A symposium is being organized in honor of the great Ethiopian writer, public servant and patriot Haddis Alemayehu in Washington DC, Saturday, October 17, 2009.
Ato Assefa Gebremariam, one of the organizers of the event, informed Ethiopian Review that the event will be held at Howard University’s College of Engineering, 2366 6th Stree NW, Washington DC.
The symposium will also celebrate Ato Haddis Alemayehu’s 100th birthday.
The family and friends of Ato Haddis invite every one in the Washington DC area to join them in celebrating his life and achievements. (For more info write to: [email protected])
Haddis Alemayehu (15 October 1910 – 6 December 2003), was a Foreign Minister of Ethiopia and novelist. His Amharic novel Fiker Eske Mekaber (Love to the Grave, 1968) is considered a classic of modern Ethiopian literature.
He was born in the Endor Kidane Miheret section of the city of Debre Marqos, Gojjam, the son of an Orthodox priest, Abba Alemayehu Solomon.
As a boy, he began his education within the system of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, including at the monasteries of Debre Elias, Debre Worq, and Dima.
Later, he moved to Addis Ababa where he enrolled at the Swedish Mission and later at the Ras Taffari Makonnen school for further education. He was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate by Addis Ababa University. (Source: Wikipedia)
ADDIS ABABA — A coalition of eight Ethiopian opposition parties presented a common manifesto for the planned June 2010 general elections.
The coalition said it will field candidates in the elections.
The Forum for Democracy and Dialogue, an amalgam of eight parties, unveiled their 65-page manifesto in Addis Ababa on Saturday.
“We have agreed to move this country forward. For the last 150 years, political change has only come through the barrel of the gun. We want to break that tradition and change power through the ballot box,” said one of its leaders, Gezachew Shiferaw.
Ato Gizachew said the manifesto is based on the programs of all eight parties.
“We hope on that basis to be able to lead in unity.”
The coalition chairman Professor Merara Gudina said the new forum mirrored “Ethiopia’s multi-ethnic composition” with representatives from Tigray to the Somali border.
The new coalition has appealed to the government “to negotiate genuinely with us on the modalities of the coming elections” that should be “free, fair and transparent” and monitored by observers from the European union, Merara continued.
The forum, or Medrek as it is known in Amharic, has called for the “release of political prisoners”, notably Birtukan Mideksa, who has been jailed since December 2008, Merara said.
The forum said last month that almost 200 of its supporters had been arrested amid what it called a campaign of government harassment.
The issue currently blocking talks between the government and Medrek is the drawing up of rules governing the conduct of the electoral campaign.
Meles also said last month that international observers would likely be invited for the polls.
At least 200 people were killed when police brutally repressed riots after the opposition refused to accept Meles’ victory in the last elections in 2005. (AFP)
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopian Prime Minister tribal warlord Meles Zenawi accused Eritrea on Saturday of sowing havoc in the region and reiterated calls for sanctions over Asmara’s alleged support for Somalia’s rebels.
“It is going on and on with its creating havoc agenda. The character of this regime is not changing,” Meles told parliament.
He said that Ethiopia Woyanne has done its best to establish a dialogue with the government of Eritrea.
“We believe in dialogue, we have actually knocked on the door many times and they haven’t responded,” he said.
Ethiopia Woyanne accuses Eritrea of backing Islamist rebels fighting to overthrow the Somali transitional government, which Ethiopia Woyanne is helping to prop up. Eritrea denies the accusations.
The African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a six-nation regional grouping, have also called for sanctions against Asmara in recent months. [These vampires should sanction themselves out of power.]
“The evidence (of Eritrea’s involvement) is definitive, the need (for sanctions) is undeniable,” Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
“Every day the crisis worsens. Neither the region as a whole, nor Somalia in particular, can afford the consequences of failure. Peace and security issues affect domestic as well as regional considerations and all the IGAD states need a solution in Somalia, and quickly.” (Source: AFP)
WASHINGTON DC — Investigation of taxi bribery by U.S. federal authorities involving several Ethiopians in the Washington DC area is widening. Authorities have arrested 27 people and indicted 39 so far in a massive bribery case tied to the D.C. taxicab industry.
Two indictments released on October 2 accuse a total of 39 individuals of conspiring to bribe city officials in order to obtain fraudulent taxi licenses between 2007 and 2009.
Taxicab Commission Chairman Leon Swain was the man who first alerted federal authorities to the conspiracy, and the Post reports that Swain was working undercover for the FBI on the case as recently as last month. Mike DeBonis has more on Swain, who so far has not publicly commented on his involvement.
First word of the investigation broke last week, when Ted Loza, chief of staff to Ward 1 D.C. Council member Jim Graham, was arrested and charged with accepting $1,500 in cash and other gifts from taxicab lobbyist Abdulaziz Kamus. Kamus’s name does not appear in today’s indictments, and it’s been previously reported that he was cooperating with the FBI as an informant.
The payments involved on the taxicab commission’s end appear to be much larger: first $14,000 in cash, then $8,000, and even a shopping bag filled with $59,880, plus numerous smaller payments of around $3,000, all totaling up to ultimately hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The apparent ringleaders named in today’s charges are Yitbarek Syume, Berhane Leghese, and Amanuel Ghirmazion, but scores of others are also alleged to be involved, and both indictments refer to co-conspirators “both known and unknown to the Grand Jury.” This case appears poised to grow only larger.
Girma Yifrashewa will perform at a UCLA-sponsored international symposium and festival under the title of Africa Meets North America (AMNA), October 22-25, 2009.
Girma is Ethiopian pianist and composer of classical music. He is profiled at AfriClassical.com and has been featured on AfriClassical frequently.
The event is being organized by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Department of Ethnomusicology, Azusa Pacific University, Music Research Institute (MRI), and the
Center for Intercultural Musicology at Churchill College, Cambridge (CIMACC).
ADDIS ABABA – As many as 6.2 million Ethiopians need emergency humanitarian assistance due to severe drought, an official from the Oxfam charity said Monday.
[Yesterday, the tribal junta in Ethiopia that is led by the Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) has claimed that the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) has grown by 10 percents.]
The Ethiopian government puts the number in need at 5.3 million. Pastoralist communities in the country’s southern Borena area have been particularly hard hit by the lack of rain.
[Borena is one of the most fertile areas in Ethiopia. The problem in Borena is not drought. It is the ethnic-apartheid based agricultural policy of Meles Zenawi’s regime that is causing food shortages in regions of Ethiopia that are fertile.]
“Some 6.2 million Ethiopians hit by two-year recurrent drought are facing starvation and need emergency assistance,” Abera Tola, head of Oxfam America in east Africa, told Reuters.
Oxfam warned last week that severe drought is driving more than 23 million east Africans in seven countries towards severe hunger and destitution.
It said the worst affected nations were Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda, and that the situation was being exacerbated by high food prices and conflict in some areas.
(Reuters: Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
