Debretsion Gebremichael, TPLF spy chief who also doubles as Minister of Communication and Information Technology, appears to suggest that the ruling party has mobilized to crush peaceful Muslim protests. Debretsion used Addis Ababa University as a platform to declare war on what he called “religious radicalism” and “terrorism.”
Eskedar Kifle | Capital Ethiopia
October 8, 2012
The Addis Ababa University, the longest serving higher institution in Ethiopia, gave a three day seminar to its teachers in all campuses, Capital learned. The meeting was originally intended to take place at one location from October 3 to 5, but they later decided to carry it out separately on different campuses.
The notorious Debretsion who intercepts email, other electronic communications
When the seminar came to a close at the Sidist Kilo Main campus on Friday, October 5, DebretsionGebremichael (PhD), Minister of Information and Communication Technology gave guidance to the participants saying that in the coming years the university must focus on the problems of religious radicalism and the dangers of terrorism.
“We don’t want to have a destabilization movement under the guise of religion. In every religion we trace fundamentalism which is contrary to the basic principle of religion that teaches coexistence with each other,” Debretstion was quoted as saying. This movement has to be stopped, he strongly warned.
He also attended the meeting at the Arat Kilo Science Faculty on Thursday, October 3. Sources told Capital that at Science Faculty like in other faculties raised questions about the teachers’ salary increase. Dr. Debretsion discouraged the issue out of hand by saying:
“This time don’t expect a pay raise. You have the capacity to generate additional income by having additional work elsewhere. We don’t like that option. But on the government side there is no plan to increase the salary of teachers at this time,” he said.
A teacher who preferred anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue told Capital that he is not happy with the response of Debretsion. “Inflation is extremely high. So life is difficult to manage with the salary we are receiving now. House rent is increasing literally every month. The government wants us to provide a quality education. With this small pay it is impossible to have first class teachers. So the fall of the standard of education, due to mediocre teachers, is an avoidable fact,” he said.
But Dr. Debretsion was positive about the housing question. “I know that the late Prime Minister wanted the housing problem of the university teachers to be tackled. Accordingly something has been done in that direction all through. So we will exert every effort to resolve the housing problem that the teachers face,” Dr. Debretsion said.
The other major discussion point was about the quality of education. There was a consensus that the quality of education has tremendously gone down. Though all of them agreed to improve the quality of education, no viable future plan was put in place. “We all said that we will improve the quality of education. This is a cliché like saying we shall realize the dreams of the visionary leader,” remarked one disgruntled teacher. But making change requires a backbreaking job, he concluded.
To break any habit, including obedience to authority, we must make a deliberate decision to quit, constantly remind ourselves of that decision, and reiterate why it is important to break the habit. Breaking the obedience habit is a difficult task, just like quitting smoking. Both the decision to stop, and reiteration about why it is so important to stop, are constantly required… [read more]
In Ethiopia, counselors are seen as helpers for “crazy” people. When most people in Ethiopia are faced with a problem, they tend to talk to their family members, neighbors, friends, or they go to church to talk to the priests and pray about it. Also, traditional healing plays a big role. In Ethiopia mental health issues are not talked about, or if it is brought up, it is always associated with “mad people” who walk around half naked on the street and talk to themselves. Mental illness is also seen to have supernatural causes such as spirit possession; people with mental illness are seen as violent and will never recover. These are myths that have a part of Ethiopian culture today. As a result, people don’t seek professional help, whether they are experiencing minor or major mental illness.
This raises a question, what is mental illness is? Do we know what causes it? People with mental illness experience problems in the way they think, feel or behave to the point that these despair feelings, thinking and behavior interfere with their daily functioning. As a result, their relationship with family and friends are affected, as well as their employment. It is essential for us to understand that having a mental illness is no one’s fault. According to experts in the field, there are many factors that may cause a mental illness, such as a {www:genetic predisposition}, chemical imbalance in the brain, stress and exposure to severe trauma. Mental illness includes disorders such as anxiety, {www:post-traumatic stress disorder}, depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
When major negative life events occurs such as losing loved ones, divorce, an accident, or serious prolonged problems such as substance abuse or domestic violence, coping becomes progressively more difficult, and resulting distress begins to impair one’s daily functioning and can cause sleep disturbances, appetite changes, energy level changes and intrusive thoughts.
It is unfortunate that mental illness is running rampant within Ethiopian community. It is an issue no one is addressing. People are suffering from severe depression, the number of young adult committing suicide is increasing, some are abusing substance to cover up what they are feeling while other are showing it in their aggressive and violent behavior. Divorce, domestic violence, parent-child conflict, and crime are increasing. In a culture where mental illness is associated with “madness,” it is not shocking that Ethiopians don’t seek help. Mental illness is a major problem in our community that needs to be addressed by everyone including, youth, adults and the elderly. Mental illness doesn’t discriminate by age, gender, socioeconomic status, or education level. We need to come together to educate and jointly fight the stigma that is holding us back from seeking professional help.
(Hiyawkal Gizachew, a Mental Health Counselor with the Northern Virginia Family Service, can be reached at [email protected])
I dreamt about my uncle. He has been dead for over ten years so I was wondering what brought him to my conscious now. It was a vivid dream and I awoke both sad and happy. So all day long I kept wondering what is it that made me dream about him. I really think I was able to come up with a reasonable explanation why this memory was triggered in my brain. I believe it is due to what I have been reading lately that awaken this memory about service, integrity and today’s Ethiopia.
The night before the dream I read a very revealing article on goolgule.com about the land grab in Oromia region. It is a depressing tale of what those in position of power and authority do to our people. The story was told to give us perspective about Ato Junedin Sado, who seems to find himself in a very precarious position lately. His problem that started before the death of the tyrant has escalated to his being dismissed from that TPLF satellite organization OPDO. It looks like this puppet who has been serving his TPLF masters faithfully betraying the Oromo people is now paying the price for his sins.
I also have been reading about the Deputy Mayor of Addis Abeba Ato Kefyale Azeze defecting and moving to the US as a fellow refugee. I have also been informed about Ato Getachew Belay, a high ranking TPLF official, who decided to stay in the US abandoning his post. Ato Getachew has served his party as head of the Privatization Agency and head of EFFORT. Both are posts normally reserved for party loyalists.
The defections must have been what got me to think about service to people and country. That must be what triggered this deeply held memory to surface in the middle of the night. My uncle is one of the few people that have left a mark in my brain. I always think of him in a very pleasant manner. The earliest I remember of him from is the picture hanging on our living room wall. It was taken before he left for Korea as part of the United Nations peace keeping force. He was dresses in a greenish uniform sitting on a chair with medals on his chest. It was a serious picture but his boyish face betrayed the stern garish looking uniform and made him look like a kind solder unlike a warrior he was supposed to be. No question that picture impressed all of us growing children.
Upon his return from Korea he was recruited to work at our embassy in Egypt. He must have stayed there a long time because when we met next I was already in high school. He was working as administrator at Paulos Hospital in Addis Abeba. He got married and built a beautiful bungalow in Gulele. My brother and I used to love going over to visit him in the weekends and spend the day listening to him talk and observe the disciplined and meticulous way he lived.
He built the house himself and for us it was like a Ferenji place. It has a beautiful bathroom with toilet, bathtub and bidet with working plumbing system including hot water. The house has a beautiful dining area and a living room for entertainment with couches and a radio. His flower garden was a marvel to look at. We sat and ate in the dining room and washed our hands in the bathroom without a maid fetching water and towel to our table.
A few years later he built an addition on his land to rent for income and help raise his three beautiful daughters. He was making an honest living and looking forward to enjoying his retirement. I finished High school and came to America.
The appearance of the Derg changed everything. The turmoil that followed affected my uncle and his contemporaries in a negative manner. The Derg expropriated all wealth created regardless of how it was achieved. My uncle became the victim of this haphazard and meaningless policy. The Derg became the landlord of his property and his tenant started paying rent to the government. My uncle was forced to retire due to the turmoil in the country.
When I visited him next I couldn’t help but notice how fast he has aged. He was still living in his house but there was no incentive to do any repair or make his house into his own castle. It was shocking to see the deterioration of both man and property. Such a vibrant and go getter of a person was reduced to spending his days on trifle affairs and mundane subjects. It was odd to see his previous tenant subleasing the house and making money. The coming of Woyane did not make things any better. They took over where the Derg left off. That is how much things have turned topsy turvy.
May be I am grasping for straws, maybe I am letting my imagination go wild but the truth is I saw a connection between my dreaming of yester year and the current news coming out of Ethiopia. My uncle’s life was a simple straight line of service and hard work with rewards of stable and fulfilling end until it was rudely interrupted. His achievement was on merit and his honest service is what makes the wheels of society turn in predictable manner. His honorable way of life was an example to all our family. We all learn by example and he was a proud mentor.
Why am I writing about my uncle is a good question. I wanted to tell you we have not always been the way we are now. Lawless, corrupt, shifty, no roots and void of faith, this is what has become of us. I believe this describes the new Ethiopia. Not long ago our country and people were different. Yes there was inequality, there was injustice and we were definitely backward. But we were not degraded, self-loathing and hopeless.
What do we have today? There is no sense of public service but public robbery, there is no sense of do the right thing but a sense of what can I get away with, there is no sense of pride in workmanship but cheap labor for fast money, there is no sense of us but it is all about me. That is what the TPLF regime cultivates. That is why they could do all kinds of damage to our people and at the end of the day abandon all and move out of the country.
When I read about the likes of Junedin, Kefyalew and Getachew I start to wonder about the future of my country and people. What do our people learn from such disgraceful action? What kind of society produces such individuals? How did our country find itself putting such people in charge?
Let us take Ato Junedin. Let us also remember the entire OPDO leadership was rejected by the Oromo people during the 2005 elections. They were restored to their position after Ato Meles ordered recount of the ballots. It was in the aftermath of this event that the OPDO leadership decided to teach the people a lesson. Land is the only wealth the Ethiopian peasant owns. He has no bank account, no capital in machinery and no stocks and bonds. People like Junedin robed the land from the simple peasant. The stolen land was leased to grow flower for the export market while some was used to build condominiums and town houses.
The same peasant that lost his land was recruited to work as a day laborer while his children were let loose in the green houses where they grew flowers. Fifteen and sixteen year old Oromo girls were exposed to chemicals and fertilizers without adequate or no protection. The land given to the developers with fancy names puts the children’s fable Alice in wonderland to shame. In a country where the per capita income is less than $700 a year our developers are constructing housing that costs five million to twenty million. That is what a company called Country Club Developers is building in Legetafo, Oromia. It is also true that over 95% of the residents of Oromia cannot afford to purchase their dream house in Legetafo. Ato Junedin made all this possible.
Folks like Kefyalew and Getachew are the engines that facilitated the working of the TPLF anti Ethiopian machine. Today they come to America as victims. They followed high officials of the Derg regime that left before the fall of Mengistu. Derg era criminals today are respected members of our community. I assure you in a few years Kefyalew and Getachew will join our Church, Mosque and Eder as ordinary fellows in exile. How could a lesson be learnt if yesterday’s criminals are today’s freedom fighters?
Do you think the problem is with them or with us? Do you think people like Junedin, Kefyalew and Getachew can exist with us? There is no ying without yang, there is no smoke without fire and there is no criminal without a victim. Our indifference, our apathy makes people like the above flourish. When we keep quiet while observing injustice we encourage such evil act to continue. When we participate in buying stolen land, building on stolen land we facilitate the coming to death of our homeland. We mock our people’s plight because we ventured out and collected a fist full of dollars.
It does not require a fortune teller to predict sooner or later the injustice, the famine; the hopelessness will force our people to resort to force as they have done before. Today’s Ethiopia is reaching that boiling point. This is not because it is written but it is so because her children failed her, because her children refused to act because her children looked the other way. The solution lies in each one of us. We all know what is right and what is wrong. We all know we cannot judge the Junedins and the Kefyalews and the Getachews if we would act like them given the chance. The question to ask ourselves is would I be different? Am I a better human being aware, conscious, and keeper of my brother?
“Soldiers came and asked me why I refused to be relocated,” a 20-year-old Ethiopian told me in September at a refugee camp in Kenya. “Ojod,” not his real name, was still visibly shaken from the horror he had left behind: “They started beating me until my hands were broken… I ran to tell [my father] what had happened, but the soldiers followed me. My father and I ran away… I heard the sound of gunfire.” Ojod heard his father cry out, but he kept running and hid from the soldiers in the bushes as he was “full of fear.” When he returned the next day he learned that the soldiers had killed his father.
Abuses such as this in Ethiopia, including arbitrary arrests, beatings and killings, have been occurring not in an armed conflict or political uprising, but as part of a government program billed as improving life for indigenous people and other ethnic minorities in designated rural areas. Donor governments supporting World Bank programs in Ethiopia, including the United States, are indirectly funding these atrocities.
Under its “villagization” program, the Ethiopian government plans to relocate 1.5 million people spread out across these areas by the end of 2013. People are to be moved into new villages where the government has promised improved access to health care, schools and other public services. The idea, says the government, is “to bring socioeconomic and cultural transformation of the people.”
The problem is, as Human Rights Watch field research has found, that the government is being duplicitous on both ends of the relocation. The largely indigenous people being moved have had no say in the process, despite being forced off land closely tied to their culture. Those who object, or later return to their old lands, become targets of abuse by the Ethiopian security forces.
Once forcibly evicted and moved to the new villages, families are finding that the promised government services often do not exist, giving them less access to services than before the relocation. Dozens of farmers in Ethiopia’s Gambella region told us they are being moved from fertile areas where they survive on subsistence farming, to dry, arid areas. Ojod’s family farm was on the river, but as part of the villagization program, the government took his farm and forced his family to relocate to a dry area. There are reports that this fertile land is being leased to multinational companies for large-scale farms.
The villagization program is an Ethiopian government initiative, not one designed by the World Bank. But villagization appears to be the government’s way of implementing a certain World Bank project in five of Ethiopia’s eleven regions. The World Bank’s “protection of basic services” (PBS) project is intended to enhance access to education, health care, and other services. Through it, the Bank is paying a portion of the salaries of local government staff, including teachers who are being forced to implement villagization. At least one regional government is deducting funds from these same salaries to fund villagization.
The World Bank has policies that are designed to prevent against forced resettlement and to protect the rights of indigenous peoples affected by World Bank projects. But it has been closing its eyes to these abuses. On September 25, the Bank’s board of directors approved the third round of this PBS loan, the biggest ever granted in Ethiopia, again without applying the Bank’s own safeguard policies.
A day before the Bank approved the loan, several Ethiopians affected by villagization brought a complaint to the Bank’s accountability mechanism, pressing it to apply its safeguard policies. They were not asking for special treatment, but for the World Bank to apply its own policies, which are designed to prevent harm by its projects. As the Bank’s leading shareholder, the US is well-placed to demand that the Bank vigorously implement its own safeguards. But it has not effectively done so to date.
Ethiopia remains in much need of development aid, particularly in the areas of food security, health, and education. But donors need to hold true to their own policies to ensure that they don’t fund harmful projects, directly or indirectly. The US and other donor countries should be telling the World Bank that they do not want to become complicit in further abuses of “villagization” and that World Bank funding for Ethiopia’s misguided effort needs to stop.
Jessica Evans is the senior advocate and researcher on international financial institutions at Human Rights Watch. You can follow her on twitter at evans_jessica.
A pride of captive lions descended from the private menagerie of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia is genetically distinct from all other lions of Africa, a study has found.
The Ethiopian lion has a distinctive dark mane and is slightly smaller and more compact than other African lions. Now an analysis of its DNA has revealed the Ethiopian lion is also a distinct breed.
It is thought that there may be less than a few hundred Ethiopian lions living in the wild and scientists are urging that their unique genetic makeup should be preserved by a captive-breeding programme.
DNA tests on 15 of the 20 Ethiopian lions kept in Addis Ababa Zoo have revealed that they form a separate genetic group from the lions of east Africa and southern Africa, said Michael Hofreiter of the University of York.
The male lions are the last lions in the world to possess the distinctive dark brown mane. They are the direct descendants of a group of seven males and two females taken from the wild in 1948 for Haile Sellassie’s own zoo, Dr Hofreiter said.
A comparison with other populations of wild lions living in the Serengeti of Tanzania in east Africa and the lions of the Kalahari desert of south-west Africa found that the Addis Ababa lions are quite separate genetically, he said.
“We therefore believe the Addis Ababa lions should be treated as a distinct conservation management unit and are urging immediate conservation actions, including a captive breeding programme, to preserve this unique lion population,” Dr Hofreiter said.
As a species, lions are under threat and their numbers have dwindled over the decades, with the biggest populations centred on east Africa and southern Africa, with a tiny population of Asiatic lions existing in the Gir Forest of India.
Two lion populations that shared the dark brown mane of the Ethiopian lion – the North African Barbary lions and the South African Cape lions – have already gone extinct in the wild.
Susann Bruche of Imperial College London, the lead author of the study published in European Journal of Wildlife Research, said that it is important to preserve the genetic diversity of the Ethiopian lions to help the species as a whole.
“A great amount of genetic diversity in lions has most likely already been lost, largely due to human influences. Every effort should be made to preserve as much of the lion’s genetic heritage as possible,” Dr Bruche said.
“We hope field surveys will identify wild relatives of the unique Addis Ababa Zoo lions in the future, but conserving the captive population is a crucial first step,” she said.
