Ethiopia trails only Eritrea as Africa’s worst jailer of journalists

 Ethiopia arrests 2 journalists from independent paper

CPJ New York, November 5, 2013–Ethiopian police have arrested without charge two editors of the leading independent Amharic weekly Ethio-Mihdar, according to local journalists.
Police in the town of Legetafo, northeast of the capital Addis Ababa, on Monday arrested Getachew Worku in connection a story published in October alleging corruption in the town administration, according to Muluken Tesfaw, a reporter with the paper, who spoke to Getachew shortly after his arrest. Getachew has not been charged, he said.
On Saturday, police arrested Million Degnew, the general manager of the newspaper, and Muna Ahmedin, a secretary, said Muluken and local journalists. Muna was released the same day but Million remains in custody without charge, Muluken said.
“A free and inquisitive media is a cornerstone of development that should benefit all Ethiopians,” said CPJ’s Africa Program Coordinator Sue Valentine. “Repeatedly detaining journalists without charge is an intimidation tactic that must end. We urge the authorities to release Million Degnew and Getachew Worku immediately.”
The government has harassed Ethio-Mihdar in the past for its independent coverage, according to CPJ research. Million and Getachew have been sued for defamation by the public Hawassa University, according to local journalists and news reports. University officials are seeking 300,000 birr (US$15,000) and the closure of the newspaper over a report alleging corruption in the school’s administration, according to local journalists.
In May, Muluken was detained for 10 days while reporting on evictions of farmers from their land in northwest Ethiopia. He was released without charge.
Ethiopia trails only Eritrea as Africa’s worst jailer of journalists, according to CPJ’s annual prison census. More than 75 publications have been forced to close under government pressure since 1993, CPJ research shows.

Abbay dam will be owned by Egypt and Sudan

Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia are all committed to coordinating and cooperating in dealing with Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam, said Egypt’s Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources on Monday.

A picture taken on 28 May 2013 shows the Blue Nile River in Guba, Ethiopia, during its diversion (AFP/File, William Lloyd-George)

Egyptian Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Abdel Moteleb said that it was “time to consider a new strategy for the available investment opportunity,” adding that any matter dealing with the dam must be agreed upon by the governments of the three countries.
The countries’ water ministers began meetings in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum on Monday in order to review recommendations put forth by a report formed by a tripartite committee investigating the impacts of the dam on Ethiopia’s neighbours in the north.
Abdel Moteleb added that trilateral support for the dam could set a “good example for cooperation in the region,” adding that he hoped that the outcome of the process would be the “beginning of a new era of cooperation between the three countries.”
“I would like to recall the initiative put forth by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, a proposal considering the Renaissance Dam a joint regional project from which the three countries could benefit,” said Moteleb in his Monday address to the representatives from the three countries.
Last week Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nabil Fahmy stressed the importance of joint action and cooperation between countries when dealing with Ethiopia’s dam, saying that the water issue must not be dealt with as a “zero-sum game.”
Spokesman of the foreign ministry Badr Abdelatty said that the Prime Minister of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn would come to Cairo “soon.”
“We will continue dialogue with Ethiopia and our Sudanese brothers,” added Abdelatty.
Source: Daily News

Aiding and Abetting: UK and US Complicity in Ethiopia’s Mass Displacement

In the face of evidence, the UK and US continue to deny systematic human rights abuses are occurring in the Lower Omo as thousands are displaced for an irrigation scheme.

The US-based think tank, the Oakland Institute, recently accused the UK and US governments of aiding and abetting the eviction of thousands of people from their land in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley.
The accusation was not new – it had been made before by Survival International and Human Rights Watch amongst others. What was new about this report was that it made use of transcripts of interviews conducted by officials from the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), during a field visit to the lower Omo in January 2012.
The interviews were recorded by the report’s author, Will Hurd, who accompanied the officials and acted as their interpreter. The recordings contain vivid first-hand accounts of the abuses suffered by local people at the hands of the government, the police and the army.
Hurd, an American human rights activist who speaks one of the local languages, decided to release the recordings to journalists when both agencies claimed publicly, months after their visit, that they had found no evidence of the ‘systematic’ abuse of human rights. Having spent 40 years working as an anthropologist in the area myself, I am confident of the accuracy and authenticity of the report and of the interviews on which it is based.
The abuses being carried out by the Ethiopian government in the Lower Omo are incontrovertible. Thousands of agro-pastoralists are being evicted by government fiat and without compensation from their most valuable agricultural land along the banks of the Omo in order to make way for large-scale commercial irrigation schemes. By far the largest of these schemes is being set up by the state-owned Ethiopian Sugar Corporation. The evictions are being accompanied by a resettlement or ‘villagisation’ programme which, although described by administrators as ‘voluntary’, is forced in the sense that those affected have no reasonable alternative but to comply.

Members of the Nyangatom, one of the communities affected by the project, loading donkeys by the river. Photograph by William Davison.

This is a glaring example of how not to do river-basin development. No impact assessments, feasibility studies or resettlement plans have been published. No plans have been announced for compensation, benefit sharing or livelihood reconstruction. And no attempt has been made to give the affected people a genuine say in decision making. In short, the project appears to have been conceived as a quasi-military operation, with the police and army acting as an occupying force amongst a recalcitrant and ‘backward’ civilian population. Not surprisingly in these circumstances, there have been reports of beatings, arrests and sexual violence by military personnel.
We know from 50 years of academic research on ‘development-forced displacement and resettlement’ as well as from countless reports by NGOs and development agencies that, if the project continues in this way, it will have a devastating impact on the economic, physical, psychological and social wellbeing of the displaced population. To use an expression from Michael Cernea, formerly the World Bank’s Senior Adviser on Social Policy and Resettlement, river-basin development in the lower Omo looks like its becoming yet another “disgracing stain on development itself.”

Aiding and abetting

Ethiopia receives $3.5 billion a year from international donors, which amounts to approximately half its annual budget. In March 2011, it was announced that the UK would be giving $2 billion in development aid to Ethiopia over the following four years, making Ethiopia the biggest single recipient of British aid money. The UK is also the biggest state contributor to the World Bank’s ‘Promoting Basic Services’ (PBS) programme for Ethiopia. PBS funds provide budget support for local government expenditure on education, health, agricultural extension and road construction. Since resettlement in the Lower Omo is the responsibility of the local administration, it would be stretching credulity beyond reasonable bounds to believe DfID’s claim that no UK money is being used to finance this activity.

Ethiopia arrests 2 journalists from independent paper

    

Getachew Worku is being held without charge. (Ethio-Mihdar)

New York, November 5, 2013–Ethiopian police have arrested without charge two editors of the leading independent Amharic weekly Ethio-Mihdar, according to local journalists.
Police in the town of Legetafo, northeast of the capital Addis Ababa, on Monday arrested Getachew Worku in connection a story published in October alleging corruption in the town administration, according to Muluken Tesfaw, a reporter with the paper, who spoke to Getachew shortly after his arrest. Getachew has not been charged, he said.

On Saturday, police arrested Million Degnew, the general manager of the newspaper, and Muna Ahmedin, a secretary, said Muluken and local journalists. Muna was released the same day but Million remains in custody without charge, Muluken said.
“A free and inquisitive media is a cornerstone of development that should benefit all Ethiopians,” said CPJ’s Africa Program Coordinator Sue Valentine. “Repeatedly detaining journalists without charge is an intimidation tactic that must end. We urge the authorities to release Million Degnew and Getachew Worku immediately.”
The government has harassed Ethio-Mihdar in the past for its independent coverage, according to CPJ research. Million and Getachew have been sued for defamation by the public Hawassa University, according to local journalists and news reports. University officials are seeking 300,000 birr (US$15,000) and the closure of the newspaper over a report alleging corruption in the school’s administration, according to local journalists.
In May, Muluken was detained for 10 days while reporting on evictions of farmers from their land in northwest Ethiopia. He was released without charge.
Ethiopia trails only Eritrea as Africa’s worst jailer of journalists, according to CPJ’s annualprison census. More than 75 publications have been forced to close under government pressure since 1993, CPJ research shows.