Ethiopian journalist on prison odyssey needs medical care

By Tom Rhodes/CPJ East Africa Representative

Berhane Tesfaye and her son, Fiteh, try to visit Woubshet Taye every week. (CPJ)

"When I grow up will I go to jail like my dad?" This was the shattering question that the five-year-old son of imprisoned Ethiopian journalist Woubshet Taye asked his mother after a recent prison visit. Woubshet's son, named Fiteh (meaning "justice"), has accompanied his mother on a wayward tour of various prisons since his father was arrested in June 2011.

Authorities have inexplicably transferred Woubshet, the former deputy editor of the independent weekly Awramba Times, to a number of prisons. From Maekelawi Prison, authorities transferred him to Kality Prison in the capital, Addis Ababa, then to remote Ziway Prison, then Kilinto Prison (just outside Addis Ababa), back to Kality, and in December last year--to Ziway again.

It is at Ziway, an isolated facility roughly 83 miles southeast of the capital, where heat, dust, and contaminated water have likely led to a severe kidney infection in Woubshet. The award-winning journalist was meant to receive medical treatment while at Kality Prison in Addis Ababa, Woubshet's wife, Berhane Tesfaye, told me, but it never took place. Suffering in such pain in his ribs and hip that he cannot sleep, Woubshet has not even received painkillers, according to local journalists who visited him.  

CPJ's attempts to reach Ethiopian government spokesman Shimeles Kemal by phone call and text message were unsuccessful.

Despite high transport costs and more than four hours of travel each way, Berhane and Fiteh try to visit Woubshet every week. Fiteh routinely becomes ill from the dust, Berhane said, and prison guards prevent Woubshet from hugging his son. Prison visits are often brief and canned, local journalists told me, as even discussions over Woubshet's health are restricted by guards assigned to monitor the conversation.

What terrible misdeeds could have triggered such a fate? Authorities sentenced Woubshet to 14 years in prison on charges lodged under Ethiopia's broad anti-terrorism law. The evidence includes email exchanges he had with Elias Kifle, exiled Ethiopian editor of the Washington-based opposition website Ethiopian Review, Berhane said. An email to Woubshet's brother in America was also cited as evidence against him, she said. After Woubshet's brother asked about their ailing father's eye operation, his reply that "the operation was done successfully" was used as an example of his terrorist activities.

Local journalists suspect the real reason lies in Woubshet's critical reporting at Awramba Times. Two weeks prior to his arrest, Woubshet published a column critical of the ruling party's performance in its two decades of rule. Another column, written in 2009, that questioned the whereabouts of former opposition party members after the 2005 elections may have also triggered his arrest, Berhane said.

While debates over the reasons for Woubshet's arrest may persist, there is one point on which all sides should agree: Woubshet must be allowed access to medical treatment. Ethiopia is a signatory to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and thus duty-bound to ensure the health of its citizens as a fundamental human right.

=>cpj

South Sudan peace talks stall in Ethiopia

By Tesfa-Alem Tekle

January 8, 2014 (ADDIS ABABA) – Direct peace talks taking place in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, between the South Sudanese government and rebel representatives have stalled, dashing hopes of a speedy ceasefire agreement.

South Sudanese president Salva Kiir holds discussions in his office in Juba with his Kenyan counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta, on Boxing Day ahead of peace talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa (Photo: AFP)

The two sides failed to make any progress after they were unable to break the deadlock over the release of political prisoners being held by the government in connection with an alleged fail coup attempt.

The detainees include senior figures from South Sudan’s ruling Sudan people’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), including former secretary-general Pagan Amum.

The breakdown in talks comes amid renewed fighting between government and renegade soldiers in strategic towns of the country, threatening to plunge the world’s newest nation in to an all-out civil war.

MORE UGANDAN TROOPS

The spokesman for the rebel delegation in Ethiopia, Brigadier General Lul Raui Kong, said neighbouring Uganda has deployed more troops to South Sudan to protect major installations, including the airport.

He said the troops were deployed to South Sudan on Monday and Tuesday following a request by president Salva Kiir.

Violence broke out in South Sudan on 15 December after clashes between rival factions of the presidential guard.

Kiir has implicated his former deputy Riek Machar in the plot, with violence spreading throughout the country and dividing along tribal loyalties.

Peace talks, brokered by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), began on Tuesday, but have already been plagued by a series of delays since the negotiating teams arrived in Addis Ababa a week ago.

Rebel representatives have insisted that all prisoners be released before truce negotiations can begin - a demand repeatedly rejected by South Sudan’s government.

The two warring sides are facing mounting international pressure to resolve the conflict

.

REBEL DEMANDS REJECTED

However, South Sudan maintains it is not willing to accept any rebel preconditions detrimental to negotiations seeking an end to the conflict.

South Sudan’s information minister, Michael Makuei Lueth, reiterated his government’s stance ahead of the closed-door talks, saying “We are ready for talks without conditions”.

He stressed that political detainees aligned with Machar would be required to answer the allegations as required under South Sudanese law.

Ethiopian officials said on Wednesday that the regional bloc had sent a special envoy to South Sudan for talks with government leaders on the possible release of the remaining nine political prisoners.

Meanwhile, Kong alleges that Ugandan military jets are bombing rebel-controlled areas, but Kampala denies the claims, saying its troops are not involved in the fighting.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, a close ally of Kiir, has warned Machar against rejecting the ceasefire offer, raising questions of bias.

He said if Machar failed to reach an agreement on the cessation of hostilities, IGAD member states would unite to defeat him.

The UN estimates at least 1,000 people have been killed and nearly 200,000 displaced in South Sudan’s worst-ever post-independence conflict.

(ST)

=>sudantribune

Ethiopia: Deported From Saudi Arabia, Ethiopian Migrants Find Dilemma At Home

Addis Ababa — They went in a bid to escape poverty, but few really succeeded, even if they did find work. Many were abused by their employers. Now, 144,000 Ethiopians have returned home, deported from Saudi Arabia, which began a crackdown on undocumented foreign workers in November 2012.

The authorities in Ethiopia were expecting migrants to return, but, anticipating a mere 30,000, they set aside just US$2.6 million to help with reintegration.

"The assistance they are receiving now is short-term, but once they get back to their homes, they will need long-term assistance, like finding jobs and reintegrating into the community, and the government must work towards these goals," Sharon Dimanche, from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), told IRIN.

The government has also banned its citizens from travelling to the Middle East, a move migration expert say will not only lead people to head for new destinations, such as Sudan, but could flout international laws on freedom of movement.

According to Chris Horwood, of the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS), the main drivers of migration from Ethiopia are "endemic poverty caused by economic inequality, poor education and training options."

He added, "We also know about pressures on access to natural resources and the impact of climate change making some areas very fragile. So people migrate as a coping strategy to poverty and lack of opportunity, and some migrants from Ethiopia particularly identify political oppression (particularly the Oromo)."

In 2010, Ethiopia came up with its Growth and Transformation Plan, a five-year blueprint for economic growth. "Four million jobs have been created in the first three years... We hope, if this trend continues, we will have a substantially reduced number of migrants going out of the country very soon," Abdulfetah Abdulahi, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, told IRIN.

Yitna Getachew, of IOM, agreed that such initiatives could help stem migration, but said that the effects were unlikely to be immediate.

"It takes time before people can begin to feel comfortable with economic prospects at home. The early stages of economic growth - the World Bank estimates that it will exceed 7 percent in Ethiopia between 2013 and 2015, while in 2012, its economy was the 12th fastest growing economy globally - currently being experienced in Ethiopia are likely to increase cases of migration," said Getachew. "People who hitherto had no money [are] begin[ning] to get [an] income, which they can invest in migration by... bribing smugglers, migration officials and buying fake documents."

IRIN met some of the deported migrants, who spoke of the reasons they left home, of what life was like in Saudi Arabia, and of their hopes and their fears now that they have had to return to Ethiopia.

Sophia Mekuria, 36

Sophia Mekuria, 36, left Ethiopia for Saudi Arabia four years ago, risking long treks on foot and dangerous sea crossings in often overloaded boats to escape poverty back home.

Mekuria's parents sold the only cows they owned to raise the 8,000 birr [$417] smugglers charged for her passage to Saudi Arabia. The journey by sea took her to Yemen. From there, she travelled by truck to the Saudi Arabian city of Jiza, where she found a job as a maid.

Through her salary of 2,000 Saudi Riyal [$530] a month, she was able to support her parents back home in Dessie town, in the Amhara Regional State in northern Ethiopia. Still, she had no savings by the time she was arrested by Saudi authorities and sent home in late December 2013.

"My main aim was to go there and earn more money, since I have seen a number of people from our locality that traveled there and changed their lives. My status was actually illegal since I [did not] have proper documents to live and work there," Sophia told IRIN.

Her parents used the money she sent home "mainly to buy food," she said.

She told IRIN she would not consider returning to Saudi Arabia.

"I will work here in my country because I have seen enough suffering in the past month alone. They kept us in camps in an inhumane way until our arrival here."

Mursan Ali, 36

Mursan Ali, a 36-year-old father of two, travelled to Saudi Arabia two years ago. His journey involved walking to the coast of Djibouti, on the Gulf of Aden, surviving only on the food he carried and a bottle of water, and sleeping unprotected on the ground at night for five days. From there, his smugglers put him on the boat to Yemen.

But the boat was wrecked off the coast of Yemen; Ali was among 35 people rescued. He and the other migrants were taken to a Yemeni prison, where they spent six months before being transferred to a camp to await deportation.

"A number of us managed to escape out of it [the camp] and joined the workforce," Ali told IRIN.

After his escape, he trekked overland to Saudi Arabia.

"I was working as a metal worker and was earning [about] 1,500 Saudi riyals [$400] at the time. I cannot make that much money here in Ethiopia."

To pay his smugglers, he had saved 4,000 birr [$209] out of the 50 birr daily wage he earned as a construction worker in the capital, Addis Ababa.

"My family is poor, and all I have known is poverty. I wanted to earn enough money to help my family, and people told me about jobs in Saudi Arabia which were paying [better] than what I earned as manual laborer in Ethiopia," he told IRIN.

He hopes that the Ethiopian government's promise to create more jobs can help halt irregular migration to the Middle East.

Tassew

Tassew lives with his sister, Negash, a 35-year-old cleaner and mother of one, and another sibling Mesfin in a tiny tin-walled shack in Addis Ababa.

Tassew and Mesfin were among those deported from Saudi Arabia. Negash now supports both of them.

"They could support me when they were there," Negash told IRIN, "but now, I will use my small salary to support the four of us. It is hard because they came with nothing, and they will take a long time to get jobs here. They will burden me, but I can't send them away."

She added, "I saved a little of what they sent me to start a business, but now I can't [save money] because I will use it to provide for them and myself."

Tassew does not rule out looking for opportunities outside again. "If it is hard to go to Saudi Arabia, I will look out for other countries where I can find work. I can go to Sudan or somewhere, because here, it is hard to be employed," he said.

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Ethiopia "remains one of the world's poorest countries. About 29 per cent of the population lives below the national poverty line".

Fatima, 23

Fatima,* 23, stayed in Saudi Arabia for just six months before she was deported.

She told IRIN, "I haven't finished paying my smugglers, and now they will want their money. I still owe them 5,000 birr [$260], and they will now auction my parents' property" through their agents in Addis Ababa, where her parents live.

"I was to pay them when I arrived and found a job in Saudi Arabia. I was deported before I could get enough money," she said.

=>allafrica

Ethiopia's model families hailed as agents of social transformation

Claire Provost

Ethiopia is boosting its healthcare statistics by enouraging rural households to adopt and disseminate a range of good habits

A model family in rural Ethiopia, part of the government's so-called health development army. Photograph: Lauren McKown/Pathfinder International

Wudinesh Demisse raises her hand above her head, showing off the matchstick-sized birth-control implant embedded just beneath the skin of her upper arm.

Demisse, 28, is a farmer in rural West Arsi, in Ethiopia's central Oromia region. With three children already, Demisse says it is time to stop. "For me, three is enough," she says, through a translator. "If they are too many, they are too expensive."

Demisse, who lives in a small village 200km south of the capital, Addis Ababa, is one of millions of Ethiopian women who have gained access to modern forms of birth control over the past decade. Today, her local health post stocks a range of products, from condoms and pills to longer-acting injections and implants.

Ethiopia is increasingly touted as a family planning success story. The government, which has made maternal and child health national priorities, is proud of its statistics – the country's contraceptive prevalence rate, for example, jumped from 15% in 2005 to 29% in 2011 – and says efforts to reach remote, rural areas lie at the heart of its success.

Along with trained, salaried health extension workers – all of whom are female, a step to make families more comfortable with door-to-door visits – thousands of volunteers have been enlisted nationwide in the government's "health development army".

At the centre of this are people like Demisse and her husband, who head one of the government's celebrated "model families" and are footsoldiers in a massive social engineering project to redefine healthy behaviour.

"They are role models and change agents for social transformation in each village across the country," says Kesetebirhan Admasu, Ethiopia's health minister, who explains that the project is based on a theory of how innovations spread that assumes change happens step by step. The idea is that there are "trendsetters" in every community, and that others can be persuaded to admire and, eventually, copy their behaviour.

To become a model family, a household has to adopt most if not all of the government's 16 priority interventions – from vaccinating their children and sleeping under mosquito bednets to building separate latrines and using family planning.

Model families get certificates, are celebrated at village ceremonies and are asked to support five other households in adopting the priority interventions.

Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country, is overwhelmingly rural and this has hampered the expansion of formal healthcare services and infrastructure. Estimates from 2009 suggest there was only one doctor for every 50,000 people. The government's health extension programme is a strategy to bridge the gap and build capacity while expanding the services.

The NGO Marie Stopes International has urged rich countries to adopt some of Ethiopia's techniques, saying they could save millions of dollarsif they too trained up frontline health workers, nurses and midwives to carry out tasks – such as the fitting of implants – otherwise done by doctors.

For Admasu, the biggest successes have come from targeting "cultural and attitude-related bottlenecks", which limit rural women from taking up services even when they are available.

In one region, Admasu says the health development army helped the government understand why women were not giving birth in health facilities. The army discovered women were fearful of the traditional stretchers used to carry them to hospital (which had become associated with bad luck) and did not want to go without the traditional coffee and religious ceremonies they could get at home. This led to changes including a newly-designed stretcher and plans to bring coffee beans, traditional food, and religious leaders to health facilities.

"All these innovations and interventions, they seem to be simple but it is changing the way services are perceived," Admasu says. In the case of family planning, he says products like implants were not popular before but are now being used by a significant number of rural women. "It's all because of the information that they get from their neighbours, from their friends and so on," he says. "That is how they break all those cultural norms."

Many African countries have set up extensive community healthworker schemes to reach rural areas. Understanding why people behave the way they do, and structuring projects accordingly, is also an increasingly popular approach in development, and a response to the failures of many expert-led schemes. The World Bank, for example, is working on a major report on the behavioural and social foundations of economic development, expected this year.

The military metaphors in Ethiopia's programme set it apart from many others, however. "Such a movement would not be successful without the discipline of the army," insists Admasu. "We said this is the way we really want to mobilise the community – they participate in the meetings, they work with the discipline of an army, and they address the critical bottlenecks."

Admasu says it is the government's policy to ensure women are not coerced into taking up health interventions. But some are suspicious of the development army model, which is also being pursued in agriculture with a nationwide network of "model farmers".

Ethiopian journalist Henok Reta has reported, for example, that model farmers who boast of their results seem to have been coached by extension workers and are unwilling to talk about failures, challenges such as the price of seeds, and what they want the government to do next. A recent paper from the Overseas Development Institute thinktank in London notes that community mobilisation efforts in Ethiopia, including the development army, can provide the ruling party with new mechanisms to monitor its citizens.

Teferi Abate Adem, former chairman of the department of sociology and anthropology at Addis Ababa University, argues that the agriculture extension programme has "reinforced the rural presence and authoritarian powers of the ruling party while largely failing to improve smallholder agriculture".

=>theguardian