Saving the ICC from African Thugtators

December 15, 2014

by Alemayehu G. Mariam

International Criminal Court Prosecutor throws in the towel

It is a dark and gloomy month on the “Dark Continent”! It is the worst of times in Africa when a man in the highest political office accused of egregious crimes against humanity waltzes out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) grinning like a Cheshire cat and flipping the bird to Lady Justice. It’s a good thing she is blindfolded!

On March 8, 2011, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s founding father and first president, was charged by the ICC Prosecutor with five counts of crimes against humanity in connection with the post-election violence that occurred in Kenya in late December 2007. According to the ICC indictment, Kenyatta, at the time a government minister, planned, financed, and coordinated the violence perpetrated against ethnic opponents of his ruling party.  Kenyatta is accused of using the “Mungiki organization” (“Kenyan mafia”)

11 Year Anniversary of Anuak Massacre of 2003 will be Remembered by Many Ethiopian Anuak Living in Refugee Camps After Being Forcibly Uprooted from their Indigenous Land

December 15, 2014

PRESS RELEASE. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Vancouver, BC, Canada) December 13, 2014 will mark the 11-year anniversary of the horrific massacre of 424 Ethiopians of Anuak ethnicity in Gambella, Ethiopia. Even though it has been over a decade, it still seems like yesterday to the Anuak, especially to those who lost members of their families. Some of the victims remain in unmarked mass graves. The Anuak as well as the other people in the region have never really recovered from this traumatic tragedy, let alone the fact that no justice has been done.

Part of the reason for this is that the lives and livelihoods of the people surviving the tragedy have been in turmoil ever since. Seventy-eight thousand Anuak and others in Gambella have been forcibly evicted from their ancestral land in order to lease the land to foreign investors and TPLF/EPRDF regime cronies. The Anuak have never been consulted or compensated as would be done in a country where there was a rule of law.

Ethiopia: Heroes of the Storm that is Coming

December 16, 2014

by Masresha Tilahun

I once met Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin during a 3 days and closed door meeting between top opposition leaders of 15 political organizations from inside and outside of Ethiopia in Alexandria, Virginia. Despite his deteriorating health, Laureate Tsegaye attended the most anticipated meeting of the opposition group as an observer. Representing the youth, I was also in the meeting as an observer.

I was also observing Laureate Tsegaye across the boardroom while he was quietly listening to the discussions and rhetoric of the so called leaders of the opposition.

Rethinking Thanksgiving By Dr. Maulana Karenga

Beyond Big Turkeys and Small Talk

Dr. Maulana Karenga

The histories and holidays of the oppressed, colonized and enslaved are, of necessity, different from the history and holidays of the oppressor, the colonizer and the enslaver. Likewise, their interpretations of those histories and holidays also differ, for they are lived and learned from different standpoints. Thus, the Palestinians call the conquest and colonization of Palestine, the Nakba—the Great Catastrophe, and the Israelis call it the war of independence. The Native Americans call the conquest and colonization of their land and the decimation of their people genocide and holocaust. The Europeans call it “discovery,” “the move westward,” “reaching the promised land,” and other self-sanitizing words and phrases.

During the Holocaust of enslavement, Frederick Douglass, asked to speak on the meaning of the 4th of July, seen as Independence Day for Whites, told his White audience, “This Fourth of July is yours not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn.” For it is for the enslaved African “a day which reveals to him more than any other day of the year the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim.” Indeed, he goes on to say that for the enslaved African, “Your celebration is a sham,” and a repulsive mixture of vanity, heartlessness, mockery and hypocrisy. And “your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings with all your religious parade and solemnity are, to him, mere bombast,

Ethiopia: Release protestors, stop crushing political opposition (Amnesty International)

December 11, 2014

(Amnesty International) On 5 and 6 December, security services in Addis Ababa arrested an estimated 90 people during attempts to stage a demonstration by a coalition of nine opposition political parties. The arrests are the latest manifestation of the authorities’ hostility towards the political opposition ahead of the general election scheduled for May 2015. The Ethiopian authorities must ensure the immediate and unconditional release of those arrested for peaceful participation in, or the organization of, the demonstration, and all others imprisoned in Ethiopia for the peaceful expression of their political opinion.

Ethiopia’s Internet Status Remain “Not Free”: Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2014

December 7, 2014

• Telecom services worsened, characterized by frequently dropped phone calls, prolonged internet service interruptions, and slow response times to service failures
• Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and CNN were inaccessible for 12 hours in July 2013, while the number of permanently blocked webpages also increased
• A law enacted in November 2013 gives the Information Network Security Agency (INSA) carte blanche to inspect private online activities without oversight
• The government launched sophisticated surveillance malware against several online journalists in the Ethiopian diaspora and dissidents in exile
• Six bloggers of the prominent Zone9 blogging collective were arrested in April 2014 on charges of terrorism

Click here for Full Freedom on the Net 2014 Report

Ethiopia continues to have one of the lowest rates of internet and mobile phone connectivity in the world, as meager infrastructure, government monopoly over the telecommunications sector,