In repressive Ethiopia, new ‘Blue Party’ struggles to offer a choice – The Christian Science Monitor

By William Davison, Correspondent / November 21, 2013 -

Yet Ethiopia’s ruling coalition seems intent on maintaining a tight grip on power until its project to transform Africa’s second-most populous nation into a middle-income country is complete.

That authoritarian control makes any opposition difficult – though of late a group called the Blue Party, made up of young Ethiopians who describe themselves as progressive, have attempted to move, if not shake, the nation’s politics in ways not seen here for a decade or more.

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Last week the Blue Party tried to organize a protest outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Addis Ababa, feeding off widespread public outcry over the treatment of Ethiopian

Thousands protested at the Saudi Embassy in London

November 18, 2013

Prophet Muhammad told his followers to leave for Axum (ancient Ethiopia), where “a king rules without injustice, a land of truthfulness-until God leads us to a way out of our difficulty.” This happened at the early days of Islam, when the Quraysh intensified persecuting early converts of Islam in Mecca; this marked the first hijraah. Today Ethiopians who gave sanctuary to the followers of the Prophet Muhammad are being killed, raped, beaten, brutally abused and more than 25,000 are imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.

In protest to this brutality inflicted on innocent Ethiopians living and working in the Kingdom nearly 5 thousand Ethiopians living in the United Kingdom held a massive vigil outside the Embassy of Saudi Arabia on Curzon Street London W1. The huge turnout which has not been seen for years has stunned the police who were not prepared for it.

Wounded in Addis, finished off in Riyadh

November 17, 2013

by Ephrem Madebo, ebini23@yahoo.com

From China to Ethiopia and from Belarus to Saudi Arabia, there is no shortage of repressive regimes in the world. In general, repressive societies are defined as exerting pervasive state control over daily life, banning free speech and political opposition, and practicing severe human rights violations. All of these attributes describe the Ethiopian regime from head to toe, but the TPLF regime in Ethiopia has many more attributes that makes it the worst of the worst. Oppressive regimes do not hate their country, yet the Ethiopian regime does. Even though oppressive regimes kill their citizens for a variety of reasons, they don’t kill out of hatred. The TPLF regime in Ethiopia hunts and kills people that it really hates. Almost all countries of the world,

Police Beat, Detain Anti Saudi Brutality Protesters In Addis Abeba

Police Beat, Detain Anti Saudi Brutality Protesters In Addis Abeba
Nov. 15, 2013

Ethiopians, who protested outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Addis Abeba, opposing the ongoing brutality by Saudi Arabians against Ethiopian migrant workers residing there, have been beaten and detained by Ethiopian police this morning.
The protest has been called by opposition parties and associations mainly by Blue Party. It was joined by ordinary citizens who were outraged by what they saw happen to their compatriots in Saudi Arabia.
Police have detained the leaders of Blue Party and other members of civic associations who joined the peaceful protest. The Embassy is under heavy Ethiopian security guard currently.

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

November 5, 2013

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

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.

Mining Corruption in Ethiopia By Prof. Al Mariam

The Shame of a Nation

In my seventh commentary on corruption in Ethiopia this year, I focus on the mining sector. For other commentaries on the subject, visit my blog site at “Al Mariam’s Commentaries”.

I continue to offer commentaries on corruption in Ethiopia to keep public attention sharply focused on the structural nature of the issue. In the past few months, the ruling regime has been grandstanding its “anti-corruption” efforts by corralling a few officials of the “Revenue and Custom’s Authority” and businessmen on charges of corruption. The kangaroo court corruption drama for those suspects is an amusing political theater staged for the entertainment of international loaners and donors who have recently intensified their pressure on the regime to show greater transparency and public accountability. For the domestic crowd, the regime’s grandstanding has been a cynical ploy to underplay, trivialize and cleverly mask the deep-rooted nature of official corruption with high profile prosecutions.