• Andrew Mccarthy
• Independent

Human rights groups fear for the future of the tribes if they are forced to scatter, through loss of land or ability to keep cattle as globalisation and development increases all photographs by Getty

“Your George W Bush came here two years ago and not a person recognised him.”

“No one?”

“No one knew who he was.”

“Would they have known Nelson Mandela?”

“No. No one here would have seen TV. No one here thinks beyond Omo.”

I’m speaking with Lale Biwa, a member of the Karo people, in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. We are surrounded by low, circular huts made from sticks, with pitched grass roofs, in his home village of Dus, on the banks of the Omo River.

A woman, heavily adorned in beads and bracelets, grinds sorghum on a large stone in the nearby shade. Men, some carrying AK-47s, sit in clusters. Small naked children scamper past. Goats and cattle are roaming freely on the dusty flood plain. The village has no electricity, no running water, no cars. Biwa, who guesses his age to be “about 40”, looks around. “It is a good place,” he says. “The people are true.”

I had come to the Omo Valley with innovative tourism entrepreneur Will Jones to get a view into the lives of some of Africa’s most traditional tribes. “I’m particularly interested in the Omo,” Jones told me. “It’s an at-risk ecosystem, with at-risk communities. But it is still a very wild place.”

Jones was born in Nigeria to English parents, raised in East Africa and educated in England. “When it came time to put on a suit and go into town,” he says, “I came back to Africa.”

Jones, 45, has been creating customised tours to the continent for more than 20 years. Wild Philanthropy is his latest venture – an enterprise designed to build sustainable tourism with a mutually beneficial exchange between visitors and the people and land they visit. Jones also operates the only permanent tented camp in the Omo Valley, not far from Biwa’s village.

This south-western corner of Ethiopia is home to seven primary tribes who coexist with varying degrees of peace. The land is largely dry savanna, with the Omo River cutting a nearly 475-mile swathe down to Lake Turkana on the Kenya border. The discovery of human remains dating back nearly 2.5 million years prompted UNESCO to dub the Lower Valley a World Heritage site in 1980.

But today the Omo is a region on the precipice. The Ethiopian government has recently completed the third of five proposed dams upriver. The dams threaten to alter the lives of the communities that have inhabited this valley and depend on the river’s moods for survival.

The Gibe III dam, Africa’s third largest hydroelectric plant, impacts heavily on the Omo Valley tribes

“This was the second year in a row that the flood crop failed,” Jones tells me. “It is the only time anyone can remember that the river never rose.”

The area has also fallen victim to hit-and-run tourism – people driving down from Addis Ababa, storming into villages, cameras blazing, then leaving in a cloud of dust. I encountered one such scrum at a local festival. Witnessing the feverish pursuit for documentation of “otherness” reflected back at me my own motives for being there. It is an issue every traveller to remote or indigenous regions needs to reconcile.

“There is a circuit of exploitation here,” Jones sayus. “It’s one of the reasons we cultivate relationships with the local people, trading with them, trying to create a mutually beneficial exchange. And it’s why we’re primarily using the river as our road. The river allows us access to villages inaccessible any other way.”

In the six days we spend on the river we see only one other motorised boat, carrying supplies for an NGO downriver.

With Biwa as our guide, we head to a small village inhabited by the Hamar people. The Hamar, numbering 45,000 throughout the valley, are known to be pastoralists. The village was overflowing with cattle. As in Dus, the dwellings were simple, built of sticks and grass, and well-ordered. Young men tend cattle while a woman skins and butchers a goat with the help of her toddler, who hangs pieces of the animal on a fence beside an AK-47 and a belt of ammo.

“The AK-47 has replaced the spear,” Jones explains.

Biwa nods. “As long as you have AK, you are respected,” he says. “Your family feels safe and proud. Someone with no AK, people look down on them. If you do not have AK, your family will go to someone who does.”

They are US-made, I’m told, gathered during the war in neighbouring Sudan. But they are not cheap,” Biwa says.

“How much do they cost?” I ask.

“Five cows.”

Beside firearms, I witness few other accommodations to the contemporary world in the Omo. Yet for a place so far off the grid, news travels fast throughout the valley. While in the Hamar village we hear word of a nearby bull-jumping ceremony. The bull jump is a ritual initiation to manhood for both the Hamar and Karo communities. We head east.

At the end of a long, deeply rutted road we come upon a dusty village in the midst of a celebration. Old men and women gather in the shade. Young men paint their faces red and white. Young women are draped in skirts and wear large bells wrapped around their calves. Their hair is ornately done in rings caked with ochre-colored mud. Each carries a small horn and blows it incessantly.

When one young woman turns away from me, I notice fresh welts on her bare back, dripping blood; she seems unaware and continued to dance. Then I see her approach a young man, stand close in front of him, and blow her horn in his face. She begins to jump up and down, her bells clanging, her horn blaring.

The young man bends to the ground and picks up a long switch, raising it over his head. The woman blows her horn more insistently, then suddenly stops. She stares at the young man. He strikes her with the whip, which snaps around her body and lashes across her back with a sharp cracking sound. She does not flinch. She lifts her horn, blows it in his face and dances away, fresh blood rising on her back.

The same performance is repeated again and again by many of the young women. Their backs are covered in old scars and new welts, yet none of them display any signs of pain.

As the sun was setting, a dozen bulls are led to a clearing and aligned flank to flank. The women cluster together and begin jumping, their bells ringing out, their horns blasting. Others begin to chant. Suddenly a naked young man leaps up on the back of the first bull and races across the spine of each.

He jumps down after the last bull, but then he is up again, racing across their backs in the other direction. He repeats the back-and-forth exercise three times. If he falls, it would be a disgrace he would carry for life, Biwa warns me. But the youth never falters – the next morning he will awake a man, able to sit among the elders.

The women continue to blow their horns, and the celebration goes on into the night. We drive away under a moonless sky, the Southern Cross hanging low, silence filling our car.

The next morning we head up river to a small village of the Nyangatom people. Relations between Karo and Nyangatom have long been strained. Intertribal conflicts over cattle rustling and grazing land have kept the valley bristling with internal strife for decades, passed down from generation to generation.

“Where we are going, this was our land until 15 years ago,” Biwa says as he throttles our engine through the brown water. “The Nyangatom are fierce fighters. They pushed us across the river. Our women tell us we are weak. Not just with their words. They dance – in front of everyone. It is a shame we wear.”

We pass large crocodiles cooling themselves on the muddy banks, their jaws resting open. Black-and-white colobus monkeys leap from branches of fig trees. A dugout canoe sits unattended on the riverbank. A Goliath heron lumbered into the air.

In time the heavy foliage lining the river thins, then grows sparse. Thirty-foot cliffs begin to rise up, and the landscape turns parched. Ahead, on the west bank, bony cattle are drinking from the river, kicking a choking dust high into the sky and across the sun, casting everything in an eerie patina. Atop the cliff, two men stand sentry. One has an AK-47 slung from his shoulder; the other wears what in a more urban setting might have been called a hipster hat.

The tribes wear a mishmash of clothing: brightly coloured traditional wraps, animal skins and adornments, mixed freely with Chelsea football jerseys, rakish caps and fatigue shorts – creating an all too apt picture of Africa’s disparate influences, all vying for dominance.

The men on the cliff greet us with stares, and we set out across the arid land. Distant hills of Kenya are visible to the south. Three young girls with water jugs balancing on their heads silently catch up with us. One carried the designs of scarification: small, raised scars created by rubbing charcoal in deliberately administered cuts, causing the skin to welt in intricate patterns. They make this 2-mile walk to and from the river twice daily; in Africa, carrying water is women’s work.

At the outskirts of the village, a half-dozen expressionless men loiter. The tallest sports a vaguely military-looking beret, worn at a jaunty angle, and an AK-47. The rest hold long sticks. Some wear rubber sandals made from scavenged truck ties; the others are barefoot.

Many Nyangatom are semi-nomadic, and this village appears haphazardly thrown together, as if built in a rush without care. There is no central meeting area, no sense of organisation. Children do not rush to greet us. We huddle with the men in the scant shade of a scraggly date tree. Cigarettes are passed around and smoked.

In time, more than a dozen women emerge from the honeycomb-shaped dwellings that look as if they could neither contain nor shelter life. One old woman begins to chant, then just as suddenly stops. All wear heavy ropes of beaded necklaces piled high, and are wrapped from the waist in once-colourful cloth, and several hold small children. Fatigue hangs in the blistering heat. It would be difficult to imagine daily life clinging closer to the edge of existence.

“The cradle of mankind is no Garden of Eden,” Jones says softly as we track back cross the barren land to the boat.

Back down the river, the mood is more celebratory – a ceremony is underway in Dus. Two hundred men from Biwa’s Karo community are gathering in a large semicircle on a bluff above the river. Seating is arranged from the youngest to the most senior elder. I am offered a spot in the dirt much too far along the timeline for my liking.

A bull is being roasted over an open fire in the centre of the gathering. Three men with machetes hack the animal to pieces. Chunks of meat and fat, clinging to large bones, are deposited onto small beds of leaves before the assembled. A part of the animal I couldn’t identify is dropped in front of me. The old man beside me with heavily pierced ears and a pointed stick protruding below his lower lip offers me his knife. He watches as I slice into the mysterious blob, then grins as I put it in my mouth. Just beyond the circle a dozen hooded vultures gather.

When the entire animal had been consumed, one of the elders gets up and begins to speak.

“He is making a prayer for the river to rise,” Biwa tells me.

“Don’t they know about the dam?” I ask.

“It is a difficult thing to understand,” he says.

The elder keeps talking as Biwa translates. “And now is a prayer for rain. For the women and children. A prayer that all bad feelings be carried off across the river.” After each invocation the assembled reply in a deep, guttural moan.

Finally, the three men who carved the bull slice open the only remaining part of the animal. They reach in and produce globs of warm dung and dispersed them. Each man begins to spread the excrement over his legs and across his chest in a commitment to protect those they love.

Afterward, I slip away. But hours later, in the dusk, I walk back alone from our camp and enter the village again. As is usually the case, a small child is the first to greet me. The light is fading quickly, as it does near the equator. A group of men huddle near the Parliament and Ceremony House, but otherwise the village is quiet. The small boy shadows me, and I begin to hear a loose kind of chanting. I turn toward the sound. There is a soft breeze in the gloaming; the heat is finally off the day. Then the unmistakable register of an AK-47 rings out.

I leap into the air. My head snaps in all directions, looking for the origin of the gunfire. Am I going to be shot as an intruder in the night? My young companion laughs at me. He looks directly up into the sky, indicating the direction of the shot. I try to smile, and, more slowly now, continue toward the sound of the crowd. My small friend reaches up and takes my hand. The voices become more insistent. It is nearly dark. Then I hear it again – this time, a rapid barrage of gunfire. Then another. The boy smiles in reassurance. I drop his hand and beat it back to the campsite.

The next morning, as we load the boat for our trip farther downriver, I learn that a village elder had died suddenly and that the gunfire was part of the mourning process.

We set out before the heat of the day. For seven hours, heavy bush lines the banks. Occasionally children splash in the crocodile-infested water and villages were visible through the foliage. Baboons scamper up the steep banks. A rare Pel’s fishing owl sweep overhead. At the dire river outpost of Omorate, we have our passports inspected, pay the local graft and carry on.

“It’s a bit of a no-man’s land from here to Lake Turkana,” Jones tells me.

The heavy bush yields to a more open flood plane. Large villages of the Daasanach people, whom we have come to see, begin to line the river. These villages differ from others we have seen in the bizarre-seeming platforms, 10 feet off the ground, that have been constructed to store and protect the sorghum crop from the annual flooding – flooding now in jeopardy because of the damming upriver.

We set up camp on a high bank. The local villagers assume free run of our site, and we are absorbed into daily life. Dugout canoes, listing and overfull with people, are constantly crossing and recrossing the river. Voices carry back and forth across the water long after dark.

On an excursion farther downstream, the river begins to splinter. Dusty land gives way to the high grass of the delta. Soon pelicans swarm, then Lake Turkana was upon us. After the confines of life on the river, the expanse of the inland sea was daunting.

Here too, the environment is threatened. “It’s said Turkana could drop 20 feet with the dam,” Jones says. “The effect on the delta would be anyone’s guess.”

From fishermen at Turkana we learn that not far upstream, numerous Daasanach communities have begun to gather for a Dimi ceremony. They had come from miles away for an event that happens only every few years and lasts several weeks – culminating in the act of female circumcision.

We leave the boat and are immediately confronted by two dozen teenage boys, each with a bow and arrow. After an initial standoff, they happily show us the sharp tips of their weapons. We carry on across land littered with the bones of what I assume to be cattle, through heat so intense it is difficult to breathe. The earth shimmers and huts begin to materialise on the horizon.

The Dimi gathering is in the early stages; only a handful of families have arrived. Outside the temporary huts are poles hung with leopard skin cloaks and ostrich plume hats for men, and colobus monkey capes for women. The skin of several people who come to greet us is already painted yellow, in preparation for the dancing that will accompany the coming ceremony.

Back by the boat I encounter a man with his entire chest and stomach covered in the well-ordered markings of scarification.

“This is to indicate that he has killed in battle,” Biwa explains.

The man glares at me. When I extend my hand to shake his, he breaks into a toothsome grin.

On our last evening, the sun is hazy near the horizon over Sudan. I walk into the village behind our site, and then keep walking to the next village, and the next. Children begin to follow. Soon they number more than a hundred. The bolder ones shake hands, some touch my hair then run away giggling. Eventually I began to chase them — the boogeyman to their delighted screams — as the sun fell.

On the way back, on the outskirts of our campsite, I come upon an old man setting fire to a dead tree near a clearing. In the morning I tell Biwa what I saw.

“It was a prayer,” he says. “A prayer for the river to rise.”

We climb into our boat and head back upstream on a river that is unlikely to do so.

© New York Times

The post Up close with the tribes of Ethiopia’s imperiled Omo Valley appeared first on Satenaw: Ethiopian News|Breaking News: Your right to know!.

The New York Times _By ALAN COWELL

LONDON — Scientists across Europe have been puzzling about a phenomenon that seemed laden with mystery and menace in somewhat uneven proportions — a concentration of radioactive pollution caused by a nuclide called ruthenium 106.

Official monitors in France and Germany concluded that, based on weather patterns, the contamination detected since late September had emanated from southern Russia or from Kazakhstan.

“The most plausible zone of release lies between the Volga and the Urals,” the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety said on Nov. 9. Jean-Marc Peres, the institute’s director, told Reuters that the geographic area could indicate a spillage in Russia or in Kazakhstan.

On Oct. 8, the German Federal Office for RadiationProtection said, “Russia must be assumed to be the region of origin of radioactive release” — a suggestion that was denied by Rosatom, the state company that runs Russia’s nuclear industry.

According to a statement from Rosatom, “None of the enterprises of the Russian nuclear industry has recorded radiation levels that exceed the norm.”

“One of the countries in the eastern part of the European Union” was more likely to be the source, Rosatom added, noting high radiation levels over Italy, Romania and Ukraine.

Nonetheless, the presence of the little-known substance raised unease that a threat to European health might be building — hardly surprising in light of the West’s broad palette of other worries about Russia’s intentions, including the crisis in Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014, and the Kremlin’s activities in cyberspace.

On Wednesday, one of Britain’s top security officials, Ciaran Martin, warned in a speech that, over the past year, Russian hackers had undertaken far more persistent attacks on his country’s energy, telecommunications and media industries than previously acknowledged.

Two days earlier, Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of “seeking to weaponize information, deploying its state-run media organizations to plant fake stories and photoshopped images in an attempt to sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions.”

In matters of nuclear threat, of course, European memories are framed by episodes such as the catastrophic accident in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union; and, 20 years later, the lethal poisoning in London of a former K.G.B. officer, Alexander V. Litvinenko, with polonium 210, a rare and highly toxic isotope.

With such considerations in mind, the detection of elevated but unexplained levels of ruthenium 106 by monitoring stations in Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland raised alarms.

Slowly though, as the levels retreated, the fretting eased.

German and French nuclear security agencies concluded that the pollution had not threatened the health of Europeans or the environment in which they live. “These low levels of radioactivity do not pose a health hazard to the population,” the German radiation protection office said on Nov. 10.

The French institute reached similar conclusions, but said the amounts of ruthenium 106 released at the source of the accident were significant. If contamination of this magnitude had occurred in France, it said, the authorities would have ordered protective measures for people living miles around.

The nuclide, which does not occur naturally, is used for a variety of purposes, including as a therapy for cancers and as an energy source in satellites.

According to European scientists, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has investigated whether the pollution could have been caused by a satellite falling back to earth, but concluded that there had been no such event.

Nor, according to the French and German radiation protection agencies, could the pollution have been caused by an accident at a nuclear reactor, because only ruthenium 106 has been detected and such a spillage would have released other nuclides. That left two potential sources, the French agency said, “either in nuclear fuel-cycle facilities or radioactive source production.”

Jean-Christophe Gariel, a senior official at the French agency, said, “We’ve done our job with the European data that was available, but we cannot go further for now.”

Referring to Russia, he added, “Maybe we’ll be able to answer more questions when the country concerned by the issue comes up with more precise information.”

He said that when he spoke to his counterparts in Russia last week, they had not been able to explain the origins of the contamination. “We showed them a document detailing our scientific approach. They told us that our results were coherent and correct, but that they were not aware of any event that could have caused that.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Gariel said French experts thought the two most likely explanations were that the ruthenium 106 originated in a facility treating used fuels, or that it came from a plant producing ruthenium exclusively.

In any event, the French agency said in a statement, ruthenium levels had been decreasing since Oct. 6 and the nuclide was “currently no longer detected in Europe.”

Map: Russia and Kazakhstan

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by Engidu Woldie
ESAT News (November 16, 2017)
Reports reaching ESAT say a marathon meeting by the central and executive committees of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) continues in Mekelle despite a deadlock.
Increasing number of members of the central committee are also walking out of the crisis meeting, according to ESAT sources. Azeb Mesfin, the widow of Meles Zenawi, who had controlled the party with iron fist, has reportedly walked out of the meeting yesterday and never returned.
One of the the focus of the meeting, that began early October, was a discussion on a 59 page document presented by the leadership which critique the Font for failing to achieve stated goals due to undemocratic practices and corruption within the leadership.
Criticism and self criticism are what the members of the central and executive committees are said to be conducting at this stage of the meeting. But unable to face criticism and make self criticism, some members have walked out of the meeting, according to sources.
The TPLF is a small clique representing a minority that controls every aspect of the over 100 million people. There has never been any change in the political leadership in Ethiopia for the last 26 years.
With the blessing of western governments, the TPLF took power in Addis Ababa in 1991 upon the demise of the communist regime led by Mengistu Hailemariam. It has since been in power holding a bogus election every five years.
Politically, the country is in shambles. Pressure has been mounting from all corners of Ethiopia against the regime with protest rallies calling for its removal intermittently staged in the last three years, especially in the Oromo and Amhara regions of the country.
Economically, the country is in deep crisis. Hard currency is hard to come by. Export trade has stagnated and foreign direct investment is non existent. The regime’s attempt to attract investment by devaluing its currency by 15% last month does not seem to yield anything.
The TPLF is holding a crisis meeting amid political and economic crisis in the nation. The average Ethiopian doesn’t seem to care what the outcome of the meeting would be. The people have said time and again that they are done with TPLF’s misrule.

16 Nov 2017

Qatar funding Ethiopia and Sudan to escalate their crisis with Egypt.

BY MOHAMED ASAL | EGYPT TODAY

The Qatari government continues its villainous role in funding and inciting Ethiopia and Sudan to escalate the crisis with Egypt by holding meetings with the Ethiopian prime minister and minister of defense, as well as the Sudanese president and Sudanese officials, coinciding with the meeting of the Tripartite National Committee in Cairo on Sunday.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn headed to Doha on Monday, directly after the Tripartite National Committee meeting in Cairo failed to approve the initial studies’ report on the regional impact of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad invited the Ethiopian prime minister to discuss ways of enhancing and promoting bilateral relations between the two countries in an attempt to persuade Ethiopia to escalate the crisis with Egypt.

The visit came in the framework of pursuing Qatar’s national political agendas to undermine Egyptian security and stability, a Qatari opposition source revealed to Egypt Today, indicating that they discussed the issue of funding the Renaissance Dam during the visit.

At the same time, the Sudanese president received Qatar Finance Minister Ali Shareef Al Emadi and Qatari Ambassador to Sudan Rashid bin Humaid Al Nuaimi to discuss promoting bilateral relations between the two countries.

In addition, Qatari Defense Minister Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah met his Ethiopian counterpart, Siraj Fegessa, to discuss the defense and military fields and means of enhancing and developing them, in addition to the exchange of experiences and military training courses.

Cairo hosted the 17th round of the Tripartite National Committee negotiations on Sunday, which was attended by the irrigation ministers of the three Nile Basin states.

It aimed to reach a consensus over the introductory report prepared by two French firms, BRL and Arterlia, on their technical studies of the dam’s potential impact on Egypt and Sudan, according to Minister Abdel-Ati.

The studies were proposed to begin in late 2016, but required an agreement on methods from the three governments before they could begin.

Abdel-Ati said that committee did not reach an agreement on adopting guidelines. The guidelines were indicated in a report prepared by a technical committee on the effects of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile Basin states after two days of talks.

Abdel-Ati declared that Egypt approves of the report’s outcomes, but the Ethiopian and Sudanese did not express consensus and called for amendments. Egypt halted all negotiations and said that all future decisions are at the hand of the cabinet.

Although Sudan was initially opposed to the dam’s construction, the country has recently warmed to the idea. This could be because Sudan has agreed to purchase electricity from the dam, while the two countries have also agreed to collaborate on a free economic zone.

Abbas Sharaky, chair of the Natural Resources Department at the African Studies Center at Cairo University, said in a TV interview on Monday that Egypt should have raised its objections to the United Nations since construction works already started. He said that it would not cripple the negotiations with Ethiopia.

Sharaky added that Ethiopia did not adopt correct studies when building the dam, and that chances of it collapsing are quite possible, which would inundate Sudan.

Egypt has previously expressed concerns about the ongoing delays in the approval of the technical studies, given that Ethiopia is continuing the construction of the dam.

Egypt’s concerns include the negative impact the Ethiopian dam will have on their historic Nile water share, amounting to 55.5 billion cubic meters in Egypt only, in accordance with the historic 1959 agreement with Sudan.

In April 2011, Ethiopia started the construction of the Renaissance Dam over the Blue Nile River, one of the major sources of water to Egypt’s Nile Delta.

By Oman Uliah, Special to Addis Standard  

Every authoritarian regime has its own symbol of economic exploitations and monopoly either in an individual face or in an organizational mask.

Ethiopia, despite its success in persuading its western allies that it is combating poverty using its fast economic growth and democratization, remained to be one of the poorest and most closed countries where a group of few individuals control vast economic shares and absolute political power. Unlike many other authoritarian regimes, the most dominant ruling elite group in Ethiopia has a complex behavior in that it claims to represent a minority ethnic group from the northern part of the country, Tigray. In response it has gotten a relatively overwhelming legitimacy among the people of Tigray as compared to other regions; or at least many people, including myself, believe it receives better legitimacy only in that specific region.

Moreover, this elite group has established a chain of several multi-billion dollar worth business firms under a home-grown umbrella called EFFORT, ‘Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray’, which was originally established to serve a harmless looking purpose of  ‘rehabilitating’ Tigray, a war-torn region deprived of a fair chance to prosper during decades of successive regimes. In the past 25 years of TPLF’s dominated political rule in Ethiopia, therefore, EFFORT has emerged as one of the leading economic powerhouses in the name of ‘rehabilitating’ the region.

 What is in the name?

On the surface, EFFORT is an umbrella company for a group of businesses which are involved in major industrial activities in Ethiopia, such as banking and insurance, import and export, media and communication, construction, agribusiness, and mining, among others.

Having started with an initial capital of around US$100 million, EFFORT’s worth has now reached more than a staggering US$3 billion in paid capital, creating more than 47,000 employment opportunities.

EFFORT companies were first registered as private share companies owned by some of the top leaders of TPLF. Later on, however, the companies were re-registered as “endowment” companies whose profits will not be divided to individuals, according to the 1960 Ethiopian civil code. However, top officials of the TPLF, the most powerful member of Ethiopia’s ruling party EPRDF, remained as the CEOs and GMs of these companies; and some of whom reportedly own small shares designed to motivate them in helping EFFORT stay competitive.

‘The original sin’: How did TPLF accumulate its wealth?

 EFFORT’s official profile claims it was established by using seed money from the liquidated amount of capital of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), accumulated during Ethiopia’s 17 years civil war of the militarist Derg regime to establish these companies.

In 2008, Aregawi Berhe, a former veteran of TPLF who later on left the party, did his Ph.D. dissertation on ‘The Political History of TPLF’ for Vrije Universteit in Amsterdam, somehow corroborates the story. In his account of the party’s earliest times, Aregawi wrote about one of the first successful operations that the then guerilla fighters ever had: ‘Axum Operation’. It is a military operation that succeeded in raiding a police garrison and a bank in the historic city of Axum in the north during which the TPLF fighters made away with “substantial amounts of arms and ammunition and 175,000 birr (US$ 84,000)”, according to Aregawi.

Having started by raiding public banks, members of the TPLF continued to accumulate wealth and went on to dominate the contested use of ‘aid money’ for political purposes before the party came to control power in 1991. TPLF had also founded the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), a humanitarian wing, during the civil war. “By June 1985,” wrote Aregawi Berhe, “REST had received more than US$100 million from donors in the name of saving famine victims. [… however] the late Meles [Zenawi’s] proposal for the allocation of the relief aid money was as follows: 50% for MLLT [Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray] consolidation, 45% for TPLF activities and 5% for the famine victims.” Predictably, Aregawi’s claim, especially that of aid money allocations, has been vehemently denied by the current TPLF leaders.

Gebru Asrat, another former TPLF veteran who later on established an opposition political party Arena Tigray, has briefly raised this issue in his book, ‘Lualawinet Ena Democracy beEthiopia’, (Sovereignty and Democracy in Ethiopia), and said that the guerilla fighters used to get a lot of money in foreign aid and; ‘it was up to the TPLF [leadership] to allocate which money goes where.” Gebru neither confirmed nor denied Aregawi’s claim that aid money was used for political purposes. If anything, he is of the view that it is impossible to make such allegations.

However, legally questionable ways of accumulating wealth seemed to have continued within the party even after it took control of state power. Ermias Legesse, a former Communication State Minister, who is now in exile, has recently published his second book, ‘Yemeles Leqaqit’, in which he raised multiple controversial points against the establishment and functions of EFFORT.

In Chapter six of this 565 pages book, Ermias tells several stories on how EFFORT used to get its finances unfairly from the Ethiopian state and how it transferred it to its own account. Ermias went an extra mile to display a letter written in 1994 and was signed by the then Prime Minister, Tamrat Layne, demanding the Addis Abeba Health bureau to refund TPLF’s medical expenses of the civil war time. The money requested amounted to more than four million birr (almost 67% of the city’s annual budget at that time), but the total amount paid by the Ministry of Health was actually 17 million birr. Ermias also wrote that the medicines that TPLF had distributed to  the locals during the civil war, for which it had requested a refund, was actually robbed by the guerilla fighters from public pharmacies. The money that was paid back in such a bizarre demand by the then Prime Minister was put in TPLF’s accounts.

Of continued sins & controversies

Companies that are currently under the umbrella of EFFORT were originally established as PLCs having a few members of TPLF leaders as shareholders. Later on, in August 1995, they were re-registered as ‘endowment’ companies and still remained under the umbrella of EFFORT.

The re-registration of these PLCs as ‘endowment’ companies was done to justify that these companies were established using the money donated by the shareholders of the preceding PLCs, which in itself portrays a picture that EFFORT, as a conglomerate of these companies, did not use public money to be established. According to the Ethiopian civil code, endowment companies are legally prohibited from distributing their profits to individuals. This fact effectively obscures the few individuals controlling these companies behind a party cover.

In 2004, the Amharic version of the ‘Ethiopian Reporter’, a bi-weekly newspaper owned by a former member of the TPLF rebel group, published series of stories concerning EFFORT and its debt in public banks, including the controversial cancellation of the debt. (The copies of these publications are annexed in the latest book of Ermias Legesse, referred above.)

According to this series of publication, EFFORT had borrowed 1.7 billion birr from the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) which later on has risen to 1.8 billion birr debt including the interests. First, CBE officials have denied and said that ‘they did not loan money to EFFORT’. But later on CBE had transferred the debts to yet another state-owned bank, Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE), for ‘better management’. Finally, DBE reported that the amount of money loaned to EFFORT was ‘none performing’ loan. Ermias claims that the CBE had loaned EFFORT the money with no collateral in the first place. The following year it was reported that DBE, the bank that took over the loan for “better management” was facing a bankruptcy of some 3.5 billion birr; certainly not exclusively attributable to the loan provided to EFFORT, but due in a significant part to it.

The other controversy surrounding EFFORT lies in the manner in which its businesses affiliates operate. Its leaders claim that their extreme obedience to the rule of law and their refusal to bribe local officials often poses a great challenge to their operations, disadvantaging their businesses. However, EFFORT companies are generally known to enjoy a great deal of support from officials. A good example to prove this is a rare ruling by a federal court on the 19th December 2012. The federal First instance court at Lideta ruled that one of EFFORT’s companies, Mega Entertainment Center, which was led by the widow of the late PM Meles Zenawi, Azeb Mesfin, has been running its business in a fraudulent manner by reporting more expenses than the actual and without paying value-added taxes collected from its customers during the preceding eight years.

But the secrecy of most of these companies is such that details like this come to the public’s knowledge only when there is disagreement between stakeholders; this time, it was between Azeb and another management member of Mega, Eqoubay Berhe.

Still, just what is EFFORT?

According to a letter by former US ambassador to Ethiopia, Donald Yamamoto, which was one of the Wikileaks documents, Ex-TPLF veteran Seyee Abraha (who later on fell from favor and was subsequently jailed for corruption) was quoted as saying the objectives of EFFORT during its foundation were “to study, and then establish profitable companies that use locally-available resources and provide employment [opportunities] for Tigray.” In this sense, EFFORT, even though it also gets raw materials from and markets its end products to other regions in Ethiopia, mostly (though not exclusively) hires Tigrians.

In principle, its profit should be used to rehabilitate the region. However, many Tigrians despair the fact that the “Endowment” is merely used by a few corrupt TPLF elites to enrich themselves. Former veteran and ex-president of the Tigray region for a decade, Gebru Asrat, in his book mentioned above admitted that the “endowment” was being exploited by a few TPLF top leaders; he suggested that there must be ways of diverting EFFORT’s profits/wealth to the people of Tigray as the endowment belongs to the Tigrians. His suggestion indicates a return, once again, of the endowment to a share company in which as many individuals could become shareholders. Many Tigrian pro-democracy activists agree with Gebru Asrat’s suggestions.

What do ‘others’ own?

Without a doubt, other regions of Ethiopia have also suffered significant social and economic devastations during the 17 years civil war before it ended in 1991. Military expenditure was Ethiopia’s biggest expense during the entire rule of the militarist Derg regime. Suffice to say, therefore, other regions also needed ‘endowments’ of their own.

It seemed it was in response to this concern that TPLF ‘provided’ seed money for other rehabilitation funds.  In Oromia regional state is Dinsho endowment, which was established in 1992 and was renamed Tumsa Endowment for Development of Oromia in 2001. It is led by top officials of the OPDO, the party representing the region within the EPRDF coalition. In Amhara regional state is ‘TIRET’, first established in 1995 and went on to incorporate several pre-existing companies. TIRET is led by senior officials of ANDM, the party representing the region within the ruling EPRDF. And in Southern Nations Nationalities and People’s Region (SNNPR) is WENDO trading, which was established in 1994 and is led by senior officials of SEPDM, the party representing the region within the ruling EPRDF.

Seyee Abraha has admitted: “TPLF gave a portion of its capital to each of the three parties within the EPRDF to establish their own endowment funds”. However, the combined numbers of companies run by these three ‘endowments’ are less than twenty; whereas at least 24 companies are listed under EFFORT; (some put these numbers as high as 380). The nature of secrecy surrounding this delicate matter means one may never find out the real figures.

Nonetheless, the three “endowments” run by OPDO, ANDM and SEPDM were supposed to create employment opportunities for more than 80% of Ethiopia’s population as compared to EFFORT’s targeting of 6% of Ethiopians in Tigray regional state.

According to a research titled ‘Rethinking Business and Politics in Ethiopia’, published in 2011 by Sarah Vaughan and Mesfin Gebremichael, “[TIRET] companies employ only 2,800 staff, as compared with the more 14,000 permanent employees or 34,000 contract staff of EFFORT and its companies.” And the poorest regional states of Ethiopia, namely, the Somali, Afar, Benishangul-Gumuz and Gambella regions do not have ‘endowment companies’ of their own to help them rehabilitate their respective regions, although they are politically administered by EPRDF’s sister parties.

What’s not and what’s owned by EFFORT?

There is a big deal of confusion in identifying EFFORT’s business complexities. Selam Bus Share Company is a good example. Established in 1996, 99.6% of this interregional transport service providing company share is held by Tigray Development Association (TDA); the rest is held by individuals. Although Selam Bus board members, as are EFFORT companies’ board members, are members of the TPLF, EFFORT has no registered share in Selam Bus. However, Selam Bus is a company many people name first when asked to list EFFORT’s businesses. This blurry ownership status is perhaps one of the reasons why Selam Buses were targeted by the last year’s widespread public protesters in Oromiaand Amhara regions.

Dejennna Endowment is another example. Established to ‘help promote development in Tigray,’ on the surface Dejenna Endowment is a part of the Relief Society of Tigray (REST). There are 11 companies listed under Dejenna Endowment in its website. In 2009, Dejenna has merged with EFFORT following the appointment of Azeb Mesfin, widow of the late Meles Zenawi, as head of the later. Companies under EFFORT usually hold shares in one another’s companies so that one pulls up when another fails. However, until today little is known about the merger of EFFORT and Dejenna. Besides, the information on the official websites of the two endowments mis-inform readers as if the two are independent of one another. But, some of the companies that are known to be under EFFORT are actually listed as the properties of Dejenna endowment.

The Sheger vs Mekelle narrative

By now, keen observers of the relationship between politics and business in Ethiopia can safely assume that business and politics in Ethiopia are radically divided into two major narratives in defining and perceiving the current TPLF dominated regime. I call these narratives ‘the Sheger narrative’ – a political narrative that is mostly advocated from here in the capital Addis Abeba, and ‘the Mekelle narrative’ – usually advocated by the people in Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray regional state, home to the all too powerful members of TPLF.

However, both narratives go beyond these respective centers depending on whose political view is solicited. The two narratives are only thoughts that do have majority acceptance in their respective centers. ‘The Sheger narrative’ (the most popular one) considers the TPLF dominated administration as a total failure that holds power by force; whereas ‘the Mekelle narrative’ generally sympathizes with the regime and considers it as a legitimate administration, albeit admitting some of its fault lines mostly due to the corrupt practices of some of its leaders.

This definition makes it clear how and why Tigrians (in most cases driven by ‘the Mekelle narrative’) and non-Tigrians (driven by ‘the Sheger narrative’) view the relationship between TPLF and EFFORT differently.

Tigrian pro-democracy activists’ criticism of EFFORT can be clearly seen by how they react to the manner in which former leaders of TPLF, who were expelled during the party’s infamous split in 2001, view EFFORT. Former top leaders of TPLF, Seyee Abraha, as we read him on wikileaks documents, and Gebru Asrat, from his book, both criticize EFFORT’s management. Both regret EFFORT’s failure to rehabilitate Tigray as was stipulated in its foundational principles. However, both believe the people of Tigray are the rightful owners of these ‘endowment’ companies under EFFORT.

On the contrary, most non-Tigrian activists and politicians disown EFFORT and also the rest of ‘endowments’ that are being manipulated by EPRDF leaders. Lidetu Ayalew, former leader of the opposition Ethiopian Democratic Party, and Dr. Berhanu Nega, current leader of the outlawed Ginbot 7, both condemned EFFORT as a party business that monopolized the economy, and both concluded the “endowments” should be dissolved or privatized. Similarly, many other activists want to (and sometimes advocate) boycotting EFFORT services and products to stop TPLF’s hegemonic march.

In the same manner, Tigrian activists claim other home grown charity organizations operating in Tigray, namely REST and TDA, are used to create grassroots networks to dictate the people of Tigray become loyalists of the TPLF, whereas non-Tigrian activists, such as Ermias Legesse, disagree and say these organizations are replicas of EFFORT to simply promote disproportionate social development of Tigrians at the cost of others.

This leads us to conclude that ‘the Mekelle narrative’ generally portrays EFFORT as an organization that rightfully belongs to the ‘Tigrian people’ which is unfortunately being exploited by few members of the top management for personal gains. ‘The Sheger narrative’, on the other hand, defines EFFORT as ‘a tool to exploit the wealth of Ethiopian people and create economic monopoly for the benefit of a [small] group’.

 The red line

What is indisputable is speaking truth in a country governed by the TPLF dominated EPRDF is always a dangerous exercise; speaking the truth about EFFORT is even more dangerous. A tax controller from Adama, 100kms south east of Addis Abeba, who is now in Qilinto prison on the southern outskirt of Addis Abeba suspected of ‘corruption’ has recently told me that ‘EFFORT trucks were known to be untouchables on their way to and from Djibouti port’. Similarly, investigating companies under EFFORT is normally a red line no journalist in Ethiopia would like to cross, contributing to the secrecy of the ins and outs of the giant umbrella.

Concealed in this intimidating rubble are crucial facts about EFFORT such as details on tax returns. That is why this article cannot be taken as an exhaustive look into the functions of EFFORT and its affiliates, but just the tip of the iceberg to demonstrate in part some facts about the economic exploitations of the authoritarian regime currently governing Ethiopia.

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How to immigrate to Canada by Lawyer Tekle from Toronto ethiofidel

ESAT DC Daily News Nov 17 2017

Addis Standard

René-Lefort

Reliable sources tell Addis Standard that René Lefort, a prominent scholar known for his critical observation of Ethiopian politics, was deported by Ethiopian authorities up on arrival at Bole International Airport in Addis Abeba on Tuesday November 14, 2017.

According to sources familiar with the matter and who want to remain anonymous, René Lefort arrived at the airport on Tuesday with a valid visa. However, as soon as he arrived, his French passport was confiscated by Ethiopian immigration officials at the airport before he was subsequently expelled with the next flight to Paris, France the same day.

René Lefort, who is now in Paris, confirmed the news and said the immigration officials “refused to tell me why I have been evicted”. “I have been blocked at the airport, my passport has been confiscated, the immigration service obliged me to [fly] back to Paris the same night,” Mr. Lefort said in an e-mail sent to Addis Standard. According to him, he arrived at Bole airport “with a business visa, delivered by the Ethiopian embassy in Paris, after having got the green light from the concerned services in Addis Abeba, following the normal process. I had planed to stay three weeks in Ethiopia.”

An observer of Ethiopian politics since the 1970s, René Lefort is known for his in-depth analysis regarding the nature of political events in Ethiopia. He is also known for his frequent articles on Sub-Saharan African countries published in respected publications such as Open Democracy, Libération, Le Monde, Le Monde diplomatique and Le Nouvel Observateur.

His articles on Ethiopia often appear on Open Democracy. His latest article, published on October 22, 2017, and was titled “Ethnic clashes” in Ethiopia: setting the record straight” delivered a critical analysis into the recent deepening political crisis in Ethiopia. The “four scenarios” he discussed in the article were a topic of wide range discussions among Ethiopia observers and the Ethiopian social media space.

Mr. Lefort, who is believed to maintain a cordial relation with a few senior government officials in Ethiopia and who often travels to Ethiopia to asses political events firsthand before writing his articles, says he was informed by a senior official in an e-mail that it could only be a “misunderstanding”. “This expulsion came as a surprise for many observers,” he said, adding, he was “deeply frustrated” that he was now “prevented” to asses firsthand a changing political dynamic, which “in my view is one of the most important in the contemporary Ethiopian history.”

Addis Standard has made several attempts to reach out to immigration authorities in the airport, but all were to no avail. And its e-mail sent to the visa section of the Ethiopian embassy in Paris has not been answered as of the publication of this news.

AS

Gebisa ñ 11/5/13 ñ updated photos of Gebisa Ejeta during a television interview at Agronomy Center for Research and Education (ACRE).

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University scientists will develop stronger, more versatile varieties of sorghum that have the potential to reach millions of African farmers, thanks to a $5 million, five-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The foundation’s grant is the second for Gebisa Ejeta, a distinguished professor in the Department of Agronomy and director of the Purdue Center for Global Food Security. Ejeta, the 2009 World Food Prize laureate, was recognized for his work in developing and distributing high-yielding varieties of sorghum that are also drought-tolerant and resistant to striga, a parasitic weed that robs maize, sorghum, rice, pearl millet and sugarcane of necessary nutrients. Striga can devastate a crop and impacts more than 100 million people in Africa.

Over the last four years, Ejeta, along with his students and research collaborators, uncovered the basic genetic and biological processes that control striga resistance in sorghum. They identified a gene involved with the release of a chemical from sorghum roots that signals striga seed to germinate and attach to those roots.

That has led to the creation of new sorghum varieties that combine striga- and drought-resistance more readily using molecular technology. So far, 961 tons of seed have been distributed to more than 400,000 farmers in Ethiopia and Tanzania.

“With more high-throughput phenotyping and the ability to sequence a large slate of genotypes, we identified an important gene that is foundational for imparting striga resistance,” Ejeta said. “It helps to move that gene with confidence and consider new ways of exploiting that gene. Some of that we’ve already been working on.”

This next phase of the program will focus on advancements in biological research, specifically identifying more genes involved in imparting broad-based and durable striga resistance in sorghum and other crops.

“We would have multiple genes that we can move around and pyramid together, so there is no risk of one gene breaking down in the future,” Ejeta said.

The new project will expand to support researchers in Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mali to develop a breeding pipeline for more high-yielding, nutritious, disease-resistant and drought-tolerant varieties of crops. The project plans to support private seed systems that will distribute high-quality hybrid sorghum seeds more effectively in those countries.

“This creates opportunities for farmers and small businesses to engage in gainful employment and develop the agricultural industry in these countries,” Ejeta said.

Writer: Brian Wallheimer, 765-532-0233, bwallhei@purdue.edu

Source: Gebisa Ejeta, 765-496-2926, gejeta@purdue.edu

 First TPLF Manifesto 1968 EC

First TPLF Manifesto 1968EC In amharic & tigrigna-1.pdf

Download (PDF, 1.27MB)

By SAMY MAGDY

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, for the second time in as many days, delivered on Saturday a stern warning to Ethiopia over a dam it is building after the two countries along with Sudan failed to approve a study on its potential effects.

Ethiopia is finalizing construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, its first major dam on the Blue Nile, and will eventually start filling the giant reservoir behind it to power the Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam.

Egypt fears that will cut into its water supply, destroying parts of its precious farmland and squeezing its population of 94 million people, who already face water shortages.

Dam construction on international rivers often causes disputes over the downstream impact.

Cairo said last week that the three countries had failed to approve an initial study by a consultancy firm on the dam’s potential effects on Egypt and Sudan.

Ethiopia says the dam is essential to its development and has repeatedly sought to reassure Egypt. But Cairo’s efforts to persuade Addis Ababa to engage in closer coordination over the dam appear to have made little headway.

El-Sissi sought to reassure Egyptians in televised comments while attending the inauguration a fish farm in the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh, but stressed that “water is a matter of life or death.”

“No one can touch Egypt’s share of water,” he said.

The Nile provides over 90 percent of Egypt’s water supply. It already receives the lion’s share of Nile waters — more than 55 billion of the around 88 billion cubic meters of water that flow down the river each year.

El-Sissi used a news conference at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Nov. 8 to deliver the same message to Ethiopia.

“We view positively the developmental needs of our friends and brothers in Ethiopia,” he said, then added “We are capable of protecting our national security and water to us is a question of national security. Full stop.”

The Egyptian leader did not say how Egypt intended to proceed. The government has publicly ruled out military action, but top Egyptian officials have in recent months been sharpening their rhetoric on Ethiopia.

El-Sissi has sought to foster better ties with sub-Saharan Africa, especially fellow Nile basin countries, insisting that while his country needs its full share of the river’s waters, it is ready to help them with their economic development.

Prof. Mammo Muchie & Prof. Richard Shambare on Africa and Dr. Mugabe

“Ethiopians are like sergena teff [staple foodstuff in Ethiopia made whose tiny seeds resemble poppy seeds eaten as flatbread called injera] (applause). [Grain] that is gathered together. Milled together. Eaten together (applause)… EthiopiaWINet is an addiction [deep passion]. It is in the heart of each and every Ethiopian. If there is a way to open and look at what is in the hearts and and minds of Ethiopians, what we see here today [EthiopiaWINet] is what what have seen here today [our unity in our Ethiopiawinet]… [EthiopiaWINet] is to be free. Human beings being free to express their feelings… Our people did not heroically sacrifice themselves in yesteryears for our country because they were paid. Our people who gave up their lives for the one-ness (unity) of our country.

In yesteryears, our people shed their blood in major battles for [to defend the integrity] Ethiopia. Now it is expected of us to work (sacrifice) for our country. We cannot go forward looking backwards. Let us not dwell on the past. Now we must stand together collectively for our country… If we set out to count our differences, in this hall there could be numerous things to separate and divide us. But there are also numerous other things that we share that could bring us together. Why don’t we strengthen that as long as it is something that can be used to good end?” — Obbo Lemma Megerssa, President of Oromiya regional government, speaking at the Amhara Oromo Discussion Forum in Bahr Dar, November 4, 2017.

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… There may be different types of positions [views] taken on [Ethiopiawinet].  As you can see, everybody who has Ethiopiawinet inside them, [will forever] have it in them. That can never be lost. It is as deep as religion. Ethiopiawinet has a delicate mystery to itself. It has a very deep foundation. When we can agree on so many good things, it is not useful to dwell on the deficient things we have done together. — Artiste Teodros (Teddy Afro) Kassahun, in a May 2017 interview following his launch of the “Ethiopia” album.

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Like diamonds, EthiopiaWINet is forever. (Just like love is forever.) — Alemayehu G. Mariam

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Translator’s Note: The following is a translation of remarks given by Obbo Lemma Megerssa, President of Oromiya Regional State, at the “Amhara-Oromo Discussion Forum” in Bahr Dar, a city in north-western Ethiopia, on November 4, 2017.

A translation of the remarks of Ato Gezu Andargachew, President of Amhara regional government, at the Amhara Oromo Discussion Forum in Bahr Dar, November 4, 2017 will also be presented.

Mea culpa: I have attempted to offer an accurate and exact translation of Lemma’s remarks in Amharic. I underscore the word attempt because I admittedly do not have the translation skills to capture the eloquence of Lemma’s refined diction, the subtleties of his ideas, poetic imagination and undiluted passion (or as he calls it “addiction”) for Ethiopiawinet. Translating Amharic into English has its special challenges  associated with finding appropriate trnanslational equivalences, finding comparable figurative language and accurately conveying the meaning of cultural terms, among others.

I apologize in advance to Lemma for any deficiencies in my translation of his remarks.

In my January 2012 commentary, “Africans Unite! Ethiopians Unite!”, I declared, “Choose your humanity before your ethnicity and nationality.  Doing it the other way around is downright insanity.” That is what I have always believed.

Lemma Megerssa, Teddy Afro and many other Ethiopians are saying the same thing. We all call it Ethiopiawinet, which I simply define as love of the humanity of the people of Ethiopia. Ethiopiawinet is simply the belief and practice of universal values of humanity in that little corner of the planet in northeast Africa.

More specifically, Ethiopiawinet is our version of the same faith the United Nations Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights reaffirmed and proclaimed as fundamental human rights nearly seven decades ago–  the dignity and worth of the human person regardless of race, color, religion, nationality, language, gender, age and all other artificial classifications used to discriminate between all God’s children.

Nelson Mandela said, “To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. Such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid.”

That is exactly how I feel about the black apartheid system set by the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF) in Ethiopia.

Mandela found the humanity of South Africans degraded by the inhumanity of white apartheid in the native “Ubuntu” (often translated as “humanity towards others”) tradition of inclusiveness. “Ubuntu” is to South Africans what EthiopiaWINet is to Ethiopians. We Ethiopians are human only through the humanity of other Ethiopians — not through our ethnicity, religiosity, territoriality, enmity or stupidity. EthiopiaWINet breaks down geographic ethnic kilils, mental kilils of hate and revenge and spiritual kilils of distrust and suspicion and opens up a level playing field for everyone…

(Author’s Note continues following translation of Lemma Megerssa’s remarks.)

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Lemma Megerssa’s Remarks:

… I’m truly proud and happy to be here amongst you to discuss and consult on various matters (applause). Not only this, I wish also to thank all of the people of Amhara region on behalf of the regional government and people of Oromiya for the brotherly hospitality they showed our delegation since yesterday (as we travelled) from Abay Bridge to Bahrdar City (applause).

I would like to thank my brother Ato Gedu and his associates from Amhara kilil (translator’s note: “kilil” is a kinder and gentler ethnic version of the South African racial apartheid which created the black homelands) and other Amhara leaders [now]. But let’s hold off on that for now (it is premature) (applause).  The reason is first we are a [an official] body holding public responsibility. Second, we have just started this [joint] effort but we have not concluded it (no need for self-congratulations). Once we bring (our efforts) to a successful conclusion, we will get plenty of opportunity to thank each other. That is why I said that (premature to self-congratulate (applause).

Indeed, today I don’t want to talk much. Many things have already been said. [I believe] our mere presence amongst you here since yesterday speaks louder than any words I could say or have been said by the people who came with me (including) the elders and leaders. [Our physical presence] indicates our intentions. That is self-evident to me (applause). Second, what has been blurred in our minds is the question, “What is happening to Ethiopiawinet?” I think this question has created confusion for most of us.

For me, what Ethiopiawinet is self-evident in what we have seen on this stage and at this event here (applause).

Ethiopiawinet is like, even though I have never tried it, being hooked on hashish. It is an addiction to be Ethiopiawinet (applause). If it were possible to open the heart of each and every Ethiopian and look, what we will find is what have seen here today [our unity in our Ethiopiawinet]. When a person is free to be able to express what he feels as we have seen here today, it is testimony showing how deeply Ethiopiawinet has penetrated our hearts (applause). Ethiopiawinet is therefore something that sparks hope. It is not that our Ethiopiawinet is darkening [despairing]. It is there [in our hearts and minds]. Indeed, it is not something that can be easily destroyed. [Our Ethiopiawinet] has been built over the ages [one brick over another]. It is an identity, a [distinctive] mark [of who we are]. It is not something that can be ruptured. It is not something whose shining lights could be switched off.

Unidentified Ethiopiawinet addict draped in Ethiopian flag, arrested by T-TPLF on 11/11/17

Indeed, this is not the only thing our Ethiopiawinet has taught us [our common identity]. When we were [initially] preparing for this conference with Amhara kilil leaders, our plan was to quietly slip in, discuss things and simply return without talking too much in our media or others [media]. But in the past couple of days, the news [of our travel here] has gone beyond Ethiopia to the rest of the world.

What this means is that on the issue of our country, its unity and oneness, we can plainly see there is a [deep] thirst and hunger everywhere among each and every Ethiopian wherever they may be (applause). Therefore, the journey and the solution [to our country’s problems] is one and the same [to be one and united as one] and we must strengthen that. We have no other solution. We have no other pathway. Thus, we have started a good thing [here], and though [a few]  individuals can start things, [we must understand] all of us have our share of work. I want to [take this opportunity] to remind all of us that we have a collective responsibility to make sure [our efforts] bear fruit.

Regarding the issue of good governance and the youth, many elders have addressed them. Good governance is our collective problem. That is one of the things we considered to be one of [our major] our problems [in Oromiya]; and launched a renaissance to cleanse ourselves of such problems. We have been working to solve [the problems of good governance and youth] in Amhara kilil, Oromo kilil and elsewhere throughout the country.

Reform alone cannot be a solution to the problem of good governance. Best practices imported from throughout the world will not be able to solve the problem. They may assist and they could help us. When we talk about the problem [of lack of good governance] in Oromya, we are [focusing] on the [administration of] justice and the selling of public services [private use of public office, corruption].

The problem of selling services occurs when the provider of the services [public officials] sell those services for whatever price [demands corrupt payments] he wants. That means he has [given himself] the authority to sell public services.

What this means is that there is incompatibility [corruption] in authority. It means the public service provider, whether appointed authority or one with professional expertise, has indispensable [supreme] power. That means he has the singular [unchecked] authority in his hands to sell whatever pubic services he wants.

The way we solve this problem is by empowering the public. [We can solve it only] when we [place structures of public accountability] which ensure what can be properly done and what is improper and establish a strengthened body [institution] with the power, with the muscle to enhance the public’s [oversight] and hold those in authority accountable.

Regarding the authorities that have taken power to themselves and say they can sell these public services anyway they want, it is necessary to have their power split up and shared and given to the people. It means creating a power balance [by public accountability]. It is extremely important to work on this [public accountability].  If this power is held in a lopsided way [allow corruption to spread unchecked], it could eventually destroy us all.

Keeping the reforms we have been working on as they are, we must also undertake as a major effort increasing and strengthening the power of the people in [public accountability]. That is the basis for our efforts for empowering the public [so they can] help solve the problem of good governance. This is evidence [foundation] of the basis upon which we are working in the Amhara kilil and other kilils.

Regarding the issues [affecting] youth, they are not something that can be taken lightly. First, based on evidence that I have [on youth] in Oromiya, the problems disproportionately fall on them. The youth are the biggest segment of society. Second, the youth themselves have their own problems. They have unemployment problems. Their social and economic problems have not been solved. Therefore, it is extremely important to work in a very special [focused] way on the problems of the youth.

Foremost, by solving their social and economic problems. Second, whether we like it or not, this youth generation is the one that will take leadership in the future. It’s called the emerging generation. It is the generation that will take charge of the country. If this generation is not prepared now, [we should know that] the destiny of this country and what’s going to happen to it is going to decided by them.

Therefore, it is necessary to chip away at the problems [facing the youth] as we go forward by engaging them in the social and political activities. This is extremely important. Beyond this, there is a gap. It is a matter of profession [training]. In school, we cannot learn more than the academic curriculum. But a generation is first built in the family. Family is a major pillar of a country. Second is society.  Our children may get proper ethical and professional training but I do not think that [skills] will abide within them overtime [without family reinforcement]. Professionalism is very necessary for any generation. Even though these things are necessary for the future of the country, we must realize we all have our collective responsibilities, particularly religious institutions, Aba Gedas (community elders) [as well as] many other social institutions.

[We must use these institutions] to nurture the children in professionalism and [teach them] love for their country and unity of their people and what it means to be responsible for the country. These are not things that can be learned in a science or geography class. Therefore, we have our collective responsibility to nurture the youth generation in these values. That is what I believe.

[What I have observed] over time is that our unity is not strengthening. From time to time, [I see our unity] shredded by minor things. That is what we are all witnessing. Beyond all that, what is even more worrying is [the attitude] that we are becoming comfortable with these things [issues that tear at the fabric of our country]. When problems arise, we say, ‘Such things just happen.” And we are getting used to hardship and making it a tradition[and making it the new normal].  [We take a cavalier] attitude in matters of death and when people are displaced [throughout the country in large numbers] and when we see other similar things. Indeed, preserving our patience, I suspect we are getting too comfortable with some dangerous things that are happening to us and dismissing them as just ordinary occurrences.

These things [that tear at the fabric of our country] are deadly diseases. As time goes on, they become destructive. This is something we should not forget.

Indeed, if we look at what we were yesterday and where we are today, many ugly things and many things that make us sick [to our stomachs] have occurred.

There are things that cannot be denied in our society, among the Amhara and among the Oromo. Instead of being united, we have leaned towards division and separation. There are ugly things we hear about what some of our brothers who have come from us but living throughout the world, believing in one God, are doing. They are dividing the churches. They divide the masjids. They say Amhara masjid, Oromo church, Amhara church. That is what we are witnessing.

When we see this, it makes us all sick. What is the cause of this? What brought us to this?

If we cannot bring this issue out and talk about it openly in public, if we cannot find medicine for this disease, what is it going to happen in the end?

It is something that we should talk about today properly without covering it up and without hiding it. We have no other country. The only one that we have is this one country. The fire that we have covered up [today], will keep burning under cover and tomorrow it will burn all of us.

A fire that has been covered, a fire that has not been put out will one day breakout and it will burn everybody. So, instead of covering it, it’s extremely necessary to work together and put out the fire.

We are part of the world. Our society has changed in many different ways, and not just in numbers but in the way of thinking and so many other ways. It has developed, changed. This is an undeniable truth. But have we changed [in our hearts and minds]? If we see it this way, there are many problems.

There are many things that we should be ashamed of and things that debase us.

Living in a time and age when the world is getting together and collaborating to solve its problems, we are doing the exact opposite.

If we cannot talk about [our Ethiopiawinet] this today, there is no other time we can talk about it.

I don’t think there’s anything else that is more important than this [Ethiopiawinet].

If we solemnly look at ourselves, we have lowered ourselves.

If we look at this deeply, [we know] this [division among ourselves] is not the kind of thing that is going to turn into something good over a period of time. If we set out to count our differences in this hall, there could be numerous things to separate and divide us. But there are also numerous other things that we share that could bring us together. Why don’t we strengthen [the things that bring us together] as long as it is something that can be used to good end?

There is something that none of us can deny. It is something none of us can change, an identity, a distinctiveness that has been built over the Millennia. We have our unity that can never be destroyed even by some accident. That cannot be destroyed even in our fantasy (applause).

Ethiopians are like [like the multi-colored seeds] sergena teff [staple foodstuff in Ethiopia made whose tiny seeds resemble poppy seeds eaten as flatbread called injera] (applause). [Grain] that is gathered together. Milled together. Eaten together (applause).

Through inter-marriage, through having children together, growing up together living together, there is a very strong unity and identity that is built .

Ethiopians share unity not only in living together. Ethiopians do not share only life, we are also a people that have shared death. Our skeletons have been buried together. We have shed our blood together. We are a people who have shared death, not only life.

We shared death at (the Battle of) Adwa [against the Italian colonial invaders]. Our skeletons were buried together. When Somalia invaded us, we shed our blood together. There is the blood of every Ethiopian on the soil of Badme [ tr. note– border town in northern Ethiopia which the late T-TPLF thugmaster Meles Zenawi delivered to the Eritreans in the so-called Algiers Agreement after tens of thousands of Ethiopians lost their  lives defending it).

We did not shed our blood there because we were paid [mercenaries] or for money. Why did we shed our blood? For the sovereignty of this country, for the honor of this country (applause).

Every Ethiopian sacrificed his dear life not because life is not a joke or a play thing. It is because of the honor of his country that he sacrificed himself. We are people of such [patriotic fervor]. Why do we treat is so nonchalantly?

Why do we stand by and watch our unity break, collapse and be destroyed?

Why do we stand and watch like this is going to benefit someone?

This is something we should all think about. This makes us all worry.

Personally, I am not worried about past history. It does not get me into a fight with anybody.

It is true that our past history is our collective history whether it is good or bad. It  is our history. As history it shuld be preserved. If there are lessons from past history, we should take it and learn from it today.

If there is there is bad history, we should correct it today.

But we cannot go forward looking backwards. These problems are adding up and piling up over time and they are hurting us.

Truth be told, the path what we have taken has not brought us any profit only loss (applause).

Therefore, you cannot go back and correct history. To the extent it is history, it must be recorded and preserved for coming generations. Yesterday’s generation has done its history and passed on. Today there is a different generation. Why don’t we make history by developing a model that’s going to help us? When we can, why don’t we? This is a matter we should seriously think about.

There is no one who benefits from creating division. What world [history] shows is that there is no one country that has benefited from emphasizing differences and division. There are no people.

Benefit comes from unity. Unity is appreciated not only by people but also God.

Therefore, when we left Oromya and came to be with our Amhara brothers, we didn’t come for picnic or entertainment. It is because we truly understand [in our hearts] that we need you (applause).

We also need other nations and nationalities. The people of Oromiya even if they wiggle a thousand times, they cannot pass the Awash River. The same for Amhara. If they can wiggle a thousand times, they cannot pass the Abay River.

Unless we unite, unless we become one people, we can never be escape  from the slavery of poverty. Escape from the slavery of suffering (applause).

Therefore, unlike any other time before, in Ethiopia today we need love (applause). We need love.

We cannot bring love through slogans, blowing horns or propaganda.

Love comes when we feel for each other, when we care [and are concerned] for each other.

When we care for each other, love is created; it is built. When we have love, we will have a strong Ethiopia.

[When there is love] there will be strong Ethipiawinet. And beyond any other time today, to bring love, to build love today, it is extremely necessary to care and be considerate to each other. This is obligatory. Otherwise, all we will do is prolong our problems and we will not get too far.

For this country, indeed if we do not go above and beyond our concerns for daily bread, if we are not worried [about our unity], concerned about what could happen [without unity], our destruction is very near. Our tribulation is [going to be] an extreme tribulation. We live on the [powder keg of] Horn of Africa which could explode overnight.

It can collapse in one evening. We are seeing it with our neighbors.

Therefore, for the things that we do, for each thing that we do, unless we take our tasks with a spirit of responsibility, we will be in for a very difficult time.

So, all of us Ethiopians must think of our unity because that is how we can benefit collectively.

When we came from Oromya [to Amhara kilil], it is not because we had some unique love for Amharas. It is because we need you; you are indispensable to us. It is the same for the people of Tigray and people of the South. We need them all to [successfully] solve our problems.

The solution to our problems is to be one and one together (applause).

So, since it is not of much value to simply talk about it without doing it, [it is to be noted that] there are many [historical] grievances amongst us, Amharas and Oromos.

I and everyone, Amharas, Oromos, all of us, instead of looking at each other in mean ways and badgering each other, we can sit down and talk and create the opportunity to dialogue with each other.

We, Ethiopians in this modern age, are we the kind of people who can not talk to each other and come to an understanding?

Are we the kind of people who do not have the ability or the capacity to do this?

We can never eliminate differences. We cannot. But what is in front of us [in our future] is far more important.

If we are determined to [make a new] start, not to repeat the dirty stuff of the past, not to repeat the bad things of the past, if we are resolved to do that, [we will realize] the journey that is ahead of us is important.

Therefore, what I am urging you all to do, especially our intellectuals, you have a very high responsibility. All of us scattered here and there and looking at each other [with enmity], none of us can benefit.

We have to work collectively together for our country. We are all concerned (stakeholders) in all matters concerning our country. When our country is hurt, so we are also hurt.

To be educated and to be in service of country does not mean just to produce academic research papers. It also means to save your country, to contribute by finding ways of saving our country, coming up with creative ideas, to spread such ideas around. That is something expected more from our intellectuals than anyone else. That is what I think (applause).

Second, even though one of the ways a generation can be nurtured is through our universities, beyond what we teach in our universities, it is also necessary to make sure they know about their country. That is also our civic [citizenship] duty. Therefore, unlike any time before, it is extremely important for us to get closer to each other and work together.

[On the other hand] our youth, we have an extraordinary responsibility.

We should remain calm and think about what we can do for our country. That is extremely important…. [Video abruptly ends.]

=========================

Author’s Note: Continued…

I have often written about Ethiopia’s “Cheetah Generation” (young people). I declaredEthiopia’s Cheetah Generation is the only generation that could rescue Ethiopia from the steel claws of T-TPLF tyranny and dictatorship. I have always considered myself  a “Cheehippo”. But when the T-TPLF in October 2017 decided to challenge my Ethiopiawinet identity on the Voice of America, I let them know that I am indeed a “spotted Ethiopian leopard).

For the past 12 years, I have declared my absolute confidence in Ethiopia’s youth. In my September 17, 2016 Amharic interview with Reeyot Alemu  (begin clip at 14 minutes), I defended my view unapologetically.

I must confess that over the  past 12 years, I have despaired about Ethiopia’s future given the state of facts. My despair originated from three sources of failure. I am deeply disappointed in the total failure of my generation. Ethiopia gave us so much and we gave back to her so little. The shame of it all. Second, I despaired over the failure of the so-called educated Ethiopians like me who dodged and ducked to avoid  standing up, speaking up, writing up and acting up over the crimes against humanity committed on the Ethiopian people every day. We, the intellectuals, the tip of the spear, turned deaf ears, blind eyes and muted lips to the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia. The tip of the spear proved to be a rusted dull knife. Third, I despaired because I mistakenly believed that the younger generation of Ethiopians have been lost to T-TPLF dirty tricks, shenanigans, monkey business and atrocities. I had difficulty conceptualizing the existence of young leaders like Lemma Megerssa.

Today, I am more hopeful than ever that Ethiopia’s best days are yet to come. I have made such a statement many times before but more as a metaphor than a statement of reality. Today, I know it is only a matter of time before Ethiopia’s best days begin. There are tens of thousands of young leaders like Lemma all over Ethiopia that are willing, able and ready to make it happen.

Lemma made a special request to Ethiopian intellectuals to join the struggle and make their contributions, not just sit around smugly self-congratulating themselves for their academic publications. The usual herd of nattering nabobs of negativism responded by spewing their usual message of defeatism criticizing Lemma for talking the talk of Ethiopiawinet but not walking it. These do-nothing lotus eaters should stand by and stand up for Lemma and his message of Ethiopiawinet, instead of trying to tear him down and belittle his message.

As they say, haters are gonna hate. As for me, I am reporting for duty following Lemma’s call!

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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Almaz Ayana wins the Delhi Half Marathon (Organisers / Procam International) 

Ethiopia’s Birhanu Legese and Almaz Ayana took the honours at the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon, crossing the line in the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in 59:46 and 1:07:11 respectively to win the IAAF Gold Label road race on Sunday (19).

Legese, now 23, regained the title he won two years ago after pulling away from four rivals in the final 500 metres.

Teenage compatriot Adamlak Belihu followed Legese home and clocked 59:51 on his debut over the distance. Despite having to settle for second on this occasion, it was still a stunning performance from Belihu who turns just 19 on Monday.

Leonard Korir finished third in 59:52, the second-fastest time ever by a US runner and just nine seconds shy of the North American record.

Women’s Race

World and Olympic 10,000m champion Ayana was making her debut over the half marathon distance but hardly looked like a novice as she led home an Ethiopian clean sweep of the podium positions in the women’s race.

Like in the men’s race, the outcome was decided in the final kilometre as she pulled away from her rivals on the approach to the stadium.

Ababel Yeshaneh was second again, as she was in 2016, and set a personal best for the second consecutive year as well, crossing the line in 1:07:19 to slice 33 seconds from her personal best.

Completing the all-Ethiopian top three, Netsanet Gudeta clocked 1:07:24 to improve her best by seven seconds.

LEADING RESULTS

Men
1 Birhanu Legese (ETH) 59:46
2 Andamlak Belihu (ETH) 59:51
3 Leonard Korir (USA) 59:52
4 Asefa Negewo (ETH) 59:54
5 Jorum Okumbo (KEN) 59:58
6 Geoffrey Kirui (KEN) 1:00:04
7 Edwin Kiptoo (KEN) 1:00:06
8 Abadi Hadis (ETH) 1:00:25
9 John Langat (ETH) 1:00:41
10 Nitendra Singh Rawat (IND) 1:03:53

Women
1 Almaz Ayana (ETH) 1:07:11
2 Ababel Yeshaneh (ETH) 1:07:19
3 Netsanet Gudeta (ETH) 1:07:24
4 Helah Kiprop (KEN) 1:08:07
5 Worknesh Degefa (ETH) 1:08:09
6 Paskalia Chepkorhir (KEN) 1:08:46
7 Veronica Nyaruai (KEN) 1:09:02
8 Loganathan Suriya (IND) 1:10:29
9 Daria Maslova (KGZ) 1:11:28
10 Sudha Singh (IND) 1:11:28

Source: IAAF

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Ross Kemp
The Gordian

‘We have a heightened responsibility towards Libya because of the role Britain played in bringing down the Gaddafi dictatorship.’ Photograph: Dave Williams/Sound Ltd

I’ve seen the dangerous route to Europe through Libya, with thousands of people at the mercy of cruelty for profit. But our leaders prefer to keep them there

It’s a mass grave that we don’t need the United Nations to verify. Every day an average of 14 migrants, the vast majority from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, die crossing the Mediterranean.

Many more see their European dream turn into a nightmare long before they’re corralled on to flimsy rubber dinghies on Libya’s beaches. They’re the victims of a silent massacre in the Sahara desert – a journey more deadly than the crossing from the coast, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Come the spring, thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and violence will die in Libya, but I doubt you’ll hear much about it. Compassion fatigue has set in. The numbers have become too big to comprehend. It’s an old story; we feel numbed by the now familiar news images of men huddled together on boats. Maybe it’s because they’re African and have been written off as “undeserving economic migrants”. These are the people some of our political leaders have in mind when they talk of swarms, plagues and marauders. The understandable focus on Syrian refugees has taken the spotlight away from the more dangerous route to Europe through Libya.

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Or maybe it’s because, with three rival governments presiding over anarchy in Libya, and the real power lying in the hands of armed militias, getting inside the country to tell the story is just too difficult and dangerous. One thing is becoming clear – many people have come to see this tragic situation as though it were more a problem for us than for the migrants. We have stopped caring about them. As a documentary-maker, I believe it’s our job to make people care. That was the reason my team and I went to Libya – to try to shine a light on the under-reported plight of migrants away from the coastline and to tell the human stories of the men and women making the journey.

What I saw there is nothing short of a modern-day slave trade, with migrants treated as commodities. It’s as though nothing has changed in the 300 years since desert tribes used the very same routes to bring slaves to north Africa: Nigerian women told they are going to Italy to work as housemaids only to be trafficked into desert brothels with no idea when they might leave, young men cruelly beaten and held captive for months until their families pay a ransom, women forced to take contraception to stop themselves becoming pregnant at the hands of smugglers.

What makes their plight even sadder is that most have no idea what sort of country they’re entering. I saw this when I spoke with men and women at the very start of their journey – dazed and battered from the drive across the desert border with Niger but filled with a naive optimism.

Not only are they at the mercy of people smugglers but also the authorities themselves – in the main, armed militias with no one to hold them to account and few other sources of income apart from the migrant trade. In the desert town of Brak, I met a young man who told me he had no choice but to work for a smuggling ring ferrying migrants to a handover point on the back of a pickup.

While Libyans may rely on their own militias for protection, the migrants have nothing and no one to protect them. When they are intercepted by what authorities do exist in the country, they are taken to squalid, overcrowded warehouses – generously referred to as detention centres. In one centre for women in the coastal town of Surman I met Aisha, a young Nigerian. She was bleeding to death after giving birth to her baby girl on the toilet floor. The child died three days later. Since coming home we have tried but been unable to find out what has happened to Aisha. I fear the worst.

Even in the worst refugee camps in the world there is often food, medical facilities and aid workers to offer support. In the Libyan detention centres, migrants are locked up and left to rot. It’s a humanitarian disaster with barely any humanitarian organisations there to help. For tens of thousands of migrants in the country at the moment, they have no means of escape. Libya doesn’t want them, Europe doesn’t want them and even their own countries don’t want them.

We have a heightened responsibility towards Libya because of the role Britain played in bringing down Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorship with no strategy for what was to come next. In the five and a half years since his death, lawlessness and anarchy have created the perfect conditions for people smuggling to thrive.

Last month, EU leaders under pressure to stop the tide of migrants travelling to Europe signed a deal with Libya. Far from helping people escape, this deal is aimed at keeping them there. It’s only one step away from forcibly returning them. Whatever your view on the migrants’ rights, forcing them back into the conditions we know they will experience in Libya is far from a humane solution. Conditions for migrants in the country need to drastically improve and until there is evidence of this, can we really consider the current deal an acceptable solution to such a horrific situation?

• This article was co-authored by producer Jamie Welham. Ross Kemp: Libya’s Migrant Hell airs on Sky 1 on 21 February at 9pm

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Hopes and Concerns: What is to be done? – SBS Amharic

The post Hopes and Concerns: What is to be done? – SBS Amharic appeared first on Satenaw: Ethiopian News|Breaking News: Your right to know!.