MEKELE, ETHIOPIA (VOA) — An estimated 400 Chinese employees on strike for the past two weeks at the Messebo Cement Factory in Mekele charge some have suffered physical injuries in clashes with company officials over wages.
[Messebo is one of the 60 mega-million-dollar companies in Ethiopia that is controlled by Meles Zenawi’s wife, Azeb Mesfin.]
Ethiopian Woyanne federal police have now placed tight security around Mesebo cement factory expansion being operated by Hafie Cement Research and Design Institute and the subcontractor, Jention.
The workers told VOA that 800 birr, a portion of their monthly wages, is paid to them but the rest of their salary which was to be deposited in their individual accounts is missing. Some of the workers said there was no money in their account for the last three months.
The contractor said they will be paid for their effort and that the two sides will meet to discuss the dispute soon.
In mid-January, the ailing Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) declared once again that it is in need of rescue fund. The business weekly, Addis Fortune, reported that the bank called on the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) to inject more capital to refill its empty cash registers.
Though the health of all state banks has been in dramatic decline within the last ten years, crisis-ridden DBE has been in much more serious trouble carrying a huge burden on its shoulders in the form of non-performing loans. Much of these loans are taken out by crooked “borrowers” like the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT), which is infamous for defaulting on the multi-billion birr loans it has been raking out from state banks. [EFFORT is now under the control of Meles Zenawi’s wife, Azeb Mesfin.]
In mid-December, Addis Fortune reported that DBE “loaned” a whopping 1.7 billion birr ($141.6 million) to a privileged company, Messebo Cement Factory, one of the many companies owned by EFFORT. Messebo’s business plan was an expansion project, to build a second factory that will extend its market monopoly in the cement business. “The money, 96 million in euro [141.6 million dollars], has been obtained entirely as a loan from the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE); only 15 percent of this money was required in local currency,” the paper reported.
“The civil work has been completed. The machinery are now coming from China,” Brehanu Werede, acting general manager of the project, boasted.
But the interesting twist in the story is the fact that while ailing DBE has been on the verge of collapse, its incompetent management team and board, filled with the ruling TPLF loyalists and hirelings, clearly flouted the basic rule of banking by approving EFFORT’s greedy loan applications.
As a result of its crisis, cash strapped DBE has been unable to finance essential and productive entrepreneurial projects. It is turning down loan applications from serious entrepreneurs that have little political and ethnic leverage, while funnelling meagre resources to a borrower that has been deliberately confusing loans with grants.
Even more surprisingly, it happened at a time when DBE has once again pressed the red button for rescue injection from the national treasury. It doesn’t make sense to undertake such a mammoth expansion project on the part of Messebo at a time when the cement market is predicted to reach a saturation point with the opening of a dozen of new factories including Sheik Mohammed Al-Amoudi’s Derba Midroc Cement Factory, which is expected to start production at the end of this year.
DBE has a long but difficult history. Over one hundred years ago, the founder of the first bank in Ethiopia, Emperor Menelik II (1844-1913), realized the critical role banks play in development endeavours. When Emperor Menelik inaugurated Bank of Abyssinia on February 15, 1906, he undoubtedly envisioned it to grow, multiply and serve generations to come. That bank played a critical role to push his modernization agenda. It is also credited for financing the construction of the only railway line in Ethiopia, the Ethio-Djibouti railway, which currently finds itself on the verge of extinction.
Emperor Menelik had also set up another bank, solely committed to enhancing development and trade by providing badly needed financial facilities, despite the fact that resources were extremely meager. In 1909, the emperor launched the Societe Nationale d’ Ethiopie Pour le Development de l’ agriculture et de Commerce (The Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and Trade).
Since its establishment, the bank has undergone major restructuring and re-naming at least eight times. During the reigns of HaileSelassie and Mengistu Hailemariam, the bank did not register any dramatic growth nor faced critical illness. After the fall of the Derg, the bank saw dramatic changes as its non-performing loans had reportedly reached as much 94 per cent. In 2003, it was re-established as the Development Bank of Ethiopia. In July 2009, the bank declared that it completed the controversial Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) which has been allegedly used to push the agenda of the ruling elite to tighten its monopolistic grip on every key institution in the country.
It is an open secret that the Development Bank of Ethiopia has been experiencing more difficulties under the Meles regime than its predecessors. The main cause of its dire problems, as mentioned above, is related to the fact that the amount of loans it disburses and the amount it recovers have been showing a widening gap that cannot be easily filled with capital injections from external and internal sources.
According to the data obtained from the bank, from 1972 to 2009, DBE disbursed 13.3 billion birr in loans but could only collect 8.39 billion birr from borrowers. Laden with heavy burden of debts, the bank is making recurrent loan requests from internal and external sources. In fact, had the bank been in healthy condition, borrowing from external and internal sources would not have been a problem due to the fact that the bank was set up to operate as such.
Under normal circumstances, no bank in any part of the world will ever lend money to any borrower with terrible credit history. But the crooked client called EFFORT is a powerful part of the establishment being run by senior TPLF officials, including the Prime Minister’s wife, Azeb Mesfin, who has been appointed by her husband to control EFFORT’s multi-billion business empire.
No state bank official can dare say “No” to any amount of “loan” requests, no matter how outrageous it could be, to the Queen of Mega and her entourage. Obviously, a bank official handpicked by Meles can hardly be expected to refuse to oblige whenever his wife demands a loan or grant be issued, no matter how much or whether it is in local or hard currency. In fact, thanks to the unlimited power accorded to the tyrant’s wife, she has been known to employ real politik to get whatever she desires.
Dr. Seid Hassan, Economics and business Professor at Murray State University pointed out the fact that he had even come across credible complaints about Azeb Mesfin’s underhanded business activities including using her power and influence to force potentially competitive entrepreneurs to “sell” their start-ups to her or her business partners in order to enable her various companies and “joint ventures” to enjoy market dominance.
Last year, DBE celebrated its 100th anniversary in the presence of Zenawi’s octogenarian figurehead, President Girma Woldegiorgis, who recently celebrated his 86th birthday. As the celebration was in high tempo, interesting figures that were rarely made public were released by the officials.
One of the most eye-catching figures came from Abay Weldu, TPLF Executive Committee member as well as Deputy President of the State of Tigray, and DBE Northern Region Manager, Hadush Gebregziabher. At the bank’s diamond jubilee, both of them excitedly disclosed that since the fall of the Derg, the bank loaned over 3 billion birr to Tigray region, i.e. EFFORT and its affiliate business projects, as reported by TPLF’s own media outlet, Walta Information Centre.
What makes the story much more interesting is the fact that from 1970 to 2009, the bank loaned 13.2 billion birr to private businesses and government projects. Out of the total outlay disbursed in four decades, it was learnt that the bank loaned nearly 8.5 billion birr since the fall of the Derg, which was 19 years ago. That makes TPLF the biggest beneficiary of the “loan” bonanza taking the lion’s share, i.e. nearly 40 per cent of loans, from the struggling bank, and its other external and domestic sources of capital, including the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and the National Bank of Ethiopia.
In addition to the 3 billion birr plus loan, Messebo Cement Factory was recently awarded 1.7 billion birr (147.6 million US dollars). That simply means that in the last 19 years, the TPLF and its ethnic affiliates took out over 4.7 billion birr of fund from the coffers of DBE, not to mention other states banks that are also victims of TPLF money grab scheme.
TPLF companies are currently undertaking “expansion” projects with funding from struggling state banks. But it is quite obvious that the funding should have been allocated fairly and equitably to finance serious development projects throughout Ethiopia including underserved and neglected regions.
In fact, there is also an incredible and outrageous twist to this saga. DBE reportedly had planned to lend around 2.4 billion birr this fiscal year. Of the 2.4 billion birr, 1.7 billion birr has already been granted to Messebo’s so-called expansion project. In other words, the privileged Messebo has been allowed to take well over 70 percent of the total outlay allocated this year to finance businesses and public projects in the whole of Ethiopia, while DBE has fallen in the habit of dialing for emergency services and rescuers. This huge inequality gap in TPLF’s Ethiopia clearly symbolizes Meles Zenawi’s ideology of gangster capitalism that has been designed to benefit only a selected few members of the ethnic junta in power.
As the TPLF leadership has been consistently claiming, EFFORT does not belong to the people of Ethiopia. Abadi Zemu, Sebhat Nega and even Gebru Asrat, who claims to be struggling against Meles Zenawi’s injustice have shamelessly claimed that EFFORT belongs to anyone with Tigrian blood as if being a Tigrian was a privilege to own multiple companies without any contributions. They are telling us that the business empire, which enjoys a huge array of privileges including unrestricted loans, exemption from external auditing, exemption from paying taxes, belongs only to the people of Tigray despite the fact that the EFFORT conglomerate is completely under the control of Meles, his wife and his closest cronies like Abadi Zemu, Arkebe Ekubay, Yohaness Ekubay, Getachew Belay, et al.
In a recent interview with VOA’s reporter Girmay Gebru, Abadi Zemu, who is the CEO of EFFORT and Executive Committee member of the TPLF, has said that Messebo Cement Factory already commands 40 per cent of the cement market in Ethiopia. Messebo was set up in 1995 with a registered capital of 240 million birr. It is puzzling why DBE approved Messebo’s 1.7 billion birr loan in foreign exchange to construct a second factory at a time when businesses are closing down due to severe shortages of hard currency and loan facilities.
It was just a few months ago that the international media jokingly reported about Ethiopia’s Coca-Cola drought as the East African Bottling Company, which was forced to suspend production of the global brand and laid off its employees as the state banks claimed to have run out of their foreign exchange reserves. Tens of thousands of business owners, especially those engaged in the import sector, have been seriously affected by the foreign exchange crunch.
The repeated firing and hiring of senior management officials within the last decade also reveal that DBE’s future has been uncertain and shaky. The bank has also been subjected to scathing criticism for being too generous on risky loans to EFFORT and failing to insist on repayment with interests in time. No matter where the bank is going, the fact that TPLF is draining state banks to undertake its discriminatory, monopolistic and illegal business projects will remain a thorny issue, and even a source of future conflicts for generations to come as the ongoing looting and corruption is too naked and unprecedented in the history of the poor nation.
The harrowing experience of Ethiopians on the doomed Ethiopian airliner in the Mediterranean Sea last week, and the racist ways in which grieving Ethiopians who were trying to know the fate of their fellow Ethiopians on the plane were treated in Lebanon, could have been used to raise important questions and start a more important discussion. Sadly, it is being deflected in a useless direction – complaint about racism, anger at the wrong parties and a cyber-war or words with the wrong culprit. Frankly, I find the self deceptiveness and empty bravado and hypocrisy of my fellow Ethiopians more maddening than the racism and degrading treatment of Ethiopians in Lebanon which we know exists in the region all along. It is good to be angry and not unreasonable at all. But it will be a foolish exercise if we don’t know where to direct our rage to. In my view, this anger has to be directed primarily at ourselves for letting this to happen to us. If we think that this experience is an isolated case then we have closed our eyes. What has gone so wrong with our generation, the sons and daughters of a proud people, who throughout the ages fought hard to keep their pride and dignity and never let anybody look down on them? What the damn went wrong with us!
As we often do in many cases, we are taking our eyes off the big picture, completely failing to raise and answer the most important questions that we need to ask ourselves about our country and ourselves as a people. How and why have we ended up being subjected to this kind of humiliation and racism and how are we going to end it? How is it that the beacon of hope and freedom of black people around the world ended up making an industry out of exporting their beautiful children to slave labor in the Middle East at the turn of a new century?
To those of you who seemed to be angry by the racist treatment of our fellow Ethiopians, I have some more questions for you. What were you expecting a bunch of maidservants who live and work much like medieval slaves were going to be treated like in a country where most people only know them as domestic slaves? Do we expect them to read our history before they buy their slaves and be forced to care that we Ethiopians are a proud and dignified people with a along and proud history of not allowing ourselves to be looked down upon by anybody? Was this the only incident and instance that Ethiopians have been treated in inhuman, degrading and racist ways around the Middle East? Have you asked why even our Airline, Ethiopian, the island of modernity in Ethiopia that we are all proud of for its world class service and record, and frankly, one that dwarfs most Middle East carriers in every respect, couldn’t dodge the racism. Have you seen how minutes after the accident and before any evidence was available, the transport minister of Lebanon and their journalists blamed the accident on the pilot. And mind you, this is a terrorist infested area and the first eye witnesses were saying the plane went down in flames. You see, after all, Ethiopian Airlines is owned and operated by a country and people that dump their beautiful children as slaves in their countries to work seven days a week in the most dehumanizing conditions. So, what in the world have we expected them to treat us like other than in indignity?
There are many more questions that any Ethiopian worthy of self respect should ask. How many times have you heard epidemic levels of Ethiopian suicides in the Middle East? How many of us have heard Ethiopian girls throwing themselves from the top floors of buildings to end their misery in these countries? Haven’t you heard that the Ethiopian embassies in these countries routinely tell our slave sisters to go to hell whenever they ask for help? How many times have we heard that boatloads of Ethiopians travelling from Bosaso in Somaliland sink in the Red Sea while attempting to reach the cost of the Arabian Peninsula where they were treated like animals? Have you wondered why hours after the first boat capsized with all Ethiopians on board others keep riding the next ramshackle boat taking a chance on their lives? Haven’t we seen pictures of Ethiopian women beaten, sometimes even burnt by their masters in this region? How often have we heard women thrown into jail, or their passports confiscated and thrown out on the streets for voulchers to play with them? Have we not heard that many are often denied their slave salaries by their masters and thrown out on streets? Have we not heard that many dead Ethiopians are simply buried in the sands and vanish like the wind? How many of us have heard Ethiopian maidservants calling the voice of America or Ethiopian community radio stations in the West to tell us harrowing stories of mistreatment and racism pleading with us for help? An Ethiopian airline crew member I met recently told me that it is not unusual to travel from the Middle East to Addis Ababa with many young Ethiopian girls who suffer from extreme forms of depression and trauma, some who lost their minds and behave strangely. Yes, there is some awful thing happening to us as a people and we seem to be lost. If there is anything strange in this particular case, it is our attempt to treat it as an isolated case, a self deception that borders on stupidity. Rather than blame ourselves for letting this happen to us we tend to project it elsewhere.
The first job of any government anywhere is to protect its citizens, so we hear in nearly all countries. In that case we have no government. We have allowed robber barons to rule over us. The anger should be directed at us for letting our country be run by a slave trading oligarchy – the government of Meles Zenawi that turned selling young Ethiopian girls in the Middle East into a huge industry. I hear that this slave trade is now becoming one of Meles Zenawi’s most important hard currency earning businesses in the country.
From time to time I meet some pigs who feed at Meles Zenawi’s trough. They tell me something I already know very well. They tell me the economy in Ethiopia is growing. Nobody is contesting that other than the inflated statistics cooked-up in Meles Zenawi’s office for propaganda purposes. This is not even a secret. I have heard it from people who work on analyzing and reporting the data. These pigs, like any pig, hardly understand the meaning of economic growth and development as it relates to social welfare and how to measure it and account for the source of the growth and who benefits out of it. If they see buildings and asphalted roads and bridges and a few people in Addis Ababa and elsewhere striking it rich overnight, that’s it- economy is growing. They seem to have very little clue that the TPLF is expected to do something for a living or that it is supposed to show us something in the form of growth for being one of the world’s most important destinations of billions of dollars of foreign aid in the world and the huge remittance from millions of Ethiopians abroad, including from the slave labor its sells to the Middle East and the massive number of children it sells for adoption? By the way, have you stood by at major terminals of Ethiopian Airlines? The most common scene is a parade of people carrying small Ethiopian children. I once saw an old Ethiopian woman crying profusely at the site of the little children at Dulles Airport in Virginia. These adopters say they pay a fortune to Mr. Zenawi’s government to get these children. Did you hear that the government of Australia saw the obscenity and was forced to stop it recently? Is this a proud thing to do for a people and a country which boasts “unheard of” economic growth?
The naming of the Abay Bridge by Meles Zenawi is an interesting illustration of how Meles himself and the pigs at his trough perceive economic growth and development. According to the local media reported at the time of the inauguration of the bridge, Meles Zenawi named the bridge “Hidasse dildiy” – meaning the “bridge of renaissance.” What makes this interesting is that the construction of the bridge was 100% funded by the Japanese government! Silu semta doro tanqa motech!
Whatever its source, what is economic growth or development anyway if it is not meant to improve the life of people? Why is it that our loss of pride and dignity and humiliation so positively correlated with this reported growth? I mean, how is it that the more the country grows economically, the more people live in humiliation and desperation, and the number of the poor increases exponentially? Who is getting rich any way? What the pigs and the TPLF officials don’t tell you is that the number of the absolute poor and the perennially aid dependent population more than tripled since TPLF arrived in Addis Ababa almost two decades ago? Beggary is no more a humiliating exercise in Ethiopia. It used to be. If you happen to meet any of these pigs, or any of the government officials who brag about economic growth in Ethiopia, ask them to show you what the country manufactures and sells to the world other than good old coffee and other agricultural products that we began exporting a century ago. Ask them how many extractive industries like mining are operating.
And lo and behold, a slavery of epic proportions is hovering at your door steps. If you are not redirecting the anger and rise up to make changes as any people worthy of dignity and respect must do now, wait until the Middle East tycoons begin operating the land Meles Zenawi is selling them at bargain prices now. If you think the current land grab in Ethiopia is traditional investment and not colonialism, just wait until your relatives begin working in the Egyptian, Arabian and Asian plantations. I am not sure if it will be too late by then. If you are angry that you are despised outside of your country, you will see what it looks like when they come home to take the land our fathers fought hard to leave for us. But when are we going to say enough is enough! Ehhhhhhhhhhh!
ADDIS ABABA (Bloomberg) — Ethiopia’s ruling party said the country’s largest opposition grouping, the Forum for Democratic Dialogue (Medrek), would try to foment violence after elections scheduled for May in an effort to spur foreign governments to intervene.
“They are ready to create violence after the elections,” Hailemariam Desalegn, the parliamentary whip for the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front [a cover for Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (Woyanne)], said in a phone interview this week. “Their ultimate objection is not free and fair elections but to get power-sharing like in Zimbabwe and Kenya. I think this is very dangerous and they should be properly told this.”
He said opposition allegations that elections scheduled for May 23 would not be free and fair were designed to fuel popular discontent that would lead to street clashes as happened following the country’s disputed 2005 poll.
The warning came as the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ), the largest political party in the Forum, accused the U.S., Britain and other Western aid donors of silence over the jailing of UDJ leader Birtukan Mideksa and other human rights abuses.
The U.S. and U.K. “are following the old way of doing business,” said Andualem Aragie, UDJ’s secretary general. “They are partners in development with the Ethiopian government but I don’t think they are partners in freedom and democracy.”
Following disputed presidential elections in Zimbabwe in 2008 and Kenya in 2007, international mediators brokered agreements that allowed opposition parties to share power with Presidents Robert Mugabe and Mwai Kibaki.
The opposition has sought to raise pressure on the U.S., U.K., and other donors who supply more than $2 billion in aid annually to Ethiopia, saying their silence is tantamount to political support for Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
The U.K. government has a “frank and full dialogue with the government of Ethiopia on human rights and democracy including Birtukan,” said Gavin Cook, a spokesman for the British embassy in Addis Ababa. “Our development assistance, regardless to who is in power, has helped benefit millions of Ethiopians.”
Michael Gonzales, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Addis Ababa, declined comment.
ADDIS ABABA (APA) — The 14th African Union Summit on Tuesday unanimously re-elected Ethiopian Prime Minister genocidal dictator Meles Zenawi to represent Africa in future consecutive global climate conferences. [In Africa, failure and betrayal are rewarded. That is why the continent is a land of misery.]
The Summit commended the leading and coordinating role of Meles at the tough negotiations at the Copenhagen Climate Conference. [The fact of the matter is that Meles betrayed Africa in Copenhagen, as reported here.]
The leaders expressed their satisfaction with Meles “who strives to secure the benefits and interest of Africa.” [Thieves standing up for each other at the expense of Africa they claim to represent. Read about Meles Zenawi’s role in Copenhagen here.]
Meles was elected last year to lead the African Union delegation of thieves to the world climate conference at the AU assembly in Libya .
Tanzanian president, Jakaya Kikwete lauded Meles’s efforts at the Copenhagen climate conference where he took into consideration Africa’s interest. [Liar]
The world climate conference in Copenhagen was a forum where the international community, including the developed countries promised to give Africa tens of billion dollars in the coming three years and another $ 100 billion by 2010.
The money will be utilized for climate change adaptation and mitigation programs in Africa , which severely affected by the climate change. [The money goes into the pockets of these looters who are being propped up by neo-colonialists.]
At noon every Sunday an old Toyota sedan donated by supporters of Ethiopia’s most famous prisoner pulls up near a jail on the outskirts of the capital.
A 74-year-old woman in a white shawl and her four-year-old granddaughter — the only outsiders the prisoner is allowed to see — step out for a 30-minute visit.
Most inmates at Kaliti prison want their relatives to buy them food. But Birtukan Mideksa, the 35-year-old leader of the country’s main opposition party, always asks her mother and daughter to bring books: an anthology titled The Power of Non-Violence, Bertrand Russell’s Best, and the memoirs of Gandhi, Barack Obama and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese political prisoner to whom she has been compared.
Birtukan, a single mother and former judge, was among dozens of opposition leaders, journalists and civil society workers arrested following anti-government demonstrations after the disputed 2005 elections.
Charged with treason for allegedly planning to overthrow the government — accusations rejected by independent groups such as Amnesty International — the political leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment. After spending nearly two years in jail they were pardoned, but Birtukan was rearrested in December 2008 for challenging the official version of circumstances that led to her release. Her pardon was revoked, her life sentence reinstated.
“My child did not do anything wrong — she had no weapon, she committed no crime,” said Almaz Gebregziabher, Birtukan’s mother, in her house on a hillside in Addis Ababa after visiting her daughter one recent Sunday. “I want the world to know that this is unjust.”
Many Ethiopians agree. Birtukan’s treatment has cast a shadow over elections due in May. Opposition parties and international human rights groups said the case is proof of the authoritarian government’s stalled progress towards democracy.
It is also evidence, they said, of the double standards of Western donors when dealing with Meles Zenawi, the prime minister, a major aid recipient and ally in the “war against terror”. Although Zenawi makes no attempt to hide his disdain for Birtukan — talk of her release is a “dead issue”, he said in December — he denies the case is political.
But a look at her history with his regime shows why few people outside his party believe him.
Birtukan excelled at university and was appointed a federal judge in Addis Ababa. In 2002 she was assigned a case involving Siye Abraha, a former defence minister who had fallen out with Zenawi and was accused of corruption. Birtukan released him on bail — a rare show of judicial independence in Ethiopia — but when Abraha left court he was immediately rearrested and jailed.
Birtukan’s relatives said she joined opposition forces before the 2005 elections and was arrested and released in 2007.
Upon her release she set about bringing together the various opposition groups from 2005 and helped found the Unity for Democracy and Justice, of which she was elected chairperson. Her age and gender made this extraordinary.
In November 2008 Birtukan told an audience of Ethiopians in Sweden that her pardon had come as a result of negotiations rather than an official request made through legal channels. Although people who were in jail with her said this reflected the truth, the government said it equated to denying asking for a pardon, and sent her back to jail.
And there is no sympathy from the government. “She was advised to obey the rule of law,” said Teferi Melese, head of public diplomacy at the foreign affairs ministry in Addis Ababa. “But she broke the conditions of her pardon, thinking her friends in the European Union could get her released.”
That foreign embassies, including Britain’s, which have been refused permission to visit Birtukan, have barely made a public complaint about the case appears to back opposition complaints that when it comes to Ethiopia, donors favour stability over democratic reforms or human rights.
“The government says the more we make noise the more difficult it will be to get her [Birtukan] out,” said one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Are we going to risk our entire aid budget for one person? No.”
MEKELE, ETHIOPIA (VOA) — An estimated 400 Chinese employees on strike for the past two weeks at the Messebo Cement Factory in Mekele charge some have suffered physical injuries in clashes with company officials over wages.