethiopians. I am lucky and grateful to have my father still alive.
The two vampire regimes, Derg and Woyanne, have left my father penniless. But he has one thing that is more precious and that no one could take away from him — honor.
With his skills, experience and hard work, my father could have been one of the wealthiest individuals in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, in a country where the president is a pig, the prime minister is a mass murderer and the patriarch is a thief, it is extremely difficult for a person of honor to succeed and thrive.
I’m profoundly blessed to have a father like Kifle Seifu and in this special milestone year for the journal it is my honor to choose him as Ethiopian Review’s 2010 Person of the year.
Ethiopians in Los Angeles hold a fundraiser to assist Ethiopian boxing legend Seifu Makonnen who represented Ethiopia at the Olympics. Seifu, who is popularly knows as Tibo, is suffering from a kidney disease and is currently waiting for a transplant. The Los Angels Times has the following report:
By Kate Linthicum
Nearly every month in Los Angeles, Ethiopians host a benefit [to support fellow countrymen]. Earlier this year, at events for two compatriots with cancer, Abebe’s group raised more than $55,000.
It’s not as if they have time or money to spare. Many Ethiopians here work as taxicab drivers or parking attendants, and most send large remittances to relatives back home. But they give because they know that if ever they need help, they will get it. They give because this is a community that takes care of its own.
You can see it at the home of a family that has just lost a loved one, where friends arrive for days of mourning, each with food, drinks or an envelope of money. You can see it at the hospital, where it’s not uncommon for an Ethiopian patient to receive 300 visitors a day.
It’s a way of life they learned at home, and it helps keeps them connected here.
Seeking asylum
Seifu Mekonnen was once one of the most feared boxers in East Africa. A heavyweight with a fierce punch, he was called Tibo, Amharic for “knockout.”
Ethiopian boxer Seifu Mekonnen
He has a clutch of gold medals from various victories across the world and a tattoo on his right shoulder of five interlocked rings — a reminder of when he represented Ethiopia at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich.
But he hit his peak just as a hard-line military junta swept into power in his country, after the 1974 ousting of Emperor Haile Selassie I.
The communist regime put him in jail for several months. Later he was sent to train in Cuba. On a layover in Montreal on the way back to Ethiopia, he slipped a letter to airport police seeking political asylum.
He moved to Los Angeles with refugee status in 1978 and gave up boxing for another fight.
When Makonnen arrived in L.A., there were no Ethiopian restaurants or churches.
“Back then, everybody was on his own,” he said.
Makonnen helped found St. Mary’s Ethiopian Apostolic Church on Compton Avenue, the nation’s first Ethiopian church. While living in Washington, D.C., briefly, he opened a health center where Ethiopian athletes could train and started a weekly radio program about Ethiopian sports.
He helped build the community that now is helping him.
Together to help
The fundraiser-planning dinners have the feel of school board meetings. Decisions are made by consensus. Each person takes notes. One woman jots down the minutes, which are later typed up and sent out on the group’s listserv.
After three months of twice-monthly get-togethers, the event hall has been rented and the musicians’ travel arranged. But there is still much to be done. The invitations must be printed and the dinner menu chosen. Someone needs to make the rounds of all the Ethiopian-owned businesses to sell ad space in the February gala’s program.
The volunteers have embraced the American “do-it-yourself” ethic, with an Ethiopian flavor. Those who are hungry order food, and all eat from the same plate. They never raise their voices during two hours of sorting out event details. The meetings get heated only at the end, when the bill comes and they argue over who gets to pay it.
Beloved figure
Abebe first met Makonnen when he moved to L.A. in 1983. The former boxer was driving a taxi then, and he taught the newcomer from Addis Ababa how to find his way across a vast, unfamiliar metropolis.
Makonnen was diagnosed with diabetes in the 1980s.
The man who once skipped deftly in the boxing ring now steps slowly. He spends three days a week at a clinic undergoing dialysis. The treatments leave him exhausted and unable to work.
When Abebe heard about the fundraiser for his old mentor, he happily agreed to help. He drives to the Little Ethiopia meeting from Inglewood, where he lives with his wife and two children. Others come from the San Fernando Valley and Orange County.
“A lot of people love him and know him,” Abebe said of Makonnen, who has two grown children. “He needs another chance to live.”
When Makonnen heard about the gala, he was happy but not surprised.
“In Ethiopia, there is no ‘individual,’ ” he said. “You help people, and they’ll do good for you.”
A new political party named Oromo People National Unity and Liberation Movement has been formed and is currently introducing its political program to the public. The new party strives to make Ethiopia a country where the rights of the Oromo people are respected, according to Colonel Abebe Geresu, an executive committee member. Col. Abebe, who now resides in Asmara, is one of the high ranking officers who defected from the Woyanne regime along with General Kemal Gelchu and several others. Click here to read OPNULM’s political program.
Some Eritrean friends are asking me why is it necessary for Ethiopian Review to start a public discussion on concerns regarding the disappearance of Ethiopian patriots in Eritrea and problems facing Ethiopian opposition groups. They are urging me to work behind the scene to find solutions. That is also my preference. For over a year, my colleagues and I were engaged in intense behind the scene discussions with Eritrean authorities regarding Ethiopian opposition groups inside Eritrea, and particularly the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF). As a strong advocate of cooperation between the Eritrean government and Ethiopian opposition groups, I would not want to jeopardize the progress that has been made in the past couple of years despite enormous difficulties. However, a corrupt mid-ranking Eritrean official named Col. Fitsum, who is assigned to advise Ethiopian opposition groups, has ran amok and it seems the Eritrean government is unwilling to control him. The rogue colonel has been trying to block the effort to revamp EPPF — an organization that has not moved an inch in its 10 years existence — and when he noticed that he is losing ground, he has launched a disinformation campaign using the Asmara-based EPPF radio and web site. He has also tightened his grip on EPPF more than ever. A few months ago, I and several others had finally decided that locking horn with a rogue, albeit powerful Eritrean intelligence officer in Eritrean territory is not worth it and decided to take a different route. This move seemed to have threatened the colonel even more and he started to take desperate actions, including the arrest of those who are thought to be involved in the new movement. He has also called an urgent meeting and ordered the dismissal of several EPPF central council members, including those who had already withdrawn themselves.
We will take a more in-depth look at EPPF another time. Here, I will try to illustrate that EPPF is not the only organization that is facing difficulties in Eritrea. In Ginbot 7’s case, for example, Col. Fitsum has dispersed most of the soldiers who had defected from the ANDM wing of Woyanne and arrived in Eritrea in early 2009 to join the new movement by turning them against each other. He forced the few who remained in Eritrea to create a new group named Amhara Democratic Force Movement so that they would not join Ginbot 7. With the exception of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), all the other Ethiopian groups are in the same boat. The only reason ONLF is facing little or no problem in Eritrea is that Col. Fitsum cannot get involved in their affairs. As a result, ONLF is the only opposition group that has been able to carry out serious military actions against Woyanne.
One of the Ethiopian armed resistance groups that seems to be by far the strongest is the Tigray People’s Democratic Movement (TPDM). I visited one of the TPDM shelters in Oct. 2009, and I was impressed by the sheer number of its troops. The first question that came to my mind while visiting the TPDM army was, why are we not hearing about any major military offensive by the TPDM forces against Woyanne? TPDM could easily make Tigray ungovernable to Woyanne if it is allowed to fight. ONLF doesn’t have 1/10th the number of fighters TPDM has, and yet it is consistently bleeding Woyanne’s nose until every one in the world knows about it.
I asked the TPDM leadership this very question. They were too afraid to give me an answer, but it was not necessary. I could read the frustration in their faces. Instead of fighting Woyanne, TPDM fighters currently spend their days toiling on farms without pay. The fighters want to fight. The leaders want to fight. But fortunately for Woyanne, they are put on a short leash by their Eritrean “adviser.”
In December 2008, I wrote a weekly column entitled “Groundhog Year in Prison Nation” summarizing some of my weekly columns for that year. I used the “groundhog year” analogy following the title of the motion picture “Groundhog Day” in which a hapless television weatherman is trapped in a time warp and finds himself repeating the same day over and over. I wrote[1]:
2008 in Ethiopia was Groundhog Year! It was a repetition of 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004… Everyday millions of Ethiopians woke up only to find themselves trapped in a time loop where their lives replayed like a broken record. Each “new” day is the same as the one before it: Repression, intimidation, corruption, incarceration, deception, brutalization and human rights violation. Everything that happened to them the previous day, the previous week, the previous month, the previous 18 years happens to them today. They are resigned to the fact that they are doomed to spend the rest of their lives asphyxiated in a Prison Nation. They have no idea how to get out of this awful cycle of misery, agony, despair and tribulation. So, they pray and pray and pray and pray… for deliverance from Evil!
It is December 2010, the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. Are Ethiopians better off today than they were in 2009, 2005…2000?
Does bread (teff) cost more today than it did a year ago…, five years ago? Cooking oil, household fuel, beef, poultry, gasoline, housing, water, electricity, public transport…?
Are there more poor people today in Ethiopia than there were a year ago… five years ago? More unemployment among youth, less educational opportunities, less health care?
Is there more corruption, more secrecy, less transparency and less accountability in December 2010 than in December 2009…?
Are elections more free and fair in 2010 than they were in 2008, 2005?
Is there more press freedom today than five years ago? More human rights violations?
Is Ethiopia more dependent on international charity for its daily bread today than a year ago…?
Is there more environmental pollution, habitat destruction, forced human displacement and land grabs in Ethiopia today than there was in 2005?
Are businesses paying more taxes and bribes in Ethiopia today than in years past?
Is Ethiopia today at the very bottom of the global Index of Economic Freedom (limited access to financing, inefficient government bureaucracy, inadequate supply of infrastructure)?
Let the reader answer these self-evident questions. Suffice it to say, “It is what it is!”
Montage of Scenes From 2010 Time Loop
So here we are in Ethiopian Groundhog Year 2010. As a year-end overview, I decided to select and highlight a few of my columns from the multiple dozens of weekly and other commentaries I wrote in 2010 and published on the various Ethiopian pro-democracy websites, and the Huffington Post[2] where all of my commentaries for the year are readily available.
January 2010 – Looking Through the Glass, Brightly
“Ethiopia is the country of the future,” Birtukan Midekssa would often say epigrammatically. Ethiopia’s number 1 political prisoner is always preoccupied with her country’s future and destiny. Her deep concern for Ethiopia is exceeded only by her boundless optimism for its future… To be the country of the future necessarily means not being the country of the past. Birtukan’s Ethiopia of the future is necessarily the categorical antitheses of an imperial autocracy, a military bureaucracy and a dictatorship of kleptocracy. Her vision of the future Ethiopia is a unified country built on a steel platform of multiparty democracy. Birtukan would have been pleased to explain her vision and dreams of the future country of Ethiopia; unfortunately, she cannot speak for herself as she has been condemned to “rot” in jail.
February 2010- Putting Lipstick on a Pig
Ethiopia’s dictators think we are all damned fools. They want us to believe that a pig with lipstick is actually a swan floating on a placid lake, or a butterfly fluttering in the rose garden or even a lamb frolicking in the meadows. Put some lipstick on hyperinflation and you have one of the “fastest developing economies in the world”. Put lipstick on power outages, and the grids come alive with megawattage. Slap a little lipstick on famine, and voila! Ethiopians are suffering from a slight case of “severe malnutrition”. Adorn your atrocious human rights record by appointing a “human rights” chief, and lo and behold, grievous government wrongs are transformed magically into robust human rights protections. Slam your opposition in jail, smother the independent press and criminalize civil society while applying dainty lipstick to a mannequin of democracy. The point is, “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it ‘democracy’ but after 20 years it stinks to high heaven!”
March 2010- Waiting for Godot to Leave
The politics of “succession” to Zenawi’s “throne” has become a veritable theatre of the absurd. The personalities waiting in the wings to take over the “throne” (or to protect and safeguard it) bring to mind the witless characters in Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy play Waiting for Godot, arguably the most important English play of the 20th Century. In that play, two vagabond characters anxiously wait on a country road by a tree for the arrival of a mysterious person named Godot, who can save them and answer all their questions. They wait for days on end but Godot never shows up… and the two characters keep returning to the same place day after day to wait for him; but they cannot remember exactly what happened the day before. Godot never came. Waiting for Zenawi to leave power is like waiting for Godot to arrive. It ain’t happening. He is not only the savior and the man with all the answers, he is also the Great Patron who makes everything work.
April, 2010- C’est la Vie? C’est la Vie en Prison!
When Meles Zenawi, the arch dictator in Ethiopia, was asked about Birtukan’s health in his prison on March 23, 2010, he was comically philosophical about it. He said Birtukan health is in “perfect condition”, except that she may be putting on some weight. “The health situation of Birtukan, the last I heard, is in perfect condition. She may have gained a few kilos, but other than that, and that may be for lack of exercise, I understand she is in perfect health… I am not surprised that they [U.S. State Department] have characterized Birtukan as a political prisoner, because I understand they have also characterized Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and Oromia Liberation Front (OLF) terrorists… as political prisoners… But that is life; I think the French say, ‘C’est la Vie.’
May, 2010- Speaking Truth to Power
For the past year, I have been predicting that the 2010 Ethiopian “election” will prove to be a sham, a travesty of democracy and a mockery and caricature of democratic elections. Without my literary and rhetorical flourish, that is now the exact conclusion of the international election observers. The “Preliminary Statement” of the European Union Election Observation Mission- Ethiopia 2010 stated: “The electoral process fell short of certain international commitments, notably regarding the transparency of the process and the lack of a level playing field for all contesting parties.” … Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the State Department told the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee that “we note with some degree of remorse that the elections were not up to international standards… The [Ethiopian] government has taken clear and decisive steps that would ensure that it would garner an electoral victory.” Even Herman Cohen, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State who served as “mediator” in the so-called May 1991 London Peace Talks which resulted in the establishment of the Zenawi regime decried the outcome: “… I don’t think it was a fair election.”
June, 2010- Speaking Truth to the Powerless
Now that the hoopla around Meles Zenawi’s “election” is over, it is time for the Ethiopian opposition to take stock and re-think the way it has been doing business. We begin with the obvious question: “What happened to the Ethiopian opposition in the make-believe election of 2010?” Zenawi will argue vigorously that he defeated them by a margin of 99.6 percent (545 of 547 parliamentary seats). If that were the real “defeat” for the opposition, I would not worry much. Losing a sham election is like losing one’s appendix. But there is a different kind of defeat that I find more worrisome. It is a defeat in the eyes and hearts of the people. I am afraid the opposition collectively has suffered considerable loss of credibility in the eyes of the people by making a public spectacle of its endless bickering, carping, dithering, internal squabbles, disorganization, inability to unite, pettiness, jockeying for power, and by failing to articulate a coherent set of guiding principles or ideas for the country’s future.
July, 2010- Hummingbirds and Forest Fires
World history shows that individuals and small groups — the hummingbirds — do make a difference in bringing about change in their societies. The few dozen leaders of the American Revolution and the founders of the government of the United States were driven to independence by a “long train of abuses and usurpations” leading to “absolute despotism” as so eloquently and timelessly expressed in the Declaration of Independence… The Bolsheviks (vultures in hummingbird feathers) won the Russian Revolution arguably defending the rights of the working class and peasants against the harsh oppression of Czarist dictatorship. They managed to establish a totalitarian system which thankfully swept itself into the dustbin of history two decades ago… Gandhi and a small group of followers in India led nationwide campaigns to alleviate poverty, make India economically self-reliant, broaden the rights of urban laborers, peasants and women, end the odious custom of untouchability and bring about tolerance and understanding among religious and ethnic groups. Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo led ANC’s Defiance Campaign and crafted the Freedom Charter which provided the ideological basis for the long struggle against apartheid and served as the foundation for the current South African Constitution. In the United States, Martin Luther King and some 60 church leaders formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, becoming the driving force of the American civil rights movement.
August, 2010 – Steel Vises, Clenched Fists and Closing Walls
U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a speech in Poland… and singled out Ethiopia along with Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and others to warn the world that “we must be wary of the steel vise in which governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit.”… She pointed out: “Last year, Ethiopia imposed a series of strict new rules on NGOs. Very few groups have been able to re-register under this new framework, particularly organizations working on sensitive issues like human rights.”… Secretary Clinton said the acid test for the success or failure of U.S. foreign policy is whether “more people in more places are better able to exercise their universal rights and live up to their potential because of our actions?” By this measure, U.S. policy in Ethiopia has been a total, unmitigated and dismal failure. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable…
September, 2010- Indoctri-Nation
Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education issued a “directive” effectively outlawing distance learning (or education programs that are not delivered in the traditional university classroom or campus) throughout the country… Wholesale elimination of private distance learning programs by “directive”, or more accurately bureaucratic fiat, is a flagrant violation of Higher Education Proclamation No. 650/2009. Under this Proclamation, the Ministry of Education and its sub-agencies have the authority to regulate and “revoke accreditation” of a private institution which fails to meet statutory criteria on a case-by-case basis following a fact-finding and appeals process…. I believe the regime has a long term strategy to use the universities as breeding grounds for its ideologues and hatcheries for the thousands of loyal and dependent bureaucrats they need to sustain their domination and rule. The monopoly created for the state in the disciplines of law and teaching (which I will predict will gradually include other disciplines in the future) is a clear indication of the trend to gradually create a cadre of “educated” elites to serve the next generation of dictators to come.
October, 2010- Birtukan Unbound!
Birtukan was held for months in a dark room with no human contact except a few minutes a week with her mother and daughter. Fear, anxiety and despair were her only companions. Heartache knocked constantly on the door to her dark room needling her: “Did you do the right thing leaving three year-old Hal’le to the care of your aging mother?” Self-doubt kept her awake in that dark room where time stood still asking her the same question over and over: “Is it worth all this suffering? Give up!” But a voice in her conscience would echo thunderously, “Like hell you’re going to give up, Birtukan. Fight on. Keep on fighting. ‘Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.'” In the end Birtukan signed Zenawi’s scrap of paper making exception to convictions of honor and good sense. We expected nothing less from such a great young woman…. Prisoners can be brainwashed to say anything by those who control them. Prisoners who have endured torture, extreme degradation and abuse have been known to do shocking things to please their captors and ease their own pain and suffering. Abused prisoners have been known to deceive themselves into believing the cruelty of their captors as acts of kindness. It is called the “Stockholm Syndrome.” When the victim is under the total and complete control of her captor for her basic needs of survival and her very existence, she will say and do anything to please her captor.
November, 2010- Remember the Slaughter of 2005
November is a cruel month. Bleak, woeful, and grim is the month of November in the melancholy verse of Thomas Hood:
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member–
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!
//
And no justice for the hundreds massacred in Ethiopia in November (2005).
No redress for the countless men, women and children shot and wounded and left for dead.
No apologies for the tens of thousands illegally imprisoned.
No restitution for survivors or the families of the dead.
No trace of those who disappeared.
No atonement for the crimes of November.
No absolution for the slaughter of November.
November is to remember.
December, 2010- “So What!”
So what are the lessons of Groundhog Year 2010? The first decade of the 21st Century?
Lesson I. Crush your opponents with full force. Alternatively, vegetate them forever.
Lesson II. If you get into America’s face and stick it to her, she will always back down. Always!
Lesson III. “Democratization is a matter of survival.” If democracy stays alive in Ethiopia, Zenawi cannot survive. If Zenawi survives, democracy cannot stay alive.
Lesson IV: If you want democracy, you must struggle and sacrifice for it.
Lesson V. If your rights are being violated, defend them!
Lesson VI. Elections are like children’s marble game where everybody can play as long as the guy who owns the marbles wins all the time.
Lesson VII. If you want to win, you need to organize, mobilize and energize your base. You need to teach, preach and reach the people.
Lesson VIII. You want funding, don’t beg for it; dig deeper into your own wallets.
Lesson: IX. There is one law, one regime, one ruler, one circus master and only one man who runs the show in Ethiopia.
Lesson X: The greatest lesson of 2010 and the first decade of the 21st Century:
DESPAIR NOT! “THERE HAVE BEEN TYRANTS AND MURDERERS AND FOR A TIME THEY SEEM INVINCIBLE BUT IN THE END, THEY ALWAYS FAIL — THINK OF IT ALWAYS.” Mahatma Gandhi.
A Kenyan journal, The Standard, reports that the government of Kenya is intensifying its crackdown on Ethiopians who are fleeing from Ethiopia to seek refugee in other countries. Most of the Ethiopian refugees Kenyan authorities are arresting use Kenya as a transit point to South Africa and Yemen. The recent crackdown is said to be related with Kenya’s fight with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) at the urging of Woyanne, the ruling junta in Ethiopia.
NAIROBI (The Standard) — In Taita-Taveta, 57 Ethiopians were arrested on their way to Mombasa from Nairobi while 17 were intercepted on Nairobi-Nyeri highway.
The arrest brings to more than 70 the number of illegal immigrants so far arrested in Taita-Taveta County in the past two weeks. This is also the largest number of foreigners so far arrested.
Taita OCPD Nathaniel Aseneka said 56 men and a woman were arrested at Caltex filling station roadblock in Voi town. One of the suspects, however, escaped and police are still looking for him.
“We are detaining the suspects and will take them to court once we are through with our investigation,” said the police boss.
“We’re doing everything possible to rid the area of illegal immigrants,” Aseneka added.
No documents
Meanwhile, MPs Calist Mwatela (Mwatate), Dan Mwazo (Voi) and Thomas Mwadeghu (Wundanyi) accused some livestock traders of hiring foreigners as herders with no identification documents.
Elsewhere, police arrested 17 Ethiopians as they were travelling to Nairobi from Isiolo on Nairobi-Nyeri Highway.
They were nabbed on Monday night by police officers who were patrolling the highway at Huhi area, near Makuyu town.
Yesterday, Murang’a South OCPD Antony Onyango said the foreigners were arrested at 10.30pm after police manning a roadblock flagged down their vehicles.
Also arrested were two drivers who had been hired to ferry the 17 to a hotel in Narok town where they were to stay before travelling to South Africa. Onyango said they would be arraigned before a Thika court once investigation is complete.
