One may wonder if Meles Zenawi will ever wish the people of Ethiopia happiness, freedom from his endless tyrannical rule and a future of hope. At a time when Ethiopians have been preoccupied with efforts to receive the new Ethiopian year with a sense of hope and jubilation, not because of any tangible change but for the sake of at least their unique calendar and the end of the dreary rainy season, Meles Zenawi had a different game plan. When he convened a meeting of his loyalists, it was predictable that he had no plan of any good wishes for the poor nation he has been ravaging with his misrule.
After all Meles is a classic tyrant whose cruelty is undisputed. According to Wikipedia, the word “tyrant” carries connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who places his or her own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population, which the tyrant governs or controls.
Despite his best effort to try to fool the people, the majority is too wise to be cheated. But there were at least some gullible folks who took the absolute monarch’s pranks seriously and thought that he would abdicate his absolutist throne and deliver a great resignation message on the New Year. “He will go. It is a done deal!” they argued. But it turned out that Zenawi’s plan was nothing more than an unsophisticated cruel April fool’s day hoax in September [Meskerem], the first month in the Ethiopian calendar.
Stopping an insurrection
Before its melodramatic end, Meles Zenawi’s resignation gamesmanship has a long history. It started in the aftermath of the 2005 national elections. After stealing the elections and smashing the popular demand for democracy and freedom, Meles appeared on BBC’s HARDtalk with Stephen Sacker. The interview was not as easy as the monologue he scripts for ETV and Walta. Meles was palpitating and visibly stressed.
Zenawi’s agony was quite understandable as the questions were forthright and there was little space to evade the uncompromising BBC interrogator who even managed to extract a confession that he ordered his security forces to open fire on unarmed protesters.
“What order did you give the security forces?” asked Mr Sacker.
“Stop the insurrection!” declared Meles.
“As simple as that!”
“Yeah!” said the dictator triumphantly as if he ordered the killing of some flies.
The game of the president
The usually cunning despot was caught red-handed lying a few times. He even tried to convince the BBC sharp man that the person who formed the electoral board was not him but the “president” of the country. This was to make Sacker and BBC viewers believe that he was in power only for two terms.
“The National Election Board, the current board, was appointed over a decade ago, during the transitional period, and at that period, at that time, the president submitted the names to the parliament. Now if we were to appoint new election board members, it would be the prime minister, which would put the names to the parliament.”
Bemused with his answer, Stephen asked the self-anointed Prime Minister: “Where were you at that particular time?”
“I was the president of the Transitional Government,” Meles answered blinking his eyes helplessly. So finally, it was discovered that the “president” was no one other than Zenawi himself. The street smart despot never surrenders.
“You were the president?” asked Mr Sacker as if he was surprised.
“Yes!”
“So you still put forward the names?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you now expect the opposition to believe this Board would be entirely impartial? Then Meles resorted to comparing his anomalous empire to a normal country. “Well, I suppose the opposition parties in France expect their Minister of Interior to be impartial in elections and I suppose it is very similar in your country?”
“But I suppose in most countries it would be unusual for one man to be in power for so long, and would control all the appointments for so long?”
“This is my second term and I…” said Meles again trying to pull the wool over Mr Sacker’s eyes.
“You just told me you were the president of the interim transitional authority before?”
“Yeah, the transitional period.”
“So in essence, you have been in power for 14 years.”
“Is that unheard of in Europe?” asks the tyrant to make an escape route.
In the middle of the dramatic interview in which Meles was cornered, the issue of resignation was raised. Meles’ answer was simple, “That is up to my party to decide!” He went on to say: “I want the office to serve my country and I will only serve if I feel…I have value to add. Likewise, if my party feels I don’t add value, they can change the prime minister any time.”
Since that bad encounter with Mr Sacker, who further revealed the mind of a typical power monger in front of the whole world, Mr Zenawi insisted that it would be his last term and he would submit his resignation to his party, as if the “party” composed of his “yes-men” will ever have a power to decide on his fate.
Had had enough
On December 14, 2006, Stephanie McCrummen of the Washington Post published another interesting interview with Zenawi in which he boldly declared that he was deeply convinced that “we either democratize and have a good chance of surviving, or if we fail to do so, we disintegrate.” At the end of the interview McCrummen asked, “Do you have any plans to try a third term?” He tried to evade the question again by diverting it to his party.
“My party? My party will try not only for a third term but for a tenth term.”
“And you personally?” fired back McCrummen knowing what he was up to.
“And me personally, I think I have had enough,” Zenawi said. Here again anyone can notice his self-doubt and caprice. The sentence was not fully affirmative as he opened the sentence with “I think….” If he had had enough, why did he say I think? Just a fool’s game of self-deception.
He continued to sing the resignation song and his blind supporters continued to dance to the tune tirelessly. And yet he kept on giving conflicting signals until many of the respected global news outlets echoed his propaganda. They declared that Zenawi was likely to set an example not only in Ethiopia but also in Africa by relinquishing power in a civilized manner.
Got bored with resignation
In June 24 of this year, Meles told reporters another interesting story. In a news dispatch under the headline Meles bored with resignation talk, the global newswire service Reuters reported that the tyrant was bored with the expectation and talks of his departure.
According to Reuters, asked when he would go at a news conference, “Meles, who has been hinting at an exit for several years, replied: “I am bored with that question. Even if you are not bored, I am.”
But Tsegaye Tadesse and Barry Malone got it wrong again by quoting another gullible but unnamed analysts. “Analysts believe Meles is most likely to leave after the 2010 election, with the ruling party probably winning again and the prime minister’s post then passing to a senior minister,” they reported. Misreading the signals, a Barry Malone of Reuters even distributed a list of possible successors: Seyoum Mesfin, Girma Biru and Tedros Adhanom added with a list of opposition figure most of whom were victims
Setting a new example
Though Meles declared his boredom over talks of his resignation in front of reporters, he told William Wallis, FT Africa Editor, a few days earlier that in Addis Ababa June 17th that he was going to set a new example.
“Is there a danger though that your liberation movement could go the way of some others on the continent which have over time lose their original ideals and are prey to cronyism and the pursuit of power for its own sake rather for the sake of the people?” Wallis asked.
“Absolutely! There is no guarantee. Every movement will have to renew itself everyday or risk degenerating.”
“Including changing leadership?” Wallis wondered.
“Absolutely!” Zenawi said.
“You have said before you are willing to stand down? What developments are there on this front?
He argued at length that his party will change the old leadership and “renew” itself with a new kind of leadership.
Another serious question followed: “Are you saying that you won’t be standing in the elections next year?”
“All I am saying is that my personal position is that I have had enough. I am not a lone gunman…. So I am arguing my case and the others are also arguing their case.… I would like to keep my party membership even after I resign from my government position. My hope is we will come up with some understanding. I don’t think the differences are all that big.”
“When might that take place? Is there a party congress coming up?”
“Yes there is a congress in September,” Meles declared making it appear that there is a real party with real members with unsold souls with rights to debate with him.
“Who would you like to succeed you?”
“I would like the party to make that decision.”
“Why is it that Ethiopians don’t really believe you could go?” Wallis queried with interest.
“Because it has not been done in the past in Ethiopia.”
“But this is a precedent you would like to set?”
“This is a precedent that I would almost kill to set.” From what he was saying, it seemed he can’t wait to go and leave alone the country he has been messing up for lover three decades.
A bad hoax
“And what will you do when you eventually step down? I gather you haven’t had a holiday for 34 years.”
The tyrant answered: “I think my preference would be to read, perhaps write, but again that will be a decision for the party. One thing that I will not do, one thing that the party should not consider is be involved in any government work.”
“You will withdraw?”
“That is a necessary condition and without that there is no change of leadership. But once we have done that the party will have its decision as to whether I will be allow [sic] to sit back read and write, or give me other party (role).”
“Like party chairman?”
“I don’t think so because the prime minister has to be the party chairman. That is not a position for a retired leadership,” Meles answered knowing full well that he was just playing a game that he has perfected: a game of self-deceptions. After all tyrants like Meles are narcissist creatures who are too predictable to cheat anyone but themselves.
As predicted again, the resignation game came full circle. Meles convened his “party”. When the two-day “conference” was over we were told that EPRDF accepted Meles Zenawi’s resignation. “The council has passed decision the senior leaders of the front and management would hand over its leadership in the coming five years. The council has examined the resignation request of EPRDF Chairperson, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and decided to put in to effect as per the procedure of the Front after five years,” the TPLF-controlled Ethiopian News Agency reported. That was not the end of the story.
“We have made a decision about all our frontline leaders, not just Prime Minister Meles Zenawi,” Muktar Kedir, chief of headquarters for the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), told Reuters on Wednesday.
“They will all resign within five years. We will consider his request again then,” he said after the EPRDF’s annual congress this week. Muktar must be kidding. The election is over EPRDF is going to enjoy another landslide victory because it is just a periodic exercise to impress donors. Meles has been begged to stay in power and he is going to be his own predecessor, the one he was promising all these years to transfer power to. What an impressive trick!
Meles Zenawi seems to be like a man who has been trying to build a fortress of ice in the middle of the Tropics. Unfortunately, his efforts are vain and his games too silly. The reason why Zenawi will cling to power for ever is the fact that he has not built a country for himself and his children. There is so much at stake. After all, the nation is a milk cow for him and the ethnic oligarchy he created.
The truth of the matter is that the wicked dictator has little choices. Very few tyrants like himself will take him as a guest of honor. Zimbabwe is already occupied by his predecessor. His long time mentor Isaias Afewerki will need his head on a platter if he flees to his mother’s country, Eritrea, a country he liberated from Ethiopian colonialism. The Sudanese tyrant Al Bashir may take him but the trouble is he is being hunted by the International Criminal Court, which is also compiling files against Zenawi. Where can he flee to escape justice? China, Burma may be Libya? For tyrants like Zenawi, the options are quite limited in the real world as he will be forced to confront the mountain of truth and the grips of justice.
Zenawi rebuilt Ethiopia on a quicksand, on a foundation of divide and rule. When the wall comes crushing on him, it will wipe out the whole criminal enterprise. Expecting Meles to go on his own volition is waiting for a miracle to happen. After all, he is a man who has been sowing the chaff of hatred and division across the fields and over the mountains and telling the people to collect the harvest of peace and democracy.
What is sad this time round is not the cruel game but the fact that the despot chose to play his moronic April fool’s day hoax on a New Year, a time of hope, change and expectation. In spite of the fact that Meles also plays such a game for the consumption of some naïve funders who sponsor his tyranny, knowingly or unknowingly, the joke is cruel beyond the pale. Whether Zenawi likes it or not, change is inevitable and freedom and democracy will come eventually, not out of kindness of ruthless tyrants like him but out of the human march toward the unyielding path of freedom. Sooner or later, Meles will take his guaranteed place in the dustbin of history along with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mobutu, Id Amin, Pol Pot…and all the known evil men who have caused a great deal of destruction and horror.
We wish fellow Ethiopians in and outside of the country a year of hope, courage, change and unity. Let us forget the dictator’s cruel hoax and enjoy the New Year festivities. On such an occasion, it is also important to think of heroes and heroines who have fallen and made great sacrifices in jails and torture chambers for freedom’s sake. We need to pay tribune to our future leaders, those true Ethiopians like Birtukan Mideksa who have offered themselves as sacrificial lambs so that Ethiopians will one live in abundant freedom and dignity. Their sacrifice and suffering is not in vain. We should always remember that resistance against tyrants is obedience to God, as Thomas Jefferson said. Intensifying the resistance in unison against tyranny setting aside the petty bickering cannot be postponed.
(The above articles is released by Forum for Rights and Equality in Ethiopia (FREE), a new advocacy group under formation that aims to campaign for freedom, democracy and justice founded on basic rights and equality for all. Using the power of new media, we aim to speak vocally, raise awareness, network and mobilize freedom loving Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia across the world. For enquiries, comments or to get involved, please contact us at [email protected] or email the project co-ordinator Abebe Gellaw at [email protected])
Victims of the Wonji and Metahara sugar factories in Ethiopia have launched a new web site.
A brief History of the Wonji victims
Dr. Ashagere Germow
In 1950’s, HVA International NV started to pioneer the sugar industry in Ethiopia. Wonji, Wonji/Shoa and Metahara sugar factories were established in 1954, 1960 and 1968. Wonji,Wonji/Shoa and Metehara Sugar Estates are located 110 km from Addis Ababa the capital city of Ethiopia. Wonji, Wonji/Shoa and Metehara are close to the Rift Valley where there are excess fluoride hot springs/volcanic rocks. Except HVA International administration and it’s Dutch employees the rest (Ethiopian) employees of the three sugar factories and their families had no knowledge of the existence of excess fluoride in their drinking water.
HVA International violated the trust of it’s employees and their families by withholding information of excess fluoride existence in the drinking water for 17 years. Sadly, HVA was providing safe drinking water to protect only it’s own citizens only, the Dutch. Secretly two treated water were planted inside their secluded fence where they lived called: ” Shibo Gibi” which means fenced area.
“The existence of ‘fluoride’ problem’ in the state was first recognized in 1957 when the children of the Dutch families had dental examination while on holiday in Holland. In 1962, two de-fluoridated plants were installed in the two factory villages where the Dutch families lived. In 1972 the existence of skeletal fluorosis in the estate was discovered. Between 1974 and 1976, de-fluoridated water was made available to all villages of the estate” (historical data were obtained in 1997 from records & files of WSSF.A review done by Genene Shifera,MD and Redda Tekle-Haimanot,MD FRCP(C),PhD 2)
Thousands of children and adults were and still are at risk almost four generations are affected from dental and skeletal fluorosis which is a bone disease caused by excessive consumption of fluoride. These three communities were exposed also to toxins emitted from the factory. Dust, gases and smoke had affected many people’s lungs and circulation. And the houses’ roofs were built from asbestos.To this day HVA International continues to be reluctant to admit violating the human rights of those poor voiceless Wonji/ Wonji/Shoa and Metehara residents.
Wonji, Wonji/Shoa and Metehara fluoride victims situation now is all more alarming as they are the most archaic human beings. The number of people leading “a painful and crippled life” from fluorosis has risen. Being disfigured and disabled, physiological and mental particularities had pernicious consequences such as suicide in some cases. Children were forced to abandon schooling because their deformed limbs could no longer take them to the secondary school.
Negative tendencies are traced out in finding a job, friendship and also a marriage because of the appearances of Wonji young adults. The only chance the youth has is to marry within their community that have the similarity to stained teeth and find a job in their community-in the three sugar factories.
Sugarcane cutters (unskilled laborers) wage average was US$0.40 cents a day (Revolutionary Ethiopia page 111,By Edmond J. Keller). Right now Wonji retirement wage ranges from 48-300 Birr a month (US $5.50–$34 dollars) Wonji victims have to support with that small amount of money their children and family members who are living with them.
As a result, timely and comprehensive, and especially prophylactic, medical services appear to be in urgent need of social, economic and medical assistance.
Please see the photo album of the victims, WSMPPA members,the administration staff of Wonji sugar factory and Almaz Mequanint and her husband Elias Gizaw who flew from USA to attend the wheelchairs distribution event in December 2007.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – A coalition of opposition parties accused the Ethiopian authorities the Woyanne tribal junta on Thursday of arresting some of its members on trumped up charges to stop them running in an election scheduled for next May.
Eight parties have allied under the banner of the Forum for Democratic Dialogue in Ethiopia (FDDE) to contest the 2010 polls, which analysts say the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) is likely to win.
Opposition figures say they have been hamstrung by a campaign of arrests and intimidation. The EPRDF Woyanne denies it.
“Ruling party cadres throughout the country are jailing our potential candidates on false charges,” Bulcha Demeksa, leader of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement, one of the parties in the opposition coalition, told reporters in Addis Ababa.
“We want to negotiate with the government and ask them to stop arresting and jailing our potential candidates.”
The parties that make up the alliance hold just 80 of parliament’s 547 seats, but still represent the most significant opposition to a government that is a close ally of Washington.
Bereket Simon, the Ethiopian government’s head of information, told Reuters that since none of the parties had yet named their candidates, the opposition’s claims were baseless. “Nobody is being jailed for being a politician,” he said.
TALKS WALK-OUT
Ethiopia’s last elections in 2005 were hailed as the country’s first fully democratic polls, but they ended in bloodshed after the government declared victory and the opposition said the result had been rigged. Police and soldiers killed about 200 people who took to the streets in protest.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused the demonstrators of trying to topple his government, and more than 100 opposition leaders, journalists and aid workers were later jailed.
Those detainees were pardoned and freed in 2007, but rights groups say the government is cracking down on dissent again. One opposition party leader is in jail and a group of former military officers have been convicted of plotting to oust Meles.
Meles has set up talks with the opposition about drawing up a code of conduct for next year. But the FDDE said on Thursday that its members had walked out of discussions.
“The code of conduct assumes a context where there will be independent administration of elections, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, no intervention by security forces,” said Seye Abraha, a former defence minister who is now in the FDDE.
“We want these issues discussed alongside the code of conduct, not assumed.”
Bereket dismissed FDDE claims the code was undemocratic: “This code of conduct is being drawn up by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, not the Ethiopian government … To walk away from it is disastrous and is to walk away from democracy.”
ADDIS ABABA (NMG) — Ethiopia Prime Minster Head of the brutal tribal junta in Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, will run for a new five-year term, his ruling party announced on Tuesday.
The 54 year-old former [Marxist] guerrilla leader, who has been in power for 18 years, was convinced by party members to stay on. [Don’t laugh. This is not a joke!]
The Ethiopian People Democratic Front (EPRDF) council Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) underlined that the Ethiopian people and his party need Mr Zenawi for one more term at the end of a two day annual gathering.
“Meles is playing a key role in transforming Ethiopia….” EPRDF said in a statement.
In recent months, EPRDF’s chairman Woyanne junta leader Zenawi has said he plans to go in 2010 if his party accept his resignation.
The council extensively debated on the issue and agreed to keep Mr Zenawi in office for one until 2015.
Ethiopia’s next general election is scheduled for June 2010.
The PM has increasingly become a champion of African in international forums.
However, at home he is accused of a poor human rights record and oppression against opposition politicians and the media.
Last week, Mr Zenawi was elected [by his fellow thieves] to represent Africa in the climate change talks in Denmark, Copenhagen.
Immigrants to Minnesota from eastern Ethiopia are being forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom payments to support an Ethiopian security force that tortures and kills thousands of innocent Ethiopians.
Under an extortion scheme run by the Ethiopian Woyanne tribal junta, soldiers in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia abduct men, women and teenage boys and girls, holding them without charge in one of scores of military jails in the region, which borders Somalia.
Knowing that many Ogaden families have relatives who live in Minnesota, the Ethiopian army tells the prisoners’ families that their loved ones can be freed upon payment of ransoms ranging from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.
Hating to pay the money but having no other choice, the Minnesota refugees empty their personal bank accounts and pass the hat to raise ransoms to release their husbands, wives, sons, daughters and friends from overcrowded jails where torture, rape, beatings and killings are common.
Destruction of Villages
“It is a booming business for the Ethiopian Woyanne army,” said Mohamed, a Minnesota school teacher who immigrated from the Ogaden in 1993. “It happens every day in the Ogaden, and every day someone in Minnesota is sending money.”
Mohamed and other Ogaden immigrants quoted in this story declined to give their full names for fear that their families and friends living in the Ogaden would be jailed, tortured or killed in retribution for their openness.
In recent years, one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises has unfolded silently in the Ogaden region, where a vicious counter-insurgency campaign by the Ethiopian government has wiped out scores of villages, killed thousands of civilians, and displaced tens of thousands or more to refugee camps in Ethiopia and northern Kenya.
About 5,000 Ogaden refugees have found their way to Minnesota, which has one of the largest refugee populations from the Ogaden crisis in the world. They Ogaden refugees in Minnesota are settled mainly in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Willmar, St. Cloud and Faribault.
Frantic Calls
The ransoming of Ogaden refugees in Minnesota is exacting a disastrous economic, psychological and social toll within the Ogaden community and the broader society, Ogaden immigrants here say.
“I cry every night, believe me,” said Abdi, an Ogaden refugee who has sent $600 ransoms on two occasions. “You are forced to do what is not right, you are forced to do the wrong thing. It’s horrible. It lives with us, it lives with us everywhere. No matter where I am, in the bedroom, in the bathroom, in the living room, I cannot hold back my tears.”
Being forced to spend thousands of dollars to free their relatives from jail in Ethiopia slows down the Minnesota Ogadeni refugees’ attempts to learn English, to get an education and to successfully assimilate into U.S. society, they say.
“We get frantic phone calls day and night,” says Mustafe, an Ogaden refugee who works at Minneapolis employment agency. “Friends and family need money to be freed from jail. They say ‘Please send us money, please send us money!’ We send it, of course, but as a result we go into debt ourselves. I don’t even dream of going back to school to improve myself until the situation in Ogaden changes and improves.”
Financial Aid
In 2007, Mustafe sent $1,500 towards a $4,000 ransom collected in Minnesota to release a teenaged cousin who was jailed for three months, and was released after the ransom was paid. As a result of that and other ransoms Mustafe has paid, plus monthly support he sends back home to relatives, he is about $10,000 in debt.
The ransoming of Ogaden refugees is only one facet of an extreme humanitarian crisis involving countless crimes against humanity bordering on a full-scale genocide, that has been building in the Ogaden for more than a decade, but intensified sharply in 2007.
The roots of the Ogaden crisis lie in the fact that eastern Ethiopia is inhabited by ethnic Muslim Somalis at a time when the Ethiopian government has been waging war against Somalia. In December 2006, with financial aid and military training from the U.S., Ethiopia crushed the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist government that controlled Somalia.
In 2007, the Ethiopia-Somalia war intensified in Ogaden, where the Ethiopian Army launched an all-out counter-insurgency against a separatist militia, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which it calls a terrorist organization.
Collective Punishment
The ONLF conducts deadly raids against Ethiopian Woyanne military, such as an April 2007 attack against a Chinese-run oil operation in the Ogaden which killed not only Ethiopian soldiers but several dozen Ethiopian citizens and nine Chinese nationals.
The report documented hundreds of cases of torture, rape, executions and indeed the destruction of entire Ogaden villages on the mere suspicion that someone in the village was harboring an ONLF fighter. Human Rights Watch said the likely scale of the disaster was far larger than they were able to document in the report.
Since 2007 all foreign journalists and many aid organizations, including the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, have been forced by the Ethiopian government Woyanne junta to suspend operations in the Ogaden.
Virtually all of the ransoms paid by Minnesota Ogadeni refugees to the Ethiopian Woyanne military are to release friends and relatives who have been jailed on suspicion of knowing, sheltering, or aiding ONLF fighters.
Clan Elders
But in a region like Ogaden, where almost every village has at least one son or daughter who has joined the ONLF, to declare war on all people with even a slight relationship the ONLF is tantamount to declaring war on the entire Ogadeni people – on their society and culture. From an Ogadeni perspective, that is what has happened.
In Minneapolis over the past two weeks, I interviewed 18 Ogaden refugees. Every one confirmed knowledge of the frequent payment of ransoms by Minnesota Ogadenis to free imprisoned relatives held by the Ethiopian army in the Ogaden.
About half of the refugees I interviewed said they had personally paid ransoms to free relatives from jail, and some had done so many times.
The ransom amounts ranged from $300 to $1,500. In some cases those amounts were contributions to total collected ransoms of more than $10,000, which seems to be a typical amount needed to release Ogadeni clan elders who are held.
Here are four ransom stories I was told:
Abdi #1: “In 2002, in the city of Harare, Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers arrested my brother and beat him badly, tying a rope at the top of his elbows. For five nights they beat him. My Dad had to pay money to get him loose. He came back with marks on his arms above his elbows. Another time, my brother-in-law was arrested. On two occasions, his relatives called me in Minnesota to say he is alive in prison and asked us here to send money. So on two occasions since 2002 we sent $600, but my brother-in-law was never released and we still don’t know if he is alive or dead.”
Mustafe: “In 2007 my brother, who was in high school, was arrested and put in jail. They accused him of being a collaborator of the ONLF. They said he was buying khat [a chewed leaf that is a legal stimulant in Ethiopia and a major cash crop there] to give to the ONLF. But he was only a student with no money and he never did that. We collected $4,000 here in Minnesota to release him which they finally did after three months.”
Mohamed: “In 2005 they put my brother in jail. He is a tea shop owner and the Ethiopian army said he sold some food to the ONLF. My brother’s wife and cousins sold their sheep and goats to get the ransom money and he was released, but five months later they put him back in jail. This time, his wife called me and said ‘Mohamed, our sheep and goats are very thin and weak, it’s the dry season, and none of them can be sold. We need money. They will kill your brother if we don’t pay.’ So I sent what I could afford which was $700. Again he was released, but today, only a few hours ago, I got the bad news from my village that my brother and two others were taken by the Ethiopian army and no one knows their fate. So again I don’t know if my brother and the others are okay or if they are killed. If they aren’t killed, I will once again have to pay ransom, for the third time. They said my brother is a sympathizer of the ONLF, but he is only a tea shop owner. How can he discriminate if a customer who comes in who is ONLF? They don’t wear any uniform, how can he tell?”
Abdi #2: “My friend and cousin is named Hassan Ahmed, from the town of Jijiga. Last year he was jailed and sentenced to death for supposedly helping the ONLF. But he has asthma and was seriously sick and he needed to go to the hospital. So his mother called me here in Minnesota and said, ‘If we pay $500 they say they will take him to the hospital.’ So we managed to raise $500 which we sent to the family, and they gave it to the Ethiopian army. But he was never let out of prison and we don’t think he was taken to the hospital either. Instead, after they got the money they said, ‘This guy is sentenced to death, he will never get out.’”
Cell Phones
Mohamed, the Ogaden school teacher, has collected records of 182 separate instances of extortion and ransoming of Ogadeni civilians by the Ethiopian Woyanne Army. The total amount paid in these cases was $84,500, which Mohamed estimates is less than 1% of the total amount of money extorted and ransomed by the Ethiopian Army in the past two years.
“You cannot imagine how widespread this is,” said Mohamed, who collected the data through cell phone calls to contacts in the Ogaden and the global Ogaden diaspora.
As a result of the humanitarian aid and information blackout imposed by Ethiopia on the Ogaden, accounts given by the Ogaden refugees in Minnesota provide one of the richest sources of information about the crisis there.
Money, Army or Jail
Ogadeni shopkeepers and traders are also frequent targets for Ethiopian Woyanne army threats and shakedowns, Minnesota’s Ogaden refugees say.
“In the town of Gode,” said Mohamed, ‘the Army just last week gathered more than 100 business people recently and told them, ‘You have three choices: you can give us money, you can join the army, or you can go to jail.”
(Douglas McGill has reported for the New York Times and Bloomberg News– and now the Daily Planet. To reach Doug McGill: [email protected]. And visit The McGill Report at www.mcgillreport.org)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) — Ethiopia could suffer ethnic violence next year ahead of its first national elections since a 2005 poll triggered street clashes following a disputed victory for the government, a think tank has said.
In a study released over the weekend, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned of the potential for a violent eruption of conflict ahead of the election scheduled for May 2010 because of rising ethnic tensions and dissent.
“The international community must stop ignoring and downplaying these problems and encourage meaningful democratic governance in the country,” the ICG said in a statement.
Ethiopian government officials were not immediately available to comment.
The 2005 elections were touted as Ethiopia’s first truly democratic poll. But they ended in bloodshed after the government declared victory and the opposition cried foul.
Police and soldiers then killed about 200 people who had taken to the streets in protest. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused the demonstrators of trying to topple the government.
Rights groups regularly accuse his administration of cracking down on opponents. One party leader has been jailed and several former and serving military officers have been charged in recent months with plotting to oust Meles.
The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) is made up of parties from all major ethnic groups.
It introduced a system of “ethnic federalism” when it took power in 1991, after a communist regime was toppled, with major ethnicities controlling the regions where they dominate.
The government says that gives all ethnicities equal power.
“Ethnic federalism has not dampened conflict, but rather increased competition among groups fighting for land, natural resources, administrative boundaries and government budgets,” said Francois Grignon, director of the ICG’s Africa Program.
“This concept has powerfully promoted ethnic self-awareness among all groups and failed to accommodate grievances.”
The ICG called on donors who give money to sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous country — which is one of the world’s biggest recipients of foreign aid — to put pressure on Meles’ government.
(Reporting by Barry Malone; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
