Ethiopian crash jet flight recorders found off Lebanon

The "black box" flight recorders from a passenger jet which crashed off the coast of Lebanon two days ago have been found, officials say.

A search team located the recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines flight just over 1.3km (0.8 miles) underwater, 10km west of the capital, Beirut.

The search team is now trying to retrieve them, Lebanese security officials said.

All 90 people on board the flight are presumed dead following the crash.

At least 24 bodies have been pulled from the sea so far.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, bound for Addis Ababa, crashed into the Mediterranean minutes after take-off from Beirut at 0237 (0037 GMT) during a severe thunderstorm on Monday
Witnesses said they saw the plane plummet into the sea in flames.

The international search operation has included Lebanese navy troops and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) as well as US navy destroyer USS Ramage and a civilian vessel from Cyprus with sonar equipment.

The cause of the crash is not yet known, however Lebanese officials have said the jet did not fly in the direction instructed by the Beirut control tower.

The officials said the pilot had been asked to correct his course, but turned in the opposite direction.

Seven crew and 83 passengers were on board the Boeing 737-800. Most were Lebanese or Ethiopian.

Marla Pietton, the wife of the French ambassador in Beirut, was among those on board.

BBC

Blakk Rasta to Storm Ethiopia on Rastafarian pilgrimage

Ghana’s reggae superstar Blakk Rasta will be one of the headline acts at the forthcoming reggae festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The festival, which comes off on the 6th of February, commemorates the birth of the reggae legend, Bob Marley.

Blakk Rasta is scheduled to present two speeches on pan africanism and two musical performances at the event, which he describes as a “pilgrimage” for the Rastafarian fraternity.

In attendance will be Rita Marley, wife of the late Bob Marley, and organisers say this year’s event - themed “Towards One Africa” - will be the biggest since its inceptions decades ago.

The Ghanaian-born reggae sensation of Barack Obama fame, told Myjoyonline.com, his selection to deliver a speech is rather humbling.

Organisers say Blakk Rasta’s song, which he released in the lead-up to the United States elections in 2008, has received wide acceptance in Ethiopia.

Indeed, his song received airplay and reviews many international media outlets, including the CNN, BBC and the New York Times.

Blakk Rasta, who holds a Bachelor’s in Land Economics from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), has been on the reggae music scene for years but had been a virtual unknown until his pro-Obama anthem threw him into the limelight.

He told Myjoyonline.com the Ghana Embassy in Addis Ababa will host him after a ceremony that will welcome him as the participant from Ghana.

The Ethiopian invitation comes weeks after a recent show in Amsterdam, which drew a massive crowd, and a scheduled tour of the Caribbean, which he cancelled.

The HITZ FM Taxi Driver presenter has raised the standard of reggae music in the country, making him a ‘connoisseur of reggae music in GH,’ one fan said.


Story by Fiifi Koomson/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana

Source joyonline

Flight ET409 Exposes Lebanon's Racist Underbelly

Patrick GaleyReporter based in Beirut, Lebanon

Even though there were nine nationalities aboard the Boeing 737 jet which burst into flames and crashed into the sea minutes after taking off in a violent thunderstorm on Monday morning, the Lebanese, naturally enough, only concerned themselves with one.

54 Lebanese, almost all from the country's predominately Shiite southern region, are probably dead and the nation's outpouring of grief has been intense.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri declared Monday to be a national day of mourning for the victims; the education minister closed institutions for two days as a mark of respect.

The funeral of a southern businessman, who worked for a food import country in Angola, attracted international media attention, with veiled women throwing themselves on the coffin.

Distraught friends and relatives are still thronging a hospital in southern Beirut, waiting to identify mangled bodies being dragged from the eastern Mediterranean.

The search for the plane's black box is continuing, with families of victims waiting anxiously for clues on what befell flight ET409 in the seconds before disappearing off radar screens for good.

As with any air disaster in a post 9/11 world, terrorism has been raised as a possible cause, with several Lebanese dailies carrying uncorroborated allegations that the crash was the result of a "deliberate attack."

Whatever the cause of the disaster, it has exposed the uncomfortable and often unuttered truth that many Lebanese are still virulently racist.

23 migrant domestic workers from Ethiopia were onboard the ill-fated flight, along with at least seven airline crew members. The pilot was also Ethiopian.

In the absence of concrete facts, Lebanon's transport minister suggested that pilot error may have downed the plane, with the jet having undertaking "a very strange and fast turn" seconds before crashing.

This was all the information many media outlets needed. Naharnet, an English-language news site to be read with a shovelful of salt, carried the offensive headline: "Ethiopian pilot flew wrong way!"

The complete lack of evidence aside, it is certain that no such exclamatory tone would have been used if the pilot were Lebanese.

The inference here is simple: an Ethiopian pilot - silly him - ignored the learned Lebanese air traffic controllers (who have an exemplary record for departure punctuality) and his mad error killed 90 people.

Such scandalous journalese, however, pales in comparison to the appalling treatment of friends and relatives of Ethiopian passengers.

At Rafik Hariri International Airport, while wailing Lebanese family members were consoled by round after round of politicians, offered food and drink and drip fed information on victims as and when it was received, Ethiopian concerned were sidelined totally.

Desperate women, dressed in the scrubs which often adorn domestic workers, pleaded with authorities for information only to be shepherded into a separate room from Lebanese mourners.

DNA databases that will be used to identify mangled corpses are only being compiled from Lebanese blood samples. No Ethiopian has been asked to participate, even if relatives were on board.

A normally well-respected broadcaster conducted a live piece to camera outside a hospital with their Beirut correspondent on Monday night.

An Ethiopian, wracked with grief, unwittingly wondered into shot only to be literally hauled out of view by the Lebanese crew. Had she been Lebanese, it is unthinkable she would have been treated like this.

Much has been written on the plight of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. The relatives of one Ethiopian victim said that their daughter was on the way home to Addis Ababa for good after years of being beaten by employers.

To witness the neglect of friends and relatives left behind in Lebanon will offer Ethiopian families no comfort.

The BBC even commissioned a special report on the Lebanese diasporas in Western Africa. No such article was mooted for the reverse demographic.

It is entirely understandable for news agencies and civilians to take interest in their own nationals during times like this.

But to systematically sideline, even vilify Ethiopian victims, many of whom would have led a pitiful existence in Lebanon in domestic servitude, exudes exactly the opposite of the mercy relatives of Lebanese victims are pleading for.

In times of disaster, people let down their guard. The disaster of flight ET409 showed large parts of Lebanese society for what it is.

The Huffington Post

Profile: Ethiopian Airlines

Unlike many African airlines, Ethiopian Airlines has a good safety record.

The last time one of the airline's planes crashed was in 1996 when a Boeing 767 ran out of fuel after being hijacked while flying from Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, to Nairobi in Kenya.

It ditched into the sea off the Comoros Islands, with the loss of 123 passengers and crew out of 175 people on board.

In 1988, an Ethiopian Airlines 737 struck a flock of pigeons after take-off in Bahar Dar, Ethiopia. Thirty-one people were killed when the plane crash-landed on returning to the airport.

The state-owned airline flies to more destinations in Africa than any other airline, making it a popular carrier in a continent where many airlines fly only from their home country to destinations outside Africa.

Free from politics

Along with South African and Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airlines is widely considered to be among sub-Saharan Africa's best operators, but many passengers have complained of frequent delays.

One of Africa's few profitable airlines, it has recently added flights to China and India. The airline also planned to add flights to Shanghai, Madras (Chennai) and Bangalore, chief executive Girma Wake told Reuters news agency.

The airline uses mostly Boeing aircraft and announced earlier in January plans to buy 10 of the new 737-800 model at a cost of about $750m (£464m).

It was the first African airline to order the 787 Dreamliner and the long-range 777-200LR models.

It was founded in 1945 by Emperor Haile Selassie. Some say the emperor hoped that having a good quality national airline would help Ethiopia shake off its poverty-stricken image.

The airline remains 100%-owned by the Ethiopian government but it has generally been free from political interference.

The BBC's Uduak Amimo in Addis Ababa says that Ethiopian government officials pay for their flights on Ethiopian Airlines - unlike in other African countries whose national carriers have been bankrupted by officials and their cronies using them as their personal jets.

BBC

Facts about Ethiopian Airlines

Nairobi - Ethiopian Airlines, whose jet crashed on Monday after takeoff from Beirut, is one of Africa's fastest growing airlines and has had a good safety record for more than a decade.

The carrier started operations in 1946, a year after it was founded, and is considered to be among a trio of sub-Saharan aviation giants, alongside South African Airways and Kenya Airways.

It serves 56 international destinations with 210 weekly international departures from its Addis Ababa hub and a total of 555 weekly international departures worldwide.

On its website the company says it hopes to increase revenue to $1bn and to increase the number of destinations it serves to 60 in 2010.

Ethiopian Airlines, which say it employs more than 5 000 people, currently has a fleet of 37 aircraft and 35 more on order.

Last week Boeing said that Ethiopian had ordered 10 737-800 jets, in a deal valued at $767m.

Other major security incidents

Until Flight 409 lost contact with Beirut airport control shortly after takeoff early Monday and crashed into the Mediterranean, Ethiopian had a better safety record than any other African airline, with the exception of South African Airways, industry sources said.

Apart from an emergency landing earlier this month that left no casualties, the two incidents involving the company go back more than 10 years.

Earlier this month one of the company's 757s made an emergency landing at Malta's airport while on its way from Addis Ababa to Rome. The pilot reported a problem with one of the two engines. The passengers continued their journey via London Heathrow while the plane and its crew remained in Malta.

Other major security incidents involving Ethiopian Airlines go back more than a decade.

In November 1996 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked between Addis Ababa and Nairobi by three Ethiopians seeking political asylum. The aircraft crashed into the Indian Ocean off the Comoros when it ran out of fuel, killing 125 of the 175 people on board.

In September 1988 one of the airline's Boeing 737s made a crash landing at Bahar Dar in Ethiopia after birds entered both engines during takeoff. Thirty one of the 105 people on board were killed.



- AFP

More on Ethiopian plane Crash

The illegeal controband unregistered items put on these planes makes the plane carry more weight than the actual standard set by the plane manufacturers. In addition to the fact that the pilots are over worked , most planes are overloaded which is thge main cause for deteriorateing of the planes.Mr. Siye Abraha’s rebel group overthrown the government of Ethiopia in 1991.After 1991 Siye Abraha gotr a post ofthe Defence minister of Ethipia plus Board Chairman of Ethiopian Airlines .Mr.Siye Abraha adminstration installed corrupt , unprofessional and with no work ethics gangsters from top positions to bottom in EAL which are still runing things.The EAL management practice has been clearly designed to benefit few individuals at the cost of the whole country’s economy and reputation.The customs and luggage handling ring abuses the planes , customers properties , rules and regulation to get money and management looks the other way.
I am not a disgruntled Pilot or seeking revenge. This is what was waiting to happen to Ethiopian Airlines in the shadows. As they say it ‘Yetatekut Suri Sirotu yefeal” . Ethiopian airlines is led by a so called COO who is incapable , corny appointed , no credential , severe lack of experience and no knowledge of the aviation or flying side of the business.
These individuals and his cronies who he has appointed by eliminating anybody that is against his philosophy or anyone who he thinks is blocking his path to his final frontier to become the CEO ofthe Airline by replacing the ageing legendary and visionary Ato Girma Wake. This man or so called C.O.O has bent the rules by allowing or intimidating pilots to fly beyond regulation allowed hours, a pilot body working like salves with no collective agreement, Glorifying and talking in public about pilots that he personally has intimidated to violate flight and duty times, scolding and degrading staff in public and the list goes on. If employees were given the right to talk without repercussion today this man will be sent to jail for life for his crimes. Who is this man?? From what I have discovered before I leftthe airline : that he brags of a degree that he obtained thru on line correspondence while he was the area manager in New York. There are eye witnesses that testify his degrees are plagiarized and someone had to take the entire test and classes for him. He has no experience as COO or running neither flight department nor M&E etc… He is the head and decision maker in these departments. He has made comments to the media out of his no knowledge capacity that disgraces the pilots ofEthiopian Airlines . This man is pushing Department heads of the Flt operations to upgrade pilots without proper qualifications. An example is: a Pilot to be upgraded needs 9 to 10 hours of training in the simulator other than the CBT and ground school he or she takes according to the regulation. But this man has pushed department heads to give incapable and not ready Pilot candidates to upgrade by allowing or forcing to give those additional hours to some up to 30 hours to prepare them for command ship. His expansion vision that he brags about does not have substance. As pilots’ are intimidated to fly over 100 hours where regulation states 70 to 80 hours is ample. Pilots are intimidated and warned of losing their jobs if they ask for vacation. He forces pilots to take money instead of their hard earned and well deserved vacation time. I had an accumulated vacation time of 6 years that I could not take. Every time I asked as was told which I know it came directly from him that I am not a team player and I should expect repercussion in the future.. The list goes on. If you think I am fabricating these story please talk discretely to some of the pilots and you will hear all the horror stories since this guy took office. For your information most of the pilots are flying hoping they will get my kind of opportunity one day. It is not that we hate our Airline or don’t care for its growth; it is just that this man is making allEthiopian Airlines employees life hell on earth with his cronies.
Supply and demand of Pilots and leased airplanes:
He brags about the expansion plan he has drafted which is the result what just occurred yesterday. Pilots are flying tired and fatigues. An Ethiopian Airlines had a recent incident were both crew members fall asleep and flew into Italian airspace without clearance because of severe lack of sleep and rest time . He is buying and leasing Airplanes that should not fly because of wear and tear previous mechanical problems etc… His only vision of expansion as I said has no substance because he has no plans how he is going to fill all the slots with pilots. He is constantly advertising for pilots which I don’t have any objection if it helps the Airline grow. But most of them are leaving after 4 to 5 month service because they could not stand his heat or working condition. He is hoping by this dangerous vision he will have the vote of confidence to gain the CEO position once the current leader leaves. I can only say once this happens Ethiopian Airlines might as well expect tragedies after tragedy. I hope and pray that does not happen, just for the sake of this conglomerate Airline with its great safety records and for the sake of the pilots and x ET employees and current employees.

Pilot’s grief and mishandling:
Pilots and cabin Crew members are voicing their grief when we see them on their stop over abroad. Our heart sinks with sorrow when we hear their stories. How some of them have not seen their family or children for days. How some of them fear for their jobs as they are intimidated day in day out by this person’s cronies. Let all Ethiopians be aware that I love my Airline and will go back to fly for Ethiopian in a heartbeat. I have plenty of years left. I am out here flying for a foreign Airline because of the mishandling and violation of Pilots rights. I am sure he might argue saying he is paying pilots more than anybody in the country. Bloggers they deserve every penny they get. They are still under paid. He is hiring foreign pilots way more than what he pays the locals. All the pilots know his deed but the saddest thing is they don’t have anywhere to go. He has blocked their license or will not allow them to resign. He will ask them to fork their training sometimes up to $500, 000 Birr plus he threatens them that he will have all the property and their parents or relatives property confiscated if they don’t pay and so on. I will write next time how I left. It was the saddest day in my life to leave my Airline but I had to as so many are waiting in the shadows to-do the same.
Bloggers again I am not a disgruntled former employee I am just voicing my opinion and hope fully I am been the voice of so many that are suffocating and still flying because they don’t have no choice. I pray for the Crew and passengers that perished on ET flight 409. But I will say it again this was looming in the shadows to happen. I hope this will be the end of it and Ethiopian will have a capable and experienced individual to run as COO who has authority over the Flight operations department again. Long live Ethiopian Airlines and the staff that are tirelessly fighting for its survival and God Bless Ethiopia.

Source click


Posted by MULUNEH | January 26, 2010, 1:37 am

Decades on, fear of hunger still looms large for Ethiopian people

Severe “food insecurity” in Ethiopia has put an estimated 4.8 million people at risk

HRAYKEDENEW would prefer to forget the dark days of 1985 but sometimes the memories tumble forth unbidden.

She remembers her family, desperate for anything that would fill their stomachs, boiling strips of leather to make it easier to swallow. Weeks later, as the final stages of starvation set in, her parents lay down on their bed and never got up again. Three of her siblings also perished.

Hraykedenew (37) still lives in Korem, the highland town that became synonymous with Ethiopia’s devastating famine 25 years ago after the BBC’s Michael Buerk arrived to discover what he famously described as a “biblical famine, now, in the 20th century”. Hraykedenew is married with six children.

“We are living a better life,” she says. “We pray to God we will not see days like that again.”

Ethiopia’s famine ended with nearly 1 million dead, and while the country has experienced much political and economic change in the decades since, the fear of hunger has never really gone away in this, sub-Saharan Africa’s second most-populous nation. Korem today has all the appearance of a thriving town, with boisterous children spilling from gaily painted houses ringed by lush fields of maize and barley, but the surrounding region of Tigray is one of several pockets of Ethiopia where food shortages are a familiar reality – a situation many believe will worsen this year.

In December the Ethiopian government identified an estimated 4.8 million people who will need emergency food assistance from January to June.

That is in addition to more than 7 million people who depend on a government-managed but foreign-funded “safety net” programme that supplies food in exchange for work.

“The current situation is far from qualifying as a famine as some media outlets have stated but there is severe food insecurity in certain areas,” says Judith Schuler of the World Food Programme. “We expect a deterioration of the situation within the next six months.”

The effect of successive seasons of failed rains goes some way in explaining why Ethiopia finds itself in this current predicament, but even when the rains come and harvests are bountiful, nearly one tenth of its people rely on food aid to survive. Other deeper, structural – and much debated – factors are at play, including rapid population growth and the impact of government land policy.

Since the 1980s famine, Ethiopia’s population has doubled to almost 80 million.

In a country where some 85 per cent rely on farming for a living, using methods unchanged over centuries, this means farm holdings have become smaller and smaller, and meagre harvests must be stretched further.

Some analysts argue that efforts to boost agricultural development are hamstrung by 1990s legislation that put all land under state ownership, a policy they say discourages initiative and stifles productivity.

The issue of food security can be a prickly one in Ethiopia, with many Ethiopians resentful that their country’s name still conjures up images of famine and war in the wider world, particularly at a time when it is attracting tentative but growing interest from foreign investors.

Prime minister Meles Zenawi points to overall economic growth rates of more than 7 per cent per year. He argues that efforts to boost agriculture are bearing fruit, noting that areas where there is generally adequate rainfall have experienced sustained growth in agricultural production for several years. But that, he admits, is not enough.

“We ought to and we should be able to also break this structural bottleneck in the drought-affected areas. The reason we have not achieved that is primarily because it takes a lot of money ... to kickstart development in those areas,” he told The Irish Times .

“We are making those investments and they are beginning to make a difference but it is not fast enough. Unless you break the structural barriers you will always be in this whirlwind of emergency programmes. We have done much of the work but not all of it. We need to do the rest.”

On the population issue – described to me by one development worker in Addis Ababa as “the elephant in the room” – Meles acknowledges the need for a “sensible population policy” and insists that it is already in place. “Population growth rates in Ethiopia are beginning to come down and we will maintain that policy – not because we believe in this doomsday scenario of Ethiopia being unable to feed anything more than 80 million people, but because we believe that a stable process of population growth – rather than the massive growth we had – could be brought about in Ethiopia, and such an environment would be many times more conducive to not only feeding Ethiopians but making them prosperous. After all, that is the ultimate objective

Source Irish Times

White House saddened by deaths in Lebanon crash

The Associated Press
Monday, January 25, 2010; 1:23 PM
WASHINGTON -- The White House says the Obama administration is deeply saddened by the deaths of passengers aboard an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed after taking off from Beirut early Monday.

Spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration's thoughts and prayers are with the loved ones of those who died, and he commended rescue workers for their quick response.

The plane carrying 90 people caught fire and crashed into the sea minutes after taking off. No survivors have been found, but emergency workers recovered at least 34 bodies. The cause of the crash was not immediately know, but the Lebanese president says terrorism is not suspected.

The Washington post

Ethiopia declares January 25, “National Day of Mourning.”

Addis Ababa, January 25 (WIC) – Prime Minister Meles Zenawi expressed his regret over the unfortunate accident of ET-409 which took place shortly after departure from Beirut International Airport today.

The government of Ethiopia has declared January 25, “National Day of Mourning.”

Meanwhile, the United States government on Monday said USA is ready to assist in the investigations into the crash of an Ethiopian passenger airliner that occurred several minutes after take off in Beirut, Lebanon according to APA.


“On behalf of the American people, the Embassy of the United States of America expresses our deepest condolences to the Ethiopian people on the tragic crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 409 this morning,” said the USA embassy in Ethiopia.


“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those who were in this terrible accident,” added the embassy.


The embassy said that together with the US government they stand prepared to assist Ethiopian Airlines and Lebanese officials in investigation into the tragedy.

“Ethiopian Airlines is a demonstrated leader in safe and reliable civil aviation in Africa and internationally,” added the embassy.
Last Updated ( Monday, 25 January 2010 )

'If push comes to shove, we can survive on our own'

Foreign Affairs Correspondent Mary Fitzgerald talks to Ethiopia’s prime minister in the first of a series of articles from the African country

IT IS almost two decades since Meles Zenawi came to power in Ethiopia after the rebels he led toppled the brutal dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Since then, the former Marxist guerrilla has presided over sweeping political and economic change: introducing a multiparty system, boosting health and education, and adopting pro-market policies to help transform a limping, largely agricultural economy into one predicted to be among the five fastest-growing in the world in 2010.

“We have succeeded in proving that Ethiopia can grow at Asian growth rates,” says Meles, sitting in his cavernous offices in the capital Addis Ababa. “This has rekindled hope in the possibility that Ethiopia will not for long be the poster child for poverty in the world.”

Ethiopia remains heavily dependent on foreign aid – Ireland contributed €27.8 million in bilateral aid in 2009 – and almost 12 million Ethiopians will rely on food aid in the first half of this year. It comes as a surprise, therefore, to hear Meles argue that “technically . . . if push comes to shove, we can survive on our own”.

If food aid was cut tomorrow, he continues: “We would have to shelve some of our development projects and use the money to buy wheat from abroad but no one would starve.”

While Meles’ fans once hailed him as one of sub-Saharan Africa’s shrewdest and most visionary leaders – in 1998, Bill Clinton described him as the leader of a continental renaissance – his record has been blotted by sharp criticism over human rights and the violent crackdown on anti-government protests which followed a disputed general election in 2005. At least 193 people were killed by police and thousands arrested.

Meles admits mistakes were made: “With better training and equipment of our police force, the number of people who lost lives could have been drastically reduced . . . there were very glaring shortcomings but those shortcomings have now been overcome.”

Most of Ethiopia’s political players have signed up to a new code of conduct ahead of parliamentary elections due to take place in May.

“That is a major plus to what we had in 2005 because the majority of participants have now agreed on the rules of the game,” Meles says.

“In spite of all this, I cannot tell you the risk of instability is zero. I can say that we are aware of this risk and we are determined to ensure that it doesn’t materialise.”

Asked about opposition claims that aid is being used as a political tool in the run-up to the poll, he replies: “Given the fact that there are several hundred thousand people involved in the distribution of food aid, I cannot say that not a single one of them has unfairly discriminated . . . People are trying to make political capital out of this.”

Still, Ethiopia has faced increasing criticism for its human rights record.

“The overwhelming majority of the criticism is invalid,” Meles claims. “At the same time, I say this is a work in progress . . . and we do not expect to have a situation where there is no violation of human rights of any person anywhere in Ethiopia.”

He refers to a Human Rights Watch report which alleged Ethiopian troops committed war crimes while battling rebels in the country’s Ogaden area, and a US state department report: “We found that the overwhelming majority of those accusations are allegations by people who have an axe to grind being transformed into facts after a series of reportings.”

A review by the UN Human Rights Council in December raised several concerns about Ethiopia’s record. It recommended that the government reassess controversial legislation passed last year which outlawed any civil society group that promotes human rights, democracy, or conflict resolution and receives more than 10 per cent of its funding from abroad.

“It is perfectly democratic legislation,” Meles argues. “I believe that if we were to follow the advice of some of our friends and allow foreign money dictate political terms in Ethiopia, we would simply pretend to be in the process of democratisation without democratising.” But doesn’t the law narrow Ethiopia’s democratic space? “No, it is possible to organise in Ethiopia without foreign money. I know because I have done it both as a student and a guerrilla fighter,” he counters.

Some international human rights groups and Ethiopian opposition figures accuse donor states of holding back from properly challenging the government on human rights because it is a crucial ally in an unstable region. During the Bush era, US officials frequently described Meles as Washington’s most important African partner in its so-called war on terror.

Meles rejects claims that some donors have soft-pedalled on human rights. “Many of our friends have not minced words in criticising us . . . They tried to convince us to stop the [civil society] legislation. But I think our friends know that . . . we make our own decisions.” He is scathing about Birtukan Mideksa, an imprisoned opposition leader whose case has been highlighted by Amnesty International. Birtukan, who was given a life sentence following the 2005 elections and then released under a pardon agreement, was sent back to prison after the government accused her of violating the terms of her pardon.

“She will be in prison until she serves her full term and nothing anybody says is going to change that,” Meles bristles. “It is a perfectly legal process and that is the end of the story . . . This is again a glaring example of how the human rights issue is abused by people who want to influence political processes in Ethiopia.”

Meles has now been in power for longer than the man his rebel army overthrew in 1991. After consultations with his party, he says his intended retirement date of 2010 has been put back to 2015: “I will be participating in these elections as a candidate but for sure this will be my last term . . . It will be my last term because the party says it will be my last term.”

Ethiopian jet crashes off Beirut

An Ethiopian Airlines plane carrying 85 passengers has reportedly crashed into the sea after taking off from Lebanese capital Beirut.

Airport sources cited by the Reuters news agency said the aircraft disappeared from radar screens shortly after take-off early on Monday morning.

According to the Ethiopian Airlines website, the flight from Beirut bound for Addis Ababa is operated by a Boeing 737 aircraft.

It had been scheduled to depart from Beirut at 02:10am, landing at Addis Ababa at 7:50am local time.

source

Ethiopian wife may be deported because husband suffered stroke

In 19 days Baza Almash will be deported to Ethiopia, because her husband has been in a nursing home, immobilized by a stroke, and the couple is no longer living as man and wife.

Almash, 32, is not Jewish. Her husband of 10 years, Mogus Adeniya, immigrated to Israel in 1991. He would fly to Ethiopia every few months to see her. Their daughter, Rahel, was born five years ago. Shortly afterward, in 2006, Almash immigrated to Israel, where she was given a temporary visa.

The family lived together in Netivot. About six months ago Almash began studying to convert to Judaism, in order to obtain Israeli citizenship.

About a year after her arrival, however, Adeniya, who is about 30 years her senior, had a stroke that left him paralyzed below the waist and unable to walk or to take care of himself. Almash cared for him, but he eventually was admitted to a nursing home in Ashkelon.

About two weeks ago, Almash received an urgent summons to report to the Be'er Sheva branch of the Population Registry, where she was handed a letter giving her 30 days to leave the country. The letter said that an agency committee had rejected her request to become a naturalized Israeli citizen because her husband had been in an institution since the beginning of the naturalization process, and "you are not living together and managing a common household."

Almash tearfully told a reporter, "I haven't slept since, the fear of deportation has paralyzed me, I don't know what to do; I came with my husband, who was like a father to me, to Israel, and now they want to deport me because he is institutionalized."

She says that her daughter is completely Israeli: "Do they want me to return her to Ethiopia? What will we do there? Our whole life is in Israel."

Almash works two hours a days as a cleaner at a Netivot community center, and gets by with help from the city welfare department.

The Interior Ministry said in response: "Mrs. Almash submitted a naturalization application based on her being the spouse of an Israeli citizen. Shortly thereafter the citizen was admitted to a medical institution, and for the past three years they have not lived as a couple. In light of the tragic circumstances, however, the naturalization process was not halted immediately, but only two years later. When it became clear that the process had been suspended, Mrs. Almash lost her standing and she was recently asked to leave the country. However, the head of the Population Registry, Mr. Amnon Ben Ami, has asked to review her case as early as tomorrow."

Haaretz.com

Ethiopians Rulers

ETHIOPIA’S MELES ZENAWI, like Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, was among a new generation of African leaders who came to power in the early 1990s whose role in kicking out murderous regimes and commitment to democratic values was much admired. It seemed like Africa was fiinding a new voice. And there is no doubt that the Ethiopia Meles rules today is a far cry from the famine-ridden brutalised country of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. But on the human rights front Meles does have questions to answer.

Facing elections that will certainly see him re-elected prime minister, he can boast an economy growing at 7 per cent and dramatic improvements in health and education standards. As he tells Mary Fitzgerald in the foreign pages today: “We have succeeded in proving that Ethiopia can grow at Asian growth rates,” rekindling hope “in the possibility that Ethiopia will not for long be the poster child for poverty in the world.”

There is some way to go. Ethiopia remains an important recipent of Ireland’s aid, a “programme coutry”, where we contribute tens of millions to a food safety net programme that feeds 12 million people in return for public works. A further five million people are under threat of famine in the months ahead. Malnutrition is widespread with 47 per cent of children under five suffering from wasting or stunting. Over half the population lives below the national poverty line.

Donor countries have come under fire, however, from human rights groups who complain they are not sufficiently vocal about abuses. The 2005 elections tarnished Meles’s reputation with violence in which some 200 died and opposition leaders and activists were jailed. Although freed temporarily, Birtukan Mideksa, the 36-year-old head of the Unity for Democracy and Justice party (UDJ), has been sent back to jail for life after authorities claimed she flouted the terms of her pardon by denying that she had “expressed remorse”. Her release would go a long way to reassuring civil society about the fairness of forthcoming elections.

Meles is also unrepentant or in denial about widespread concern over recent anti-NGO legislation and the documented use of torture by police and military officials in official and secret detention facilities across Ethiopia. All are issues which Irish diplomats say are the subject of regular “frank” bilateral and multilateral discusssions with the government. Meles has been told rightly that these elections will be an important test of his democratic commitment.

Source IrishTimes

Anxious Ethiopia Jangling nerves

Meles Zenawi will probably win the election. But that may not bring calm


Jan 21st 2010 | ADDIS ABABA
From The Economist print edition


WORRIES about Ethiopia’s election, due in May, are growing. Aid-giving Western governments hope it will pass off without the strife that followed the last one, in 2005, when 200 people were killed, thousands were imprisoned, and the democratic credentials of Meles Zenawi, despite his re-election, were left in tatters

Though poor and fragile, Ethiopia carries a lot of weight in the region. A grubby election could worsen things in neighbouring Sudan, where civil war threatens to recur. The borderlands near Kenya, where cattle raiding, poaching and banditry are rife, would become still more dangerous. A renewal of unrest in Ethiopia would be exploited by its arch-enemy, Eritrea, which already backs sundry rebel groups in an effort to undermine the country’s government. And it could make matters even worse in Somalia, where jihadist fighters linked to al-Qaeda want to weaken “Christian” Ethiopia, where a third of the people are in fact Muslim. Foreign intelligence sources have long feared a jihadist attack in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia is a country of contradictions. With its present population of around 82m growing by 2m a year, it is poised to overtake Egypt as Africa’s second-most-populous country after Nigeria, with around 150m. It hosts the seat of the African Union. It runs one of Africa’s biggest airlines. This year its economy is predicted to grow by 7%, one of the fastest rates in the world. It is wooing foreign investors with offers to lease 3m hectares of arable land. It is expensively branding its coffee for export.

Yet the grim side is just as striking. Hunger periodically stalks the land. Some 5m people rely on emergency food to survive; another 7m get food aid. Few people benefit from the country’s free market. Ethiopia has one of Africa’s lowest rates of mobile-phone ownership. Income per head is one of the most meagre in the continent.

All this is the responsibility of Mr Meles’s Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which has run the show since 1991. The party is dominated by former Marxist rebels from Tigray, even though Tigrayans, among them Mr Meles, make up only 6% of Ethiopia’s population. Not that Tigrayans want to cling to power, says Mr Meles brusquely. It is just that Ethiopia needs consistency to pursue a long-term development agenda. And the EPRDF can point to some successes. Since Mr Meles came to power, infant mortality has fallen by half, school attendance has risen dramatically and life expectancy has increased from 45 to 55 years.

Nourishing a liberal democracy or upholding human rights, however, has never been central to that agenda, even less so after Mr Meles clobbered the opposition in 2005. Some Western diplomats insist, implausibly, that politics has got better since. The government and some opposition parties have, for instance, signed a code of conduct for the coming election. Some of the opposition groups are genuine, but others are in hock to the EPRDF. In any case, the main opposition grouping, Forum, refused to join the talks, arguing that the EPRDF would exploit any agreement for its own ends. The government has been smothering potential sources of independent opposition, such as foreign and local NGOs. It insists it does not censor the press, but newspapers continue to close and independent journalists are moving abroad. Some farmers allege they are being denied food aid for political reasons.

Forum is demanding the release of one its leaders, Birtukan Mideksa, from prison. She was jailed with other opposition figures after the 2005 election, later pardoned, then arrested again. She is unlikely to be let out again before the poll as she could, some say, pose a real threat to the EPRDF in Addis Ababa and other cities.

Yet most Western governments seem keen to downplay Mr Meles’s human-rights record, hoping his re-election will keep his country stable. America is to disburse $1 billion in state aid to Ethiopia this year, more if covert stuff is included. Ethiopia can expect a similar amount from the European Union, multilaterally and through bilateral arrangements with Britain and others. And climate-change deals may bring Mr Meles even more cash.

Ethiopia inflation soars to 7.1 pct y/y in Dec

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia's year-on-year inflation rose to 7.1 percent in December from 0.6 percent in November on the back of rising fuel, food and construction material prices, the statistics office said on Friday.
Inflation in the vast Horn of Africa nation hit a high of 64.2 percent in July 2008. It then entered a period of deflation from July to October last year.

"In the recent months, except for cereals and oil seeds and fats, all the other food components show a rise in their indices," the Central Statistical Agency said in a statement.

"Among the non-food components, the prices of fuel, construction materials, clothing and footwear, furniture and furnishing and personal care and effects are increasing."

After the July 2008 peak, the government halted state borrowing and increased bank reserves to drive down the rate.

Ethiopia's central bank had also instructed private banks to restrict borrowing as part of the attempts to curb inflation.

The global recession has slashed international demand for Ethiopia's agricultural exports and power cuts have ravaged business, fuelling a foreign currency shortage.

The government says it expects growth of about 10 percent in 2010. Opposition parties contest the government's statistics.

Ethiopia, one of Africa's biggest potential markets with some 80 million people, is drawing growing foreign investor interest in agriculture, hydropower and oil and gas exploration.

The Raping of Ethiopia: The new way of Bio-Colonialism

Zekarias Ezra

Land is finite. There is so much of it and that is it. So, food-importing countries with scarce arable land but lots of cash, mainly in Asia and the Middle East, are increasingly

looking overseas to secure food supplies after the prices of staple foods rocketed last year. They are scouring Africa as a kind of 3rd wave of outsourcing, i.e. agriculture outsourcing. Critics are rightly crying that such schemes hark back to colonial-era "plantation agriculture" where rich outsiders force subsistence farmers off fertile land to grow export crops.

Jacques Diouf, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, has reportedly called the land deals a type of "neo-colonialism". Bless his heart! But, some argue including the learned Prime Minister of Ethiopia that the investments have the potential to increase local food availability and create badly needed jobs. May be if a government of the people, by the people, for the people negotiated such give-away contracts. Otherwise such deals prove disastrous. Example: Madagascar´s deal with South Korean firm Daewoo.

There is even a fundamental human right issue in play here. Does the present generation (Meles and co) even have the legal right to mortgage the peoples´ land for 50+ years? How could Meles know the legitimate owners of the land (namely the future generation of Ethiopians) may not need the land say 20 years from now?

On many grounds, the Ethiopian government action in fact is blatantly immoral. It is a rape of a nation and its people, pure and simple. Read the following and judge for yourself.

"The Bangalore-based company, which is the world's largest grower of roses, has negotiated an extraordinarily good deal with the government. For its farm in Bako, Karuturi is paying no rent for six years and then only 135 birr (£6.50) per hectare per year for the remainder of the 50-year lease. In Gambella, a remote and sparsely populated region close to Sudan, the rent is only 15 birr per hectare."

Does receiving 135 birr per year for each 10000 square meter of arable land seem to you a good deal for the people of Ethiopia? I don´t think so. What is more, like all the foreign land investors in Ethiopia, the company is free to export as much of its produce as it likes. How is it having such a clause in the contract help Ethiopia? In entering to such an unconscionable contractual agreement, the Meles government turns the Bako people into indebted servitude for a long 50+ years

Land is not an infinite resource. The buyers are coming to Ethiopia not because of compassion but because it makes an absolute good business sense. However, the politicians of the country not only betrayed the people but also proved that the un-attended ´street dogs´ would have been better than the present day ministers to rule the country.

Prior to the 1974 popular Ethiopian Revolution, which the Mengistu gang

hijacked, land was exclusively owned by the nobility and other members of the few highly-privileged feudal landlords under a system known as serfdom (Gebbar). Under this land management system, everything that the farmer produced on the farm was the property of the feudal landlords, who would then redistribute grains to "their" farmers. The farmers (tenants) were totally under the control of the feudal landlord and would face eviction from the land if they failed to pay taxes in the form of farm products. The 1974 revolution" (let it be noted Meles and his friends were proponents) with its main slogan of "Land to the Tiller" ended the serfdom.

Three decades later, EPRDF has turned the clock back and is busy handing out farm land under the slogan "land to the land-grabbers´. The poor Ethiopian peasants are now losing their farmland to the "land grabbers" through coercion of the corrupt governments; the poor African farmers will then toil on the farmland day and night to only see the grains exported out elsewhere – little to none will be spared for domestic markets. As laborers on the farmland, they will be paid bare minimum wages under deplorable living standards.

Mafa Chipeta, FAO´s representative in Ethiopia, told the Washington Post:

"I can´t believe Ethiopia or any other government would allow their country to be used like an empty womb. The human spirit would not allow it."

Every body knows that so-called leaders were camouflaged robbers, whose only one objective is to loot the country in various pretexts, deceive their cadres, fool the citizen and speak lies, and talk nonsense most of the time and never do any things good for the nation and people.

Just when colonialism was considered dead and buried, along come neo-colonialism in its latest guise with the collaboration of corrupt leaders. Allied with its close relatives globalisation, free marketeering and lack of transparency, it is currently launching a new offensive on the disempowered population of poor nation such as Ethiopia.

OLF in disarray continue.....

ADDIS ABABA — A rebellion by ethnic Oromos in Ethiopia is at its weakest state after years of internal divisions, a former rebel leader said Friday, claiming it had "zero" chance of toppling the government.

Six senior members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which for more than three decades has fought for independence of the Oromia region, crossed over from Kenya and surrendered earlier this month, along with 250 fighters.

"The OLF was meant to liberate its people, but divisions and a lack of vision has hampered its cause," Lucho Bukhura, a former central committee member, told journalists here.

Lucho said the group had splintered into three factions "based on geographical background" since its inception in the 1970s.

"It has been disintegrating for the past 17 years. They have zero fighting capacity at the moment and zero chance of overthrowing the government," he said.

Lucho, who spoke along with three other former rebels, said they surrendered after holding negotiations with the authorities and obtaining guarantees on their treatment.

The OLF insisted in a statement this week that its operations would not be affected by the defections.

"Those who surrendered... are traitors, who had contact with the tyrannical minority regime's intelligence network and had, for a long time, been sources of problems in the area," the statement said.

The OLF was part of Ethiopia's transition government from 1991 to 1995, after the fall of the Marxist regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.

After numerous disputes with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's EPRDF party, it quit the coalition and demanded the creation of an independent state to be called Oromia.

Since then, Ethiopian police have routinely blamed the group of carrying out "terrorist activities" and fomenting insecurity, while opposition leaders of Oromo descent accuse the government of arbitrarily detaining hundreds from the region on suspicion of supporting the group.

Lucho said he had handed recommendations to the government to resolve the issue peacefully and was scheduled to meet the prime minister this week.

"The government needs to come out and work with the people. We have given recommendations in order to uplift the Oromo people," he said.



Lucho, who spoke along with three other former rebels, said they surrendered after holding negotiations with the authorities and obtaining guarantees on their treatment.

The OLF insisted in a statement this week that its operations would not be affected by the defections.

"Those who surrendered... are traitors, who had contact with the tyrannical minority regime's intelligence network and had, for a long time, been sources of problems in the area," the statement said.

The OLF was part of Ethiopia's transition government from 1991 to 1995, after the fall of the Marxist regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.

After numerous disputes with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's EPRDF party, it quit the coalition and demanded the creation of an independent state to be called Oromia.

Since then, Ethiopian police have routinely blamed the group of carrying out "terrorist activities" and fomenting insecurity, while opposition leaders of Oromo descent accuse the government of arbitrarily detaining hundreds from the region on suspicion of supporting the group.

Lucho said he had handed recommendations to the government to resolve the issue peacefully and was scheduled to meet the prime minister this week.

"The government needs to come out and work with the people. We have given recommendations in order to uplift the Oromo people," he said.

Oromos are the largest ethnic group in the Horn of Africa nation, comprising more than 30 percent of the population of 80 million.

AFP

Ethiopian Airlines orders 10 Boeing 737-800s

UPDATE Ethiopian Airlines orders 10 Boeing 737-800s

NEW YORK, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Ethiopian Airlines [ETHA.UL] has ordered 10 Boeing Co's (BA.N) Next-Generation 737-800s for a total price of $767 million, the airline and aircraft maker said on Friday.

Ethiopia Airlines will invest in additional airplanes to expand its fleet and broaden its network, the companies said.

In 2009, Ethiopian Airlines became the first African carrier to order and operate the ultra-long-range 777-200LR model. It also was the first African carrier to order the 787 Dreamliner, with 10 new planes ordered in 2005.

Ethiopian Airlines is an all-Boeing operator.

The airline operates five 737-700s and two 737-800s. Ethiopian also operates nine 757s, 10 767s and one MD-11BCF (a Boeing Converted Freighter), with a second MD-11BCF arriving in August. (Reporting by Ilaina Jonas)

Human Right in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is on a deteriorating human rights trajectory as parliamentary elections approach in 2010. These will be the first national elections since 2005, when post-election protests resulted in the deaths of at least 200 protesters, many of them victims of excessive use of force by the police. Broad patterns of government repression have prevented the emergence of organized opposition in most of the country. In December 2008 the government re-imprisoned opposition leader Birtukan Midekssa for life after she made remarks that allegedly violated the terms of an earlier pardon.

In 2009 the government passed two pieces of legislation that codify some of the worst aspects of the slide towards deeper repression and political intolerance. A civil society law passed in January is one of the most restrictive of its kind, and its provisions will make most independent human rights work impossible. A new counterterrorism law passed in July permits the government and security forces to prosecute political protesters and non-violent expressions of dissent as acts of terrorism.

Political Repression and the 2010 Elections
As Ethiopia heads toward nationwide elections, the government continues to clamp down on the already limited space for dissent or independent political activity. Ordinary citizens who criticize government policies or officials frequently face arrest on trumped-up accusations of belonging to illegal "anti-peace" groups, including armed opposition movements. Officials sometimes bring criminal cases in a manner that appears to selectively target government critics, as when in June 2009 prominent human rights activist Abebe Worke was charged with illegal importation of radio equipment and ultimately fled the country. In the countryside government-supplied (and donor-funded) agricultural assistance and other resources are often used as leverage to punish and prevent dissent, or to compel individuals into joining the ruling party.

The opposition is in disarray, but the government has shown little willingness to tolerate potential challengers. In December 2008 the security forces re-arrested Birtukan Midekssa, leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party, which had begun to build a grassroots following in the capital. The government announced that Birtukan would be jailed for life because she had made public remarks that violated the terms of an earlier pardon for alleged acts of treason surrounding the 2005 elections. The authorities stated that there was no need for a trial as the move was a mere legal technicality.

In July the Ethiopian government passed a new anti-terrorism law. The law provides broad powers to the police, and harsh criminal penalties can be applied to political protesters and others who engage in acts of nonviolent political dissent. Some of its provisions appear tailored less toward addressing terrorism and more toward allowing for a heavy-handed response to mass public unrest, like that which followed Ethiopia's 2005 elections.

Civil Society Activism and Media Freedom
The space for independent civil society activity in Ethiopia, already extremely narrow, shrank dramatically in 2009. In January the government passed a new civil society law whose provisions are among the most restrictive of any comparable law anywhere in the world. The law makes any work that touches on human rights or governance issues illegal if carried out by foreign non-governmental organizations, and labels any Ethiopian organization that receives more than 10 percent of its funding from sources outside of Ethiopia as "foreign." The law makes most independent human rights work virtually impossible, and human rights work deemed illegal under the law is punishable as a criminal offense.

Ethiopia passed a new media law in 2008 that improved upon several repressive aspects of the previous legal regime. The space for independent media activity in Ethiopia remains severely constrained, however. In August two journalists were jailed on charges derived partly from Ethiopia's old, and now defunct, press proclamation. Ethiopia's new anti-terror law contains provisions that will impact the media by making journalists and editors potential accomplices in acts of terrorism if they publish statements seen as encouraging or supporting terrorist acts, or even, simply, political protest.

Pretrial Detention and Torture
The Ethiopian government continues its longstanding practice of using lengthy periods of pretrial and pre-charge detention to punish critics and opposition activists, even where no criminal charges are ultimately pursued. Numerous prominent ethnic Oromo Ethiopians have been detained in recent years on charges of providing support to the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front (OLF); in almost none of these cases have charges been pursued, but the accused, including opposition activists, have remained in detention for long periods. Canadian national Bashir Makhtal was convicted on charges of supporting the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in July, after a trial that was widely criticized as unfair; he was in detention for two-and-a-half years before his sentence was handed down, and he was unable to access legal counsel and consular representatives for much of that period.

Not only are periods of pretrial detention punitively long, but detainees and convicted prisoners alike face torture and other ill-treatment. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have documented consistent patterns of torture in police and military custody for many years. The Ethiopian government regularly responds that these abuses do not exist, but even the government's own Human Rights Commission acknowledged in its 2009 annual report that torture and other abuses had taken place in several detention facilities, including in Ambo and Nekemte.

Impunity for Military Abuses
The Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) has committed serious abuses, in some cases amounting to war crimes or crimes against humanity, in several different conflicts in recent years. Human Rights Watch is not aware of any meaningful efforts to hold the officers or government officials most responsible for those abuses to account. The only government response to crimes against humanity and other serious abuses committed by the military during a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in Gambella in late 2003 and 2004 was an inquiry that prosecuted a handful of junior personnel for deliberate and widespread patterns of abuse. No one has been investigated or held to account for war crimes and other widespread violations of the laws of war during Ethiopia's bloody military intervention in neighboring Somalia from 2006 to 2008.

In August 2008 the Ethiopian government did purport to launch an inquiry into allegations of serious crimes in Somali Regional State, where the armed forces have been fighting a campaign against the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front for many years. The inquiry was sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, lacked independence, and concluded that no serious abuses took place. To date the government continues to restrict access of independent investigators into the area.

Relations in the Horn of Africa
In August the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission issued its final rulings on monetary damages stemming from the bloody 1998-2000 border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nonetheless the two countries remain locked in an intractable dispute about the demarcation of the heavily militarized frontier. Eritrea continues to play a destabilizing role throughout the Horn of Africa through its efforts to undermine and attack the government of Ethiopia wherever possible. The government of President Isayas Afewerki hosts and materially supports fighters from Ethiopian rebel movements, including the Oromo Liberation Front. Eritrea has also pursued a policy of supporting armed opposition groups in Somalia as a way of undermining Ethiopia's support for the country's weak Transitional Federal Government.

Key International Actors
Ethiopia is one of the most aid-dependant countries in the world and received more than US$2 billion in 2009, but its major donors have been unwilling to confront the government over its worsening human rights record. Even as the country slides deeper into repression, the Ethiopian government uses development aid funding as leverage against the donors who provide it-many donors fear that the government would discontinue or scale back their aid programs should they speak out on human rights concerns. This trend is perhaps best exemplified by the United Kingdom, whose government has consistently chosen to remain silent in order to protect its annual £130 million worth of bilateral aid and development programs.

Donors are also fearful of jeopardizing access for humanitarian organizations to respond to the drought and worsening food crisis. Millions of Ethiopians depend on food aid, and the government has sought to minimize the scale of the crisis and restrict access for independent surveys and response.

While Ethiopia's government puts in place measures to control the elections in 2010, many donors have ignored the larger trends and focused instead on negotiating with the government to allow them to send election observers.

A significant shift in donor policy toward Ethiopia would likely have to be led by the US government, Ethiopia's largest donor and most important political ally on the world stage. But President Barack Obama's administration has yet to depart from the policies of the Bush administration, which consistently refused to speak out against abuses in Ethiopia. While the reasons may be different-the current government is not as narrowly focused on security cooperation with Ethiopia as was the Bush administration- thus far the practical results have been the same. The events described above attracted little public protest from the US government in 2009.

Source

Protecting Ethiopia?

By Donald Levine
“Min ale teqel min ale? ‘Agarén le-sew agarén le-sew - alsetem’ ale”; literally translated as “What did Teqel [horse name of Emperor Haile Selassie] say, what did he say? ‘I’ll not hand my country’s land to foreigners,’ he said.”

They symbolized the deep Ethiopian aversion to letting outsiders grab land belonging to Behere Etyopiya. Of many expressions of this sentiment over the centuries, my favorite is that of Emperor Tewodros IV, who reportedly told his troops to make sure that when British visitors departed they should have their boots cleaned: “Far more valuable than gold is a particle of Ethiopia’s earth.”

With the notable exception of the Aksumite conquest of portions of present-day Yemen in the sixth century, Ethiopia has not invaded foreign countries. Rather, it has repeatedly been a victim of such incursions -from Turkey and Turk-supported Adalis; from the Sudan; and from Italy. And in spite of EPRDF’s initial acquiescence in the cession of Assab to Eritrea, and then of Western borderlands to Sudan, the present regime boldly, if not tragically, repulsed the Eritrean invaders of 1998 and maintains a strong force committed to the protection of Ethiopian territory.

It is in this age-old spirit that some Ethiopians warn today of new dangers of encroachment in their country and in Africa generally. This fear may well be exacerbated by recent leases of expanses of land to Saudi Arabia, India, and Egypt, and by published reports that some 50pc of Chinese businesses reportedly operate in Ethiopia illegally.Fear of outsiders spills over into anxiety about undue dependence on them.

Ethiopians were historically proud of their self-sufficient lifestyle. In a renowned Amharic novel of the 1940s, Enda Wetach Qiretch by Assafā Gabra Māryām,perhaps the most poignant scene is when one protagonist laments the erosion of Ethiopianself-sufficiency by importing so many things from abroad. The relatively self-sufficient geberé or pastoralist remains a model that a majority of Ethiopians continue to embrace.

Most problematic of all, perhaps, stands the anxiety about foreign influence in Ethiopian domestic affairs. Emperor Haile Selassie was famous for not permitting any one country to get a monopoly of influence in any national sector, especially the defense forces, by letting Swedes influence the Air Force, Norwegians the Navy, Americans the Army, and Israel the intelligence and officer training sectors.

But of course, Ethiopia has imported culture from abroad continuously for more than 2,000 years: from Sabaeans, Hebrews, Greeks, Syrian and Egyptian Christians, and Muslims. So much cannot be denied. Even so, it never absorbed this influence slavishly. Ethiopia’s variants of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam exhibit distinctive Ethiopian coloration.

As I suggested in Tiliqwa Etyopia (Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society), Ethiopian tradition has typically evinced a style of “creative incorporation,” that is, a process whereby elements from foreign cultures have
regularly been taken in but then reworked to fit Ethiopian culture to exemplify a distinctive homeland style. This was true even up to the Ethiopian Constitution of 1957, which incorporated substantial references to the Fetha Nagast. (This pattern was not so evident, I believe, with the wholesale importation of Marxist-Leninism in the 1970s and 80s.)

With these points in mind, let us consider the vexed question of the legislation on charities and civil society organizations, a.k.a. CSO laws, and, related, recent statements protesting against foreign influence.

The CSO laws have been greeted by many Ethiopians as well as by Euro-American donors with alarm, as an instance of repression against benign organizations. Although when implemented that may indeed sometimes be the case, perhaps the most detrimental feature of this legislation rides on the negative perception of what that they signify. On the other hand, consider some constructive features of the CSO legislation.

For one thing, it gives Ethiopians confidence that whatever wrongful interference they found in foreign NGOs in 2005 will not be repeated. It affords them access to funds that might legitimately be claimed from donors. To my mind, the most positive thing about this legislation is that it might send a wake-up call to relatively well-off Ethiopians: If you are interested in protecting children, women, and human rights, engage in these programs yourself. Like nearly all countries outside the United States, Ethiopia has many customs of mutual aid at the local level, but lacks a national tradition of organized philanthropy.

The CSO restrictions might, just might, provide some incentive in that direction. A related set of concerns has been voiced by Ethiopians inside and outside the government -the concern that outside agents are telling Ethiopians what to do. “Who are they to tell us how we should handle our own problems?”

The plaint reminds me of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam’s outburst when a Newsweek article once accused him of importing the Red Terror from the Russians: “We do not need to borrow the idea of a Red Terror from anyone else, we are perfectly able to create one on our own!” Similar sentiments have been voiced by patriotic Ethiopians who complain that I have no business writing about Ethiopian affairs and offering suggestions.

But the point here demands thoughtful attention. When what appears to be a rejectionist sentiment is expressed by so distinguished a writer, Tesfaye Habisso, former ambassador and speaker of the Parliament, it deserves to be taken seriously. I refer to a recent article of his, “Free Elections for Democracy or Creating Client Regimes?”

The heart of Tesfaye’s article jumps out from his opening paragraph: “The experience of many developing countries since the onset of the ‘third wave of democratization’ . . . throughout the world has unambiguously shown that these countries have faced numerous and serious difficulties in conducting free and credible elections not only because of weak democratic institutions and processes, negative political culture and the democratic deficit, lack of independence and capacity of the election management bodies and the judiciary, etc. but largely and detrimentally because of the arrogant and destructive interference of foreign powers bent on creating pliant governments and client regimes amenable to their national interests, without any regard for the sovereignty of these countries and their peoples as well as for the consolidation of democracy and democratic culture that they publicly and loudly ‘preach’ at international forums. . . . The bloody chaos and disruptions that occurred after the May 2005 national and regional elections in Ethiopia were undoubtedly . . . the outcome of such Western interference and attempt bent on ousting the current nationalist and populist developmental regime and replacing it with a client government in Ethiopia that would serve the interests of the West and its multi-national/ trans-national corporations, and not Ethiopia and the Ethiopians.”

This sort of claim reminds me of statements from the government of Emperor Haile Selassie, following the abortive coup d’état of the Neway brothers in 1960, which insisted that there were no problems under the government then in power and blamed the whole rebellion on Chinese Communist influence. To his credit, Tesfaye does name a indigenous factors that contributed to the mayhem, such as “negative political culture and the democratic deficit [and] lack of independence and capacity of the election management bodies and the judiciary.”

And he cannot be faulted for alluding, albeit vaguely, to incidents in which foreign actors certainly did intervene in inappropriate and harmful ways into Ethiopia’s own domestic political process in 2005. What concerns me most about this claim is its disregard of the numerous positive contributions that foreign powers have made in protecting Ethiopia’s independence and treasures; and its support -unintentional, I suspect - to a mindset in which Ethiopians can claim that outside concerns about human rights violations and modern electoral standards represent an illegitimate abrogation of its sovereign rights.

The historic threats to Ethiopia’s sovereignty came from Turkey, Adal, Sudan, and Fascist Italy - none of them, at the time, a Western democratic power.

On the other hand, consider how Portuguese helped save Ethiopia from the Adalis; how the United States opposed the Fascist conquest and its war-time President gave support to Ethiopia’s ruler; and how British troops led the campaign that ousted the Italians in 1941.

Perhaps no less weighty, consider the protection of Ethiopia’s historical treasures provided by the German expedition under Enno Littmann; historic discoveries by French, Italian, and American archaeologists; the protection of priceless manuscripts in the British Museum; and the work of museological expeditions from the United States and its gift of housing the most complete library of Ethiopic manuscripts in the world.

At the moment, however, the chief issue before us concerns the conduct of free democratic elections. Knowing Tesfaye as I do, I believe that he personally is as devoted to the ideals of electoral justice as any one an earth. Yet the effect of his article may be to discredit the efforts of international players in seeking to promote a free and fair electoral process. I invite the good former Ambassador to bring forth his evidence regarding what he calls the “dirty tricks and tactics of Western state agencies and their NGOs together with their servile local media agents and NGOs in the country who unashamedly orchestrated those foul and sinister games during and after the third national elections in Ethiopia.”

But let me be clear: I seek here not to best my brother Tesfaye in an argument
game but to direct the attention of Ethiopians to the fact that they have for a long time been beholden in some ways to the moral pressures of the Western world. The most dramatic instances of this concern the practice and trade of slaves, which was rampant throughout Ethiopia in the early decades of the last century. It was the pressure of members of the League of Nations that prodded Ras Tafari to sign a proclamation ending slave trading in Ethiopia in 1923. And it was cognate pressure from other countries, including the United States, that forced the Imperial Ethiopian government to pass laws outlawing slavery as a condition for joining–indeed, as the only African country to be a Founding Member of – the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. And that took some doing. I can report interviews with a number of Ethiopians in the 1950s who even then regretted that outside powers had forced them to give up their slaves.

At present, we live in a world in which it is no longer possible for any country ¬not least the United States, Egypt, Arabia, Israel, Iran, and China -to hide behind walls of national sovereignty in order to defend practices that do not hold up to standards that were to be sure indeed Western in origin but have now become universal. Foremost among these are the universal codes that respect human rights, codes that have been inscribed so eloquently in Ethiopia’s Constitution– and which, be it recalled, Ethiopia championed when she voted for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

In mustering support for those codes, Ethiopia should welcome, not defend against, support from whatever quarter to advance those rights, just as it welcomes food from Western quarters to help feed its starving millions. Needless to say, in both domains the assistance should be given with tact, respect, and the full support of Ethiopian authorities, and that in turn requires a process of learning about Ethiopian sensibilities that often has failed to take place.