Ethiopians stormed World Bank in Washington DC

 by Efe Ebelo reporting from Washington DC
Source: Daily Independent

Ethiopians in their numbers Saturday morning stormed the 17th Street Office complex of the World Bank in Washington DC, protesting the bank’s alleged support for land grab and ethnic cleansing by President Girma Wolde-Giorgis
Displaying placards with various inscriptions like “World Bank stop financing Human rights violations,” “USA say no to ethnic cleansing of the Amharas in Ethiopia” and what will it take to end poverty? Empower people not dictators” among others, they claimed that they decided to protest to the headquarters of the bank against forceful eviction of poor farmers by alleged corrupt tycoons and foreign corporations to enrich themselves.
According to the protesters, “in Gambella more than three million hectares of Annuak land was sold to foreigners to produce food for their own people. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations claim securing land to feed their people for the future. More than 70,000 Annuaks have already been forced from their land and another 150,000 will be displaced in the coming few years.
They alleged that these evictions and ethnic cleansing is financed by the World Bank as they claim the Ethiopian government cannot do them without support from the World Bank and financing by the International Monetary Fund, (IMF).
“The World Bank and IMF are financing it at all levels including paying salaries for those who are killing the poor people. Annuaks are now an endangered species so are the Mursi people who were chased away from the South Omo Valley hunting ground to clear the land for the regime’s sugar company.
They said that if the World Bank could deny loan to Cambodia in 2011 when that government was displacing its farmers, there is no reason why the Ethiopian case should be different demanding the Bank to come clean and distance itself from the alleged crimes being committed by the present administration in that country.
“We endorse the demand of the Human Rights Watch on its recent press release on Ethiopia for the World Bank to do its own internal investigation on the land eviction issue in Ethiopia and make it public. Thousands of Ethiopians were and are evicted; many children, women and elderly are dying as a result of this. The World Bank either has to condone or condemn this human rights violation and crime against humanity” they added.

Ethiopia: Jailed hero journalist Woubshet Taye off to Zeway death camp

The Horn Times News 20 April 2013
by Getahune Bekele, South Africa

As the unpopular, corrupt and inefficient minority junta continues to govern the police state Ethiopia with brute iron hand, dealing ruthlessly with political prisoners and jailed journalists whom it blames for causing the late despot Meles Zenawi’s “ untimely” death; Ethiopian political prisoners have fallen on hard times filled with dread and terror.
The former Editor of Awramba Times, Wubeshet Taye is the latest Prisoner to be sent to Zeway death camp to serve the remaining time of his 14 years sentence away from his family, with the likes of Bekele Gerba, Albana Lelisa and several others who are already condemned to the notorious facility.
Chained in leg iron and carrying his belongings in tiny bag, hundreds of curios inmates at Kilinto prison watched the young scribe taken away by more than 20 TPLF soldiers on Tuesday morning April 16 2013.
A friend of the terrorized journalist confirmed to the Horn Times that Woubshet Taye is currently in Zeway, still in leg iron like all political prisoners.
The 2011 trial of Woubshet Taye was at the time described unfair and was way below the international fair trial standard under the controversial and draconian anti-terrorism law designed to persecute and silence dissenting voices.
The Horn Times franticly tried to talk to TPLF officials in charge of prison administration to find out the reason behind sending opposition prisoners particularly Ethnic Oromos and the Amharas to Zeway during the known malaria season, but none of them were willing to reply including the office of the man himself, warlord Berket Simeon.
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