The Green Green Gold of Ethiopia

                         Corporate Greed in Africa

                                                                                                                           by GRAHAM PEEBLES

Ancestral land that for generations has served as home and livelihood for hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Ethiopia is being leased out, on 99-year renewable contracts at nominal sums to foreign corporations. The land giveaway or agrarian reforms as the government would prefer to present them began in 2008 when the Ethiopian government, under the brutal suppressive Premiership of Meles Zenawi invited foreign countries/corporation to take up highly attractive deals and turn large areas of land over to industrial farming for the export of crops. India, China and Saudi Arabia were all courted and along with wealthy Ethiopians have eagerly grabbed large pieces of land at basement prices; rates vary from $1.10 to $6.05 per hectare (HA), comparable land in India would set you back $600 per ha.

A total of 3,619,509 ha, the Oakland Institute (OI), a US based think tank, estimate has been leased out. Land made available by the forced re-location of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people under the government’s universally condemned Villagization progamme, which aims to forcibly re-locate over 1.5 million people from their homes.

India corporations have taken the lion’s share, acquiring around 600,000 ha concentrated in Gambella and Afar, split between 10 investing companies. The term ‘investing’ implies benefits for Ethiopia, which is misleading; ‘profiteering’, or ‘exploiting’ sits closer to the truth of these land deals, as the OI make clear, “taking over land and natural resources from rural Ethiopians, is resulting in a massive destruction of livelihoods and making millions of locals [farmers and pastoralist communities] dependent on food handouts”. With small scale farmers being evicted from their land, prices of staples such as Teff, used by millions throughout Ethiopia to make Injera (bread), has rocketed in price, according to Ethiotribune 22/5/2012, increasing fourfold since 2008.

Corporate expansionism: small change big profits

In line with its ambitions of diversity and world food dominance

Ethiopian Muslims protest: a rise of sociopolitical consciousness

                                                                                                                                     by Mubarak Keder

The relationship between the Ethiopian Muslim community and the government has always been on a delicate balance reached by a compromise made by the Muslim community. For the most part, given the authoritarian rule the country is under, the Muslim community tolerated the government’s unconstitutional involvement in their religious affair and institutions. In particular, the Muslim community has, for long time, been unsettled by the government’s heavy-handed involvement in the supposedly independent Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council commonly known as Majlis. Consequently, the Majlis have been as ineffective in executing the tasks entrusted by the community. However, it was not this specific circumstance that gave way for the growing protest in the country that has been going on for more than a year.
Tension between the two start to grow when the government decided to import followers of Islamic sect from Lebanon, known as Ahbash, on a bold and ambitious move – that disrupted the long wrestled balance between the two – to implement a Nationwide plan to introduce and impose Al Ahbash ideologies, which is completely alien to Ethiopian Muslims. Al Ahbash, is an organization based in Lebanon, formally known as Association of Islamic charitable project, which describes itself as a charitable organization promoting Islamic culture. Despite the group’s claim, some have hard time understanding the true objective of the group, one of the reasons for this being the fact that the group was in the center of the UN probe into the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, following the UN inquiry naming two of its active members as key suspects.
In July 2011, the Ethiopian government has aggressively mobilized to change the country’s Muslim belief for that of ‘Ahbashism’. To this effect, it launched a nationwide training of imams and Islamic scholars in Ahbash ideologies side by side with ‘revolutionary democracy’, which is essentially an indoctrination of EPRDF’s political ideology as the only and perfect fit to govern the country. Those imams and Islamic scholars who have either refused to take part in the program or teach it in their respective mosques have been removed from their mosques otherwise arrested; mosques and Islamic institutions that turned down the government’s demand have been closed.
The Muslim community came to find out about the government’s plan before it hardly take full effect; they understood this to be a grave aggression against their constitutionally bestowed right to freedom of religion and action that farther endangered a secular form of governance, which the government have been insisting on having. So, started the protest which spread from Awolia and Anwar mosques in Addis Ababa to different part of the country, and have been growing throughout it’s more than one year period. The disorganized Muslim community started to readjust; and the first important advance they made were to form an arbitration committee of 17 Islamic leaders to negotiate with the government regarding four issues: “1) respecting the Ethiopian constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom; 2) ending government imposition of al-Ahbash on Ethiopian Muslims, while allowing al-Ahbash to operate equally with other religious communities; 3) re-opening and returning schools and mosques to their original imams and administrators; and 4) holding new elections for the EIASC, and having these elections take place in mosques, rather than in neighborhood government community centers, to ensure that the community’s selections would be honored.” as noted on the November 8, 2012 statement released by the United States commission on international religious freedom ( USCIRF).
However, the negotiation between the government and the arbitration committee failed to bring any result and the protest continued to grow in size and frequency. The same month the government arrested all 17 members of the committee along with other hundreds of protesters. Since July 13, Ethiopian police and security services have harassed, assaulted, and arbitrarily arrested hundreds of Muslims at Addis Ababa’s Awalia and Anwar mosques who were protesting government interference

Moral Equivalent of an Anti-Apartheid Movement in Ethiopia?

    by Alemayehu G. Mariam
Ethiopian Muslims engaged in the moral equivalent of an anti-Apartheid movement?
In her recent commentary in the New York Times Book Review, “Obama: Failing the African Spring?”, Dr. Helen Epstein questioned the Obama Administration for turning a blind eye to human rights violations in Africa, and particularly the persecution of Muslims in Ethiopia. She argued that “After more than four years in office… Obama has done little to advance the idealistic goals of his Ghana speech.” In fact, she finds the Administration playing peekaboo with Paul Kagame, the Rwandan dictator and puppet master of M23 (the rebel group led by Bosco Ntganda under indictment by the International Criminal Court) which has been wreaking havoc in Goma, (city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Youweri Museveni, the overlord of the corruptocracy in Uganda. Dr. Epstein is perplexed by President Obama’s lofty rhetoric and his paralysis when it comes to walking the talk in Ethiopia:

Perhaps most worrying of all is the unwillingness of Obama and other Western leaders to say or do anything to support the hundreds of thousands of Muslim Ethiopians who have been demonstrating peacefully against government interference in their religious affairs for more than a year. (The Ethiopian government claims the country has a Christian majority, but Muslims may account for up to one half of the population.) You’d think a nonviolent Islamic movement would be just the kind of thing the Obama administration would want to showcase to the world. It has no hint of terrorist influence, and its leaders are calling for a secular government under the slogan ‘We have a cause worth dying for, but not worth killing for.’ Indeed, the Ethiopian protesters may be leading Africa’s most promising and important nonviolent human rights campaign since the anti-apartheid struggle.

Is Dr. Epstein correct in her profound observation that the Ethiopian Muslim “protesters may be leading Africa’s most promising and important nonviolent human rights campaign since the anti-apartheid struggle.” Are the Muslim protests that have been going on for nearly two years the moral equivalent of an anti-Apartheid movement in Ethiopia? Is Obama failing an Ethiopian Spring?
The importance of religious freedom to Americans and in U.S. foreign policy
Religious freedom is arguably the most important cornerstone of all American liberties. Promoting religious freedom worldwide is so important that the U.S. Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) affirming religious freedom enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and in various international instruments, including Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Obama Administration’s record on international religious freedom in general has been deplorable. In 2010, Leonard Leo, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Commission openly complained that the Administration is ignoring religious persecution throughout the world to the potential detriment of U.S. national security. “We’re completely neglecting religious freedom in countries that tend to be Petri dishes for extremism. This invariably leads to trouble for us… Regrettably, this point seems to shrink year after year for the White House and State Department.”
The Obama Administration’s disregard for religious freedom and tolerance of religious intolerance and persecution throughout the world is incomprehensible given the centrality of religious freedom and separation of religion and government in the scheme of American liberties. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the foundation of all American liberties, first and foremost prohibits government involvement in religion in sweeping and uncompromising language: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The “establishment” clause guarantees government neutrality by preventing government establishment of religious institutions or support for religion in general. The “free exercise” clause protects against religious persecution by government.
In the 1796 “Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary”, the U.S. formally affirmed to the world the sanctity of religious freedom in America without regard to doctrine or denomination: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, — as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, — and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” (Art. 11.)
Many of the American Founding Fathers including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were deeply suspicious of government involvement in religion, which they believed corrupted religion itself. George Washington championed separation of religion and state when he wrote, “I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” Thomas Jefferson believed religion was a personal matter which invited no government involvement and argued for the “building a wall of separation between Church & State”. Jefferson wrote, “Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that … of liberty to worship our Creator… a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.” James Madison, the “father of the U.S. Constitution” was a staunch defender of religious diversity: “Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which pervades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society.” President John Adams minced no words when he wrote, “Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.”
President Barack Obama himself made it crystal clear that he personally disapproves of government’s

Ethiopia: When Foreign Investors and Donors become complacent on crimes of corruption of the ruling regime

           by Teshome Debalke

No one yet scratched the surface to examine the extent of the Ethiopian ruling regime led by Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) intricate economic crimes against the people of Ethiopia and Donor countries.
The gullible foreign community either knowingly became complacent on the crimes of the regime or taken for a ride as victims of the elaborate corruption of the savvy regime.
The accomplices of the regime in Diaspora that carry Western passport and talking the language of business have lots to do to cover up for the regime and can no longer be ignored in their conspiracy to commit crime against the people of Ethiopia.
TPLF understanding of the international community’ gullibility and low expectation, its grasp of the kinds of foreign investors’ have the appetite to make quick bucks in extractive industries, its ability to target corruption prone Diaspora investors and its awareness of the changing world power politics and where the resources are channeled are some of the its assets to shield its criminality with relative ease. To its credit, TPLF ability to organize it operatives to sing its tune as well as the opposition division on irrelevant issues helped it getaway with almost everything it does in the last two decades of its rule.
Absence of organized and independent investigation, the regime and its accomplices got away with crimes of the century. The regime’s sophisticated control of the flow of information, the means and ways of economic production, and key economic sectors with its clandestine business enterprises are part of the elaborate institutionalization of corruption to hide its crimes.
The recent conference held in India regarding the massive land grab by foreign investors’ in Africa opened another window of opportunity to look deeper in the regimes operation. The fact land is the regimes main political tool to engineer its ethnic cleansing, extortion and wealth transfer to its cronies as well as a means to earn foreign exchange by parading investors tells us its preference for partner in crime are from unexpected places. It also explains why the regime held onto land; to take the population hostage to sustain its rule.
Little has been done formally to scrutinize the regime and its accomplices that are running