Panel discussion with Dr Beyan Asoba, Dr Abreham Alemu, and Geletaw Zeleke – Pt 1 – SBS Amharic

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(ESAT) An American economist and civil resistance expert has accused the TPLF of copying the policies of the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa to oppress and exploit the poor people of Ethiopia.

In an exclusive interview with ESAT, David Steinman, who advises pro-democracy movements around the world, said the minority regime is draining all the economic resources away from the majority.

He claims that there is a good reason to conclude that Zenawi embezzled over $3 billion during his reign of terror. He mentioned Celebrity Net Worth as a pretty accurate source that uses financial investigative methods before arriving at such a conclusion.

According to him, there is ample evidence that shows that the TPLF regime has embezzled over 30 billion US dollars. The Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT) is a major force in the massive scale looting of Ethiopia, according to Steinman.

According to Steinman, the structure of apartheid was deliberately revised and imposed in Ethiopia. “This doesn’t appear a coincidence to me,” he said.

“In South Africa apartheid was used to justify the exploitation of the majority by minority whites. I don’t think it is a coincidence that you see in Ethiopia the exact same dynamic. You have a small ethnic minority that is pushing on other people this ethnic tribalism,” he said.

He noted that there is already a history going back the last 26 years of ethnicity being disastrous for Ethiopia. “The signs are that it is not going to get any better. I think Africa has already experienced the struggle to get rid of one apartheid regime. Another apartheid regime does not strike me as exactly one that Africa needs at this point in history.”

He also claimed that the economic development that the TPLF is trying to promote is fake as the major beneficiaries of any economic gains are corrupt TPLF officials and their cronies. He argued that there is a direct connection between economic development and enabling political environments such as respect for human rights, rule of law and human rights.

“Ethiopian can only prosper by the efforts of millions of Ethiopians aspiring to improve their own life. The power of the individual must be unleashed in Ethiopia.”

Steiman further pointed out that the domination of the economy and political space by the TPLF is dangerous that will only end up in disaster. He blamed former tyrant Meles Zenawi for instituting such a corrupt and oppressive regime after promises to bring about justice, rule of law and democracy.

Steinman urged Ethiopians to unify against the TPLF regime which is using ethnicity as a tool of implementing its divide and rule policy.
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Full interview with David Steinman

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Tadesse Biru Kersmo

On 5^th July 2017, we read in the British Press that Dr. Taddesse Kersmo, a British national of Ethiopian dissident who was detained at Heathrow Airport on 4^thJanuary 2017, upon his return to the UK from a trip to Eritrea, was charged with terrorism under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 at Westminster Magistrate and later released on bail as he pleaded not-guilty to all charges. The Magistrate judge referred the case, which is the first in relation to an Ethiopian opposition member outside of the country, to be heard in a High Court at a later date.

This charge is different from your traditional terrorist charge which usually has an Islamic connection. The accused is Christian and is well known to the authorities in Britain for leading a secular organisation fighting for basic rights of citizens and respect for rule of law. The charges are brought under Article 58 of the contentious Terrorism Act of 2000 which is criticised by Liberty groups and has the power to make Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

Dr. Kersmo, a Christian, a scholar, researcher and passionate defender of human rights and a dedicated advocate for social justice, who genuinely believes only a democratic system, will bring peace and stability in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Dr Kersmo is a senior leader of Patriotic Ginbot 7 – Movement for Unity and Democracy in Ethiopia, a secular and liberal organisation set up to fight excessive political repression and injustice inflicted on Ethiopians by the ethnic and brutal regime in Ethiopia.

Dr. Kersmo, due to his well-known activism for the reign of human rights and democracy has made him a prime target of the Ethiopia regime.In 2014, Dr. Kersmo was the victim of a high-profile cyber-attack by the Ethiopian regime against Ethiopian exile community in the UK and in the US. The attack confirmed by Privacy International in collaboration with Citizen’s Lab was facilitated by the use of software developed and produced by the British-German company Gamma International British Government has ignored this blatant contravention of international law by a regime of different jurisdiction on a British national residing within the UK.

Britain, a country built on the values of freedom, justice and rule of law is not only home to many refugees fleeing political persecutions from brutal regimes around the world but known to support freedom movements in the past and at present. The open support provided to oppositions to the Syrian and Iranian regimes are the most obvious examples today. There are hundreds of Ethiopians who have been granted political asylum in the United Kingdom for being politically persecuted by the regime in Ethiopia and affiliated members of Ginbot 7 which in 2015 became Patriotic Ginbot 7 following a coalition with another opposition group with a support base in northern part of Ethiopia. However, for a country with a declared foreign policy to promote respect for human rights, freedom and democracy, it is rather puzzling that the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS) has decided to bring to court a case which is questionable from evidential or public interest tests point of view.

As a direct consequence of the political repression and marginalisation perused by the rulers of Ethiopia there are today a number of Ethiopian rebel organisations based in Eritrea with their senior leaders residing in the west, who are engaged in all forms or resistance against the regime in Ethiopia years before Ginbot 7 came in to the seen. However, It is rather curious why the CPS, and then the British Government decided to go after a senior leader of Patriotic Ginbot 7 and by implication against the organisation.

The glaring inconsistency between the declared foreign policy of the British Government and its disturbing collusion with the authoritarian regime of Ethiopia suggests that this is a politically motivated charge brought at of the behest the Ethiopian government bent on taking out those who oppose the regime and have the power to bring change not just at home but also living abroad. In doing so it appears that the British Government wilfully ignore that excessive political repression and complete erosion of constitutional rights and dignity of citizens are the primary reasons of opposition to the authoritarian regime in Ethiopia. This unprecedented cooperation of the British Government and its security apparatus with the Ethiopian authorities which has now been escalated to the level of using the legal system is also strengthening the suspicion about its role in the abduction and rendition of Andy Tsegie from Sanaa Airport while on route from Dubai to Eritrea on 23^rdJune 2014.

Human rights organisations accuse the British government for writing an open cheque to the Ethiopian regime and underwriting repression.The UK Government is condemned for using taxpayers’ money to bolster the Ethiopian security forces responsible for the kidnap and imprisonment of opposition leaders outside the borders of Ethiopia.

Human rights group has been calling for greater scrutiny by Britain and other donors to ensure their money does not support state-sanctioned killings and brutality, as there are growing evidence that thousands have faced repeated torture while unlawful state killings have been carried out in a ‘relentless crackdown on real or imagined dissent’.

The Ethiopian government on Friday 4 August 2017 lifted the 10 month state of emergency imposed in October 2016 after over a thousand innocent and unarmed citizens were killed in anti-government protests demanding wider political reform and end to political and economic marginalisation. The state of emergency is said to have further enshrined the repression that has contributed to the crisis in the first place.

The regime in Ethiopian

In the last 25 years Ethiopia has made significant gains in economic growth, infra-structure development, and achieved some of its millennium development goals.  However, the flip side of the so called success story is a country which is NOT at peace with itself like never before and has rapidly descended to a one party authoritarian state is at significant risk of political disintegration.  The absolute disregard and contempt of the ethno-centric regime in Ethiopia for human rights and human dignity has outraged the conscious of mankind.

These developments have not come by accident or happen overnight but are outcomes of conscious decisions of Ethiopia’s political rulers of the day over two and half decades.  Today, little remains of democracy in Ethiopia, especially since the enforcement of laws that, tighten control of civil society, suppress independent media, repress political opposition, and apply a deeply flawed anti-terrorism law designed to silence dissent.

The Foreign Office acknowledges that media freedom remains severely restricted in the country and that some journalists are among the political prisoners held by the state in gruelling conditions. Freedom House reports that Ethiopia is not free and is in a down ward trajectory where the recent state of emergency gave sweeping powers to the state and its security forces to crack down on freedoms of expression and association.

Highlighting gross violation of human rights committed by the Ethiopian Government on its people over the years, citizens the United States House of representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on 28^th July 2017 voted to advance resolution HR128 offering a blueprint to create a government better designed to serve the interests of the Ethiopian people.

Despite this deplorable record the west, particularly the UK continue to provide financial, political and diplomatic support to the regime in Ethiopia and is accused of underwriting repression. In a landmark case, the UK Government was challenged in the High Court for financing a project which resulted in the displacement of indigenous communities from their ancestral land. I wonder why the UK is content to short change its fundamental values of liberty and democracy to protect a presumed short term political interest and partnership with an authoritarian regime delivering nothing but boat load of political refugees to British and Western taxpayers.

A possible implication of the case                                                       

Ethiopia in the eyes of western governments may be seen as an economic power house showing strong economic growth rate and a stable country in a turbulent region. However, this narrative is in fact running out of steam and Ethiopia is sleep walking to utter instability and possible disintegration as the economic growth under fire is tailing-off and ethnic division is overtaking the supposed federalism.  Contrary to the view held among western governments that Ethiopia is a reliable partner to tackle security and stability problems of the region, a deeper analysis of the political role of the regime in Ethiopia in the region reveals that the regime has been partly responsible to the security and migration crisis that has engulfed the region.

A myopic view of the west and particularly Britain to support a brutal and dying regime standing on the wrong side of history for short term objectives leaves a sour test in the relation between the people of the two countries and reminiscent of the role Britain played in installing a minority regime in Ethiopia not to mention the influence of its colonial mess impacting on the peace of Ethiopian today. Considering the political and economic support the British Government has accorded apartheid South Africa and authoritarian regimes around the world, it is hardly surprising that they may see Ethiopia as their dictator as the former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called the Shah of Iran our dictator in the 1970s.

While it is worrying to learn that the Crown Prosecution Service, basically the Government of the United Kingdom – a country with proud history championing freedom and liberty, decided to bring such a case which tests the defensibility of a blanket application of the Act, the strength of the charge and the evidence, and the political motive behind the case; I have every confidence that the British justice system will defend liberty to the end and demonstrate that the state cannot dictate the outcome of a trial as in Ethiopia.

Moreover, this case could be an opportunity to lay bare in front of the Court and for the public to see the deplorable duplicity in the foreign policy of the UK and its inconsistent application of protection to different set of asylum seekers escaping political persecution from different parts of the world and its collusion with the brutal regime in Ethiopia.

On 7 August 2017 Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called  Mr Nicholas Mudros –  President of Venezuela “behaving like the dictator of an evil regime” following the death of 120 people during months of anti-government protest in Caracas.  While, it is totally unacceptable to see a single loss of life from a direct action of a government meant to protect and serve its people, the tragedy in Venezuela makes the massacre of over a thousand Ethiopians during the last 9 months alone by security forces, some of which have been trained by British aid and personnel, and the detention of tens of thousands in prisons also called death valleys for asking for their basic and constitutional rights; look like a child play.

On the other hand it was rather sad to observe Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson give a press interview at  the Conservative Conference 2016 unashamingly confirming that the Ethiopian Government formed by a ruling party led by the Tigrean People Liberation Front (TPLF) listed on the  Global Terrorism Database since 1980s, which claimed 100% of the parliamentary seats in two false national elections in a row (believe you me this is not North Korea or China but a strong partner of the UK)  is a democratic Government. This is a slap in the face of thousands of Ethiopians who has been lost their lives in the hand of this ethnic apartheid rule over the last 26 years, and the tens of thousands who have let their home in perilous circumstances in search of freedom. Human Rights and freedom of individuals are matters of principles and have no colour.

We fear that the current Foreign policy and position of the British Government towards Ethiopia, its desire to wilfully ignore atrocities committed by the brutal regime in Ethiopia, ready to be duped by a corrupt repressive regime, and instead go after for those who advocate for the freedom of a community shackled by excessive political repression; is expected to worsen the current global crisis of stability and migration.  A foreign policy which rejects the repression and marginalisation of nearly 100 million people and support respect for basic human and constitutional rights of citizens is the best guarantee of stability of Ethiopia and the region.

The writer can be contacted on Zerihun.Zelalem@gmail.com

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COLUMNIST |   Lolade Adewuyi 

The increase in the number of participating teams at the Africa Cup of Nations to 24 means only a few countries on the continent can afford to host the tournament. Ethiopia is building its capacity to become one of those few with an investment of more than $500million in new stadiums across the country.

In 2013, I was in Addis Ababa to cover the World Cup qualifier between Ethiopia and Nigeria at the Yidnekachev Tessema Stadium. Built in 1940, the 35,000 capacity ground was filled up on match day, with fans on the streets in several mile-long queues trying to get in.

Many of the fans came from far flung regions to watch the international spectacle as the Walyas were 180 minutes away from qualifying for Brazil 2014. The crowd was so much that it overwhelmed the tiny media box and one could not find space in the area for computers for live match commentary. But that is all about to change.

Ethiopia’s passion for football saw them host the Africa Cup of Nations thrice during the early years, the last time in 1976. But facilities have largely remained the same until recently when the government began to invest in infrastructure around the country. A new electric train service built by China as part of its five-year Growth and Transformation Plan is being followed by the construction of more than 13 new stadiums.

This country of a 102 million people that has fallen behind in African football hierarchy wants to host the African Nations Championship in 2020 and wrote to CAF about their plans, which is yet to be formally announced but a tweet in 2015 by Ethiopia Football Federation president Juneidi Basha suggested they have secured the rights.

They want to use the CHAN as a launching bid for the 2025 AFCON, Basha told me this week.

“We’re hosting CHAN in 2020. AFCON bid decisions depend on measures that CAF might take and progress of facilities but we’re interested in hosting as soon as our stadiums are ready,” Basha said.

CAF president Ahmad returned to Addis Ababa this week, the city where he defeated Issa Hayatou in March, and met with Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn where he expressed satisfaction at improvements in infrastructure.

“This is a great nation and what we see nowadays indicates that Ethiopia is ready for the future,” said Ahmad, according to the CAF website.

Ethiopia was one of the four founding members of the AFCON and won the title in 1962 before suffering a 30-year shut out where they failed to qualify for the tournament until 2013 in South Africa.

PM Desalegn told Ahmad: “The fact is that we need to come back to the forefront and take back the position which we deserve. I know we are somehow late but we are doing our best to come back. As you can see, we are building stadiums and ensuring the facilities will be ready to host international events.”

Ethiopia’s stadium investments include $110m for a new 60,000 capacity National Stadium in Ababa due to be completed in June 2018; 45,000 seats Mekelle Stadium at $20m (85% completed); 80,000 seats Adama Stadium at over $80m; 70,000 seats Dire Dawa Stadium at $50m; 56,000 seats Harar Stadium at $70m and 30,000 seats Gambella Stadium at $20m.

Some are already completed – Woldia Stadium with 25,155 seats at $25m was built by businessman Sheik Mohammed Al-Amoudi; Hawasa Stadium with 40,000 seats at $25m and Bahir Dar Stadium 53,000 seats at over $25m.

Ethiopia is enjoying a stadium boom, according to Basha. But how will they maintain all these facilities at a time when many countries are cutting down on hosting major tournaments?

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“The plans are to keep hosting continental, national and local tournaments and youth championships frequently. Women’s and youth leagues, which involves clubs in almost all parts of the country now exists on a national level too. There will always be a need to keep our stadiums in use,” he said, with domestic teams like St George, Dedebit and Ethiopian Coffee all having a massive following.

They will also need accommodation for a big event like the AFCON.

“Addis Ababa and capitals of regional states like Bahir Dar, Hawasa, Mekelle and Dire Dawa have enough hotel rooms,” said Basha. “More work definitely needs to be done in the coming years to get some of our cities fully ready for a tournament like the AFCON in [terms of] accommodation and infrastructure, given the number of fans and media coverage.

“However, many of our big cities have very good hotels since they are a tourist destination and host international conferences.”

It is not only Ethiopia that is investing in sport around East Africa. Rwanda hosted the CHAN in 2016 renovating its facilities for the tournament.

Kenya will host next year’s CHAN and is upgrading facilities but only two stadiums have met CAF requirements.

“You know what football can do to a nation,” said Dennis Mabuka, Chief Editor of Goal.com Kenya. “Look at Rwanda, they used football to bring peace just like Ivory Coast. So by hosting more competitions, it will bring people together. It is a very positive move.”

No East African country has played at the World Cup and none has reached the knock-out rounds of the AFCON in decades. So their ambitious investments in hosting major tournaments can be seen favourably in that light.

While Ethiopia recently ended a 10-month state of emergency resulting from protests by the Oromo and Amhara peoples, perhaps their football investments would lead to a more united nation when the major tournaments roll in.

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NAIROBI (Reuters) – Heavy fighting erupted on Friday in the South Sudanese town of Pagak near the border with Ethiopia when rebels launched an offensive against government forces, the rebels said.

Rebel spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told Reuters that the rebels were seeking to regain Pagak, which was captured by government forces on Aug. 7.

“We decided to launch an attack on them because Pagak is our base. They took it from us and we want to take it back,” Gabriel said.

“We cannot say right now that we are in full control but we are going towards taking control.”

Dickson Gatluak Jock, a spokesman for the forces of South Sudan’s First Vice President Taban Deng Gai, confirmed that they were engaged in fighting.

“At 5:00 am, SPLA-IO forces (loyal to the Juba government) came under heavy fire (from the rebels) in Pagak … Their main aim was to drive out our forces from the strategic town of Pagak,” he told Reuters.

South Sudan descended into civil war in 2013, only two years after it won independence, when President Salva Kiir fired his deputy, Riek Machar, unleashing a conflict that has since splintered along multiple ethnic lines.

Machar has been under house arrest in South Africa since December as regional leaders try to bring about an end to the conflict. The rebels fighting government forces in South Sudan remain loyal to Machar.

UNMISS, the U.N. peacekeeping force in South Sudan, told Reuters in an email the situation in Pagak was “extremely worrying” and urged all combatants to show restraint.

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August 11, 2017 – The United States embassy in Ethiopia announced that the main road from Addis Ababa to Jijiga has been blocked by security forces between the cities of Babile and Harar due to intense fighting including gunfire.

Ethiopian Defense Force troops are arriving in the area, and the road is not passable.  The Embassy has also recommended that U.S. citizens avoid travel between Babile and Harar at this time.

“As always, review your personal security plans; remain aware of your surroundings, including local events; and monitor local news stations for updates. Maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to enhance your personal security.” reads the Embassy’s website.

Earlier today, the Ethiopian Communication minister, Negre Lencho, has categorically dismissed the information by the US embassy in Addis Ababa.  “Due to the lack of awareness about border demarcations, some local residents have forbidden experts who were sent there to demarcate borders between Oromia and Somali regional states. Then the experts left the area; no conflict happened there,” said

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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — One person died and 19 were injured after a car plowed through a crowd here on Saturday. White nationalists and counter-protesters had violently clashed earlier in the day, injuring eight and prompting Charlottesville police and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to declare a state of emergency.

Supporters gathered in Emancipation Park Saturday morning in anticipation of a noon rally held by “Unite the Right.” The aim of the rally was to protest the removal of a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The park was formerly known as Lee Park.

State police and members of the Virginia National Guard surrounded the park after McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and the city of Charlottesville declared the alt-right protest an unlawful assembly — effectively cancelling the demonstration before its planned start time.

The Charlottesville Police Department reported that, as of 12:30 p.m. ET, it had made a single arrest and emergency medical personnel had responded to eight injuries.

But those may not be the only injuries related to the event. A video made after 1 p.m. ET and posted to social media appeared to show a car plow into a group of counter-protesters as they walked through the streets of Charlottesville.

Related: Trump, Politicians Condemn White Nationalist Rally in Charlottesville

CPD asked that people avoid and clear the site of the three-vehicle accident — Fourth and Water streets — in downtown Charlottesville. They reported multiple injuries. NBC News confirmed that the car that struck the crowd was a silver Dodge Charger, which built speed over two blocks before hitting the counter-protesters.

After striking a number of people, the car appeared to back up and flee the scene.

Assistant city editor of the Daily Progress Mark Newton told MSNBC that witnesses reported at least nine people were injured and that “bodies went flying.”

The CPD estimated between 2,000 and 6,000 people were expected to attend the “Unite the Right” rally, according to local paper The Daily Progress. The controversial event was seeking to unify the far-right wing and “affirm the right of Southerners and white people to organize for their interests,” according to its Facebook page.

McAuliffe said he declared a state of emergency to allow for a response to quell the violence.

“It is now clear that public safety cannot be safeguarded without additional powers, and that the mostly out-of-state protesters have come to Virginia to endanger our citizens and property,” McAuliffe said in a statement released shortly before noon. “I am disgusted by the hatred, bigotry and violence these protesters have brought to our state over the past 24 hours.”

White nationalists, as well as apparent neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members, were met in opposition by clergy members and other groups, who stood in a line singing “This Little Light of Mine” to drown out the profanity and slurs.

“Love has already won. We have already won,” the counter-protesters responded early Saturday.

But as the violence intensified with shoving and punching, demonstrators covered their mouths after tear gas was apparently released into the crowd.

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 Chaos Erupting At White Nationalist Event 2:09

Two people were also treated for serious but non-life-threatening injuries near Emancipation Park, the city of Charlottesville tweeted, as tensions flared with back-and-forth shouting and physical posturing.

A large group of counter-protesters wore black shirts and masks and carried shields, yelling to the white nationalists: “We have replaced you. Strong, united, interracial crew.”

Once the violence had mostly come to an end, President Donald Trump denounced the clashes via a tweet that called for “ALL” to be united in their condemnation of hate.

The city and Albemarle County both issued a “declaration of local emergency”

for the two jurisdictions to request additional resources.

McAuliffe said that his entire team would continue to monitor the situation and continue to coordinate with Virginia State Police, Virginia National Guard, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management as well as local and state officials.

“Local officials continue to closely monitor the situation,” Charlottesville police added on Facebook.

The University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville, cancelled all events and programming on the school’s campus.

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 White Nationalist Rally Turns Violent 1:00

The rally followed a night of torch-wielding white supremacists clashing with counter-protesters at the University of Virginia. Chants of “You will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil!” were met with shouts of “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!”

Related: Ahead of Far Right Wing Rally in Virginia, Airbnb Cancels Accounts

Reuters and a number of local reports put the number of protesters Friday in the hundreds. The Washington Post reported that the march lasted between 15 and 20 minutes.

At least one person was arrested Friday night and several others treated for minor injuries, according to The Daily Progress. Both sides reported being hit with pepper spray, the newspaper added.

Rep. Don Beyer, D.-Va., tweeted Saturday morning that “white supremacists chanting Nazi slogans aren’t Virginia or America. They are weak, ignorant, fearful people with citronella tiki torches.”

In videos posted to social media from Friday night, the white supremacists can be seen goading their opposition with shouts of “Jews will not replace us” and “white lives matter.”

The display drew condemnation from local and university officials.

“I am deeply saddened and disturbed by the hateful behavior displayed by torch-bearing protesters that marched on our grounds this evening,” University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan said in a statement. “I strongly condemn the unprovoked assault on members of our community, including university personnel who were attempting to maintain order.”

“The violence displayed on the grounds is intolerable and is entirely inconsistent with the university’s values,” Sullivan added.

Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer called the demonstration a “cowardly parade of hatred, bigotry, racism and intolerance.”

He added: “Everyone has a right under the First Amendment to express their opinion peaceably, so here’s mine: Not only as the Mayor of Charlottesville, but as a UVA faculty member and alumnus, I am beyond disgusted by this unsanctioned and despicable display of visual intimidation on a college campus.”

The King Center, founded by civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, tweeted that “racism never left America.”

Marianna Sotomayor reported from Charlottesville. Phil McCausland and Ariana Brockington reported from New York.

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Nizar Manek

Military helicopters circled above a crowd of thousands during a festival in Ethiopia’s Oromia region in October last. “Down, down TPLF!” one of those who assembled at Bishoftu town in Oromia shouted into a microphone, referring to the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, the dominant wing of Ethiopia’s ruling party. Oromia has seen violent protests, which began two years ago after complaints about evictions of farmers to make way for development projects and a lack of autonomy in an authoritarian system. Security forces fired tear gas at the crowd, triggering a stampede in which scores were crushed. Some drowned in a lake. Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn declared emergency rule less than a week later. The same day, defence forces shot a 28-year-old Oromo farmer. Witnesses cited in a report by Ethiopia’s only rights NGO, Human Rights Council, said the farmer was shot because he protested. An Opposition party leader was arrested after he addressed the European Parliament.

Ten-months later, the ruling party has unexpectedly lifted the emergency. Most of the over 20,000 people arrested were released after “renewal training”, while over 7,000 are on trial, Defence Minister Siraj Fegessa told Parliament earlier this month. But Oromia is far from being calm. The U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa has recommended avoiding an area where Oromia and Ethiopia’s Somali regions meet, where intense fighting is going on. Weeks earlier, Information Minister Negeri Lencho, an Oromo, told this reporter that almost 70,000 retailers lodged complaints over a new regional income tax law. “Most of the shops are closed where I live to protest” overvalued tax payments, said a resident of an Oromo town, 20 km from the capital.

‘Torture and murder’

The Human Rights Council published its 49-page report online, in Amharic, on May 29. A day later, the state telecom monopoly turned off internet access for almost a week. It documents 22,525 arrests, testimony from 28 former prisoners, six cases of “torture, beatings, and injuries” and 19 murders. Ex-inmates of a prison in the Amhara region, to where the protests spread, testified that prisoners were dunked in a cesspit full of urine; 250 youths were held without charge or trial; up to 100 prisoners were forced to sleep in a room of 10X4 meters; water was given only weekly; and contaminated water exposed them to contagious diseases.

In November, a 12-year-old girl from Ethiopia’s south was beaten and then taken from her house by government forces to a makeshift prison, her father testified. A heavy presence of government forces prevented the Council’s staff from moving freely, people were afraid to testify, and state organs, including police stations and federal prisons, remained deaf to the Council’s efforts at official corroboration, the report says.

The Council says what it documented violates the right to life contained in Ethiopia’s Constitution, as well as the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Convention against Torture, to which Ethiopia has acceded. The report assumes the scope and types of violations are “more than presented. It asks the ruling party to give the UN permission to investigate without restriction. Addis Ababa, however, rejects this, citing “an issue of sovereignty”. Zadig Abraha, deputy government spokesperson, said the report is “politically-motivated”. He pointed to a government-sanctioned inquiry which found that security forces took “proportionate measures in most areas”, saying 669 people were killed last year alone. The government can investigate itself, he added.

Nizar Manek is a reporter based in Addis Ababa, covering African affairs

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Muktar Edris of Ethiopia, left, wins the 5,000m ahead of Mo Farah, right, Paul Chelimo of the US and Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

London – Muktar Edris of Ethiopia spoiled Mo Farah‘s desire for 5,000m and 10,000m double at the World Athletics Championships, by clinching Ethiopia’s gold medal.

Idris’ winning time in the men’s 5000m race was 13:13.79.

Mo Farah had to settle for a silver medal.

Farah, 34, is stepping up to the marathon and had hoped to add to the doubles he won at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, and the 2013 and 2015 world championships. He also won the 5,000m at the 2011 worlds, giving him 10 global golds in all.

However, Muktar Edris of Ethiopia broke with his compatriot Yomif Kejelcha on the last lap and though the latter faded Farah was unable to chase down Edris and had to settle for a battling silver.

Final Results

1  Muktar Edris (Ethiopia) – 13:32.79
2 Mohamed Farah (Great Britain) – 13:33.22
3 Paul Kipkemoi Chelimo (USA) – 13:33.30
4 Yomif Kejelcha (Ethiopia) – 13:33.51
5 Selemon Barega (Ethiopia) – 13:35.34

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Almaz Ayana and Helen Obiri

The early stages of the 5000m final played out in an almost identical manner to the 10,000m with Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana making a huge surge after a ponderous opening to proceedings but while the Kenyan challenge fettered away in the 10,000m, Hellen Obiri produced an irresistible burst of speed on the last lap to deny the reigning champion a much vaunted long distance double.

Ayana ground the field into submission in the 10,000m on the second day of the championships and she made her intent clear in the 5000m final with a fourth lap of 65.57, followed by 66.21 for the fifth lap. These lap times represented world record pace for the distance but Obiri was more than content – and confident enough – to sit in her slipstream while the field splintered behind the leaders.

After a season blighted by a leg injury and illness, Ayana looked back at her imperious best in the 10,000m but it soon became clear these exertions were catching up with the reigning champion. Two very fast laps were followed by a succession of laps in the 68-second range through three kilometres in 8:58.05 and four kilometres in 11:49.95 and while the pace was still quick by anyone’s standards, it was not fast enough to draw any of the sting out of Obiri, a sub-four minute 1500m performer in seasons gone by.

Despite possessing the superior finishing speed, Obiri made her first challenge down the back straight on the penultimate lap. Ayana successfully fended Obiri off but when the Kenyan surged again at the same point on the bell lap, Ayana had nothing in response to Obiri’s vicious kick. With a last lap of 60.11, Obiri crossed the finish line in 14:34.87 to secure her first global outdoor title, punching the air in delight.

“I was telling myself to go. I could see Ayana was not going so I thought, ‘why not?’ So I said, ‘go’. I am mentally strong so I knew I was capable,” said Obiri. “When I crossed the line I was extremely happy, and just wanted to celebrate. All my emotions came out. I wanted the 5000m gold a lot.”

Ayana was being chased down by the fast-finishing Sifan Hassan on the last lap but the Ethiopian had enough of a buffer to hang onto silver medal position in 14:40.36. Ayana’s championships ended with her relinquishing her 5000m title but she was still more than pleased with her achievements given her chequered build-up to the championships.

“Compared to Rio this is a bigger achievement,” she said. “I’ve had many injuries this year so I am very happy with two medals. I have been injured for the whole season and haven’t been able to get over it. The pain came back after the 10,000m. I did my best today but Hellen was too good at finishing.”

Ayana also missed out on the 5000m title at the Olympic Games last summer when a stomach ailment left her weakened but she is still keen to attempt the same demanding double in future global championships. “But I won’t give up going for 5000m and 10,000m. I won gold and bronze in Rio and now gold and silver, so this is a step up,” she said.

Hassan described the 1500m final as a “nightmare” but she managed to salvage something from what would have been an otherwise disappointing championships with bronze in 14:42.73. She hinted this medal might even precipitate a change in her focus in years to come.

“Believe me, this is my event,” said Hassan. “In time I will keep up with the best, Ayana and Obiri, I just have to work at the event.”

Final Results:

Source: IAAF.org

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Due to their potent blend of trail‐blazing technology and disruptive innovation, FinTech players have the ability to accelerate the digital transformation of financial services in Africa and, in turn, further spur incumbent banks to rapidly ramp‐up their own innovation initiatives to meet the financial needs of under‐served markets across the continent.

August 2017, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: FinTech players are increasingly becoming an important part of the fabric of Africa’s financial services ecosystem and the leading banks on the continent are now more urgently seeking to harness technology innovations, collaborate with FinTech start‐ups, and create a platform to scale much faster – to make digital financial services pay.

Across Africa huge game‐changing leaps are currently taking place which are transforming economies on the continent ‐ and helping to drive forward key strategic priorities such as financial inclusion. The impact of Blockchain, Open Banking, Mobile Money and Payments innovation are radically transforming the financial services landscape as FinTech disruptors intensify the challenge to incumbent banks in Africa and kickstart new opportunities.

Finnovation Africa: Ethiopia 2017, which will be held on the 3^rd of November 2017 at the Radisson Blu Addis Ababa, will gather international FinTech experts together with African pioneers, investors, entrepreneurs and leading bankers, to harness the FinTech revolution to boost strategic economic priorities such as financial inclusion and deepening – and how FinTech can make a positive and profitable difference in Africa. The event will also explore how the major banks and financial institutions on the continent are addressing the digital transformation of financial services; and how their own digital innovations are being shaped and accelerated as a result of the gathering momentum of FinTech disruptors.

The unique environment for financial services in Africa is fertile ground for innovative FinTech players who are capitalising on the opportunities to disrupt or leapfrog established business models to make financial services more affordable, accessible and profitable across the continent. Finnovation Africa: Ethiopia 2017 is delighted to welcome a stellar list of keynote speakers, including Chris Principe, CEO of Chain2Trade, Inc. and Founder of FinFuture & Financial IT magazines; Yasaman Hadjibashi, Group Chief Creation Officer of Barclays Africa Group; Mountaga Diop, Founder & CEO of BelCash; Ermias Eshetu, CEO of Ethiopia Commodity Exchange; Aaron Fu, Managing Partner, Africa of NEST.vc; Ken Njoroge, CEO of Cellulant; Murad Qubbaj, Associate Director and Business Channels Development of Pio-Tech; and Ameya Upadhyay, Principal, Investments of Omidyar Network. The opening keynote session will define directions on Aligning the Role of Government Policymakers, Incumbent Banks, FinTech Innovators, Investors, Multilateral Agencies, MNOs and the Private Sector to Create a Dynamic Ecosystem for FinTech in Africa.

Finnovation Africa: Ethiopia 2017 will also provide a platform to connect innovative start-ups with leading investors in the African FinTech space and the Wolves’ Den session is one of the most dynamic features of the event. The Wolves’ Den enables innovative FinTech start-ups and trail-blazers to real-time test the positive impact of their solutions. A panel representing savvy Investors/Venture Capitalists and seasoned African Fintech Pioneers will evaluate the business model of each chosen start‐up or trail‐blazer in a high-stress 10 minute “elevator pitch” to the “Wolves” who will ask the tough questions and provide the illuminating insights.

Murad Qubbaj, Associate Director, Business & Channels Development of Pio-Tech, speaking ahead of his participation in the event, said that: “A combination of limited access to financial services, high mobile penetration and strong entrepreneurial spirit are some of the key reasons behind the acceleration of financial services innovation in Africa, with some of the most innovative FinTech and banking solutions being developed in and for the region. Recent research has revealed that almost a third of the money invested in African start-ups was consumed by new FinTech firms and the Finnovation Africa: Ethiopia 2017 event has created a unique platform for these start-ups and trail-blazers, the broader FinTech ecosystem, as well as the incumbent banking powerhouses across Africa to engage and learn from each other.”

Speaking ahead of his participation in Finnovation Africa: Ethiopia 2017, Mountaga Diop, Founder & CEO, BelCash, said that: “Industry leaders from across the African and global FinTech industry will gather at Finnovation Africa: Ethiopia 2017 where they will seek to harness the growing momentum around digital financial services into more inclusive and productive economies across Sub‐Saharan Africa.”

Mr. Diop continued by saying, “As the formal economy grows we see individuals, communities, and nations prosper and make progress on strategic growth and development priorities. When unbanked and underbanked communities have access to digital financial services, everyone benefits and FinTech can play a vital role in driving financial inclusion imperatives across the continent. There is an opportunity to change people’s lives while building scalable, profitable companies that consumers need and want.”

Finnovation Africa: Ethiopia 2017 will take place at the Radisson Blu in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the 3^rd of November 2017 and will gather all stakeholders and influencers in the African FinTech ecosystem, from start-ups to banking powerhouses, from the key markets across Africa and internationally.

Ethico Live Limited is a UK registered company with its corporate headquarters at 110 Queen Street, Glasgow G1 3BX, UK. Focused on the digital transformation of financial services and the role that FinTech is playing in driving positive and profitable change in areas such as Finclusion, Islamic banking and smart cities, we serve our clients with high-profile international conferences in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia – with a special focus on the exciting high-growth markets of Africa.

For further details, please contact:

Sanay Lalwani, Media & Marketing Lead: Finnovation at Ethico Live:

sanaylalwani@ethicolive.com

www.finnovationlive.com

Contact No – +91 90245 26133, +91 124 418 2794/5

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Introduction to the series…

This rather long and somewhat discursive introduction to the ongoing series I have dubbed “The Dilemma of U.S. Policy in Ethiopia: Policy Options” [hereinafter “policy options series”] is necessary to set the stage for what I hope will be a cyber platform for ongoing discussions and exchange of creative and innovative ideas for a more effective U.S. policy in Ethiopia.

In 1991, the U.S. played the role of power broker effectively delivering Ethiopia into the hands of the TPLF. Ethiopia became one of the last pawns in the Cold War.

Over the past quarter of a century, the U.S. has poured tens of billions of American tax dollars to support the regime of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front.

What has the U.S. received in return?

I would argue not even a heartfelt thank you. The Chinese got all of the “thank you’s”.

What do American taxpayers have to show for the billions of dollars in aid they poured into Ethiopia?

I am afraid, not much!

It is unfortunate that a significant portion of U.S. aid in Ethiopia over the past quarter of a century has been looted, stolen, misused and illicitly transferred out of the country by the leaders of the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF).

I do not discuss specific policy options, proposals or recommendations for U.S. policy in Ethiopia in this commentary. That shall follow in subsequent commentaries in the form of “Policy Options” papers, analyses and documents.

In this commentary, I merely set the stage for the ongoing series by pulling together key foundational questions, issues, facts and critical analyses which will help inform my future  policy discussions, analyses and recommendations.

In this series, I aim to achieve several broad objectives: 1) Spark informed debate and robust discussion on the likely outcomes of the current situation in Ethiopia in general, and more specifically focus on what the U.S. can and should do (and must not do) in light of emerging developments in Ethiopia. 2) Generate informed policy analysis and recommendations for consideration and use by American policy makers responsible for formulating policy in Ethiopia. 3) Educate the concerned Ethiopian and American publics on available policy options and risks and opportunities associated with particular policy options in Ethiopia. 4) Directly engage American policy makers in the executive and policy forums and help shape U.S. policy in Ethiopia. 5) Generate a body of cogent policy analyses which will serve to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Ethiopia.

There has been a dearth of critical, informed and evidence-based analysis on U.S. policy in Ethiopia over the past decade. Yet, there is a considerable body of publicly available data which cries out for mining by Ethiopian and Ethiopian American scholars and policy analysts. What is available in the Ethiopian blogosphere, in large part, simply does not cut the mustard as policy analysis.

I want to state emphatically that the foremost purpose of the series herein is to invite, indeed to vigorously challenge, Ethiopian and Ethiopian American scholars, academics, researchers, policy analysts and other Ethiopianists to come forward and make a contribution to better inform U.S. policy in Ethiopia. This undertaking should not be regarded as something novel. American scholars of diverse national heritage engage American leaders in the executive and legislative branches in a variety of ways every day, including as “experts”, “specialists”, “consultants”, “analysts” and in other professional capacities.

To clarify, I refer to “Ethiopian” and “Ethiopian American” scholars and others herein to signify the fact that Ethiopian Americans as citizens and taxpayers have the constitutional right to make demands on their government. Ethiopian Americans have the right to petition their government for a redress of grievances, which means among other things, they can  demand their government change its domestic or foreign policies. Regrettably, Ethiopians have no such right in their country, or in the U.S., obviously. But they do have a right to express themselves under international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

On a number of occasions over the years, particularly during my days of advocacy for passage of H.R. 2003, I have been asked two critical questions by very influential people in the U.S. government (neither of which I have been unable to answer adequately to this day). 1) “What is the consensus of Ethiopian intellectuals about U.S. policy in Ethiopia?” 2) “Why can’t the Ethiopian opposition come as a unified voice and engage in grassroots advocacy in Congress?”

Passage of H.R. 2003 (“Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act”) in the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2007 is compelling evidence that determined collective action can indeed impact the policy making process.

Better late than never! Perhaps this series could help focus the efforts of the Ethiopian democratic opposition in the United States to come together and directly contribute to the policy process.

I believe Ethiopian American intellectuals today have a great opportunity to impact policy in the Trump administration, if only they can compartmentalize their views on Trump as a person and president. I know many of them have disengaged from the policy process over the past couple of years embittered by the monumental betrayal of Barack Obama.

I have previously called on and challenged Ethiopian intellectuals and Ethiopianists to rise to the occasion and engage American policy makers confidently and forthrightly on Ethiopian issues. I have always found it ironic that some non-Ethiopian academics are invited to testify before Congress and provide “expert” analysis to the State Department when able Ethiopians watch from the sidelines.  Where some leave a vacuum, others rush to fill it in. Such is the universal law of vacuum.

The fact of the matter is that few Ethiopian scholars and intellectuals have risen to the occasion and stood up and spoken on behalf of Ethiopia and Ethiopians. In June 2010, I wrote a commentary entitled, “Where Have the Ethiopian Intellectuals Gone?”, lamenting this fact.

In 2017, I still feel a little bit like Diogenes the Cynic, the Greek philosopher, who used to walk the streets of ancient Athens carrying a lamp in broad daylight looking for an honest man.

I have “walked” the hallowed grounds of Western academia, searched the cloistered spaces of the arts and scientific professions and traverse the untamed frontiers of cyberspace with torchlight in hand looking for Ethiopian public intellectuals, those willing, able and ready to share their knowledge and expertise with policy makers and the common folk.

I have found very few.

That does not mean they are not “out there”. I personally know of dozens of top flight Ethiopian American scholars, academics and researchers who could play a dynamic role in transforming U.S. policy in Ethiopia in innovative and creative ways. From time to time, a few of them will drop a blog or two and vanish in the fog of the blogosphere. But the vast majority, for reasons known only to them, prefer silence in anonymity. I am hoping my challenge here will encourage them to disavow their vows of silence and join me in the debate and discussions. Indeed, I hope they will accept my challenge now and come out, stand up and be counted on the side of Ethiopia.

I am aware that some of my readers have difficulty comprehending my views expressed in numerous commentaries on my blog and in The Hill supporting Trump’s penetrating questions on U.S. policy in Africa, which has special relevance to Ethiopia. “How could I even mention Trump’s name…?” they ask me.

The answer is simple. Henry Kissinger said, “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

I could say the same thing about Ethiopia!

Take Barack Obama, for instance. Obama ain’t no friend of Ethiopians. No doubt, he is a bosom friend of the TPLF thugs.

By the same token, Donald Trump who has said and done nothing to harm Ethiopia is no enemy of Ethiopia, or Africa. I believe Trump’s questions about U.S. aid accountability and corruption, use of counterterrorism cooperation as a meal ticket  for dictatorial regimes, bogus trade deals and the double standard benefiting Chinese businesses is in any way harmful to Ethiopia or Africa.

Obama’s sins of commission are very different from Trump’s anticipated sins of omission.

Suffice it to say that Ethiopian Americans must “by nature be a fox but a hedgehog by conviction” in dealing with the Trump administration.

Touché!

The dilemma of U.S. policy in Ethiopia

The dilemma of U.S. policy in Ethiopia is simply this: The T-TPLF is driving the country over the cliff into a cataclysmic civil war at breakneck speed. The Ethiopian opposition is fragmented, splintered, ineffective and disorganized.

The country is in a massive state of quiet riot.

The people of Ethiopia are engaged in mass acts of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance throughout the country. They refuse to pay the T-TPLF’s outrageous taxes and are resisting expropriation of their land. Every day the people are standing up defiantly and proclaiming to the T-TPLF, “Enough is enough! We ain’t gonna take it no more.”

The quiet riot is getting louder and louder by the day.

Two days ago, the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa reported that it

is aware of reports that the main road from Addis Ababa to Jijiga has been blocked by security forces between the cities of Babile and Harar due to intense fighting including gunfire.  Ethiopian Defense Force troops are arriving in the area, and the road is not passable.

The Voice of America, Amharic program also reported a few days ago that massive boycotts and strikes against the T-TPLF are taking place in the Amhara region.

The quiet riot is morphing into a creeping civil war slowly enveloping Ethiopia.

Is Ethiopia doomed to share the fate of Rwanda, as Meles Zenawi, the late thugmaster of the T-TPLF, once predicted?

Could the U.S. play a role to avert a civil war in Ethiopia?

The U.S. has always played a decisive role in Ethiopia.

Over the past eight years, the Obama administration has been the best friend for life of African dictators.

The U.S. poured billions of American tax dollars to keep the T-TPLF afloat despite its horrendous corruption and human rights record. Obama even declared the T-TPLF is democratically elected after the T-TPLF claimed one hundred percent control of the “parliament”, and a police state which pretty much every other aspect of the society.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton imposed a comprehensive trade embargo against Sudan and blocked the assets of the Sudanese government for the genocide in Darfur and sponsorship of terrorism.

On January 13, 2017, a week before the end of his term, signed an executive order removing Clinton’s trade embargo on the government of Omar al-Bashir, a dictatorship that has been in power since seizing power in a military coup in 1989. Bashir is today an indicted fugitive from justice at the International Criminal Court and listed on the Red Notice of Interpol for directing genocide in Darfur and other places in the Sudan.

Barack Obama never met an dictator or thugtator he did not love.

Trump has manifested very little interest in Africa.

For his apparent lack of expressed interest, he has been criticized for ignoring (and being ignorant) and neglecting Africa.

Indeed, the positions of National Security Council Africa director, assistant secretary and principal deputy assistant secretary for African affairs at the State Department remain vacant.

Trump has only spoken to the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa. Trump completely ignored Obama’s darlings and the biggest mooches of American tax dollars in Ethiopia. This past May,  U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited the Middle East and Africa to “reaffirm key U.S. military alliances” and engage with strategic partners.” Mattis only visited the tiny nation of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa where the U.S. maintains its largest military base.

Ethiopia was conspicuously absent from the “strategic partner” lineup. Does that signal a basic shift in U.S. policy in Ethiopia?

Trump’s critics argue that he simply fails “to realize the importance of Africa to U.S. national security interests, and America’s indispensable role in continuing to shape the democratic evolution of the continent.” They say he is callously turning his back on “more than 20 million people facing starvation and famine” in Africa. Their preferred solution is for Trump to appoint “moderate and experienced Africa experts” and old hands who perambulate through the revolving door of government, think tanks and consultancies and continue with business as usual.

I am not concerned about, and give little credit to, allegations that Trump is “ignoring” Africa.

I believe Obama has done much greater damage to the people of Africa by pouring billions of American tax dollars to support their oppressive dictators.

Perhaps Trump is “ignoring” Africa because he believes Africa’s dictators are not worth a damn. Not a dime of American tax dollars should be used to support their corruption and lavish life styles.

Perhaps Trump thinks Africa under the rule of thugtators and dictators is a rabbit hole for American tax dollars with no accountability. Maybe he does not want to throw good money after bad. I do not know.

But after examining Trump’s transitions team’s questions on Africa, all I can say is that they asked the same exact questions I have been asking for the past eleven years.

What more can I say!?

Where Trump’s critics see danger in “ignoring” Africa, I see great opportunity to engage and influence the Trump administration in its emerging Africa policy.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it…

There are tens of thousands of Ethiopian American taxpayers who shelled out their hard-earned money and sacrificed their time and energy to get Barack Obama elected.

They put all their eggs in Obama’s basket, and Obama crushed them all in eight years.

Obama betrayed the vast majority of his Ethiopian American supporters when he got in bed with the TPLF thugs. To use an Ethiopian metaphor, “In return for the gold Ethiopian Americans gave Obama, he returned to them pebbles.”

I doubt there is any Ethiopian American who has felt Obama’s cruel betrayal more deeply than myself. I made so many excuses to defend him in his policy in Ethiopia against those who said he was no friend of Ethiopia. They told me Obama was a friend of Africa’s thugtators and dictators. His best friends were the TPLF thugs. I dismissed their views out of hand. I self-assuredly proclaimed, “Obama was a constitutional and civil rights lawyer before he was president. He will do the right thing.”

Now, I know I was wrong and those who pegged Obama as African dictators’ best friend were right. (Mea culpa. My belated apologies to all!)

Obama made a parade of fools of his Ethiopian American supporters, and I must painfully confess that I was at the front of that parade twirling a baton.

But I had a cathartic moment when I wrote my September 2014 commentary, “Shame On Me For Being Proud of President Obama!”

Truth be told, shame on Obama for he shamed himself for all eternity when he declared with a straight face that the T-TPLF which claimed to have won one hundred percent of the seats in its “parliament” was democratically elected.

I have nothing to be ashamed! Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on you.

Obama will not fool me the second time wallowing in the dustbin of history!  All I have to say to Obama is, “He who laughs last, laughs best!”

It is true that “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

Thus, the question is, “What are the mutual interests of the U.S. and Ethiopia in their relations?”

For eight years, I have spoken to Obama’s deaf ears about the mutual interests of the two countries. All I got from his administration was, “We are working on it. It takes time.”

It took me a while to find out about the subterfuge of Obama’s “quiet diplomacy”.

How silly of me to believe that there could be quiet diplomacy in the face of massacres, colossal thefts of elections and gross violations of human rights. It is like the fox having quiet diplomacy with the chickens cooped up in the hen house.

Anyway, “quiet diplomacy” was Obama’s reward to all of his Ethiopian American supporters who toiled to get him elected.

In less than six months, I have been “heard” by the Trump administration.

In my December 2016 commentary, “Glimpses of Trump’s Foreign (Human Rights) Policy in Africa”, I confidently declared that President Trump would do nothing but “watch Africa mired in corruption, human rights violations, bad governance, wars, conflicts and violence with indifference and nonchalance.” I further declared, “I do not expect the Trump Administration to pay attention to my analyses or policy recommendations on Africa” and “if I am proven wrong in the slightest, I ‘shall eat crow’, the ultimate blasphemy for a vegan.”

I am happy to report that I now know where to get vegan crow.

I am comparing and contrasting Obama with Trump because I believe there is an opportunity to influence, however modestly or enormously, the Trump administration in the right direction. That is the direction of strict U.S. aid accountability, human rights accountability and democratic accountability.

That is why I am specifically inviting and challenging Ethiopian American intellectuals in this series to engage U.S. policy makers by providing them informed, evidence-based and well-reasoned policy analysis on what the U.S. should and should not do in Ethiopia, and remind them of what the U.S. has done right and wrong in the past.

The less of history is this: Things are not always what they seem to be, and one should never put all of one’s eggs in one basket.

Why policy engagement on U.S. Ethiopia policy today is vital

I am well aware that the vast global network of U.S. intelligence services provide voluminous data and analysis to American policy makers every day. No doubt, the U.S. diplomatic corps and intelligence services in Ethiopia do the same.

But anyone who has taken the time to study the Wikileaks documents on Ethiopia understands the limitations in U.S. intelligence and diplomatic analyses in Ethiopia.

What Churchill said of Russia, perplexed about what Russia may do, is equally applicable to Ethiopia. “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” There is a “key” to the enigma.

Careful review and analysis of the Wikileaks documents on Ethiopia show that American diplomats and intelligence analysts are sorely lacking in that singularly paradoxical Ethiopian perspective.

With all their data and number crunching (and their silly hubris about what they know), the diplomats and intelligence services can only penetrate the “sem” (wax) but rarely the “worq” (gold) of the Ethiopian condition, to use an Ethiopian metaphor.

The fact of the matter is that Ethiopia is just a job for them. They don’t have a dog in the race. They are just temporary spectators of a deadly game of dictatorship in Ethiopia. It’s all in a day’s work for them. They don’t have skin in the game. Just another day at the office. They write up their “objective” boilerplate reports garnished with the usual buzzwords and platitudes, call it a day and go home.

They care about what is happening in Ethiopia as much as the guy sitting in the park watching  the clouds drifting across the sky. It may be amusing to pass the time, but who cares? They will move to another assignment in two or three years and Ethiopia will be nothing more than a blurred memory for them as they take up another assignment.

Those of us who have our roots, families, relatives and friends in Ethiopia have a lot of skin in the game. We have horses in the race. If human rights are trampled, our people suffer. If the rule of law is absent, our people suffer under the rule of thugs.

That is why Ethiopian American intellectuals must now rise to the occasion and take a leading role in shaping the destiny of their homeland and people.

Let me say in passing that I am aware some may consider my views about the current T-TPLF regime single-mindedly severe and uncompromising.

I don’t know but I’ve been told that “they” say I am part of the “extremist Diaspora.”

“They” claim that I say and write things about them out of malice and animus.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn what they think or say about what I say or think.

I take Barry Goldwater’s position about what I do. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

The 800-pound gorilla in the room nobody wants to talk about

The “dilemma” for U.S. policy in Ethiopia revolves around difficult choices the U.S. will have to make given that country’s political trajectory towards civil war.

CIVIL WAR!

The prospect of civil war in Ethiopia is something few would dare to talk about in public. Privately, that is what most Ethiopians murmur about in one form or another.

I talked about it in my August 2016 commentary, “The Volcano, the Beast and the Tiger”. Things have gotten far worse in August 2017.

In October 2016, the T-TPLF declared a state of emergency and jailed tens of thousandsof innocent citizens fearing the breakout of civil war.

The T-TPLF puppet prime minister Desalegn invoked the constitution (Art. 93(1)(a)) to declare “state of emergency” fearing a “breakdown of law and order which endangers the Constitutional order and which cannot be controlled by the regular law enforcement agencies and personnel”.

In my May 2017 commentary, “The Good Kops/Bad Kops T-TPLF Con Game (Over)”, I pointed out the irrefutable fact that the T-TPLF today barely clings to dear political life sitting on a powder keg and holding by a thread it calls a “state of emergency” decree. Remove the “state of emergency” lid on the people’s anger, frustration and resentment against T-TPLF rule and boom goes the powder keg.

Last week, the T-TPLF declared it had lifted the “state of emergency”.  BFD!

Of course, the T-TPLF did not have to lift diddly.  The people did it on their own. They refused to pay taxes in the form of daylight robbery. They refused to give up their land. In short, they told the T-TPLF to go to hell, hell, hell!

Just a minor clarification. The T-TPLF’s “state of emergency” was, in fact, martial law.

The T-TPLF called it “command post law.” The T-TPLF thought it could cleverly disguise its martial law by using a kinder, gentler and dumber phrase like “command post”.

But martial law by any other name is still martial law. The “command post” was empowered to massacre, jail and terrorize the civilian population at will.

It did not work. The people rose up in massive disobedience two weeks ago and ended the “state of emergency” by themselves. That happened when the T-TPLF immediately backed down after the anti-tax uprising. The T-TPLF now claims it had ended the “state of emergency”.  Ha!

The T-TPLF could no longer massacre and jail hundreds of thousands to secure compliance with its dictatorial orders.

The T-TPLF knew all too well that its “state of emergency” could keep a lid on the powder keg for only a very short time.

The pressure in the powder keg is building up by the second, minute and hour. There is no safety valve to release the pressure, only increasing compression and oppression.

The T-TPLF house of cards is coming apart, brick-by-brick and nail-by-nail.

The T-TPLF knows for certain that when the powder keg goes off, only two questions will remain unanswered: Whether it will go off with a bang or a whimper, and whether it will happen in daylight or come like a thief in the night.

Let the record show…

Let the record show that I am not the first person to talk about the possibility of the powder keg going off with the T-TPLF perched on top.

Let the record show that the chief prophet of gloom and doom of civil war in Ethiopia was none other than Meles Zenawi, the late T-TPLF thugmaster.

Let the record show that Meles’ minions and disciples have been preaching about the coming ethnic Armageddon if they were no longer in power for over two decades.

Let the record show that on May 6, 2005, nine days before the election, Meles warned  that a victory for the opposition in May 15 elections could lead to Rwanda-style bloodshed and accused the opposition of conspiring to foment ethnic hatred.”  Meles pleaded:

I call on the people of Ethiopia to punish opposition parties who are promoting an ideology of hatred and divisiveness by denying them their votes at election on May 15…  Their policies are geared toward creating hatred and rifts between ethnic groups similar to the policies of the Interahamwe when Hutu militia massacred Tutsis in Rwanda. It is a dangerous policy that leads the nation to violence and bloodshed. (Emphasis added.)

Meles’ was crystal clear about his message: 1) If he and his gang are removed from power there will be civil war. 2) If the opposition takes power, they will conduct genocide on a scale similar to Rwanda’s.

The only thing that was not clear in Meles’ statement was the identity of the genociders and the victims of the genocide.

Meles must have been crazy as a loon or crazy like a fox when he said that.

Maybe he was high on khat, but he predicted a Rwanda-style Interahamwe in Ethiopia.

Let the record show that was not the first time Meles warned of the specter of civil war in Ethiopia if he and his gang are no longer in charge.

Let the record show that Meles has been preaching the coming ethnic Armageddon since the late 1990s to justify the necessity for him and his gang to remain at the helm of power. Meles would pull out the “Yugoslav boogeyman” to scare the Ethiopian people. Meles would rant about Ethiopia going the way of Yugoslavia but for his leadership and his T-TPLF gang.  The former Yugoslavia is today seven nations, Meles used to harangue.

Let the record show that Meles repeated the same eschatological warning in a videotaped interview in 2009.

Balkanization was Meles’ and the T-TPLF’s dream for Ethiopia. It is still their dream today.

Over the past 26 years, Meles and his T-TPLF gang have toiled day and night to carve up, chop up and put on fire sale Ethiopia to facilitate and prolong their rule; and when it’s time for them to go, to make sure Ethiopia goes up in smoke. It is like the wish of the proverbial Ethiopian donkey: “After I die, I could not care less if the grass grows.” In other words, apres T-TPLF, le deluge. (After the T-TPLF, the flood in Ethiopia.)

The former Yugoslavia splintered into 7 states after their civil war.

The T-TPLF did not need a civil war to break up Ethiopia into 9 apartheid-style Bantustans called kilils to make it easier for them to divide and rule. Indeed, they have achieved their dream of balkanizing Ethiopia with a stroke of the pen in their constitution.

Today, the T-TPLF gangsters are trying to convince Ethiopians and the world that without their steady hands at the helm, Ethiopia will go the way of Yugoslavia.

What a fantastic con job!

Everyone who has examined the evidence I have presented in the past to prove the T-TPLF is a reincarnation of the minority apartheid regime in Ethiopia knows that its kililistans are  patterned after the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa.

Recently, David Steinman, the American economist and expert in civil resistance, gave an interview in which he said,

In South Africa, apartheid was used to justify the exploitation of the majority by minority whites. I don’t think it is a coincidence that you see in Ethiopia the exact same dynamic. You have a small ethnic minority that is pushing on other people this ethnic tribalism.”

South African apartheid leaders used to justify their minority white rule by claiming that if they were removed from power South Africa will disintegrate in “a two-phase process of revolution which has as its objective the establishment of a Communist state” and accelerate the spread of communism throughout Africa.

The T-TPLF is making essentially the same argument. Without them in power, Ethiopia will disintegrate into a 9-way ethnic implosion drawing the entire Horn of Africa. They must, under any and all circumstances, remain in power.

The irony of history is that the TPLF organized itself and waged an armed “liberation” war to create the “Republic of Tigrai” in a “two-step process:  1) re-demarcating Tigray’s borders to expand the region’s borders within Ethiopia, and 2) acquiring coastal lands within Eritrea and seceding as an independent nation.”

The TPLF did not wage a liberation struggle to save Ethiopia from civil war or territorial disintegration. They waged a civil war to disintegrate Tigray from the rest of Ethiopia. Now, they claim to be defenders of Ethiopian unity through ethnic federalism, an oxymoron.

What the T-TPLF is saying today is similar to a ludicrous statement made by An American military official in Vietnam in 1968. “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

The T-TPLF says it is necessary to destroy Ethiopia by breaking it up into apartheid-style

kililistans (by dividing the people by ethnicity, religion, region, language and class) to save it.

The destroyers of Ethiopia are the only saviors of Ethiopia!

The second irony of history is that the T-TPLF seized power hell-bent to eliminate “Amhara domination”. They made that declaration clear in their Manifesto.

In 1991, as he was grasping power, Meles changed his tune. “We expect that Ethiopia will be a really democratic country, united not by force of arms but by the freely expressed will of the people involved. I suppose we won’t need the Kalashnikov anymore.”

Today, the T-TPLF clings to power by the straps of Kalashnikovs comfortably cushioned by a bed of American taxpayer dollars.

Let the record show that in June 2005, a month after the 2005 election, Bereket Simon, Meles Zenawi’s step-and-fetch and one-time T-TPLF  communication minister justifying the massacre of unarmed protesters that year repeated his boss’ accusations and predicted: “Strife between different nationalities of Ethiopia might have made the Rwandan genocide look like child’s play.” (Emphasis added.)

Let the record show that in 2015, in a secretly recorded conversation which I discussed in my commentary, “The “End of the Story” for the T-TPLF in Ethiopia?”, Berket Simon and his comrade “deputy prime minister” Addisu Legesse, plainly talked about the end of times — the final days, the last days — for the T-TPLF to a group of their supporters. They lamented “the end of their story” in a civil war!

Let the record show that in August 2016, Aboy Sibhat, T-TPLF thugmaster-behind-the-scenes, foretold the coming civil war in Ethiopia with crystal clarity:

No people will stay under conditions of sweltering oppression for [unlimited number of] years. That is [a] universal [principle].  A people to the extent they are people, in world history, they will not stay in a [one] place as those put them there want. When the people become bitter, [the situation] explodes. This universal truth. There are no people who will not rise up when they become bitter [have had enough]; [that is a fact] historically, now or in the future.”

The Ethiopian people have become “bitter” and are “rising up” as Sebhat predicted.

Let the record show that in July 2016, T-TPLF general Tsadkan Gebretensaye, offered an extensive analysis (in Amharic) of T-TPLF rule and concluded with what clearly appeared to be a “proposal” to pull Ethiopia back from the brink of civil war.

Gebretensaye explored three “scenarios”. The very first one was what he called the possibility of things “getting out of the control of the government as a result of the questions and issues raised by the people. This could result in the total collapse of the government.”  (Emphasis added.)

Gebretensaye did not explicitly say what could follow the complete “collapse of the government”, but “total collapse” sounds like civil war!

Meles and his T-TPLF have always used the Amhara boogeyman to cling to power.

The T-TPLF has always sought to legitimize itself by claiming that it has freed Ethiopia’s multicultural society from “Amhara domination” built on the foundation of a unitary state.

Why can’t there be democracy in Ethiopia? The “evil Amhara” will come and take over and make everyone serfs.

Why can’t the rule of law be observed in Ethiopia? The “evil Amhara” will come and take over and make everyone serfs.

Why not privatize land ownership?

Former Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Herman Cohen, who facilitated the handover of  power to the TPLF from the military junta in 1991 in an interview in January 2012 revealed:

And I questioned him [Meles] about land ownership. I was promoting allowing the farmers to have ownership of the land. He said that was not good because the Amharas would come and take over and buy all the land; and these people [the farmers] would return to be serfs like they were under the Emperor.” (Emphasis added.)

In 2015, Cohen expressed his puzzlement: “I fail to understand why the Ethiopian regime feels it necessary to exercise such extreme control to the point of committing murder periodically against their own citizens.”

Murderer is as murderer murders.

Cohen was outfoxed by Meles, that villainous shapeshifter who smiled as he murdered and murdered as he smiled, to paraphrase Shakespeare.

The third irony of history is that the T-TPLF has today become the “Amhara boogeyman” today.

The old saying is true. In time, unless one is exceedingly careful, one becomes the very thing one hates.

So, the question today is, “Who is dominating the multiethnic federal state of Ethiopia today?”

In other words, who has complete control of the 9 kililistans (“multiethnic federalism”)?

Who controls 100 percent of the “parliament” in Ethiopia today?

Who controls 100 percent of the top military leadership in Ethiopia today?

Who controls 100 percent of the top leadership of the civil service and bureaucracy in Ethiopia today?

Who controls 100 percent of the most profitable sectors of the economy in Ethiopia today?

“Multiethnic federalism” is slowly but surely swallowing the T-TPLF like a Nile crocodile.

The fourth irony of history is that the T-TPLF heroes who stormed into Addis Ababa in May 1991 find themselves to be loathsome villains in August 2017.

Civil war by civil disobedience?

The T-TPLF is now witnessing “civil war” by civil disobedience.

The people of Ethiopia refuse to submit to T-TPLF tyrannical rule. That is an undeniable fact!

To paraphrase a line from Shakespeare in Hamlet, “When ‘civil war’ comes, it comes not in battalions but single acts of civil disobedience.”

The American dilemma in Ethiopia

The dilemma of U.S. policy in Ethiopia is simply this: The Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF) is driving the country over the cliff into a cataclysmic civil war at breakneck speed. The Ethiopian opposition is fragmented, splintered, ineffective and disorganized.

The situation in Ethiopia has reached critical mass, the point of no return.

Meles and his TPLF disciples have been crying wolf (“Rwandan Interahamwe”) all these years to scare people into supporting them.

Well! The wolf has arrived!

No doubt about it!

The wolf has arrived in the sheep’s clothing of civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance and noncooperation.

Whether the wolf has arrived or not is not the question. The question is when the wolf will take off his sheep’s clothing and bare his teeth.

The T-TPLF created its own Frankensteinian monster when it established its kililistans. Now, it stands in the middle of the kililistans surrounded by hungry and angry wolves.

Is Meles Zenawi’s mad prophesy about the big bad wolf coming to devour everyone in Ethiopia about to come true?

What should/can the U.S. do about the hungry and angry wolf roaming the kililistans in Ethiopia?

Has the die been cast?

Has Ethiopia crossed the Rubicon, the point of no return?

To be continued…

Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino. His teaching areas include American constitutional law, civil rights law, judicial process, American and California state governments, and African politics. He has published two volumes on American constitutional law, including American Constitutional Law: Structures and Process (1994) and American Constitutional Law: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights (1998). He is the Senior Editor of the International Journal of Ethiopian Studies, a leading scholarly journal on Ethiopia. For the last several years, Prof. Mariam has written weekly web commentaries on Ethiopian human rights and African issues that are widely read online. He blogged on the Huffington post at  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/ and later on open.salon until that blogsite shut down in March 2015.

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Vision Ethiopia and ESAT Fourth Conference

Third and final call for papers, July 31, 2017

Conference Theme

Building Democratic Institutions in Ethiopia

የዲሞክራሲ ተቋማትን በኢትዮጵያ ስለመግንባት

Vision Ethiopia, an independent network of Ethiopian scholars and professionals, in collaboration with the Ethiopian Satellite Television and Radio (ESAT), is pleased to announce that the Fourth Conference will be held in Washington D.C. on September 23 and 24, 2017. We thank those who responded to our first and second calls for papers. The third and final call is intended to ensure that we reach out to all potential contributors, and a more focused list of transition issues that the conference aims to address. Abstract, and preferably the entire paper should be sent to visionethiopia2016@gmail.com on or before, August 20 2017. The theme of the conference is Building Democratic Institutions in Ethiopia.

Authors are reminded that the theme of the Fourth Conference builds upon the deliberations of the Third Conference that was held from October 23 to 24, 2016. At the Third Conference where more than 20 panelists and moderators and hundreds of participants were engaged, and conference resolved that there is an urgent need to build a road map for transition from

conflict to a post-conflict constitution making order in Ethiopia. The communique of the conference highlighted the contemporary issues, assessed the challenges, and identified the actionable areas to realize the road map. Since October 2016 there have been a number of conferences and town hall meetings held by Ethiopians in various parts of the world. Alliances and counter alliances are being formed. As expected the ruling regime has had its own panel discussion to fight back the pressure and manage public and international opinion by defying, manipulating, and trying to capture the call for transition, while others perhaps inadvertently mimic the call for positioning themselves and remaining relevant. Vision Ethiopia notes these developments and encourages the engagement of the wider public in these important deliberations. Most conferences share the view that transition in Ethiopia is unavoidable.

The discourse has turned into the type of transition, how to make the transition inclusive, effective, relevant and capable to manage the various issues in Ethiopia while strengthening national unity and maintaining the territorial integrity of the country. It has also become important to take lessons from the 1975, 1991/92, and 2005 failed transitions. The question now is how to make the vehicles of transition and agents of change stronger. The myriad of political, economic, social, and security problems, coupled with the unrest, state of emergency, conflicts, tensions, drought, outmigration, internal displacement and the paralysis and tensions within the ruling regime, all indicate the need for a carefully planned change, that controls chaos.

The Fourth Conference aims at providing a forum for consolidating the discussion about the type of transition that is needed in Ethiopia. It addresses two critical issues that are the cornerstones of successful transitions: maintaining and strengthening national unity and creating, enabling and maintaining effective institutions. The continuity of the Ethiopian state, with its  territorial  integrity,  the  unity  of  its  diverse  population,  and      their

democratic aspirations are critically dependent on the quality and strength of institutions that exist during and after the period of transition.

The protection and cultivation of an enduring and evolving national unity and sovereignty, through effective institutions, is the central tenet of a meaningful national discourse on transition. History, nostalgia and normative analysis of social and political orders must be separated from contemporary (real) politics. Self-determination becomes an empty idealization of a utopian state unless it is contextualized. Transition thus must not be defined as change of government or another meaningless election or a ritual copied from others. Formal and national institutions should have a number of attributes which should include, consistent with theory: shared national values, sets of functioning rules, ethical standards, procedures and norms designed to constrain offenders and those in authority, prevent cheating, system of entry to and exit from political office, defining the role of traditional authority/leadership, releasing the institutions of the modern state from their captured status, separation of powers, and mechanism for fending the tyranny of the state. Hence it is important to examine and understand what can go wrong in the transitioning processes. The process of transition is an important determinant of the outcome.

Authors are expected to use research and experience while analyzing a specific problem or series of problems. They need to contextualize their theories, and attempt to present the problem and solution dispassionately. With respect to specific topics, Vision Ethiopia would like speakers to focus on the following interconnected problems, and identify types of tried and tested transitions, and state why a specific type of transition is appropriate for today’s Ethiopia. Speakers can select sub topics of transition from the following. The list is indicative and by no means restrictive.

1. Comparative Constitutional Analysis: Constitutions & National Charters provide the broad framework of the political, legal, social, economic, and policy aspirations of a country and its transition

framework. Setting and analyzing the constitutional/charter issues, provisions, priorities, challenges, and comparative context are important issues in drawing the road map and the transition to a post-conflict political order.

2. National Unity & Institutions: Outlining the mechanisms for maintaining and strengthening national unity through effective institutions. Which institutions (laws and organizations) have worked/failed in post-conflict countries? What are the lessons (if any) for Ethiopia?
3. Institutional Framework: Identifying existing formal and informal institutions that can be used for mediation, reconciliation, conflict management and resolution. How to connect truth and reconciliation with the various dimensions of justice?
4. The duration of the transition: How long/short should the transition period be? What are the determinants of shorter transition periods in militarized societies? What effective instruments can be put in place to prevent transitional/provisional governments from making themselves “permanent”? How does one minimize factors that make transitions periods unstable?
5. Policy and capacity Issues: What should be the economic, social, land and foreign policy of a transitional administration? How should it deal with priority issues of land, territorial disputes, drought, outbreak of diseases, and national crisis of outmigration and deportations of Ethiopians from various parts of the world?
6. Economic Policy Issues: Mechanisms for establishing fair, just and largely market-based economic institutions. Addressing mechanism for resolving property rights issues including ownership by political party affiliated economic entities and individuals and entities that serve as fronts; examination of the credibility of macro-economic and demographic statistics, the management and sustainability of sovereign
7. Management of conflicts and Conflict Prevention: Establishing the mechanism to prevent and control the escalation of conflict, including controlling irresponsible targeting of communities, as well as upholding values, customs, and traditional practices  that

can be reflected in national identity/symbols and legal instruments so that conflict is controlled.

8. Corruption and state and regulation capture: Releasing the institutions of the state and the economy from capture and preventing future captures is critical for successful transition. What is the situation of corruption in Ethiopia and what are its manifestations? Using case methods speakers can identify political and economic corruption, economic crime, illicit financial flows, and the alleged widespread market rigging in the country? Corruption, state capture, contract awards and mega projects (e.g. dams, railway lines, sugar plantations, industrial parks, etc.), donor and tender “preneurship” are examples. How to complete strategic national projects (dams, railway lines, ) which are showing cost overruns and delays during the period of transition while controlling corruption? Using an institutional perspective, speakers can explain why the corruption watch dog became toothless and the Prime Minister’s statements ended up in thin air.
9. Freedom of Information and the Press: Establishing a dynamic system that ensures the legal and constitutional rights of citizens’ access to information and eliminating of censorship; ensuring pluralistic and responsible media that helps keep citizens informed; and empowering citizens to the freedom of information while at the same time controlling disinformation and “fake news”. Should Ethiopians (inside the country and out of the country) establish an independent media monitoring organization?
10. Civil Society Organizations: How to guarantee the emergence and protection of independent and vibrant civil societies that protect national and ethnic heritages, places of worships, civil and political rights, including the rights of labor, peasants, land lords and tenants, women, children, youth, minorities, the disabled, war veterans and victims of conflicts? How does one stop the penetration and capture of faith and other social organizations by the ruling regime and political parties?
11. Managing and Preventing Extremism: Establishing mechanisms that fend off against the spread of religious and cultural fundamentalism and extremism, and legally restrain those  that

attempt to fuse ethnicity and faith for advancing separatist agenda. What can be done to prevent extremist tendencies and behavior and to address the underlying factors in the country?

12. Human Resource Management and Equity: Promoting equal opportunities and inclusiveness in the national defense, security, police force establishments, including in their top brass, as well as other public institutions to reflect judicious participation by wide spectrum of the Ethiopian population. Reforming economic organizations, including party and state owned enterprises that provide employment shelters to specific ethnic or other social groups. Reforming exclusive regional “charity/development organizations” that serve as fronts, shadow government network and long arms of the ruling party. How to make the national defense, security, and police forces apolitical (loyal to the country and its people and not to a ruling party or the ruler), professional and free from corruption and prejudice? Identifying ways and means of integrating armed combatants to the national army; demilitarizing the country, mechanisms for handling victims of conflict, including former combatants, solders and war veterans;
13. Political Parties: Establishing a system of party politics based on political pluralism; a representative and effective electoral system that encourages regional parties (ethno-nationalist and faith based political organizations) to transform themselves into national parties, where factionalism and regionalism does not become a cause of instability. Analysis of existing legal and clandestine political parties and movements, by shapes, sizes, political programs and their membership and funding characteristics, and identifying where duplication and waste exists, and mechanism for reduction of their number by aligning and tweaking their programs so that personalities are not causes of How to minimize the incentive to create a party while respecting the civil and political rights of individuals and groups? Should there be a threshold of the number of political parties? If so what should be the criteria or would they simply vanish as time progresses?
14. Justice System Reforms and Independence: Establishing an independent, accountable and transparent national and  regional

governance and justice system that fuses the trias politika doctrine (separation of powers) with local institutions (cultures, beliefs and cognitive systems), with role for traditional authority/polity (See also item #1 above). Who should interpret the constitution? The House or an independent constitutional court? How does one ensure the independence of the judiciary, the constitutional court and how does one make justice affordable and free from corruption?

15. Electoral System: Institutional frameworks that guarantee an unfettered free and fair electoral processes and popular participation in political issues and processes both at federal, regional and local levels; which type of electoral system is preferable for Ethiopia? Should voting be mandatory?
16. Diaspora Issues and Policy: Institutionalizing the role of the diaspora and its active engagement in the national economic, political, and social issues of the country. What is the size and capacity of the Ethiopian diaspora? What can the diaspora do to accelerate and support the transition and ending the state of emergency? What is the role of the diaspora in exacerbating illicit financial flows and black markets, land grab, the eviction of farmers from their ancestral lands? Why is the Ethiopian diaspora restricted from participating in the national voting for so long?
17. Territorial Dispute Management: Land shortage and administrative structures have brought territorial disputes. How should these disputes be resolved?
18. Population and Environmental Matters: Establishing the connections between political power, conflict, population policy /, economic growth and control of resources is important. Conflicts often start with grievances in poorer regions where population groups feel deprived while richer regions feel that their resources are unfairly being taken away from them by “others”. How should fiscal decentralization, environmental degradations, vulnerability of regions to climate change be managed in an environment of resurgent regional or ethno-nationalisms?

The main purpose of the Fourth Conference is to bring together researchers, professionals, political and rights activists, former civil servants

and experts from different background and disciplines to deliberate, without fear or favor, on these and interrelated issues, and explore ways and approaches to make the transition successful. It requires redefining our isms and rethinking our collective future. The focus is on strengthening national unity through the creation, reform and strengthening of national institutions in Ethiopia. The Conference will facilitate discussion and debate on different ideas and approaches to be considered on the basis of their merit and analytical foundations and practicality. It is with this understanding that speakers and participants are encouraged to address the issues documented above, and present their thoughts to the Ethiopian public so that the direction and content of the transition towards post-conflict, stable and democratic political order is clearer and made understandable to the masses.

Papers may be written in either Amharic or English, follow acceptable reasoning and decorum. For the presentation, speakers are encouraged to communicate using language(s) that most of the audience at the conference venue and in Ethiopia comprehend. Authors must be present to address the conference participants. Speakers who want to use other languages must provide their own interpretation services. Papers must be short and to the point, and the message must be deliverable within 20 minutes. Please avoid jargon, foul and inflammatory language, and untested and anecdotal evidence.

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ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) — The man known as “the father of Ethiopia’s tourism”, Habteselassie Tafesse, was laid to rest on Sunday at a funeral held on the premises of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

Habteselassie, known to have coined the phrase, “13 Months of Sunshine,” the country’s popular tourism slogan, had contributed hugely to the establishment and development of the tourism industry in the East African country.

Ethiopia last year officially launched its new brand, “Ethiopia, Land of Origins.”

Having assumed different government posts, the late has played role in the establishment of various tourism and related institutions, which have immense contribution to the promotion and development of the sector in Ethiopia.

He died at the age of 90 last Wednesday, on August 9, and his funeral on Sunday was attended by senior government officials, representatives of different public and private offices, families and friends of the late among others.

Speaking on the occasion, Hirut Woldemariam, Ethiopian Minister of Culture and Tourism, has hailed Habteselassie’s accomplishment in promoting Ethiopia and the country’s tourist destinations and products at home, and to international audience.

The minister recalled the prizes awarded to him by the incumbent government in recognition of his achievements and promotion of the country’s tourism industry.

She noted that Habteselassie had carried out various activities to promote Ethiopia to the outside world and increase tourist flows to the country, even at times when there were no as such infrastructure development and facilities in the country.

He was showered with various prizes and awards from different governmental and non-governmental organizations for his contribution and achievements of promoting the country’s tourism.

Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-13 21:56:21|

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Athletics chiefs in Ethiopia are not worried about doping problems in the sport and are dealing with them strongly, a senior official said on Saturday. The east African nation and neighbouring Kenya have been rocked by a number of positive doping tests in recent years

By: Reuters | Published:August 13, 2017

Athletics chiefs in Ethiopia are not worried about doping problems in the sport and are dealing with them strongly, a senior official said on Saturday.
The east African nation and neighbouring Kenya have been rocked by a number of positive doping tests in recent years and both countries were placed in “critical care” by the athletics authorities over their drug-testing systems.
“It (doping) is not worrying us. The few cases that emerged were dealt with squarely and decisively and we have launched a major education programme among young athletes because we know knowledge is power,”
Bililign Mekoya, Secretary General of Ethiopian Athletics Federation (EAF), told Reuters.
“We are working with our Kenyan counterparts, our national anti-doping organisation and the IAAF to get to root out doping,” he added.
“It does not threaten us now. Our government has done a great job and we are confident that it won’t take root in Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia and Kenya have introduced legislation to criminalise doping. More than 40 Kenyan athletes have tested positive in the past five years.
Jos Hermens, who manages many of Ethiopia’s elite runners, said doping cases were not as many as had been reported.
“We are working with authorities to attack the (doping) matter. Africa does not need doping, they always produce good athletes,” the Dutchman said.

“We are working with Haile Gebrselassie in Ethiopia and Paul Tergat in Kenya. Reports doing rounds about doping, particularly in Ethiopia, are disgraceful,” he added.
Gebrselassie, the former Olympic and world champion long-distance runner, has said previously that dopers should be jailed for life.
“Doping cases in Ethiopia were so few, compared to Kenya, but that does not mean they were ignored,” Hermans said.
“We will catch them. Some unscrupulous doctors and pharmacists have been misleading young athletes, but we will soon attack and deal with them.”

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“ESAT Radio Mon 14 Aug 2017″>ESAT Radio Mon 14 Aug 2017

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Col. Hubert Julian beside a plane in Le Bourget.

BY JAY MAEDER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, August 14, 2017,

From Italy’s standpoint, it was true, Italy had been fairly royally chiseled out of any substantive World War spoils. The Allies had promised the sun and moon and then left Italy with crumbs, Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, nothing but barren desert. Some Roman Empire that was. Well, Italy had Albania, too, but of course Albania was worthless. So it was that Benito Mussolini cast Italian eyes again on the ancient cradle of the Kingdom of Abyssinia. Abyssinia was nothing but barren desert either, so far as that went, but at least there was more of it.

Italy was still relatively new to the world stage in the 1930s. Until 1870 Italy had been a medieval collection of poor duchies and poorer principalities, and its early attempts to expand across the Mediterranean into Tunis were contemptuously blocked by the older powers. The Italian armies were not particularly sophisticated, in any case: When in 1896 the dictator Francesco Crispi resolved to make a protectorate of Abyssinia, 8,000 Italian soldiers were slaughtered at Adowa by Abyssinians armed with sticks and spears. Great was this sting. Italy had been just mortified ever since.

Now, in 1935, Mussolini was determined both to avenge the old Adowa humiliation and to stake an emperor’s claim at last to Italy’s rightful colonial place in the sun. Now the Roman legions were mechanized, bristling with tanks and warplanes, and all the world knew that Italy would storm defenseless Ethiopia the day the September rains stopped. The great powers did not approve, but the slightest diplomatic misstep could easily mean another world war; now Haile Selassie, Ras Tafari, the Lion of Judah, came before the League of Nations to plead for deliverance, and the great powers all went deaf.

On Tuesday, the 1st of October, as Europe watched silently, Caproni bombers blasted Adowa into rubble and columns of troops poured across the border and destroyed the pathetic war-dancing spearmen who rose up to meet them. The sun had not set before the Italo-Ethiopian War came as well to the hundreds of thousands of Italians and the hundreds of thousands of blacks who sought to live together in the City of New York.

Reaction was mixed in the Italian communities. “Italy makes war to civilize, just as the old Romans did,” said banker Cavaliere Raffaele Prisco. “The Italian people need colonies and must develop Africa,” explained newspaper editor Carlo Falbo. Shrugged Times Square barber Federico Fugini: “The war is no concern of us Italians who have come to this country.”

Reaction was mixed in the black communities. “The white races stand indicted before the civilized world,” scolded Urban League executive director James Hubert. Shrugged porter Walter Anderson: “They can do all the fighting they want to. I guess we all came from Africa some time or other, but that doesn’t make an Ethiopian out of me.”

If barber Fugini and porter Anderson might have sat down there and then and had a friendly drink, there was no such good will at Public School 178 in Brooklyn, where gangs of black kids and gangs of Italian kids squared off and brawled until school officials took away their sawed-off pool cues. In Harlem, jeering blacks rallied on Lenox Ave., waved the Ethiopian tri-color and vowed to run Italians out of the neighborhood; cops were called out to prevent the destruction of a Jewish-owned grocery that rented stall space to three Italian vendors.

At this very moment, Col. Hubert Julian, the Black Eagle of Harlem, was in Addis Ababa, and it would have been his most glorious hour if he’d only had an airplane.

Trinidad-born Hubert Fauntleroy Julian had been one of Harlem’s most flamboyant figures for years. One of the pioneer black fliers, he had popped up in the early 1920s as black nationalist Marcus Garvey’s air minister, and he frequently mesmerized citizens by parachuting, crimson-clad, onto 125th St.

In 1924, three years before Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, Julian announced his intention to make a solo seaplane flight from Harlem to Liberia and back. On the Fourth of July, as 25,000 cheering Harlemites gathered at the foot of 138th St., the Black Eagle passed the hat around, collected a few hundred dollars, climbed into his plane and, moments later, crashed into Flushing Bay. He had, he explained, developed “pontoon trouble.”

Four years later he announced another ocean hop, this one sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Aviation Amongst Colored Races, an organization newly formed by a Harlem quack named Geneva Morgan-Johnson, who practiced something called psycho-irradiation, and a white man named Hoffman, who previously had been associated with American Hebrew magazine. Things shortly became acrimonious, and the NAAAACR withdrew its support, pronouncing Julian “not sufficiently outstanding in Harlem aviation circles.” Even Julian blinked at that one  “Harlem aviation circles?” he demanded. “I am those circles. Who else they going to get?”  and he went cross-country seeking to raise private funding. There wasn’t any. “An unfortunate apathy curtailed my project,” he told the press.

In June 1930, he informed the world that Haile Selassie, Ras Tafari, the Lion of Judah, had appointed him chief of the Ethiopian Air Force.

He cut A dazzling figure in Addis Ababa, swaggering about in a splendid colonel’s uniform and sending out official Ethiopian military communiques. Ethiopian aviation, he declared, “is in a very advanced state.” This was not quite true. Actually, the Ethiopian Air Force consisted of three airplanes, and, late in October, he crashed one of them. It was the Lion of Judah’s personal favorite, too. Back to New York sailed the Black Eagle before year’s end.

But he remained devoted to Abyssinian causes, and in late 1934 and early 1935, as it became evident that Benito Mussolini had designs on Haile Selassie’s kingdom, it was largely Hubert Julian who brought this state of affairs to the attention of American blacks, and the proliferation of Ethiopian flags and relief-fund-raising stations in New York and other cities was very much the result of his impassioned crusading.

In February 1935, he was on his way back to Addis Ababa.

And again he cut a dazzling figure, dressed in khakis, swinging a sword, riding a fine white horse. But this time Ras Tafari wasn’t about to let him anywhere near an airplane, and the Chicago flier John Robinson was Ethiopia’s new air force chief. When the invasion came, it was Johnny Robinson who got the worldwide headlines, bravely flying against Mussolini’s airmen.

By December, Julian was back in New York, flying new political colors. “I couldn’t stand those lazy people any longer,” he sniffed. Ethiopia was a hopelessly barbaric place, he said, and as far as he was concerned the Italians could have their place in the sun. “Ethiopians do not care for the American Negroes,” he said. “They do not consider themselves Negroes. American Negroes should face their own problems at home and keep out of international affairs.”

He urged Harlem to take down the flags. Ethiopia, he said, “is not worth saving.”

As it happened, by now everyone could see that Ethiopia was lost and the relief efforts had pretty much dried up anyway.

When the war ended several months later, Hubert Julian was in Naples, calling himself Col. Huberto Juliano and promising several great trailblazing flights, none of which was ever made.

Back in Harlem in 1940, the Black Eagle publicly challenged Nazi Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering to a one-on-one Messerschmitt duel over the English Channel. Goering paid no attention to him.

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ESAT Special Documentary Ambassador Girma Biru Aug 14 2017

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Food insecurity in the Somali region of Ethiopia has worsened, putting 700,000 people on the verge of starvation, according to Oxfam International.

The humanitarian organization says that about 8.5 million people across the country face a high risk of hunger, a 30 percent increase since the beginning of the year.

FILE – People wait for food and water to be distributed in the Werder zone of Ethiopia’s Somali region, Jan. 28, 2017.

Food shortages and hunger have led to displacement and negative coping mechanisms such as increases in child labor, early marriage and school dropouts, according to a recent joint report by the Ethiopian government and humanitarian partners. “Sex for food and child labor were reported in some woredas [districts],” the report said.

Much of Ethiopia is now in the midst of its lean season, and some people at risk have not received any food distributions since May.

“We’re not looking at a situation which will give respite until at least 2018 when you have a new harvest, and then maybe some food may come to the market,” Manish Kumar Agrawal, Oxfam’s humanitarian program manager in Ethiopia, told VOA in a phone interview. “Currently, we are going through the most difficult time, and, if the situation is not handled now, it can convert into a big catastrophe.”

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a U.S. government-funded monitoring body, said a lack of rainfall during the past year caused the food crisis. The group forecasts that, even if the October to December rainy season is plentiful, herders will continue to suffer because many animals have already died or stopped reproducing or giving milk.

FILE – A mother of 12 (center), who was displaced from her village due to drought, sits among a group of women in the town of Werder, in Ethiopia’s Somali region, June 9, 2017.

More than $1B in aid needed

Agrawal said Ethiopia needs $1.25 billion in food, water and other life-saving assistance, but only 39 percent of requested funding has been met. He said Oxfam is prioritizing the most vulnerable people, including households with children under five, pregnant or breastfeeding women, and households headed by women.

“We are trying to do a very hardcore targeting, and we are going to go about those districts often and then trying to identify how best we can serve with our limited resources to the worst affected people,” said Agrawal.

Acute watery diarrhea continues to be a problem in the region, due in part to people being forced to drink water from unclean sources. About two months ago, Ethiopia had 32,000 cases, Agrawal said, nearly all in the Somali region.

“It’s gone down in the last couple of months, but the risk is still there. And there are really cases that are popping up every day in there, and the current situation, again, more than 10 million people don’t have a sustainable water supply system, and they are really facing acute water shortages,” he said.

The worst affected zones in Ethiopia’s Somali region are Dollo, Korahe, Afder and Jarar. Although the southern Somali region is the hardest hit, the southern Oromia region and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region are also experiencing high levels of food insecurity.

• Salem Solomon

  Salem Solomon is a digital journalist at the Voice of America’s Africa Division and covers the latest news from across the continent. Salem reports and edits in English, Amharic and Tigrigna. She produced the multimedia and data-driven projects How Long Have Africa’s Presidents Been in Office? and Hunger Across Africa. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poynter.org, Reuters, The Tampa Bay Times and Satenaw. Salem researches trends in analytics and digital journalism. For tips and inquiries, email: sfekadu@voanews.com.

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