At least eight Kenyan Somalis have been killed in renewed fighting between two Somali clans in and outside the north-eastern Kenyan city of Mandera bordering Somalia early on Wednesday morning, a source from Mandera told APA in Mogadishu.
The fighting which erupted over the ownership of grazing lands first started in Koroney village about 14km south of Mandera and then spread into the town, Somali elder Abdi Samad Nur Ibrahim told APA by phone on Wednesday morning.
Abdi Samad Nur Ibrahim said in a telephone conversation with APA that 6 people were killed early Wednesday morning after they left a mosque in Mandera while 2 others were killed in Koroney village.
“The situation in Mandera is very tense today and the riot police are using teargas and rubber bullets to quell the intensifying fighting between Garre and Murale Kenyan ethnic Somalis,” he added.
“People were using swords, knives, bayonets and axes in the fighting and many bleeding people could be seen running everywhere in the city,” he added.
Schools and businesses were closed down because of the reigning tension and the clan-based hostility in the city.
Last week, at least 9 people were killed and dozens of houses burned when the two clans first fought over the ownership of grazing lands, but police and local elders were able to quell the incident.
Mandera is located in the north eastern part of Kenya, bordering Ethiopia and Somalia. It is located at 1000km from Mogadishu.
The top U.S. official for human rights and democracy issues has met Ethiopia’s TPLF leaders to express concern about pending legislation that critics say would curtail political freedoms. VOA’s Peter Heinlein in Addis Ababa reports Ethiopian Woyanne officials flatly reject the criticisms, arguing that the rights of citizens are being protected.
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights David Kramer says he came to Ethiopia this week to ask Prime Minister Dictator extraordinaire Meles Zenawi to reconsider provisions in a draft law that would criminalize many activities of foreign non-governmental organizations. The bill is set for presentation to parliament in the coming days.
The so-called Charities and Societies Proclamation would give the government oversight authority over NGOs receiving at least 10 percent foreign funding, including money from Ethiopians living abroad. It prohibits these NGOs from promoting the advancement of human and democratic rights, gender equality or the rights of children and the disabled.
After what he described as a ‘useful and productive’ two-hour meeting with the prime minister, Dictator Assistant Secretary Kramer told reporters he had expressed U.S. concerns about a number of issues, including the conduct of recent local council elections and a newly-passed law limiting press freedom.
“I did convey to him concerns that we have and we have heard from others about some trends that would point to a closing of political space. When you look at the April election earlier this year, when you look at the media law that was passed. When you look at the draft CSO legislation, and we had a discussion about that,” he said.
Kramer says he is worried about provisions in the draft legislation that could force the closure of several aid projects funded by the U.S. government. “My bureau for example funds programs that deal with issues of women’s empowerment, with media, with conflict resolution, and based on my understanding of the latest version of the proclamation that I’ve seen so far, those programs could be adversely affected,” he said.
Ethiopian officials TPLF have staunchly defended the draft law, saying it will not jeopardize the rights of Ethiopians. In a recent VOA interview, senior government adviser TPLF cadre Bereket Simon dismissed criticisms that the proposal would constitute a blow to democracy. “This is simply a ridiculous assertion. Since we’re promoting democracy, I don’t think any genuinely democratic NGO shall be afraid of empowering our people. We are empowering our people. Nothing has been taken from the right of the people, and that’s what concerns us most, and if these NGO critics are really interested in what is taking place in Ethiopia, in empowering the public, I think there should be no concern or fear,” he said.
Assistant Secretary of State Kramer declined to speculate on what impact passage of the Charities Proclamation might have on the level of U.S. aid to Ethiopia. The Horn of Africa country is currently the third largest recipient of U.S. aid in Africa, after Egypt and Sudan. During fiscal year 2008, U.S. assistance to Ethiopia Woyanne totaled nearly $800 million, most of it humanitarian food military aid.
There are an estimated 3,000 NGOs currently operating in Ethiopia. Their combined budgets are believed to be more than $1 billion a year.
NAIROBI // Nestled somewhere among the green hillsides of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, is a cluster of small detention centres, where detainees have languished for almost two years without being charged.
The detention centres are part of an illegal rendition programme that has spanned three Horn of Africa countries and included US interrogators. Human rights organizations have called the jails “Africa’s Guantanamo”, after the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspected terrorists have been held since 2002.
The Ethiopian Woyanne rendition programme is not the first time the United States has been accused of sending suspected terrorists to countries that allow torture. A Council of Europe investigation in 2006 found that the CIA detained at least 100 terrorism suspects in Europe and transferred them to such third-party states as Egypt, Morocco and Uzbekistan. These so-called extraordinary renditions are part of the US “war on terror” since the September 11 attacks.
Most of the 150 men, women and children – meaning they were younger than 18 – who were arrested in 2007 as part of the rendition programme have been released.
This month, eight Kenyans arrested in 2007 and transferred to Ethiopian authorities TPLF henchmen were sent back to Kenya. Two others remain in Ethiopian TPLF custody, but at least 22 are unaccounted for, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a rights organisation based in New York. HRW has seen evidence that they were sent to Ethiopia, but the Ethiopians Woyanne cannot account for them.
“The dozens of people caught up in the secret Horn of Africa renditions in 2007 have suffered in silence too long,” said Jennifer Daskal, the senior counterterrorism counsel at HRW. “Those governments involved – Ethiopia TPLF, Kenya and the US – need to reverse course, renounce unlawful renditions, and account for the missing.”
The Horn of Africa rendition programme has its roots in Somalia’s civil war. Somalia, which has been in a perpetual state of conflict since 1991, experienced a brief period of security when a group of hardline Islamists, known as the Islamic Courts Union, took over much of the country in 2006.
Fearing that the courts union would harbor terrorists and turn Somalia into a safe haven for al Qa’eda, the United States in late 2006 backed the EthiopianWoyanne army in an invasion of Somalia to rout the movement. A weak secular transitional government took the place of the Islamic Courts Union, and the Islamists have waged a bloody insurgency ever since.
Thousands tried to flee Somalia into Kenya in Jan 2007. The Kenyan government, at the request of the United States, closed its border with Somalia and arrested suspected insurgents as they tried to cross.
The suspects were taken to Nairobi and then flown to Somalia, according to passenger manifests of the flights. There they were handed over to Ethiopian authorities TPLF and lumped together with other suspects arrested by the Ethiopians Woyanne in Somalia.
From Somalia, the suspects were transferred to Ethiopia, where they were tortured, according to a HRW report on the rendition programme made public on Oct 1.
“They beat me from head to toe,” said Ishmael Noor, a detainee who was released.
“They beat me on my upper arms, on my legs, on the back of my head, on the bottom of my feet. At one point they broke my foot. Sometimes it is still so painful that I cannot sleep.”
Mr Noor, 37, is a shepherd from Ethiopia’s troubled Ogaden region now living in a refugee camp in northern Kenya. He fled to Somalia in 2004 during fighting in Ogaden, according to the HRW report. In 2007, he again fled fighting in Somalia and attempted to cross into Kenya.
He was stopped at the border by Kenyan security forces and was asked to show identification, which he did not have. When he could not pay a bribe of US$15 (Dh55), he was arrested and sent to Nairobi, where he was interrogated before being rendered to the Ethiopians TPLF thugs.
Many of the detainees, who spent months in the detention centres in Addis Ababa, were interrogated by US counterterrorism officials before finally being let go.
The United States also funds Ethiopian security forces TPLF henchmen giving the country $12 million in security-related assistance in 2007.
“The United States says that they were investigating past and current threats of terrorism,” Ms Daskal said. “But the repeated interrogation of rendition victims who were being held incommunicado makes Washington complicit in the abuse.”
Ethiopia was seen as an ideal location for the US officials to interrogate suspects, according to Al Amin Kimathi, the head of the Muslim Human Rights Forum in Kenya.
The United States did not transport or torture the suspects, but instead relied on their its African counterparts to do the dirty work puppets.
“It was the most natural place to take anyone looking for a site to go and torture and to extract confessions,” Mr Kimathi said. “Ethiopia Woyanne allows torture of detainees. And that is the modus operandi in renditions.”
The Ethiopian Zenawi government denied the charges of torture.
“All allegations of torture are untrue,” said Birhan Hailu, Ethiopia’s information minister TPLF minister of misinformation.
“It’s part of a smear campaign against a country which has never committed, and never will, such practices. They were treated very well.”
The US government refuses to comment on the Horn of Africa rendition programme.
“I have no knowledge of it nor as official policy can I comment on such matters,” Jendayi Frazer, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, told the BBC in September.
Eight of the Kenyans held in Ethiopia were released on Oct 4, just days after the HRW report on the rendition programme. They were taken to the port city of Mombasa, where they received medical treatment. The released detainees threatened to sue the Kenyan government over its role in the renditions.
“We urge you to direct the police to immediately investigate the identity of the public officials who authorised the arbitrary kidnapping of our clients, with a view to arresting and prosecuting the officials for abuse of office,” the lawyers for the detainees said in a letter.
Alfred Mutua, a spokesman for the Kenyan government, denied that Kenyan authorities played a role in transferring their own citizens to the Ethiopians TPLF.
MOGADISHU (Xinhua) – Hussein Mohamed Hubsired, spokesman for the Somali president, has strongly denied media reports of a political rift within Somali and Ethiopian leaders over the future of the war-torn Horn of Africa nation, a press release said Sunday.
Hubsired described those reports as “political speculations,” adding that only the spokesperson of the President of Somalia is authorized to speak on behalf the president.
“I would like to underline that the current leadership of Somalia and Ethiopia have come all the way to make history out of their courage and far-sighted vision by strengthening all the positive values and important interests we share as brothers and neighbors,” Hubsired said in a statement.
This comes days after some local and international media reported that the Somali president, through his “special envoy,” accused both his Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of being behind the failure of the Somali transitional government and its inability to tackle the insurgency in Somalia.
Hubsired said the leaders of the two countries “have paved the way for a brighter future of peace and political stability in our sub-region and far beyond.”
In late 2006, the Ethiopian government sent its military into Somalia to help the Somali transitional government defeat an Islamist administration in southern and central Somalia that was deemed a threat to the national security of Ethiopia and a challenge to the authority of the internationally recognized Somali national institutions.
Hubsired urged local and international media to cover as fairly as possible Somali issues, asking them to have in mind “the tremendous sufferance of the Somali people and their utmost right for fair and lasting peace.”
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (AFP) — The Ethiopian government Woyanne dictatorial regime in Ethiopia has submitted to the {www:rubber stamp parliament} draft legislation on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which has drawn fire from rights activists, the state news agency said on Saturday.
“The Council of Ministers on its 70th regular meeting on Friday discussed and passed decision on a draft law of Civil Society Organisations (CSO),” the office of Prime Minster Meles Zenawi told ENA.
“The bill is aimed at strengthening democratic institutions and ensuring constitutional rights of citizens.”
According to ENA, the government has included stakeholders’ recommendations in the plan.
The bill has been strongly criticised by the rights organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW).
On Friday, British International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, made public his reservations about the bill after meeting Meles.
“We have expressed our concerns to Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi,” he said at a news conference in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
“He informed me that a version recently tabled to his cabinet was in fact the fourth revised law.”
In October, HRW called on donor governments “to speak out publicly against this law”, saying it was “alarming”. The organisation claims it violates both the Ethiopian constitution and several international agreements.
NGOs are particularly disturbed by the creation of a state oversight agency which, they say, could at any moment launch a probe into any organisation outside any legal control, take part in meetings or mandate the police to do so, as well as appoint or dismiss senior staff.
Ethiopia, a poverty-stricken nation of 80 million inhabitants in the Horn of Africa, is one of the countries in the world receiving the greatest amount of aid.
In July, the Swiss branch of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said it was withdrawing from the country’s Somali region because of intimidation from the Ethiopian authorities.
“The authorities’ attitude towards humanitarian organisations has translated into recurrent arrests of MSF Switzerland staff without charge or explanation,” MSF said in a statement.
These “repeated administrative hurdles and intimidations” had prevented the aid agency from bringing urgently needed medical aid to the population.
NEW YORK (UN News Center) – Drought-hit Ethiopians are facing a worsening food situation as the cost of maize soars nearly three-fold in some areas of the Horn of Africa country compared to last year, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cautioned today.
[The U.N. needs to come out and tell the truth. The current famine in Ethiopia has nothing to do with drought. It is a man-made famine by the US- UK- and World Bank-financed dictatorial regime of Meles Zenawi that is purposely hiding and covering up the problem as the U.K. officials have finally admitted today.]
Migration by people from rural to urban areas in search of food is increasing, it noted, and aid agencies have identified critical malnutrition. A rapid assessment team said it found grave water and pasture shortages in some areas.
Due to reduced rations resulting from breaks in the pipeline have led to reduced rations, whose distribution began in July and will continue until December, OCHA said that it anticipates increased malnutrition and a rise in child labour and begging.
The Office also warned that without adequate October-December rains, food insecurity will continue will into next year.
Earlier this week, OCHA appealed for more than $265 million to fund relief operations in Ethiopia for the next three months to meet the widening scale of the crisis, with some 6.4 million people now estimated to need urgent assistance.
It reported that a recent joint assessment by Ethiopian authorities and the international humanitarian community found that an extra 1.8 million people have been hit hard by the crisis since the last assessment in June.
The biggest increase has been in the country’s south-east, known as the Somali region, where the number of people requiring emergency food aid has almost doubled to 1.9 million since June.
Migration by people from rural to urban areas in search of food is increasing, it noted, and aid agencies have identified critical malnutrition. A rapid assessment team said it found grave water and pasture shortages in some areas.