Ato Zenawi Asres, the father who brought to this world one of the worst mass murderers in Africa’s history — also known as the Butcher of Addis Ababa and Mogadishu — Meles Zenawi, has died today in Addis Ababa at the age of 82. Ato Zenawi’s body was flown to Adwa for burial.
Mayor-Elect of Addis Ababa and leader of the newly formed Ginbot 7 Movement, Dr Berhanu Nega, testified yesterday at the European Union parliamentary hearing on the current political crisis in Ethiopia.
The hearing in Brussels, Belgium, was organized by Member of European Parliament Ana Gomez, and attended by members of EU’s Human Rights and Development committees.
Several Ethiopians and representatives of the International Crisis Group (ICG) have also attended the hearing.
Meles Zenawi’s regime was represented by the lobby firm DLA Piper, not by the ambassador to EU Berhanu Gebrekristos.
“I am from a lobby firm DLA Piper. I have a question to you and Ms Ana Gomes. Why don’t you fight the government in Ethiopia, like Professor Mesfin does, than from Diaspora?” the lobbyist asked.
“We have never seen you in any of our sessions before,” the U.K. Labor Party spokesperson and Co-President of the African, Caribbean and Pacific/EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, Glenys Kinnock, said to the DLA Piper lobbyist.
Glenys pointed out the recent Human Rights Watch report that criticizes the EU executives for being silent on the crimes against humanity committed by Meles Zenawi’s regime in Ethiopia.
“In Portugal, we also had the same brutal dictator as that of Meles Zenawi,” Ana Gomes responded to the lobbyist. “We fought it both from inside and out side.”
As a chief European election observer mission, Ms. Anna had witnessed that Kinijit leaders won the 2005 elections. “Berhanu would have been in power. But the regime put him in jail.” Ana said.
“You are doing everything you can to kill HR 2003. You make money by defending a corrupt and criminal regime at the expense of millions of the Ethiopian poor,” Dr. Berhanu told the lobbyist for DLA that is being paid $50,000 per month by Meles.
Read Dr Berhanu’s full statement: (click here)
Source: EMF
EDITOR’S NOTE: Why doesn’t the drunkard sheik invest his own money, instead of borrowing from the World Bank in the name of Ethiopia? The answer is simple. He is in Ethiopia to plunder the country with his Woyanne buddies and leave when their time is up, not to invest in long-term economic development.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Billionaire businessman Al Amoudi signed a $200 million loan agreement with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on Wednesday to build a new cement plant to ease cement shortages in Ethiopia, officials said. IFC is the private sector arm of the World Bank.
The new factory, worth $351 million will also be financed by Midroc, a privately owned company with interests across the Horn of Africa country which will provide the remaining $151 million needed to build the new plant.
“This plant with a capacity to produce up to 2.5 million tonnes a year, will address the acute shortages of cement in Ethiopia,” Midroc Chairman Sheik Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi said during the signing ceremony.
The plant will be built in Derba, some 70 kms (43 miles) north of Addis Ababa.
“As a result of the unprecedented boom in the construction business in Ethiopia, a mix of Ethiopian and foreign investors are building 24 cement factories in different parts of the country”, Hailu Abebe a public relations officer at the trade ministry told Reuters.
By 2009, production from some of the 24 cement factories is expected to surpass Ethiopia’s annual demand of between five to six million tonnes, Hailu added.
ADDIS ABABA – As part of the annual, global celebration of an international day for refugees, UNHCR, with support form its partners, colourfully celebrated the 2008th edition of World Refugee Day on Friday under the theme “Protection.” The aim was to create greater awareness on the work of UNHCR to ensure that refugees enjoy international protection.
The Friday afternoon celebration at the African Union in particular drew a great number of representatives of the Addis-based diplomatic community, heads of UN agencies, government and African Union officials to mention a few. Statements calling for increased international support to refugees as well as to address the root causes of forced displacement in Africa were delivered by officials of the African Union, a representative of the Ethiopian government responsible for refugee matters as well as by UNHCR Regional Liaison Representative Ilunga Ngandu. Mr. Ngandu said he was himself an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) early in his life and knows it pretty well how it feels to be uprooted from home and get dispossessed of everything. He sounded an earnest call to African leaders to work on policies that effectively address forced displacement of people.
A refugee girl from Congo Democratic Republic and a refugee boy from Somalia also shared their experiences as refugees and the kind of support they were getting from UNHCR, the government of Ethiopia and other humanitarian organizations.
Refugee children sang in a choir while adult refugees set up stalls to display and sell products that were produced by themselves. The market was meant to show to the world what refugees were capable of doing while at the same time aimed to help refugees generate some income.
Also on Friday, a UNHCR documentary entitled “Working With Refugees,” was screened at the Alliance Ethio-Francasie cinema hall to a packed audience of students, diplomats, officials and refugees. The film described UNHCR’s mandate and role in the humanitarian filed and demonstrated the UN refugee agencies often immediate reaction to major emergencies. That was followed by a lively question & answer session that witnessed a very active participation from the audience
Refugee children who participated and excelled in a writing competition were also awarded and encouraged on the occasion.
UNHCR currently hosts more than 80,000 refugees in six camps. All the refugee camps also commemorated the day on Friday with various activities.
Courtesy: UNHCR Public Information Unit.
For further information please contact Mr. Kisut Gebre Egziabher, Senior Public Information Assistant UNHCR-RLO E-mail:[email protected]
The Messengers of the butcher of Addis Ababa, Meles Zenawi, had attempted to convene a meeting in Dallas on Sunday, June 22nd, at the Radisson Hotel located at Hwy 75 to spread propaganda about Ethiopia and their regime. They came prepared to deliver their well known talking points: the politics of Ethiopia is democratizing and is in good custody; leave the politics for us — just come home and spend money as tourists — send your remittances, and of course invest.
Zenawi’s stooges, Ato Hilawe Yosef (EPDRF’s campaign manager during the bloody 2005 election), Ato Demeke Mekonnen (so-called Vice President of the Amhara Regional State who is involved in orchestrating the regional cover for ceding of Ethiopian territory to the Sudan), and Ato Mulae Tarekegn, from the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC and their operatives amongst us know very well that it is impossible for them to sell this idea to Ethiopians. Their aim is clear. It is to go every where the Diaspora is and get a handful of people in a room for a propaganda consumption. Knowing this, the Ethiopian activists in Dallas came prepared to change their talking points.
The meeting ended in being a total fiasco as the Woyane representatives were forced to abandon their prepared speech and agenda of political stability and economic development in Ethiopia, and instead were forced by patriotic Ethiopians to go directly to questions and answers focusing on the Ethio-Sudan border, the on-going drought and famine and the grave dissatisfaction of the Ethiopian people with the endless lies, dishonesty and corruption of the dictatorial regime of Melesse Zenawi.
The Woyanne stooges were given an earful about the dreadful situation prevailing in Ethiopia: the lack of democracy and gross abuse of human rights; the famine that is afflicting 14 million Ethiopians; the ceding of sovereign Ethiopian territory to the Sudan; the EPRDF government’s lies about Badme and the loss of 70,000 Ethiopians in the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia; the grinding poverty prevalent in Ethiopia despite EPRDF’s false claims regarding development; and many other such important facts demonstrating the utter failure of the current regime in Ethiopia.
The response by the Woyane representatives was totally inadequate as they were teetering in shock at the strong opposition and incisive remarks and questions directed at them. Some of their responses were pitifully and obviously unconvincing. One of them alleged, for instance, that no land has been ceded to the Sudan, although the Sudanese government has confirmed to the contrary; and the very Ethiopian people whose land and property has been ceded to and occupied by the Sudanese have testified to that fact repeatedly on VOA. It was particularly tragic to note that according to the Woyanne stooges, the on-going drought and famine occurring in Ethiopia was an exaggeration and that it was a figment of imagination of the international community!
After expressing the bitter frustration of the Ethiopian people with the corrupt regime and dominating the forum which was organized by operatives of Woyane for three hours, most of the participants walked out in protest leaving the Woyanne representatives and their handful puppets extremely frustrated and confused. It was a good opportunity to identify their operatives among us conspiring to penetrate and silence the Diaspora under the guise of “consensus forum”. They need to be fully exposed and be under the watchful eyes of patriotic Ethiopians. We ask fellow Ethiopians in the Diaspora to challenge the TPLF propagandists where ever they come and most of all identify their operatives amongst us.
Let other Woyane meetings result in a total fiasco!
Ethiopian activists in Dallas
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Over a quarter of Ethiopia’s HIV/AIDS patients on drugs are not taking their medicine because of logistical problems but also due to religious beliefs, the head of a treatment body said on Tuesday.
Over 40,000 of Ethiopia’s 156,360 HIV/AIDS patients on the life-prolonging medication have discontinued treatment “due to problems of transportation to hospitals,” said Dr Ygeremu Abebe, the director of the Clinton Foundation in Ethiopia.
Some however stopped taking the anti-retroviral medicine on the prompting of religious leaders who encouraged them to take “holy water” instead, he said.
“Lack of awareness of serious health problem for patients who discontinue treatment could also be considered a reason,” Ygeremu told a workshop on the disease.
Some 20 percent of 7,000 children with the illness have also stopped medication, he said.
Last year, the head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church told about 5,000 faithful, most of who were infected, that they should combine the free drugs — provided under U.S. President George W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — with the holy water.
With more than 1.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, Ethiopia is one of the countries in the world most affected by the epidemic, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Over a million adults and children have died in Ethiopia in the last two decades from AIDS.
Infections in the country are predominantly in urban areas but have in the last several years spread to rural centers all over the country, where 85 percent of Ethiopia’s 81 million people live, according to WHO.
(Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Editing by Richard Balmforth)