Former rebel leader who overthrew Marxist dictator

BY Paul Vallely
THE INDEPENDENT
When Ethiopian police opened fire on anti-government demonstrators after the last election, they not only killed 193 people, but also seriously damaged the reputation of the election winner, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Protesters say they were complaining that the election had been fixed, but Mr Meles insists that those on the streets were trying to stage a coup.
Either way, the police response was disproportionate and created a human rights blot on the admirable record of a leader who was seen as one of the great hopes for change in Africa. Mr Zenawi entered Addis Ababa at the head of a rebel army in 1991 after two decades in the bush, to overthrow Ethiopia's blood-thirsty Marxist dictator, Col Mengistu Haile-Mariam.
Since then, he has made enormous progress, instituting democracy, devolving power to the federal regions, restoring independence to the judiciary, and pushing equal rights and opportunities for women.
He is also a pragmatist. He jettisoned his Albanian-style Marxism and embraced the pro-market reforms recommended by the World Bank, fulfilling the conditions to qualify for massive debt cancellation.
But the economic prescriptions of "the Washington consensus" have, over the past 20 years, failed to generate the economic growth promised in Africa. Seeing that, Mr Zenawi has resisted pressures for land reform and refused to privatise the airline or telecomms industries.
Instead, he has developed an imaginative compromise - "a strong developmental state" which will "not intervene in the market in a wanton fashion" but acts to address "market failures".
To that end, he has just secured from China $1.5bn of investment in telecoms. Mobile phones, he says, are proving "a licence to print money in Africa".

Read more!

Ethiopia is accused of 'torturing and illegally jailing opponents of regime'

By Steve Bloomfield in Addis Ababa
THE INDEPENDENT
Ethiopia is conducting a systematic campaign of intimidation, detention and torture against political opponents of its increasingly autocratic government, human rights groups have alleged.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a celebrated ally of the US administration in its "war on terror" and previously invited to sit on Tony Blair's Africa Commission, has become increasingly blatant in his suppression of opposition.
At least 40 opposition supporters in the country have been held in prison since December where torture has become commonplace, according to evidence from Amnesty International.
None of the detainees being held in Addis Ababa's Maikelawi prison have been allowed to see family members or lawyers and released suspects say prison guards routinely torture inmates.
The opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) also claimed several of their supporters had been shot dead in a series of extra-judicial killings.
Those held include a 23-year-old IT student called Endalkachew Melese who was arrested on 15 December in Addis Ababa. His family has been allowed to bring him food but have not been able to see him. Despite being taken to court, he is yet to be formally charged. Mr Melese, like the others held with him, is a supporter of the CUD.
Mr Meles was once the poster boy for good governance in Africa and feted only two years ago by the West as one of Africa's brightest democratic leaders. Since then, his star has fallen rapidly.
Mr Meles first changed the constitution to allow himself to seek a third term as prime minister and the subsequent elections in May 2005 were marred by allegations of fraud.
Mr Meles and the opposition claimed victory and the prime minister called in the security forces to quell unrest. Several thousand suspected government opponents were arrested after demonstrations in Addis Ababa in 2005. Police and security forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing 187 and wounding 765.
There are currently 76 opposition leaders and journalists standing trial for treason and "attempted genocide". Their trial, which has been condemned by human rights campaigners and EU nations, including Britain, is set to resume on 19 February.
There is a sense of fear on the streets of Addis Ababa when the subject of politics is raised. Martin Hill, Amnesty International's Ethiopia expert, said: "We are very concerned that members of an opposition party are being held incommunicado and possibly on fabricated charges. They are clearly at risk of torture and ill treatment and that is why we have appealed to the authorities."
The Ethiopian government denied any opposition supporters had been arrested. Bereket Simon, an adviser to the prime minister, said: "We have arrested people related to the terror plot only," a reference to the allegation that Ethiopia's bitter rival, Eritrea, attempted to plant a bomb during last month's African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
"No opposition supporters have been arrested," he said. "It is simply unfounded." As Mr Meles' democratic credentials have taken a battering, he has sought the backing of the West, particularly the United States, in fighting the "war on terror".
A coalition of Islamists took control of much of Ethiopia's neighbour, Somalia, last year, prompting fears in the US administration that the war-ravaged failed state was becoming a safe haven for would-be al-Qa'ida terrorists. Mr Meles portrayed himself as America's sole ally in the Horn of Africa and the US gave him tacit approval to launch an attack on Somalia's Islamists.
Britain has made it clear it no longer sees Mr Meles as a democratic leader. Britain's International Development Secretary, Hilary Benn, announced last year that the Government would no longer provide aid direct to the Ethiopian government.
"Tony Blair was personally betrayed by what Meles did," said Amdargachew Tsege, a leader of the CUD. "The crackdown on the democracy movement was savage. When Mr Blair saw him in South Africa, he looked at him as if he was a piece of something. They are not supportive of Meles but, just like the Americans, Britain has its own interest of fighting against terror. All other issues take second place."

Read more!

Torture on rise again in Abu Ghraib of Ethiopia "Mae'Klawi"

Ethio-Zagol
A man identified by this blogger's police sources as Dr. Lakew Alemu was arrested and taken to Mae'kelawi two days ago. He was returning home from work. According to the sources, the man was arrested in connection to his activism for Kinijit. Preliminary accounts indicate that he works at the Economic Commission for Africa.
Meanwhile, further names of Kinijit prisoners who have been jailed and tortured at Maekelawi has been obtained by this blogger.
The following is the list with their addresses and employment
Temesgen Shemere.......(Awasa, CUD election candidate, Tortured)
Wolde Dana... (Wolayita Sodo... CUD election candidate, Tortured)
Ashebir Gebre....(Awasa, Policeman, Tortured)
Lij Alem Takele... (Dila, Tortured))
Addis Aman... (Sodo Zuriya, private employee, Tortured)
Tilahun Ayalew....(West Gojam, Teacher, Tortured))
Abebe Shumye... (Gonder, works at Dashen Beer, Tortured)
Zekiyos Ashebo. ... (Awasa, Works at Justice Bureau, Tortured)
Shimeles Capitone.... (Addis Ababa, works at Lufthansa, Tortured)
Tsegaye Ayele... (Gonder, X-ray technician, Torture status not known)
Anteneh Getnet Mulatu... (Addis Ababa, Teacher, Tortured)
Binyam Melaku... (Awassa, Student, Tortured)
Belay Kefyalew....(Gonder, Trader, Tortured)

Read more!

Pray for Peace in Ethiopia and all the Prisoners of Conscience - EWPD

We, concerned Ethiopian women & mothers looking to contribute to the nonviolent struggles for peace, justice, and the development of democracy in Ethiopia, call on all Ethiopians, friends of Ethiopia and all concerned peace loving people to join us in prayer as we call on the "Power of One" through the power of tmultitude, to solidify our intention, our intention of peace, love, tolerance and forgiveness. We ask yus in our desire to bring peace through the power of prayer forming an energy field of oneness and the unity of the Divine to heal our nation's suffering. The more people holding the intention, the more powerful aneffective the field to create change. Click here for More

Read more!

A Sharp Eye On Ethiopia

N.Va. Network to Provide Outlet for Views Suppressed in Homeland
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
After three decades as a prominent reporter in Ethiopia, the arrests and jailings -- punishment for articles deemed critical of the government -- became too much for Mulugeta Lule. He fled his country and now works for a District parking company.
Tamagne Beyene was a famed entertainer who toured Ethiopia's stages and arenas. But he gave up that life for refuge in Alexandria after his public jokes about the government led to jail time and police beatings.
Nebiyu Eyassu published articles in his Addis Ababa magazine censuring government policies and was rewarded with criminal charges of incitement. Today, he oversees airport buses in Northern Virginia, where his closest tie to the profession he abandoned a decade ago is through the fictional journalist in a novel he is writing.
Until recently.
Now these men and other political exiles whose words were stifled in Ethiopia are reclaiming their voices here. In an unmarked warehouse off a gritty Alexandria street, they are creating a medium to reach out to their homeland: a 24-hour, independent television network about Ethiopia and its people.
By March 1, they hope to speak again to the more than 100,000 Ethiopian expatriates living in North America -- via satellite broadcasts of news and political analysis, educational programs and entertainment recorded mostly in Amharic. Eventually, they say, the Ethiopian Television Network, produced from the safety of a studio half a world away, will extend into Ethiopian homes.
"Land of opportunity," Beyene, 42, said of America while standing in the studio's production room, where he has recorded several episodes of a Jay Leno-style talk show for ETN. "You can say what you want to say and no prison."
For ETN reporters and hosts, many of whom have been granted political asylum, the network represents a professional renaissance and the chance to report freely on Ethiopian issues, even if from afar.
Success or failure, the station will be a milestone for U.S.-based Ethiopians, who had to turn to the Internet, radio or government-run satellite television for Amharic-language news about their country's recent invasion of Somalia. And it is a sign of the vitality of the Washington region's Ethiopian population, the nation's largest.
One recent evening, several staff members showed off the studio. In one dim editing room, the network's logo -- in the red, yellow and green of the Ethiopian flag -- bounced around computer monitors.
Under the bright lights of the production studio, where folding chairs were lined up for the audience, Beyene described a satirical 2005 DVD he made. In it, he pretended to interview Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, then spliced in comments Zenawi had made in real interviews. In one of his favorite parts, Beyene asks Meles how he rules his country. Meles' response: By instinct.
Beyene said he read on the Internet that because of the DVD, which had been distributed in Ethiopia, he was charged in absentia with treason and genocide.
" That is the funny part!" said Beyene, an animated man with graying hair and glinting eyes.
The Ethiopian Embassy did not respond to several requests for comment.
Beyene moved to the United States in 1996. Bitter that his work as a comedian and emcee brought him trouble, he cast it aside and studied computers. Eventually, he took to the stage again and now performs for Ethiopian expatriates in the United States and abroad. But those are weekend gigs, and Beyene said he has sometimes felt depressed during off hours, when his thoughts turn to the stars who have taken his place in his homeland.
"I have just an opinion," he said. "So why [is] anybody mad at me?"
In a bare-walled office down the hall sat Lule, 65, who wears an Ethiopian flag pin on his lapel and is ETN's new chief executive. He worked his way up through several media outlets before becoming founder and editor of the popular newspaper Tobia in the 1990s. Eventually, he said, state harassment -- 16 criminal charges and three imprisonments, he said -- chased him away. He left in 1996.
Here, he has continued to write occasionallyfor Ethiopian papers. His livelihood, though, has come from a job in operations for a parking company.
"I miss it," he said of his journalism career.
While Ethiopia, a staunch U.S. ally, allows private media, international human rights organizations say independent journalists face state intrusion and intimidation. Hundreds of opposition leaders, social activists and journalists have been jailed. Newspapers have been shut down. That repression has sent many journalists and performers abroad -- several to the Washington area. Census data say 22,000 Ethiopian immigrants live in the region, but some community leaders believe it is home to more than 100,000. And so Sosinna Tesfa looked no further to build the ETN roster.
Tesfa, an Alexandria tech company owner who immigrated as a child, hatched the idea for ETN early last year with two friends. They recruited other investors, Ethiopians and Ethiopian Americans who mortgaged their homes and took loans to raise $500,000 in startup funds. And to give the network a slick and professional feel, they decided seasoned journalists and artists would run the show.
Tesfa first approached Lule, whom she calls "our Walter Cronkite."
Initially, he was skeptical. But when he learned that they had a space and equipment, he signed on.
"I shared their dream," Lule said.
He helped recruit other exiles, including Dereje Desta, the publisher of a District-based newspaper, Ze Ethiopia, and Genet Metike Alemu. Alemu freelances for Voice of America and makes a living as a receptionist at Providence Hospital, a job she cheerfully says has taught her skills -- filing, faxing -- and kept her verbal skills up to snuff.
"Of course, it is different from journalism," she said.
Perhaps no one feels more reborn through ETN than Eyassu, who spent 25 years as an editor and writer for various media in Ethiopia. He tried his hand as a foreign correspondent when he arrived in Northern Virginia in 1994, but it paid poorly. When ETN came calling, he was so overjoyed that he offered to work for free.
"It's hard to leave a career behind, let alone to bus driving," said Eyassu, 59, a ground transportation supervisor at Dulles International Airport. He has recently taped four episodes as host of an ETN political debate show.
The ETN crew emphasizes often that the network will be no mouthpiece -- not for the opposition, not for the state, not for anything but the truth.
Yet disdain for the Ethiopian government is evident in the studio. Lule refers to Meles as "a despot in the desert."
Abdul Kamus, an Ethiopia native who is executive director of the African Resource Center in the District, said America's fast-growing Ethiopian community needs quality media to help it adjust. But he is skeptical that a television network run by exiles can be objective.
"People will be free to speak their mind, yes, of course . . . Will they be neutral? I doubt it," Kamus said. "The majority [of Ethiopians] here would like to hear negative aspects of Ethiopian politics. They don't want to hear anything positive about the government."
Lule rejected Kamus's prediction, insisting that the network will be a "marketplace of ideas."
Beyene, for one, is brimming with them. After years of admiring late-night hosts David Letterman and Bill Maher as they take swipes at political leaders, Beyene is giddy about having an opportunity to do the same.
"When you are here, your thinking is much broader. Now I am thinking wide," Beyene said. "I wish I got this chance to perform this in Ethiopia."

Read more!

Ethiopia - Annual Report 2007 - Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders
The international community might have believed that legislative elections in May 2005 would mark the end of “authoritarian democracy” and the beginning of a genuine openness. But the polling fiasco and the riots which followed them dashed this hope. Around 15 journalists have been in prison since November 2005 after being picked up in a crackdown on the opposition coalition.
After a disastrous year, 2006 in Ethiopia was a static one. Some 20 journalists spent it in cells in Addis Ababa, part of a group of at least 76 members of the opposition, civil society and the private press prosecuted for “treason”, “conspiracy” to overthrow the government and “genocide”. Their trials before the federal high court opened on 2 May. The general disapproval, including from Ethiopia’s traditional allies, failed to get Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to budge. For him, there was no doubt that the opposition wanted to engineer a coup and to take revenge on ethnic Tigreans like himself.
Fourteen newspaper editors or publishers were rounded up in the space of one month in November 2005. From December onwards, other journalists were arrested and sentenced in defamation cases. All were still detained as of 1st January 2007.
Since 1st January 2006, two other journalists were added to the list of the “November prisoners”. Solomon Aregawi, of Hadar, arrested in November 2005, was charged on 21 March 2006 with “insulting the Constitution” and “genocide”, along with 32 other prisoners, members or supposed members of the CUD, Goshu Moges, of the weekly Lisane Hezeb, arrested on 19 February was charged with “treason” on 19 April. A number of other journalists and opposition figures or organisations, were charged while out of the country and tried in absentia.
It is against this tense background, aggravated by the war with Somalia and the standoff at the Eritrean border, that several privately-owned newspapers are continuing to appear in Addis Ababa. Self-censorship is commonplace, particularly on military issues. Ethiopian journalists are held to an imposed patriotism and foreign correspondents closely watched. Anthony Mitchell, working for the Associated Press (AP), was forced to leave the country on 22 January for having allegedly “tarnished the image of the country”. Foreign media have great difficult in obtaining accreditation from the Information Ministry, which is essential to be allowed to work legally in Ethiopia.
Reporters Without Borders has been worried since 2004, about the plight of two journalists working for the Oromo service of public television ETV. They were arrested in April of that year, along with other ETV staff, since released, following a violent crackdown on an Oromo student demonstration on the Addis Ababa University campus, on 4 January 2004. The two journalists were accused of being informers for the separatist Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).
For the first time in its history, the Ethiopian government appears to have launched itself into web censorship. From May to June 2006, most blogs and opposition websites were inaccessible in the country. The government denied being behind it. However, at the end of November, these online publications against mysteriously disappeared, which makes the hypothesis of political censorship appear more plausible.

Read more!