Friday, May 31, 2013

Thursday's papers: Ethiopia dam dominates headlines, judges protest

On

Thu, 30/05/2013 - 17:14
   
News about Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam and Cairo’s fears over its water supply continued to dominate Thursday’s headlines in Egypt.  Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding the judicial authority law returned to the front pages as judges have planned a strike.
State-owned paper Al-Akhbar reports that Egypt would lose a quarter of its water supply every year during which the path of the Blue Nile, one of the Nile’s two major tributaries, remains altered.
The country depends on the Nile River for 85 percent of its water supply. The megaproject, however, is expected to deprive Egyptians of 12 billion cubic meters of water per year, according to a report published by a tripartite committee made up of experts from Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. 
The privately-owned Al-Shorouk newspaper reports that Egypt may resort to a “diplomacy weapon” if it cannot reach common ground with Ethiopia. The paper quotes diplomatic sources who say that Egypt could seek assistance from the Arab League to resolve the crisis.
Privately owned Al-Tahrir paper writes that Pope Tawadros II, head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church, refuted claims that the president’s office had asked him to pressure the Ethiopian government to back away from its decision.
Tawadros told the paper that the Ethiopian and Egyptian Churches share strong historical ties, but that this does not signify that he has the authority to interfere in the decisions of the Ethiopian authorities.
The paper also talks about the role of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders, and it concludes that they want a military intervention.  It also criticizes the government’s diplomatic approach in trying to resolve the issue.
“Egypt is not weak and it is more than capable of handling the situation if military intervention is needed,” Osama Soliman, member of the Islamist-dominated Shura council, told Al-Tahrir.
Saber Aboul Fatouh, leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, echoed the same sentiment. He suggests that military planes bomb the dam to ensure the country does not suffer from an acute water shortage.
Al-Wafd, the liberal newspaper of the opposition Wafd Party, dedicates its front page headline to the planned open-ended sit-in organized by judges in protest of proposed amendments to the judicial authority law.
The paper says that judges have been gearing up their efforts to confront the challenges posed by the Shura Council, the Islamist-dominated upper house of parliament and sole legislative body in the country.
The paper writes that the Supreme Judiciary Council decided to join members of the Judges Club in staging an open-ended sit-in starting on Friday in protest of the Shura Council’s insistence on deliberating on amendments to the judiciary law.
The club’s legal defense and youth committees have already started the sit-in on Monday at the High Constitutional Court.
The controversial bill would lower the retirement age for judges from 70 to 60, which, it is believed, would force out about one quarter of Egypt's 13,000 serving judges.
Additionally, judges issued a call for people to participate Monday in a popular march that will start at the High Constitutional Court and end at the Shura council, and which will serve to denounce the attacks on the independence of the judiciary.
Privately-owned daily Youm7 has an exclusive report which claims that Abdel Rahman Mohsen, a member of the 6 April Youth Movement who was arrested for belonging to the protest group Black Bloc, has been subjected to physical torture in jail.
Mohsen reportedly wrote a letter from prison to one of his friends asking him to expose police brutality and convey his message to the public. 
The letter also says that he and eight other Tora prison detainees, accused of being members of the Black Bloc, have gone on an open-ended hunger strike.  
Surprisingly, FJP, the mouthpiece of the Brotherhood’s political arm, diverges from its usual bias with one of today’s top headlines: “The return of gasoline queues.”
The partisan paper depicts the difficulties citizens have been facing in the last three days due to gasoline shortages across the country. The report goes on to blame the government for the disruption in the gasoline supply.

Egyptians up in arms as Ethiopia builds giant hydro dam on Nile River; minister rules out war

(Elias Asmare/ Associated Press ) - In this photo made Tuesday, April 2, 2013, shows the construction of the dam in Asosa Region Ethiopia. Ethiopia started to divert the flow of the Blue Nile river to construct a giant dam on Tuesday, according to its state media, in a move that could impact the Nile-dependent Egypt. Downstream nations Egypt and Sudan have objected to the construction, saying it violates a colonial-era agreement which reportedly gives Egypt nearly 70 percent of Nile River waters.
CAIRO — Ethiopia’s construction of Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on the world’s longest river threatens to affect flows of water to Nile-dependent, water-starved Egypt, where there is growing outrage, anger and fear.
Egypt in the past has threatened to go to war over its “historic rights” to Nile River water but diplomats from both countries this week played down the potential for conflict.
“A military solution for the Nile River crisis is ruled out,” Egypt’s irrigation and water resources minister, Mohammed Baheddin, said Thursday amid newspaper reports recalling the threats of war from Egypt’s two previous leaders, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.
Ethiopia on Tuesday started diverting the flow of the Blue Nile for construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Eighty-five percent of Nile waters originate in Ethiopia yet the East African nation whose name has become synonymous with famine thus far utilizes very little of those waters.
Ethiopia’s decision challenges a colonial-era agreement that had given downstream Egypt and Sudan rights to the Nile water, with Egypt taking 55.5 billion cubic meters and Sudan 18.5 billion cubic meters of 84 billion cubic meters, with 10 billion lost to evaporation. That agreement, first signed in 1929, took no account of the eight other nations along the 6,700-kilometer (4,160-mile) river and its basin, which have been agitating for a decade for a more equitable accord.
And Ethiopia’s unilateral action seems to ignore the 10-nation Nile Basin Initiative to promote cooperation.
Ethiopia is leading five nations threatening to sign a new cooperation agreement without Egypt and Sudan, effectively taking control from Egypt of the Nile, which serves some 238 million people.
Mohammed Abdel-Qader, governor of Egypt’s Gharbiya province in the Nile Delta, warned the dam spells “disaster” and is a national security issue for the North African nation.
“Taking Egypt’s share of water is totally rejected ... The Nile means everything to Egypt,” said Gov. Abdel-Qader.
Baheddin said Egypt already is suffering “water poverty” with an individual’s share of 640 cubic meters well below the international average of 1,000 cubic meters.
Egypt protests that others along the Nile have alternative water sources, while the Nile is the sole water source in the mainly desert country.
Ethiopian officials say the dam is needed to provide much-needed power for development.
At a ceremony marking the diversion of the Nile, Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnin said Ethiopia could export cheap electricity from the dam to energy-short Egypt and Sudan. He insisted the dam would not affect the flow of water to Egypt.
Experts say otherwise.
Alaa el-Zawahri, a dams engineer at Cairo University and an expert on a national committee studying the ramifications of the Ethiopian dam, said Egypt stands to lose about 15 billion cubic meters of water — 27 percent of annual share — each of the five years that Ethiopia has said it will take to fill the dam. The country’s current share already is insufficient.

Inside Story- Death on the Nile – Al Jazeera Video

The River Nile has been a source of life for millions over the centuries. Now Ethiopia is diverting water to build a giant dam pushing those downstream who depend on the river, to wonder when and whether this issue can be resolved peacefully. To discuss this, presenter David Foster, is joined by guests: Bereket Simon, Ethiopian minister of information; Lama El Hatow, co-founder of water institute of the Nile and specialist in water governance and climate change; and Cleo Paskal from Chatham House, specialist in water and food security and writer of ‘Global warring.’

Ethiopia holds reporter covering evictions in dam region

New York, May 30, 2012--Ethiopian authorities have detained since Friday a reporter who sought to interview people evicted from their homes in a region where the government is building a contentious hydro-electric dam on the Blue Nile, according to a news report and the reporter's editor. The Committee to Protect Journalists said today that the case highlights authorities' disregard for the rule of law and its systematic efforts to suppress news critical of government officials.
Muluken Tesfahun, a reporter for the private weekly Ethio-Mehedar, is being held in a prison in the town of Asosa, capital of the Benishangul-Gumuz region, Getachew Worku, the paper's editor-in-chief, told CPJ. Muluken has not been formally charged or presented in court, Getachew said. The detention appears to run counter to constitutionalguarantees that a person be brought to court within 48 hours of arrest.
"By arresting journalist Muluken Tesfahun for gathering information from the victims of forced relocation, Ethiopia is once again criminalizing independent journalism," said CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator Mohamed Keita. "Ethiopia should make good on its obligation as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council to uphold citizens' rights by releasing Muluken immediately."
Local security forces picked up Muluken on Friday in the village of Dobi and confiscated his reporting equipment, the U.S. government-funded Voice of America reported, citing Getachew and members of the journalist's family. Ethio-Mehedar assigned Muluken to report on the return of thousands of ethnic Amhara, Oromo, and Agew farmers who had been forcibly evicted from their land in mid-March, Getachew said.
Ethiopian state media have not reported in detail on the evictions, despite local testimony reported by VOA and accusations of ethnic cleansing made by opposition parties, according to local journalists. After weeks of silence, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn acknowledged the evictions in an April speech in the House of Peoples Representatives. The prime minister called the action "illegal," blaming it on lower-level officials and inviting the displaced to return. This month, Federal Affairs Minister Shiferaw Teklemariam announced the arrests of 35 Benishangul officials in connection with the evictions.
Neither federal or local authorities have provided an official explanation for the evictions, and it's not immediately clear they were directly related to construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam, which the government says will be Africa's biggest power plant. The dam's impact on water supply has renewed international tensions between Ethiopia,Egypt and Sudan.
The Ethiopian government has denied allegations of coercion, abuse, and violence in unrelated resettlement programs, in which authorities have displaced small-scale farmers in order to lease large tracts of land to foreign commercial farmers, according to international news reports
With eight journalists behind bars, Ethiopia trails only Eritrea among Africa's worst jailers of journalists, CPJ research shows.

SIX PERCENT OF ETHIOPIAN ETHINIC TIGRE / TPLF DOMINATE ARMY OFFICERS!

Nemera Dinsa
Nemera Dinsa
By Nemera Dinsa W | May 31, 2013
The table below shows that the TPLF regime has a virtual monopoly over political power; and this monopoly is established among other things through the introduction of ethnic politics into the political process. In Ethiopia, ethnic politics is at the helm of the military and other civic organizations, which naturally are supposed to be politically neutral institutions. I urge donor nations and other international aid agencies to pay particular attention to this overwhelming evidence and reconsider their policies towards a regime that benefits the few. 50% of the country populations are Oromo’s but there is no any position for ethnic OROMOS in army. This shows weyane / TPLF they made our Oromia like Syria tomorrow by ethnic violence. Obviously, donor nations and tax payers in donor countries do not want to see their funds used by dictators who deny freedom and justice to the very people to whom the aid is intended. Likewise, no democratic citizen of the world wants its hard earned money to go to a Third World country and be used to prop up a dictatorial regime that muffles free press and kills democratic movements like Ethiopia.
The domination of Tigre in army power never stops the freedom way of Our Oromia and Oromos with OLF!
Defense Departments
No
Job Division
Name & Rank
Ethnic Group
1Armed Forces Chief-of-StaffGeneral Smora Yenus
Tigre
2Armed Forces Head of TrainingLt.General Tadesse Worde
Tigre
3Head of LogisticsLt.General Gezae Abera
Tigre
4Head of IntelligenceBr. General Gebre Dela
Tigre
5Armed Forces Head of CampaignMajor General Gebreegzher
Tigre
6Armed Forces Head of EngineeringLt.General Berhane Negash
Tigre
7Chief of the Air ForceChief of the Air Force
Tigre

Heads of the Nation’s four Military Commands
No
Job Division
Name & Rank
Ethnic Group
1Central CommandGeneral Abebaw Tadesse
Agew
2Northern CommandLt.General Saere Mekonene
Tigre
3South Eastern CommandLt.General Abraha Wolde
Tigre
4Western CommandBr. General Seyoum Hagos
Tigre
Army Divisional Commanders
Central command
Northern Command
No
Job Division
Name & Rank
Ethnic Group
114st Army DivisionColonel Wodi Antiru
Tigre
221st Army DivisionColonel Gueshi Gebre
Tigre
311th Army DivisionColonel Workidu
Tigre
425th Army DivisionColonel Tesfay Sahiel
Tigre
522nd Army DivisionColonel Teklay Klashin
Tigre
64th Mechanized DivisionColonel Hinsaw Giorgis
Tigre
South Eastern Command
No
Job Division
Name & Rank
Ethnic Group
119st Army DivisionColonel Wodi Guaae
Tigre
244st Army DivisionColonel Zewdu Tefera
Tigre
313th Army DivisionColonel Sherifo
Tigre
412th Army DivisionColonel Mulugeta Berhe
Tigre
532nd Army DivisionColonel Abraha Tselim
Tigre
66th Mechanized DivisionColonel G/Medhin Fekede
Tigre
Western Command
No
Job Division
Name & Rank
Ethnic Group
123rd Army DivisionColonel Wolde Belalom
Tigre
243rd Army DivisionColonel Wodi Abate
Tigre
326th Army DivisionColonel Mebrahtu
Tigre
47th Mechanized DivisionColonel Gebre Mariam
Tigre
Commanders in Different Defense Departments
No
Job Division
Name & Rank
Ethnic Group
1Agazi Commando DivisionB.General Mohammed Esha
Tigre
2Addis Ababa & Surrounding Area GuardColonel Zenebe Amare
Tigre
3Palace GuardColonel Gerensay
Tigre
4Banking GuardColonel Hawaz Woldu
Tigre
5Engineering CollegeColonel Halefom Eggigu
Tigre
6Military Health ScienceB.General Tesfay Gidey
Tigre
7Mulugeta Buli Technical CollegeColonel Meleya Amare
Tigre
8Resource Management CollegeColonel Letay
Tigre
9Siftana Command CollegeB.General Moges Haile
Tigre
10Blaten Military Training CenterColonel Salih Berihu
Tigre
11Wourso Military Training CenterColonel Negash Heluf
Tigre
12Awash Arba Military Training CenterColonel Muze
Tigre
13Birr Valley Military Training CenterColonel Negassie Shikortet
Tigre
14Defense Administration DepartmentB.General Mehari Zewde
Tigre
15Defense AviationB.General Kinfe Dagnew
Tigre
16Defense Research and StudyB.General Halefom Chento
Tigre
17Defense Justice DepartmentColonel Askale
Tigre
18Secretary of the Chief-of-StaffColonel Tsehaye Manjus
Tigre
19Indoctrination CenterB.General Akale Asaye
Amhara
20Communications DepartmentColonel Sebbhat
Tigre
21Foreign Relations DepartmentColonel Hassene
Tigre
22Special Forces Coordination DepartmentB.General Fisseha Manjus
Tigre
23Operations DepartmentColonel Wodi Tewk
Tigre
24Planning, Readiness and Programming DepartmentColonel Teklay Ashebir
Tigre
25Defense Industries Coordination DepartmentColonel Wodi Negash
Tigre
26Defense Finance DepartmentColonel Zewdu
Tigre
27Defense Purchasing DepartmentColonel Gedey
Tigre
28Defense Budget DepartmentAto/Mr. Berhane
Tigre