She was going to a world where there was said to be a pile of gold at every corner and a stash of money at every turn. She had heard rumors that the place was not much short of heaven. But that fantasy disappeared as soon as she got off the plane and took her first steps in the United States. America is nothing like what others in Ethiopia described it to be for junior Engidawork Kita.
Engidawork Kita and Selam Kabtiymer
[Photo by Gili Perl]
The lottery to another world
In 2000 Kita’s family won the Diversity Visa (DV) lottery that enabled them to make the move to the United States from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program annually makes 50,000 permanent visas available to a random selection of people who “meet strict eligibility requirements [and come] from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States,” according to the U.S. State Department web site.
Individuals who receive visas through the program are permitted to bring spouses and unmarried children under the age of 21 to the United States and are authorized to permanently live and work in the country, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services web site. “Since everyone wants to come to America, it’s a way of randomly picking people,” Kita’s friend, senior Selam Kabtiymer, says. Although Kabtiymer’s family had also won the DV lottery, she and her family were able to come to the United States without the lottery’s help. Kabtiymer’s mother was already residing in the United States and so the rest of her family was able to get visas through her. Kabtiymer’s father had applied for the DV lottery in the case they were not able to obtain visas this way.
Junior Engidawork Kita and Senior Selam Kabtiymer Photo by Gili Perl.
For Kita’s parents, as for most others in Ethiopia, the chance to move to the United States was a dream come true. A war had been raging between Ethiopia and Eritrea since 1998 over a border conflict. Even Kita was afraid when she heard news warning the country that Eritrea threatened to attack. “I used to get scared because I don’t want to die of course,” Kita says.
Still, Kita’s feelings towards the move were lukewarm – she wanted to experience America, but not at the expense of leaving her relatives, friends and culture behind. “You want to see what it’s like to be in America,” she says, but at the same time she did not want to leave.
Making the transition
The difficulties of the move were only compounded by Kita’s limited knowledge of English. “It was hard,” she says. But making Ethiopian friends in school and receiving support from teachers helped Kita adjust to the new environment. “[The teachers] were really helpful,” Kita says. In addition, Kita took ESOL from fourth to ninth grade to help her get past the language barrier.
Although there was no pile of gold waiting for her in the United States, Kita sees some clear benefits of living in the country. She finds that there are more opportunities to succeed in school because there is so much support available from the education system. Even though Kita went to a free public school in Ethiopia, students still needed to purchase books and other materials on their own. It was tough luck if you could not afford them; here, public schools provide the books as well as financial help.
Kita also feels that there are more facilities available in the United States, such as easy access to computers. “There [were] no such things as computers in my school [in Ethiopia],” she says.
Kita adds that American schools are more laid back. “School is easier here…compared to Ethiopia,” Kita says. She offers that this is not so much because the subjects are easier but more so because the teachers are comparatively lenient in this country.
Kabtiymer agrees that education is stricter in Ethiopia and there is much more pressure from teachers and parents. School rankings are taken very seriously and so students constantly compare themselves with others, according to her.
School here has helped Kita adapt to the American culture. But at the same time, she tries to maintain certain aspects of her Ethiopian heritage. She celebrates some of the Ethiopian festivals and eats Ethiopian food daily. Kita is also a member of the Ethiopian club at Blair and hopes to participate in the club’s big show in early June, which features traditional dances, a fashion show and a drama.
Kita still misses her country at times and though she realizes that money does not come easy no matter where you are, she does not want to move back permanently. “I want to stay here now that I am used to it,” Kita says. “I like it here.”
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — Ethiopia on Tuesday called for a quick deployment of peacekeepers in war-ravaged Somalia, an African nation increasingly running adrift in the face on an escalating insurgency.
Of the 8,000 peacekeepers the African Union pledged to send to bolster President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed’s weak government, only 1,500 Ugandan troops are actually on the round.
“The plan designed to deploy peacekeeping forces to Somalia should be materialised as soon as possible,” the Ethiopian foreign ministry said in a statement.
Ethiopian troops helped sweep aside Islamist militants from much of the country they had briefly governed in January, but have been embroiled in a deadly insurgency mainly in Mogadishu.
Rebels recently dragged through the streets, stumped and spat on the bodies of Ethiopian troops, a grisly reminder of a similar treatment of US special forces in 1993.
Burundi and Nigeria had given firm pledges to contribute soldiers, but are yet to make good their word.
The Ethiopian foreign ministry called on the international community to facilitate efforts to restore durable peace in Somalia, where the last functional government collapsed in 1991 after the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The escalating insurgency has seen UN chief Ban Ki-moon rule out sending any peacekeepers to the Horn of African nation, except for a “coalition of the willing.”
But on Monday, the UN Security Council said there was need to pursue contingency planning for the possible deployment of UN troops, side-stepping Ban, but giving no promises.
Previous peacekeeping forays by the United Nations and the United States ended disastrously in the mid-1990s and the world turned its back, abandoning the country at the mercy of armed gangs.
By Xan Rice, East Africa correspondent
Monday November 19, 2007
The Guardian
The Islamist-led resistance in Somalia is growing in scale and aggression, with insurgents openly taking on Ethiopian Woyanne troops and African Union peacekeepers in the capital Mogadishu, in fighting that has killed dozens, possibly hundreds, in the past three weeks.
Early on Saturday two groups of rebels fired grenades at Ugandan peacekeepers and briefly entered their post before being repelled. The attack, which coincided with an internet call by a Somali Islamist extremist, Adan Hashi Ayro, for peacekeepers to be targeted, came after two weeks of fighting and reprisals between insurgents and the allied Ethiopian Woyanne and government troops that caused a massive exodus from Mogadishu.
The UN estimates that 173,000 people have fled the city since October 27, adding to the 330,000 already displaced from the capital this year. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of civilians were killed, as both sides fired shells indiscriminately into residential neighbourhoods.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdullah, the UN secretary general’s special representative for Somalia, said last week that the huge displacement, coupled with high child malnutrition rates and extreme difficulty in delivering aid, had made this Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Few people believe that the situation is about to get better. Several experts interviewed by the Guardian say that the insurgents are becoming more powerful. A military analyst and a western diplomat to Somalia, neither of whom wished to be named, warned that the angry mood and conditions that allowed an Islamist movement to defeat a gang of warlords and take power in Mogadishu last year were returning. “We are on a merry-go-round and it’s back to 2006,” said the analyst. “The insurgents are gaining not only in physical strength, but in moral strength too.”
African Union commanders told diplomats last week that the insurgents were actively fighting in 70% of Mogadishu’s neighbourhoods. There are also signs that the resistance has spread beyond the capital. Islamic courts are reported to have taken control of two towns in the far south, while Hassan Al-Turki, a radical Islamist on the US terror list, is understood to be expanding his influence up the coast from his base near the Kenyan border.
Analysts say that the situation reflects a chronic miscalculation by the Ethiopian prime minister dictator, Meles Zenawi, who sent his troops into Somalia late last year, and by the US, which backed that decision. The goal was to rout the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), which had brought a measure of calm to Mogadishu for the first time in more than a decade, but which was accused by Washington and Addis Ababa of close links to al-Qaida.
Ethiopian Woyanne troops easily swept through the Islamist fighters and installed the weak and unpopular Somali government in Mogadishu. The calm did not last long. Remnants of the SCIC’s military wing, the Shabaab, launched a low-scale insurgency, using hit-and-run tactics and remote-controlled bombs to target Ethiopian Woyanne and government troops. Many ordinary Somalis also resented the presence of tens of thousands of troops from Ethiopia. Soon warlords, clan leaders and businessmen were aiding the resistance with money, arms and their own militias.
EXILED ETHIOPIAN TRADE UNION LEADERS
Contacts in USA, Africa, Europe and Australia
E-Mail: [email protected]
[Sent to each senator individually]
The Honorable US Senators
SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20510
Dear Senators:
Re: AN APPEAL AND CRY FOR DEMOCRACY TO SUPPORT BILL H.R. 2003
We the Exiled Ethiopian Trade Union Leaders residing in the United States of America and different parts of the world would like to ask your support for H.R. 2003, “Ethiopian Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007.” This bill authored by Congressman Donald Payne (Chairman, House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health) passed unanimously in the House of Representatives, last month, on October 2, 2007 will let democracy, accountability, good governance and transparency reign in Ethiopia.
Since May 1991 Ethiopian has been under the most repressive regime once again and the current Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, dressed in democratic grab and is clinging to power for the last 16 years through the barrel of a Gun. Meles Zenawi, under fake election continued his brutal regime the same as his predecessor by following the footprints of the Dereg and deceitfully blind folding the democratic world including USA. Ever since he came to power, he has been ruling the country with an iron fist.
In May 2005 national election, 25 million of Ethiopia’s illegible voters stood in line for long hours to cast their votes. Mr. Zenawi’s regime was overwhelmingly defeated by the opposition. However, Mr. Zenawi had difficulty in accepting that the opposition had won the national election and declared himself a winner, ordered his security to shoot and kill more than 193 innocent citizens, embarked on a massive and sustained crackdown of all dissent in the country. Thousands of innocent citizens, mostly young held in 5 specially arranged Nazi type concentration Camps. There have been massive extrajudicial killings and massacres in many parts of the country and even many times in neighboring countries and continued the same international crime specially in Kenya and the Sudan using the money funneled to them from American and other tax payers.
The self crowned dictator, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi surrounded by world class criminal gangs who are above the law and using the constitution as a tool for suppression call it democracy while they take care that they will pull every string the way they want. The Addis Ababa Gang is playing with the rules not by the rules. As a result, currently, our country, Ethiopia is run by criminal Gangs which call’s themselves a government.
The regime has routinely engaged and continues to engage in torture, beatings, systematic abuse, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment of dissidents and opponents in violation of their own Constitution. The regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has severely curtailed the right of freedom of associations and the right of the people to engage in unrestricted peaceful political and civic activity. The regime continues to violate the people’s right to assemble freely by disrupting or unlawfully banning opposition party meetings, arbitrarily denying or delaying or engaging in last minute revocation of public meetings or demonstration permits, and by using pressure tactics on ordinary Ethiopians, including requiring opposition members to renounce their party membership, even systematically harassing and intimidating opposition parliament members and their constituents not to hold meetings to address any issue.
The regime continues to harass, persecute publishers, editors and journalists and controls all broadcast media. Regime officials continue to manipulate the privatization process, as state and party owned businesses received preferential access to land leases and credit. The regime relies on politically appointed judges to obtain predetermined outcomes, which often result in a miscarriage of justice.
We Ethiopians have had more than our share of political crises and internal conflict due to the lack of good governance and accountable government operating under the rule of law. Our people have paid for democracy and the rule of law in terms of their blood and treasure for years. Many opportunities for development have been wasted because of the political crises, as a brand new chapter is being added to the book of scandal of the regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi by the day, as we speak.
Therefore, we ask you to support rule of law and democracy to prevail in Ethiopia and to use your influence to be part of the solution for the crises in Ethiopia. We say democracy and ask you to stand with our people whose rights are denied. You can right wrongs, and say enough of blood and tears in Ethiopia. That will be by supporting bill H.R. 2003 to stop the ongoing crimes being committed. We believe that, bill H.R. 2003 is the corner stone to lay ground for true democracy and rule of law with accountability in our country, as these are the measuring yard sticks to promote democracy and transparency that will make all the difference.
Thank you for all your work in supporting those whose rights are denied.
NAIROBI, Nov 18, 2007 (AFP) – Ethiopia’s Woyanne air force has been “carpet-bombing” villages and nomadic settlements in its oil- and gas-rich Ogaden region, leaving a trail of casualties, separatist rebels in the restive eastern area said Sunday.
“Since Friday the Ethiopian Woyanne air force has carried out continuous air sorties on the area of the lakes called in Somali Haro Digeed,” Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) spokesman Abdirahman Mahdi said.
The air force “has been carpet-bombing the villages and nomadic settlements,” an ONLF statement said.
“Many people are hurt or dead and lots of animals have been killed,” he said, but did not say whether the fatalities were rebel fighters or civilians.
“The army decided to change tactics and use air assault because they realised their ground forces could not make it,” he said, adding the air force was still pounding the region late Sunday.
“Some ONLF fighters were hurt in the air bombardments, but the air force targeted civilian settlements and livestock,” the spokesman said, adding that locals were fleeing the region amid bad weather.
On Friday, the Ethiopian Woyanne army said it had killed some 100 rebels and captured hundreds others in Ogaden, near the frontier with lawless Somalia, over the past month.
But Mahdi said army has an “habit of summarily executing civilians and then counting them as ONLF dead.”
“The Ethiopian Woyanne Army had killed hundreds of civilians are imprisoned thousands and we believe that this is a ruse to fool the UN misson who are starting to investigate the situation in the Ogaden.”
The rebels say they have made military gains in the recent months.
In October, the UN announced that it had been allowed to collaborate with regional authorities to supply relief food, medicine, and veterinary services as well as setting up offices in a key town there.
Addis Ababa has expelled Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee for the Red Cross from Ogaden for allegedly meddling in politics, a charge both deny.
The rebel and army reports could not be independently verified as journalists and aid workers have repeatedly been blocked from accessing vast swathes of the volatile region in recent months.
The Ethiopian Woyanne army launched a crackdown in the region after ONLF rebels attacked a Chinese oil venture in April that left 77 people dead.
Many refugees have since fled to Somalia, saying authorities have imposed a trade blockade, with few goods — including food — permitted into the area.
Human rights groups said the crackdown resulted in numerous human rights violations in the region and subsequent UN fact-finding mission called for an independent investigation.
Addis Ababa routinely rejects rights violation claims, saying its troops are pursuing “terrorists.”
The barren Ogaden region has long been extremely poor, but the discovery of gas and oil has brought new hopes of wealth as well as new causes of conflict.
It is about the same size as Britain with a population of about four million.
Ethiopia Woyanne accuses arch-foe Eritrea of supporting Ogaden separatists, which the authorities in Asmara have denied.
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — Ethiopian track heavyweight Kenenisa Bekele on Saturday married 22-year-old Dannawit Gebregziabher, an up-and-coming actress in Ethiopia’s fledgling film industry.
Five hundred wellwishers, including fellow Ethiopian track star Haile Gebresellasie, joined the 10,000m world champion and world record holder and his bride at a plush ceremony in the Sheraton hotel.
Tragedy struck Bekele in January 2005 when his then fiancee Alem Techale, a world champion runner, died while they were out training together in the hills near the tiny trading post of Asela. An autopsy blamed a heart defect.
Bekele, 25, told local media that he would not compete in any more athletics meetings this year because of his marriage but would be ready for 2008 World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh next March.
