ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Drought-ravaged Ethiopia should improve its “backward” farming systems to curb acute food shortages, which have left millions of people in need of urgent humanitarian aid, a top World Bank official said on Wednesday.
About 4.5 million Ethiopians need emergency food aid due to poor seasonal rains and high food prices in the vast east African country, according to the United Nations.
“Ethiopia has registered commendable economic growth over the last three or four years,” Justin Lin Yifu, chief economist and senior vice-president of the World Bank, told reporters on a visit to Addis Ababa.
“However, some parts of the country have been experiencing drought due to the backward farming system in the country.”
Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation, needs $325 million to provide 400,000 tonnes of food, especially in the country’s hard-hit south and south eastern regions bordering Somalia and Kenya, according to the United Nations.
About 85 percent of Ethiopia’s 81 million population rely on subsistence farming and “this needs to be revisited,” he said without elaborating.
“Given good weather conditions, diverse natural resources and huge labour in Ethiopia, I don’t think it would be difficult to bring about a real change in the country”, he said.
Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Editing by Wangui Kanina
The few newspapers that are struggling to survive in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa under constant harassement from security forces of the Meles dictatorship have found a way to thrive in the past few weeks: Put Berhanu Nega’s photo on their front page.
Last week’s editions of Fitih, Awramba and Enbilta newspapers were sold out the same day they were printed. Each of them had published photos of Dr Berhanu and reports about the newly launched organization, Ginbot 7 for Movement for Justice, Freedom and Democracy.
According to ER sources, the newspapers will double their printed copies this week and all of them will have extensive coverage of Dr Berhanu’s ongoing European tour.
The newspapers’ circulation is limited to Addis Ababa. They are not allowed to distribute any copy outside of the Addis Ababa area. On top of that, every week, the reporters and editors of these few newspapers, who are carefull not to criticize the Meles dictatorship, are harassed, detained, and verbally abused by Woyanne security forces. Through all this they have found a way to survive, even thrive — that is until Woyanne decides to shut them all down again.
EPRP web sites have reported today that the discredited former chairman of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (Kinijit), Ato Hailu Shawel, held a meeting with Addis Ababa’s youth and women. It is reported that some 200 people attended the meeting on Sunday, June 15.
Where are the youth? Where are the women?
As the photo below shows, there were only one person under 60 years old and only three women in the meeting. [Photo is provided by mahder.com, an EPRP web site.]
More revealing as to how much of a joke Ato Hailu made out of himself is that while Woyanne police was dispersing UDJ meeting a short distance away on the same weekend, no body bothered to even notice that he was holding a public meeting. It is too obvious now that even the paranoid Woyanne is not taking Hailu Shawel seriously any more.
Meanwhile, some of those who are partly responsible for Ato Hailu’s downfall, including Ato Moges Brook of Los Angeles, have now turned their back on him. They find him useless, too, after he aligned himself with the EPRP reactionaries. The web site that was hijacked by Ato Moges, Kinijit.org, has stopped reporting any thing about him for several weeks. Currently, Hailu Shawel relies on trashy web sites that are run by retired communists (EPRP) to get his message out. Even among those repeat losers, many are abandoning him after observing that he has no more use to them.
The rise and sudden fall of Hailu Shawel must be carefully studied by all Ethiopian political leaders, so that they do not repeat the same mistake. It is a self-caused down-fall by a person whom we all once held in high esteem.
In his interview with Ethiopian Current Affairs on Sunday, June 15, Ethiopia’s most distinguished human rights activist Prof. Mesfin Woldemariam has made some assertions that Tegbar for Unity and Democracy (Tegbar) respectfully disagrees with.
Issue 1: Prof. Mesfin said: “Ethiopians have not yet started the ‘peaceful struggle’.”
Following the 2005 elections, Woyanne had rounded up 80,000 Kinijit supporters and detained them in Nazi-type, disease-infested concentration camps. Thousands were brutalized and killed. All of Kinijit’s top leaders were thrown in jail. What more does the professor wants from the people of Ethiopia after he and the other Kinijit leaders had abandoned the struggle when they were led to jail without making any contingency plan on how the struggle can continue in their absence? The people of Ethiopia did not fail to struggle or to follow their leaders. It is Prof. Mesfin and colleagues who failed to lead. Now after tens of thousands of Ethiopians paid all that sacrifice, many of them with their lives, the professor tells us that the “peaceful struggle did not start yet.” Tegbar rejects that assertions.
Issue 2: Prof. Mesfin said: “Woyane canceling the recent UDJ meeting in Addis Ababa was a victory for Ethiopians.”
The professor, while failing to acknowledge the huge sacrifices being paid by the people of Ethiopia, now tries to tell us that getting dispersed by two police officers without any argument or semblance of resistance is a victory. What the professor and his colleagues at UDJ are currently engaged in is not peaceful struggle. It is submission to tyranny.
The professor also said in the same interview: “The fact that Woyanne prevented the UDJ meeting from taking place over the weekend will expose it to the world.”
We found this statement to be less than convincing because every one knows about Woyanne’s crimes against the people of Ethiopia and Somalia. Two policemen illegally and arbitrarily dispersing 400 delegates of an opposition party without any hint of resistance exposes the weakness of UDJ’s leadership more than it exposes Woyanne’s lawlessness. Because the world has already witnessed Woyanne as it engaged in mass murder of civilians, including recent satellite photos that show entire villages burned down by Woyanne troops. How much more Woyanne can be exposed?
Issue 3: Prof. Mesfin tried to explain that 400 people taking orders from two Woyanne security agents to shut down their meeting is “Ethiopiawi Chewanet.”
Our forefathers who fought tooth and nail to keep Ethiopia, the oldest independent nation in the world, must be rolling in their graves to hear such a statement from a senior leader of an opposition party.
Issue 4: Prof. Mesfin said: “People and organizations that don’t participate or only follow the peaceful and non-resistance path come from the neftegna culture.”
The professor is telling us that self-defense is a “neftegna culture.” By his definition, OLF, ONLF and other freedom fighters are “neftegnoch.” We disagree. It is a natural right for people to defend themselves against tyranny using any means available to them.
Issue 5: Prof. Mesfin said: “Ethiopia’s feudal culture is an obstacle to the process of fighting Woyanne.”
We find this statement to be off base since a large portion of Ethiopia’s population is under 40 and has not lived through the feudal regimes of the past. In addition, it is this young demographic group that is paying the most sacrifice in the fight against Woyanne.
The professor further explained that organizations that don’t participate or only follow the peaceful or non-resistance path want to take Ethiopia back to the old feudal governance.
One should then ask the professor the following questions: Is self-defense feudalism? Are freedom fighters such as OLF, EPPF, ONLF, TPDM and Genbot 7 fighting to bring feudalism back?
According to Prof. Mesfin, the reason freedom fighters in Ethiopia are chasing Woyanne from all corners is because they want to bring feudalism back. Not because Woyannes are massacring Ethiopians; Not because Woyanne is stealing from Ethiopia’s children and making them hungry to then turning around and use them to beg from its masters.
As much as we respect Prof. Mesfin, we strongly disagree with a series of statements he has made during his interview on Sunday denigrating the sacrifices of Ethiopia’s freedom fighters. The professor can continue with his non-resistance, but when he goes out of his way to label those who are paying sacrifices with their lives as fuedals and neftegnas, we are obligated by our conscience to speak up.
We urge the professor to focus his criticism on Meles Zenawi’s terrorist regime, not the freedom fighters who are fighting to liberate our country from it.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Trade and Industry Minister of Ethiopia plans to develop its vast coal reserves in the west of the country for fertilizer and power generation, at an estimated cost of $730 million.
Girma Birru said his ministry had signed an agreement with state-owned China National Complete Plant Import & Export Corporation (COMPLANT) to develop the coal reserve.
No other details were given of the accord. The firm had earlier conducted a feasibility study of the project.
Ethiopia imports up to 400,000 tonnes of fertiliser annually but the escalating international price of urea, used in the manufacture of fertiliser, is becoming prohibitive for the government.
“The study indicated that the reserve has a potential to produce between 300,000 tonnes of urea, 20,000 tonnes of methanol and 90 megawatts of electric power,” he told reporters.
An environmental assessment study is also being conducted in the thickly forested Yayu region, some 500 kms (312 miles) west of Addis Ababa, he said. (Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Editing by Wangui Kanina)
Ginbot 7 strongly Condemns the Appalling Crime against humanity Perpetrated by the Meles Zenawi Dictatorial Regime in the Ogaden region.
Human Rights Watch, a respected and credible human rights advocacy group, in its well-documented report has accused the tyrannical regime of Meles Zenawi to have had committed crime against humanity in the region of Ogaden on a report issued June the 12th 2008.
According to the report, many villages have been burned down. Children, elderly women and men have been brutalized by the Meles Zenawi army. Women have been raped, people have been forcibly displaced and their properties confiscated. Human Rights Watch clearly states that Meles and his cohorts should be held responsible for grave violations of human rights and crime against humanity.
For a number of years, such despicable crimes have been committed against the people of Ogaden and still continued unabated. It should also be noted that the brutal regime of Meles Zenawi has in the past committed and continues to commit similar crimes in other regions of Ethiopia. The crime committed by the regime in the Oromo, Gambella, Amhara, Southern Ethiopia, Afar regions and the city of Addis Ababa and many towns is well documented
Where as we all have suffered the indignity of brutalization by Meles’ regime and have been victims of it’s brutal acts of savagery, we have been handicapped to act together and rise against this evil. One main reason for our failure is our inability to work against the ethnically divisive politics of the regime and remove the seeds of discord the regime has sown among Ethiopians, in order to maintains its hold to power unchallenged.
Our deliverance from the difficult and tormenting situation that we all find ourselves lie only in our resolution to fight back this dangerous and venomous politics of division and incitement and to unite against the regime’s brutal army and its intelligence forces. It is only through sharing the pain and the suffering of individuals and communities anywhere in the country as the pain and suffering of all of us and generate within us the burning desire to do whatever it takes to stop it. The collective battle cry against tyranny should be “Injustice anywhere in Ethiopia is injustice every where in Ethiopia”
The time has come that we take the first step of building solidarity by condemning, in one voice and in the strongest term, the despicable crime being perpetrated on the people of Ogaden. This also goes to demonstrating to our compatriots in the Ogaden that we stand beside them in their hours of distress and sufferings.
Ginbot7 Movement for Justice, Freedom and Democracy strongly condemns this crime committed against the people of Ogaden. The Movement affirms its commitment to help in whatever way it can the struggle waged by the people of Ogaden to resist this appalling carnage unleashed against them by the regime of Meles Zenawi.
Similarly Ginbot7, calls upon political parties, members of the civil society, institutions and individuals to stand up and condemn the criminal acts of Meles’s regime in Ogden. We also reiterate our call to Ethiopians to take any wrong committed in any corner of the country as a crime committed against all the people of Ethiopia.
Only such act of unity and solidarity in our part will in the end abort the malicious plot by Meles Zenawi and co. to divide and rule us. It is only when we act with shared purpose and mission that we can stop the wanton destruction of lives and communities by the Meles’s regime and force this regime to account for the crimes and treason it has been committing against the Ethiopian people and the security of our country.
Ginbot7 uses this opportunity to urge the international community to stop the financial, military and material support it provides to a regime that is committing crime against humanity in its own country and beyond. In fact we would like to inform the international community that the close relation it has established with the most brutal regime in Africa is playing a huge part in prolonging the misery and the suffering of the Ethiopian people. It has to be noted that such practice has been generating serious resentment amongst the vast majority of Ethiopians. If the international community will not be forthcoming with reviewed polices that make the interest of the Ethiopian people, not the interest of a handful tyrants, the linchpin of its relation to our country, the consequence will be that it would end up being seen as an accomplice to evil in Ethiopia. In the long run, the spread and entrenchment of such extreme attitude amongst Ethiopians, will not be beneficial to both the interest of the people of Ethiopia and the international community.
Hence, Ginbot7 particularly calls upon Western governments to revise their hitherto distorted policies on Ethiopia and rally behind the struggle of Ethiopians for justice, freedom, democracy and the respect of human rights.
