UK foreign aid, the final insult: Ethiopian sues Britain after claiming our £1.3billion programme supports ‘Stalinist’ regime that sent him to world’s biggest refugee camp

Daily Mail | May 26, 2023

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  Ethiopian police brutality
  Four million people forced off their land by security forces while their homes and farms are sold to foreign investors
• ‘Mr O’ said by suing British Department for International Development he fights on behalf of Ethiopian people who are being relocated
• Questions raised about British role in atrocities as annual payouts continue
• When he refused to leave his land, he was taken to military barricks and tortured
• Refugee camp over Kenyan border overflowing with Ethiopians is now largest in the world

It is hard to think of many more blessed spots on Earth than the Gambella region of Ethiopia, with its fertile soil, lush vegetation and flowing rivers – so different to the usual famine-struck images of barren terrain and starving infants we see from that country.

Power outages derail African Union’s 50th anniversary gathering in Ethiopia

May 26, 2013 (TESFA NEWS) – U.S. SecretaryJohn Kerry has been forced to leave Ethiopia without addressing the African Union summit after an electricity blackout hit the $200m Chinese-built African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa.

In his planned three-day visit to the country, Kerry was expected to discuss a range of security and bilateral issues with many African leaders and foreign dignitaries that will be gathering to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the African Union.

"Billisumaan Haawee" Qasim Sinbo New Oromo Song

Ethiopia: Amnesty International – Annual Report 2013

May 23, 2013 (Amnesty International) –The state stifled freedom of expression, severely restricting the activities of the independent media, political opposition parties and human rights organizations. Dissent was not tolerated in any sphere. The authorities imprisoned actual and perceived opponents of the government. Peaceful protests were suppressed. Arbitrary arrests and detention were common, and torture and other ill-treatment in detention centres were rife. Forced evictions were reported on a vast scale around the country.

Kofi Annan, Africa Progress Panel, Urge G8, G20 Members to Tackle Illicit Flows to Help Africa

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE -”With Africa’s economies riding the crest of the global commodities wave, there is an unprecedented opportunity to convert the region’s vs resource wealth into investments that could lift millions out of poverty.” – Kofi Annan

Former UN Secretary-General Calls for Public Disclosure of Corporate Ownership Information

2013 Africa Progress Report Features GFI Research, Highlights Devastating Impact of Tax Haven Secrecy, Phantom Firms on Development

Forthcoming Joint Report from AfDB and GFI Released May 29th to Examine Economic Toll of IFFs on Africa

May 18, 2013, WASHINGTON, DC (Global Financial Integrity) – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) lauded former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Africa Progress Panel (APP), which he chairs, for highlighting the devastating impact that illicit financial outflows have on economic development and poverty alleviation across the continent in the 2013 Africa Progress Report published today.  The APP report cites GFI’s research on illicit financial flows and calls upon the G8 to require full, public disclosure of the beneficial ownership information of all corporate entities within the next year.

BREAKING-NEWS: 22 OFFICERS DETAINED FOR BAHIRDAR KILLING SPREE

by: Daniel Berhane May 18, 2013

Federal Police detained fifteen of its officers include a Shaleqa level officer, it has been learnt. The list of detainee include another seven “security officers”.

The detainees are presumed responsible for the security vacuum that enabled the killings in Bahirdar.

It is to be recalled that a rogue Federal police officer killed twelve people in the city, around a vicinity called Abay Mado Kebele eleven, last Sunday evening around 9 pm.

Residents and officials concur that the killing spree could have been halted in time as there were several officers guarding government offices in the vicinity.

The killer, named Constable Fekadu Nasha and said to be from Oromiya region, escaped police pursuit and jumped into Blue Nile – Abay river shortly after the killings. His body was found on Tuesday morning after a high-profile search by the Federal police and local militia.

Change looms for Ethiopia’s ancient salt trade

By Siegfried Modola

Reuters/Reuters – A camel caravan carrying slabs of salt travels away from the Danakil Depression, northern Ethiopia April 22, 2013. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

May 17, 2013, HAMAD-ILE, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Abdu Ibrahim Mohammed was 15 years old when he began trekking with caravans of camels to collect salt in a sun-blasted desert basin of north Ethiopia that is one of the hottest places on earth.

Now 51 and retired, he has passed his camels to his son to pursue this centuries-old trade in “white gold” from the Danakil Depression, where rain almost never falls and the average temperature is 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.4 Celsius).

But the tradition of hacking salt slabs from the earth’s crust and transporting them by camel is changing as a paved road is built across the northern Afar region.

Although the road being cut through the Danakil Depression is making it easier to transport the salt, the region’s fiercely independent local salt miners and traders are wary of the access it might give to industrial mining companies with mechanised extraction techniques that require far less labour.

Lack of Statehood Exposes Oromo to Humiliation in Their Own Homeland

May 14, 2013 (OLF Info Desk) — Successive Ethiopian regimes worked against the Oromo. A comparatively larger population, wide geographic area and immense economic resources of Oromia have been viewed by these regimes in Ethiopia as the threat to their naked ambition for domination for which reason they targeted Oromo as an object of fear and hate. Leaving the past regimes’ horrific acts against the Oromo for history we will cite few samples from the current regime.

For the last 22 years of its reign, the current Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) regime has been pitting other nations and nationalities, previously co-exiting with the Oromo people in harmony, against the latter in every direction, under the guise of peoples-based federation. This has been one of the regime’s standing policies against the Oromo.

UN: 3,000 Ugandan and Burundi Soldiers Killed in Somalia

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson

May 12, 2013 (VOA News) –A top U.N. official says up to 3,000 African Union soldiers have been killed in Somalia over the past few years fighting the Islamist insurgency.

U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson gave the death toll at a news conference Thursday at U.N. headquarters.

Eliasson said Uganda and Burundi, which supplied most of the troops for the AU force, “have paid a tremendous price.”

A spokesman for the force, Ali Aden Hamoud, says he cannot confirm or deny the death toll.

“That responsibility belongs to each one of those contingents, or troop-contributing countries,” he said.

Ethiopia: DFID Fail to Act on Human Rights Violations

The Ethiopian government may be guilty of atrocities against indigenous peoples as it completes construction of the Gibe III dam. UK aid-agency DFID has failed to exert its influence and protect the rights of these minorities.

How much longer will Mursi children survive in the Omo Valley? Photo by Survival International.

May 12, 2013 (Think Africa Press) –Ethiopia may until recently have been a byword for famine, but in one part of the country at least, there are people who have lived largely without outside help for hundreds of years. With the connivance of the British government, this is about to change forever.

The tribes of the Lower OmoValley in south west Ethiopia – chief among them the Mursi, the Nyangatom, the Bodi and the Daasanach – depend on a combination of flood retreat cultivation on the banks of the Omo River, rain fed cultivation further back from the river, and cattle on the grass plains.

They move between these resources seasonally so as to exploit them to their best advantage. A self-sufficient existence outside mainstream society has meant that few speak Amharic, and that fewer still can read or write. Like most of us they are strongly attached to their way of life and their traditions, and believe passionately in their right to decide for themselves whether and how to change them.

Ethiopia: Loss of Lives and Displacement Due to “Border Dispute” in Eastern Ethiopia

HRLHA Urgent Action

The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) would like to express its deep concern over the negligence of both the federal and regional governments in Ethiopia regarding the violence that has been going on for about six months against the Oromos in Eastern Hararge Zone of Oromia Regional State.

According to reports obtained by HRLHA from different sources, this government-backed violence that has been going on in the name of border dispute around the Anniya, Jarso and Miyesso districts between the Oromia and Ogaden regional states has already resulted in the death and/or disappearance of 37 Oromo nationals and the displacement of about 20,000 others. Around 700 different types of cattle and other valuable possessions are also reported to have been looted. The reports indicate that the violence has been backed by two types of armed forces (the Federal Liyou/Special Police and the Ogaden Militia) from the Ogadenis side, while on the side of the Oromos, even those who demonstrated the intentions of defending themselves in the same manner were disarmed, dispossessed and detained. Despite these facts, the reports also dissociate the Ogadeni nationals from the violence mentioning that they have never made claims of ownership of the piece of land in the name of which the government-backed violence has been taking place. HRLHA has also learnt that the said piece of land was demarcated and declared to be part of Oromia Regional State during the 1996 referendum.

Mysterious Lake Threatens Ethiopian Sugar Ambitions (Addis Ababa)

May 4, 2013, ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — A saline lake in Ethiopia that’s baffled scientists by its 15-old growth threatens to spill into the nation’s longest river and damage plans by Africa’s biggest coffee grower to become a commodities powerhouse.

Lake Beseka in the Rift Valley has grown to its largest size ever amid irrigation runoff and seismic shifts in past years. Should salt waters contaminate the Awash River, they would risk Ethiopia’s oldest state-owned sugar estate and an India-funded project downstream that’s key to the government’s $5 billion plan to turn the country into a top sugar exporter.

“The fear is for the river,” Water and Energy Ministry groundwater chief Tesfaye Tadesse said. “If it discharges by itself without any control, the river is going to be contaminated forever.”

Oromia: Mass Media Under Arrest – World Press Freedom Day

May 3, 2013 (Gadaa.com) — As the world marks the UNESCO-adopted World Press Freedom Day today, May 3, 2013, activists of press freedom in the Horn of Africa highlight how the increasingly oppressive and draconian press laws in Ethiopia have led not only to the imprisonments and exiling of scores of Oromo journalists, but also to the wiping out of the Afan Oromo mass media serving the Oromo people in the Horn of African region.

The Oromo people make up the largest nation in the Horn of Africa, and their language, Afan Oromo, is the third largest language with most speakers in Africa. Despite this, there is no independent Afan Oromo media outlet operating in Oromia, the homeland of the Oromo, due to the hostile policies of the Ethiopian government towards Afan Oromo mass media, in addition to the already repressive media laws that have made independent journalism a risky career choice.

Ethiopia: Terrorism Law Decimates Media

                                

Ethiopia’s journalists shouldn’t be spending World Press Freedom Day in jail on trumped-up terrorism charges. Freeing these journalists would be an important step toward improving Ethiopia’s deteriorating record on press freedom.

May 3, 2013, Nairobi (Human Rights Watch) – The Ethiopian government should mark World Press Freedom Day, on May 3, 2013, by immediately releasing all journalists jailed under the country’s deeply flawed anti-terrorism law. On May 2, 2013, the Supreme Court upheld an 18-year sentence under the anti-terrorism law for Eskinder Nega Fenta, a journalist and blogger who received the 2012 PEN Freedom to Write Award.

US slams Ethiopia’s ‘political persecution’ of critics

May 3, 2013 (AFP) — The United States Thursday slammed “harsh” sentences handed down to an Ethiopian blogger and an opposition leader, voicing concerns about the “politicized prosecution” of government critics.

An Ethiopian court dismissed the appeals of blogger Eskinder Nega and opposition leader Andualem Arage, jailed last year for terror-related offenses.

Eskinder was given an 18-year sentence, while Andualem was jailed for life.

The US was “deeply disappointed” that Ethiopia’s federal supreme court upheld the men’s “conviction and harsh sentencing,” acting deputy State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said.

“Today’s decision further reinforces our serious concern about Ethiopia’s politicized prosecution of those critical of the government and ruling party, including under the anti-terrorism proclamation.”

Ventrell stressed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gives everyone “a right to freedom of opinion and expression, and that this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference.”

Upholding such freedoms “is essential if Ethiopia is to realize its stated goal of being a democratic state,” he added.

However, he could not say if the court’s decision would impact a planned trip to Ethiopia by US Secretary of State John Kerry at the end of May.

Although no dates have been announced, Kerry told US lawmakers last month that he planned to attend celebrations to mark the African Union’s 50th anniversary in Addis Ababa.

“We travel, and we continue our relationship with countries… where we have human rights concern,” Ventrell said.

–Global Post