COTONOU, BENNIN – Ethiopian prime minister dictator announces Mauritania’s suspension from African Peer Review Mechanism.
Mauritania has been suspended from the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi, announced Saturday at the opening of the ARPM summit in Cotonou, Benin’s capital.
“In pursuance of the African Union’s decision to suspend Mauritania, we have also decided to suspend the country’s participation in the African Peer Review Mechanism”, Zenawi said.
The Ethiopian dictator — who stole the 2005 elections in Ethiopia and illegally invaded neighboring Somalia causing the displacement of 2 million people, among other atrocities he is commiting — chairs the forum of the continental institution.
Several heads of state and government thieves and murderers arrived Saturday in Bennin to participate at the summit.
Mauritania’s first democratically elected president was ousted on August 6 hours after he issued a decree firing the military’s top brass, including junta leader General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.
Since the coup, the junta has taken over the powers of the president and formed a new government with the support of a majority of the deputies in parliament.
The top U.S. official for human rights and democracy issues has met Ethiopia’s TPLF leaders to express concern about pending legislation that critics say would curtail political freedoms. VOA’s Peter Heinlein in Addis Ababa reports Ethiopian Woyanne officials flatly reject the criticisms, arguing that the rights of citizens are being protected.
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights David Kramer says he came to Ethiopia this week to ask Prime Minister Dictator extraordinaire Meles Zenawi to reconsider provisions in a draft law that would criminalize many activities of foreign non-governmental organizations. The bill is set for presentation to parliament in the coming days.
The so-called Charities and Societies Proclamation would give the government oversight authority over NGOs receiving at least 10 percent foreign funding, including money from Ethiopians living abroad. It prohibits these NGOs from promoting the advancement of human and democratic rights, gender equality or the rights of children and the disabled.
After what he described as a ‘useful and productive’ two-hour meeting with the prime minister, Dictator Assistant Secretary Kramer told reporters he had expressed U.S. concerns about a number of issues, including the conduct of recent local council elections and a newly-passed law limiting press freedom.
“I did convey to him concerns that we have and we have heard from others about some trends that would point to a closing of political space. When you look at the April election earlier this year, when you look at the media law that was passed. When you look at the draft CSO legislation, and we had a discussion about that,” he said.
Kramer says he is worried about provisions in the draft legislation that could force the closure of several aid projects funded by the U.S. government. “My bureau for example funds programs that deal with issues of women’s empowerment, with media, with conflict resolution, and based on my understanding of the latest version of the proclamation that I’ve seen so far, those programs could be adversely affected,” he said.
Ethiopian officials TPLF have staunchly defended the draft law, saying it will not jeopardize the rights of Ethiopians. In a recent VOA interview, senior government adviser TPLF cadre Bereket Simon dismissed criticisms that the proposal would constitute a blow to democracy. “This is simply a ridiculous assertion. Since we’re promoting democracy, I don’t think any genuinely democratic NGO shall be afraid of empowering our people. We are empowering our people. Nothing has been taken from the right of the people, and that’s what concerns us most, and if these NGO critics are really interested in what is taking place in Ethiopia, in empowering the public, I think there should be no concern or fear,” he said.
Assistant Secretary of State Kramer declined to speculate on what impact passage of the Charities Proclamation might have on the level of U.S. aid to Ethiopia. The Horn of Africa country is currently the third largest recipient of U.S. aid in Africa, after Egypt and Sudan. During fiscal year 2008, U.S. assistance to Ethiopia Woyanne totaled nearly $800 million, most of it humanitarian food military aid.
There are an estimated 3,000 NGOs currently operating in Ethiopia. Their combined budgets are believed to be more than $1 billion a year.
MOGADISHU (Xinhua) – Hussein Mohamed Hubsired, spokesman for the Somali president, has strongly denied media reports of a political rift within Somali and Ethiopian leaders over the future of the war-torn Horn of Africa nation, a press release said Sunday.
Hubsired described those reports as “political speculations,” adding that only the spokesperson of the President of Somalia is authorized to speak on behalf the president.
“I would like to underline that the current leadership of Somalia and Ethiopia have come all the way to make history out of their courage and far-sighted vision by strengthening all the positive values and important interests we share as brothers and neighbors,” Hubsired said in a statement.
This comes days after some local and international media reported that the Somali president, through his “special envoy,” accused both his Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of being behind the failure of the Somali transitional government and its inability to tackle the insurgency in Somalia.
Hubsired said the leaders of the two countries “have paved the way for a brighter future of peace and political stability in our sub-region and far beyond.”
In late 2006, the Ethiopian government sent its military into Somalia to help the Somali transitional government defeat an Islamist administration in southern and central Somalia that was deemed a threat to the national security of Ethiopia and a challenge to the authority of the internationally recognized Somali national institutions.
Hubsired urged local and international media to cover as fairly as possible Somali issues, asking them to have in mind “the tremendous sufferance of the Somali people and their utmost right for fair and lasting peace.”
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (AFP) — The Ethiopian government Woyanne dictatorial regime in Ethiopia has submitted to the {www:rubber stamp parliament} draft legislation on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which has drawn fire from rights activists, the state news agency said on Saturday.
“The Council of Ministers on its 70th regular meeting on Friday discussed and passed decision on a draft law of Civil Society Organisations (CSO),” the office of Prime Minster Meles Zenawi told ENA.
“The bill is aimed at strengthening democratic institutions and ensuring constitutional rights of citizens.”
According to ENA, the government has included stakeholders’ recommendations in the plan.
The bill has been strongly criticised by the rights organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW).
On Friday, British International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, made public his reservations about the bill after meeting Meles.
“We have expressed our concerns to Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi,” he said at a news conference in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
“He informed me that a version recently tabled to his cabinet was in fact the fourth revised law.”
In October, HRW called on donor governments “to speak out publicly against this law”, saying it was “alarming”. The organisation claims it violates both the Ethiopian constitution and several international agreements.
NGOs are particularly disturbed by the creation of a state oversight agency which, they say, could at any moment launch a probe into any organisation outside any legal control, take part in meetings or mandate the police to do so, as well as appoint or dismiss senior staff.
Ethiopia, a poverty-stricken nation of 80 million inhabitants in the Horn of Africa, is one of the countries in the world receiving the greatest amount of aid.
In July, the Swiss branch of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said it was withdrawing from the country’s Somali region because of intimidation from the Ethiopian authorities.
“The authorities’ attitude towards humanitarian organisations has translated into recurrent arrests of MSF Switzerland staff without charge or explanation,” MSF said in a statement.
These “repeated administrative hurdles and intimidations” had prevented the aid agency from bringing urgently needed medical aid to the population.
NEW YORK (UN News Center) – Drought-hit Ethiopians are facing a worsening food situation as the cost of maize soars nearly three-fold in some areas of the Horn of Africa country compared to last year, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cautioned today.
[The U.N. needs to come out and tell the truth. The current famine in Ethiopia has nothing to do with drought. It is a man-made famine by the US- UK- and World Bank-financed dictatorial regime of Meles Zenawi that is purposely hiding and covering up the problem as the U.K. officials have finally admitted today.]
Migration by people from rural to urban areas in search of food is increasing, it noted, and aid agencies have identified critical malnutrition. A rapid assessment team said it found grave water and pasture shortages in some areas.
Due to reduced rations resulting from breaks in the pipeline have led to reduced rations, whose distribution began in July and will continue until December, OCHA said that it anticipates increased malnutrition and a rise in child labour and begging.
The Office also warned that without adequate October-December rains, food insecurity will continue will into next year.
Earlier this week, OCHA appealed for more than $265 million to fund relief operations in Ethiopia for the next three months to meet the widening scale of the crisis, with some 6.4 million people now estimated to need urgent assistance.
It reported that a recent joint assessment by Ethiopian authorities and the international humanitarian community found that an extra 1.8 million people have been hit hard by the crisis since the last assessment in June.
The biggest increase has been in the country’s south-east, known as the Somali region, where the number of people requiring emergency food aid has almost doubled to 1.9 million since June.
On the front line of an invisible Ethiopian famine, government forces stand between the dying tribes scattered across a closed hinterland and outside aid.
The restrictive Ethiopian {www:Woyanne} security regime hiding the worsening crisis in the country’s southern Somali region has infuriated important donors. Western officials privately warn that a damaging stand-off with the country is unfolding.
[It is these same shameless U.K. and other Western officials who are bankrolling the unpopular regime of Meles Zenawi to steal elections and stay in power by committing unspeakable atrocities against the people of Ethiopia and Somalia.]
International relief agencies should be celebrating notable breakthroughs in the rush to stop a fresh wave of mass starvation in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa this week conceded that 6.4 million people were on the brink of death and agreed to open up the worst hit parts of the country to shipments of outside assistance.
But hard-won access to the bleak garrison town of Kebri Dehar in the Somali region, also known as the Ogaden, has unveiled the harsh realities of a regime determined to crush a rebel army.
The government strives to proclaim it has the upper-hand against the vicious insurgency waged by the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The desert raiders have waged a war of ethnic separation from Christian-dominated highlands since peace talks broken down in 2005.
In efforts to bolster its claims to have crushed the group, the government has staged Potemkin scenes in Kebri Dehar. Half-filled hospitals are marshalled by clean but uncrowded schools with plasma screen televisions. Meanwhile the streets appeared to have been emptied.
“The groups have been eradicated and the food is now moving freely,” declared local administrator, Bashir Ahmed Abdi.
Nothing rings true in the boast. Two aid workers were kidnapped near Kebri Dehar just this month and are thought to have been spirited over the border to Somalia. British officials in the town reported it was flooded with Kalashnikov-carrying soldiers as recently as Wednesday. Skirmishes between the army and rebel fighters take place with regularity in the surrounding bush.
Five brigades of the Ethiopian army are based in Kebri Dehar’s garrisons. Those caught in the middle of the war are too afraid to speak out against the government line.
School teacher Abdi Wahadi tried vainly to hide his embarrassment that his class size had been reduced to just six pupils, claiming that 70 were expected to enrol by the end of the week, even though the year started in September.
At the hospital the reluctance to acknowledge the impact of the war was clear in the maternity ward. One lone woman sat with a baby. An aid worker shamefacedly explained that two other women with far more malnourished children had disappeared.
“The others must be taken out,” she said. “I’m not sure where they could have gone because the children are severely malnourished. I hope they are within the city limits.”
A UN official went further. “The people’s movements are severely restricted by the government,” the official said. “If they are starving they get past the roadblocks to get into town; if they have any goats left they don’t go to the watering hole because the army targets these; if they are ill they can’t get into the hospitals to be treated.”
In the town’s market, there are hardly any goods. A diplomat in Addis Ababa said the overstretched Ethiopian army, which maintains an expeditionary force in neighbouring Somalia, has indiscriminately blocked movements in the region.
A government ban on truck has stopped food distribution efforts, according to World Food Programme officials. But it has also cut off supplies of consumer goods and durables that used to be imported from Somalia. “It’s difficult to come here,” said nomad Mohammad Farah, “when we get here we have nothing to sell and nothing to buy.”
Oxfam reported this week that two million people are on the brink of starvation in Ethiopia’s Somali region and that the long-term prospects of recovery were blighted by the loss of 60 per cent of cattle and 50 per cent of goats.
Frustrations over the Ethiopian government’s refusal to throw open the doors to foreign assistance threaten a schism between Addis Ababa and its Western allies. “The events in Somali demonstrate too clearly the flaws in Ethiopia’s willingness to engage with us as government and its actions on the ground,” said a European diplomat. “A lot of governments are awkward on both fronts but by mixing its messages Ethiopia has got away with too much, for too long.”
Migration by people from rural to urban areas in search of food is increasing, it noted, and aid agencies have identified critical malnutrition. A rapid assessment team said it found grave water and pasture shortages in some areas.
International relief agencies should be celebrating notable breakthroughs in the rush to stop a fresh wave of mass starvation in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa this week conceded that 6.4 million people were on the brink of death and agreed to open up the worst hit parts of the country to shipments of outside assistance.