Saudi Arabia torturing refuges, what a shame!

 by Dejenie A. Lakew

Inter- governmental, economic and cultural relations are meant – to create awareness , strengthen social relations and benefit common citizens.
Ethiopia and Ethiopians, the Islamic world and its people – It is documented in their holy scriptures that Muslims should love and respect Ethiopians and Ethiopia, as it is the country who saved their religion by giving refugee to followers of Mohammed when persecuted by their nemesis and threatened to abolish their religion Islam.
The huge investments the Saudi Arabians and other Islamic countries make in Ethiopia by full permission and collaboration of the Ethiopian government ( and its people – in principle ) across the lands of Ethiopia, and the financial benefits they gain have to bee seen from the perspective and point of view of a collateral benefits of economics from both sides and to nurture and cultivate cultural and social bonds among the common people of these countries. These connections have to create a bond of cultural likeness and affinity between Ethiopia, its people and the Arab countries and their societies. If that does not bear fruit then the relation will just be a bond of vultures who simply hunt for their meals, but not caring about the community that they are and benefited from.
But contrary to virtues of good neighborliness, affirmative inter-governmental relations that are shown and principles of peaceful co-existence and from the perspective of Islam and of course of Christianity – as they both are claimed to be religions of peace and love, the world constantly witnessed an imaginable and hard to fathom and to believe treatment of people of the horn of Africa, particularly from Ethiopia ( including Eritrea ) by people of Arabic countries. We witnessed, such in humane acts of savagery, cruelty and barbarity to the highest order from across the Sinai desert, the plains of Egypt, shores of red sea and urban towns and homes of Arabic countries. I question whether these people indeed worship any type of God. We have heard and witnessed time and again, that people are butchered and their organs are harvested ( a very degrading and dreadful term of a misfit : harvest to a human body parts, although it’s meaning is to collect the fruit of labor ) for sale in these places.

The Ethiopian government ( including Eritrea) should proactively be engaged with these governments so that their people should and must treat Ethiopians ( including Eritrea) humanely, the way Ethiopians received and threat the followers of Mohammed with honor and dignity – virtuous acts of humanity and civility. The inter-governmental relations after all is to benefit and up lift the lives of their common and ordinary citizens, not to drink whisky and cocktail with ministers in Hilton or in Dubai intercontinental.
The United nations and other global and continental organizations such as the European union and African union should look in to these matters and put pressure on these countries and their society so that acts of humanity and reasons of purpose reign, and artificial boundaries of countries should remain imaginary, invisible and porous to those who seek refugee from persecution.

The Ethiopian Muslim Civil Rights Activists

Personal reflections on the traits of a new generation of Ethiopians  
Alemu Tafesse recently published a highly profound article - The Ethiopian Muslim Civil Rights Movement: Implications for Democracy in Ethiopia. In it, he argued that the 14-month old Muslim civil rights movement has had remarkable implications for the democratic transformation of that country. He specifically argued that by forcing the government to completely throw away its democratic garb; by introducing into modern Ethiopia an alternative path to democracy, and by actually becoming an alternative location of democracy, the Muslims' activism has so far left great impacts on the contours of the current and future democratic possibilities of Ethiopia. While I generally agree with the points he raised, I also believe that they need to be discussed and debated by all Ethiopians at large.

My concern in this particular piece is much more limited than that of Alemu. I want to ask a specific question: what are some of the most prominent characters of this new Ethiopian Muslim generation that Alemuconsidered to have played a remarkable role in the democratic record of the country in its persistent fourteen-months old loud and non-violent activism? In trying to answer this question, my aim is not to assess the historical, political, economic, and religious background of this generation. I don’t intend explaining anything along those lines, but just outlining my personal reflections on a few of the qualities that the young Muslims have betrayed in their quest for freedom and justice. I believe doing this is a step towards understanding the kind of generation we are witnessing in Ethiopian at present—and take relevant lessons for future wider-scale activism.

Fearless: According to many scholarly sources, the political past has not been that good for Ethiopian Muslims in general. There have been numerous structural shackles that undermined the political, educational, economic and intellectual development of Muslims. These shackles have also had phenomenal impact on their
consciousness in that a large section of the population has for long been considered to be subservient and docile. As a person who grew up surrounded with such stereotypes, one of the things that has unforgettably stunned me is the vibrancy of the Ethiopian Muslims civil rights movement. The vibrancy of the new Muslim generation has stunned me for three reasons: One has to do with its break with the obedience-imposing “Ethiopian”culture. The second has to do with its specific incongruity with our (many of us who have followed Ethiopian politics for long) understanding of the new Ethiopian Muslim generation. The third is about its break out in the context of a very gruesome dictatorial regime. When the three came together, I woke up to the amazement that there are a large section of Ethiopians in Ethiopia who seem to have transcended the constraints of culture- and structure-imposed regime of fear and docility, or, more accurately, have managed to overcome the self-imposed sense of fear that usually tends to interlock with some structural and cultural templates in the society. I think how and why this happened now needs to be studied well by concerned researchers.

Non-Radical: But not every “fearlessness” is a blessing, nor is every break with tradition commendable. The other admirable—though perhaps more easily explicable-- element of this rather unexpectedly loud activism of Ethiopian Muslims is its moderate tone. As many observers have noted, the Muslims have been purely calling for the protection of religious rights and freedom in the country. Despite the government's clear intent to push them towards violence, the protesters have constantly refused to drag themselves into that pit. It is my belief that in outsmarting the government by contradicting its wish to induce the escalation of the demands and the resort to violence, the movement has made itself more durable than anybody's expectation. So, my admiration for the movement comes not just because it has been unexpectedly fearless, but also because it has been consistently non-violent. That it has so far been constitutional and legal in all its narratives is also part of this non-radicalism (although some oppositional forces might genuinely question the promise of such conservatism in the long-term. But this is a point of debate that I won't delve into here).

“Apolitically”Religious: the intensity of religiosity among Ethiopian Muslim generation is not baffling. In fact, any close observer of the post-1991 Ethiopian public would not but hasten to point out the increasing significance of religion among Ethiopians in general. This has not been different with Muslims. One striking thing that this movement taught me, though, is that the Ethiopian Muslim youth have been religious in an "Ethiopian" way despite the call for radicalization in the whole region and beyond. While I don't intend to give in to prejudice, many active Muslim movements in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority countries have had overly political tones. In fact, in many occasions, the activists in such contexts have been very vocal about their intentions to establish an Islamic polity, But there is nothing in religionper se—not even in religious activism as such-- that necessarily drives one to a politically aggressive positioning. And there is no more evidence to prove this than the young Ethiopian Muslim activists. Here, religiosity hasn't meant the craving for political totality. Interestingly, even when it crept into state politics, it just called for its absence: the demand was “no state in our religion!”

I know the so-called arguments reiterated by the government and its supporters to discredit the movement. To me, they are all neither sound, nor valid. They are, first, based on either no proof, or doubtful proofs or false “proofs”. The accusations, secondly, do not flow from the premises. For instance, the major TPLF propaganda that was released in the form of a documentary film absolutely failed to establish any proof that the accused Muslim leaders were intending to establish an Islamic state or wage a jihad. All it did was "accusation by association". It urged us to associate the movement to some two (rather unknown and unrelated) personalities (allegedly Shabab-trained), or the Arab Spring (through the pictorial juxtaposition of again unrelated demonstrations, Ethiopian and Arab, and through the establishment of a rather weak connection with a Qatar-based intellectual whose image was unfairly distorted). In none of these cases was there presented a proof that the movement was actually about what the government has said it was. Even the badly beaten Committee members didn't appear incriminating themselves. When they mentioned of an Islamic state, it was clear that they were responding to a specific question in another context.

The other sets of arguments are very weak--and also betray another problem:

Ethiopian government: Stop interfering in religious matters

By Engineer Abdelwuhab Bushra; March 23, 2013
The Ethiopian constitution states that “The state shall not interfere in religious matters and religion shall not interfere in state affairs” (Article 11 sub-article 3). But the state never stops interfering in religious matters. With respect to the constitution, the regime always abuses it. For example, the state trains a group of people called Ahbash in Beirut, Lebanon, as a new Islamic religion and introduced them by force to the Ethiopian Muslims. The Ahbash group was trained by Israel and UK governments as well as funded by both. The Ethiopian Muslims immediately rejected the idea of the Ahbash group. Then the state tried to use several ways to harass Muslims and many peoples were arrested. Many Muslims were arrested by the security forces from mosques. Emams of Tigray Muslim mosque leaders were forced to be trained by Ahbash new religion group at Mekele University, and other educational centers throughout the country. Muslims were warned that they would be fired from their jobs if they rejected the conversion. The Tigray mosque leaders and Emams were given field allowances by the government that also covered their transportation cost. Islam has been in Ethiopia for over 14 hundred years, therefore, we do not need a new Islamic religion. There is no new Islamic religion at all. Islam is as old as 14 hundred years, and the Ethiopian government tries to renew it by force, which is impossible to be accepted by the Ethiopian Muslims. Muslims in Ethiopia are suffering from governmental interference in their own religious affairs in all aspects. But the Muslims never stop asking to be left alone. The regime was using the divid and rule system by creating Ahbash, and it thinks that the Muslims will fight each other. But instead Ethiopian Muslims emerged united more than anytime ever, which crippled the strategy of the ruling party.
Recently, there was an election for the Majlis committee. The Muslim communities presented their own candidates, but the security agency of the Ethiopian government refused to accept the candidates because it wants candidates from the Ahbash group, eventhough the candidates picked up by the government are unknown to the Muslim society. The government interference has remained extremely bad and disturbing. As a people, the government forces us to do as told, if we like it or not. This is the case and truthful situation in Ethiopia. There is no way out of this condition unless the EPRDF is changed. And change is impossible because the electoral board is not autonomous and not neutral as its employees are members of TPLF or EPRDF. In other words, there will never be a fair and free election in the country.Over the past several months, many mosques were invaded and abused by security forces and many citizens were arrested for several months without court orders and charges. Their crime was that they were at the mosques. Those arrested never knew what they were charges were. According to Article 20 sub-article 2, "Accused persons have the right to be informed with sufficient particulars of the charge brought against them and to be given the charge in writing”. If this is the case, why were the Ethiopian Muslims without letting them appear in a legal court? There is no body who would answer this equation, because there is no proper human rights organization that defends the civil rights of citizens.Many journalists were arrested and their journals or newspapers were closed when they published articles that discover the interference of Ethiopian government in religious affairs. Nowadays, state-owned Ethiopian Radio and TV claim that

Tigray Economics and Ethiopian Politics

   by Teklu Abate

During the last two decades, Tigray has occupied the minds of Ethiopians. That EPRDF’s (the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Party) creator, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), is native to Tigray explains all the discourses. Ordinary conversations, media reports, and developments on the ground all seem to testify that Tigray is being preferentially and positively treated in all fronts.
It is known that TPLFities dominate Federal government offices including the military and security apparatuses. It is public discourse that people from Tigray take a significant number of scholarships being offered by top western universities. Compared to the other regional governments, Tigray presumably outachieves in nearly all economic indicators and measures. In a way, Tigray is said to be the ‘pampered child’ of the ruling party.
The question is: to what extent these assertions hold water? That TPLFities have a grip on power is never contentious. Elusive and less grounded was the argument related to Tigray’s overall economic performance. How and to what extent the region performs economically compared to other regions? This was never answered authoritatively only until we happened to get a new empirical study conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
The National Economy
In its January 2013 book entitled Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia: Progress and Policy Challenges, the IFPRI provided “…empirical evidence to shed light on the complexities of agricultural and food policy in today’s Ethiopia, highlight major policies and interventions of the past decade, and provide insights into building resilience to natural disasters and food crises”
According to the IFPRI, the editors of the book, Paul Dorosh and Shahidur Rashid “tell the story of Ethiopia’s political, economic, and agricultural transformation”.

The Pain of the Ogaden Somali People

       by GRAHAM PEEBLES

“Every night, they took all of us girls to [interrogations]. They would separate us and beat us. The second time they took me, they raped me… All three of the men raped me, consecutively”.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) report in Collective Punishment, along with 15 other female students, this innocent 17 year-old Ogaden girl, was held captive for three months in a “dark hole in the ground” and raped 13 times. This is just one of countless accounts of abuse, from within the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, where it is widely reported criminal acts like these are perpetrated by the Ethiopian military and paramilitary forces on a daily basis. Untold atrocities like this; past and present are awaiting investigation, amid what is a much-ignored, little known conflict in the Horn of Africa.
In an attempt to hide the facts from the rest of the world, in 2007 the Ethiopian government banned all international media, and expelled many humanitarian aid groups from the area. It is reputed that any Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) allowed to stay do so on the condition that they sign a waiver document, agreeing not to report human rights violations by the government. Ethiopia, Leslie Lefkow of HRW states, “is one of the most difficult places to work for human rights groups or humanitarian agencies on the African continent”, and the Ogaden (a barren land, littered with military remnants from past conflicts), “is one of the most difficult places to work in Ethiopia.” There are “huge challenges to doing investigations on the ground because the security apparatus of the government is extremely extensive and permeates even the lowest levels, the grass roots, the village levels”, where regime spies and informers operate, reporting anything and anyone suspicious.
Information about life within the region comes from whispering sources on the ground, and from those who have fled the violence, and are now living outside Ethiopia. Many are in refugee camps in Kenya and Yemen, from where they recount stories of horrific abuse. Mohammed, from the Dhadhaab (or Dadaab) camp in Kenya, described to Ogaden Online (OO) 1/12/2012 how he was captured by the Ethiopian military, accused of being a supporter of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and mercilessly tortured. “They hogtied me”, he said, “and then flogged me while pinned down.” Mohamed’s face “was disfigured to the point where he can’t be recognized”. Refugees support Amnesty International’s (AI) findings of “torture and extrajudicial executions of detainees in the region” – women tell of multiple gang rapes, their arms, feet and necks tied with wire, for which they bear the scars, men speak of barbaric torture techniques at the hands of the Ethiopian military and paramilitary – the notorious, semi legal, completely barbaric Liyu Police, who, Laetitia Bader of HRW says, “fit into this context of impunity where security forces can do more or less what they want”.
The ONLF is cast as the enemy of the state, and regarded, as all dissenting troublesome groups are, as terrorists. They in fact won 60% of seats and were democratically elected to the regional parliament in the only inclusive open elections to be held, back in 1992. Civilians suspected, however vaguely of supporting the so-called ‘rebels’, are forcibly re-located from their homes. The evacuated villages and settlements, emptied at gunpoint HRW (CP) record, “become no-go areas” and in a further act of state criminality, “civilians who remain behind risk being shot on sight, tortured, or raped if spotted by soldiers”. Children, refugees report are hanged, villages and settlements razed to the ground and cattle stolen to feed soldiers: HRW record (CP), “water sources and wells have [also] been destroyed”. Systematic, strategic methods of violence and intimidation employed by the Ethiopian regime, that has, Genocide Watch (GW) state, “initiated a genocidal campaign against the Ogaden Somali population”.
Pervasive pernicious control
Spearheading the Governments campaign of terror in the region is the Liyu Police. A force of 10,000-14,000 18-20 year olds, with little or no knowledge of criminal law or human Rights, David Mepham UK Director of HRW told The Guardian 15/01/2013, that “for years we have documented egregious human rights abuses committed by the Liyu police, including the March 2012 extra-judicial execution of 10 men in their custody and the killing of nine other villagers”.