Addis Ababa – Ethiopian opposition officials told a court on Monday that two anti-poverty activists on trial for allegedly trying to overthrow the government were never members of their movement. Daniel Bekele, 40, and Netsanet Demissie, 29, are the last two defendants out of 131 original charged in a long-running treason trial.
On Monday, Hailu Shawel, chairperson of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) told the court neither men had been a part of his organisation.
“Charges that they were CUD members are totally false,” he said. “If they had been members I would have known.”
Hailu Shawel and other senior CUD officials were also charged in the same trial, which human rights groups and donors said was an attempt to dismantle the opposition after it made strong gains in 2005 elections. They were all arrested after two bouts of violence after the disputed polls in which 199 civilians and police were killed, 800 people wounded and 30,000 arrested, according to a parliamentary inquiry.
They were freed on July 20 after the government published a letter it said CUD leaders had sent to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi admitting their guilt and repenting.
Defence lawyers say Bekele and Netsanet, who work for ActionAid Ethiopia and the Organisation for Social Justice in Ethiopia respectively, refused to sign and want to be acquitted.
ADDIS ABABA — Nearly 12,000 people have been displaced and one person has died in western Ethiopia in flash floods over the weekend, an official said Tuesday.
“As of now, we only know that 11,886 people have been displaced and one killed from the flood that resulted from Sunday’s heavy rainfall,” Ojulu Bach, head of disaster prevention program in the Gambela region, said.
Ojulu said that both the toll and the number of displaced could rise as rescue teams had not accessed all those affected.
“The field teams are using boats and whatever necessary to rescue the people in danger,” he said. “The numbers could be higher after our teams conclude their search.”
Earlier this month, some 7,000 people were affected by floods after heavy rains pounded southern Ethiopia for more than a week.
The rainy season began in early June in the Ethiopian Highlands and is due to last until the end of September.
Last year, more than 600 people were killed and hundreds of thousands affected by unusually heavy floods that ravaged several regions in the Horn of African nation.
In Addis Ababa, a five-day conference is underway on female genital cutting. The UN Population Fund says worldwide, up to 140 million women and girls have been subjected to the practice, which is also known as female genital mutilation. The agency is calling on the international community to support its campaign for zero tolerance of the practice.
Kemal Mustapha is the UN Population Fund’s representative in Kenya. From the conference site in the Ethiopian capital, he spoke to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about the prevalence of female genital cutting in Kenya.
“The national prevalence rate, when it was last measured in the demographic and health survey, which was conducted in 2003, was that 32 percent of the females in the age range of 15 to 49 had gone through this at one stage or the other. However, that figure needs to be treated carefully because there are areas of the country where it’s almost non-existent and there are areas where you have prevalence rates in certain ethnic communities of over 90 percent. What is encouraging is that the prevalence rate among the younger women is decreasing. And that quite a lot of that 32 percent is made up of older women,” he says.
Asked whether the cutting is done in traditional settings, where a single cutting instrument is used on many different women and girls, Mustapha says, “It varies very much from community to community. There are cases where that kind of practice does continue and efforts are being made to introduce ways in which people are alerted to the health risks, especially of HIV infection. But the general trend has been to try and work towards its elimination. Legislation was passed in the year 2001 criminalizing the cutting of any child under 18. There has unfortunately been in some communities the medicalization, whereby because of the fears of problems of hygiene, people have resorted to going to medical practitioners to undergo the surgery. So, that’s something that’s also being tackled,” he says.
In regards to gathering international support, he says, “I think this has to be seen within the broader framework of human rights, of gender equality and of the Millennium Development Goals.”
The Honorable Congressman Richard Gephardt
Former House Democratic Leader
c/o : Richard A. Gephardt Institute for Public Service
Washington University in St. Louis
Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
It was with a deep sense of betrayal and disbelief that we read a recent report suggesting that you might be involved in helping the Ethiopian dictator, Meles Zenawi, to derail the passage of a bill in Congress intended to protect the democratic rights of the people of Ethiopia.
If it is indeed true, your association with one of the most vicious dictators of the modern era would be inconsistent with your image as a leader who has dedicated his professional life to advancing the ideals of democracy and social justice.
Not too long ago, you declared to the world:
“One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, … The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth.”
On May 15, 2005 the people of Ethiopia took to the polls in unprecedented record numbers, and cast a vote of no confidence in Zenawi’s minority government. Instead of accepting the people’s verdict, Zenawi proclaimed a state of emergency, and declared himself a winner, against the testimonials of credible observers, including one by the EU-EOM group.
In the aftermath of the elections that he stole, Zenawi ordered the massacre of over 193 peaceful demonstrators, and imprisoned opposition leaders and thousands of opposition party members, as was unveiled by a commission set up by his own government.
In a move reminiscent of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge, he coerced the political prisoners into admitting responsibility for the crimes he had committed, and publicized to the world the confession obtained under duress.
“The long nighttime of communism and totalitarianism is not over, but we are entering a new era where ordinary citizens everywhere are speaking out freely and are no longer afraid of murderous dictators.”
Unfortunately, if the rest of the world is marching out of the “nighttime of totalitarianism,” it is still pitch dark for the people of Ethiopia. According to a recent report, Ethiopia topped the list of the worst countries for press freedom, with more jailed and exiled journalists than any other country in the world. In 2006 alone, eight newspapers were banned, two foreign reporters were expelled and several websites were blocked.
As the rest of the world enjoys the “peace dividend” from the end of the “Cold War,” the people of Ethiopia are going through extremely severe economic hardships, thanks to the rampant corruption and expensive lobbying that are characteristics of Zenawi’s regime. A recent World Economic Forum report indicated that Ethiopia had slid to the rank of 120th out of 125 countries in 2006 in the Global Competitive Index, down from the 116th place it had occupied in 2005. Economic analysts point out that the number of Ethiopians on less than a dollar a day, has nearly tripled since Zenawi took power in 1991, i.e., relative to the record of the discredited communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
You once made the observation:
“It’s amazing what happens when you ask yourself this question before you speak or act. ‘How would I like this said or done to me?'” So, before you venture to work for Zenawi, the people of Ethiopia would wish to remind you of the above and to ask yourself: “How would I feel if I were an Ethiopian living under a dollar a day and my leader squandered the money on expensive lobbying?”
You have also been quoted as saying: “I think the most important thing in life, …., is credibility,…” Your demonstrated position against tyranny in Ethiopia would give more credibility to the mission of the Gephardt Institute for Public Service that you so generously helped to establish, and whose purpose you so eloquently described as an institute, “… to help spread freedom, democracy, and capitalism across the globe so we can better prevent the creation of terrorists.” The stand you now take in distancing yourself from a brutal dictator will certainly be a metric by which the image of this promising institution will be judged for a long time to come.
Honorable Congressman,
In the days and weeks to come, Ethiopian Americans and other Ethiopians in the US, who unlike their compatriots back home enjoy their freedom of speech, will be contacting you in thousands to ask you to disassociate yourself from a brutal dictator, and to stand on the side of democracy and social justice. They will be doing so, not out of impertinence, but in the full knowledge and conviction that, as a man of integrity, you will listen to the voices of the 70 million oppressed Ethiopians and be a part of their struggle against tyranny and injustice.
Meles buys Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer
Ephrem Isaac lobbied hard against H.R. 2003
The Coalition for HR 2003 has learned that Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Tom Lantos was directed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (San Francisco) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Maryland) not to mark-up H.R. 2003 on July 31, 2007. The reasons for the directive are not clear.
Preliminary investigations suggest that neither Chairman Tom Lantos nor Chairman Donald Payne were consulted prior to issuance of the directive.
The Coalition is informed and believes that over the past few days, Meles Zenawi’s lobbyists from DLA Piper, State Department officials and others were engaged in intense lobbying of Pelosi and Hoyer.
The Coalition has further learned that Prof. Ephrem Isaac, who has recently been masquerading as a “shimagle”, has been engaged in intense lobbying efforts against H.R. 2003 in Congress. He was observed visiting various congressional offices today chaperoned and accompanied by Congressman Gary Ackerman of New York. The Coalition is investigating information that Ephrem Isaac is mobilizing powerful Jewish leaders and groups in the United States against H.R. 2003.
The Coalition respectfully notifies Ethiopian Americans in California and Maryland, particularly in the congressional districts of Pelosi and Hoyer, to prepare for vigorous and intense advocacy in the coming days.
The Coalition will provide further statement on these developments shortly. The Coalition will prepare an advocacy action plan in the near future.
The Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party’s International Leadership (K.I.L.) announced yesterday that it is handing over political leadership back to the recently freed top leaders of the party in Addis Ababa.
At a press conference that was attended by several Ethiopian editors, publishers, and radio hosts, Dr Moges Gebremariam, chairman of the K.I.L., said that his committee has ceased its activities. Dr Moges explained that the K.I.L.’s mandate was to represent the party’s executive committee only until its members are released from jail.
Earlier yesterday, the Kinijit executive committee sent a letter from Addis Ababa to all Kinijit groups in the Diaspora announcing that it is taking over leadership responsibilities from the party’s international leadership. Click here to read the letter.
Dr Moges, joined by his colleagues Ato Berhane Mewa, Ato Andargachew Tsige, Ato Dawit Kebede and Ato Daniel Assefa, expressed his appreciation for the contribution made by the Ethiopian independent media in the effort to secure the Kinijit leaders’ freedom, and keep the struggle going.
He also thanked Ethiopians around the world who had supported and rallied around the K.I.L. in the past 15 months of its existence.
Following the opening statement by Dr Moges, Ato Berhane Mewa read what he called “K.I.L.’s last official statement,” which announces the end of the leadership group.
The statement outlines K.I.L.’s accomplishments and jobs left unfinished. It is a positive and forward-looking statement.
In the 3-hour press conference, the media representatives took turns to ask questions and make their own comments.
Ethiopian Review asked the K.I.L. members what the future of Kinijit movement in the Diaspora would look like.
Ato Andargachew answered that a high-level Kinijit delegation composed of some of the top leaders will arrive in the United States shortly and it is they who would make such a decision after consulting with the various support groups. Until then, Kinijit North America, which has a democratically elected leadership, will continue to moblize support for the party from Ethiopians in the U.S.
Ato Andargachew said he believes that their decision will be in line with helping Kinijit’s culture of democracy to be firmly established through out the party.
