The Rape Victim Who Fought Back and Shamed a Nation

Aberash Bekele in a scene from Schoolgirl Killer in 1998. SCHOOLGIRL KILLER DOCUMENTARY

January 9, 2015 (Newsweek) — The woman who greets me at Addis Ababa airport is very different from the traumatised girl I last saw in 1998. When I hugged Aberash Bekele goodbye 16 years ago, I had just finished filming a BBC documentary about her called Schoolgirl Killer. At 14, Bekele was kidnapped by a gang of horsemen, raped and then put on trial for killing her abductor. Her story forced Ethiopia to confront its brutal customs and change its laws. Today she’s the mother of a 10-year-old son;  she’s plumper, her hair is hennaed and styled, her shoes sparkly, her nails varnished gold. Her story has now been made into a feature film called Difret. Executive produced by Angelina Jolie, Difret has already won awards at the Sundance, Berlin, Montreal and Amsterdam film festivals and Bekele is once again the talk of the nation.

Bekele is one of 11 children (now aged between 52 and 19) by the same mother and grew up outside Kersa, a small remote town in Arsii, southern Ethiopia, where her parents are subsistence farmers. She was on her way home from school when horsemen with whips and lassoos surrounded her, grabbed her, threw her over a saddle and took her to a hut where she was locked up and raped. Her rapist then announced he was her husband-to-be. In Arsii it was the custom that if you wanted a wife you went out and kidnapped one and it’s estimated that, in 1998, 30% of marriages were initiated this way, with varying levels of violence.

Bekele escaped, stealing the guard’s gun. When her abductor and his men gave chase, she threatened to fire but they ignored her. So she pulled the trigger. Bekele was nearly murdered by the furious mob that gathered but was rescued by family friends, then arrested and put on trial. She became the first cause célèbre for the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association and was finally released on the grounds of her youth and acting in self-defence. Despite her release, Bekele was exiled by the Kersa elders who didn’t recognise the courts. Unable to return to her family, and in danger from revenge threats by her dead abductor’s family, she fled to Addis.

When Schoolgirl Killer aired on the BBC in 1999, it struck a chord with the British public, who sent in enough money to send Bekele to a safe boarding school to finish her education. I lost touch with her until last year when an Ethiopian cameraman alerted me to Difret. I went to see it at the London Film Festival. Centre stage, as the main character, rather than Bekele, was Meaza Ashenafi, the then head of the Women Lawyers’ Association, whom I had interviewed for Schoolgirl Killer. The producers had changed Bekele’s name, but some scenes in the film were almost identical to Schoolgirl Killer. I found Bekele and flew to Addis.

Bekele now works there for Harmee, an NGO that aims to eliminate violence against women in Arsii. Dr Daniel Keftassa, who founded Harmee in 2006, picked me up from the airport with Bekele and we made the five-hour drive to Kersa, where Harmee has its headquarters, and where Bekele’s family still lives. On the way, she told me about the film. She was never consulted during its making, and when she found out about it and confronted Ashenafi and the producers, they told her the film was not about her.

Rounds of legal negotiation followed but no-one agreed to put Bekele’s name on the film. So, on the night of the film’s première, she obtained a last minute court injunction to stop it being screened. The producers had just screened Jolie’s televised address, in which she said that Difret was based on the “untold story of Aberash Bekele,” when she arrived with the necessary papers. Bekele ultimately signed an agreement, which means she feels unable to complain or take further action. Meanwhile, the film was temporarily released in Ethiopia but blocked again by the children of Bekele’s defence barrister. The film’s producers did not respond to a request for comment nor did Jolie’s personal assistant acknowledge receipt of emails.

Bekele, Keftassa and I arrived in Kersa. Apart from a new mosque, it’s the same shambles of mud and corrugated iron shacks strung along a few dirt roads. We went immediately to see Bekele’s family, who live a walk away from a new dirt road in a thatched hut on their farm. After eating, we sat around a fire under the stars. The grandchildren began dancing as one of the daughters beat out a rhythm on a plastic jerrycan and the family sung traditional Oromo songs. Bekele looked happy as she sat in her father’s embrace, a small nephew on her knee. Her brother told me about the day she was abducted. He was in the same class at school and went home early. As he cradled his infant son, it clearly still haunted him that he was unable to protect his sister.

Aberash Bekele with her father and family members today. ABERASH BEKELE PERSONAL PHOTO

After Bekele’s high profile case, abductions dropped in Arsii; none were reported for five years. Bekele’s older sister Mestawet is now 50. She was also abducted into marriage at 14. When we filmed her for Schoolgirl Killer, she was living in a hovel that also served as a bar, pouring home-brewed Arak to men, bringing up four small children. She had been a contemporary of the athlete Derartu Tulu, the first black African woman to win an Olympic gold at Barcelona in 1992. Mestawet, too, had been picked to run for her country and had been about to depart when she was kidnapped. Though she later left her husband, the elders persuaded her to return. She is now a grandmother and lives in a small new house running Harmee’s compound for Keftassa. Her eldest daughter is at college studying IT, the youngest at school. “I was married against my will so I will never be satisfied or happy but things are much better,” she said. “Kidnapping here has been minimised. Bekele paved the way because men started to be scared of what girls can do but only some have really changed their minds.”

The impact of Bekele’s high-profile case was immediate, but in the last few years abductions are back to seven or eight a year and late last year a 14-year-old was kidnapped. When her abductor tried to rape her, the girl fought so hard that he enlisted his friend to help tie her up. He kept her bound and hidden in the forest for a month, repeatedly raping her. To end the torture, the girl agreed to marry him. At the earliest opportunity, she stole his mobile and called her brother. Her abductor was given 17 years in jail. Bekele applauds the sentence but worries, like her sister, about whether the male mindset has truly changed. “How could that man have thought the girl would want to be his wife after what he did to her? Shame on him!” she said.

Bekele is now determined to change the violent customs that have scarred her life. Her work with Keftassa and Harmee is already yielding results in Arsii, where more girls are being educated and learning to stand up against the traditions that have subdued them for so long. Recently another girl was grabbed, hurled into a horse-drawn cart and driven off, but she screamed so loudly and the local women were so alert to abductions that they gave chase. The kidnappers threw the girl out of the cart. She was severely injured but her abductor was sent to jail for 12 years.

One night in Kersa, Bekele, Keftassa and I sat talking until late, reminiscing about the day she finally obtained the court order that ruined the film’s première. “I counted 11 big Mercedeses dropping off actors that night,” remembers Keftassa. “They swept up the red carpet, so high, so honoured, to meet Meaza and other important people. Meanwhile, far from the celebrations, running around out there seeking justice was Aberash. Aberash! The one who went through all the pain and all the trauma. I despair of people’s greed and ego that they can say it’s not her story.”

The film’s producers have now invited Bekele to Los Angeles in December, but she has been refused a visa. Though the film continues to be blocked in Ethiopia, distribution deals have been secured throughout Europe and Jolie enthused about its forthcoming release in the UK, when she hosted a special screening of the film during the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, which she co-chaired with the British foreign secretary William Hague. She  reportedly said, “I cried for the first 20 minutes and then I smiled for the rest of it thinking I can’t wait for the world to see it because it will make a change.”

Of course, any change that helps end violence towards girls is welcome. While anyone to whom the cause of Ethiopa’s young women is important applauds the makers of the film for their good work, Bekele remains without a credit on the film. Today, she could be bathing in the glow of international admiration for her extraordinary courage and resilience. Instead she is invisible, her story taken.

“I feel doubly abducted,” she said.

=>ayyaantuu

THE IMPLICATIONS OF HIGH LEVEL DEFECTIONS FROM THE ETHIOPIAN AIR FORCE

By Sokore Waqo 

The recent defection of Ethiopian Air Force crew with MI-35 helicopter has sent shockwaves to the corridors of power in Addis Ababa. The ruling elites are increasingly displaying pugnacious behavior. They lashed out at the pilot, labeling him a “traitor”. And they lambasted Ethiopia’s enemies (which the Defense Ministry statement referred to as Shabiya’s agents and mercenaries) for conspiring to destabilize the country and presumably being involved in the defection covertly.  Adding to the setback TPLF had already suffered, unconfirmed reports on another round of defection of four pilots from the Ethiopian Air Force to neighboring Kenya were circulating in the last few days.  It is believed that similar waves of defections are even more rampant in the Army. In fact, these waves of defections are telling signs that TPLF’s reliance on coercive institutions to continue its grip on power is reaching its limits. Professor Messay Kebede, a notable scholar and commentator on Ethiopian politics, had written a compelling prognosis few weeks ago explaining this “slippery ground of TPLF’s power strategy”.  Thus, the essence of Messay’s prognosis is that with increasing reliance on coercion as a power strategy, TPLF only hastens its inevitable fall from power for this could possibly trigger resistance against the regime both from within the government and from the resentful members of the public.

In my view, there are chiefly three frontiers that explain TPLF’s ability to hold on state power virtually alone since May 1991. These are tight control over coercive state institutions, trading on democracy building and lately claiming to advance economic development under the rubric of a “developmental state”.

Command and control of coercive state institutions as a solid power strategy

The first has always been the major and most effective weapon in TPLF’s power strategy.  It seems to me that TPLF leaders have always been very transparent about their reliance on coercion as a method of statecraft or governance. To be sure, in TPLF’s loose political coalition – so-called EPRDF – political weight is a function of the havoc one had wreaked during the insurgency years with the Dergue regime rather than a function of building constituencies that could win an election.  Consequently, key positions in coercive state institutions and public resources were selectively handed to TPLF core members who are believed to have paid more “sacrifice” in blood and sweat in removing the Dergue dictatorship.  So to speak, all the Rawlsian primary goods – liberties, opportunities and income and wealth – are unfairly distributed to the high ranking officers in the coercive state institutions.  Thus, the military or other security organs of the state are the entry points for those who intend to become career politicians or wealthy business men. Indeed, the military profession as an entry point to politics and business has always been the legacy in historic Ethiopia except that TPLF intensified this practice with an ethnic twist.

The fault lines of reliance on command and control of coercive institutions

The strategy of populating senior positions in coercive state institutions with loyal cadres from the insurgency years might have been effective so far in serving TPLF’s political ambitions. But there are growing signs of its fault lines recently. The supposedly loyal members of the coercive state institutions, specifically the middle and low ranking officers, are increasingly dissatisfied with the soaring cost of living and maladministration in their institutions in particular,  and worsening political and economic conditions in the country in general. For this reason, some of them are electing to defect risking their lives. A case in point is the crew of the MI-35 helicopter who defected to Eritrea last week.  Members of the crew were from different ethnic backgrounds, including from Tigray. To the dismay of TPLF leaders, the crew members put aside their ethnic differences and acted in unison to land the helicopter in Eritrea.  Now loyalty based on primordial relationship is being put under severe test.  This is really what enraged the TPLF leaders than loss of the MI-35 gunship to their arch-rival regime in Asmara because TPLF benefits from fomenting ethnic tensions and creating animosity among the staff in the security institutions. Hereafter, who is going to be a trusted functionary of TPLF to the last minute even from the staff in the security institutions? Now, therefore, TPLF leaders cannot be sure enough if the officers they have assigned in coercive state institutions would stand with them when the political storm of the oppressed Ethiopians surface violently.

A lesson or two for the junior partners of TPLF and the opposition

There is a lesson to be learnt by the junior partners of TPLF’s government in particular and the opposition in general. For the junior partners, they have a clear opportunity presenting itself to them. That TPLF’s last frontier to continue exercising grip on power – the skewed arrangement of balance of power in the coercive state institutions – is on a downward spiral. If the junior partners can seize the momentum, there is likelihood to cut back TPLF’s dominance in the coercive state institutions thereby facilitating the conditions for “equal partnership” in the loose coalition I have passingly mentioned above.

Again, for the junior partners, seizing the momentum is now or never for two reasons. First, if the junior partners fail to sense this opportunity, TPLF core leaders will get time to regroup like wolves and redesign a framework for perpetual subduing of the junior partners. Second, with the increasing use of naked power to silence regime opponents and growing dissatisfaction of Ethiopians due to the prevalent chronic political and economic problems in the country, TPLF may trigger a widespread political storm that could hasten its fall from grace. With the demise of TPLF, undoubtedly the junior partners would also be swept under the rug.

For the garden-variety regime opponents, it is time to stop wholesale assignment of blame on the Tigreans for the ills created by the TPLF regime on the unfounded ground that TPLF’s social/political base is Tigray. TPLF is an organization that plies its trade through coercion; it is reluctant to build constituencies and base its political survival on adequate representation of the interests of its constituents. For this reason alone, it is not fair to assume that TPLF has the political support of all Tigreans. Besides, at a time when the members of the coercive state institutions are defecting in opposition to regime’s rogue actions from all ethnic backgrounds, it doesn’t make any sense at all to single out those from Tigray. When opportunities avail themselves they are equally resistant to TPLF’s authoritarian rule. To be specific, Abreha Desta’s courageous struggle against TPLF tyranny, despite many odds and his suffering at the Maikelawi prison, is a testament to this very assertion. After all, on what moral/political ground can we reproach the Tigreans while the so-called silent majority in the rest of the country has apparently acquiesced to the authoritarian rule of TPLF?

The faltering of democracy building as a legitimation strategy

The second ground of legitimation for TPLF’s government – democracy building – has already faltered. TPLF enacted a constitution in 1995, established a “Federal Democratic Republic”, incorporated all kinds of individual  rights and freedoms as well as collective rights into the constitution,  stipulated that sovereignty lies not in the government but the Ethiopian people hinting that government is based on the consent of the people, etc.

In its practice in the last twenty years, however, TPLF adequately demonstrated that it has no intention to abide by the rules and standards stipulated in its own constitution. The sovereignty of Ethiopian people has been denied as TPLF refused to sanction free and fair elections. The second republic, that was presumed to be federal and based on the self-government of the diverse ethno-cultural communities, did not come close to a true “Federal Democratic Republic”  since  TPLF was determined to exercise totalitarian power over the whole country as a matter of fact. The much-admired individual and collective rights stipulated in the constitution remained hollow promises for they were reluctantly breached rather than being observed for political expediency. Institutions that were established by the constitution, to serve as custodians of these rights and put a limit on governmental overreach, were either structurally flawed from the beginning or starved of revenue and competent personnel. The regular courts (at federal and regions) lack institutional independence from the state and party structure of TPLF, and cannot, therefore, be relied on by citizens as the last bulwark for ensuring their rights. The Ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission are run not by independents but apologists of the TPLF regime. The House of Federation, which is established to protect the fundamental rights of citizens and curb unconstitutional excesses of power by the government through constitutional interpretation, lacks the essential characters of a constitutional court, and therefore, practically unable to carry out its functions. As a result of all these anomalies, democracy building under TPLF has lost any credibility.


Why developmental state is not the answer for TPLF’s legitimacy crisis

The third ground on which TPLF claims to have legitimacy to rule has to do with economic development. TPLF emphatically claims that it has the recipe for Ethiopia’s rapid and sustainable economic development far better than neo-liberal economic policies advanced by the opposition due to suitability and relevance of its “developmental state” policy to Ethiopia’s peculiar economic problems. Accordingly, it has issued reports of progress claiming Ethiopia’s economy has grown by 11% in the last decade as a result of implementing the policies of a “developmental state” where the state plays a pivotal role in the economy. However, there are many reasons not to trust such an extremely exaggerated claim by TPLF and its external allies. First and foremost, the benefits of the said rapid economic growth have not meaningfully trickled down to the majority of the Ethiopian citizens so far. Second, youth unemployment is still rampant. Third, food insecurity is still a permanent feature of the Ethiopian agrarian economy. Fourth, income and wealth inequality, which was reversed by the Dergue regime’s sweeping measures of ‘land to the tiller’ in the rural areas and redistribution of urban land and extra houses, is roaring back as a fundamental feature of Ethiopia’s political economy. Fifth, rampant corruption and embezzlement of public funds due to nonexistence of oversight mechanisms and institutions is facilitating capital flight in billions of dollars from Ethiopia annually.   Finally, TPLF government institutions lack technocratic elites and efficient bureaucracy which are vital for successfully carrying out the mega development projects sponsored by a developmental state.

The interview

Allow me to allude to a side issue to explain my last point by taking one recent example – the Interview. I am not talking about the film by Sony Pictures allegedly hacked by North Koreans. I am referring to the interview an Egyptian television station (Nile TV International) recently conducted with the Ethiopian Speaker of the Parliament. It is not my intention to go through all the content of the interview. My intention is to only raise two points that were striking to me and illustrative of the ineptness of TPLF government functionaries. One has to do with Speaker Aba Dula’s choice of words to describe the relationship between Egypt and Ethiopia since ancient times. He said, “the Fer’on pyramid was Aksumite kingdom”.  This assertion is “nonsense upon stilts” to borrow a famous phrase used by Jeremy Bentham (leading British philosopher and jurist of the early 19th century) in his critique of natural rights. If the Speaker meant the Egyptian pyramids were built by the Aksumite kingdom, this is not going to sink well with the Egyptians who are very proud of their ancient civilization. This is not going to be a “public diplomacy” envisaged by TPLF either, but an insult to the intelligence of the Egyptian people.

The second has to do with the apology issued by the Speaker to the Egyptian media for the coincidence of the Egyptian revolution and the initiation of the Grand Renaissance Dam on the Nile. If you claim the case to be a happenstance by coincidence, there is no logic necessitating apology. But if the apology is one for starting the very construction of the dam, then the Speaker is explaining the latest position of the Ethiopian government (as a high ranking official) on the controversy over the construction of the dam. Otherwise, the Ethiopian government must take further measures showing the Speaker’s comments do not represent the position of the government on the matter.  Hence, one of the measures could be impeaching the Speaker for incompetence.

Inept officials are inimical to developmental state policy

Imagine now how inept officials like the Speaker (I suspect the Speaker is not alone in the wilderness of inertness in TPLF’s government) could be antithetical to the creeds of a developmental state – efficiency, effectiveness, technocracy, competitiveness, prudence and decisiveness. Filling the government with such inert people turns the claimed “developmental state” into anti-developmental primitive political entity.  I believe TPLF is deliberately doing this for political reasons (to maintain its supremacy in the EPRDF) although assignment of officials based on loyalty rather than competence could hurt its professed economic policies of a “developmental state”. One may ask whether this is a good trade off.  This being as it may, Aba Dula’s recent interview with an Egyptian media gave us an opportunity to see the contradiction between wanting loyalty in the political sphere and desiring competence in the economic sphere.  Now let’s contrast the leadership qualities of Ras Gobena and Aba Dula vis-à-vis both of whom critique is often hurled for lack of agency, political vision, and by extension, incompetence.

Ras Gobena versus Aba Dula

Without denying the controversial legacy of Ras Gobena, it is fair to say that he relatively excels Speaker Aba Dula in many aspects including courage, diplomatic skills and characters of a competent statesman. Nonetheless, it is not uncommon to hear a charge pressed against Ras Gobena for his decisions and actions during the early expansion and consolidation of the modern Ethiopian state: that he had no wisdom to have his own political ambition – of founding the modern Ethiopian state as a co-equal with Menelik – but a mere vassal of the latter. Despite such criticism marshalled against Gobena by some ethno-liberationists and their disciples, some historical records reveal that Gobena was the most capable war general of his generation. For instance, Gobena was able to subdue the resistance in Gurage region after Menelik lost at a battlefield with Chaha tribe of the Gurage in October 1876 (see Bahru Zewde, The Aymallal Gurage in the Nineteenth Century: A Political History in SOCIETY & STATE IN ETHIOPIAN HISTORY: SELECTED ESSAYS, (2012) p.67). According to Bahru, Menelik “was defeated and a large number of Amhara captives were sold to Wallayta by the victors. Only one-third of Menilek’s men returned safely. Among those killed in the battle was Alaqa Zanab, author of the first chronicle of Emperor Tewodros”

In contrast, Gobena led a successful expedition against Qabena and Walane tribes of the Gurage region in July 1880 and quelled their rebellion. A noteworthy point here is that Menelik was advised by Gobena to pull back his forces after he had crossed the Awash River to confront the said Gurage tribes because Gobena didn’t want his partner to lose another battle in the region and anticipated what another loss would mean for their bigger political project at hand. Again, in the same Gurage region, Gobena defeated Hassan Enjamo, who was able to mobilize Gurages and other Muslims against the Shewan forces, in 1889 killing more than 3,000 of their men while losing his son (Merid) and 29 fighters. It can be safely said that Gobena’s capacity at organizing and leading war campaigns as well as his diplomatic skills in negotiating peaceful settlement with regional powers to bring their territories under the suzerainty of the emerging modern Ethiopian state at the time was unparalleled. Hence, Gobena’s hand in bringing the western territories from Wollega to Jimma and Beni Shangul to Gambella is reminiscent of a competent statesmanship.

However, the new Gobena of TPLF, the honorable Speaker of the Ethiopian Parliament, (if the criticism against Ras Gobena for vassalage holds) has shown no wherewithal of a statesman in his interview with the Egyptian media. He can only function as a statesman under the tutelage of TPLF in TPLF’s political empire. Well, Aba Dula’s pedigree also includes that of a war general like Ras Gobena, but TPLF has not been generous enough so far in publicizing his battlefield achievements. Until the shenanigan empire of TPLF discloses the former general’s military achievements, we are entitled to believe that Gobena excels as a warrior based on available historical records. Surprisingly enough, as one can glean from his online biography, the educational credentials he earned from China, the United States and the United Kingdom were not adequate to lift his veil of ignorance. In my view, the two Gobenas are incomparable: the earlier Gobena – a true statesman who cofounded modern Ethiopia with Menelik; the new Gobena – a remarkably inept messenger of TPLF.  It is my contention that TPLF might have encouraged the Speaker to do the interview in English, a language, they know, he doesn’t have good command of, to expose his ineptness and to send a chilling message to his OPDO colleagues that the top position in Arat Kilo is beyond their reach because one of their own failed to effectively represent the government in external relations when given the opportunity.  Now, we can connect the dots and surmise why Juneidi Saddo, another TPLF protégé, was discharged dishonorably from the government in November 2012. At least, he could have given a decent interview in English to an international media or effectively represent the government on international platforms thereby raising the hopes of rank and file OPDO members to start thinking one of their own could possibly take the chief executive position in the government or wreak havoc till their aspiration in this regard is given a serious consideration.  Thus, it seems to me that TPLF got rid of him to nip in the bud any potent internal power struggle.

Having said all that about the ineptness of TPLF government officials and having discussed the reasons for which reliance on coercion or building a developmental state may no longer be effective power strategies for TPLF, I would like to wind my opinion of part I of this write-up by posing the following questions to be examined in detail in part II.  What should be prioritized in our thoughts in the new year of 2015 to unshackle ourselves from the yoke of TPLF’s tyranny?  Unless we are clear headed about what we want, what our priorities should be, how to bring together various groups with differing political interests to deal with the grave political and economic problems brought upon the Ethiopian people by the authoritarian rule of TPLF, the prospect of bringing real democracy and meaningful economic progress for all Ethiopians would be a daunting and far-fetched project.


=>madote

ETHIOPIA: Oromo Voices from Ethiopia Prisons

HRLHA Urgent Action

January 6, 2015

Since the March-April 2014 crackdowns against the peaceful Oromo protesters who have protested against the Ethiopian Federal Government’s plan of annexation of 36 small Oromia towns to the capital city of Addis Ababa under the pretext of the “Addis Ababa Integrated Plan”, thousands of Oromo nationals from all walks of life from all corners of Oromia regional state including Wollo Oromo’s in Amhara regional state have been detained or imprisoned. Some have disappeared and many have been murdered by a special commando group called “the Agiazi force”. The “The Agiazi” force is still chasing down and arresting Oromo nationals who participated in the March-April, 2014 peaceful protests. Fearing the persecution of the Ethiopian government, hundreds of students did not return to the universities, colleges and high schools; most of them have left for the neighboring states of Somaliland and Puntiland of Somalia where they remain at high risk for their safety. Wollo Oromos who are living in Ahmara regional state of Oromia special Zone are also among the victims of the EPRDF government. Hundreds of Wollo Oromos have been detained because of their connection with the peaceful protests of March-April 2014. The EPRDF government has detained many Oromo nationals in Wollo Oromia special Zone under the pretext of being members or supporters of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), as prisoners’ voices from Dessie/Wollo prison have revealed.

From among the many Oromos who were picked from different districts and places from Wollo Oromia special Zone in Amhara regional state in April 2014, the HRLHA reporter in the area has received a document which shows that 26 Oromo prisoners pleaded to the South Wollo High Court that they were illegally detained first in Kamise town military camp for 36 days, Kombolcha town Police Station for 27 Days, and Dessie city higher 5 Police Station for 10 days- places where they were severely tortured and then transferred to Dessie Prison in July 2014. According to the document, they were picked up from three different districts and different places by federal police and severely beaten and tortured at different military camps and police stations and their belongings including cash and mobile telephones were taken by their torturers. In their appeal letter to the South Wollo high court they demanded

Full document in PDF

=>ayyaantuu

The people pushed out of Ethiopia's fertile farmland

By Matthew Newsome 
Ethiopia

 The construction of a huge dam in Ethiopia and the introduction of large-scale agricultural businesses has been controversial - finding out what local people think can be hard, but with the help of a bottle of rum nothing is impossible.

After waiting several weeks for letters of permission from various Ethiopian ministries, I begin my road trip into the country's southern lowlands.

I want to investigate the government's controversial plan to take over vast swathes of ancestral land, home to around 100,000 indigenous pastoralists, and turn it into a major centre for commercial agriculture, where foreign agribusinesses and government plantations would raise cash crops such as sugar and palm oil.

After driving 800km (497 miles) over two days through Ethiopia's lush highlands I begin my descent into the lower Omo valley. Here, where palaeontologists have discovered some of the oldest human remains on earth, some ancient ways of life cling on.

Some tourists can be found here seeking a glimpse of an Africa that lives in their imagination. But the government's plan to "modernise" this so-called "backward" area has made it inaccessible for journalists.

As my jeep bounces down into the valley, I watch as people decorated in white body paint and clad in elaborate jewellery made from feathers and cow horn herd their cows down the dusty track.
I arrive late in the afternoon at a village I won't name, hoping to speak to some Mursi people - a group of around 7,000 famous for wearing huge ornamental clay lip plates.

The Mursi way of life is in jeopardy. They are being resettled to make way for a major sugar plantation on their ancestral land - so ending their tradition of cattle herding.

Meanwhile, a massive new dam upstream will reduce the Omo River, ending its seasonal flood - and the food crops they grow on its banks.

It is without doubt one of the most sensitive stories in Ethiopia and one the government is keen to suppress.

Human rights groups have repeatedly criticised schemes like this, alleging that locals are being abused and coerced into compliance.

I'd spoken to local senior officials in the provincial capital of Jinka, before travelling into the remote savannah.

The suspicion is palpable as the chief of the south Omo zone lectures me. Local people and the area's reputation have been greatly harmed by the negative reports by foreigners, he says.
Eventually a frank exchange takes place and I secure verbal permission to report on the changes taking place in the valley.

The Gibe III Dam

The Omo River

• Situated approximately 300km south-west of the capital Addis Ababa, the dam is 246m high
• Work started in July 2006 and was estimated to take 118 months (nearly 10 years)
• The government says it will provide much needed-power and help develop the country's economy
• Authorities say no-one has been forced from their home

It seems prudent to let the Mursi tribe and attendant police warm to my presence before I start asking questions. After all, I have the whole evening.

But a brief chat with the tribe ends abruptly with the entrance of a police officer, wearing a replica Manchester United football shirt, vehemently waving a dog-eared copy of the country's constitution.
I am prohibited from talking to anyone and must immediately climb back into my jeep, drive back up the mountain and return to Jinka, he says.

As often in Ethiopia, he doesn't explain exactly why.

I object to driving through the wilderness at dusk on safety grounds and so a compromise is reached: I will pitch my hammock outside the police station, a short stroll away from the village, with armed guards watching my every move.

The political boss of the zone comes on the two-way radio. "This is house arrest," I protest. "No, just a misunderstanding," he replies.

The prospect of returning home without interviews is unthinkable. My ruse is to distract my captors.
I sit them down for a meal of pasta and vegetables - and brimming beakers of spiced rum - in front of my laptop, which is playing an Ethiopian comedy.

After saying good night I strike out through the scrubland.

I run without sense of direction through bush and bog, crawl under fences, and negotiate large herds of noisy cattle. I have to find a village elder I met earlier, and interview him before policemen and their flashlights turn up.

So I am relieved to stumble on two boys milking their cows in the moonlight. They lead me to the elder's hut. The sound of so many rudely-awakened animals in our wake fills me with dread that searchlights are heading our way.

The moment arrives. I squat in front of the elder inside his mud dwelling, surrounded by his sleeping companions: several cows, a goat and a cat. My dictaphone is poised to record truths heard by few journalists in this media-muzzled region.

I ask him in broken Amharic what is going on. He tells me: "The government is telling us to sell our cattle and modernise like townspeople - they say our land is the property of the sugar corporation. We have not been asked what we want or need.

"If we do not accept the resettlement plans, we'll be taken to jail. How can we survive if we have no access to land, cattle or water?"

I promptly thank the elder for his time, apologise for disrupting his evening and head back to my open-air jail.

On reaching my hammock I find several dozing policemen and an empty bottle of rum. Mission accomplished.

The Mursi people

• About 10,000 Mursi people live in Ethiopia
• Traditionally insert pottery plates known as debhinya in the lower lips of young women
• They live in an area surrounded by the rivers Mara, Omo and Mago, which flow into Lake Turkana
• Mursi territory was incorporated into Ethiopia during the reign of King Menelik II in the 19th Century

Source: Oxford University Department of International Development



=>bbc

Change Mind, Change Future

By Awwal Nagawoo | January 2, 2015

This article is not about protest or politics, it is about empowering ourselves by discarding own illusions and limitations, re-connecting to the sources and resources, enhancing our energetic relationship to ourselves, to our circle of influences and to the outside world. Political, social and human rights activism can be a path way towards intrapersonal & interpersonal healing and reconciliations paradigm which shifts the focus from blame the victims to recognition of oppressive systematic structure. Engagement with the aspirational of a community offers an immediate sense of purpose and direction. It requires building functional ties with community to develop solidarity both for personal and collective efficacies. Such successful change of mind and change future will bring great rewards in terms of social recognition, power and economic resources, renewed sense of identity to individuals and society as whole.

Before we have been fighting with Abyssinians and their made systems, but now on there will be unprecedented future and we (Oromo’s) are going to fight with a lot of creepy land grabbers from West, Middle East, Southeast Asian (China) and other continents by the name of investment, with sophisticated technologies and twisted repression systems.

It is up to all of us to change our mind individually, and change the future collectively, especially up to the Oromo young generation (Qubee generation) to act locally and thinking globally, to take action and make sure you are not sleep walked into the agendas of others, any fractions and fictions. In the creative explosion of youthful energy from young minds, happenings of future change is inevitable. When on here I am emphasizing more on the Qubee generation whose are in productive age and the future, I am not discarding and discrediting the past generations and/or old adults.

When I discuss about change here we have to focus on different causes– from personal to collective level, social justice to economic development to the environment, but we all have to see and understand change mind as vital to our common change of future change. We have to create the compelling reasons for what we wanted to change and the ultimatum change we want. Wanting without pleasure, if we do cultivate the skills needed to control our thoughts the mind will create wants that do serve our well-being. By quieting our minds through physical activity, controlled breathing and meditation, we can begin to hear what we truly desire. Happiness, joy and peace. Thus, we have to have the frequencies of life and inspiration; the feeling of joyful, strengthens and happiness; the cluster of quality, compassion and give it us the sense of confidence, to our community, and the world as whole.

“The future must not belong to those corrupt few who steal a country’s resources, it must be won by the students and entrepreneurs:  workers and business owners who seek a broader prosperity for all people. Those are the men and women that America stands with, there is the vision we will support” U.S President Barack Obama speech while address the UN General Assembly. I quoted Obama’s speech not because of he is the U.S. president or the president is fulfilling his promises, just only because it’s powerful and inspirational speech for those who are ready to change their mind and change their future. Interestingly, the Obama administration is fully funding and holly supporting those few who are stealing the country’s resources and carrying out atrocities on humankind.

I would strongly suggest to my fellow Oromio’s to introduce ourselves to others either socialize or join resume building activities and networking, ought to be inspired and inspire human generation, share information of Oromo’s and Oromia, remove barriers, learn from others and teach them, create a new incentives to change future. The approach we think here is to change our own mindset to change ourselves first, and thereby change the world as we are part of the world. I am extremely passionate about creating and influencing change in myself and optimist that these changes will gradually change me future. In order to make the greatest impact that we can, we have to realize and accept that if we embrace ongoing change, we can lead that change towards our way, not any changes lead us towards itself. So that these changes will create the life the way we have always wanted it to be. Some changes can be for the worse, but if nurtured brought about with the right people, change can bring about good. My point here is that, the small changes we will bring to ourselves success will leads us towards our common purposes that will affect the other individuals, groups, and/or countries positively.

People might fear freedom and democracy because they have been living under dictatorial and repressive regimes for centuries. It may need some efforts to detach few self-centered minds from loving Abyssinians dictators. People should be able to imagine how good governance, tolerance, equality and equity, just & fairness and unity look like. Our film makers and legend singers should transform from comedy and romance to such ideals as they have been doing it restlessly. TV screen crew members, investigative journalists, radio shows presenters, social media bloggers, authors, story tellers, community elders, religions leaders, politicians, professional advocacy groups, teachers, students, farmers, businessmen, and all other communicators have to contribute and influence the minds of international communities to accept the Oromo people quest for freedom, democracy, and justice for all. Somebody should make a movie of independent Oromia where all human beings and natures are protected and preserved.

Use it or lose it, my message is very simple if we are interested in making difference and making history in our live, there is never be a better time than now for all of us to go out of our comfort zone and spread the words about Oromo the only people under colony and in armed control in 21century to the world communities. There is no one we ask to allow us to speak, to do whatever we want, to take destiny and/or future into our way, except our own natural leader which is our mind (sammuu kenaa). Because no one has been allowed to do whatever they wanted. We are living in extraordinary times, times of potential opportunities and change, times of great hope when the Qeerroo roaring from within and outside of Oromia. With election is due mid of this year 2015, now is the time for all Oromo’s to get united, to speak loudly in one voice to others surround us, to our neighbors and to the world, wherever we live, whatever social group or status we acquire and/or affiliated with any political portfolio.

I reflect on the past years and seeing where I am today compared to last year. It seems like so much has changed internally and externally with me. I know that tomorrow, it will be different again and different the next day. How do I knew? Because I made a promise to myself that in order to change my life, the lives of my dependents/family and my people, I have to change something I do daily. The secret of my success or failure will be found in my daily routine, thinking pattern and behavior. I am not going to experience any different results if I keep doing the same thing over and over. I cannot become what I need to be by remaining what I am. It is I who will get me to where I want to be because it is only me and my natural leader who knows where I want to be too. Why I am writing my reflection? Because I have a believe that people who have an access to read this piece will get some hint and hot inspiration which will make them to reflect on themselves and enable them to promise themselves to change their mind and change their future.

Our world is evolving and changing tremendously. The end result will be something very positive, but there are a lot cleanups that required to get there. Part of this change is a shift in the energy that flows through everything. Change your mind, change your future is the ultimate personal development testimony if you prepared to live in a new, very different paradigm where individuals play life in a win-win way rather than a win-lose or lose-lose situations. Its paradigm and paradise where individuals are respected, encouraged and fascinated to reach their highest potential rather than exploited, subjugated, used and abused. Is this a kind of change something that you want?  The decision is your and its free.  “Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday” Dale Carnegie.

Jiradhaa!!

Awwal Nagawoo

=>ayyaantuu

Local Ethiopians miss out as big agriculture firms struggle in Gambella

Commercial farming, with its vast tracts of land, is running into problems in Ethiopia’s Gambella region – and local communities are reaping few benefits 

William Davison in Gambella

Guards near Saudi Star’s farm in Gambella, which was attacked by gunmen two years ago. Photograph: William Davison 

As dusk envelops the grasslands of Gambella in western Ethiopia, a weary Jakob Pouch sits on a jerry can, resting his chest against a wooden staff. The 45-year-old evangelical preacher from the Nuer community has just made the three-hour walk from the banks of the Baro river, where he tends to his large family’s small plot of corn. His daughters are preparing cabbage and cobs to be cooked on an open fire.

In the opposite direction, across the asphalt road that leads to South Sudan, lies the farm of BHO Bioproducts, an Anglo-Indian company growing rice and cotton on the 27,000 hectares (67,000 acres) it has leased.

Pouch says the company doesn’t care about the people of his village, Wath-Gach. Grazing land has been lost, and BHO has built a wooden cage around a water pump to prevent locals using it. “From the beginning we did not have a good relationship,” he says. “It was given without consultation. There has been lots of negative impact.” The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Harvesting rice at Saudi Star’s farm investment in Gambella. The company says it is trying to ensure that local communities benefit from the operation. Photograph: William Davison

BHO’s operation, which began in 2010, is one of many concessions Ethiopia’s government has granted in Gambella, including one plot leased to the Indian company Karuturi Global of 100,000 hectares. Commercial farmers are expected to bring knowhow, technology and jobs to one of the country’s poorest and most remote regions. By converting uncultivated bush into productive farms, officials believed food security and export revenues would improve in a country dominated by subsistence agriculture.
But despite those worthy ambitions, progress has been hampered by Gambella’s logistical difficulties, and a failure to ensure local communities benefit.

The village of Ilea is home to people from Gambella’s other main indigenous group, the Anuak. It’s also been the headquarters of Karuturi’s operation for the past five years. In the village, a group of men shelter from the afternoon heat, passing round a tobacco waterpipe. Behind them, women draw water from a well built by the government.

Karuturi’s project has stalled after managers discovered that four-fifths of the land is in a floodplain. The firm also failed to build relations with residents, according to the elders. Complaints include reduced land for farming and hunting, no promised health clinic, cattle dying from ingesting pesticides, the burning of unwanted maize, and only a handful of jobs for villagers. “The government benefits from the tax but the community does not benefit,” says Obang Wudo, one of the elders.

Jakob Pouch says his community in Gambella hasn’t benefited from a nearby commercial farm. Photograph: William Davison

The gripes of Ilea’s residents about Karuturi are compounded by their concerns about nearby land parcelled out to Ethiopian investors from outside Gambella. They say they frequently lobby the regional government to act, but nothing has been done.

That region’s president, Gatluak Tut Khot, expresses support for investors engaged in “very difficult work”. The regional government can’t force companies to pay more, he explains, but his administration has held meetings to improve relations. “They have to respect the interests of the community and those who need jobs from them,” he says.
Gambella has been the focus of a political fallout between the central government and advocacy groups such as Human Rights Watch and the Oakland Institute – with donors uncomfortably positioned in the middle. The critics claim that a resettlement programme to move scattered rural populations to larger settlements was coercive and designed to clear the way for investors. Ethiopia says rights groups from the global north are ideologically opposed to its state-heavy development model and that the voluntary resettlement programme was to make public service delivery more cost-efficient. The UK’s Department for International Development and the World Bank are facing legal inquiries for funding the salaries of civil servants who staffed the enlarged villages.
Bikrum Gill is studying the impact of Indian investors on Gambella’s people for his doctorate, with a specific focus on Karuturi. He found that locals had hoped to access more food and better farming technologies, but were often disappointed. Instead, communities lost land and flooding worsened. Speaking specifically about the Karuturi investment, Gill says: “It’s difficult to ascertain, what, if any, benefits this project has brought to affected local people.”

Karuture farm managers at the site referred inquires to the company’s head office, which didn’t respond to attempts to contact it.

One farmer from Ethiopia’s highlands, who did not want to be named, tells a different story. He thinks the wave of commercial farming will transform an economic backwater. “They were sitting on the side of the riverbank,” he says about locals. “If investors are coming, their life has changed, they are operators, technicians.” He pays 50 birr (about £1.60) a day – above the average for manual labour in Ethiopia – and provides transport for his workers. Eight houses have been built for teachers, he says, and 25 hectares cleared for the community to plough.

Some larger enterprises are also reaching out. At the request of the regional administration, Saudi Star Agricultural Development’s four-year-old rice farm in another part of the region has hired 40 local professionals, while district governments will each get two tractors for young people to use.

“We know we’re creating job opportunities, transforming skills, training locals,” says the firm’s chief executive, Jemal Ahmed. “The community has to profit from the project and we have social responsibility.” He is fully aware of local sensitivities about the company’s work. The farm, bankrolled by Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire Mohammed al-Amoudi, was attacked by gunmen two years ago and has been criticised as a land-grab.

Ahmed says no one was displaced from Saudi Star’s 10,000 hectares, which were earmarked in the late 1980s by the previous government for large-scale agriculture. “It’s not part of any villagisation, it’s not been grabbed – that’s a fact,” he says. “But people who have their own agenda, – Oakland Institute and Human Rights Watch – fabricated stories and campaigned against this project.”


Gill says part of the problem is that investors are “not seeing the people on the land … It precludes the possibility of engaging with locals. To succeed you have to build out of local diversity and knowledge.”


=>theguardian

HRLHA Holds Public Meetings with Oromo Community Members

The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) held, over the past three weeks, public meetings with members of Oromo Communities in four cities of Canada and discussed human rights issues in the Horn of Africa in general and in Ethiopia in Particular. The Oromo communities involved were those of Toronto/Ontario, Edmonton & Calgary/Alberta and Winnipeg/Manitoba; and the major topic of discussion at all the four public meetings was the unabated gross human rights violations by the different regimes of the Ethiopian Government for over a century, with particular focus on what have been happening in the past twenty years under the current TPLF/EPRDF government.

Toronto:
The public gathering in Toronto was held on December 13, 2014 at the office of Oromo Canadian community Association. At the gathering, HRLHA Executive Director Mr. Garoma B. Wakessa explained in his presentation “the gross and Systematic violations of human rights against Oromo nation and other nationals in Ethiopia in the past and at present” by different governments that ruled the country. Extra judicial killings, mass arrests and detentions, kidnappings and disappearances, and tortures under the present government in particular have been discussed in details.
Besides, Mr. Tesfaye Dheressa Kumsa, Director of Investigations and Dissemination with HRLHA, who did a presentation on “Land Grabs and Evictions as a Cultural Genocide”, explained how forced displacements of the Oromos and others from their farm lands and the resultant detachments and disconnections from traditional rural lives have been causing destructions of precious cultural assets, values, and wisdoms from which the societies have been benefiting generation after generation.

The HRLHA presenters explained that they are working with other civil society organizations to bring the perpetrators to justice and urged all human rights advocates to stand together in this regard.

Edmonton and Calgary:

On December 20 and 21, 2014, similar public meetings were held in Edmonton and Calgary/Alberta respectively, and many Oroms participated and discussed human rights violation issues in Oromia and Other  regions in Ethiopia.
At the gathering, HRLHA Executive Director Mr. Garoma B. Wakessa presented “the gross and Systematic violations of human rights against Oromo nation and other nationals in Ethiopia in the past and at present”  by different governments that ruled the country.

Extra judicial killings, mass arrests and detentions, kidnappings and disappearances, and tortures under the present government in particular have been discussed in details. The participants have actively participated in discussion by giving their perspectives on the continuous gross human right violations by EPRDF government of Ethiopia against Oromo young generation in particular. At the end of the meeting, the consensus has been reached that the perpetrators should be brought to justice for genocide they had committed and also Oromos must pay all necessary sacrifices to resist the evil action of the EPRDF Government to save Oromo nation from more victimizing.

Winnipeg/Manitoba:

On Dec 27, similar meeting was held in Winnipeg/Manitoba and many Oromos participated and discussed human rights violation issues in Oromia and Other regions in Ethiopia.

Winnipeg

Extra judicial killings, mass arrests and detentions, kidnappings and disappearances, and tortures under the present government in particular have been discussed in details. After many hours’ explanations and discussions on genocide the EPRDF government has committed against Oromo nationals and others, the consensus has been reached that the perpetrators should be brought to justice for genocide they had committed and also Oromos must pay all necessary sacrifices to resist the evil action of the EPRDF Government to save Oromo nation from more victimizing.

During the discussions at four meetings held, it has been concluded that, by committing such well documented human atrocity, the Ethiopian government has violated the constitution of the land, regional, and International human rights treaties it has signed and ratified. The continued gross human right violations in Oromia, Ogadenian and Gambela regions in the past twenty three years by the EPRDF Government were/are intentionally committed genocides and crimes against humanity. For its deliberate actions of killings, torturing and disappearing its citizens, the EPRDF Government should be accountable. For the heinous human atrocity of EPRDF government against Oromo, Ogaden and Gambela people there are credible documents and proofs to hold the EPRDF Government accountable for its criminal actions and to bring the perpetrators to justice. The participants raised several questions on the possibilities of bringing the government to justice and all possibilities were explained by the presenters.


Finally Oromo participants of the four meetings thanked all HRLHA members for their commitment of defending human rights and promised to support HRLHA financially to make the organization stronger. HRLHA chapter organization was created during the meetings to help the organization’s more involvement in the communities.


=>ayyaantuu