World

Siegfried Pausewang, longtime Ethiopian researcher, dies at 75

April 19, 2012 (opride) – Dr. Siegfried Pausewang, a great friend of Oromo people, eminent Ethiopian researcher and champion of human rights, died of cancer last Friday in Norway. He was 75.

His colleague and friend, Professor Kjetil Tronvoll of International Law and Policy Institute in Oslo, announced the death in an email to Ethiopian activists.

Dr. Pausewang worked extensively within Ethiopia. Observing elections, teaching, initiating various development programs such as the seminar on the sociology of development, democracy training in rural Ethiopia, land reforms, population research, and penned numerous articles on Ethiopia, especially around issues of democracy and good governance.

He presented his work at numerous conferences worldwide including the Oromo and Ethiopian Studies conferences. His countless published works, engagement in international development initiatives and unyielding activism testify to Dr. Pausewang’s dedication to social justice. Read more…

UN experts urge probe of Ethiopian maid, Alem Dechasa, suicide in Lebanon

UN human rights experts on Tuesday urged the Lebanese government to investigate the death of an Ethiopian housemaid, who commited suicide a few days after she was beaten by a man in Beirut

April 3, 2012, Geneva (AFP): UN human rights experts on Tuesday urged the Lebanese government to investigate the death of an Ethiopian housemaid, who commited suicide a few days after she was beaten by a man in Beirut.

Alem Dechasa, 34, hung herself with a bed sheet on March 14 at a psychiatric hospital east of Beirut, where she had been taken by police after the February beating that was aired on Lebanese television.

“Like many people around the world I watched the video of the physical abuse of Alem Dechasa,” said Gulnara Shahinian, the UN expert on contemporary forms of slavery, in a statement.   “I strongly urge the Lebanese authorities to carry out a full investigation into the circumstances leading to her death,” she added.

UN officials including anti-torture rapporteur Juan Mendez, migrant expert Francois Crepeau, rapporteur on violence against women Rashida Manjoo as well as a member of the working group on discrimination against women Kamala Chandrakirana echoed the call.   They also demanded that results of the investigation be made public. Read more…

Petition for refugee protection in San’aa Yemen

Dear UN Refugee Agency

March  21, 2012

Geneva, Switzerland

We are Oromo Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers with UNHCR recognition in Sana’a Yemen.  Our petition to UNHCR Geneva is to bring a sense of urgency on humanitarian grounds to our plight in Sana’a Yemen For months, we have been in front of UNHCR Sana’a office pleading to the local staff to help us with our security and basic needs. Amongst our group are young children, elderly, women and the sick. Each time we have reached out the UNHCR Sana’a office, they have told us to leave the grounds or they will have Yemen security forcibly remove us. With the current volatile state in Sana’a Yemen, most of refugees and asylum seekers have nowhere to go. We were persecuted in Ethiopia and now experience persecution in Yemen. Our plea to the UNHCR office in Geneva is to provide greater protection and advocacy to the refugees and asylum seekers.

Our security issues range from violence committed by Yemen Security forces, opposition groups and rebels. Military security forces have attacked us at least twice in 2011 resulting in deaths and injury to many. Children and newborns have also died from a result of hardships. Read more…

Yemen frees Ethiopians held by gunman seeking ransom

Ethiopian migrants sleep out in the open near a transit centre where they wait to be repatriated in the western Yemeni town of Haradh, on the border with Saudi Arabia, March 29, 2012. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

SANAA, March 29 (Reuters) – Yemeni police have freed 21 Ethiopian illegal migrants who were tortured by armed men to force their relatives in Saudi Arabia to send ransom money, the government said on Thursday.

The group, which included 14 women, were held in a house in Hajja province near the border with Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

“Security forces stormed the building, arresting three of the kidnappers, including two who were torturing the Ethiopians with electric cables and iron chains,” it said.

“The Ethiopians said during investigations that their kidnappers wanted to force them to contact their families who are in Saudi Arabia to send money to secure their release.”

It said the Ethiopians had been transferred to a U.N. refugee centre ahead of repatriation.

Yemen, which has been in turmoil over the past year as protesters forced veteran leader Ali Abdullah Saleh from power, is a destination point for refugees from Horn of Africa countries although it is one of the world’s poorest nations. Read more…

Yemen frees Ethiopians held by gunman seeking ransom

March 29, 2012, Sanaa, (Reuters) – Yemeni police have freed 21 Ethiopian illegal migrants who were tortured by armed men to force their relatives in Saudi Arabia to send ransom money, the government said on Thursday.

The group, which included 14 women, were held in a house in Hajja province near the border with Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

“Security forces stormed the building, arresting three of the kidnappers, including two who were torturing the Ethiopians with electric cables and iron chains,” it said.

“The Ethiopians said during investigations that their kidnappers wanted to force them to contact their families who are in Saudi Arabia to send money to secure their release.” Read more…

UK sells armoured vehicles to Ethiopia, despite Eritrea tensions

Campaign Against Arms Trade has questioned the UK Foreign Office on UK arms sales to Ethiopia, as fighting flares on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Cameron flogging weapons

March 26, 2012 (One World Group) – Campaign  Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has questioned the Foreign Office on UK arms  sales to Ethiopia, as fighting flares on the border between Ethiopia and  Eritrea. Between the beginning of 2008 and September 2011, the UK  licensed military and dual use equipment for export to Ethiopia to the  value of over £1.2 million – with military comprising half of the value.

CAAT is especially concerned about the £243,000 for  “military vehicles” and “components for military vehicles”, licensed in  March 2011. Such vehicles might be used in the arid border areas where  fighting has taken place.

Other  items relate to small arms and communications equipment. In August 2010  the UK approved export licences for “components for simulators for  small calibre artillery” of £161,000. In June 2009 a licence was issued for export of  “components for ground military communications equipment”, for £43,000  and in February 2009 for “ground military communications equipment” and  “military communications equipment”, together totaling £106,000.

CAAT  has asked the UK government if UK equipment has been used in the recent  incursions and is calling on the UK government to suspend extant licences to Ethiopia and to use the new powers of suspending the export licensing process. Read more…

US Intelligence Report: Expect Water Wars Soon

Report sees biotechnology, agricultural exports and virtual water trade as the way forward

March 25, 2012 (Common Dreams) – A report released today on global water security from the Defense Intelligence Agency assesses that in next 10 years, water instability will be likely in “nations important to the United States”, and says that in the next decades, the use of water as a weapon will be more become more likely.

The report, which focused on the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Mekong, Jordan, Indus, Brahmaputra, and Amu Darya water basins, states that the availability of potable water will not keep up with demand without better water management.

While environmentalists have pointed to agroecology, food sovereignty and viewing water as part of the commons as a path towards responsible water management, the intelligence report sees biotechnology, agricultural exports and virtual water trade as the way forward. Read more…

Lebanon: Stop Abuse of Domestic Workers

Investigate Recent Suicide; Enact Labor, Immigration Protections

March 23, 2012, (Beirut) – Lebanese authorities should act quickly to reform restrictive visa regulations and adopt a labor law on domestic work to address high levels of abuse and deaths among migrant domestic workers, a group of eight concerned civil society groupssaid today. The government should also announce publicly the outcome of the investigation into the recent abuse and subsequent suicide of Alem Dechasa-Desisa, an Ethiopian domestic worker.

The eight groups are Human Rights Watch, Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center, KAFA (enough) Violence & Exploitation, Anti Racism Movement, Amel Association International, Insan, Danish Refugee Council, and Nasawiya. Read more…

Migrant students demand ‘Justice for Alem Dechasa’

March 21, 2012 (Migrant Workers Task Force) –  On Sunday March 18th, after news of Alem Dechasa’s death spread, MWTF volunteers and students (migrant workers from different backgrounds) decided to do something different. So far, Lebanese activists have spoken through their blogs, locals in Ethiopia have condemned what happened, and even Ethiopians in the United States have taken a stance. Today, the migrant workers in Lebanon had a message to say, a common voice that ‘enough is enough’.

At Zico House, the class started as usual at noon and everyone got seated. We were a bit more crowded than usual. Rahel Zegeye took the microphone and addressed all the workers. Read more…

Ethiopian asylum seeker children to leave, Norway increases aid

'Our task is to make regulations, not decide individual asylum seeker cases', PM Jens Stoltenberg

March 19, 2012, Oslo (The Foreigner) – Amongst reports Ethiopia is to get more Norwegian funding, 450 children that have been born as well as raised in Norway will have to leave because of government immigration policy.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg made the announcement about deportation during his speech at the Labour Party’s annual meeting in Oslo.

“Our concern is to have a just refugee and asylum policy. This means people who are persecuted shall stay, whilst those who are not shall leave.”

“Regard for children shall be emphasised, but it is not politicians who are to decide individual cases, it is the UDI (Directorate of Immigration) and the UNE (Immigration Appeals Board). Our task is to make laws and regulations,” he told Dagsavisen.

Many Labour Party representatives from across the country want to see the rules relaxed for the children’s best interests, however.

Some 450 children in Norway’s asylum seeker reception centres have been living in asylum seeker reception centres for three or more years, a quarter were born there. Some attend school, have Norwegian friends, and speak Norwegian. Read more…

Oromo immigrants among tortured for ransom in Yemen

UNHCR reveals majority of approximately 3,000 women held by smugglers in Haradh over past year were raped, many of them repeatedly.

March 14, 2012, HAJJAH, Yemen (IRIN) - The discovery of 70 battered men and women held captive in a remote area of Yemen’s Hajjah Governorate near the Saudi Arabian border has sparked an investigation into the torture and extortion of African immigrants by criminal gangs, say local authorities.

The men and women, Oromos and ethnic Somalis from Ethiopia’s Somali Region, had been held for some time in a house in the Sharqia area of Haradh city, and were found wearing just their underwear. Two men who managed to escape by jumping over the wall of the house, alerted the authorities. Their captors, they said, had beaten them with pipes, burned them with cigarettes and poured liniment in their eyes, making them scream in pain.

“We are really shocked,” said Ali Ibrahim, a criminal investigator in Haradh. “I have been in the department for 15 years and I don’t remember anything like this… It’s unbelievable that this was going on in our own back yard.” Read more…

Civil Resistance in the Middle East and its Aftermath

By Maria J. Stephan

March 8, 2012 (The Middle East Institute) – Three years ago, when I began the project that culminated in an edited book, Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization and Governance in the Middle East,[1] my intent was to shine a klieg on a remarkable, albeit underappreciated, tradition of civil resistance in the Middle East. It seemed like a strange topic for an edited volume, given the prevailing scholarly view that this region is structurally, culturally, and historically disposed towards violence and sociopolitical stagnation. The Middle East has definitely endured its fair share of wars, terrorism, foreign occupation, and dictatorship. But this complex part of the world has also witnessed striking campaigns of popular nonviolent resistance that have successfully ousted authoritarians, pushed back foreign occupiers, and led to important political reforms. The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and the ongoing nonviolent struggles in Syria and Bahrain should be seen as the latest manifestations of a significant tradition of people power in the Middle East. Read more…

US Rep. Donald Payne of NJ, known for civil rights work and advocacy for poor, dies at age 77

Note: Rep. Donald Payne was a friend Oromo-Ethiopia. He confronted dictator Meles Zenawi on human rights issues and co-sponsored various HRs on TPLF regime’s democracy and human rights violations. Donald always sided with oppressed and neglected people. Finally, he was denied visa to Ethiopia.  Our thoughts and prayers go to his family.

March 6, 2012, NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Days before U.S. Rep. Donald Payne died of cancer, it wasn’t the phone calls of encouragement from presidents that cheered him. It was when a Washington hospital orderly recognized the New Jersey congressman as the only U.S. official to visit his village in the African nation of Eritrea.

Hearing from the orderly how much the visit had meant, and knowing he had made a difference in the lives of people struggling against violence and poverty — from his native Newark, N.J., to sub-Saharan Africa —  was the reason why Donald Payne had dedicated his life to public service, his brother William said Tuesday.

“He walked with kings, but never lost the common touch,” William Payne said.

Donald Payne, the first black congressional member from New Jersey, passed away Tuesday at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, N.J. He was 77. Read more…

Waamicha Walga’ii WWDO

Walgai’iin keenya kan ji’a kanaa Dilbata dhufu guyyaa gaafa 03/04/2012 waaree booda saa’a 6:00 irraa jalqabee gaggeeffama. Sirna walga’ii keenya irratti qophiileen bashannansiisoo taa’an adda addaa fi sagntaa wal-barsiisuu qophaa’ee jira.

Kanaaf, dargaggoonni  Oromoo Washington DC fi naannooshee jiraattan walga’ii keenya irratti argamuun  afuura  fi hamlee Oromummaa nugidduu jiru  akkasumas  inaaffaa guddina uummata keenyaaf qabnu  nuwajjin akka hirmaattan waamicha keenya isiniif dabarsina.

 Qophii keenyatti bashannanaa walbira jiraachuu keenya haa muli’fnu!

Bakki: Jaarmiyaa Hawaasa Oromoo, Washington, DC
Koree WWDO irraa

Survivors of torture actions to end impunity

Ayyaantuu.com, 3.2.12:  TASSC (Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International) has been working to end torture in countries where this inhuman and barbaric action is practiced. Over the years this organization has travelled a long distance to create awareness and mobilize people to voice against torture. Through efforts of survivors of torture from all over the world, it has managed to score a lot of meaningful results. In recent time, there was big victory attained with regard to actions to end impunity. Read more…