ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — The African Union urged the International Criminal Court Friday to suspend its indictment of Sudan’s president on genocide charges, saying it could jeopardize any peace process in Darfur.
The court’s chief prosecutor has accused Omar al-Bashir of masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in western Sudan’s Darfur region with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation.
The ICC still must decide whether to issue a warrant for al-Bashir. There have been no rulings on the warrant yet and a court decision is expected early this year. The UN has the power to grant a one-year suspension.
Up to 300,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes in five years of fighting in Darfur. Al-Bashir is also accused of unleashing militia allied with the government to target civilians, rather than rebels, in villages and camps.
The head of the AU Peace and Security Council said Friday that African foreign ministers unanimously supported delaying the indictment process for a year so officials can negotiate peace in Darfur.
“There is a solidarity shown toward the president of Sudan, unanimously,” Ramtane Lamamra said after the closed-door session.
Sudanese officials were not available for comment Friday.
Reed Brody, a Brussels-based lawyer with Human Rights Watch said the AU’s argument that Bashir’s arrest would imperil the peace process had one fatal flaw. “What peace process?” he said. “We don’t see an effective peace process happening at the moment.”
The Sudanese government does not recognize the court, and has refused to turn over any suspects to face international justice. Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state named as a war crimes suspect by the court’s prosecutors.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (AFP) – The European Union has given Ethiopia’s dictatorship €251m (US$329 million) in aid to boost development projects across the Horn of Africa nation, the government said on Friday.
The agreement was signed on Thursday by the bloc’s Director of Aid to sub-saharan Africa, Carribean and Pacific regions Gary Quince and Ethiopia’s Finance and Economic Development Minister Sufian Ahmed.
“The grant will be used for development assistance through road sector policy support… forest management and to implement some other development activities,” the finance ministry said in a statement.
The EU is one of the top development contributors to the Woyanne brutal regime in {www:Ethiopia), an impoverished country of 77 million and among the world’s top aid recipients.
The world marathon record can sink as low as one hour and 58 minutes, the fastest human being over 42-kilometres, Haile Gebrselassie, has predicted.
But the Ethiopian legend, who has been in Nairobi since Monday on a training mission with his sponsors, G4S, said this record time will only be registered after 20 to 25 years.
Gebrselassie and his long-time nemesis, Paul Tergat, were the star attractions at a sumptuous dinner hosted by G4S at the Laico Regency Hotel in Nairobi on Friday night.
Roses of smoked salmon and shrimps set on a bed of fresh bouquet garden leaves enriched with balsamic and rice vinaigrette dressing was the appetiser at Friday’s dinner, with the main dish a choice between a mixed grill of chicken and medallion of beef fillet accompanied with bordelaise sauce and pan seared fillet of tilapia surrounded with tomato basil sauce.
And as the guests were served with a desert of baked cheese cake with black pie cherry filling and fresh fruit salad, Gebrselassie and Tergat took to the stage to re-live their glorious competition days that climaxed in that memorable 10,000 metres Olympic final in Sydney where the Ethiopian pipped Tergat to the gold medal.
Gebrselassie, who holds 26 world records, including the world’s best marathon time of two hours, three minutes and 59 seconds, said it is possible for man to dip under two hours over the 42 kilometres.
“In the next 20 to 25 years it will be possible to run 1:58 or 1:59 in the marathon but to run lower than that will mean the runners using special shoes or skates,” the 35-year-old Gebrselassie, who left for his Addis Ababa base on Friday, said.
Gebrselassie also described his win over Tergat at the 2000 Olympics as “a victory from God.”
“That was not me. That was God,” he said.
“I don’t know how I did it… I remember looking at the big screen and when I saw my pictures there, then I knew I had won the race.”
Tergat, sharing the stage with his rival but great friend, said the Ethiopians had planned seriously for the race and had schemed how to stop him from winning.
“When Asefa (Mezgebu) boxed me with 300 metres to go, I said shit! I knew just what they had planned because Asefa came in front of me but did not want to move,” said Tergat who held the world marathon record at 2:04.55 before Gebrselassie lowered it to 2:04.26 in Berlin two years ago and further to 2:03.59 last year at the same Berlin course.
“I lost the gold medal by less than a second. I had done everything and put in all the effort I needed to win and that will remain my most memorable race as an athlete. I lost to a great man.
Tergat, a five-time world cross country champion, who finished 17th at the Armed Forces Cross Country Championships a fortnight ago, said he is not keen on making a comeback to his previous speciality and sounded a warning to Kenyan cross country runners: “If I’m still able to breathe down your neck, then it means you have some homework to do.”
Gebrselassie was in Kenya on a mentorship programme for the G4S Teen programme that featured upsoming athletes from Africa.
The G4S athletes included Kenyan cross country star Pauline Korikwiang, sprinters Obinna Metu (Nigeria), Fanuel Kenosi (Botswana) and table tennis star Zodwa Maphanga (South Africa).
Tergat and Gebrselassie agreed that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has a lot more to do to root out doping from the sport.
“Things are not as bad in athletics as they are in other sports but there is a lot that the IAAF needs to do to remove drugs from our sport,” Gebrselassie said.
They urged the upcoming stars to be close to the media and be involved in community service.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, or IGAD, a regional grouping of six East African nations, has condemned the attempt by Islamist extremists to retake control of Somalia, following the withdrawal of Ethiopian Woyanne troops. The Somali delegate at an IGAD foreign ministers meeting warned that security is at a critical stage in his country.
The IGAD ministers issued a statement on Tuesday condemning the actions of what are described as “anti-peace groups” in Somalia. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development is a regional forum linking Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Djibouti.
The emergency meeting was called a day after Ethiopian Woyanne troops completed their military withdrawal from Somalia. The Ethiopians Woyannes were immediately replaced in the provisional seat of parliament, Baidoa, by the hardline Islamic group al-Shabab, which already controls a large portion of central and southern Somalia.
An al-Shabab leader was quoted as promising to restore strict Sharia, or Islamic, law, which had been in effect before Ethiopian Woyanne intervened more than two years ago to prop up the country’s fragile transitional government.
Ethiopia’s Woyanne Foreign Minister, Seyoum Mesfin, accused al-Shabab of using Ethiopia’s presence in Somalia as a pretext for a campaign of violence that has left an estimated 16,000 people dead.
“Now that Ethiopian Woyanne troops are completely out of Somalia, so they have a different a different agenda, leading Somalia to the verge of fragmentation. And they are leading Somalia down the drain. They must not be allowed to lead Somalia into that disaster,” he said.
At the same time, the foreign minister emphasized that Ethiopia Woyanne has no intention of returning to Somalia after failing to bring stability to a country that has been without a functioning government since 1991.
“I don’t think Ethiopian Woyanne troops are ready again to step into Somalia. That is ruled out. But we will do everything by strengthening AMISOM [the African Union Mission to Somalia] and the Somali institutions to fight anarchy and these terrorist acts inside their country,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Africa’s top diplomat, African Union Commission chief Jean Ping spoke confidently of adding Ugandan and Nigerian battalions to the AU’s 3,500-strong peacekeeping mission in Somalia. AMISOM is working alongside 10,000 Somali security service personnel. But the combined force controls little more than a section of the capital, Mogadishu.
Ping shrugged off the fall of Baidoa to al-Shabab, saying it had been expected. He described security conditions as “less serious” than expected.
But Mohamed Jaama Ali, the top official in Somalia’s foreign ministry, says he is very worried about the restoration of militant Islamic rule. “Our security assessment, the Somali situation is very critical. As you may see it, it is very critical after the withdrawal of the Ethiopian; it is very volatile and very critical,” he said.
Somalia’s parliament, meanwhile, is meeting in neighboring Djibouti, a day after members voted to expand from 275 to 550 the number of members of parliament to include moderate Islamists under a United Nations-mediated deal.
Lawmakers on Tuesday extended by a few days the time limit for electing a new president to replace Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who resigned under pressure last month.
The country’s provisional charter gives parliament 30 days to elect a new president after the position falls vacant. That 30 day period expires on Wednesday. But the leader of a moderate Islamist opposition group that is joining the government, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, has asked for an extension to organize a campaign for the presidency.
Sheik Sharif quickly became a frontrunner in the presidential race because he has the support of a large faction of the new members in the expanded parliament.
The Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJ) leaders and members held a protest rally in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa demanding the release of their leader Wzr. Birtukan Mideksa.
The demonstration took place in the form of a candle light vigil and listening to music inside the party’s office. [This is not a joke. It is true.]
It has now been 1 month since UDJ chairperson was thrown in jail for refusing to retract a statement about pardon and apology.
Read more in Amharic about today’s candle light vigil as reported in Amharic by EthiopiaZare.com:
It is not often, these days, that I walk into an exhibition space and feel those familiar symptoms–the heart beating harder, faster, the head spinning with awe, the blood running through the veins–by which I recognize that I’m in the presence of genius. And I don’t mean just that intellectual brilliance we too often associate with the word in its casual use, but something closer to its profounder meaning, a transcendent connection between humanity and what I can only describe with the word “spirit.” It’s an expression of greatness, of the awesome potential of the imagination, of the boundless, passionate creativity that can spring from a single, singular human mind.
It’s this complex of feelings that overwhelmed me as I stepped across the threshold and into that space of the Santa Monica Museum of Art that is now devoted to the work of the Ethiopian artist Elias Simé, in a show called “Eye of the Needle, Eye of the Heart,” co-curated by the multi-disciplinary arts impresario Peter Sellars and the noted Ethiopian curator and anthropologist Meskerem Assegued. If I can help you step into that space yourself, you’ll be able to understand what I mean by “boundless creativity…”
Come with me, then. Your eye will likely be attracted, first, by the hundreds of goatskins, stuffed with straw and decorated with bright, totemic markings, laid out on the floor and arranged in groups that suggest love in all of its myriad forms, whether intimate, sexual even, between two beings, or family love, parents with children, or community groupings whose bond is love of a different, more inclusive kind. It will move on, then, to an arrangement of regal thrones at the center of the gallery floor, each constructed of sensuously carved wood, animal horns, skins and shells, their presence evoking the ritual of kingship, the authority of the seated ruler.
And thence to the walls, adorned with “paintings” created out of exquisitely crafted thread and buttons, quasi abstract, at once primitive in their magic and intensely contemporary in aesthetic sophistication; and to three-dimensional wall constructions, created from both the detritus of the Addis Ababa city streets and the common materials found in its market stalls.
Elias Simé is something more than an artist, I’d say, from looking at his work. He’s a pack rat, a teacher, a guru, a magician, a medicine man, a community organizer, an orchestrator of the reality that surrounds him where he lives. You know how the most mundane of objects can be conjured by such a person into something so heavily invested with the combined power of labor and craft, vision and intention that it assumes the burning quality of a religious icon, a talisman? To get the full impact of Simé’s work, you need to multiply that effect by the thousands.
This is an artist who wastes nothing, works with anything and everything, recycles what others disregard or throw away and invests it with dignity and meaning. From what I read in the accompanying brochure, community is an essential part of his work: family and friends join with him in the creation of his art, and he spreads small wealth and creativity amongst the local children by rewarding them for bringing him the results of their scavenging. He is, in a real and pragmatic sense, a social activist.
Imagine this: the wall of a gallery piled high, at its foot, with bales of straw, on which lie, higgledy-piggledy, hundreds of small, roughly molded individual figures of monkeys and frogs, interspersed, improbably, with the square, stolid shapes of miniature television sets, each one hand-formed out of an earthy mix of mud and straw.
You tell me what this vision “means.” Something about the clash of cultures? The lost, mysterious connection between the “primitive” and the “sophisticated”? Earth and sky? Between the animate and the inanimate, nature and artifact? All this and more, wherever your mind can wander with it. For me, though, it’s enough to stand there in sheer wonder, with that beating heart, and marvel at the way in which the mind and body simply say, Yes! This is what it is, and could be nothing other. That, friends, quite simply, is the impact of art at its greatest: a recognition, undeniable and true.
Simé is also an architect and constructivist. The exhibition includes a video documentation about the house he is building in Addis Ababa–again, mostly out of mud and straw, but also stone, wood, plant material.
It is part Antonio Gaudi, the Barcelona eccentric, part Frank Gehry visionary in its sheer playful inventiveness of form and its startling diversity of materials. It is part Simon Rodia, of Watts Towers fame, part Grandma Prisbrey, who built a village out of discarded bottles; and it shares with all self-taught artists an audacious, sometimes bizarre originality untrammeled by conventional rules and expectations.
What we sense above all in Simé’s work is the skill and dexterity of the human hand, whose presence is evident everywhere, and its coordination with the human heart. We cannot doubt that all this is a “labor of love,” in the truest meaning of that trite expression, nor that it embodies a dedication to the finest qualities of the human spirit: love, labor, yes; and home and hearth, family, connection. It is “organic” in the same sense that the entire body of this artist’s work is organic–in its intimate, sensual connection with nature, its indivisibility, its living, breathing, constantly expanding growth, its continuity with everything that surrounds it. It is a beautiful expression of that “oneness” that most of us glimpse only in moments of rare privilege in our lives, but in which this artist seems to dwell.
I know, I know, I rave. I do not believe, however, that I am overstating the case for this truly remarkable, visionary, profoundly human work. Readers who live anywhere within visiting range should not pass up on the opportunity to see this exhibition. It’s an opportunity of a kind that will rarely come again.
(Peter Clothier is an internationally-known novelist, art critic, and blogger.)
