A Canadian citizen who has been detained in Ethiopia for the past 10 months without being charged is suing the government there and its officials for “violations of international law, assault, battery, false arrest and false imprisonment.”
The statement of claim, which was filed in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice late last week, names Workineh Gebeyehu, the head of the Ethiopian police, and Taadese Masaret, the head of the prison where Bashir Makhtal is being detained.
The suit claims that Ethiopia “is illegally holding” Makhtal and is “subjecting him to torture and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment.” According to the statement of claim, Makhtal has been held “incommunicado” for more than nine months, and he has not been charged with any offence. Nor has he been brought before a court of law.
His rights to legal counsel and adequate access to the consular protection of Canada have also been denied, the suit says.
“He has been denied his fundamental rights under international, Ethiopian and Canadian law,” according to the suit.
The suit adds Makhtal was also “subject to frequent interrogations during which he has been subjected to torture and cruel and inhumane treatment. He was also forced to videotape a false confession under the coercion of the Ethiopian authorities. The false confession was broadcast on the television in Ethiopia.”
The suit also alleges that Makhtal’s family, many of whom remain in Ethiopia, have been detained, arrested and subjected to torture and coercion to force them to implicate him.
None of the allegations in the lawsuit has been proven in a court of law.
Officials at the Ethiopian embassy were served yesterday afternoon with the lawsuit, but they were not available for comment.
Makhtal’s lawyer, Lorne Waldman, his cousin, Said Maktal, and Amnesty International held a news conference in Ottawa yesterday detailing the $1.5 million civil suit.
But it is not clear whether the Ontario Superior Court of Justice will hear the case because of the State Immunity Act, which shields sovereign states from liability here. Waldman, however, said he will try to convince the court that because Makhtal is a Canadian citizen and is still being psychologically tortured he should be able to hold Ethiopia accountable in a Canadian court of law.
Makhtal was rendered to Ethiopia in January after being detained for three weeks in Nairobi by Kenyan officials.
According to the lawsuit, Makhtal had been travelling in Somalia, selling used clothes, when the Ethiopian Army invaded that country. He has been held in the Central Investigation Detention Centre in Addis Ababa ever since.
It is believed Makhtal was of interest to the Ethiopian government because of his grandfather’s connection to the Ogaden separatist movement.
But there has been no evidence of Makhtal belonging to that or any of the warring factions in Ethiopia, his family says.
The following analysis of Dennis Hastert’s congressional service is provided by the Ethiopian American News Service.
Dennis Hastert, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives from Illinois’ 14th district, resigned his seat in Congress effective 11:59 p.m. on Monday, November 26. Hastert is remembered in the Ethiopian community as the individual responsible for blocking H.R. 5680 (The Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Advancement Act of 2006, sponsored by Christopher Smith) from reaching the House floor in 2006 for final action. He is widely regarded as the man who hijacked human rights in Ethiopia. Harper’s Magazine last year reported that “Armey [former House majority leader and DLA Piper lobbyists] twisted the arm of then-House Speaker Denny Hastert to ensure that [H.R. 5680] didn’t come up for a vote.”
Hastert was one of the most anti-human rights lawmakers in modern Congressional history. Prior to his opposition of the Ethiopia human rights bill, Hastert bottled up human rights bills aimed at China, Turkey, Colombia and other countries with massive human rights violations.
Hastert showed his callousness in September, 2005 when he declared that spending federal money to rebuild New Orleans from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina “doesn’t make sense to me. It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed.”
Hastert has been criticized for a number of questionable ethical practices, including a legal effort to quash a subpoena to force him to testify in a criminal case linked to Randy “Duke” Cunnigham, the former San Diego congressman convicted of bribery in 2006. He was also criticized for an appropriation of $356 million for a highway that will speed the development of large tracts of land he owned in Illinois.
Hastert sought campaign contributions from groups and organizations with questionable background. He received multiple contributions from Enron Corporation, which defrauded investors and employees of billions of dollars. He also received thousands of dollars in contributions from clients of lobbyist Jack Abramoff who pled guilty in 2006 to a massive fraud and bribery scheme in Congress.
In September of 2006, it was revealed that Hastert had been aware for over a year that Representative Mark Foley had been soliciting sex from underage congressional pages. Hastert did nothing to stop Foley. Foley continued to engage in sexual harassment of young men working as congressional pages until he was forced to resign.
The Washington Times and a number of republican opinion leaders called for Hastert’s resignation over the Foley sex scandal. The Times editorial stated, “Either he was grossly negligent… or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away. He gave phony answers Friday to the old and ever-relevant questions of what did he know and when did he know it? Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance.”
In the end, Hastert will be most remembered for his ineptitude in maintaining a republican majority in the House, and for his sleazy dealings with fraudsters and conniving and corrupt lobbyists. It is not surprising that Rolling Stone magazine rated him the worst congressman in 2006. He will forever be remembered in the Ethiopian community as the man who hijacked human rights in Ethiopia.
(Reuters) – U.N. undersecretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes was on Tuesday in Ethiopia’s troubled southeastern Ogaden region where government forces are fighting separatist rebels.
The one-day visit is the most high profile since the ethnically Somali region made international headlines in April when Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels attacked a Chinese-owned oil exploration field and killed 74 people.
Holmes is due to meet the region’s president before inspecting U.N. relief operations that began a couple of weeks ago, after the international body said 953,000 people there needed food aid.
Holmes will also meet representatives of local herding communities but there has been no mention of him meeting rebels, who have welcomed the U.N. presence in the region.
The rebels accuse the government of human rights abuses in a crackdown that followed the April attack and both sides routinely claim to have inflicted huge casualties on the other.
Holmes will be accompanied by the head of Ethiopia’s Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Agency and by the heads of U.N. humanitarian operations in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian government Woyanne and the United Nations say emergency relief operations continue in the region and that 7,000 tonnes of food aid has now been delivered.
It has also pledged that 30 trucks of food a day will travel to Ogaden over the next two months until the estimated 17,407 tonnes needed are delivered.
The United Nations said last week 19 non-governmental organisations have been allowed to work in the Ogaden region following the expulsion from the region of some aid agencies including the International Committee of the Red Cross in July.
Holmes will meet Ethiopian dictator Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa on Wednesday before continuing his east African tour in Sudan and Kenya.
(Reporting by Barry Malone; Editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Janet Lawrence))
Should Eritrea launch another war, we will make certain that Asmara would never, ever dream of even entertaining or thinking about war again. Meles Zenawi.
Ethiopia Woyanne plays down war talk ahead of border deadline
ADDIS ABABA, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Three days before a deadline for demarcating their disputed border, Ethiopia Woyanne said on Tuesday it had no plans for another bout of fighting with arch-foe Eritrea but would crush any attempt by Asmara to invade.
Tensions between the Horn of African neighbours have ratcheted up in recent weeks with the approach of the Nov. 30 deadline set by an independent border commission to physically mark their disputed frontier.
“Ethiopia Woyanne has no reason to launch another war against Eritrea. Our intention has always been to resolve all outstanding border problems with Eritrea through peaceful means,” Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi told parliament.
“Should Eritrea launch another war, we will make certain that Asmara would never, ever dream of even entertaining or thinking about war again,” he said.
Asmara and Addis Ababa Woyanne have been locked in a dispute over their shared frontier since a 2002 ruling by an independent border commission gave Eritrea the key town of Badme.
The commission was set up by a peace deal ending a 1998-2000 border war killing some 70,000 people.
Ethiopia Woyanne initially rejected the ruling, but now says it accepts it but wants more talks with Eritrea. Asmara rejects calls for dialogue, saying it wants full implementation.
Last November, the commission said it was fed up by the lack of progress with the border and gave both nations one year to make moves to mark the frontier or it would fix it on maps.
Analysts have warned of possible renewed hostilities between the two nations as the deadline approaches.
But both sides say they have no desire to go to war.
The United Nations says Eritrea and Ethiopia Woyanne have moved thousands of troops and heavy weapons to the 1,000-km (620-mile) frontier since the border commission gave its deadline.
The world body and the United States have urged both nations to show restraint.
Analysts say the border deadlock has been complicated by a war in Somalia where Eritrea is accused of backing Somali insurgents battling Ethiopian Woyanne and Somali government troops.
In the last month, Asmara has repeatedly accused Addis Ababa Woyanne of planning to invade.
On Tuesday, Meles said Eritrea was using rebels in Somalia to distract Ethiopia for an invasion from the north.
“Eritrea’s intention was that when rebels and terrorists it supports penetrate into Ethiopian territory from Somalia and create confusion, it was planning to invade the country from the north,” Meles said. “But we have crushed the rebel groups who were fighting a proxy war for Eritrea and as such its plan to invade us fizzled out.”
Eritrea has accused Ethiopia Woyanne of planning to invade. Both sides deny the others’ claims. (Editing by Jack Kimball and Janet Lawrence)
Short wave radio monitors have confirmed that VOA broadcasts to Ethiopia in the Amharic and Afan Oromo languages have been jammed for the past two weeks. VOA Correspondent in Addis Ababa Peter Heinlein reports Ethiopia’s government denies responsibility for the interference.
Listeners to VOA’s Amharic Service began complaining about November 12 that they could not hear the one-hour nightly broadcast. Amharic is the language of commerce and the main official language in Ethiopia.
In recent days, the reports from listeners and monitors confirmed that all five short-wave frequencies used by VOA are being jammed. Broadcasts by the other major western broadcaster in Amharic, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, have also been blocked.
The BBC monitoring service says its experts have determined that the direction from which the jamming originates indicates the signals are being transmitted from within Ethiopia.
In a telephone interview with VOA, Ethiopia’s Information Ministry spokesman Zemedkun Tekle says he doubts the government is involved in jamming.
“I do not think this one is true. Of course I have seen the media reporting saying that, but we do not need, the government does not need to waste its time on doing so,” he said. “I myself have not come across audiences who are saying so, but the relevant body may speak on the details, but I do not think this story is true.”
The two Amharic Service broadcasts are known to have a substantial audience in the Ethiopian capital, which is a hot bed of anti-government sentiment.
Monitors also report jamming of VOA’s Oromo Service, which broadcasts on the same frequencies. Oromo is the language spoken by Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group.
Ethiopia is known to be blocking broadcasts from its neighbor and rival Eritrea. Monitors report the jamming has intensified in recent weeks, as tensions have risen along their disputed border.
A status report issued by the umbrella organization that oversees Voice of America, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, says VOA broadcasts to Ethiopia have previously been jammed during civil unrest in 2005, but the jamming was stopped in mid-2006.
The Voice of America is a multi-media international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news and other programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people.
Emebet Bellingham visited her native Ethiopia in 2003 and was stunned at the changes she saw after 17 years. The streets were crowded, the air polluted, and 4.6 million of Ethiopia’s children were orphans. “It just shocked me,” she says.
Euyeal Joseph Zeleke and Emebet Bellingham are
co-directors of The World Family, a San Anselmo-based
nonprofit that is building a community center in an
Ethiopian village and helping equip medical clinics
there. [Photo: Robert Tong]
She returned to her San Anselmo home determined to do something to help her people. Her mother, Yemegnushal Haile – “an amazing woman and a true humanitarian,” Bellingham says – served on the board of an organization helping children whose parents had died of malaria, AIDS, poor sanitation and inadequate care. She planned to start a nonprofit of her own that would be the American partner of the agency where her mom worked in Ethiopia.
Her intentions were derailed when she became pregnant with her second child. She continued to sponsor orphans in Ethiopia on an individual basis – “I have sponsored children since I was 19” – but her plans for a nonprofit were put on the shelf.
Then, last year, her mother died in an auto accident in Addis Ababa, and Bellingham, 39, resolved to pick up the work her mother had started.
She joined with another Ethiopian, Euyeal Joseph Zeleke of San Jose, to found a new nonprofit called The World Family – Ethiopian Orphans and Medical Care.
Zeleke was already working in Ethiopia, rounding up serviceable but outdated medical equipment in American hospitals and sending it to clinics in his native country. He has sent $5 million worth of equipment since 2005, some of it to a clinic that Bellingham’s mother helped build.
Bellingham and Zeleke met in her mother’s hospital room in Ethiopia and decided to team up.
“I am so grateful,” Zeleke says. “She’s a really good person, very dedicated.”
In March, Bellingham went back to Ethiopia, looking for a place on which to focus her efforts.
She fell in love with a rural village called Gara Dima, whose people lived in primitive huts, drinking impure water from a nearby river. “The people were so warm and welcoming,” she says. “This was an underserved community in clear need of help.”
She decided that Gara Dima and a second village nearby could best be served by construction of a community center that would serve everyone, including orphaned children, and would include a library, kitchen, clinic, a large meeting room, classrooms and a guest apartment for visiting experts.
Field Paoli, a design firm in San Francisco, drew plans for a center, to be constructed from bags filled with dirt enclosed in plaster. The firm didn’t charge for its work, and deliberately chose an affordable form of construction. “(Field Paoli) has been supportive in every aspect,” says Bellingham.
Projected cost for the center, which she hopes to start building in January: $95,000. “We expect to get additional donations to help furnish the clinic and library.”
She has already raised $88,000, much of it from a charitable event held at Fort Mason in San Francisco last month.
Meanwhile, the nongovernmental organization she and Zeleke co-direct continues to send medical equipment to Ethiopia, working with the Ministry of Health and the Clinton Foundation, which is building 100 new health centers every year.
The nonprofit sends two 40-foot containers a month to Ethiopia, enough to equip four centers.
Working with the Ministry of Education, World Family has also implemented the opening of two dental schools, the country’s first.
To meet Bellingham is to marvel that she has accomplished so much in a short space of time.
“I am a very driven person,” she says.
Dave McConnell, president of the Marin Environmental Forum, says he is “just amazed that a person (like Bellingham) is taking the bit in her teeth and running with it.” McConnell has consulted with her on environmental aspects of the proposed center.
A reed-slim woman with a fashion model face and a head of springy black curls, Bellingham came to the Bay Area from Ethiopia in 1984 when her father, then an executive with Ethiopian Airlines, decided to send his two daughters here to attend school. (A son was already here.) Bellingham finished high school in Richmond, then enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Design in San Francisco. She then attended the Academy of Art for a year and a half before going to work at Esprit, buying fabric and designing clothes.
Later she began her own highly successful business, designing high-end women’s clothing and selling it to boutiques.
“It just got too hectic,” she says. She had married Michael Bellingham, a painting and decorating contractor, in 1994, and “we decided not to expand my business, and to raise a family instead.”
She is the mother of a girl, 8, and a boy, 4.
The rest of her family is spread out: her sister lives in Hercules, her brother in Singapore, her father is still in Addis Ababa.
She continues to work in the fashion industry, doing freelance work as a designer and wardrobe consultant.But much of her energy goes to the World Family, and she expects that to continue.Many outsider organizations come to Africa, provide relief monies, and disappear, she says. “The villages have nothing lasting to show for the money that’s been spent.
“I hope to reverse that situation.”
HOW TO HELP
– Financial contributions to The World Family can be made online at www.theworldfamily.org or by mail. Checks should be made to The World Family Ethiopian Orphan and Medical Care and sent to either Medical Care Donations, 391 Jacklin Road, Milpitas 95035 or Orphan Care Donations, 310 Laurel Ave., San Anselmo 94960.
– The agency also needs donated warehouse space to store reclaimed medical equipment. Call E. Joseph Zeleke at 408-594-1360 or send e-mail to [email protected].
– Volunteers are also needed. Call Emebet Bellingham at 302-3037 or send e-mail to [email protected]
