ORANGE – First lady Laura Bush turned down Tilahun “Michael” Belay. So did England’s Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. Bill Gates, too. Oprah didn’t even bother to respond to the Orange resident.
After Belay’s solicitation letters for his nonprofit organization were unsuccessful, the 52-year-old father of three sold his own house to build a school in the poor African nation of Ethiopia.
Belay won’t be disappointed today. Instead, 2,500 people will be present to honor Chapman University’s community service officer with the 23rd annual Albert Schweitzer Award of Excellence for public service. This is the fourth time the university has given the award to one of its own. Past recipients include renowned groups such as Habitat for Humanity.
“I am a believer in education – something I have dreamt for myself for my whole life,” Belay said. “My dream come true is for my own children to graduate, and my children in Ethiopia as well.”
Starting with a hut
The Tilahun Belay School in the village of Arusi began in 2000, when the Ethiopian native returned to his homeland for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Moved by the poverty he saw, Belay immediately withdrew his own money from the bank. He built a mud hut to house a school for 150 children. He ground charcoal to make blackboards.
“I promised them I would be back with supplies,” Belay said. “I promised them I would give them a school.”
With the help of colleagues at Chapman, Belay started the nonprofit Hands Across the Planet to Poor Youth. Colleagues donated what they could, but it wasn’t enough. So Belay made a life-changing decision.
Belay sacrificed his dream house in 2004: a three-bedroom home on a half-acre in Corona. He moved his family into a two-bedroom apartment in Orange.
“I had no choice,” he said. “These children have nothing. The people are suffering.”
Local philanthropists took notice. Orange developer Roger Hobbs donated 100 chairs to replace the wood platform that served as the school’s benches. Chapman University donated computers. University Trustee S. Paul Musco paid for the 20-foot container to ship more supplies.
Just last week, Jason Gallagher, manager of a Staples in Santa Ana, donated 240 folders filled with school supplies.
“Doesn’t it seem like the right thing to do?” Gallagher said. “He sold his own home to build this school. The least I can do is donate school supplies.”
Going full circle
Belay’s journey has been a long and dangerous one.
At the age of 7, he left his village and moved to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, after his father became a judge. Belay was forced into the army at 13.
When a civil war broke out, his father told him to leave. In 1975, the young man trekked by foot for three months until he reached Sudan.
A year later his father and 25 others were killed. Insurgents burned their bodies.
In 1981, Belay came to the United States as a political refugee. He settled in San Jose, where he worked in a convalescent home. Years later, he ran an Ethiopian restaurant in Orange County. Then he found a job at Chapman.
“When I went (back to) my birthplace, the city was destroyed by war. Everything was dust,” Belay said as he wiped away tears. “I remember it was a beautiful town. The children I found were barefoot and had nothing. But they were eager to learn even as they sat on the dirt under the shade of a tree.”
Aleqa Ayalew Tamiru, a prominent Ethiopian theologian and scholar, passed away on Sunday at his home in Addis Ababa. He was 83 years old.
Aleqa Ayalew was an icon of the Ethiopian Orthodox church who was engaged in a running battle with Aba Gebre-Medhin (formerly Aba Paulos) over fundamental teachings of the Church. He had served as chairman of YeLiqawnt Gubae (council of scholars) until he was forced out by Aba Gebre-Medhin, the gun-totting illegitimate patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
NAIROBI — Three Ethiopian journalists who had been held for almost two years in an Addis Ababa prison said that days after being cleared of all charges and released this spring, they each received death threats from government security agents.
In lengthy interviews here in the Kenyan capital, the journalists also described being subjected to psychological torture during their confinement with other political prisoners in a stifling cell on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital. They said that after their release they had had high hopes of starting a new life, but government agents almost immediately began hounding them, harassing them with phone calls and otherwise terrorizing them into fleeing their country for Kenya.
“They told me, ‘We will kill you if you do not disappear,’ ” said one of the newspaper journalists, all of whom spoke anonymously on the advice of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “I was sure I would be killed if I stayed.”
A spokesman for the Ethiopian government declined to comment on the allegations.
The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has often dealt brutally with people deemed threatening to his fragile ruling coalition. In the capital, people suspected of supporting opposition groups routinely disappear from their neighborhoods, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, a pro-democracy group based in Addis Ababa.
Elsewhere, the government is conducting brutal campaigns against rebels and opposition movements in the Ogaden and Oromia regions, where the council and reporters have documented widespread extrajudicial killings, illegal detentions and torture.
The journalists were among thousands of people, including the country’s top opposition leaders, who were arrested in the capital during protests following Ethiopia’s 2005 elections, in which the opposition made significant gains.
Some Ethiopians had held out hope that the release in April of the journalists and others — and especially the subsequent pardon and release of the country’s top opposition leaders last month — marked a turning point for the Ethiopian government.
The U.S. State Department, which considers Ethiopia a key ally in fighting terrorism in the Horn of Africa, had praised the prisoners’ release as a “breakthrough.”
“We commend the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi for its statesmanship in resolving this issue,” the department said in a statement. “The United States calls on all parties to use this breakthrough as the basis to advance dialogue on peace and democratic progress.”
The journalists said their release had seemed miraculous, coming after nearly two years of confinement in the dingy Kaliti prison, where conditions are supposed to be superior to other jails around Ethiopia.
They said they were held in a room riddled with bullet holes and crowded with about 400 other inmates, many suffering from tuberculosis and other illnesses. The room had one toilet.
The journalists estimated that perhaps 85 percent of the inmates were political prisoners from Oromia.
“There was a 90-year-old man and an 86-year-old man,” said one journalist. “One had been there for 12 years, the other for eight years, and they were still waiting for a trial. The 86-year-old had scars all over his body from being beaten. If you heard their story, you would not think you are living in the 21st century.”
One of the journalists said he was beaten on the head and face with an iron rod when he was first arrested in 2005. Otherwise, the journalists said, they were not tortured, a fact they attribute to the international attention to their case.
But other inmates were routinely tortured, they said. “They would pour water on their back and beat them in front of us,” said one of the journalists. “Every morning, we would hear people screaming and begging for their own death. When we saw them tortured, we were tortured.”
When the journalists were found not guilty and released, they said, they looked forward to resuming some kind of normal life, though the government had shut down their newspapers.
But within two weeks, they were being hounded by government agents, in some cases by men they recognized as those who arrested them in 2005.
One of the journalists said he was constantly followed around the city — to Internet cafes, to his home and once to a bar, where a security agent confronted him.
“He said, ‘If you make a mistake again, we will not put you in prison. We will kill you,’ ” he said, adding that the man put his fingers into the shape of a gun and imitated a shot to the head.
Last month, the men decided independently of one another to leave Ethiopia, having heard that the prosecutor had appealed their acquittal.
They recounted putting on disguises — long robes, big hats — and smuggling themselves by truck and taxi, first to the Kenyan border and finally to Nairobi, where they are under U.N. protection.
They live now in hiding, having heard an unconfirmed report that Ethiopian security forces have come to Nairobi.
“My mind cannot rest,” said one of three men. “I do not feel safe. I always think of my family, that they may inflict some harm on them to harm me.”
The treatment of the released prisoners highlights a challenge for the State Department: reconciling its counterterrorism objectives with its stated goals of promoting democracy and human rights abroad.
The United States backed Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia last year to oust an Islamic movement that had taken hold there, and it cooperated closely with Ethiopia in conducting three airstrikes against Islamic fighters.
A bill critical of Ethiopia’s human rights record is currently stalled in Congress because House leaders have said they feel the Ethiopian government should be given time to arrange for the release of other political prisoners still in jail, a strategy that the journalists consider doomed.
“You hear all this condemnation of Mugabe,” said one, referring to Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe. “Meles is much worse. He is killing freely. America should change this partnership with Ethiopia on terrorism. It is allowing the Ethiopian government to kill democracy.”
We, the undersigned, as members of Ethiopian human rights organizations, Ethiopian civic organizations and in the Ethiopian religious community, call for immediate action to stop the outrageous human rights abuses going on in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia that is causing wide-scale humanitarian disaster to the civilian population due to the fighting between the Ethiopian regime of Meles Zenawi and the Ogaden National Liberation Forces (ONLF).
We appeal to the Meles regime and the ONLF to call an immediate ceasefire so as to allow all humanitarian organizations, including the International Red Cross, the Ogaden Human Rights organizations and other such groups to gain access to the area in order to help the people who are suffering due to displacement, lack of food, lack of clean water, lack of shelter, lack of medical care and lack of any semblance of normal life necessary to their survival and well being. This crisis is worsening by the moment and will result in many more lives being lost, especially the lives of the most vulnerable — the young and the elders.
We call on those in the international community — the United Nations, the African Union, the United States as a key ally to Ethiopia, the European Union and other concerned entities and citizens to take a stand for the innocent who are dying as a result of this crisis. We call on you and all media to not be silent on this appalling human catastrophe before it worsens. Inaction and apathy will only bring about another example of shame to the international community if the Ogaden becomes another Darfur as good people fail to act with moral conviction, urgency and effectiveness.
To the regime of Meles Zenawi and to the ONLF, we recommend the following actions:
1. agree to comply with an immediate ceasefire, something that requires the total cooperation of both parties if it is going to be effective
2. provide for safe and unrestricted access into the region by all humanitarian groups in order to meet the needs of the civilian population
3. organize a dialogue with the goal of finding a peaceful resolution to this crisis and one that respects the universal human rights of all civilians and compliance with the Ethiopian Constitution and International Law.
Right now, we who are calling for this action have information from the ground on what is going on, but the Meles regime appears to be diverting the attention of both other Ethiopians and of those in the international community away from the tragedy going on in the Ogaden. Meles has called the ONLF a terrorist group, even while the regime is reportedly perpetrating crimes against humanity against the civilian population in the Ogaden and in other regions of the country. The Meles regime may believe that classifying the ONLF as terrorists would open up a means to legitimize the killing of Ogadeni civilians. However, according to representatives from the ONLF, they believe they must defend the Ogadeni people and call on the Meles regime to cease committing human rights atrocities against their people.
This past week, Meles was on Ethiopian television warning Ethiopians to not speak up for the ONLF as they are terrorists and that his government intends to “crack down” on these “terrorists.” He went on to say that those who supported the ONLF would be supporting a terrorist group. Some would say that any support of the EPRDF/TPLF that is responsible for crimes against humanity should be considered a terrorist.
Additionally Meles seemed to want to focus the attention of the international community and Ethiopians inside and outside of the country on the upcoming Ethiopian Millennium celebration as well as to infer that the majority of Ethiopians should be happy that he had released the CUDP leaders and that their minds should be on these things instead of what was going on in the Ogaden.
Instead, Ethiopians should say a loud “NO” and speak out for Ethiopian Ogadenis like we spoke out in protest of the student protesters in Addis Ababa in June and November of 2005 and for the Opposition leaders who were just released.
We speak laud with one voice for our brothers and sisters of the Ogaden as well as for those left in the prisons throughout our country and use the same volume we did for these groups until we all are free! We must continue to rally, protest and advocate for all Ethiopians until the killing, torture, rape, detention and man-made humanitarian crises, causing untold suffering to our people, stop.
We call on the international community and all peace-loving people to stand up, in real life and in practical actions, for the principles you have established based on universal values of humanity and justice.
For additional information, please contact: Mr. Girma Kassa
E-mail: [email protected]
Abugida Info
Addis voice
Anuak Justice Council
Ethiopian Media Forum (EMF)
Ethiopian American Association of Portland
Ethiopian Review
Kaliti Peace Advocacy Group
Network of Ethiopian Scholars Scandinavian Chapter
Ogaden Human Rights Committee
Ogaden Voice for Peace
Ogaden Empowerment Initiatives
Ogaden Youth Network
Peacewithkinijit Blog
Tegbar League
[Lawyer Ruta Ghebremichael receives a war damage claims from a woman in her office in Asmara in this file photo from July 30, 2007. REUTERS/Jack Kimball]
By Jack Kimball
ASMARA (Reuters) – Standing in a muddy courtyard, 65-year-old Letezai Tewolde-Bahta’s eyes dart back and forth as she stares at a doorway leading to Eritrea’s legal office.
One of thousands of Eritreans deported from Ethiopia during the two countries’ border war of 1998-2000, she opens up a green identity card and points to the granddaughter she says she carried across the front lines.
“The Ethiopians came in the middle of the night and they took us to prison for three days. Then I was deported along with the rest of my family,” said Letezai, who had lived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, for 40 years.
“They took everything from us. Then they took us to the border. There must have been 30 buses,” the Eritrean housewife said.
In her weathered hands she holds papers from her past life in Ethiopia — proof, Eritrean lawyers argue, that she was one of 70,000 dual national Eritreans expelled during the war, in which a similar number of people died.
In a peace deal signed in Algiers in 2000, the two countries agreed to submit to binding arbitration by a claims commission and a boundary commission in The Hague.
While the independent boundary commission has made its final decision, the claims commission — set up to assess war damages — has yet to make a final ruling.
In the last few weeks, thousands of Eritreans who lived in Ethiopia before the conflict have lined the streets outside the legal office in Asmara and in other cities across the Horn of Africa nation.
They hope the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission will give them back what they say was stolen by Ethiopia. Many say they have lost all they had — money, homes and businesses — but so far no compensation has been forthcoming.
Ethiopia is also preparing claims for damages against Eritrea at the commission.
While no figures have been released, Eritrea estimated in 2005 its claims could exceed $500 million, or half the country’s gross domestic product for that year.
Eritrean lawyers say deportee claims will be the largest.
“It’s important, because so many lost so much. Some of these people lost millions of U.S. dollars,” said lawyer Ruta Ghebremichael, 23.
The Commission has yet to receive all the financial claims from either side and is not expected to rule on how much should be paid until some time next year.
“WE LOST EVERYTHING”
Wearing an Adidas jacket and U.S. college basketball hat, Melake Yhidego, 40, enters a tiny office in a run-down one-storey building next to Eritrea’s legal office.
After waiting in line for most of the morning, Melake sits down in a chair facing one of a team of Eritrean lawyers working on the claim forms.
Like many expellees, he said he was arrested before being deported from Ethiopia, where he had lived for 30 years.
“My wife and child were deported one month before I was. We only met in Asmara,” the former driver said.
“This is our money. This is what we worked for so it’s a must that Ethiopia pays. We’re not begging, this is ours.”
The Commission — part of the Permanent Court of Arbitration set up to settle international disputes — angered Eritrea when in 2005 it blamed Asmara for triggering the war by attacking Badme town on May 12, 1998.
The small, dusty town was awarded to Asmara by the boundary commission, set up by the Algiers peace deal to mark the Eritrea-Ethiopia border.
Ethiopia initially rejected the decision. Addis Ababa now accepts the frontier ruling, but wants more discussion — a move Eritrea vehemently rejects.
The border stalemate has ratcheted up tensions along the 1000-km (600-mile) border and Eritrean lawyers said the dispute may affect the claims decision.
“It’s hard to see how the claims commission’s final judgment can be implemented when one of the parties is still refusing to comply with the boundary commission,” said Lea Brilmayer, a U.S. lawyer advising the government.
In the crowded corridor, housewife Letezai shared the scepticism, echoing the concerns of many expellees.
“We lost everything, and we want it to be known,” she said.
“The Ethiopians deported us from our houses so why should we believe that they’ll pay us,” she added before turning her attention back to the slow-moving line.
A six-member delegation of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit) led by the party’s chairman Ato Hailu Shawel will arrive at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport on Wednesday, August 29, at 8 AM.
Previously they were scheduled to arrive on August 20, but delayed due to logistical issues.
The committee that is organizing the Kinijit delegation’s North America tour said that Ato Hailu Shawel(President), Wzt. Birtukan Midekssa (Vice President), Dr. Berhanu Nega (Addis Ababa Mayor-Elect), Dr. Hailu Araya (Spokesperson), Ato Brook Kebede and Ato Gizachew Shiferaw (executive committee members) will visit several cities in the United States and Canada at the invitation of Kinijit support groups.
The Kinijit delegation looks forward to engaging in constructive discussions and exchange of ideas and views with Kinijit supporters in North America, the organizing committee said.
The Kinijit leaders are expected to be received by hundreds of Ethiopians when they arrive at the airport on Aug. 29.
The ad hoc committee that is organizing their visit is finalizing reception plans, such as arrival schedules and other information, which will be released shortly, according to Ato Aklog Limeneh, chairman of Kinijit North America support groups and a member of the reception committee — which also include Dr Alemayehu Gebre-Mariam, Ato Tamagn Beyene, Dr Solomon Alemu, and Dr Gashu Habte.
Aleqa Ayalew Tamiru, a prominent Ethiopian theologian and scholar, passed away on Sunday at his home in Addis Ababa. He was 83 years old.
አለቃ አያሌው በአራት አመታቸው በምስራቅ ጎጃም ዞን ዲማ ጊዮርጊስ ቤ/ክርስቲያን የቤተክህነት ትምህርት የጀመሩ ሲሆን በእድሜ ዘመናቸው ቤተ ክህነትን ሲያገለግሉ የነበሩና በኋላም የሊቃውንት ጉባኤ ሰብሳቢ በነበሩበት ወቅት በ1988 ዓ.ም ከአባ ገ/መድህን (የቀድሞው አቡነ ጳውሎስ) ጋር ቤተክርስቲያኒቱን በሚመለከት ጠንካራ የሃሳብ ልዩነት በመፈጠሩ ወጥተዋል፡፡ ሊቀጠበብት አያሌው ወያኔ በጠመንጃ ሃይል ካስቀመጣቸው ጳጳስ ከአባ ገ/መድህን ጋር ያለመግባባቶች የነበራቸው እንደነበር ወዳጆቻቸው ሲናገሩ በተለይ በ1988 ያለመግባባታቸው ጎልተው መተው ነበር ይላሉ፡፡ ልዩነቶቻቸውም የቅዱስ ሲኖዶስ ተጠሪነቱ ለፓትሪያርኩ ይሁን በሚል አባ ገ/መድህን ሲወስኑ አለቃ አያሌው በበኩላቸው ቅዱስ ሲኖዶስ መመራት ያለበት በመንፈስ ቅዱስ ነው፡፡ ጰጳሳቱ በእኩል ተቀምጠው በመግባባት በእኩልነት ነው ሊወስኑ የሚገባቸው በቅዱስ ሲናዶስ ማንም የበላይ ሊሆን አይገባም፡፡ ኃይማኖቱም የሚያዘው ይህንኑ ነው በማለት ሲከራከሩ እንደነበር ለጉዳዩ ቅርበት ያላቸው ገልፀውልናል፡፡
[Lawyer Ruta Ghebremichael receives a war damage claims from a woman in her office in Asmara in this file photo from July 30, 2007. REUTERS/Jack Kimball]