The following is a speech delivered by Ato Obang Metho in Minnesota at a conference organized by the Ogaden Youth Network:
Let us Break Down the Invisible Fences of Ethiopia!
August 11, 2007
It is an honor to be here in front of you to talk about human rights in Ethiopia. Human rights abuses are going on all over the country, but right now, the people of the Ogaden are paying the heaviest price. What is happening in the Ogaden is a silent Darfur. I am here with you today as a brother who knows what you are going through. I am here to grieve with you as part of your Ethiopian family. I am here as a fellow worker in a battle against the same injustice that is killing all of our people—the people of Gambella, the Ogaden and in all of Ethiopia!
I want to thank the Ogaden Youth Network for inviting me to first Annual International Ogaden Youth Committee and for all the excellent work you have done in organizing this conference. I thank the Ogaden Human Rights Committee, the University of St. Thomas who is hosting this conference and the many others who assisted in bringing this about.
I am glad to be in this great state of Minnesota. Minnesota has become my second home. Since 2004, I have been coming here many times to speak, starting with the Anuak. You may not know that most of the Anuak in the United States live in Minnesota, as do my family members, friends and some of my work colleagues. More recently, I have been here to speak at the University of Minnesota and just two weeks ago to speak to the Oromo.
More Oromo live in Minnesota than anywhere else in the country, but I have just learned from some of my hostesses that there are 15,000 to 18,000 Ogadenis here in Minnesota as well—again, more than in any other place in the country! I now feel all the more strongly that Minnesota is my second home because I feel so at home with not only the Anuak, but now also because it is the largest US home of Ogadenis and the Oromo. You all are my new brothers and sisters and we have much in common, but the Anuak and the Ogadenis have had little chance to meet in the past.
I first met some of you in January of this year when we were in Atlanta at a meeting about the human rights abuses in Ethiopia that was organized by African Americans. During our stay, some of us met informally in a hotel room and talked for hours. There were four Ogadenis, one Amhara, one Oromo and me, an Anuak. While we were there, Abdulhakim, an Ogadeni, commented that it was unbelievable that we were all there together in the same room. He went on to say that previously there had been an invisible fence that had blocked us from each other that had been set in place by the Dergue and now was reinforced by the Woyane government.
An Ethiopian human rights group is demanding that the United States and other international donors monitor the food and financial aid they give to Ethiopia for its impoverished Ogaden region. As Nick Wadhams reports from Nairobi, activists say the government has blocked food aid to the Ogaden as it tries to quash a local rebel group.
The Ogaden Human Rights Committee says Ethiopia’s government has sparked a humanitarian crisis in the Ogaden and is asking nations from around the world to contribute aid. But it says they must make sure the donations get to the people who need them most.
Last week, the United States announced it is providing nearly $19 million in food assistance for the Ogaden through the U.N. World Food Program. Some money also will help pay for health, nutrition, and livelihood programs.
Abdukadir Sulub Abdi is the international coordinator for the Ogaden Human Rights Committee. He says more than two million people are suffering from malnutrition because of the military clampdown.
“There is not independent agents or international NGOs who can be trusted for the distribution of the aid. So it is easy to divert and everyone knows that they divert aid,” said Abdi. “Many children have starved to death because of this military blockade and there is also a breakout of cholera and other diseases which are related to malnutrition.”
Ethiopian government officials deny they are blocking aid, but U.N. officials have privately complained in the past that the Ethiopian government was restricting their ability to deliver aid. Many aid groups working in the Ogaden have had to submit themselves to close monitoring by Ethiopian officials as well.
In July, Ethiopia expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross from the Ogaden region, and before that, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government of widespread abuses as part of a crackdown on the Ogaden. It said Ethiopian troops had blocked food shipments, burned villages and killed innocent civilians as it pursues the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front.
The rebels advocate independence for southeastern Ethiopia. The desert region borders Somalia and is said to contain large petroleum reserves. The group accuses the government of discriminating against the region’s people, who are mostly Somali-speaking camel herders and nomads.
In April, the rebels attacked a Chinese oil facility in the Ogaden and reportedly killed 74 people. The rebels accused the Chinese of entering into an illegal contract with the Ethiopian government. In June, Prime Minister Meles announced he was launching a campaign to wipe out the rebels.
Last week, the rebel group said it welcomed U.N. plans to send a fact-finding mission to the Ogaden and asked that the team not limit itself to humanitarian issues. But U.N. officials said the mission that included staff from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the U.N. refugee agency, and others had already taken place.
(SomaliNet) Somalia’s top Islamist Courts Union leader vowed on Saturday to wage a stronger insurgency in the capital, Mogadishu, until all Ethiopian Woyanne troops withdraw from the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation, AFP reports
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the chief of the executive arm of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), said Somalis must defend their nation against Ethiopian Woyanne forces deployed in Mogadishu to bolster the feeble government.
“Our country was attacked by Woyanne Ethiopia, who are trying to colonise Somalia,” Ahmed said in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, the base of the exiled ICU.
“We have the right to defend our country. We are compelled to attack Woyanne Ethiopia. They will be pushed out from Somalia and we will take back our freedom by force,” he added.
“We have a right to live in peace and in freedom and a right to manage our affairs ourselves … Until we get that point, we will continue the fighting,” Ahmed said.
Since wresting back control of Mogadishu in April, insurgents have switched to guerrilla tactics, carrying out daily hit-and-run shootings, roadside bomb and grenade attacks against government targets.
The Islamists and elders from Mogadishu’s dominant Hawiye clan refused to participate in internationally backed peace talks in Mogadishu, which opened on July 15, marking a key setback to the latest efforts to normalise the paralysed nation.
Instead, the Islamists and other foes of Somalia’s weak President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed are planning on opening parallel 10-day peace talks in Asmara on September 1.
Although Ahmed urged the United Nations and Western powers to support the Islamist initiative, he renewed salvos against the United States, which backed Woyanne Ethiopia in its moves to drive Islamists from Somalia.
“The US is supporting Woyanne Ethiopia, supporting the dictator Meles Zenawi who is killing our people,” Ahmed said. “We appeal to European countries, to the US, to the UN, to support us,” he added.
Ahmed, who is regarded as a moderate in the movement that Western intelligence has said has been infiltrated by al-Qaeda extremists, flatly rejected the claims.
“There are no al-Qaeda members in Somalia and we are not terrorists: we are simply Somalis,” he said.
Somalia, home to about 10-million people, disastrously collapsed after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre paved the way for a bloody power scramble that has defied numerous efforts to restore peace.
Ethiopian Woyanne officials are disturbed by legislation pending in Congress that would restrict military assistance and travel to the United States by certain Ethiopian Woyanne officials unless President Bush certifies that the Addis Ababa government is acting to address specific human rights concerns.
The Ethiopians Woyannes argue that it is unfair to lump them in with countries like North Korea and Iran at a time when their troops are acting as allies in the war on terrorism, defending an interim government in neighboring Somalia against Islamist extremists.
“This would be the fatal blow to cooperating security arrangements between the United States and Ethiopia,” said Samuel Assefa, Ethiopian Woyanne ambassador to the United States. “Ethiopia is a vital ally to the U.S. in this region in the fight against terrorism. The bill could cut off economic and bilateral aid at a most inopportune time.”
The legislation — known as H.R. 2003 — was proposed by Rep. Donald M. Payne, New Jersey Democrat, and is backed by members of the Ethiopian community in Washington, most of whom support the main opposition party in Addis Ababa and remain angry over the outcome of a May 2005 parliamentary election.
Shortly after the election — in which the opposition party won an unprecedented number of seats but not enough to defeat Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi — violent protests erupted, leading to a government crackdown.
The government admitted its security forces arrested about 30,000 protesters and killed 193 civilian protesters, but denied excessive force was used. Many more were arrested and have been held in many cases until recently.
Mr. Assefa argued in an interview at The Washington Times that his government was addressing the problem. Last weekend, the government reported that 32 members and supporters of the opposition coalition were released.
Another 38 prisoners had been freed three weeks earlier, and Mr. Assefa said only one political prisoner who signed a plea requesting a pardon remains jailed because his court case is still pending.
Under the country’s legal system, Mr. Assefa said, “a plea for a pardon can only be considered after a conviction and sentencing is passed.”
However leaders of a local support group, Coalition for H.R. 2003, contends the Ethiopian government is using the political prisoners as “pawns in its shell game with the U.S. Congress.”
“Every time the bill is scheduled for markup [by a full House committee], the regime touts out a hapless bunch of political prisoners and threatens the U.S. that they will not be released if the House Foreign Affairs Committee marks up H.R. 2003,” said Alemayehu Mariam, member of the Coalition for H.R. 2003.
“The bottom line on the ruling regime’s opposition to H.R. 2003 is that it is incapable of making a morally and politically convincing case against the bill in its entirety, or any of its provisions,” Mr. Mariam said.
“So it has to resort to the thuggish tactic of strong-arming members of Congress and holding the freedom of innocent political prisoners in the balance.”
While the Ethiopian Woyanne government questions the timing of the bill, Noelle LuSane, staff director for the subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, emphasized there was a two-year gap between the time the 193 protesters were killed and the bill’s introduction in April.
“The government had plenty of time to resolve the issue,” Ms. LuSane said. “So Congressman Payne does not feel the government should have been given more time, as they had two years to fix the problem.”
AP reports that Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi has promised to invest in the country’s telecommunications network in a speech he gave at a technology conference that was held in Addis Ababa Wednesday. The fact of the matter is that the Meles dictatorship has purposefully kept Ethiopia’s telecommunications network underdeveloped. For example, unlike most countries in the world, the Meles Woyanne regime doesn’t allow private companies to operate Internet and cellular phone services. As a result, there are more mobile phones in the anarchic Somalia than in Ethiopia. The cellular phone networks in Mogadishu, operated by private companies, are more reliable and less expensive than in Ethiopia. It is therefore disingenuous for Meles to say that his regime will invest in the Ethiopia’s telecommunications network. Read the AP report below.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP)–Ethiopia’s dictator prime minister Wednesday promised to invest in the country’s telecommunications network, long hampered by corruption, bad service and high tariffs.
“Rapid progress for countries such as Ethiopia in this area is not a choice, but a necessity,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said at the opening of a three-day technology conference in the capital, Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia plans to double the size of its network within the next three weeks by putting 1.2 million new phone numbers on the market.
Abdurahim Ahmed, a spokesman for Ethiopia’s state-owned telecommunications corporation, said the expansion, along with technological improvements, will cost $21.7 million.
The expansion is in addition to a $200 million contract to upgrade the mobile network the government signed last May with a Chinese telecoms company.
Ahmed said improving telecommunications was “ammunition to reduce poverty.” He said the government regretted not putting greater effort into its telecommunications sector until a decade ago. “We didn’t give it due attention,” he told the Associated Press.
A call from Ethiopia to neighboring Kenya costs $1.47 a minute, as does a call to Australia. International calls on one of Kenya’s largest mobile networks, Celtel, vary widely, but can cost a tenth of the price, at less than 15 cents a minute, or up to $1.50 a minute.
Ethiopian newspapers have reported that several senior officials at the state telecoms company have been fired for corruption in the past months.
Text messaging in Ethiopia is forbidden, after a spate of post-election violence in 2005 when opposition protesters were accused of using the service to arrange pro-democracy rallies.
AP reports that Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi has promised to invest in the country’s telecommunications network in a speech he gave at a technology conference that was held in Addis Ababa Wednesday. The fact of the matter is that the Meles dictatorship has purposefully kept Ethiopia’s telecommunications network underdeveloped. For example, unlike most countries in the world, the Meles Woyanne regime doesn’t allow private companies to operate Internet and cellular phone services. As a result, there are more mobile phones in the anarchic Somalia than in Ethiopia. The cellular phone networks in Mogadishu, operated by private companies, are more reliable and less expensive than in Ethiopia. It is therefore disingenuous for Meles to say that his regime will invest in the Ethiopia’s telecommunications network. Read the AP report below.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP)–Ethiopia’s dictator prime minister Wednesday promised to invest in the country’s telecommunications network, long hampered by corruption, bad service and high tariffs.
“Rapid progress for countries such as Ethiopia in this area is not a choice, but a necessity,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said at the opening of a three-day technology conference in the capital, Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia plans to double the size of its network within the next three weeks by putting 1.2 million new phone numbers on the market.
Abdurahim Ahmed, a spokesman for Ethiopia’s state-owned telecommunications corporation, said the expansion, along with technological improvements, will cost $21.7 million.
The expansion is in addition to a $200 million contract to upgrade the mobile network the government signed last May with a Chinese telecoms company.
Ahmed said improving telecommunications was “ammunition to reduce poverty.” He said the government regretted not putting greater effort into its telecommunications sector until a decade ago. “We didn’t give it due attention,” he told the Associated Press.
A call from Ethiopia to neighboring Kenya costs $1.47 a minute, as does a call to Australia. International calls on one of Kenya’s largest mobile networks, Celtel, vary widely, but can cost a tenth of the price, at less than 15 cents a minute, or up to $1.50 a minute.
Ethiopian newspapers have reported that several senior officials at the state telecoms company have been fired for corruption in the past months.
Text messaging in Ethiopia is forbidden, after a spate of post-election violence in 2005 when opposition protesters were accused of using the service to arrange pro-democracy rallies.
