(AFP) – AN Ethiopian Woyanne kangaroo court has sentenced to death five top military officers of former Marxist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam, for air raids that killed hundreds in an open market in 1980.

The state-run Ethiopian News Agency said the five officers were sentenced for the raid at Hawzen, along with five others given life sentences and four given terms of 19 years. All were tried and sentenced in absentia.

Ethiopian Air Force officers were [falsely] accused of bombing Hawzen in the northern Tigray region, killing hundreds of civilians on a market day on June 23, 1980, prosecutors said.

Ethiopia Woyanne has been trying former officials of Mengistu’s regime for the past 14 years for horrific killings carried out under his rule.

Most are in exile after rebels including the current prime minister, Meles Zenawi, overthrew him in 1991. Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe, where he lives in luxury under the protection of President Robert Mugabe.

The same court in January 2007 sentenced Mengistu to life in prison for killings thousands of people during his 17-year rule which included famine, war and purges including the “Red Terror” slaughter of suspected opponents.

Prosecutors have said his sentence was not commensurate with his crime and appealed for a death sentence in May. The court is expected to hear the appeal this year, but Mengistu is not likely to face justice.

Statement of the Oromo Liberation Front

The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) is prompted to issue this statement in response to the statement by the UN’s News release, dated March 28, 2008. The News Release reports, among others, that, “The deteriorating situation with regard to human health, food security, livelihoods, and livestock health, initially reported in Borne zone has spread to Bale, East Hararge, Guji and Liben zones of Oromia Region. Poorly performing rains for upcoming rainy season forecast by National Meteorological Agency are likely to exacerbate the exiting situation in lowland agropastoral areas of Oromia Region.” The report predicts that, “An estimated 88, 000 people in affected woredas [districts] in Borana zone require emergency assistance from government, humanitarian partners and UN agencies.” The News Release also warns of similar “emergence of hotspots in the SNNPR.”

The OLF applauds the UN’s news release for bringing to the attention of the World Community the grim situation that Oromo people are facing at this difficult time and for calling for emergency assistance for those affected in Oromia and other parts of Ethiopia. The OLF leadership believes that no responsibility is greater and no calling nobler than saving the lives of our pastoralists and farmers who are victimized by forces beyond their control.

At the same time, the OLF would like to point out that the cause that the UN Report gives to the calamitous situation of the Oromo people as “poorly performing rain” is only a part of the truth. The other part of the truth is bad governance of the Ethiopian regime, which has made the lives of the Oromo truly miserable. What is more, the current Ethiopian regime, which is dominated by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), follows discriminatory and lopsided economic development policy in Oromia and other regional states in southern Ethiopia.

It is imperative to remember that since the Meles regime came to power in 1991″the effects of the dry season”, the usual cause for famine in Ethiopia has shifted from Northern Ethiopia, in general, and Tigrai, in particular, to the Southern Ethiopia, in general, and Oromia, in particular. The Tigrai region, the home base of the Meles and the regime’s ruling elites, that used to be known for drought and famine for several decades, is now boasting for unheard of all round economic progress. These days there are no warnings of famine concerning Tigrai. It is good news that Tigrai economy is progressing and the people of Tigrai are no longer subjected to starvation like the Oromo.

At this point it is pertinent to ask why Oromia is starving while Tigrai is prospering? Since the creation of the modern Ethiopian empire in the 1880s Oromia has been known as the breadbasket of Ethiopia. More than sixty percent of Ethiopian government revenue comes from Oromia. Most of Ethiopian cash crops come from Oromia. Oromia, the Oromo regional state, is the most fertile part of Ethiopia, which enjoys abundant rainfall and has numerous rivers and lakes. With its hardworking farmers and abundant animal population Oromia always prided itself not only on its self-sufficiency in food production, but also produced surplus for the rest of Ethiopia and for international market.

Why is the same land now starving and needs humanitarian assistance of food? The answer is very clear. The root cause of the famine in Oromia is the TPLF regime’s policy towards Oromo people. Because the Oromo constitute almost forty-five percent of the population of Ethiopia, the TPLF, which represents less than seven percent of the population of Ethiopia, fears Oromo numerical strength. As a result the TPLF dominated Ethiopian regime follows the policies of destroying all independent Oromo organizations and impoverishing the Oromo people.

How does the TPLF regime impoverish the Oromo people? The regime follows well documented discriminatory economic policies. It provides disproportionate and unfair budget allocation to Oromia. It is this regime that has classified the educated and the entrepreneurial classes of the Oromo as enemies of its ‘revolutionary democracy’ ideology. What is more, the regime has imposed gross human rights violations in Oromia, which forced tens of thousands of Oromo farmers to seek refuge in the neighboring countries in the Horn of Africa and beyond. Since it came to power in 1991, the current Ethiopian regime has dispossessed, displaced, and disenfranchised tens of thousands of the Oromo people, which is the real root cause for the underdevelopment and starvation in Oromia
today.

As if its gross human rights violations in Oromia are not enough, the irresponsible and myopic TPLF regime has been engaged in an intentional deforestation of Oromia since it came to power. On the pretext of flushing out the OLF guerrilla fighters, the current Ethiopian authorities, intentionally set fire to Oromia’s natural forest that is a cause for the fast degradation of Oromia’s ecological system. It is worthy of note that the most recent intentionally set fire to Oromia’s natural forest is that of the Shakiso forest of Bale zone destroying huge forests.

The OLF would like the UN and the world community to know that the TPLF regime is punishing the Oromo people for demanding their fundamental human rights. The regime deprived the supply of fertilizer to Oromo farmers for their alleged support of the OLF. It was with the intention of depriving the Oromo people a relief and development assistance that the TPLF regime banned the Oromo Relief Association (ORA) from legally functioning in the country.

The regime also illegally confiscated ORA’s assets and properties, including a ready for distribution relief and humanitarian aid. The TPLF regime has either withheld the humanitarian and development assistance provided by the Western World from the Oromo people or diverted it to the Tigrai region or used it for a provision of its armed and security forces.

Therefore, the OLF calls on the UN and other humanitarian agencies to directly help the needy Oromo and other people in Ethiopia. We also request that the UN and other humanitarian agencies make sure that the humanitarian aid that they provide reaches the needy people. The TPLF regime is totally discredited to be entrusted with the task of distributing humanitarian aid.

The OLF would like the UN and the world community to know that so long as the tyrannical regime of Meles Zenawi is in power, the World Community would continue to hear more alarming reports about the famine in Oromia and other parts of Ethiopia. What will end famine and gross human rights violations in Ethiopia will be the replacement of the current regime by a government that does not discriminate among its citizens, a government that does not pursue discriminatory economic development policies, a government that is accountable to the people, a government that honors the rule of law and human rights.

Finally, the Oromo people are struggling for their freedom and basic democratic rights- to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We call upon the Western World and all concerned governments and organizations to impress upon the Ethiopian government to immediately stop its gross human rights violations in Oromia and other parts of Ethiopia and to end without delay its discriminatory economic development policies, which are the main cause of famine in Oromia.

Victory to the Oromo People!

Daawud Ibsaa
Chairman, National Council of the OLF

(The Economist) — America and Ethiopia Woyanne need each other, but their needs are not equal

THE alliance between the United States and Ethiopia Woyanne was born of pragmatism. In another time, they might have been enemies. Ethiopians Woyannes do not like American soldiers tramping on their soil. Americans dislike Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s bad human-rights record. Local elections due this month are a case in point. Ethiopia’s opposition, emasculated by the long imprisonment of its leaders (most of whom were pardoned last year) and weakened by its own divisions, will almost certainly be crushed in an unfair contest. “It’s going to be a stitch-up,” says a Western diplomat. “Control is what this government is all about.”

America jealously guards information about its more discreet military activities in Ethiopia, while advertising its soldiers’ do-gooding: digging wells, vaccinating animals and so on. Officially, it contributes only a sliver of Ethiopia’s $300m defence budget. Unofficially, it may have helped pay for the rising costs of Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s army, one of Africa’s largest. Some say America has a secret base in eastern Ethiopia to move CIA, special forces and “friendlies” into next-door Somalia; America says not.

What is certain is that the closest military ties between the two countries involve Somalia, which America fears may have already become an incubator of Islamist terrorism. That is why America backed Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s invasion of Somalia at the end of 2006. Its own air raids on supposed terrorist targets in Somalia have relied on Ethiopian Woyanne intelligence, though nearly all appear to have missed. American officials praise the Ethiopian Woyanne troops who are still in Mogadishu, Somalia’s battered capital, as peacekeepers; most Somalis see them as occupiers.

Leftist hardliners in Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s government think that its prime minister, Meles Zenawi, is doing the Bush administration’s bidding. That is not how the Americans portray it. Regardless of Mr Zenawi, who must answer to his party’s central committee and is anyway due to step down in 2010, the Pentagon wants to make Ethiopia a bulwark in a region where Somalia is a dangerously failed state, Sudan and Eritrea are pariahs and Kenya has troubles of its own. Ethiopia has other selling points. The African Union is based there. Its ancient Christian history stirs American evangelicals. Its poverty and population (at 80m, Africa’s third-largest) attract development-minded foreigners.

But Ethiopia is too poor to be rated an A-list client state. Even American hawks admit that selling guns to one of the planet’s hungriest countries, the “cradle of humanity” to boot, would look bad. America says the little it gives Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s forces is “non-lethal”: boots, night-vision goggles, medical kits and so forth. It would like to do more to train Ethiopian Woyanne troops for peacekeeping work. A measure of America’s realism is the way it has allowed Ethiopia Woyanne to buy arms from North Korea.

So differences remain. Many in Ethiopia’s 1.2m-strong diaspora in the United States have lobbied their congressional representatives to condemn Mr Zenawi’s government as tyrannical. A bill passed by the House of Representatives last year called for curbs on aid to Ethiopia Woyanne, but is unlikely to be passed by the Senate. Yet it points to a division between those in Washington (mainly Republicans) wanting to reward Ethiopia Woyanne for fighting terrorism in Somalia and those (mainly Democrats) wishing to punish it for its human-rights abuses at home.

Ethiopia Woyanne, for its part, had hoped for stronger support from America over its border dispute with Eritrea. It wants the administration to list two Ethiopian separatist groups, the Ogaden National Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Front, as terrorists. America is reluctant. The process is complex; it has taken a long time to complete listing the Shabab, a Somali jihadist group. The Ogaden and Oromo fronts will go on fund-raising among their supporters in America, just as the Irish Republican Army once did.

Aid from European Union countries will probably keep flowing, however patent Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s human-rights violations. China will invest more. But Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s luck may run out. After several years of good harvests, a famine may set in this year. With 8m of its people likely to depend on food aid, much of it paid for by the Americans, Ethiopia Woyanne still needs America a lot more than America needs it.