Gambella Nilotes United Movement/Army

GNUM/A Press Release, Gambella
September 28, 2013

• "Unite We Must!"
• "Where Unity Prevails Success Prevails"
• "Freedom & Justice for all Oppressed Ethiopians"
• "The TPLF/EPRDF government must stop killing, detention and intimidation of mass demonstrators and the Muslim Protestors in Ethiopia"

The Gambella Nilotes United Movement/Army (GNUM/A) strongly condemns the killings, detention, harassment and intimidation acts as being carried out by the TPLF/EPRDF government against the mass demonstrators including Muslim protestors in Ethiopia. The demonstrators are simply demanding from the government, among others, the respect to the constitution, the exercise of rule of law, and the release of the political prisoners including the Muslim leaders held in detention in many parts of the country. These peaceful demonstrations are the indicators towards the beginning of popular democratization process anticipated to relief the long entrenched historical injustices in the country.

However, as the demonstrators were exercising their rights through peaceful means, surprisingly they were met with unprecedented killings, imprisonment, harassment and some were even forced to exile. This clearly demonstrates that the TPLF/EPRDF government is not yet prepared to admit its flaws, and begins responding to the demand made by the majority Ethiopians who feel oppressed in the system of the minority rule from the north as represented by the TPLF.

Obviously, the TPLF/EPRDF government is contradicting its own constitution for the benefit of its minority people it represents. Freedom of religion, belief and opinion as enshrined in the constitution are constitutional rights of the Ethiopians. The Muslim protestors demands this religious right as demonstrated in Afar, Ogaden, Oromia, and other parts of the country. The TPLF government has no constitutional rights to commit atrocities against demonstrators in killings, intimidation, imprisonment, and forced others to live in exile.

Ironically, these mass demonstrations throughout the country must be known as signs to converge all the oppression parties inside and outside the country to unite and join hands together to fight the repressive TPLF/EPRDF regime for their freedom. It is clear that the TPLF/EPRDF government seized its power through militancy, not through peaceful means in which it repeatedly opposes, and tends to maintain this power over its subjects throughout the country at gun point not on ballots. It should be understood from the government stance point that peaceful means will never make any meaningful impact as an option to resolve the chronic historical injustices in Ethiopia. All opposition parties or the entire oppressed majority Ethiopians must join hands together to bring meaningful challenge to this dictator and corrupt regime, to an end.

GNUM/A would therefore, call upon all the oppressed groups including Oromos, Ogadenians, Sidamas,Beneshangul/Gumuz Nilotes, Afar, Gambella Nilotes, Southwestern Nilotic Omotic Nations, and all other oppressed Ethiopians everywhere in the country to work together to end this unpopular government.

It is our core belief as GNUM/A that “where unity prevails there will be always success.” GNUM/A as a political party established through convergent of different Gambella political parties, maintains a symbol of unity for peoples of Gambella, and continue to extend this unity message to all Southwestern Nilotic Omotic peoples, and all the opposition parties inside and outside the country, to embrace the vision of unity for the emancipation of all the oppressed peoples of Ethiopia. We should know that the TPLF/EPRDF government plays divide and rule politics to maintain and prolong its power; and as unity will remain a core ingredient factor to prevail for all the opposition parties operating on different lines, it should be embraced by all the opposition parties to enhance solidarity and promote it.

Our freedom will only be achieved when all opposition political forces put aside their differences and join resources together to fight the oppressive regime, in order to bring meaningful challenge to the repressive TPLF/EPRDF government.

Currently the people of Gambella and all the Southwestern indigenous peoples understand that they are discriminated against their colours, race, cultures and traditions, and denied of their fundamental human rights to security, freedom, prosperity, and popular political representation in Ethiopian politics. Their common sufferings speak loudly to unity and solidarity. Being aware then of our common plights we have collectively agreed and joined hands together under the SENPIM vision as one political entity to fight our historical oppressors and injustices.

The Gambella Region

We are very aware that the TPLF/EPRDF government is vigorously and systematically exterminating the indigenous Nilotic communities of Southwest, in exchange to the Northerners’ direct and indirect settlements and empowerment in our ancestral lands. This act emanates from racist and colonial outlook of northerner historical rulers who have dominated the system and maintained it through manipulation of central leaderships. As the indigenous communities, we are denied of our citizenship rights and freedom in the country beyond any measure. As the TPLF/EPRDF government continue to commit crimes against our peoples, we continue to stand against the government’s criminal acts to ensure true freedom is brought to our peoples to decide for their own destiny freely.

According to our current intelligent service, our peoples are in precarious conditions and the situation has never improved as the TPLF/EPRDF government is currently conspiring on inciting animosity to create ethnic conflicts in Gambella to extinct Anyuaks, Majengers, and others; by allowing illicit armed rival groups inside the towns, villages and refugee camps in the region. The proliferation of unknown armed people from South Sudan is the new device and plan of the Ethiopian government to conspire on inciting ethnic conflict in the region.

The Northern (Ethiopians) settlers in the Gambella region enjoy the federal government all privileges including security, political, economic, social and military empowerments as they jointly conspire on possible ethnic cleansing conflicts together with the increasing number of armed refugees from South Sudan, waiting for due time to launch attacks against the Anyuaks and Majengers. The Anyuaks and Majengers villagers and farmers are left vulnerable to unknown armed groups’ robbery and killings, without government protection. Currently, cattle raids, recurring killings and armed robbery are rampant in the Gambella region. The current attack launched against the Ariethvillagers by unknown armed groups within Gog district is one of our concerns and threats to the villagers. The community land is still being leased to commercial investors, while the villagers are facing evictions in districts of Gog, Gambella, Abobo, Itang, Meti, Dimma, and other areas in the region.

We are well informed that currently the TPLF/EPRDF has recruited six sponsored delegates from the Gambella regional administration and sent them to South Sudan to persuade the Anuaks refugees, who fled the country for their safety, to repatriate back to Ethiopia to end up in prisons in Ethiopia, by giving unfounded cheap promises. These delegates apparently tried to enter to Gorom refugee camp in Juba, but only they failed due to strong leadership of the Anuaks refugee in the camp. The Gambella Nilotes United Movement/Army (GNUM/A) condemns this mission and is calling upon the refugee community leaderships elsewhere in the World to stand strong and unite as one, not allowing any puppet to destabilize the unity and the leadership. It should be known that any deal on behalf of the refugees should not take place in isolation to our political leadership.

GNUM/A would like to take this opportunity again to inform the people of Gambella and all the South-western Nilotic Omotic peoples that all those instruments and institutions set up as means of divisiveness and creation of  conflicts against the interest of our indigenous people, should be stopped and abolished.

Lower Omo Valley of SNNPR

In the Lower Omo Valley of SNNPR the indigenous Nilotes and Omotic peoples are still facing serious human rights abuses and atrocities. From March through June/2013 many indigenous Nilotic Omotic tribes have endured indiscriminate killings and imprisonment by TPLF/EPRDF government soldiers. In particular, the Suri people endured the indiscriminate killings by the TPLF/EPRDF soldiers, in which more than 400 Suri’s children, women and men were killed in cold blood, in respond to the foreign commercial investors’ demand in the area, to expand their agricultural lands from the Suri farmers and villagers.

The construction of Gibe III has been carried out without free and informed consent of the pastoral Nilotes and Omotic tribes. The construction of the project is almost to be completed, in which more than eight indigenous tribes will lose their traditional lands. Moreover, the indigenous pastoral communities are forced to sell-out their cattle to keep up with very small number in the area which is against their traditions. The Mursi, Bodi, Nyangathom, etc, tribes are already in conflicts with the new comers in the area, as the large sugar plantation also is indirectly attracting more than 150,000 settlers from other areas (mainly from the North) with serious potential conflicts to occur in the area.

Similarly, the Dawro people of Southern Ethiopia are facing serious human rights abuses, as the impact of Gibe III Hydroelectric project has already created great damage to their livelihood. As most of Dawro territory is bounded by the Omo and its tributaries Gojeb  and other rivers, the construction of Gibe III hydroelectric project has damaged most part of King Kalala heritage - the traditional stone walls (of 175miles long) which was constructed thousand years ago. The King Kalala stone walls provide social identity and belief to Dawro people, and the construction of this huge project was carried out without proper pre-consultation with the community, it has denied the tribe a history, future and culture as most parts of the traditional stone walls will be submerged by the reservoir with no compensation.

Besides, part of Dawro land is forcefully settled by other neighbouring tribes who vigorously push their way intoDawro territory, through the federal government induced supports in which the Prime Minister Hailemariam is allegedly found to be the key player in this illicit settlement process. Ethnic conflict is already underway between theDawro community and the illegal settlers.

The situation is worsening as many Dawro youths who completed 10^th grade from the schools are currently facing serious unemployment; and they are demanding agricultural lands as the only option to provide them self-employment. The federal government respond has not been encouraging while the illegal settlement in the area is increasingly creating ethnic animosity among the tribes. Frustration and anxiety are increasing among the Dawroyouths, and some resorted to take their life by burning themselves alive in protest against the crimes committed by the federal government. The dissidents are facing serious insecurity, imprisonment, harassment, beating, and some are forced to live in exile. The students have boycotted their normal schools in protest to the government.

The exploration of petroleum in the Nyanyathom area has confirmed the availability of petroleum in the area. It has been another factor of tension in the area as the government is vigorously going ahead with the project, and the surrounding communities have been told to be ready for resettlement at a distance of 100kms radius from the project site.

Beneshangul/Gumuz Region

In Beneshagul/Gumuz the indigenous Nilotes are suffering atrocities in protest against the land grab and evictions in the region. The TPLF/EPRDF government responses have been very severe against the indigenous communities, in which the prisons in the region serve as concentration camps for the indigenous communities of Berta, Gumuz,komo, and Mao tribes, in order to enforce the Northerners settlement and domination in the region. Many of the indigenous dissidents and innocent elites have been killed and others are serving life and death sentences in various prisons in the country including Ziway prison where many of these prisoners have endured serious sufferings, and their families, relatives, and friends failed access to visit them.

Moreover, the construction of the Renaissance Dam along the Nile in the Gumuz land is underway with potential impact of displacement and other serious social hazards to the indigenous Nilotes. The proliferation of northerner’s settlers to Beneshangul/Gumuz region poses serious threat to the indigenous populations in the area.

Somalia (Ogaden) and Afar Region

The indigenous Ogadenians and Afar people are facing serious human right abuses and all kind of atrocities in the regions. Displacement and forced migration to prepare their land for commercial agriculture by the government are accompanied by serious threat, intimidation, killings, imprisonments, tortures and rapes.

Oromyia Region

The Eastern Oromyia farmers are suffering evictions from their lands by the government. Similarly, in WesternOromyia in area called Amfilo the government evicted Oromo farmers of more than 300 Oromo farmers and packed them in prisons to prepare the land for the Northern investors and settlers.

These are serious crimes against the indigenous communities of the Southwestern regions including the Oromo community, Ogadenians, Afars, and other oppressed citizens in the country in which GNUM/A condemns TPLF/EPRDF government’s crimes and cruelty acts against it citizens.

By and large, the atrocities and human rights violations committed by the TPLF/EPRDF government against the unprivileged majority citizens in Ethiopia are self explanatory. Indeed, the TPLF government is fully engaged in assuring absolute economic prosperity, security, and freedom to the minority Northerners at expenses of majority Ethiopians at any cost. This tells the Northern rulers including the TPLF leaders have their mind-set in plunder as demonstrated by their ancestors and monarchies who engaged themselves in building the nation on the slave economy and entrepreneurship. This has been summed up by the scholars as Abyssinian colonization and domination in which the non Abyssinians Ethiopians still suffer the legacy until today.

It should be known that Abyssinian colonization or domination is still being nurtured and maintained by the minority Northerners and their rulers in Ethiopia. Abyssinian colonization or domination is not just a history, but it is a torment too in the country to the subjects (non Abyssinians). It should be known that it is still alive, active and persistence to any attempt to bring true freedom, security, prosperity, and equal opportunities to all citizens. It persist principles of liberal democracy for the citizens to enjoy equal opportunities, rule of law, and respect to bill of rights in the Ethiopia.

Abyssinian colonization and domination should not be complicated with the hatred against the Northern tribes but as an evil and torment demonic spirit which must be completely stripped off over all the oppressed-majority-non-Abyssinian citizens to bring true equality in Ethiopia. How? 

Ethiopia needs fundamental change to exercise genuine liberal democratic principles to bring meaningful freedom and justice to every citizen. This can only be achieved when each tribe and all the oppressed citizens vigorously fight to achieve their own-freedom-first, before nation-building (nationalism) and patriotism which should as secondary choice. For politics around nationalism and patriotism has been manipulated by the Abyssinian oppressors for ages for their own end. To diverse attentions the poor and oppressed communities in Ethiopia have been manipulated by the Northern dominant regimes to fight proxy wars created by the Northerner leaders along nationalism and patriotism, putting the country first before their individual freedom, forgetting the past and suffering they endured in the hands of their internal oppressors.

But at end of the day, the few dominant minority groups from the North and their rulers prosper at the expense of the majority oppressed non Abyssinian citizens, and maintains that upper-hand politics, prosperity, and leadership to ensure they control our future. Right now who is enjoying security, peace, freedom and prosperity in the country at the expense of poor majority Ethiopians? In the midst of present economic disparities among the individuals, tribes, regions, geographical locations in the facing of rising living conditions and hardships in Ethiopia, who is having the purchasing power as the prices of commodities  deadly rocket in the country? It is the poor and the oppressed who are receiving the brunt. It is the poor and the oppressed who being recruited in the military to fight proxy wars created by their oppressors and beneficiaries.

How long will the oppressed peoples in Ethiopia be manipulated to fight proxy wars created by minority oppressors from the North, and use it for their own benefits at the expense of the majority Ethiopians, who are denied of their freedom and justice? There are many examples of these historical wars including Eriteria, Ogaden, Somalia, terrorism, etc. Who are fighting and dying in these wars with no posterity and benefit to their families apart from the northerners? All the oppressed Ethiopians must critically assess their past to come together as one to challenge their causes to ensure their own freedom first, before the nation.

As oppressed citizen, why should you die for a country that does not recognize your history and future as a dignified citizen? It is unrealistic for the Gambellans or peoples of the southern region or Ogadenians, or Oromos, or the Nilotes of Beneshangul/Gumuz region, to be dragged in, as part of the three thousand years Ethiopian history which they all don’t benefit equally, and still denied of their own history and tradition to live in the country without future.

Our traditional lands provide our social and political identities, security and sense of belongings. Land should be considered as community property, not state property. The provision that places land to be state property in the Ethiopian constitution has wrong application to the indigenous rights and freedom. It has cunningly given high leverage to Northerner oppressors to divide our land as cake and occupy them at gun points. The denial of freedom and justice against the majority Ethiopians in their own lands and territories by the Abyssinians colonialists and oppressors will have to cease completely, in order to bring true freedom to our oppressed communities to decide for their own destiny in a free political environment.

This achievement can only be realized through unity. Without firm unity and participation of all the oppressed Ethiopians to the struggle, the oppressive ruling of dominant minority from the North will continue shedding innocent bloods in the country persisting our existence as humans; it will continue to deny our political, economic, social, and human rights and freedom until we are perished in our lands. Without full participation to the emancipation process of all the oppressed Ethiopians, the country will not be vindicated from hypocrisy, lying, dishonesty, robbery, corruption, and lack of transparency as they remain as the very essential values and characters of Abyssinian oppressors. No oppressed citizens can be free as long as the oppressive regime maintains these evils, for they resist the very basic liberal democracy principles to flourish in the country; and the TPLF/EPRDF government has failed to realize these principles to all Ethiopians.

We are aware and understand that TPLF/EPRDF government deliberately plays divide and rule politics among our nationalities to extinct the indigenous communities from their ancestral lands. The leadership of GNUM/A would like to inform and strengthen all the indigenous populations and other oppressed Ethiopians to condemn and oppose the current leadership of the EPRDF/TPLF government and unite together to fight the repressive system for the realization of our freedom.

To this respect, we would like to inform the EPRDF/TPLF government to stop land grabbing, force villagization, intimidation, killing of innocent civilian imprisonment and detention of the indigenous peoples and the demonstrators in the country. Furthermore, we would like to call upon the international community to increasingly putting pressures on the TPLF/EPRDF government to stop human rights abuses and crimes against the indigenous communities in Ethiopia, and the release all the indigenous prisoners of Gambella, Beneshangul/Gumuz, Lower Omo Valley of SNNPR, Oromyia, Afar, Ogaden, South, etc, who are kept in different prisons in Ethiopia.

The GNUM/A would like to take this opportunity also to call upon the international community to investigate and condemn this barbaric act of killing, intimidation and harassment of mass protestors in Ethiopia and holds the TPLF/EPRDF regime accountable for all crimes against humanity.

The Gambella Nilotes United Movement/Army (GNUM/A) also takes this opportunity to call upon all the indigenous people of Gambella and pastoral Nilotes of Lower Omo Valley to unite together with other opposition parties fighting against the TPLF/EPRDF government for the emancipation of all the oppressed nations and citizens of Ethiopia. 

In conclusion the Gambella Nilotes United Movement/Army (GNUM/A) will continue its struggle for all people of Gambella and all south western Nilotes Ethiopian to ensure freedom, justice, security and prosperity are brought to our people in the region.

Gambella Nilotes United Movement/Army (GNUM/A) Central Committee 
CONTACT: gambellagnuma@yahoo.com


=>ethiomedia

Irreecha: Guyyaa Aadaa Oromoo

(A4O, 28 Fulbaana 2013) Ayyaanni Irreecha ayyaana galateeffannaa waggaatti altokko Oromoon yeroo birraa walitti dhufee kan darbee itti galateeffatu; ka dhufu immoo itti kadhatuu dha.

Ayyaanni kun seenaa Oromoo waliin hidhata jabaa fi fulla’aa qaba. Gadaa Mormor bara 6400 caalaa fulla’ee fi Gadaa Odaa Nabee bara 1800 ol itti fufee jiru irraa adda bahee kan hin beekne, Ireechaan Oromoo, bara Oromoon nagaa fi bilisummaan jiraataa tures, bara Oromoon dhibdee fi garbummaa keessa jiraataa jirus otuu walirraa hin citiin, jabina abbootii keenyaan baroota kuma jahaa fi dhibba afurii oliif ka fulla’ee dha.

Dhalooti har’aas seenaa fi aadaa boonsaa abbootii keenya irraa dhaalan, Irreeffannaa, sadarkaa olaanaatti ol guddisuuf tattaaffii guddaatti jiran. Sababa kanaan, Irreechan, guyyaa aadaa Oromoo ta’uun akka sabaa fi biyyaalessaatti beekamaa jira. Kana malees, Irreechan, Oromoota eenyummaa fi aadaa saba keenyaaf quuqamaniif guyyaa galateeffannaa callaa miti; karaa itti waan aadaa fi eenyummaa Oromoo itti deebisanii guddisanii dha.

Irreechan guyyaa itti akka sabaatti gamtaan walarganii dhimma har’a itti jiran waliif himan, waan egeree immoo waliin qindeeffatan, guyyaa walooma Oromoo ti. Gamtaan bahanii Irreecha irratti aadaa fi eenyummaa ofii agarsiisuunis mallattoo sabboonummaa ti.

=>gadaa

Water Wars: Egyptians Condemn Ethiopia's Nile Dam Project

As the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam takes shape, tempers rise. 
Peter Schwartzstein in Cairo, National Geographic
September 28, 2013

"Ethiopia is killing us," taxi driver Ahmed Hossam said, as he picked his way through Cairo's notoriously traffic-clogged streets. "If they build this dam, there will be no Nile. If there's no Nile, then there's no Egypt."

Projects on the scale of the $4.7 billion, 1.1-mile-long (1.7-kilometer-long) Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam often encounter impassioned resistance, but few inspire the kind of dread and fury with which most Egyptians regard plans to dam the Blue Nile River.

Egypt insists Ethiopia's hydroelectric scheme amounts to a violation of its historic rights, a breach of the 1959 colonial-era agreement that allocated almost three-fourths of the Nile waters to Egypt, and an existential threat to a country largely devoid of alternative freshwater sources.

But what Egyptians regard as a nefarious plot by its historic adversary to control its water supply, Ethiopians see as an intense source of national pride and a symbol of their country's renewal after the debilitating famines of the 1980s and '90s.

"People are enthusiastic. They're excited, because no leader has tried such a project in Ethiopia's history," said Bitania Tadesse, a recent university graduate from the capital, Addis Ababa. "It's a big deal that is going to be beneficial to future generations."

Intense Water Politics

Ethiopia maintains that Egypt and Sudan downstream have no reason to be fearful. The government says it's merely redressing the inequalities of previous water-sharing arrangements, which had left the nine upstream countries largely bereft of access to the Nile.

But the changing regional dynamic is a tough pill for Egypt to swallow.
For decades it has used its regional clout to stymie the dam-building plans of its impoverished upstream neighbors. International organizations, such as the World Bank, which has financed hydroelectric ventures in the past, shied away from involvement in such a controversial proposal, handing Egypt a de facto veto.
But weakened by several years of economic and political unrest in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Egypt now finds itself ill-placed to counter a resurgent Ethiopia.

A total of "98 percent of Egypt's freshwater comes from outside its borders, and it has exceptionally little leverage," said Angus Blair, an economic and political analyst at Cairo's Signet Institute. "The answer lies with working with its neighbors."

Thus far, however, Egypt has taken a largely belligerent stance.

State and private media have whipped up a current of fierce anti-Ethiopian sentiment, with the several-thousand-strong Oromo community in Egypt bearing the brunt of public suspicion and rage. Many Oromo Ethiopian refugees have been the victims of physical assaults, according to the UN, while a number of online bulletins solicited apartments for Ethiopians after many were evicted from their homes and deprived of medical care in hospitals.

Egypt's politicians were no less inflammatory in their rhetoric.

"Building a dam is tantamount to a declaration of war," a senior Nour Party official said back in June, as he proposed Egyptian support for various separatist movements within Ethiopia if the dam's construction continued.

President Mohamed Morsi also weighed in with a veiled threat shortly before his ouster in a popularly supported military coup in early July, saying that "all options are available to us."
Some Egyptians blame Morsi and his Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group for the dam's fast progress. "They wanted an Islamic caliphate. They didn't care about Egypt as a country, so they did nothing to stop this dam," said shopkeeper Karim Abdallah. But Egypt's position has, if anything, weakened since Morsi's overthrow.

Egypt's southern neighbor, Sudan, has switched sides and chosen to support the dam, not least because Sudan had agreed to an Egyptian request to build an airbase near the Ethiopian border, according to Wikileaks.
"Sudan understands that the dam is in its interests," said Harry Verhoeven, who teaches African politics at the University of Oxford. "It will be able to import the cheap energy it desperately needs.
"Egypt [also] needs to bite the bullet," he added. "Instead of fearing the dam, Egypt should see it as an opportunity to move closer to a region it has traditionally spurned."

Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is often accused of having neglected his African neighbors, and some feel Egypt is now paying the penalty for its preoccupation with its place in the Arab world. "Egypt cannot continue to hurt black Africa and the countries of the tropics of Africa," said Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni this past summer.

Need for Water

Still, Egypt's concerns are far from groundless. Its population is forecast to almost double to 150 million by 2050, so as demand for water surges, its supply will be restricted by the dam. Ethiopia says it's an "unrealistic conception" that the dam will damage Egypt, but for a few years at least (the time it will take for the dam's reservoir to fill), Egypt and Sudan will have to contend with reduced water flow.

Egypt fears that storing water behind the Ethiopian dam will reduce the capacity of its own Lake Nasser (thereby reducing the power-generating capacity of Egypt's giant hydroelectric plant at Aswan). Ethiopian officials have sought to allay fears by pointing out that storing water in the cooler climes of the Ethiopian lowlands will ensure much less water is lost to evaporation, but Egyptians are unconvinced.

"The production of electricity at the Aswan High Dam is likely to drop by almost 40 percent should the Ethiopian dam be built," concluded Nader Noureddin, a professor of agriculture at Cairo University.
Such unease has spawned a bevy of wild theories as to how Ethiopia, poorer and more populous than Egypt, can afford its extensive dam-building program (20 dams in total). "Israel and the U.S. are behind it," insist a number of Egyptian Islamist politicians. "The Chinese are funding this to get back at us for supporting the Americans," a friend in Cairo recently suggested.

The Chinese are certainly involved, but there's nothing conspiratorial about it. Chinese state-owned Sinohydro is the world's largest dam builder and accounts for over 50 percent of recently constructed dams. "China simply sees this as terrific business," Verhoeven said.

The Ethiopian government insists it's capable of raising the necessary funds itself, and the country's sizeable diaspora is helping out. Tadle Haile, a retired school counselor from Northern Virginia, has given money, and said that "everybody I've talked to [in the Ethiopian community] says they have as well." The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington even offers advice on how to buy bonds to finance the dam.

But how much longer the country will be able to self-finance its ambitious projects is a contentious issue. State employees have already been "invited" to surrender a month's salary, and "there is a collectivist pressure to accept," lawyer Daniel Berhane said. "Few Ethiopians would dare complain about anything to do with the Nile, as it's a symbol of patriotism."

The dam is now 20 percent built, and on schedule to be completed by 2017, according to Ethiopian officials. The Grand Renaissance Dam, it seems, is going to get built. But what happens next depends on how Egypt adjusts to its changed circumstances.


"Egypt needs to wake up to the new world," Verhoeven said. "This doesn't need to be a problem."


=>ethiomedia

Sakharov and the fight for a free press in Ethiopia

By Mohamed Keita/CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator

Ethiopian journalists Eskinder Nega and Reeyot Alemu. (Lennart Kjörling and IWMF)

In 1968, Andrei Sakharov braved censorship and personal risk in the Soviet Union to give humanity an honest and timeless declaration of conscience. That same year, Ethiopia's most prominent dissenter, Eskinder Nega, was born. In January 1981, a year into Sakharov's exile in the closed city of Gorky, Reeyot Alemu, another fierce, Ethiopian free thinker, was born.

In considering both Eskinder, a veteran journalist and free speech activist, and Reeyot, a teacher and newspaper columnist, for the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize, the selection committee is recognizing two uncompromising idealists and indomitable free thinkers who have stubbornly persisted in telling inconvenient truths about their government in a country silenced by fear.

For Eskinder, who has spent the last two decades in and out of jail enduring arrests, intimidation, the closures of his newspapers, and the arrest of his wife and the birth of his son in prison, you would think fear, anger, and bitterness would be natural emotions. Instead, the writings of the American-educated journalist have consistently reflected a clear commitment to peaceful reform with pointed, thoughtful critiques of the unkept promises of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which maintains a tight stranglehold on the country.

In a 2010 interview--in between two prison confinements--he argued that Ethiopia needs democracy "to moderate the [ethnic] differences" and prevent violent conflict or revolution. Asked whether he believed the EPRDF could reform, his answer was unequivocal: "That's the only way. We have to hope against hope."

Then, he added: "I believe in forgiving, by the way, that we shouldn't have any grudge against the EPRDF, despite what it has done. I believe that the best thing for the country is reconciliation. I believe in the South African experience."

At the onset of the Arab Spring, Eskinder, inspired by the Egyptian military's decision not to attack anti-government protesters, wrote an online article urging Ethiopian soldiers not to crush the people, as they had done in 2005, should demonstrations break out. The ruling party and the state security's overreaction to the column betrayed its paranoid insecurity: a top police official issued a death threat and a final warning to Eskinder, accusing him of inciting the public against the regime.

In a first-person account of the experience, Eskinder wrote that he left the police station hopeful, and heartened to hear one of the officers escorting him say, "We are all children from one country. We are all human beings. Political differences can be resolved by peaceful dialogue, and we don't have to kill each other."

A few months later, as the EPRDF invoked a nebulous terrorist plot to round up dissident journalists, lawyers, teachers, and academics, Eskinder aired what weighed on his conscience again. "None of the recent detainees under the terrorism charges remotely resemble the profile [of a terrorist]. Debebe is probably the ultimate antithesis of the fanatic, his pragmatism, his easy nature, defines him," he wrote, referring to prominent actor Debebe Eshetu. "Neither do journalists Woubshet [Taye] and Reeyot [Alemu] and opposition politician Zerihun Gebre-Egzabher fit the profile. The same goes for the calm university professor, Bekele Gerba." Just five days after writing those words, Eskinder was arrested, joining Alemu behind bars.

The daughter of a lawyer, Alemu was known for her very sharp reproaches of the societal ills under the EPRDF's Orwellian system, including dogmatic narrow-mindedness, the stifling of creative thought, and human rights abuses. Alemu attributes her intellectual courage to parents that encouraged her to speak her mind and Arthur Shopenhauer's maxim that "truth works far and lives long."

Passionate about education and politics, she taught English at a secondary school and launched a newspaper aptly called Change, before becoming a freelance columnist in Amharic-language newspapers. In 2012, a collection of her articles were published in a book called The EPRDF's Red Pen, a critical examination of what she deemed as the detrimental effects of the party's repressive policies on Ethiopian society. The book could be an Ethiopian version of "The Inertia of Fear," the scathing 1968 commentary on the Soviet system by Valentin Turchin, a Sakharov contemporary and fellow dissident.

The comparison is apt when you consider Ethiopia's past as a Soviet-style, totalitarian state, and its current reincarnation as an African model of China's authoritarian, one-party capitalism.

The current rulers overthrew the pro-Soviet regime in the name of establishing what they deemed true socialism and freedom of self-determination. It is a tragic irony that the once idealist freedom fighters have come to use their power to banish journalists, teachers, lawyers, actors, and other intellectuals to a 21st-century gulag for using peaceful means, i.e., writing articles, to demand reform.

It is an irony that was not lost on Eskinder. "Martin Amis wrote, quoting Alexander Solzhenitsyn, that Stalinism (in the 1930s) tortured you not to force you to reveal a secret, but to collude in a fiction. This is also the basic rationale of the unfolding human rights crisis in Ethiopia. And the same 1930s bravado that show-trials can somehow vindicate banal injustice pervades official thinking. Wont to unlearn from history, we aptly repeat even its most brazen mistakes," he wrote in a letter from prison published in The Independent.

Eskinder and Reeyot's principled defense of intellectual freedom has exposed the Ethiopian government's methods of fear and intimidation as crude and impotent. Reading the article Eskinder published five days before his arrest, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Carl Bernstein described him as "the embodiment of the greatness of truth, of writing and reporting real truth, of persisting in truth and resisting the oppression of untruths."

In a note from prison, Reeyot, upon accepting the International Women's Media Foundation's Courage in Journalism Award last year, wrote: "For EPRDF, journalists must be only propaganda machines to the ruling party. But for me, journalists are the voices of the voiceless. That's why I wrote many articles which reveal the truth of the oppressed ones. Even if I am facing a lot of problems because of it, I always stand firmly for my principle and profession."

Dr. Sakharov would be very proud.

Mohamed Keita is advocacy coordinator for CPJ's Africa Program. He regularly gives interviews in French and English to international news media on press freedom issues in Africa and has participated in several panels. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ.

=>cpj

No Human Rights = No Development

Oakland Institute and the Housing and Land Rights Network
Submit Human Rights Report on Ethiopia to the United Nations 
By Anuradha Mittal amittal@oaklandinstitute.org; Emily Mattheisen emattheisen@hic.mena.org
September 27, 2013

OAKLAND CA - In a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on September 15, 2013, the Oakland Institute and the Housing and Land Rights Network outlined the human rights and international law violations perpetrated by the government of Ethiopia in the name of country's development strategy.

Drawing clear links between recorded testimonies on the ground and breaches of specific international covenants and articles in Ethiopia's constitution, the joint submission to the UN Human Rights Council also responds to Ethiopia's draft National Human Rights Action Plan for 2013-2015. "Rather than working to build a development strategy grounded in human rights, the Ethiopian government is attempting to hoodwink its human rights record, leaving unmentioned its villagization program and the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation-both used by the government as significant justifications for forced resettlement, arbitrary detentions, and politically motivated arrests," said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

As previous Oakland Institute reports have chronicled, the Ethiopian government's efforts to clear land for large-scale foreign investment has entailed widespread violations of human, social, economic, and political rights. Violations of citizen's rights to self-determination, housing, land for subsistence production, and free political association--enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution, the Rural Land Administration and Land Use Proclamation, and in United Nations international covenants--are carried out in the name of development.

The joint UPR submission suggests that the ruling party's ability to implement country's unpopular villagization program rests in its monopoly on force and dominance over the allocation of humanitarian assistance. "Authoritarian governance and the methods used in implementing development projects have combined to violate human rights to livelihood and culture for land-based peoples, especially in the peripheral regions," said Joseph Schechla, Coordinator of the Housing and Land Rights Network. "Involuntary resettlement, a form of forced evictions, accompanies deprivation of the right to food, including the right to feed oneself, particularly for agropastoralists. On the other hand, the ability to control information and stifle dissent has enabled the ruling party to present a positive face to the international community, which has dubbed Ethiopia a nation in "renaissance", he continued.

The joint submission presents undeniable evidence that should compel the international community to advocate for a human rights centered development strategy that would benefit all Ethiopians.


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Ethiopia bans access to student's critical article

Cristina Holtzer / Staff Writer |

Abigail Salisbury is an enemy of the state of Ethiopia because of an op-ed column she published online. 

Salisbury, a student in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, spoke about her article to an audience of about 10 in a “Let’s Talk Africa” lecture on Wednesday in 4130 Posvar Hall from 1:30 to 3 p.m. The Ethiopian government blocked her article, titled “Human Rights and the War on Terror in Ethiopia,” one day after she published it online.

While in Ethiopia, Salisbury noticed an extreme lack of freedom of speech and press for Ethiopian people and decided to write the piece, which criticizes the Ethiopian government.

Salisbury was working as an assistant professor at Mekelle University Law School, a small college outside of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, when she published the article. After the university administration discovered her article, Salisbury said the university “basically asked [her] not to work there anymore.”

“I was told that, based on what I wrote, that if I had been an Ethiopian person, I would have been put in prison,” Salisbury said. “I don’t think they want me back.”

Ironically enough, Salisbury said, she was in the country teaching international human-rights law, a class required for graduation from law school in Ethiopia.

Anna-Maria Karnes, a representative of the Africana studies department, also attended the lecture and interjected throughout. Karnes, whose parents live in Ethiopia, has a thorough grasp of the political climate in the country.

“Skype was outlawed two years ago in Ethiopia,” Karnes said. “There were people jailed for using Skype.”

When Karnes first discovered the Skype law, she worried that she would not be able to get in touch with her parents because that was their primary source of communication. But Skype was illegal only for Ethiopians, not for foreigners.

“As a Westerner, you are treated differently,” Salisbury said. “Better.”

Ethiopians subscribe to a different race and caste system than many Americans are used to. Salisbury said that when African-Americans traveled to Ethiopia, they were treated the same as whites. Ethiopians believe that everyone else in Africa is black but that they, themselves, are red skinned. 

Salisbury recounted a story of when someone in the street approached her and asked, “Have you seen any black women today?”

Salisbury said she was surprised by the scale of differences between the learning environments in Ethiopia and the U.S.

Because of the country’s limited resources, students learn to memorize verbatim what professors say in lecture. Salisbury said she’s seen students reproduce a lecture right down to the “ums” and “likes.”

Ethiopian education also differs from Western education because, Salisbury said, there could be “watchers” present at any time, in any classroom. Watchers are government representatives on the lookout for those speaking out against the government.

“What would creep me out if I were in that class?” Salisbury said. “I don’t know if I would be raising my hand with opinions.”

In addition to an extreme lack of freedom of speech, Salisbury said Ethiopians also struggle with tough racial tensions and “ethnic federalism,” or preferential treatment for one ethnic group that is officially recognized by the government. With Ethiopia located in a contentious part of the world, Salisbury said U.S.-Ethiopia relations are crucial.

“Ethiopia is really instrumental in the U.S. agenda and the global war on terror that we’re engaged in,” she said.

Salisbury and Karnes opened the presentation with an activity about African knowledge. They divided the audience into small groups and asked them to label a map of Africa with the names of as many countries as they could. Even with several African students and faculty in the audience, no one was able to label the entire map.

“You can’t know the whole of Africa,” Director of Africana Studies Macrina Lelei said. “That’s part of why we have African studies here at Pitt ... to share those experiences.”

=>pittnews

The Brain of the Bale Rebellion, Sheik Musa Bati, Died at the Age of 70

By Kadiro Elemo | September 26, 2013

The Oromo nation is saddened by the news of the death of Musa Bati, on Wednesday, September 24, 2013, in Nagelle Borana, Southern Oromiya. Musa Bati, who earned an honorific title of Sheikh—elder, in Arabic—at his salad age, because of his knowledge of Arabic and Somali, was among the pioneers of the Bale peasants’ resistance against the Ethiopian rule in 1960s and 1970s to end the humiliating yoke of tribute-giving, land dispossession, and cultural suffocations. A close confidante of General Waqo Gutu, Sheikh Musa led the Oromo fighters during many ferocious battles including the landmark battle of Dhombir, 1963. Because of the heroic activities of Sheikh Musa against Ethiopian army and naftanya marchers, his family paid a heavy cost. In one morning of the early 1960s, when Ethiopian jets raided his village, his family lost their entire stock, more than 300 cattle and camels. In the raids, which lasted for three days, the Oromo peasants lost more than 12,000 livestock and an untold number of people. At the time when the Oromos were unwelcomed in the administration, civil service, schools, media, justice systems of the empire, this tragedy was a major turning point in his life. This increased, according to Zaytuna Bati, a niece of Sheik Musa, the determination of the Sheikh, and his friends, to fight for the right of his people until they achieve victory over the invaders that despised their culture and robbed their land.

As a prolific writer, who earned a name of “brain of the revolution,” Sheikh Musa was a man in charge of keeping the diaries of the struggle and negotiating with enemies. In the late 1960s, when he met Emperor Hayla Sillase to negotiate an armistice and a peace deal, the emperor hardly believed his eyes when he saw a young man in the early 20s. The skinny boy did not meet the expectation of the emperor who heard a lot about bravery of an imaginary Sheikh. Then, the emperor said, “I want to deal with Sheikh Musa, a big one, not a baby one.” A witness had to come to prove to the emperor that he was dealing with Sheikh Musa, the real and the only one. When the confused emperor offered him a chance to go to school and a car, Sheikh Musa told him that his main demand was to ask the empire stop its abuses and violent repressions of the Oromo people, and he rejected his offer until the same chance extended to all Oromo children.

Except a brief exile in Somalia, Sheikh Musa refused to leave the country he loved most, Oromiya. He returned to the country after the fall of the military dictatorship of Mangistu Hayla Marya in 1991. He participated in the Transitional Government of Ethiopia, during the Transitional Charter Period. He remained in Oromiya even when the EPRDF government, after the transition charter period, led a monstrous clamped down on all democratic rights and brutally suppressed the Oromo people’s quest for self-determination. A fearless advocate of the Oromo people, Sheikh Musa of “dubbii sibilaa” (hard talk) was arrested for many years, at Hurso and Agarfa, along a prominent Oromo activists and elders. He was released after his health deteriorated, and when Mahmud Bune, a brother of Colonel Hussein Bune, another icon of the Bale rebellion, died in a prison. Sheikh Musa was 70 and survived by more than 20 children, some of whom still languishing in prison houses of Ethiopia on concocted charges of supporting anti-peace elements. We shall have ample occasions to remember the legacy of Sheikh Musa Bati during a commemoration of the 50th year anniversary of the modern Oromo military struggle against the Ethiopian rule. We shall display a video message of the Sheikh Musa Bati to the Oromos and friends of the Oromos, on October 20, 2013, in Minnesota, during the 50th year anniversary celebration, via Facebook, and YouTube. Maatii Sheekh Muusaafi firoota isaaniif Rabbin obsa haa kennu.

=>bilisummaa