TORONTO, CANADA – Kemer Yousef, who escaped Ethiopia on foot with nothing 24 years ago, has scored an unprecedented video hit with Nabek, a seven-track DVD showing him singing from a yacht in Toronto Harbour and dancing on the steps of Casa Loma. Clamour for his return has become so great that the central government [a political ploy by the hated dictatorial regime] is helping to arrange a six-concert homecoming tour that opens Dec. 7 at Ethiopia’s largest indoor venue – Addis Ababa’s 20,000-seat Millennium Hall.
For Kemer Yousef the tour in Ethiopia means seeing his family for the first time since he escaped across the desert to Somalia at the age of 20. His mother is in her 70s. His father is 103.
The tour also means singing to former enemies.
Kemer belongs to the Oromo ethnic majority, long oppressed by successive ruling minorities, who are now as swept up by the pop phenomenon as anybody else. [What a crock!]
VIDEO: One of Kemer Yousuf’s latest songs that have made him popular. Nice music, but poor video and terrible choreography
“Ethiopia has more than 70 ethnic groups and languages,” tour co-producer Bumiden Abdul Wahab explains by phone from the city of Adama [Nazareth]. “Normally people only listen to their own music, follow their own traditions. [Not necessarily true.]
“Kemer shook up the country,” he says. “He broke the barrier. Every time you turn on the radio – in whatever language – you hear his music.
“If you ask 10 people, at least nine have his CD.”
Kemer is a broad-shouldered man with a magnetic grin and a warm, tender way of expressing himself.
He grew up in an oral and singing culture in the village of Golu, near the town of Deder, in east-central Ethiopia. Villagers had enough to eat, he says. The famine regions lay elsewhere.
But throughout his childhood, the successive governments of Emperor HaileSelassie and Mengistu Haile Mariam relentlessly persecuted the Oromo. [The current dictator, Meles Zenawi, is the worst of all. He has turned Ethiopia a large prison camp for Oromos, according to his own former defense minister. Kemer owes his fans to point out this tragic fact.]
“You cannot even call yourself Oromo,” Kemer says of the HaileSelassie period. “If you dress as Oromo, if you write Oromo language, you will be killed.” [This is a lie. HaileSelassie was not like that.]
Of the Mengistu period, he says: “I remember one night when they came and took my uncle and for no reason they shot him in front of the door. [The Meles dictatorship is committing genocide in some parts of the country. Why do you leave that out?]
“You cannot even grieve and not even scream,” Kemer says.
“If you scream, if you cry, they will kill you. Then they ask (your family) to pay for the bullet you get killed with.”
In 1984, Golu’s elders pooled their resources to help their young people escape. Thousands of people mobilized and with dozens of classmates Kemer caught a ride east to the rallying point of Jijiga.
He joined a camel caravan of about 200 people on a three-day march to the border. Most died on the way. Snakes killed some. Bandits killed many others, stole their animals, and raped and abducted many of the women, leaving 37 survivors.
In 1987, after much suffering, Kemer made it to Toronto. He now lives in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood.
“I have a song in my language,” he recalled several years ago on CBC Radio’s Global Village.
“I say, ‘Thank you, Canada, for wiping my tears, for listening to my cry, for reaching for me with a long hand, far away in Africa, and giving me this opportunity to be a human being, to be somebody, to sing again for others.'”
Throughout the hard times, music remained important to Kemer. In refugee camps, he made up songs about refugee life. At a transient center in Rome, he sang as he mopped floors.
In Toronto, after learning English and taking an electronics course, he assembled a band from musicians he met mostly in subway stations.
In 1993, he found a role model. Ali Birra, the only Ethiopian Oromo star of the 1960s and 1970s, moved to Toronto.
“Ali Birra is a reference singer for all Oromo people,” says French musicologist Francis Falceto, the brains behind Ethiopiques, a hit world-music CD series mining the best of that golden era.
“I didn’t give Kemer much help, really,” Birra says at home in Pickering, where he now lives.
“He’s a very good learner. He watches. He picks things up and improves them.”
Kemer developed a niche, playing Oromo political and social events in Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, Dallas and Washington, D.C. He played in Australia and travelled to Amsterdam, Oslo, Frankfurt and Rome. He married an Oromo woman he met in Munich.
He constantly innovated. Instead of standing still like most Ethiopian singers, he danced and ran. To enhance melodies, he mixed pentatonic and diatonic scales – “like Kenny G,” he says.
For the homecoming tour, he trained three Caucasian Toronto female dancers – Jennifer Dallas, Elisha MacMillan and Yaelle Wittes – to dance Oromo-style and sing backup lines.
“People are so excited,” he says. “They want to see how Canadian girls can dance Shaggoyyee, Ragada, Gattumi and Skista.”
In 1997, Kemer’s brother Redwan escaped to Kenya. Kemer got him to Canada. Within weeks Redwan landed a job in a variety store at Weston Rd. and Lawrence Ave., and on his first day at the cash register two thieves walked in and shot him in the back. He survived but remains traumatized.
“The bullet followed me from Africa,” Kemer says fatalistically.
About five years ago, Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi opened a dialogue with expatriate Oromo communities in Europe and North America. [This is a lie. Within the past 3 weeks alone, over 94 politicians and journalists from the Oromo ethnic group were rounded up and thrown in jail by the Meles regime.]
“The system changed, the people changed, I changed,” Kemer says of his broader themes in recent years of love between men and women, love for humankind, and love for Ethiopian village life. [The system changed?]
The changes brought a new infectiousness and universality to his songs, and opened him to the new, mass audience.
John Goddard is accompanying Kemer Yousef on his homecoming tour to Ethiopia. Follow their journey in the Star’s Entertainment section.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a good propaganda piece for the Woyanne dictatorship by the Toronto Star reporter John Goddard. It is Shame on Kemer for allowing himself to play into that. He didn’t have to praise the blood thirsty Woyanne junta in order for him to go to Ethiopia and sing. The things he said about Atse HaileSelassie is far from the truth. HaileSelassie had many weaknesses, but being racist was not one of them. The fact that Kemer fails to point out any of the injustices that are being committed by the current tribal junta in Ethiopia tells a lot about him — that he has sold his soul to the Woyanne murderous thugs.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is done to eliminate the competition against Woyanne currency dealers, not to enforce the law. Foreign currency exchange is one of the businesses that the ruling party wants to monopolize.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (APA) – The Ethiopian police on Wednesday arrested eight people for being in possession of foreign currency (US dollars and Euro), which contravenes currency regulations, APA learns here.
The Ethiopian federal police [Meles Zenawi’s death squad] accused the eight for attempting to take the money to the border for illegal trading.
“They were caught after hiding the foreign currency in a vehicle for their illegal trading at the border,” said the police.
Since the past four months, the government banned black market foreign currency exchange and shut down a number of shops that were involved in a black market of foreign currency, especially US dollars and Euros.
The eight people were arrested with over $350,000 and over 16,000 Euros, according to the police.
It is illegal to use foreign currency for buying and selling activities. The police have advised the public to go to the bank for any foreign currency exchange transactions.
The presidential election and its drama have finally come to an end. The excitement and honeymoon is over. It is time for us all to get back to reality and lead life as we have always known it to be.
Now is the time for us all to start rethinking what we expect of a President Barack Obama. Now is the time to verify if the change he promised us he would bring to American politics and foreign policy is plausible or whether it is just a bag of hot air.
Having run all his campaign on a change platform, Obama’s recent move to appoint many of former President Bill Clinton’s officers does not in any way show Obama is committed to changing the way politics works in America. By keeping and surrounding himself with the Clinton people, Obama is now confirming the fears many Americans had about whether his talks for change was real or whether it was just another empty political verbosity.
Almost all the people he is rumored to be planning to appoint into his cabinet were part of the Clinton Administration. This is slap in the face of many Americans who voted for a new chapter in American politics and had no interest in creating a third term for Bill Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton.
Senator Clinton has emerged as the most likely candidate to become Obama’s Secretary of State. It will be very disappointing if Obama appoints Clinton because the Clintons were part of the problem that wrecked Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. For a man who ran his campaign completely on change, appointing Sen. Clinton would be a confirmation of the concerns that the Clintons have hijacked the Obama agenda. Obama’s choice for Secretary of State should be someone who has not been involved in the George Bush or Clinton Administrations.
In fact, a good choice for Obama’s Secretary of State should be someone who has expertise and experience on the Middle East. An Arab American would be the perfect candidate because the Middle East’s problems ranging from Palestine, Israel, Iraq, and Iran to Afghanistan will continue to dominate US foreign policy agenda. Getting someone with a natural connection to the region would bring a new dimension on how to address conflicts and US interests in the region.
The first casualty of the “talk change, but make no change” Obama Administration is going to be US-Africa policy. Obama has recruited and kept very closely individuals like Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and former US Secretary for African Affairs, Susan Rice. Both Rice and Richardson oversaw the tragedies and wars that ravaged Africa, including the Rwanda genocide, but did nothing.
The Clintons just sat by and did nothing as people died in Rwanda, Liberia, Congo and Sierra Leon. Instead of stopping these deaths, they befriended some of these war criminals, armed them and motivated them to fight. In the case of Uganda and Rwanda, they trained Ugandan and Rwandan rebels who then invaded Rwanda, and thereby instigated the Rwanda genocide four years later. Again, the same Administration supported Ugandan and Rwandan troops to go and invade DR Congo leaving five million people dead and millions displaced. The residual effect of that invasion is currently unfolding in Eastern Congo.
In Clinton’s eight years in office, Africa saw some of the worse wars and atrocities in recent memories. And in many cases, the Clinton Administration either looked the other way or partnered with corrupt African leaders who used the Clinton support to suppress their citizens and instigate wars. This must come as a surprise for many who were duped by the Clinton charm to believe that Clinton had a good policy regarding Africa.
In reality, Clinton’s Africa Policy was abysmal, to say the least, and the impacts of this failed policy have led to current political, military, economic and social quagmire facing countries like Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and even Sudan.
In other words, the entire Great Lakes region of Africa has suffered. Even the International Court of Justice in 2005 found Uganda liable for mass killings and looting resources from the DR Congo and ordered Uganda to pay DR Congo $10 billion. Up to now, Uganda has not paid a dime. The US funded and supplied the Ugandan and Rwandan troops to invade DR Congo; the liability should have stretched beyond Uganda.
Clinton developed special relationships with African dictators like Yoweri K. Museveni of Uganda and leaders of Rwanda, Paula Kagame; Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi; and Kenya, then Daniel arap Moi. Clinton then coined a bogus term, referring to these men as a “new breed of African leaders.”
In Uganda, Museveni, who is America’s most reliable stooge in Africa, has been in power since 1986 and has even changed the country’s constitution so he can rule for life. Uganda’s economy is bailed-out every year by the U.S. and the U.K., underwriting more than 50% of the country’s budget. Corruption is at all time high in Uganda with Museveni and his cronies pocketing grants and donor funds into their own coffers; even money sent to fight HIV/Aids. Not a word about this is found in corrupt Western corporate media.
We all know that these shady African leaders have been anti-democratic and have used the US support to abuse their citizens, cause wars and enrich their personal bank accounts. Today, some of those leaders Clinton was palling around with are listed as the richest African leaders, and yet their countries are at the bottom of the poverty ladder.
Several years ago when the US supported the overthrow of dictator Mubutu Seseko of Zaire–now Democratic Republic of Congo—Bill Clinton sent his hawkish Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, to visit Uganda and instigate the invasion of Congo leading to genocidal conflict that has yet to end.
To address African affairs, Obama needs to appoint someone who has never had any working relations with the current African presidents in office and most especially presidents like [Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia], Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Joseph Kabila of DR Congo. The US needs to redesign its foreign policy in regards to Africa, especially for the Great Lakes, putting particular focus on addressing human rights, democracy, health and economic development.
The US policy on Africa during the Obama administration should be geared to punish poor leadership and behavior by oppressive and corrupt African leaders instead of rewarding them. The US should tie any economic assistance to democratic achievement and only fund programs that benefit poor people in African villages, including construction of roads, schools, hospitals; farming and environmental protection should also be promoted.
No aid should be given directly to the corrupt governments and officials. Instead, aid should be channeled through non-governmental and community organizations to implement the programs.
The cold war has ended a long time ago, but American foreign policy is still stuck in that era’s mentality. When will America and its leaders move into the 21st century regarding her approach to foreign policy?
Historic as Obama’s election might be, he should not miscalculate on foreign and domestic affairs. His success will depend on whether he will maintain his commitment to change or whether the same Washington insiders he campaigned against will be the ones running his White House.
Americans have invested heavily in Barack Obama; if he fails them will early poor choices he can later not rectify, the same voters are going to turn against him.
Obama should keep that in mind and should remember that the Clintons did not like him all along and they will not take the blame if Obama’s administration fails. Instead, they will reap from the failure and say, “I told you so” to not elect Obama. Clinton would welcome the post of Secretary of State, but the minute Obama stumbles, they will say: “I told you so.”
In Luo, a heritage I share with Obama, there is a saying that goes “Angee tyene lit,” meaning, “I wish I knew earlier, I would have not done it.”
Obama will live to regret any early bad moves he makes in his Administration.
(Black Star News contributing columnist Otika is an African Policy Advocate and a Social Entrepreneur based in North Carolina. He may be reached via email at [email protected])
EDITOR’S NOTE: Somali parliamentarians are currently hiding in Kenya fearing that the puppet regime is about to collapse.
MOGADISHU (Xinhua) — Sheik Adan Mohamed Madoobe, speaker of the Somali national parliament, called on lawmakers on Monday in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, to return to the southern Somali town of Baidoa, the seat of the legislative body, “in order to save the country and the government”.
Most of the Somali parliamentarians have remained in Nairobi following a meeting there in late October with leaders of the regional body, the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), on the situation of Somalia.
The meeting called by IGAD was attended by all Somalia’s top leaders including the entire parliament and heads of state and government of the regional body, but since the end of the meeting,few lawmakers have returned to Somalia because of lack of adequate funds or for security considerations.
“The deputies should all return to Baidoa in order to save the country and the government,” Madoobe told reporters in Baidoa. “You have been hearing what was going on in Nairobi. That is not good for the country and the people who want us to bring peace and stability.”
The call by the speakers came as the rift between Somali’s top leaders widens after their failure to form a government.
On Saturday, Somali President Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed [the puppet of Meles Zenawi’s regime in Ethiopia] told lawmakers in Nairobi that there were “no functioning government” in the country which he said was mostly controlled by Islamist insurgents.
The president refused to endorse a list of ministers appointed by Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein. He described the new ministers as “destructors”.
In their October meeting, the IGAD leaders issued recommendations for Somali officials to form a government within fifteen days, which expired last Wednesday, and urged them to draft a constitution for the war-torn country during the remaining ten months before the Somali government transitional term expires.
Ethiopia: Arbitrary detention/torture or other ill-treatment
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
At least 15 members of the Oromo ethnic group, including those named above have been arrested in the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and also reportedly in eastern and western parts of the Oromia region of Ethiopia, since around 30 October 2008. Most are reportedly held incommunicado in detention facilities in Addis Ababa, including Maikelawi, where torture and ill-treatment of political prisoners has been reported in the past.
1. Bekele Jirata (m), General Secretary of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) party
2. Asefa Tefera Dibaba (m), university lecturer at Addis Ababa University
3. Bekele Negeri (m), a businessman
4. Dejene Borena (m),
5. Fiqadu Jalqaba (m), college student
6. Eshetu Kitil (m), owner of the Hawi Hotel
7. Desta Kitili (m), his brother
8. Kebede Borena (m), assistant manager of the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa
9. Leslie Wodajo (f), a journalist
An unknown number of other members of the Oromo ethnic group
Some of those detained were reportedly briefly brought before a primary court, accused of financially supporting the OLF. Some were also paraded on state television on 5 November. Amnesty International believes that those detained are at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
The Government of Ethiopia, including the National Anti-Terrorism Taskforce, has reportedly claimed that those detained had links to the armed opposition group, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and a previously unknown armed group, Kawerj.
Bekele Jirata is General Secretary of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) party, a small registered political party in Ethiopia that holds seats in parliament. Others arrested include Asefa Tefera, a lecturer at Addis Ababa University, and a number of students. Leslie Wodajo is a journalist who worked for the Oromo television programme on Ethiopian state television. On 12 September, the airtime of this programme was cut, a move the OFDM and another opposition party, the Oromo National Congress, claimed was politically motivated. Sixty staff members of the Oromo television programme were also removed from their jobs, many of them placed under security surveillance while their movements in Addis Ababa were restricted.
The OFDM has strongly denied that Bekele Jirata, or the party, has had any links to the OLF. In April, the party accused the Ethiopian authorities of intimidation during local elections, the first held since the post-election violence of 2005 which killed some 187 civilians.
This wave of arrests follows on a series of suicide bombings in Hargeisa, Somaliland, one of which targeted the Ethiopian consulate, killing several Ethiopian officials and a number of Somalilanders queuing for visas.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Thousands of members of the Oromo ethnic group have been detained, and many of them tortured, in recent years on suspicion of links with the OLF. The OLF has been fighting the Ethiopian government in the eastern and western parts of the Oromia Region and other areas since 1992. Among detainees held on these grounds have been people who Amnesty International considered to be prisoners of conscience who had not used or advocated violence.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in English or your own language:
– calling for formal charges to be brought against Bekele Jirata and other Oromo citizens, including those named above, who were recently arrested, or their immediate and unconditional release;
– expressing concern that those detained are being held incommunicado and are at risk of torture or ill-treatment;
– urging the authorities to bring all those detained before a court with a guarantee of fair trial, and allow them access to their families, legal counsel and medical treatment;
– expressing concern that those detained may be prisoners of conscience who have not used or advocated violence.
APPEALS TO:
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi
Office of the Prime Minister
PO Box 1031, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Fax: +251 11 1552020
Salutation: Your Excellency Dedeb Woyanne
Minister of Justice Berhan Hailu
Ministry of Justice
PO Box 1370, Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Foreign Trade and Development Minister Paavo Väyrynen (Photo: YLE)
Foreign Trade and Development Minister Paavo Väyrynen embarks on a five-day visit to Ethipia and Kenya from Monday. Väyrynen will discuss Finnish development cooperation with the Prime Ministers of both countries.
Väyrynen will also discuss {www:development} policies in the host nations as well as Finnish efforts with regard to poverty reduction and sustainable development programmes. The Minister’s agenda also includes discussions on economic issues.
In Ethiopia, Väyrynen will meet Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi as well as African Union chair Jean Ping. He will also familiarize himself with ongoing development cooperation projects.
In Kenya Minister Väyrynen meets with Prime Minister Raila Odinga and will visit medical facilities supported by Finland. He will also visit the Meru dairy and forestry project.
