Ethiopia’s stifled press

WHILE ENJOYING its status as an international development darling, Ethiopia has been chipping away at its citizens’ freedom of expression. The country now holds the shameful distinction of having the second-most journalists in exile in the world, after Iran. That combination of Western subsidies and political persecution should not be sustainable.

According to a new report by Human Rights Watch, at least 60 journalists have fled the country since 2010, including 30 last year, and at least 19 have been imprisoned. Twenty-two faced criminal charges in 2014. The government closed five newspapers and a magazine within the past year, leaving Ethiopia with no independent private media outlets. With the country headed toward elections in May, the pressure on the media has undermined the prospect of a free and fair vote.

Ethiopia has long been known for its censorship and repression of the media, but the situation has deteriorated in recent years. According to theCommittee to Protect Journalists, the country has since 2009 “banned or suspended at least one critical independent publication per year.” After the death of prime minister Meles Zenawi in 2012, successor Hailemariam Desalegn has tightened the regime’s stranglehold on the press. Even Ethiopia’s rival Eritrea looks better: It released several imprisoned journalists last month.

As Human Rights Watch documents, journalists and media outlets who dare publish critical articles routinely receive threatening phone calls, texts and e-mails from party officials and security personnel. Journalists’ movements are often restricted outside of the capital, Addis Ababa. Sources who talk to foreign journalists and human rights organizations can face threats and detainment.

The repression extends across the media ecosystem. State agents harass printers and disrupt distribution processes associated with critical publications. Journalists who flee into neighboring countries are tracked and threatened. The government blocks Web sites from the Ethiopian diaspora, and it has jammed signals of foreign broadcasters, including Voice of America.

Much of the persecution has come under the guise of counterterrorism by a regime that has been a player in the fight against the al-Qaeda-allied al-Shabab. At least 38 journalists have been charged under a 2009 “anti-terrorism proclamation” and the criminal code. In 2012, prominent journalist and blogger Eskinder Nega was jailed for 18 years on charges of terrorism after criticizing the government’s repression.

Despite these policies, Ethiopia has retained its status as a U.S. ally and recipient of large amounts of U.S. development assistance — including $373 million for health and humanitarian programs in 2014. By contrast, U.S. spending on democracy and human rights assistance in Ethiopia has fallen dramatically in the past several years, from $3.4 million in 2012 to $162,900 in 2014. The decline in assistance for human rights bows to a 2009 law that prohibits nongovernmental organizations receiving more than 10 percent of their funding from abroad from conducting human rights advocacy.

The State Department recently spoke out against the media crackdown. But more than words should be at stake. The Obama administration should link continued aid to the release of imprisoned journalists and bloggers, and it should enlist other Western aid donors to do the same. The West should not be subsidizing a regime that is one of the world’s leading persecutors of journalists.

=>washingtonpost

Ethiopian Shade Coffee Is World's Most Bird Friendly

A new study found high biodiversity on traditional coffee farms.

Ethiopian coffee farmer Awol Abagojam and his son Isaac harvest their product near the village of Choche, much the same way their ancestors did a thousand years ago.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AMI VITALE, PANOS

Brian Clark Howard

National Geographic

Shady coffee plantations in Ethiopia, where coffee has been grown for at least a thousand years, hold relatively more forest bird species than any other coffee farms in the world, new research shows.

The research suggests that traditional cultivation practices there support local forest bird biodiversity better than any other coffee farms in the world.

In Ethiopia, coffee is traditionally grown on plantations shaded by native trees. These farms boasted more than 2.5 times as many bird species as adjacent mountain forest, according to a study slated for publication February 11 in the journal Biological Conservation.

"That was a surprise," says study co-author Cagan H. Sekercioglu, a biologist at the University of Utah and a National Geographic Society grant recipient. Further, "all 19 understory bird species we sampled in the forest were present in the coffee farms too, and that just doesn't happen elsewhere."

Other studies have shown that shade coffee farms provide better bird habitat than full-sun plantations, but the effect may be more prominent in Ethiopia because farmers there tend to use native trees instead of the exotic species popular elsewhere.

Coffee cherries, the fruit that contains the coffee beans, are seen up close on the plant in Ethiopia.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AMI VITALE, PANOS

Why It Matters

The new study may be the first of bird biodiversity on Ethiopian coffee farms, because the country is relatively remote and poor. Ethiopian coffee farmers face pressure—as in many countries—to convert more coffee production to full-sun plantations.

Growing coffee in the sun can reduce the risk of fungal disease, cuts labor, and can yield more coffee beans, but at the costs of lower-quality coffee that fetches less per pound and degraded habitat for wildlife, says Sekercioglu.

The Big Picture

Scientists found all but one of nine species of migratory birds on the coffee farms, but not in adjacent forest. Sekercioglu suspects that the open structure of the farms was more inviting to the birds than the denser natural forest because it more closely resembles the habitat they are used to in the north.

Still, Sekercioglu cautions that "coffee farms cannot simply replace forest for habitat." Although all forest understory bird species were also represented on the farms, their number of individuals was about 80 percent lower. (See how coffee changed America.)

Birds such as the blue-breasted bee-eater can be found on Ethiopia's shade coffee farms.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CAGAN SEKERCIOGLU, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

What's Next

The team would like to measure how birds in the canopy above the coffee farms are faring, since they only measured birds caught in the understory, or the first ten feet above the ground. The scientists also want to study long-term the breeding success and population changes of birds in forest versus shade coffee.

Sekercioglu also suggests that the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Centeror the Rainforest Alliance, which certify bird-friendly coffee from other countries, should consider extending their programs to Ethiopia. Certification allows farmers to recoup a price premium, which can help deter the impulse to convert farms to full sun or otherwise develop their land.

Correction: An earlier version of this story suggested the Ethiopian farms had the highest bird biodiversity anywhere, but it has been updated to clarify that the farms have the highest relative bird biodiversity.

=>nationalgeographic

OPDO’s Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa Questioned by OMN Journalists on Records of Human Rights in Oromia and TPLF’s Refusal to Make Afan Oromo Federal Language

(Gadaa)OPDO’s Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa came to Minnesota (also known as ‘Little Oromia’ for having the largest population of Oromos in North America) on an official trip sanctioned by Tigrean/TPLF officials from Mekelle (who know control the power at the Arat Kilo Palace in Finfinne) on January 30, 2015.

Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa’s trip was filled with controversies. At his unannounced arrival at the airport, he was received by members of the Ogadeni Community in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Tigrean/TPLF Embassy at Washington-DC worked hard to keep Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa’s arrival at the Minneapolis airport secret in order to avoid a huge protest rally by members of the Oromo Community – whose sons, daughters, fathers, mothers … were imprisoned, disappeared or even killed by the orders of the Tigrean/TPLF regime.

Just a little more than six months ago, more than a hundred nonviolent (peaceful) Oromo protesters were gunned down by the Tigrean elite killing squad called Agazi for opposing the Tigrean Master Plan for Addis Ababa – a Master Plan that is designed to displace Oromo farmers around Addis Ababa (Finfinne) and give the land to Tigrean and other Habesha investors (new/neo-Neftegna’s).
No one – not a single person – has been brought to justice to answer the killings of more than a hundred peaceful Oromo youth, elders – students, mothers and fathers. As a Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, OPDO’s Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa could have used his power to set up a federal committee to investigate the mass killings of more than a hundred Oromo students and other civilians. However, Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa has never done that, instead, he was sent by the Tigrean/TPLF regime to tarnish the image of the peaceful protesters as “violent robbers.” What’s more, after having slaughtered more than a hundred Oromos, TPLF has not stopped the Tigrean’s Addis Ababa Master Plan of displacing Oromo farmers in order to give out the land to Tigrean and other Habesha investors (new/neo-Neftegna’s). OPDO continues to say nothing to stop the Tigrean’s evil agenda of physical and cultural genocide against Oromos in Central Oromia, especially, around the Finfinne areas.

Mr. Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa, the following videos were recorded live as TPLF’s Tigrean elite killing squad – the Agazi – was slaughtering Oromos in Ambo on April 30, 2014, and the other two were from Mendi and Madda-Walaabuu University shootings. The civilians slaughtered by the Tigrean elite killing squad – the Agazi – were not “violent robbers” – they were students and other civilians. Justice will be delivered by the Oromo people soon over these mass slaughtering of innocent civilians. Where will OPDO stand at that crucial time – with the TPLF’s Tigrean elite killing squad – the Agazi – again, or with the Oromo people? When will OPDO stop TPLF’s “5-Year Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP)” that continues to evict Oromo farmers to give the land to Tigrean and other Habesha investors (new/neo-Neftegna’s) under the disguise of “poverty eradication and development”? Conscious OPDO members must ask themselves these questions before it’s too late and play their historic role of crushing the aggression of Habeshas/neo-Neftegnas in Oromia.

OMN Journalists Question OPDO’s Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa on Records of Human Rights in Oromia and TPLF’s Refusal to Make Afan Oromo Federal Language

OMN Journalists Question OPDO’s Abbaa-Duulaa Gammadaa on Records of Human Rights in Oromia and TPLF’s Refusal to Make Afan Oromo Federal Language

Ethiopia: Crackdown on Dissent Intensifies

Human Rights Situation Dire Ahead of May 2015 Elections

(Nairobi) – The Ethiopian government during 2014 intensified its campaign of arrests, prosecutions, and unlawful force to silence criticism, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2015. The government responded to peaceful protests with harassment, threats, and arbitrary detention, and used draconian laws to further repress journalists, opposition activists, and critics.

“The Ethiopian government fell back on tried and true measures to muzzle any perceived dissent in 2014,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director. “Journalists and dissenters suffered most, snuffing out any hope that the government would widen political space ahead of the May 2015 elections.”

In the 656-page world report, its 25th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth urges governments to recognize that human rights offer an effective moral guide in turbulent times, and that violating rights can spark or aggravate serious security challenges. The short-term gains of undermining core values of freedom and non-discrimination are rarely worth the long-term price.

Ethiopia’s dismal rights record faced little criticism from donor countries in 2014. Throughout the year, state security forces harassed and detained leaders and supporters of Ethiopian opposition parties. Security personnel responded to protests in Oromia in April and May with excessive force, resulting in the deaths of at least several dozen people, and the arrests of hundreds more. The authorities regularly blocked the Semawayi (Blue) Party’s attempts to hold protests.

Media remain under a government stranglehold, with many journalists having to choose between self-censorship, harassment and arrest, and exile. In 2014, dozens of journalists fled the country following threats. In July, the government charged seven bloggers known as Zone 9 and three journalists under the abusive Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. In August, the owners of six private publications were charged under the criminal code following threats against their publications. The government blocks websites and blogs and regularly monitors and records telephone calls.

The authorities have been displacing indigenous populations without appropriate consultation or compensation in the lower Omo Valley to make way for the development of sugar plantations. Villagers and activists who have questioned the development plans face arrest and harassment.

The government showed no willingness to amend the Anti-Terrorism Law or the Charities and Societies Proclamation, despite increasing condemnation of these laws for violating basic rights. Authorities more rigorously enforced the Charities and Societies Proclamation, which bars organizations from working on human rights, good governance, conflict resolution, and advocacy on the rights of women, children, and people with disabilities if the organizations receive more than 10 percent of their funds from foreign sources.
“The government’s crackdown on free expression in 2014 is a bad sign for elections in 2015,” Lefkow said.

=>hrw

Leaked Report Says World Bank Violated Its Own Rules In Ethiopia

                    ICIJ  |  By Sasha Chavkin

 This article was reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington DC-based global network of 185 reporters in 65 countries who collaborate on transnational investigations.

Internal watchdog finds link between World Bank financing and Ethiopian government's mass resettlement of indigenous group

The World Bank repeatedly violated its own rules while funding a development initiative in Ethiopia that has been dogged by complaints that it sponsored forced evictions of thousands of indigenous people, according to a leaked report by a watchdog panel at the bank.

The report, which was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, examines a health and education initiative that was buoyed by nearly $2 billion in World Bank funding over the last decade. Members of the indigenous Anuak people in Ethiopia’s Gambella province charged that Ethiopian authorities used some of the bank’s money to support a massive forced relocation program and that soldiers beat, raped and killed Anuak who refused to abandon their homes. The bank continued funding the health and education initiative for years after the allegations emerged.

The report by the World Bank’s internal Inspection Panel found that there was an “operational link” between the World Bank-funded program and the Ethiopian government’s relocation push, which was known as “villagization.” By failing to acknowledge this link and take action to protect affected communities, the bank violated its own policies on project appraisal, risk assessment, financial analysis and protection of indigenous peoples, the panel’s report concludes.

“The bank has enabled the forcible transfer of tens of thousands of indigenous people from their ancestral lands,” said David Pred, director of Inclusive Development International, a nonprofit that filed the complaint on behalf of 26 Anuak refugees.
Anuak children in Gorom Refugee Camp in South Sudan. Many Anuak fled Ethiopia during a government relocation campaign called "villagization". Photo credit: Andreea Campeanu/ICIJ.

The bank declined to answer ICIJ’s questions about the report.
“As is standard procedure, World Bank staff cannot comment on the results of the Inspection Panel’s investigation until the Executive Board of the World Bank Group has had the opportunity to review the Panel’s report over the coming weeks,” Phil Hay, the bank’s spokesman for Africa, said in a written response.

In previous responses to the complaint, bank management said there was no evidence of widespread abuses or evictions and that the Anuak “have not been, nor will they be, directly and adversely affected by a failure of the Bank to implement its policies and procedures.”

Because the panel’s report has not yet been published, some of the language may be revised before a final version is released, but its basic conclusions are not expected to change.

The report stops short of finding the bank responsible for the most serious abuses. The panel did not attempt to verify the widely reported allegations of forced evictions and human rights violations, finding that the question was beyond the scope of its investigation. The bank did not violate its policy on forced resettlement, the report says, because the relocations were conducted by the Ethiopian government and were not a “necessary” part of the health and education program.

Since 2006, the World Bank and other foreign donors have bankrolled the Promoting Basic Services program, which provides grants to local and regional governments for services such as health, education and clean water. The PBS program was designed to avoid funneling aid dollars directly to Ethiopia’s federal government, which had violently cracked down on its opposition after disputed 2005 elections.

By 2010, federal and provincial authorities had embarked on an effort to relocate nearly 2 million poor people in four provinces from isolated rural homes to village sites selected by the government. In these new villages, authorities promised to provide the relocated communities with health care, education and other basic services they had lacked.

The government relocated 37,883 households in Gambella, roughly 60 percent of all households in the province, according to Ethiopian government statistics cited by the Inspection Panel. The Ethiopian government has said that all resettlements were voluntary.

Many members of the Anuak, a mostly Christian indigenous group in Gambella, have said they didn’t want to move. Anuak and their advocates say that they were pushed off their fertile lands by soldiers and policemen, and that much of the abandoned land was then leased by the government to investors. The evictions were “accompanied by widespread human rights violations, including forced displacement, arbitrary arrest and detention, beatings, rape, and other sexual violence,” according to a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch.

The Human Rights Watch report and Anuak refugees’ complaint to the Inspection Panel contended that the bank’s money was being used by local and regional authorities to support forced relocations. For example, they say, money from the PBS initiative was used to pay the salaries of government officials who helped carry out the evictions.

The bank continued to fund the PBS program throughout the villagization campaign. The bank approved new funding for PBS in 2011 and 2012, and its support for the program continues today. Since the nationwide health and education initiative launched, Ethiopia has reported strides in reducing child mortality and increasing primary school enrollment.

The villagization campaign ended in 2013, and is believed to have resettled substantially fewer than the nearly 2 million people anticipated by the government.

The Ethiopia case is one of several recent World Bank-financed projects that have drawn fire from activist groups for allegedly funding human rights violations. These projects include a loan to a palm oil producer in Honduras whose security guards have been accused by human rights advocates of killing dozens of peasants involved in a land rights dispute with the company, and a conservation program by the Kenyan government that members of the Sengwer people say was used as tool for pushing them out of their ancestral forests.

In the Ethiopia case, the Inspection Panel decided that the most severe allegations of forced evictions and violence were beyond its mandate, in part because bank rules limited its investigation to only the most recent funding installment of the PBS program.

During its investigation, the Inspection Panel asked Eisei Kurimoto, a professor at Osaka University in Japan and an expert on the Anuak people, to travel to Gambella and help review the Anuak’s complaint.

Kurimoto told ICIJ that Anuak he spoke with told him Ethiopian authorities used the threat of violence to force them to move.

Ethiopian officials who carried out the villagization program “always went with armed policemen and soldiers,” Kurimoto said. “It is very clear that the regional government thought that people would not move happily or willingly. So they had to show their power and the possibility of using force.”

Inclusive Development International’s Pred said it is now up to World Bank president Jim Yong Kim to decide whether “justice will be served” for the Anuak. “Justice starts with the acceptance of responsibility for one’s faults – which the Inspection Panel found in abundance – and ends with the provision of meaningful redress,” he said.                                   

=>huffingtonpost

ETHIOPIA: “ETHIOPIAN EXODUS” FLOODS YEMEN

Photo: Ethiopian refugees of the Tigray ethnic group crossing into Eritrea

Sam B.

The Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS) is again reporting a dramatic increase in Ethiopians fleeing their country from hunger, poverty and deplorable human rights abuses to Yemen. The RMMS core Steering Committee and founding agencies are UNHCR, IOM, DRC, Intersos and the Yemen Mixed Migration Task Force.

The Economist (the magazine) writes:

“Several thousand Ethiopians sleep rough in Bossaso’s dirt, like animals. They are sustained by Muslim alms: a free meal each day, paid for by Bossaso traders. Some of the Ethiopians arrive in town feral with hunger. They have to be beaten back with cudgels when the meal is served. The hope of all of them is to be illegally trafficked across the sea to Yemen. They slip out of town in the moonlight, cramming into metal skiffs that are death traps. Many drown in the crossing: the boat sinks or they are tossed overboard by traffickers when Yemeni patrols approach. Some of the men interviewed in Bossaso for this story have since drowned in this way. Refugee agencies say only a few of those who survive will find jobs in Saudi Arabia. The rest will drift, disappear or die young.”

RMMS calls this phenomenon the “Ethiopian Exodus”. Between September and November 2014 alone RMMS says over 26,000 Ethiopians have crossed the Red Sea to Yemen alone, on their way to Saudi Arabia. Many drowning in the attempt.

In November RMMS reported:

“An estimated 9,420 Ethiopians made their way to Yemen in November 2014, 19% higher than arrivals in October 2014, and 366% higher than the number of Ethiopians that arrived in November 2013.”

And in September it stated:

“An estimated 9,443 Ethiopians made their way to Yemen in September 2014, 15% higher than arrivals in August 2014, and 149% more than the number of Ethiopians that arrived in September 2013.”

RMMS estimated “82,680 migrants/refugees arrived in Yemen between January and November” 2014 and that “approximately 85% of the migrants” were those of “Ethiopian origin, while the rest were Somali”. RMMS further underscored that Ethiopian and Somalis are “maintaining the approximate arrival ratio between the two groups that has existed for the last 3 years.”

In fact starting in 2008 Ethiopian migrants arrivals to Yemen have overtaken Somalis, by large margin. The following graphic is compiled by UNHCR shows the breakdown between Somali and Ethiopian migrants in Yemen.

=>madote

URGENT: Statement released by Western Australian Oromo Community

(Oromedia, 21 January 2015)The Western Australian Oromo Community says any individual or/and group of individuals who may take part in  meeting with the Ethiopian government do not represent the Oromo Community in Western Australia.

This is in reference to telephone conversation and written request made by Ethiopian Embassy in Canberra, Australia to meet with Oromo diaspora by high level of delegate from Oromia Regional State led by Vice President. Thank you for your invitation.

As Oromo Community in Western Australia, we held a series of meeting and discussion about your request and made the following official statement to your request. We would like to inform you that we are not only unable to participate in any formal or informal discussion or dialog with the current Ethiopian Government body or it’s representative, but also we strongly and firmly oppose such gathering in its any form.

We the Oromo community in Western Australia demands that the current Ethiopian regime immediate cessation of hostility against Oromo people. We demand that Government stops its lip service campaign in the election year; release all political prisoners without any precondition, respect the basic human right of freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and expression.

We also demand that the Government stop displacing Oromo people from its ancestral lands. We speak loud and clear that the Government cease the power immediately and allow opposition political parties to operate in the country freely. We also demand that the Government respect its article 39 constitution and allow the nation and nationalities in the empire of self-determination including cessation or union at will. Then only we believe that the door of dialog and discussion with this Government be open.

According to the press release “the current Ethiopia Government is the regime that dehumanized the Oromo public: marginalized the Oromo people politically, economically, and socially.”
Here is the press release from Oromo Community of Western Australia. Official Statemen_OCWA
The email letter sent to the Oromo community from Ethiopian Embassy Canberra indicated that “high level delegation of the Oromia Regional State led by the Vice President will visit Perth after January 23, 2015 (the specific date will be notified later) to meet with Oromo Diaspora in your city and the surroundings.”

The purposes of the meeting are:

1. To brief on the objective situation (political, economy and social development) of the region,
2. To brief on the Diaspora Housing Development Program and
3. To brief on the upcoming Oromia International Diaspora Day

The venue will be in one of the big hotels in Perth, the cost of which will be covered by us. Therefore, as Chairman of your association, we seek your assistance to inform the leadership and members to attend the forthcoming meeting in Perth. The Diaspora Minister Counselor will call you on Saturday, 17 January 2015, for detailed discussion.
Here is a letter sent from Ethiopian Embassy Canberra: Ambassador’s Letter

1. Ethiopian Embassy letter to Dr. Nuru Said, Chairman of Oromia Community

2. Response to the letter by Oromo Community in W. Astralia

=>ayyaantuu