ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AFP)–Clashes have broken out in the restive Ethiopian region of Ogaden, with rebels saying Friday they have killed 140 government troops and allied militia fighters.
The Ethiopian government Woyanne tribalist regime in Ethiopia disputed the claims from the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), saying some 40 rebels were killed by local clan militia.
“The casualty figures heavily favored our forces due to the nature of our operations,” the rebels said in a statement, adding that they lost 29 fighters. “In particular, surprise attacks and ambushing enemy military convoys.”
Communications Propaganda Minister Bereket Simon told AFP that the insurgents “clashed with some of the clan inside Ogaden and the clans have beaten them well.”
The ONLF is fighting for the independence of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia’s oil-rich Ogaden region. They say the local people have been marginalized by Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia’s The {www:Woyanne} military launched an offensive against ONLF after they attacked a Chinese-run oil venture in the Ogaden in 2007, killing 77 people, including nine Chinese nationals.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Six [fake] Ethiopian opposition parties formed an alliance on Thursday and accused the government of clamping down on dissent ahead of parliamentary elections next year.
[All this is orchestrated by the American embassy in Addis Ababa to give legitimacy to the Meles dictatorship.]
The alliance parties hold only 80 of parliament’s 547 seats, but still represent the most significant opposition to a government that is a close ally of Washington.
The new alliance includes the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF) and the Unity for Democracy and Justice party (UDJ), whose jailed 34-year-old leader Birtukan Mideksa is seen by regional analysts as the foremost opposition figure.
“Violations of democratic rights come … at a time when the general election is only a few months away,” UEDF leader Beyene Petros told reporters in the capital Addis Ababa. “The political space (should be) made conducive for free and fair elections.”
[It is laughable to call Dr Beyene Petros an “opposition politician.”]
Analysts say the government of Prime Minister dictator Meles Zanawi is likely to win next year’s poll as the opposition has been weakened since a 2005 parliamentary election ended in violence that killed 199 civilians.
Bereket Simon, the government’s head of information propaganda, rejected opposition claims the scope for political activity in Ethiopia was too restricted as “baseless accusations”.
“The political space is continually widening. We welcome the forming of this alliance. We believe it is good for Ethiopian democracy to see parties with the same programmes forming together,” he told Reuters.
Ethiopian opposition parties routinely accuse the government of harassment and say their candidates were intimidated when Ethiopians went to the polls last April for local elections.
The six parties will contest next year’s election under the banner of the Forum for Democratic Dialogue in Ethiopia (FDEE), while maintaining their independent structure and leadership.
The FDEE called on Thursday for Birtukan to be freed from prison, along with “several other Ethiopians incarcerated on political grounds”. They did not name the other prisoners.
Birtukan has been in solitary confinement since December and went on hunger strike for 13 days last month. She was jailed after the 2005 poll, pardoned in 2007, and rearrested last year.
Gebru Asrat, leader of the Arena Tigray for Democracy and Sovereignty Party, will serve as chairman of the alliance.
The other parties are the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM), the Ethiopian Democratic Unity Movement (EDUM) and the Somali Democratic Alliance Forces (SDAF).
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Harambe Newspaper editor Wosenseged GebreKidan has been taken to the notorious Kality prison today after he told the court that he doesn’t have 3,000 birr to pay for bail.
The U.S.-financed regime in Ethiopia has brought charges against Wosenseged for publishing a report about lack of participation in the April 2007 local elections, which, according to the prosecutor, violates the “press law.”
Wosenseged is one of the journalists who were released from jail in July 2007 along with the top leadership of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (Kinijit) after signing a pardon request letter that was prepared by mediators.
Many of the journalists who were released in July 2007 have fled Ethiopia fearing further persecution. Several members of Kinijit are also forced into exile.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The only reason the vampire regime in Ethiopia will not liberalize the telecom industry is that it wants to limit the people’s access to information.
By Jason McLure | Bloomberg
Ethiopia’s tribalist dictatorship will pursue membership of the World Trade Organization, though it has no plans to liberalize its telecommunications and financial-services industries to gain access, Trade Minister Girma Birru said.
Ethiopia is currently fielding questions about its trade policies from countries including the U.S. and Canada, as it attempts to negotiate entry into the global trade regime, Birru said in an interview on Feb. 17 in the capital, Addis Ababa.
The Horn of Africa nation, twice the size of Texas and with a population of 82.5 million, applied for membership of the Geneva-based trade arbiter in 2003. The country is counting on membership to open new markets to boost its $25.1 billion economy.
“Primarily we will join the WTO not to make others happy, but to make our economy work,” Birru said. “So to the extent it helps our economy we will liberalize things, but if it’s not going to assist our goals in trade and development we will not liberalize. Why do we have to?”
The country’s protected telecom and financial industries will be points of contention in the talks with WTO-member countries including the United States and United Kingdom, Tewodros Mekonnen, a researcher with the Ethiopian Economic Association, said in a phone interview on Feb. 19.
“I don’t see any plan” to break up or sell Ethiopian Telecommunications Corp. to private investors, Birru said. “If there are some problems it has nothing to do with ownership. It has only to do with management. Management and ownership don’t necessarily go together.”
Private Investors
Ethiopia has resisted pressure from the World Bank and trade partners like the U.S. to sell the telecommunications company to private investors.
Ethiopian Telecommunication’s monopoly enables it to charge $35 for a mobile-phone SIM card, which is required to obtain a mobile-phone number. In neighboring Somalia and Kenya, which have private mobile services, cards cost less than $5.
A 1-megabyte per second Internet connection costs more than $2,000 a month in Ethiopia. In South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy, a similar service costs between 600 rand ($59) and 760 rand, according to the http://www.mybroadband.co.za Web site.
“In Ethiopia, if there is any problem I don’t think it’s the price,” said Birru. “It’s the quality of the service. This has to be improved. And to improve this I don’t think it would be wise to privatize it.”
Ethiopia’s government is reluctant to sell the company because it is profitable and is expanding services to rural areas, Newai Gebre-Ab, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s top economic adviser, said yesterday in an interview.
Cash Generator
The company is “generating a lot of money and that money is being put to good use for development of infrastructure,” Gebre- Ab said.
Birru also said the Ethiopian central bank lacks the capacity to regulate large foreign financial institutions. The country is also unsure whether foreign banks would play a positive economic role in the country. As a result, the country is unlikely to liberalize the financial-services industry.
“At this stage, given the capacity that we have in terms of managing things and supervising them at the National Bank level, I don’t see why we’d allow that,” he said.
Ethiopia’s three state-run retail banks control about two- thirds of the capital in the country’s banking industry, according to the National Bank of Ethiopia. Until last year, no bank in Ethiopia could process MasterCard transactions. Banks in the country are also reluctant to lend to businesses that cannot provide real estate as collateral.
Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provision of international law be enforced.” – World War II Nuremberg Tribunal
Darfur is not the only case of international intervention in an African human rights dilemma. During the last two decades, Africa had several crises that needed international attention. The conflicts in Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Liberia devastated entire communities. Of particular concern to the international community was the widening conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which spilled over into the neighboring countries of the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia—several of which were already experiencing humanitarian emergencies of their own. Even after a shaky peace accord was signed in the DRC, humanitarian conditions did not improve significantly, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) had to deal with known human rights abusers.
While humanitarian emergencies continue to proliferate in Africa, a question with far-reaching implications arises: what is to be done regarding Darfur? Are there justifications for the Sudanese government’s position that no international organization can interfere in its own internal affairs? And if intercession is contemplated, what constitutes a sufficiently just cause to warrant intervention? All these depend on several factors: the intentions of the interveners, whether interventions are a last resort, who and what might be a legitimate target of intervention, reasonable prospects for success, and proper authorization.
The issue of just cause requires that severe suffering warranting help has arisen. These include such threats to vital interests as indiscriminate killings, torture, rape, and displacement of people. These would count as significant threats to human dignity and normal life. When such activities are widespread, and the state either perpetrates the injustices or does nothing appropriate to end the suffering of people, it would be reasonable to suggest the just cause threshold has been attained. These were undoubtedly present in ICC’s Darfur case.
Sudan has vehemently opposed what it considers intervention in its domestic affairs by the ICC. The Sudanese government has rejected the ICC’s request that war crimes suspects Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb be arrested and handed over to them. They consider the action an intrusion into their national affairs and have dubbed the ICC “a tool for [imposing] the culture of superiority.” But they could not stop the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) from publishing a notice for the arrest of Harun. Sudan’s Justice Minister Ali al-Mardi said that any attempts to arrest Harun and Kushayb through INTERPOL would be treated as “kidnapping and international piracy.”
This opposition to the ICC’s adjudication represents both practical and fundamental hurdles. On one level, there is no possibility for an international tribunal to operate without a state’s cooperation in turning over defendants and evidence and permitting investigation within its own territorial boundary. If the government of President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir shields its citizens from the ICC, the court would be hard pressed to carry out its prosecution.
On another level, criminal proceedings by international tribunals have rarely fulfilled victims’ expectations of universal justice. The international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia were both severely criticized as being too remote, too sluggish, and biased in their choice of defendants. The prosecutions were accused of sparing the most senior defendants from the local courts where they might be tried in accordance with local standards and within view of the local population that had witnessed the atrocities, and where, just like their subordinates, they could face the death penalty if convicted. This of course could not be expected in the Sudan, where the chain of command in the crime stretches up to President Bashir himself whom the ICC is now seeking to prosecute.
The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, after a through study of international law and conventions, determined that it may be appropriate for supranational bodies to intervene in what are normally considered the domestic affairs of a state for the purpose of protecting people who are at risk. The commission’s report pinpointed principles on which its prominent jurists reached consensus and which it believes to be “politically achievable in the world as we know it today.” The cardinal principles the commission considered legitimate were stated in the following words:
State sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself… However, where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression, or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of nonintervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.
The report does not deny that sovereignty is important, but it calls attention to what sovereignty entails. For the jurists, sovereignty is not best conceived of in terms of control but rather in terms of responsibility. Government officials are responsible for assuring the safety of citizens and for advancing their welfare. The commission did not find genuine support for a view that sovereignty necessitates unlimited state power over its own citizens, but instead acknowledged that “sovereignty implies a dual responsibility: externally—to respect the sovereignty of other states—and internally—to respect the dignity and basic rights of all the people within the state.” The report noted in its conclusion that “sovereignty as responsibility has become the minimum content of good international citizenship.”
The general responsibility to safeguard peoples’ welfare requires the implementation of three specific tasks. In the first instance, it entails a responsibility to prevent or to contend with the root causes of conflict that puts people at risk of requiring humanitarian intervention. Contending with the root causes can mean putting to an end political repression. In the second instance, it entails a responsibility to respond aptly when there is a pressing human need. A fitting response may call for sanctions, international prosecutions, or military interventions. And last but not least, the responsibility to protect people in distress demands a responsibility to rebuild by providing the right kind of help with recovering, reconstructing, and setting in motion a process of national reconciliation.
Regarding the issue of proper type of authorization for interventions, there is no better or more appropriate body than the United Nations Security Council that charged the ICC to take up the Darfur crisis. By its very design, the Security Council bears a primary obligation to deal with all requests for emergency authorizations and it has to do that within an appropriate time period, particularly when they entail urgent, large-scale crises like Darfur. There is clear tension between the goals of nations shielding themselves from outside interference and international goals of responding to victims who suffer in humanitarian crises; but when it comes to respecting sovereignty and respecting the welfare of individuals who are in distress, the matter should definitely be resolved in favor of protecting the vulnerable individuals who suffer in humanitarian crises.
_____________________________
Paulos Milkias, Ph.D., is a former Canada Council Doctoral Fellow, is Professor of Humanities and Political Science at Marianopolis College/Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Specializing in political science, he earned his MA and PhD from McGill University in Montreal and his BA from Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is currently co-editor of North-East-African Studies and associate editor of the journals Horn of Africa and the International Journal of Ethiopian Development Studies.
The main gallery space at the Santa Monica Museum of Art has been marked off by tape, like an archaeological dig where {www:different} findings have been indicated. In fact, the objects do look unearthed, anthropological.
Here, dozens of hand-carved sticks the size of walking canes are neatly laid out on a tarp; there, several hundred lumps of earth mixed with straw, crude figurines in the form of small apes, frogs and boxy television sets, are jumbled. Several framed works — collages and stitchings on fabric — are propped against the walls, which are being sponge-painted with an earthen wash.
The artist who has created these works is the subject of an unusual retrospective, “Elias Sime: Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Heart.” A quiet, burly man with a soft smile, Simé, 41, is from Ethiopia, where he is already well known. Three years ago he leapt onto the international scene when invited to participate in the New Crowned Hope Festival, organized by über-impresario Peter Sellars as part of Vienna’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Sime’s work often integrates recycled objects, not to make an environmental or economic {www:statement}, he says, but because “they have a story. Like the old buttons I use in my work, I can feel the people who wore them.”
“Every object is telling stories, has a history,” says Sellars. “He takes you into this micro-universe of intense experience.”
Last year Sellars convinced Elsa Longhauser, director of the Santa Monica museum, to do Simé’s first one-person show in this country. Longhauser praises the work as “all these things which hold a charge of life and are passed on from generation to generation. It’s very moving, very poignant.”
This afternoon, Sime and Meskerem Assegued, co-curator of the show along with Sellars, are in the gallery going over the first shipments — and there is more, far more to come, they say. Assegued both explains the work and helps {www:translate} for Sime.
She picks up several of the sticks and reveals that each “handle” has a face carved into it, some comical, some fierce. “This is what the farmers use for digging, and they specifically look for these kinds of branches,” she says, holding one by the long end and dipping the shorter section downward. How will these be displayed? “I’m thinking of tying together several at a time, then hanging them up in a corner,” she says. Simé nods, trusting her to best present his work.
Sime is a graduate of the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts and Design. He majored in graphic design, but when he graduated in 1990, he felt the artist inside straining to get out. Since childhood, he had done sewing, embroidery and furniture repair, and he gravitated toward collage work. The early pieces were illustrative — “Yedero Suk” (1997) depicts a movable general store that used to be common in Ethiopia. This, like much of his work, utilizes found or recycled material — yarn, cardboard and cloth in this case.
“I collect a lot of things; I collect everything,” Sime says. “Bottle caps, for instance, I have 20 big bags. I have also the same amount of old keys, buttons, horns, dolls, cans — I have a lot of old rusted cans. I feel they have people’s touch on them.” Thus, the fabric in his work may be from worn clothing, the buttons from salvage. He often visits the main open-air market in Addis Ababa, his hometown, scouring for material. Even his signature on framed pieces is a recycle — flattened metal bottle caps that he finds on the streets. “When people step on it, they put their mark on it,” he says.
Sime and Assegued met eight years ago, and he repeatedly asked her to visit his studio. When she finally went, she ended up staying for hours, as he showed her work upon work. The art, she thought, was astonishing enough, “but I was especially struck by his lack of ego.” She realized that he was someone she would want to work with, and she began putting him in exhibitions she was organizing. Sellars feels that that very modesty puts Simé “in a tradition of the sacred artist; he’s putting something larger forward.”
“He’s the most unpredictable artist,” says Assegued. “It’s contemporary art more than contemporary African art. Yes, it’s being done in Africa and addresses issues that concern us all, but he’s not in any movement. He doesn’t fit; that’s what makes his work unique.”
An anthropologist by training, Assegued is intrigued by indigenous pre-Christian culture and tradition, which is fast disappearing in Ethiopia, and she and Sime have traveled together to see traditional rites, artifacts and architecture.
“When we go out in the field, I document with writing and photographs,” she says. “When we come back, we don’t see each other for a month or so, and he does his own interpretations or feelings about what we’ve seen.” It was from one such trip at the end of 2002 that the first throne came about. In one village they had discovered a ritual to Bojje, the thunder deity. Weeks later, Sime showed her the fantastical throne he had built with a bovine skull and horns and cowrie shells on a carved wooden frame.
Real-life references
A week later, the exhibition is up, and this throne sits with a few others in the middle of the gallery. In April, in a procession yet to be determined, the thrones will be carried to Walt Disney Concert Hall for Esa-Pekka Salonen’s final concerts, featuring Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex” and “Symphony of Psalms.” Around the thrones are dozens of goatskins filled with straw, arranged in groupings of two and three. (These skins were traditionally used as household containers.) The mud figurines are piled in a line along the back, and collages and stitched work have been arranged on the walls.
Although the recent stitched work looks more abstract, there are real-life references. In “Filega 1” (“filega” means “searching”), a hand emerges from a swirling ether created from pastel-colored yarn; the forefinger presses a circle that is on a panel with four points. Assegued suggests that since this was made after they had visited temples devoted to the thunder god, it might make reference to the altars they found there — which often had four points. In “Filega 2,” one hand in the lower right corner seems to be reaching up. “It’s like reading,” Simé says of that one, “like you’re turning a page of a book.”
Typically, Sime works from 6 a.m. till midnight. “Stitching takes a lot of time and patience. With patience you can do almost anything.” Then he adds, as an afterthought, “And that’s true in life as well.”
When asked whether he sketches or plans out his work, Sime reaches in his pocket and pulls out a stack of folded note paper. On them he has lightly sketched out various ideas — squiggles and grids, with the occasional note. In his sewn work, he starts out with only a rudimentary pencil sketch on canvas. “If I sketch everything, it limits me. It doesn’t allow me to go freely. I let my mind lead me.”
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Harambe Newspaper editor Wosenseged GebreKidan has been taken to the notorious Kality prison today after he told the court that he doesn’t have 3,000 birr to pay for bail.