UDJ's Public Relations Head Dr. Hailu Araya gave interviews to two local newspapers on current issues- The Reporter and Addis Admass. For the excerpts click on the title of the news papers.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Dr. Hailu on current affairs
UDJ's Public Relations Head Dr. Hailu Araya gave interviews to two local newspapers on current issues- The Reporter and Addis Admass. For the excerpts click on the title of the news papers.
Ethiopia: IMF Sees Country's 12 Percent Economic Growth Slowing to Six Percent IMF Says Downturn to Take Toll on Country's Economy
The Daily Monitor, Addis Abeba — Ethiopia's economic growth could slow to 6 percent in 2009 as the world slowdown is likely to hit its coffee export, tourism, and transportation the country's leading foreign exchange earners, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday.
This is seen to largely contradict with the 12.8 percent economic growth maintained by the government.
Last month, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said he saw only a 0.6 percent slide from the 12.8 percent economic growth last year owing to the world economic downturn, and said that was not to be considered significant compared to the economic achievements the country is registering, "in the face of the global financial crisis" "It is projected that the global crisis will continue to prevail for the next two or three years, on our side there is a hope that our economy will continue to grow at the same pace," Meles told a press conference at his office.
But what did the IMF say on Wednesday?
The IMF said the country is one of the vulnerable countries to the unfolding crisis and it is expected to register only about 6% economic growth.
It said Ethiopia is in fact among the poorest the global financial crisis will weigh heavily on and it called for the international community to act "urgently" and "generously" to avoid devastating effects.
Speaking during a round table with the media and stake holders IMF Country Representative Sukhwinder Singh admitted the country was one of the fastest growing non-oil producing countries in Africa.
All the same, the country was no exception and will certainly be affected by the global downturn which is playing its ugly faces in all countries of the world-rich and poor, he said.
He said the impact on Ethiopia will be as bad as a six percent slash from what it managed to register last year.
The decline in export demand of coffee and its decreased price by 19%, the depreciation of effective foreign exchange rates by 30% last year, less tourism and revenue from airway transport are cited as the major factors behind the country's poor economic performance this year.
85% of exports are going to industrial and emerging market countries who are already suffering major import declines.
He, however, indicated that the country could grasp positive advantage with the lower oil and fertilizer price at the global market.
He noted that in the middle of the year, USD 220 million Ethiopia incurred for importing oil has now gone down to USD 75 million.
He highlighted that, due to the shock induced by global crisis, economic growth projection in pre-crisis and at present is greatly varies.
Click on 'Read More.'
The IMF forecasted the growth in SSA to be 5% a little bit earlier but it now expects only 3%, Sukhwinder said.
Current account balance in Ethiopia as elsewhere in SSA is worsening and it is currently -5.4% (while it is -2.6% in SSA) with low reserve level but risks are mounting, he said.
"We need 25 billion dollar concessional financing for Ethiopia and SSA as a whole who are most affected countries" he said.
He further indicated that Ethiopia has the highest inflation rate in Africa outside Zimbabwe (26%) and much weaker in fiscal reservation. The average in SSA is 2%.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Srauss-Kahn on Tuesday heralded that after first striking the advanced economies and then emerging markets, a third wave of the global financial crisis has begun to hit the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries, threatening to undermine recent economic gains and to create a humanitarian crisis He also called on the international community to act urgently and generously to avoid the potentially devastating effects of the global financial crisis on the most vulnerable countries. Similarly, the report by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that the world's poorest countries including Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, Rwanda and Bangladesh are unable to insulate their citizens from the crisis, with an estimated 43 out of 48 low-income countries incapable of providing a pro-poor government stimulus According to UNESCO, reduced growth in 2009 will affect the 390 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living in extreme poverty and a loss of income around USD 18 billion (USD 46 per person).
ILO last month on its part announced that Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the three East African countries that have reaped from the Western economic growth, are suffering from the reduction of prices in the West as supermarket chains take unilateral commodity price cuts.
This is seen to largely contradict with the 12.8 percent economic growth maintained by the government.
Last month, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said he saw only a 0.6 percent slide from the 12.8 percent economic growth last year owing to the world economic downturn, and said that was not to be considered significant compared to the economic achievements the country is registering, "in the face of the global financial crisis" "It is projected that the global crisis will continue to prevail for the next two or three years, on our side there is a hope that our economy will continue to grow at the same pace," Meles told a press conference at his office.
But what did the IMF say on Wednesday?
The IMF said the country is one of the vulnerable countries to the unfolding crisis and it is expected to register only about 6% economic growth.
It said Ethiopia is in fact among the poorest the global financial crisis will weigh heavily on and it called for the international community to act "urgently" and "generously" to avoid devastating effects.
Speaking during a round table with the media and stake holders IMF Country Representative Sukhwinder Singh admitted the country was one of the fastest growing non-oil producing countries in Africa.
All the same, the country was no exception and will certainly be affected by the global downturn which is playing its ugly faces in all countries of the world-rich and poor, he said.
He said the impact on Ethiopia will be as bad as a six percent slash from what it managed to register last year.
The decline in export demand of coffee and its decreased price by 19%, the depreciation of effective foreign exchange rates by 30% last year, less tourism and revenue from airway transport are cited as the major factors behind the country's poor economic performance this year.
85% of exports are going to industrial and emerging market countries who are already suffering major import declines.
He, however, indicated that the country could grasp positive advantage with the lower oil and fertilizer price at the global market.
He noted that in the middle of the year, USD 220 million Ethiopia incurred for importing oil has now gone down to USD 75 million.
He highlighted that, due to the shock induced by global crisis, economic growth projection in pre-crisis and at present is greatly varies.
Click on 'Read More.'
The IMF forecasted the growth in SSA to be 5% a little bit earlier but it now expects only 3%, Sukhwinder said.
Current account balance in Ethiopia as elsewhere in SSA is worsening and it is currently -5.4% (while it is -2.6% in SSA) with low reserve level but risks are mounting, he said.
"We need 25 billion dollar concessional financing for Ethiopia and SSA as a whole who are most affected countries" he said.
He further indicated that Ethiopia has the highest inflation rate in Africa outside Zimbabwe (26%) and much weaker in fiscal reservation. The average in SSA is 2%.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Srauss-Kahn on Tuesday heralded that after first striking the advanced economies and then emerging markets, a third wave of the global financial crisis has begun to hit the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries, threatening to undermine recent economic gains and to create a humanitarian crisis He also called on the international community to act urgently and generously to avoid the potentially devastating effects of the global financial crisis on the most vulnerable countries. Similarly, the report by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that the world's poorest countries including Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, Rwanda and Bangladesh are unable to insulate their citizens from the crisis, with an estimated 43 out of 48 low-income countries incapable of providing a pro-poor government stimulus According to UNESCO, reduced growth in 2009 will affect the 390 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living in extreme poverty and a loss of income around USD 18 billion (USD 46 per person).
ILO last month on its part announced that Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the three East African countries that have reaped from the Western economic growth, are suffering from the reduction of prices in the West as supermarket chains take unilateral commodity price cuts.
Zimbabwe Prime Minister Tsvangirai hurt in crash
HARARE, Zimbabwe(Associated Press) – Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was injured in a car crash on the outskirts of the capital Friday and his wife was killed, officials said.
Tsvangirai had been traveling to a weekend rally in the prime minister's home region, south of Harare, when their car sideswiped a truck, his spokesman James Maridadi said. No other details on the crash were immediately available.
Maridadi initially said the injuries to the Tsvangirais and an aide who also was in the car were not life-threatening. Later, two officials from the Movement for Democratic Change party told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that 50-year-old Susan Tsvangirai was dead and that an official statement would come later from the family.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti, Tsvangirai's No. 2 in the party, told reporters after visiting the Harare hospital where the crash victims were taken that the prime minister was stable. Biti refused to answer questions about Susan Tsvangirai's condition.
Earlier, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had sent his condolences to Morgan Tsvangirai. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the British government was "deeply saddened to hear news of Susan Tsvangirai's death and we offer our condolences."
The Tsvangirais, who married in 1978 and had six children, often went together to political events, but she did not have a prominent public role.
President Robert Mugabe arrived at the hospital late in the evening, spent about an hour inside and left. He and other senior aides who also visited did not speak to reporters or Tsvangirai supporters gathered outside.
The road where the accident occurred is like many in Zimbabwe — in poor condition because of a lack of maintenance — and is notorious for accidents. Long stretches have been reduced to one lane.
State television canceled its first evening newscast without explanation and reported nothing about the accident in its second.
Tsvangirai, who turns 57 next week, was sworn in Feb. 11 as Zimbabwe's prime minister in a power-sharing deal meant to end almost a year of deadly stalemate with Mugabe. The unity government has been rocky after years of rivalry between Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, and Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980.
Tsvangirai formed his Movement for Democratic Change a decade ago. As it emerged as a serious political challenger, Tsvangirai repeatedly faced the wrath of Mugabe's ZANU-PF, Tsvangirai has been beaten and was once nearly thrown from a 10th floor window by suspected government thugs.
Scores of Tsvangirai supporters were in prison even as he joined the government. Several have since been released, but not prominent party member Roy Bennett.
Bennett, Tsvangirai's nominee for deputy agriculture minister, has been jailed since Feb. 13. He faces weapons charges linked to long-discredited claims Tsvangirai's party was plotting to use force to overthrow Mugabe.
Bennett's lawyers had hoped he would be freed Wednesday, after the High Court ruled the state had no right to oppose bail. Prosecutors have appealed the bail ruling and state TV reported Friday that a magistrate had been taken into custody for "alleged abuse of office" for signing a release order for Bennett based on the High Court ruling.
State TV quoted police as saying the release order should not have been signed while the Supreme Court was considering the bail ruling.
Zimbabwe has the world's highest official inflation rate, a hunger crisis that has left most of its people dependent on foreign handouts and a cholera epidemic blamed on the collapse of a once-enviable health and sanitation system. Cholera has sickened more than 80,000 and killed more than 3,800 people since August.
Tsvangirai had been traveling to a weekend rally in the prime minister's home region, south of Harare, when their car sideswiped a truck, his spokesman James Maridadi said. No other details on the crash were immediately available.
Maridadi initially said the injuries to the Tsvangirais and an aide who also was in the car were not life-threatening. Later, two officials from the Movement for Democratic Change party told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that 50-year-old Susan Tsvangirai was dead and that an official statement would come later from the family.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti, Tsvangirai's No. 2 in the party, told reporters after visiting the Harare hospital where the crash victims were taken that the prime minister was stable. Biti refused to answer questions about Susan Tsvangirai's condition.
Earlier, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had sent his condolences to Morgan Tsvangirai. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the British government was "deeply saddened to hear news of Susan Tsvangirai's death and we offer our condolences."
The Tsvangirais, who married in 1978 and had six children, often went together to political events, but she did not have a prominent public role.
President Robert Mugabe arrived at the hospital late in the evening, spent about an hour inside and left. He and other senior aides who also visited did not speak to reporters or Tsvangirai supporters gathered outside.
The road where the accident occurred is like many in Zimbabwe — in poor condition because of a lack of maintenance — and is notorious for accidents. Long stretches have been reduced to one lane.
State television canceled its first evening newscast without explanation and reported nothing about the accident in its second.
Tsvangirai, who turns 57 next week, was sworn in Feb. 11 as Zimbabwe's prime minister in a power-sharing deal meant to end almost a year of deadly stalemate with Mugabe. The unity government has been rocky after years of rivalry between Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, and Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980.
Tsvangirai formed his Movement for Democratic Change a decade ago. As it emerged as a serious political challenger, Tsvangirai repeatedly faced the wrath of Mugabe's ZANU-PF, Tsvangirai has been beaten and was once nearly thrown from a 10th floor window by suspected government thugs.
Scores of Tsvangirai supporters were in prison even as he joined the government. Several have since been released, but not prominent party member Roy Bennett.
Bennett, Tsvangirai's nominee for deputy agriculture minister, has been jailed since Feb. 13. He faces weapons charges linked to long-discredited claims Tsvangirai's party was plotting to use force to overthrow Mugabe.
Bennett's lawyers had hoped he would be freed Wednesday, after the High Court ruled the state had no right to oppose bail. Prosecutors have appealed the bail ruling and state TV reported Friday that a magistrate had been taken into custody for "alleged abuse of office" for signing a release order for Bennett based on the High Court ruling.
State TV quoted police as saying the release order should not have been signed while the Supreme Court was considering the bail ruling.
Zimbabwe has the world's highest official inflation rate, a hunger crisis that has left most of its people dependent on foreign handouts and a cholera epidemic blamed on the collapse of a once-enviable health and sanitation system. Cholera has sickened more than 80,000 and killed more than 3,800 people since August.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Who's Next?
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The International Criminal Court's decision to pursue a sitting head of state on war crimes charges puts others around the world on notice, but it's also raising questions about which leaders are being targeted.
African and Arab nations say they will support Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, fearing the warrant issued against him Wednesday will bring even more conflict in Darfur, where up to 300,000 people have died since 2003, and further destabilize Sudan.
And they question why only Africans have been charged since the ICC — branded "the white man's court" by Sudan's information ministry — began its work six years ago. A temporary court, the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, indicted Slobodan Milosevic in 1999 while he was still president of Yugoslavia.
The chairman of the 52-state African Union has accused the court of "double standards," asking why no cases have emerged from conflicts in the Caucasus, Iraq or Gaza.
"The African states were the strongest supporters of establishing the ICC. It wouldn't have been possible without them. But there has been a significant shift in the past year," said Christopher Hall, senior legal adviser to Amnesty International.
Outside Africa, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo is investigating possible cases in Colombia, Georgia and Afghanistan as well as a Palestinian request for charges against Israel for its actions in Gaza.
Click on 'Read More.'
In Africa, those considered possible targets of the court are leaders in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, Ivory Coast, Rwanda and Central African Republic.
Even among the Africans, the court's choices are questioned. Why is it prosecuting former Congolese warlord and vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba for alleged crimes his fighters committed in Central African Republic, and not the ousted Central African leader who invited Bemba's forces?
Why not the many other Congolese warlords whose forces all are accused of gross atrocities, including those of President Joseph Kabila? And what about the leaders in Rwanda, Uganda and other African countries that sent troops to Congo?
"It's a very uneven path," said Reed Brody, legal counselor for Human Rights Watch. "We're still in a situation where if you are powerful or protected by the powerful you can avoid a reckoning."
South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said African leaders are behaving shamefully and dismissed concerns that the court's action would impede promoting peace.
"Are they on the side of the victim or the oppressor?" Tutu asked in a column in The New York Times. "Rather than stand by those who have suffered in Darfur, African leaders have so far rallied behind the man responsible for turning that corner of Africa into a graveyard."
Al-Bashir's presidential adviser, Mustafa Osman Ismail, branded the world's first permanent international court to investigate war crimes "one of the tools of the new colonization" aimed at destabilizing the sprawling oil-rich nation.
Sudan is Africa's biggest country, covering an area the size of Western Europe and bridging the continent's northern Muslim Arabs and southern Christian and animist Africans in a union riven with conflict since independence from Britain in 1956.
In Darfur, the war began in 2003 when rebel ethnic African groups, many of them Muslim, took up arms against the Arab-dominated government they accuse of discrimination and neglect. Up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been forced from their homes in what the United States calls a genocide.
Those who argue that amnesty is a more powerful weapon for peace, though, point to Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, who defaulted on a peace agreement after the court issued an arrest warrant against him.
In recent months, Kony's Lord's Resistance Army is accused of killing more than 1,500 civilians in northeast Congo and driving some 100,000 from their homes.
"There is a balance between attaining justice and sustainable peace," Uganda's Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa said Wednesday.
While another rebel leader, Bosco Ntaganda, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, Congo chose rather to treat with him and integrate his fighters into the national army. The move appears so far to have diminished the most powerful rebel threat in eastern Congo.
Sudan has reportedly said that African nations opposed to al-Bashir's arrest warrant would pull out of the ICC in protest, but none had done so as of Thursday.
Thirty of the court's 108 member states are African. And every indictment it has brought acted on requests from African members — Uganda, Congo and Central African Republic. Al-Bashir's arrest warrant is the exception, initiated by the U.N. Security Council.
That in itself shows hypocrisy, critics say, given that three of the council's five permanent members — China, Russia and the United States — refuse to join the international court.
The precedent set by the court Wednesday could extend to former U.S. President George W. Bush, amid charges his officials were the architects of criminal detention policies that led to torture in Iraq and at Guantanamo detention center in Cuba. But that is an extremely remote prospect. The Security Council is unlikely to order that while Washington is a veto-wielding permanent member.
"The world's justice looks with one eye," complained Taher Nunu, spokesman for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that Israel has been battling in Gaza."
Ethiopia defend's Al-Bashir
Sudan Tribune – The Ethiopian government condemned today the arrest warrant issued yesterday against the Sudanese President saying it is against the interest of Sudan and Africa.
Ethiopia, the host country of the African Union headquarters, reminded it is statement the AU position on the case which supports President Al-Bashir and requests the deferral of the ICC jurisdiction on Darfur crimes in order to settle the conflict politically.
"It would not be wise, prudent and in conformity with what would be in the interest of the people of the Sudan, our sub-region and Africa as a whole" said the statement on Thursday. It further recalled that at its first meeting on the matter, the AU’s Peace and Security Council decided to request the Security Council, in conformity with Article 16 of the Rome Statute, for a deferral.
"The Government of Ethiopia has been saddened by this latest development and requests the Security Council to respond favorably to the request already made by the AU, a request which reflects the sentiments of Africa as a whole."
Ethiopia, which is not a state party to the ICC, would be the first country to receive the Sudanese President after the issuance of the arrest warrant. Al-Bashir should lead the Sudanese delegation to attend the Ethiopian Sudanese Higher Committee which will be held in Addis Ababa on March 10.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council decided today after an emergency meeting to send a high-level delegation to press the UN Security Council to delay the indictment of Sudanese President for a year.
Also the Arab League, which adopted a similar decision yesterday, said today it would coordinate its efforts with the African Union.
After nine months since a request of arrest warrant for the Sudanese President filed by the ICC prosecutor, the Pre-Trial Chamber 1 followed Occampo’s findings on the counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes and responded positively to his request.
Ethiopia, the host country of the African Union headquarters, reminded it is statement the AU position on the case which supports President Al-Bashir and requests the deferral of the ICC jurisdiction on Darfur crimes in order to settle the conflict politically.
"It would not be wise, prudent and in conformity with what would be in the interest of the people of the Sudan, our sub-region and Africa as a whole" said the statement on Thursday. It further recalled that at its first meeting on the matter, the AU’s Peace and Security Council decided to request the Security Council, in conformity with Article 16 of the Rome Statute, for a deferral.
"The Government of Ethiopia has been saddened by this latest development and requests the Security Council to respond favorably to the request already made by the AU, a request which reflects the sentiments of Africa as a whole."
Ethiopia, which is not a state party to the ICC, would be the first country to receive the Sudanese President after the issuance of the arrest warrant. Al-Bashir should lead the Sudanese delegation to attend the Ethiopian Sudanese Higher Committee which will be held in Addis Ababa on March 10.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council decided today after an emergency meeting to send a high-level delegation to press the UN Security Council to delay the indictment of Sudanese President for a year.
Also the Arab League, which adopted a similar decision yesterday, said today it would coordinate its efforts with the African Union.
After nine months since a request of arrest warrant for the Sudanese President filed by the ICC prosecutor, the Pre-Trial Chamber 1 followed Occampo’s findings on the counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes and responded positively to his request.
112 Ethiopians, 76 Somalis Arrive In Yemen
SANA'A, March 6 (Bernama) -- Yemeni security bodies arrested 112 emigrants, among them 15 women, who arrived at Khanfer coastline in Abyan province and Dhubab coastline in Taiz province, Yemen news agency, Saba, reported Friday.
The security bodies said that they had captured 79 Ethiopian emigrants who arrived on an unknown ship carrying 150 persons at Khanfer coastline. The rest onboard the ship managed to escape.
In the meantime the other 33 Ethiopian emigrants arrived at Dhubab coastline and were immediately sent to undergo investigation procedures for entering Yemen illegally.
The security bodies reported that 76 Somali refugees, among them 11 women and 5 children, one child passed away, arrived at Hadramout coastline and Dhubab coastline in Taiz province in three separate trips. They were then gathered at the main camp at Kharaz in Lahj province.
According to the Information Security Centre, there were 2559 Somali refugees who came to Yemen in February.
The number of African refugees, mostly Somalis, exceeding 800,000 refugees. They put more burden on the country's fragile economy.
They usually arrived through the sea and many died as overcrowded boats capsized or as the refugees were forced by smugglers to swim far to reach Yemeni coasts.
The security bodies said that they had captured 79 Ethiopian emigrants who arrived on an unknown ship carrying 150 persons at Khanfer coastline. The rest onboard the ship managed to escape.
In the meantime the other 33 Ethiopian emigrants arrived at Dhubab coastline and were immediately sent to undergo investigation procedures for entering Yemen illegally.
The security bodies reported that 76 Somali refugees, among them 11 women and 5 children, one child passed away, arrived at Hadramout coastline and Dhubab coastline in Taiz province in three separate trips. They were then gathered at the main camp at Kharaz in Lahj province.
According to the Information Security Centre, there were 2559 Somali refugees who came to Yemen in February.
The number of African refugees, mostly Somalis, exceeding 800,000 refugees. They put more burden on the country's fragile economy.
They usually arrived through the sea and many died as overcrowded boats capsized or as the refugees were forced by smugglers to swim far to reach Yemeni coasts.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Sudan expels aid agencies, defies Hague court
By Andrew Heavens, Reuters
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir announced on Thursday that 10 foreign aid agencies had been expelled, in his first public response to the International Criminal Court's call for his arrest on war crimes charges.
The arrest warrant issued on Wednesday for atrocities in Sudan's western Darfur region is the first against a sitting head of state by the Hague-based ICC.
Bashir responded with defiance, accusing the aid agencies of breaking the law and saying the government would tackle any move to undermine stability.
"We will deal responsibly and decisively with anybody who tries to target the stability and security of the country," Bashir told a meeting of top politicians on Thursday.
"We have expelled 10 foreign organizations ... after monitoring activities that act in contradiction to all regulation and laws," he said.
He later addressed thousands of supporters demonstrating against the ICC decision. Protesters carried banners branding the court's prosecutor a criminal and Bashir, brandishing a cane, said the ICC was a tool of colonialists after Sudan's oil.
"We have refused to kneel to colonialism, that is why Sudan has been targeted ... because we only kneel to God," he told the crowd outside the Republican Palace. Cheers of "We are ready to protect religion!" and "Down, down USA!" interrupted his speech.
Click on 'Read More.'
China urged the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to heed calls from African and Arab countries and suspend the case against Bashir, but the United States has welcomed the action.
The ICC, set up in 2002, indicted Bashir on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which included murder, rape and torture. The three-judge panel said it had insufficient grounds for genocide.
Hours after the warrant was issued, Sudan revoked the licenses of several foreign aid agencies.
U.N. and other agencies are running the world's largest humanitarian operation in Darfur, a mainly desert region in western Sudan. International experts say at least 200,000 people have been killed there, while Khartoum says 10,000 have died.
A further 2.7 million people are estimated to have been uprooted by the conflict, which began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.
DEVASTATING IMPACT
U.N. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the expulsions would have a devastating impact on Darfuris, adding that Sudanese security had already started taking computers and other assets from the agencies' offices in Khartoum and Darfur.
Embassies have been on high alert in the build-up to the court's decision, fearing attacks, although Sudanese authorities have promised to protect diplomatic premises.
Britain, the United States and France have been repeatedly accused by Sudanese government officials of supporting the ICC.
The U.S. embassy said its citizens should "shelter in a secure location" and the British Embassy told nationals to keep a low profile and "maintain several days' stock of food and water."
"The real question is where the crowds are going to go next," said one western diplomat as the demonstrators gathered.
Sudanese officials on Thursday confirmed they had expelled 10 foreign aid agencies and shut down two Sudanese agencies which they said had cooperated with the ICC. Sudan has accused some aid groups of passing information to the ICC prosecutor.
The agencies included Britain's Oxfam and Save The Children, US-based Care, CHF and the International Rescue Committee, together with Medecins Sans Frontiers Holland and the Norwegian Refugee Council.
"This is going to have a devastating impact on humanitarian work in Darfur," said one U.N. official, adding senior officers were still hoping to persuade Khartoum to change its mind.
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir announced on Thursday that 10 foreign aid agencies had been expelled, in his first public response to the International Criminal Court's call for his arrest on war crimes charges.
The arrest warrant issued on Wednesday for atrocities in Sudan's western Darfur region is the first against a sitting head of state by the Hague-based ICC.
Bashir responded with defiance, accusing the aid agencies of breaking the law and saying the government would tackle any move to undermine stability.
"We will deal responsibly and decisively with anybody who tries to target the stability and security of the country," Bashir told a meeting of top politicians on Thursday.
"We have expelled 10 foreign organizations ... after monitoring activities that act in contradiction to all regulation and laws," he said.
He later addressed thousands of supporters demonstrating against the ICC decision. Protesters carried banners branding the court's prosecutor a criminal and Bashir, brandishing a cane, said the ICC was a tool of colonialists after Sudan's oil.
"We have refused to kneel to colonialism, that is why Sudan has been targeted ... because we only kneel to God," he told the crowd outside the Republican Palace. Cheers of "We are ready to protect religion!" and "Down, down USA!" interrupted his speech.
Click on 'Read More.'
China urged the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to heed calls from African and Arab countries and suspend the case against Bashir, but the United States has welcomed the action.
The ICC, set up in 2002, indicted Bashir on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which included murder, rape and torture. The three-judge panel said it had insufficient grounds for genocide.
Hours after the warrant was issued, Sudan revoked the licenses of several foreign aid agencies.
U.N. and other agencies are running the world's largest humanitarian operation in Darfur, a mainly desert region in western Sudan. International experts say at least 200,000 people have been killed there, while Khartoum says 10,000 have died.
A further 2.7 million people are estimated to have been uprooted by the conflict, which began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.
DEVASTATING IMPACT
U.N. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the expulsions would have a devastating impact on Darfuris, adding that Sudanese security had already started taking computers and other assets from the agencies' offices in Khartoum and Darfur.
Embassies have been on high alert in the build-up to the court's decision, fearing attacks, although Sudanese authorities have promised to protect diplomatic premises.
Britain, the United States and France have been repeatedly accused by Sudanese government officials of supporting the ICC.
The U.S. embassy said its citizens should "shelter in a secure location" and the British Embassy told nationals to keep a low profile and "maintain several days' stock of food and water."
"The real question is where the crowds are going to go next," said one western diplomat as the demonstrators gathered.
Sudanese officials on Thursday confirmed they had expelled 10 foreign aid agencies and shut down two Sudanese agencies which they said had cooperated with the ICC. Sudan has accused some aid groups of passing information to the ICC prosecutor.
The agencies included Britain's Oxfam and Save The Children, US-based Care, CHF and the International Rescue Committee, together with Medecins Sans Frontiers Holland and the Norwegian Refugee Council.
"This is going to have a devastating impact on humanitarian work in Darfur," said one U.N. official, adding senior officers were still hoping to persuade Khartoum to change its mind.
Ethiopia lifts filtering of critical Web sites--at least for now
By Mohamed Keita/Africa Research Associate
Journalists in Ethiopia informed CPJ over the weekend that our Web site, which was blocked to Internet users in the capital, Addis Ababa, since August, was accessible again.
Independent Ethiopian online news forums and blogs based outside the country also reported that sites discussing political dissent and human rights were also suddenly accessible. The editors of the sites linked the development to the February 25 release of the U.S. State Department's "2008 Human Rights Report" on Ethiopia. The report accused the government of restricting Internet access to its citizens and of "blocking opposition Web sites."
Ethiopian authorities have consistently denied the accusation despite documented evidence gathered by OpenNet Initiative, an academic partnership that studies Internet censorship.
There has not been any public reaction from the government about this development, according to local journalists. However, a local editor who spoke to me on Tuesday on condition of anonymity told me that a temporary lifting of Internet filtering has been a common occurrence in recent years.
Following a brutal crackdown on free media and political dissent in 2005, Internet users attempting to access sites and blogs critical of the government on the network of the state-controlled national provider Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation have seen "the page cannot be displayed" messages. In February, when CPJ launched its 2008 report on worldwide press freedom, which included a critical analysis of conditions in Ethiopia, local journalists reported that they could not access our Web site. In recent months, some local journalists have also reported their inability to send e-mails to a CPJ e-mail address.
We'll have to wait and see whether, as international attention turns away from Ethiopia, the sites yet again disappear from view.
Journalists in Ethiopia informed CPJ over the weekend that our Web site, which was blocked to Internet users in the capital, Addis Ababa, since August, was accessible again.
Independent Ethiopian online news forums and blogs based outside the country also reported that sites discussing political dissent and human rights were also suddenly accessible. The editors of the sites linked the development to the February 25 release of the U.S. State Department's "2008 Human Rights Report" on Ethiopia. The report accused the government of restricting Internet access to its citizens and of "blocking opposition Web sites."
Ethiopian authorities have consistently denied the accusation despite documented evidence gathered by OpenNet Initiative, an academic partnership that studies Internet censorship.
There has not been any public reaction from the government about this development, according to local journalists. However, a local editor who spoke to me on Tuesday on condition of anonymity told me that a temporary lifting of Internet filtering has been a common occurrence in recent years.
Following a brutal crackdown on free media and political dissent in 2005, Internet users attempting to access sites and blogs critical of the government on the network of the state-controlled national provider Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation have seen "the page cannot be displayed" messages. In February, when CPJ launched its 2008 report on worldwide press freedom, which included a critical analysis of conditions in Ethiopia, local journalists reported that they could not access our Web site. In recent months, some local journalists have also reported their inability to send e-mails to a CPJ e-mail address.
We'll have to wait and see whether, as international attention turns away from Ethiopia, the sites yet again disappear from view.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Court Issues Warrant for Arrest of Sudan’s President
New York Times- Judges at the International Criminal Court ordered the arrest on Wednesday of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, charging him with war crimes and crimes against humanity for a concerted government campaign against civilians in the Darfur region. They did not charge him with genocide, denying the request by the prosecutor.
In issuing the order, the three judges brushed aside diplomatic requests for more time for peace talks and fears that the warrant would incite a violent backlash in the country, where 2.5 million people have been chased from their homes and 300,000 have died in a conflict pitting non-Arab rebel groups against the Arab-dominated government and militias.
It is the first time the court, which opened in 2002 and is seated in The Hague, has sought the arrest of a sitting head of state. Other international war crimes courts have issued warrants for sitting presidents, including Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Charles Taylor of Liberia.
Sudan, which has long vowed to defy the court, denounced the warrant and almost immediately began curtailing the activities of Western aid groups working in the country.
“We strongly condemn this criminal move,” said Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, the Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations. “It amounts to an attempt at regime change. We are not going to be bound by it. We are not going to respect it.”
Click on 'Read More.'
Shortly after the warrant was issued, Oxfam said the Sudanese government revoked its license to operate, a decision the group said could affect more than 600,000 people, most of them suffering from the conflict in Darfur. Similarly, Doctors Without Borders said it was ordered by the government to remove all international personnel from a number of its projects in west and south Darfur.
Beyond that, aid workers said that the government had revoked the licenses or significantly curtailed the operations of at least four other international humanitarian groups working in the country.
Within minutes of the court’s announcement, thousands of people gathered in central Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, waving national flags and posters showing the Mr. Bashir’s face and denouncing the court’s decision.
But many human rights groups and Darfur exiles saluted the order. Niemat Ahmadi, a native of Darfur and an activist, called the warrant a lifeline for the many Darfurians living in displaced-persons camps. “It will change the mood of frustration and helplessness for our people,” Ms. Ahmadi told reporters at the United Nations. “Now they can feel that there is a way for their problem to be addressed.”
Richard Dicker, a director of Human Rights Watch, said, “This means he will be a fugitive, a man on a wanted poster held to be most responsible for the atrocities of Darfur.”
The criminal court judges took more than seven months to examine the evidence on Mr. Bashir before charging him with five counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape. The two counts of war crimes were for attacks against a civilian population and for pillaging.
In their statement, the judges said the court did not recognize immunity for a head of state and called for the cooperation of all countries — not just the 108 nations that are members of the court — to bring Mr. Bashir to justice.
Under the rules of the United Nations charter and Security Council, Sudan is legally obliged to arrest Mr. Bashir, the judges said — but that appears unlikely. The court has no police force or military of its own, and the 24,000 or so United Nations peacekeepers currently operating in Sudan have no mandate to detain war crimes suspects.
Ambassador Abdalhaleem also said he was not worried about the president being arrested if he traveled to any friendly country, since many African and Arab states have expressed support for him.
The question of whether genocide was being committed in Darfur has been divisive, and was so among the judges, who said 2-to-1 that the prosecutor had not provided sufficient evidence of the government’s intent, the key issue in determining genocide. The Bush administration and other governments, as well as some human rights activists, have called the attacks on civilians government’s actions genocide. The United Nations has stopped short of doing so.
Proving genocide in court is difficult. Genocide requires proof that an accused had “specific intent” to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such” on the basis of their identity. The prosecutor had argued that the government specifically tried to exterminate three ethnic groups — the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups in Darfur — and that even after driving them of their lands and killing many people, armed militias continued their genocidal campaign by raping and impregnating the women in the refugee camps to further damage the groups.
The court’s statement said that the crimes took place during a five-year campaign beginning in 2003 against rebel organizations in Darfur that opposed the government in Khartoum. The campaign, the court said, was the result of a plan agreed upon at the highest level of the government.
Violence has continued in Darfur. Six women Nobel laureates, three of whom have visited Darfur, said in a statement that while they were encouraged by the court’s work, they “remain deeply concerned by ongoing attacks against aid workers in government-controlled towns, continued use of rape as a tactic of war, and obstructions to international efforts to resolve the conflict.”
“The situation in Darfur is still desperate, after almost six years of armed conflict,” said the statement by the women: Betty Williams, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi and Wangari Maathai.
The medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday it had pulled its expatriate staff out of Darfur after the Sudanese government ordered them to leave. The government told them it would no longer be able to assure their safety after the ruling, the organization said on its Web site.
The arrest warrant is likely to further complicate the international debate over how to solve the crisis in Darfur. It came despite concerns voiced by United Nations diplomats, the African Union, the Arab League, and some humanitarian organizations that such a move could provoke renewed violence in the country and put at risk the pivotal peace deal that ended an even more deadly civil war in southern Sudan.
“I am sure there will be some crowd movements, there will be some violence here and there,” said Alain Le Roy, the United Nations under secretary general for peacekeeping operations.
Further, he said, some of the groups that have become involved in the conflict, including the government of Chad, might take the opportunity to foment violence. Delays in deploying United Nations peacekeeping troops to Darfur, with only about 64 percent of the force in place, could increase.
Mr. Le Roy said that Sudan had reassured the United Nations officials that the government would respect its commitment to protect the peacekeeping missions.
Some analysts and activists argued that the warrant could undermine Mr. Bashir’s political position at home. Nick Grono, deputy president of the International Crisis Group, wrote recently that “although Mr. Bashir and his security apparatus are still entrenched in power, the indictment is likely to weaken their hold. It may even cause the army and intelligence agencies, the ultimate wielders of power, to contemplate a future without Bashir.” There is, however, the possibility that Sudanese resentment of the court’s actions could rally the nation to his side. After the court’s prosecutor first announced that he was seeking a warrant for Mr. Bashir, some of the president’s political enemies closed ranks behind him.
Some figures in the government have threatened bloodshed in response to an indictment. Salah Gosh, the head of Sudanese intelligence, was quoted in Sudanese press reports as calling for the “amputation of the hands and the slitting of the throats of any person who dares badmouth al-Bashir or support the International Criminal Court’s allegations against him.”
The court issued warrants for two Sudanese citizens in 2007 in connection with the bloodshed and humanitarian disaster of Darfur. The two men are Ahmad Muhammad Harun, a former security official, now a government minister, and Ali Kushayb, a former militia leader. Judges said that there were reasonable grounds to conclude that they were responsible for torture, mass rape and the forced displacement of entire villages in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Neither has been arrested.
The United Nations Security Council can postpone action against Mr. Bashir and even stop a trial. But on the eve of the ruling, the council remained largely divided over how to react. Sudan’s supporters, including the African Union and Arab League, called again Tuesday for the council to invoke Article 16 of the statute creating the court which allows it to suspend any indictment. But France, Britain or the United States would likely use their veto to block such a move.
Sudanese and other African officials have criticized the court as a neo-colonial tool that so far has singled out Africa. But court officials point out at three of the four criminal investigations under way at the court, involving Congo, Central African Republic and Uganda, were all brought by the governments of those countries themselves, while the case of Sudan was referred to the prosecutor by the Security Council.
Italy's Terrible Defeat
Exactly 113 years ago, this article appeared on the New York Times reporting an African victory. Here is the article.
Government bans Birtukan protest
By Meheret Negussie
Protest planned to be staged against the re-arrest of Birtukan Mideksa, chairperson of the Unity for Democracy and Justice(UDJ), was banned.
Bereket Simon, head of the government’s communication’s affairs office, told Capital that the request was rejected because “it is a matter already dealt with by the judiciary.”
The protest was planned to be held this month.
UDJ officials have applied for authorization of the protest a month ago but they were told they couldn’t hold the demonstration because of the ongoing AU summit.
Now Bereket comes up with a different excuse saying, “I don’t think it is proper to try to subvert judicial decisions from being implemented by terrorizing implementing bodies.”
Birtukan was re-arrested for alleged violation of terms of her parole.
Protest planned to be staged against the re-arrest of Birtukan Mideksa, chairperson of the Unity for Democracy and Justice(UDJ), was banned.
Bereket Simon, head of the government’s communication’s affairs office, told Capital that the request was rejected because “it is a matter already dealt with by the judiciary.”
The protest was planned to be held this month.
UDJ officials have applied for authorization of the protest a month ago but they were told they couldn’t hold the demonstration because of the ongoing AU summit.
Now Bereket comes up with a different excuse saying, “I don’t think it is proper to try to subvert judicial decisions from being implemented by terrorizing implementing bodies.”
Birtukan was re-arrested for alleged violation of terms of her parole.
Protesters call for more action
On a March 2 worldwide rally, for three hours beginning at 2 in the afternoon, peaceful protesters chanted and ambled before the US General Consulate in Frankfurt. The rally exceeding over 100 demonstrators was composed of Ethiopians belonging to different opposition political groups and from a wide range of backgrounds. The mood was emotional. People carried flags, signs and banners, and pictures of the charismatic opposition leader Birtukan Midekssa and the Ethiopian pop singer Tewodros Kassahun while chanting slogans demanding the Obama administration to end the injustice in Ethiopia.
“Ethiopian people deserve freedom and the rule of law” “US stop assisting the tyrannical regime in Ethiopia” “Free Birtukan Midekssa, Teddy Afro and all political prisoners” were among some of the slogans carried by the demonstrators.
“We urge president Obama to keep his words and end dictatorship in Africa. I know he can. And I hope he does,” said Alem Gebretsadkan who came all the way from Mulheim to partake in the rally.**“In times such as this, we should join forces and oppose the government irrespective of our political affiliation,” said Anteneh Teffera another demonstrator from Wuerzburg. “Ethiopians living in the free world should seize the open and democratic political environment of the west to voice their opposition and demand freedom and justice in Ethiopia,” he added.
“I am a mother my self,” exclaimed a woman with a baby in her arms, “I feel the pain Birtukan is going through. We should not turn a blind eye and keep quite. I am here for Birtu. I am here for my country.”Before the demonstration came to an end, Getachew Taye, organizer of the Frankfurt demonstration called upon the protesters to keep this spirit of unity and participate in upcoming rallies against the ruling regime in Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, Ethiopians living in the southern part of Germany also held a protest in front of the US General Consulate in Munich. Click on 'Read More' for more pictures. Here is a report from Abbay Media on the demonstrations that took place in other parts of the world.
**Correction- The original version of the story mistakenly said Alem Reda from Muenster. That has been corrected to read: Alem Gebretsadkan from Mulheim.
Mr. Obang, Metho, Speech to the Ethiopian National Congress on the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia in Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois.
And here I thank Ato Erku Yimer, Dr. Imru Assefa, Ambassador Imru Zeleke and the Ethiopian National Congress for organizing this conference and for their commitment and passion to help in the struggle for our country to become a land that is free and where Ethiopians can live and flourish together.
I first entered this struggle when I started working for the protection of the Anuak following the massacre and human rights crimes perpetrated by our current government in December of 2003, but the seeds of a larger, more inclusive movement began over three years ago when I began hearing more and more reports of the suffering, misery and abuses to our people all over Ethiopia—from the east to the west and from the north to the south—at the hands of this same government.
Since that time, I could not only focus on my own group because I knew that until all were free, none of us would be free. I also knew that a New Ethiopia would never be accomplished without valuing all human beings as precious and all created in the image of God. I knew that until our humanity came before our ethnicity or any other differences, that we would sabotage each other’s efforts to improve our lives and the lives of our descendents.
I knew that coming together in solidarity would require that we improved our relationships and our respect for each other. I knew that such relationships could transform our society into a new, more welcoming Ethiopia. This is the kind of Ethiopia for which I hope and dream. This is the basic reason behind the formation of the SMNE.
Today I have been asked to more specifically describe what the SMNE is all about, why it was formed and what we hope to accomplish as a result of it. Sometimes it is easier to start by explaining something by what it is not, before explaining what it is.
is the rest of it. Click on 'Read More.'
1. The SMNE is not a political movement to run for office.
It is a social justice movement to bring about a climate conducive to genuine political expression so that different political parties and their candidates can openly compete for elected office in free and fair elections where the people decide who they want to represent them.
2. The SMNE is not a movement of groups or organizations where these individual groups or organizations are expected to each abandon their own identity and goals so as to merge into one.
It is a movement of individuals, groups and organizations who are independent, unique and who should continue to carry out their own objectives, but who desire to come together as a stronger, more collective force for good, around the shared goals and principles of the SMNE in order to bring about a more open, just and harmonious society where Ethiopians are free to pursue their goals.
3. The SMNE is not a movement to fight for dominance or to overthrow the government.
It is a non-violent movement where Ethiopians can join together, more powerful and effective as a unified force of diverse people, to exert pressure on the ruling government for positive change through wide varieties of tactics of non-violent actions and/or resistance, through legal measures, through actions taken by the international community resulting from advocacy work and through other peaceful actions within and outside of Ethiopia to bring about change, possibly including a genuine dialogue with international mediators.
4. The SMNE is not a movement of one tribe, one political group, one region, one culture, one class, one religion, one gender, etc.
It is a movement of people to people, family to family, friend to friend, community to community, ethnicity to ethnicity and so on, to bring reconciliation between previously alienated people and groups and to set an atmosphere in Ethiopia where all are included regardless of ethnicity, regional background, political view, religion, culture, language, educational level, class, gender and age, so that all who live within the boundaries of Ethiopia are valued members of society and are considered 100% Ethiopian.
5. The SMNE is not a movement based on a certain leader or group.
It is a movement of ideas, principles and values intended to hold all leaders and members of our society—present and future—accountable. Where men and women fail, make mistakes and change their minds, we must have high standards of transparency and accountability that challenge all to perseveringly uphold the basic rights and value of every human being as of highest importance and as key to the sustainability of any free, open and harmonious society.
6. The SMNE is not a movement that ends once Meles leaves office
It is a movement that must continue to protect, shape and undergird our society, government, institutions, civic organizations, economy and natural resources against future tyranny, oppression, injustice, devaluation, exploitation and abuse by those inside or outside of Ethiopia.
The Goals of the SMNE:
• To encourage Ethiopians to become a healthier, more inclusive society where all people are valued and where the rights of all are respected and advanced.
• To bring about national reconciliation between previously alienated groups.
• To bring an end to human rights abuses, the imprisonment of all political prisoners, corruption, cronyism, injustice, government domination of all sectors of society, unjustifiable military aggressions against Ethiopian citizens and neighboring countries, the territorial disintegration of Ethiopia, the suppression of the press and media, the suppression of free speech and other such basic rights.
• To better document human rights crimes perpetrated, instigated or tolerated by the current government to different people in different locations within the country, raising awareness, calling for urgent action and compiling a legal case showing a pattern of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other human rights violations in violation of international human rights laws and the Ethiopian Constitution.
• To raise awareness and advocate in the international community for the respect of human rights, freedom, justice, free and fair elections and good governance.
• To identify key experts, who might join together to form think tanks to begin to examine and make plans to address potentially critical areas of Ethiopian society—such as security issues, national reconciliation, ethnic issues, the food crisis, political prisoners, the economy, corruption and good governance—where preparedness would prevent violence and chaos and help ease the transition from an authoritarian society to one that was free, diverse and open.
• To establish an institution that would continue to act as a watchdog to guard and advance the principles set up within the Solidarity Movement for the long-term.
In summary, the SMNE is a movement to teach Ethiopians to accept, value and respect one another, giving people their God-given rights so we can live in a healthier society, also making those running our government more accountable in becoming a healthy government of the people.
Right now our survivals as a people and as a country are in doubt. Meles is using ethnicity or other differences to destroy, but we must use humanity to unify us and by doing so, to overpower his destructive influence. Meles has told us we only have our own group, but we say all human beings are our group. These are the principles we are building. To make it practical, it requires reconciliation through listening to others’ pain, acknowledging what we have done, forgiving each other and coming together in new relationship.
What we need is not the solidarity of a political party, a tribe, a class, a religion or class, but human-to-human solidarity. Because of this, we in the SMNE are willing to work with any other group, as long as we have something in common, like the Ethiopian National Congress. We have to collaborate on the things we have in common. For instance, during a disaster, the International Red Cross works side by side with other organizations who are all present to help in their different, but complementary ways.
The destination that many of us are wanting is to free Ethiopia to bring freedom for everyone. All of us may take different roads or means of transportation to get there, but never the less, if that is our destination, we can work together because our destination is the same. Our job is not to compete with each other, but to help empower and encourage others to do their best to accomplish our shared goals.
Division will destroy us. That is why in the SMNE, reconciliation between Ethiopians is the bedrock of the foundation for a New Ethiopia. Labeling of people in categories is only deepening our divisions so much that we often see each other as an enemy instead of as part of our family. Everyone knows what I am talking about. An example is our tendency to not talk to or socialize with others outside our ethnic groups.
Another example is in the sad truth of how so many of our people want to break away from Ethiopia because it has become a country that has no place for them. We must change all of this by creating an environment where when we face another Ethiopian, we see their humanity rather than their tribe.
My statement recently about racism is an example of how important it is to start sitting down with each other to talk so that we can bring people together. When you care enough about someone, you do not ignore something standing in the way of a stronger friendship, but instead, you tell them so together, you might solve it.
We must to try to solve these conflicts by starting to listen to others rather than avoiding those with whom we have a problem or with whom we disagree. This culture, where if you disagree with someone, you cut them off, shows what a problem we have in resolving settling our differences with the spirit of honest reconciliation, with humility, with grace and with civility.
We need to practice the art of apology, as the best way across the bridge that can link a divided Ethiopia to a new Ethiopia. In the rebuilding of our country, feeling healthy shame for our past behavior, combined with honest repentance, will heal many wounds and help the memories of past offenses soften enough so we can forgive each other and move on.
This work of reconciling cannot be done by politicians. It has to be done by all the people and that is why we call the solidarity of this movement, the solidarity of the people. It must start and be carried out at the grassroots level—people to people, one by one. For instance, you may know of an Ethiopian who avoids you. Instead of also avoiding them, approach them with friendliness and say, “I am from the same country as you.” Start having a real talk, asking what we all can do to better our society.
This is the caution: if we do not do this, we will be judged as people who sat by doing nothing and allowed hatred to boil up until it exploded into more hate, violence, destruction or even into ethnic killing. On the other hand, if we start reaching out, becoming more inclusive, just and compassionate, we could be known as a people who have changed the downward direction of their country and instead brought about renewal.
In conclusion, we have no time to compete, manipulate others or to waste. The clock is ticking and it is time for each of us to do our share, reaching out in a genuine and truthful way, rather than with deception and dishonesty. We do not need a superficial chameleon unity of saying we are family when we cannot even talk to each other.
Anything we do to deceive, God knows and our people cannot afford this. This false unity is the reason that the whole country is in prison, but even more so, like my friend Birtukan, and many others, who are being held under terrible conditions. We, including me, are not doing enough for her and for others in prison. I am hoping that we can all do more in the next coming weeks to make people aware of our prisoners as well as those in harm’s way—like the Ogadeni.
I would like to end this talk by thanking certain individuals who have made this event possible and also thanking the Ethiopian National Congress, for the work they have been trying to do to bring Ethiopians together. As I said from the very beginning when I first came to this struggle, we must work together for the benefit of Ethiopia. I am not pro-one group, but I am pro-Ethiopian and am for any group contributing to our struggle for the betterment of Ethiopia. You can count on me doing my share because I believe unless all Ethiopians are free, I myself will not be free. I came to this struggle not for political reasons, but seeking justice. The justice I have been seeking has still not been accomplished so I will carry on and I hope you will too. Let us work together until justice is served.
To the Ethiopian National Congress and to all the peace loving people here with us in this room or to those outside, my call is to remind you that we are all one people and one family so let us stand together for our humanity.
Let us see each ethnic group or any individuals or groups as one unique part of our larger body—such as our finger, our arm, our leg or our head—because if we view them as part of our body, when that part is inflicted with pain, that pain goes throughout the entire body and effects all its functioning. Let this be what we strive for. We must protect this one body we have from being hurt.
From now on, when you think of different ethnic groups, think of their beauty. Think of the beautiful songs of the Amhara, or the dancing of the Gurage, the Oromo or of others. Think of our reaction to each others’ music that stimulates all of us to move or feel something emotionally when any of our groups perform.
I leave you with a quote from a human rights lawyer from Mexico, Digna Ochoa, who challenged others to productively use their anger about injustice. He said, “Anger is energy. It is a force. It is injustice that motivates us to do something—to take risks, knowing that if we don’t, things will remain the same.”
Dear Ethiopians, that injustice is everywhere. We have the energy. We have the force. The death of our people, the depth of their misery and the endless threats to their life and livelihood, all point to the danger looming over us. This should motivate us to stand together, to fight together and to take risks together, knowing that only then, will we be able to survive as a people, as a nation and as human kind.
The rich and powerful countries on earth may abandon Ethiopia and its people but the Almighty God will never abandon Ethiopia and her precious people.
Thank you. May God bless you. May God bless Ethiopia.
Obang@solidaritymovement.org: Obang Metho, Executive Member of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia
I first entered this struggle when I started working for the protection of the Anuak following the massacre and human rights crimes perpetrated by our current government in December of 2003, but the seeds of a larger, more inclusive movement began over three years ago when I began hearing more and more reports of the suffering, misery and abuses to our people all over Ethiopia—from the east to the west and from the north to the south—at the hands of this same government.
Since that time, I could not only focus on my own group because I knew that until all were free, none of us would be free. I also knew that a New Ethiopia would never be accomplished without valuing all human beings as precious and all created in the image of God. I knew that until our humanity came before our ethnicity or any other differences, that we would sabotage each other’s efforts to improve our lives and the lives of our descendents.
I knew that coming together in solidarity would require that we improved our relationships and our respect for each other. I knew that such relationships could transform our society into a new, more welcoming Ethiopia. This is the kind of Ethiopia for which I hope and dream. This is the basic reason behind the formation of the SMNE.
Today I have been asked to more specifically describe what the SMNE is all about, why it was formed and what we hope to accomplish as a result of it. Sometimes it is easier to start by explaining something by what it is not, before explaining what it is.
is the rest of it. Click on 'Read More.'
1. The SMNE is not a political movement to run for office.
It is a social justice movement to bring about a climate conducive to genuine political expression so that different political parties and their candidates can openly compete for elected office in free and fair elections where the people decide who they want to represent them.
2. The SMNE is not a movement of groups or organizations where these individual groups or organizations are expected to each abandon their own identity and goals so as to merge into one.
It is a movement of individuals, groups and organizations who are independent, unique and who should continue to carry out their own objectives, but who desire to come together as a stronger, more collective force for good, around the shared goals and principles of the SMNE in order to bring about a more open, just and harmonious society where Ethiopians are free to pursue their goals.
3. The SMNE is not a movement to fight for dominance or to overthrow the government.
It is a non-violent movement where Ethiopians can join together, more powerful and effective as a unified force of diverse people, to exert pressure on the ruling government for positive change through wide varieties of tactics of non-violent actions and/or resistance, through legal measures, through actions taken by the international community resulting from advocacy work and through other peaceful actions within and outside of Ethiopia to bring about change, possibly including a genuine dialogue with international mediators.
4. The SMNE is not a movement of one tribe, one political group, one region, one culture, one class, one religion, one gender, etc.
It is a movement of people to people, family to family, friend to friend, community to community, ethnicity to ethnicity and so on, to bring reconciliation between previously alienated people and groups and to set an atmosphere in Ethiopia where all are included regardless of ethnicity, regional background, political view, religion, culture, language, educational level, class, gender and age, so that all who live within the boundaries of Ethiopia are valued members of society and are considered 100% Ethiopian.
5. The SMNE is not a movement based on a certain leader or group.
It is a movement of ideas, principles and values intended to hold all leaders and members of our society—present and future—accountable. Where men and women fail, make mistakes and change their minds, we must have high standards of transparency and accountability that challenge all to perseveringly uphold the basic rights and value of every human being as of highest importance and as key to the sustainability of any free, open and harmonious society.
6. The SMNE is not a movement that ends once Meles leaves office
It is a movement that must continue to protect, shape and undergird our society, government, institutions, civic organizations, economy and natural resources against future tyranny, oppression, injustice, devaluation, exploitation and abuse by those inside or outside of Ethiopia.
The Goals of the SMNE:
• To encourage Ethiopians to become a healthier, more inclusive society where all people are valued and where the rights of all are respected and advanced.
• To bring about national reconciliation between previously alienated groups.
• To bring an end to human rights abuses, the imprisonment of all political prisoners, corruption, cronyism, injustice, government domination of all sectors of society, unjustifiable military aggressions against Ethiopian citizens and neighboring countries, the territorial disintegration of Ethiopia, the suppression of the press and media, the suppression of free speech and other such basic rights.
• To better document human rights crimes perpetrated, instigated or tolerated by the current government to different people in different locations within the country, raising awareness, calling for urgent action and compiling a legal case showing a pattern of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other human rights violations in violation of international human rights laws and the Ethiopian Constitution.
• To raise awareness and advocate in the international community for the respect of human rights, freedom, justice, free and fair elections and good governance.
• To identify key experts, who might join together to form think tanks to begin to examine and make plans to address potentially critical areas of Ethiopian society—such as security issues, national reconciliation, ethnic issues, the food crisis, political prisoners, the economy, corruption and good governance—where preparedness would prevent violence and chaos and help ease the transition from an authoritarian society to one that was free, diverse and open.
• To establish an institution that would continue to act as a watchdog to guard and advance the principles set up within the Solidarity Movement for the long-term.
In summary, the SMNE is a movement to teach Ethiopians to accept, value and respect one another, giving people their God-given rights so we can live in a healthier society, also making those running our government more accountable in becoming a healthy government of the people.
Right now our survivals as a people and as a country are in doubt. Meles is using ethnicity or other differences to destroy, but we must use humanity to unify us and by doing so, to overpower his destructive influence. Meles has told us we only have our own group, but we say all human beings are our group. These are the principles we are building. To make it practical, it requires reconciliation through listening to others’ pain, acknowledging what we have done, forgiving each other and coming together in new relationship.
What we need is not the solidarity of a political party, a tribe, a class, a religion or class, but human-to-human solidarity. Because of this, we in the SMNE are willing to work with any other group, as long as we have something in common, like the Ethiopian National Congress. We have to collaborate on the things we have in common. For instance, during a disaster, the International Red Cross works side by side with other organizations who are all present to help in their different, but complementary ways.
The destination that many of us are wanting is to free Ethiopia to bring freedom for everyone. All of us may take different roads or means of transportation to get there, but never the less, if that is our destination, we can work together because our destination is the same. Our job is not to compete with each other, but to help empower and encourage others to do their best to accomplish our shared goals.
Division will destroy us. That is why in the SMNE, reconciliation between Ethiopians is the bedrock of the foundation for a New Ethiopia. Labeling of people in categories is only deepening our divisions so much that we often see each other as an enemy instead of as part of our family. Everyone knows what I am talking about. An example is our tendency to not talk to or socialize with others outside our ethnic groups.
Another example is in the sad truth of how so many of our people want to break away from Ethiopia because it has become a country that has no place for them. We must change all of this by creating an environment where when we face another Ethiopian, we see their humanity rather than their tribe.
My statement recently about racism is an example of how important it is to start sitting down with each other to talk so that we can bring people together. When you care enough about someone, you do not ignore something standing in the way of a stronger friendship, but instead, you tell them so together, you might solve it.
We must to try to solve these conflicts by starting to listen to others rather than avoiding those with whom we have a problem or with whom we disagree. This culture, where if you disagree with someone, you cut them off, shows what a problem we have in resolving settling our differences with the spirit of honest reconciliation, with humility, with grace and with civility.
We need to practice the art of apology, as the best way across the bridge that can link a divided Ethiopia to a new Ethiopia. In the rebuilding of our country, feeling healthy shame for our past behavior, combined with honest repentance, will heal many wounds and help the memories of past offenses soften enough so we can forgive each other and move on.
This work of reconciling cannot be done by politicians. It has to be done by all the people and that is why we call the solidarity of this movement, the solidarity of the people. It must start and be carried out at the grassroots level—people to people, one by one. For instance, you may know of an Ethiopian who avoids you. Instead of also avoiding them, approach them with friendliness and say, “I am from the same country as you.” Start having a real talk, asking what we all can do to better our society.
This is the caution: if we do not do this, we will be judged as people who sat by doing nothing and allowed hatred to boil up until it exploded into more hate, violence, destruction or even into ethnic killing. On the other hand, if we start reaching out, becoming more inclusive, just and compassionate, we could be known as a people who have changed the downward direction of their country and instead brought about renewal.
In conclusion, we have no time to compete, manipulate others or to waste. The clock is ticking and it is time for each of us to do our share, reaching out in a genuine and truthful way, rather than with deception and dishonesty. We do not need a superficial chameleon unity of saying we are family when we cannot even talk to each other.
Anything we do to deceive, God knows and our people cannot afford this. This false unity is the reason that the whole country is in prison, but even more so, like my friend Birtukan, and many others, who are being held under terrible conditions. We, including me, are not doing enough for her and for others in prison. I am hoping that we can all do more in the next coming weeks to make people aware of our prisoners as well as those in harm’s way—like the Ogadeni.
I would like to end this talk by thanking certain individuals who have made this event possible and also thanking the Ethiopian National Congress, for the work they have been trying to do to bring Ethiopians together. As I said from the very beginning when I first came to this struggle, we must work together for the benefit of Ethiopia. I am not pro-one group, but I am pro-Ethiopian and am for any group contributing to our struggle for the betterment of Ethiopia. You can count on me doing my share because I believe unless all Ethiopians are free, I myself will not be free. I came to this struggle not for political reasons, but seeking justice. The justice I have been seeking has still not been accomplished so I will carry on and I hope you will too. Let us work together until justice is served.
To the Ethiopian National Congress and to all the peace loving people here with us in this room or to those outside, my call is to remind you that we are all one people and one family so let us stand together for our humanity.
Let us see each ethnic group or any individuals or groups as one unique part of our larger body—such as our finger, our arm, our leg or our head—because if we view them as part of our body, when that part is inflicted with pain, that pain goes throughout the entire body and effects all its functioning. Let this be what we strive for. We must protect this one body we have from being hurt.
From now on, when you think of different ethnic groups, think of their beauty. Think of the beautiful songs of the Amhara, or the dancing of the Gurage, the Oromo or of others. Think of our reaction to each others’ music that stimulates all of us to move or feel something emotionally when any of our groups perform.
I leave you with a quote from a human rights lawyer from Mexico, Digna Ochoa, who challenged others to productively use their anger about injustice. He said, “Anger is energy. It is a force. It is injustice that motivates us to do something—to take risks, knowing that if we don’t, things will remain the same.”
Dear Ethiopians, that injustice is everywhere. We have the energy. We have the force. The death of our people, the depth of their misery and the endless threats to their life and livelihood, all point to the danger looming over us. This should motivate us to stand together, to fight together and to take risks together, knowing that only then, will we be able to survive as a people, as a nation and as human kind.
The rich and powerful countries on earth may abandon Ethiopia and its people but the Almighty God will never abandon Ethiopia and her precious people.
Thank you. May God bless you. May God bless Ethiopia.
Obang@solidaritymovement.org: Obang Metho, Executive Member of the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Birtu-Can! Yes, We Can!
By Alemayehu G.Mariam(almariam@gmail.com)
Free Birtukan and All Political Prisoners in Ethiopia!
On March 2, 2009, Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia throughout the world will be taking to the streets to protest human rights violations by the ruling regime, and to demand the release of all political prisoners. The preeminent political prisoner and the undisputed symbol of democratic resistance in Ethiopia today is Birtukan Mideksa, chairperson of Andenet party (Unity for Democracy and Justice party). Over two months ago, Birtukan was strong-armed, manhandled and whisked away to the infamous Kaliti Prison by armed thugs. Her crime (don’t laugh), “Pardon Denying.” Her “life sentence” by a kangaroo court was reinstated because she allegedly told an Ethiopian audience in Sweden that she and other political prisoners were released in July 2007 following negotiations with the ruling regime in Ethiopia. In her response to a regime ultimatum to retract the alleged pardon denial, she issued a clear public statement acknowledging receipt of a pardon: “As one of the prisoners I had indeed signed the [pardon] document, a fact which I have never denied. I have asked forgiveness through the elders by signing on the document dated June 18, 2006. This is a fact that I cannot change even if I want to.” Click on 'Read More.'
Back in July, 2007, all of the “king’s men” had corroborated the truth of Birtukan’s statements1. Prof. Issac Ephrem, head of the elders negotiation group, said Birtukan and the other Kinijit political prisoners were released as a result of skilled shuttle diplomacy by his group: “Before the courts were at all involved, the government did come to a position where they would be willing to withdraw the case. There would be no court process…. No document is acceptable to both sides. We had to shuttle back and forth to look at the document and see what words are acceptable to the government and what words are acceptable to the detainees.” Dr. Haileselassie Belay, a member of the elders group confirmed: “The wording [for the negotiated release document] was very, very difficult because what the detainees wanted the government did not want. This was a very big problem.” The ruling regime’s diplomatic representative in the U.S., Samuel Assefa, reaffirmed the negotiated release: “I am hopeful that my country now can put this issue behind us… This decision was the result of an independent process conducted in accordance with the democratic Constitution and laws of Ethiopia. It was carried out by Ethiopians, through our own national institutions, and without the need for international intervention.”
Mistreatment of (Political) Prisoners and the “Appalling Conditions Inside Ethiopian Prisons”
The prisons maintained by the ruling regime in Ethiopia are among the most inhumane, primitive and barbaric in the world. In an official report commissioned by the ruling regime on riot control entitled, “Modernizing Internal Security in Ethiopia” (July, 2008), retired British colonel Michael Dewars, vividly described the “appalling conditions inside Ethiopian prisons”2. After Addis Ababa police authorities took Col. Dewars to visit one of their best detention facilities in the capital city, he recounted:
I asked to go into the compound where the prisoners are kept. This consisted of a long yard with a shed to one side which provided some sort of shelter. The compound had a wall around it and a watchtower for an armed sentry overlooking it. Inside must have been 70 – 80 inmates, all in a filthy state. There was insufficient room for all these people to lie down on a mat at once. There was no lighting. The place stank of faeces and urine. There appeared to be no water or sanitation facilities within the compound. There was a small hut in an adjacent compound for women prisoners but there had been no attempt by anybody to improve the circumstances of the place. The prisoners were mostly on remand for minor crimes, in particular theft. Some had been there for months. There was one young boy among the prisoners, who appeared to me to be 12 or 13 years of age, who was weeping and pleading to speak to me so I asked him how old he was. He said 13. He certainly could not possibly have been older than 15. When I asked what the minimum age for holding prisoners in this facility was, one policeman said 18, another 15. In any event, he stayed there.
Col. Dewars concluded, “Detention conditions of prisoners are a disgrace and make the Federal Police vulnerable to the Human Rights lobby.” He “recommended that the Government should investigate this situation with the intention of improving the current appalling conditions inside Ethiopian prisons, which must brutalise prisoners and their goalers equally. It is recommended that senior Ethiopian Ministers and Police Officers visit the prison that I visited.” Just last week, the 2008 State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (February 25, 2009) stated3: The country has three federal prisons, 117 regional prisons, and many unofficial prisons. Prison and pretrial detention center conditions remained harsh and life threatening. Severe overcrowding was a problem. In September 2007 it was reported that there were 52,000 persons in prison. Earlier in the year, prison populations decreased by 10,000 due to pardons but reportedly again increased due to increases in ethnic conflict and economic crimes. Prisoners often had less than 22 square feet of sleeping space in a room that could contain up to 200 persons, and sleeping in rotations was not uncommon in regional prisons. The daily meal budget was approximately 5 birr (50 cents) per prisoner. Many prisoners supplemented this with daily food deliveries from family members or by purchasing food from local vendors. Prison conditions were unsanitary and there was no budget for prison maintenance. Medical care was unreliable in federal prisons and almost nonexistent in regional prisons.
In detention centers, police often physically abused detainees. Authorities generally permitted visitors but sometimes arbitrarily denied them access to detainees. In some cases, family visits to political prisoners were restricted to a few per year.
While statistics were unavailable, there were some deaths in prison due to illness and poor health care. Prison officials were not forthcoming with reports of such deaths. Several pardoned political prisoners had serious health problems in detention but received little treatment at the time.
Authorities sometimes incarcerated juveniles with adults if they could not be accommodated at the juvenile remand home. Men and women prisoners were largely, but not always, segregated.
During the year the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited regional prisons only. The government continued to prevent ICRC representatives from visiting police stations and federal prisons throughout the country including those where opposition, civil society, and media leaders were held.
The same State Department report further documented the use of arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of political prisoners:
Although the constitution and law prohibit the use of torture and mistreatment, there were numerous credible reports that security officials tortured, beat, or mistreated detainees. Opposition political party leaders reported frequent and systematic abuse and intimidation of their supporters by police and regional militias, particularly in the months leading up to the local and by-elections held during the year. In Makelawi, the central police investigation headquarters in Addis Ababa, police investigators reportedly commonly used physical abuse to extract confessions. (Italics added.)
In November 2008, Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment made a special point of the barbaric use of torture in Ethiopian prisons as a major cause of physical disabilities: “Of course, torture was also a major cause of creating disabilities. Particularly destructive was the ‘Ethiopian hanging style’ where prisoners were bound like a wheel and hung up, which engendered long-lasting consequences.”4
The Inquiry Commission established by the ruling regime to investigate the post-2005 election massacres by regime security forces documented that between June and November 2005, over 30,000 persons had been held incommunicado (without the means or right of communicating with others) in detention centers located throughout the country. The 2007 State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices cited other estimates of political prisoners in Ethiopia exceeding 50,000 civilians. Today, there are tens of thousands of political prisoners in Ethiopia who are held in detention without trial, including Birtukan Mideksa, and in violation of their basic right to due process under local and international law.
The Continuing Abuse of Birtukan Mideksa as a Political Prisoner
The evidence on Birtukan’s prison condition indicates that she has been held in solitary confinement following her roadside abduction by armed thugs. Birtukan recently told her mother, (the only person other than her 4 year old daughter allowed visitation), that “the ill-treatment in prison is getting beyond what she could bear as a human being”. Birtukan is denied access to her legal counsel. She is subjected to severe physical and psychological pressure. She is not allowed to have books or other reading material, or access to a radio. The regime has blocked the International Red Cross and other international human rights organizations from visiting Birtukan.
International Human Rights Law and the Rights of (Political) Prisoners
There is overwhelming evidence that conditions in prisons maintained by the ruling regime in Ethiopia are so deficient that they subject detainees and prisoners to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in flagrant violation of a slew of international human rights conventions, declarations and instruments. The established facts (as documented not only through the efforts of dissidents, ex-political prisoners and international human rights organizations, but also through regime-commissioned expert analyses and reports) are incontrovertible: The ruling regime’s prisons in Ethiopia are overcrowded and unsanitary. The vast majority of Ethiopian prisoners have little or no access to clean drinking or bathing water. As Col. Dewars documented, even the best prisons in the capital city “stank of faeces and urine. There appeared to be no water or sanitation facilities within the compound.” The prisons are vermin-infested and filthy and serve as breeding grounds for infectious diseases, and diseases of the circulatory and respiratory systems. Mental illness among prisoners is one of the least appreciated problems in the prisons. Birtukan Mideksa and thousands of other political prisoners are frequently singled out for systematic psychological intimidation and physical abuse due to their status as documented in the recent U.S. state Department report.
International law protects all prisoners, and particularly political prisoners, from inhumane and barbaric treatment. Prisoners are guaranteed basic human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 5 of the UDHR (incorporated by express reference in Art. 13 (2) of the “Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia”) prescribes that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Article 10 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (ratified by Ethiopia on June 11, 1993 and incorporated by express reference in Art. 13 (2) of the “Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia”) provides that “all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.” Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (acceded to by Ethiopia on April 13, 1994) mandates that signatories “shall undertake to prevent . . . acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment . . . .” Article 5 of the African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ratified by Ethiopia on June 15, 1998) prohibits, “all forms of exploitation and degradation of man particularly slavery, slave trade, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment.”
The foregoing principles have been reaffirmed by the UN Human Rights Committee on numerous occasions. The U.N. has adopted a number of legal instruments to ensure the humane treatment of prisoners, including the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRTP). These instruments establish basic rights for prisoners, which include among others, contact with the outside world, “regular visits of family members” and communication “reputable friends at regular intervals”, sanitary conditions to “enable every prisoner to comply with the needs of nature when necessary and in a clean and decent manner”, provision of “food of nutritional value adequate for health and strength and drinking water”, medical and general health care, and “completely” prohibits “corporal punishment, punishment by placing in a dark cell, and all cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments for disciplinary offences.” The U.N. Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners provide that “all prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings.” The U.N. Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment provide that “no person under any form of detention or imprisonment shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (“The Beijing Rules”), which encompass the Convention on the Rights of the Child (ratified by Ethiopia on July 22, 1987) require that juvenile detainees “be kept separate from adults and shall be detained in a separate institution”.
The ruling regime in Ethiopia has incorporated many of the provisions of the most important human rights treaties in its “constitution” and other “laws”. Article 13 (2) of the “Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia” states: “The fundamental rights and freedoms specified in this Chapter shall be interpreted in a manner conforming to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenants on Human Rights and international instruments adopted by Ethiopia.” This article incorporates international law and conventions prohibiting abusive treatment of detainees and prisoners expressly and by implication. Regardless of Ethiopia’s status on any particular human rights convention or declaration, there is no question that those who have engaged and continue to engage in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of political and other prisoners are in violation of customary international law. Article 38 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties provides that certain treaty provisions may become binding on third parties (regardless of ratification, accession or adoption) when those provisions are part of customary international law, as Ethiopia is indeed. There are no legal excuses or defenses for the ruling regime in Ethiopia for not complying with the requirements of international law in its treatment of detainees and (political) prisoners.
Birtukan, Ethiopian Political Prisoners: You Are Not Alone!
W/o Almaz, Birtukan’s mother, recently asked the celebrated Ethiopian actor, Debebe Eshetu, to remind Diaspora Ethiopians never to give up[5]: “Keep it up! Keep it up with the help of God. I thank you for all you do [on behalf of my daughter]. May God be with you and me. May God be with the Ethiopian people.” On this day of worldwide protest against the unjust imprisonment of our heroine Birtukan, and all political prisoners in Ethiopia, let us reassure W/o Almaz we will never, never give up! Let us tell Birtukan and her fellow political prisoners that they are not alone because God is with them, and we are with them too. Let us sing to them in the lyrics of Michael Jackson:
For you are not alone,
For we are here with you,
Though we’re far apart,
You’re always in our heart,
For you are not alone……..
Birtukan, You Are Not Alone! Free Birtu-Can! Free All Ethiopian Political Prisoners!
Let’s shout joyfully at our demonstrations: “Birtu-Can! Yes, We Can!”
1 Washington Post, July 31, 2007
2 http://www.ethiomedia.com/accent/modernizing_internal_security_in_ethiopia.pdf
3 http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/af/119001.htm
4http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B9C2E/(httpNewsByYear_en)/90769992720E46CDC125750700362D63?OpenDocument
5http://www.abugidainfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/awde24.pdf
Free Birtukan and All Political Prisoners in Ethiopia!
On March 2, 2009, Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia throughout the world will be taking to the streets to protest human rights violations by the ruling regime, and to demand the release of all political prisoners. The preeminent political prisoner and the undisputed symbol of democratic resistance in Ethiopia today is Birtukan Mideksa, chairperson of Andenet party (Unity for Democracy and Justice party). Over two months ago, Birtukan was strong-armed, manhandled and whisked away to the infamous Kaliti Prison by armed thugs. Her crime (don’t laugh), “Pardon Denying.” Her “life sentence” by a kangaroo court was reinstated because she allegedly told an Ethiopian audience in Sweden that she and other political prisoners were released in July 2007 following negotiations with the ruling regime in Ethiopia. In her response to a regime ultimatum to retract the alleged pardon denial, she issued a clear public statement acknowledging receipt of a pardon: “As one of the prisoners I had indeed signed the [pardon] document, a fact which I have never denied. I have asked forgiveness through the elders by signing on the document dated June 18, 2006. This is a fact that I cannot change even if I want to.” Click on 'Read More.'
Back in July, 2007, all of the “king’s men” had corroborated the truth of Birtukan’s statements1. Prof. Issac Ephrem, head of the elders negotiation group, said Birtukan and the other Kinijit political prisoners were released as a result of skilled shuttle diplomacy by his group: “Before the courts were at all involved, the government did come to a position where they would be willing to withdraw the case. There would be no court process…. No document is acceptable to both sides. We had to shuttle back and forth to look at the document and see what words are acceptable to the government and what words are acceptable to the detainees.” Dr. Haileselassie Belay, a member of the elders group confirmed: “The wording [for the negotiated release document] was very, very difficult because what the detainees wanted the government did not want. This was a very big problem.” The ruling regime’s diplomatic representative in the U.S., Samuel Assefa, reaffirmed the negotiated release: “I am hopeful that my country now can put this issue behind us… This decision was the result of an independent process conducted in accordance with the democratic Constitution and laws of Ethiopia. It was carried out by Ethiopians, through our own national institutions, and without the need for international intervention.”
Mistreatment of (Political) Prisoners and the “Appalling Conditions Inside Ethiopian Prisons”
The prisons maintained by the ruling regime in Ethiopia are among the most inhumane, primitive and barbaric in the world. In an official report commissioned by the ruling regime on riot control entitled, “Modernizing Internal Security in Ethiopia” (July, 2008), retired British colonel Michael Dewars, vividly described the “appalling conditions inside Ethiopian prisons”2. After Addis Ababa police authorities took Col. Dewars to visit one of their best detention facilities in the capital city, he recounted:
I asked to go into the compound where the prisoners are kept. This consisted of a long yard with a shed to one side which provided some sort of shelter. The compound had a wall around it and a watchtower for an armed sentry overlooking it. Inside must have been 70 – 80 inmates, all in a filthy state. There was insufficient room for all these people to lie down on a mat at once. There was no lighting. The place stank of faeces and urine. There appeared to be no water or sanitation facilities within the compound. There was a small hut in an adjacent compound for women prisoners but there had been no attempt by anybody to improve the circumstances of the place. The prisoners were mostly on remand for minor crimes, in particular theft. Some had been there for months. There was one young boy among the prisoners, who appeared to me to be 12 or 13 years of age, who was weeping and pleading to speak to me so I asked him how old he was. He said 13. He certainly could not possibly have been older than 15. When I asked what the minimum age for holding prisoners in this facility was, one policeman said 18, another 15. In any event, he stayed there.
Col. Dewars concluded, “Detention conditions of prisoners are a disgrace and make the Federal Police vulnerable to the Human Rights lobby.” He “recommended that the Government should investigate this situation with the intention of improving the current appalling conditions inside Ethiopian prisons, which must brutalise prisoners and their goalers equally. It is recommended that senior Ethiopian Ministers and Police Officers visit the prison that I visited.” Just last week, the 2008 State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (February 25, 2009) stated3: The country has three federal prisons, 117 regional prisons, and many unofficial prisons. Prison and pretrial detention center conditions remained harsh and life threatening. Severe overcrowding was a problem. In September 2007 it was reported that there were 52,000 persons in prison. Earlier in the year, prison populations decreased by 10,000 due to pardons but reportedly again increased due to increases in ethnic conflict and economic crimes. Prisoners often had less than 22 square feet of sleeping space in a room that could contain up to 200 persons, and sleeping in rotations was not uncommon in regional prisons. The daily meal budget was approximately 5 birr (50 cents) per prisoner. Many prisoners supplemented this with daily food deliveries from family members or by purchasing food from local vendors. Prison conditions were unsanitary and there was no budget for prison maintenance. Medical care was unreliable in federal prisons and almost nonexistent in regional prisons.
In detention centers, police often physically abused detainees. Authorities generally permitted visitors but sometimes arbitrarily denied them access to detainees. In some cases, family visits to political prisoners were restricted to a few per year.
While statistics were unavailable, there were some deaths in prison due to illness and poor health care. Prison officials were not forthcoming with reports of such deaths. Several pardoned political prisoners had serious health problems in detention but received little treatment at the time.
Authorities sometimes incarcerated juveniles with adults if they could not be accommodated at the juvenile remand home. Men and women prisoners were largely, but not always, segregated.
During the year the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited regional prisons only. The government continued to prevent ICRC representatives from visiting police stations and federal prisons throughout the country including those where opposition, civil society, and media leaders were held.
The same State Department report further documented the use of arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of political prisoners:
Although the constitution and law prohibit the use of torture and mistreatment, there were numerous credible reports that security officials tortured, beat, or mistreated detainees. Opposition political party leaders reported frequent and systematic abuse and intimidation of their supporters by police and regional militias, particularly in the months leading up to the local and by-elections held during the year. In Makelawi, the central police investigation headquarters in Addis Ababa, police investigators reportedly commonly used physical abuse to extract confessions. (Italics added.)
In November 2008, Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment made a special point of the barbaric use of torture in Ethiopian prisons as a major cause of physical disabilities: “Of course, torture was also a major cause of creating disabilities. Particularly destructive was the ‘Ethiopian hanging style’ where prisoners were bound like a wheel and hung up, which engendered long-lasting consequences.”4
The Inquiry Commission established by the ruling regime to investigate the post-2005 election massacres by regime security forces documented that between June and November 2005, over 30,000 persons had been held incommunicado (without the means or right of communicating with others) in detention centers located throughout the country. The 2007 State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices cited other estimates of political prisoners in Ethiopia exceeding 50,000 civilians. Today, there are tens of thousands of political prisoners in Ethiopia who are held in detention without trial, including Birtukan Mideksa, and in violation of their basic right to due process under local and international law.
The Continuing Abuse of Birtukan Mideksa as a Political Prisoner
The evidence on Birtukan’s prison condition indicates that she has been held in solitary confinement following her roadside abduction by armed thugs. Birtukan recently told her mother, (the only person other than her 4 year old daughter allowed visitation), that “the ill-treatment in prison is getting beyond what she could bear as a human being”. Birtukan is denied access to her legal counsel. She is subjected to severe physical and psychological pressure. She is not allowed to have books or other reading material, or access to a radio. The regime has blocked the International Red Cross and other international human rights organizations from visiting Birtukan.
International Human Rights Law and the Rights of (Political) Prisoners
There is overwhelming evidence that conditions in prisons maintained by the ruling regime in Ethiopia are so deficient that they subject detainees and prisoners to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in flagrant violation of a slew of international human rights conventions, declarations and instruments. The established facts (as documented not only through the efforts of dissidents, ex-political prisoners and international human rights organizations, but also through regime-commissioned expert analyses and reports) are incontrovertible: The ruling regime’s prisons in Ethiopia are overcrowded and unsanitary. The vast majority of Ethiopian prisoners have little or no access to clean drinking or bathing water. As Col. Dewars documented, even the best prisons in the capital city “stank of faeces and urine. There appeared to be no water or sanitation facilities within the compound.” The prisons are vermin-infested and filthy and serve as breeding grounds for infectious diseases, and diseases of the circulatory and respiratory systems. Mental illness among prisoners is one of the least appreciated problems in the prisons. Birtukan Mideksa and thousands of other political prisoners are frequently singled out for systematic psychological intimidation and physical abuse due to their status as documented in the recent U.S. state Department report.
International law protects all prisoners, and particularly political prisoners, from inhumane and barbaric treatment. Prisoners are guaranteed basic human rights and fundamental freedoms in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 5 of the UDHR (incorporated by express reference in Art. 13 (2) of the “Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia”) prescribes that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Article 10 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (ratified by Ethiopia on June 11, 1993 and incorporated by express reference in Art. 13 (2) of the “Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia”) provides that “all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.” Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (acceded to by Ethiopia on April 13, 1994) mandates that signatories “shall undertake to prevent . . . acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment . . . .” Article 5 of the African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ratified by Ethiopia on June 15, 1998) prohibits, “all forms of exploitation and degradation of man particularly slavery, slave trade, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment.”
The foregoing principles have been reaffirmed by the UN Human Rights Committee on numerous occasions. The U.N. has adopted a number of legal instruments to ensure the humane treatment of prisoners, including the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRTP). These instruments establish basic rights for prisoners, which include among others, contact with the outside world, “regular visits of family members” and communication “reputable friends at regular intervals”, sanitary conditions to “enable every prisoner to comply with the needs of nature when necessary and in a clean and decent manner”, provision of “food of nutritional value adequate for health and strength and drinking water”, medical and general health care, and “completely” prohibits “corporal punishment, punishment by placing in a dark cell, and all cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments for disciplinary offences.” The U.N. Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners provide that “all prisoners shall be treated with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings.” The U.N. Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons Under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment provide that “no person under any form of detention or imprisonment shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (“The Beijing Rules”), which encompass the Convention on the Rights of the Child (ratified by Ethiopia on July 22, 1987) require that juvenile detainees “be kept separate from adults and shall be detained in a separate institution”.
The ruling regime in Ethiopia has incorporated many of the provisions of the most important human rights treaties in its “constitution” and other “laws”. Article 13 (2) of the “Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia” states: “The fundamental rights and freedoms specified in this Chapter shall be interpreted in a manner conforming to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenants on Human Rights and international instruments adopted by Ethiopia.” This article incorporates international law and conventions prohibiting abusive treatment of detainees and prisoners expressly and by implication. Regardless of Ethiopia’s status on any particular human rights convention or declaration, there is no question that those who have engaged and continue to engage in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of political and other prisoners are in violation of customary international law. Article 38 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties provides that certain treaty provisions may become binding on third parties (regardless of ratification, accession or adoption) when those provisions are part of customary international law, as Ethiopia is indeed. There are no legal excuses or defenses for the ruling regime in Ethiopia for not complying with the requirements of international law in its treatment of detainees and (political) prisoners.
Birtukan, Ethiopian Political Prisoners: You Are Not Alone!
W/o Almaz, Birtukan’s mother, recently asked the celebrated Ethiopian actor, Debebe Eshetu, to remind Diaspora Ethiopians never to give up[5]: “Keep it up! Keep it up with the help of God. I thank you for all you do [on behalf of my daughter]. May God be with you and me. May God be with the Ethiopian people.” On this day of worldwide protest against the unjust imprisonment of our heroine Birtukan, and all political prisoners in Ethiopia, let us reassure W/o Almaz we will never, never give up! Let us tell Birtukan and her fellow political prisoners that they are not alone because God is with them, and we are with them too. Let us sing to them in the lyrics of Michael Jackson:
For you are not alone,
For we are here with you,
Though we’re far apart,
You’re always in our heart,
For you are not alone……..
Birtukan, You Are Not Alone! Free Birtu-Can! Free All Ethiopian Political Prisoners!
Let’s shout joyfully at our demonstrations: “Birtu-Can! Yes, We Can!”
1 Washington Post, July 31, 2007
2 http://www.ethiomedia.com/accent/modernizing_internal_security_in_ethiopia.pdf
3 http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/af/119001.htm
4http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B9C2E/(httpNewsByYear_en)/90769992720E46CDC125750700362D63?OpenDocument
5http://www.abugidainfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/awde24.pdf
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