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March 23, 2005

News

Cellphone stampede in Ethiopia

There have been typically few options for those who wanted mobile phones: get on a two-year waiting list, rent by the week, or get a leg up from a government ministry. When the ETC offered up 200,000 mobile phone lines to the public this week, the result was a veritable stampede.

The huge demand for mobile services in Ethiopia is going unmet despite the ample worldwide supply of handsets and telcos, because of the government’s reluctance to liberalise their telecom market.

Interestingly, despite the new availability of a flood of SIM cards, the country’s government-licensed mobile shops are still doing rather poorly. In the case of handsets, Ethiopa’s mobile users have found a way to end-run around the government’s lockdown: by flocking to local markets where cheap, illegally imported phones are in large supply. (Source: Smart Mobs)

Government still holds two journalists in detention

(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has voiced concern that, with general elections due to take place in just two months, on 15 May 2005, two journalists, Shiferraw Insermu and Dhabassa Wakjira, continue to be detained. Insermu and Wakjira, journalists for the Oromo-language service of the state-owned Ethiopian Television (ETV), are accused of having links with an Oromo separatist group.

“As Ethiopians get ready to vote, two journalists continue to languish in a prison where cases of torture and mistreatment are regularly reported by international organisations,” RSF said.

“Ethiopia is violating the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights just a few kilometres away from the African Union’s Addis Ababa headquarters,” the organisation added. “Whatever the charges against them, these two journalists have rights, which have clearly been denied by authorities who have defied the federal High Court’s decisions. Under Ethiopian law, Insermu and Wakjira should be released immediately. The circumstances under which they were thrown in prison leads us to suspect that there is absolutely no basis for the charge of terrorism that has been brought against them.”

Insermu and Wakjira were initially arrested at their homes in Addis Ababa on 22 April 2004. The federal High Court ordered their release on bail on 9 August, but only Insermu was freed. On 17 August, Insermu was arrested again, but was released on High Court orders in mid-October. As ETV refused to rehire him, he was seeking work as a journalist elsewhere when he was arrested for a third time on 11 January 2005.

Meanwhile, Wakjira has been held without interruption for nearly a year as prison authorities have ignored the various court orders to free him. According to information obtained by RSF in Addis Ababa, both journalists were brought before a court on 7 March, but the hearing was postponed. At present, both men are being held in Addis Ababa’s main prison, known as Kerchiele.

According to RSF’s information, Insermu and Wakjira have been charged, under Articles 32, 252 and 522 of the Criminal Code, with “passing government information to Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) leaders”, “planning attacks”, “criminal association of a terrorist nature” and “fundraising for the purposes of carrying out acts of terrorism”. Insermu, in particular, has been accused of sending government information to the OLF’s Sagalee Bilisummaa Oromoo (the Voice of Oromo Liberation – SBO) radio station “by e-mail or other means”.

A former colleague now living in exile said Insermu and Wakjira were detained along with other Oromo employees of ETV, who have since been released. The journalists were arrested after the broadcast of a report about the use of violence by police to disperse a 4 January 2004 Oromo student demonstration on the Addis Ababa university campus. The police arrested many demonstrators, especially members of the Macha Tulema social assistance group, who were protesting the government’s decision to move Oromo regional institutions from Addis Ababa to Adama (also known as Nazret), 100 km east of the capital.

Founded in 1974, the OLF is an armed movement that is opposed to Amhara and Tigrean dominance in Ethiopia and believesthat the Oromos of southern Ethiopia should form a separate country, together with the Oromos of northern Kenya. The OLF is backed by Eritrea, the former Ethiopian province where a guerrilla coalition waged a war of independence against Addis Ababa from 1962 to 1991. Following Eritrean independence in 1993, Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a deadly territorial war from 1998 to 2000.

Oromo community organisations and Oromo state employees are often the targets of government repression on accusations of being OLF spies. A human rights report, issued on 28 February by the US State Department, which has in the past tended to favour Ethiopia, was highly critical of human rights violations “especially against persons suspected of being OLF members.”

The difficulties encountered by RSF in obtaining information in Ethiopia about Insermu and Wakjira indicate how sensitive the issue has become. The organisation has established that at least 12 Oromo journalists have fled to neighbouring countries since the beginning of 2004 to escape the repression in Ethiopia.

Garuma Bekele, Tesfaye Deressa and Solomon Nemera, managing editor, editor and a journalist, respectively, for the weekly “Urji”, spent nearly four years in prison, from 1997 to 2001, for allegedly “participating in terrorist activities” and “publishing inaccurate news.” They had simply raised questions about an official statement that three men killed by the security forces were OLF members.

US aid group pulls out of Eritrea over political repression

NAIROBI (AFP) – A prominent US aid organization, Grassroots International, said it would stop funding projects in Eritrea, citing political repression and worsening human rights conditions there.

In a blisteringly critical statement received here, the Boston-based group said it could no longer continue working in Eritrea “in good faith”, given what it said were severely deteriorating conditions in the one-party state.

“After much internal debate, Grassroots International has decided that the program, one of GRIs oldest, is simply untenable because of the current political context in Eritrea,” it said.

It cited repeated postponements of elections, arrests and exiling of journalists, the jailing of political and religious dissidents and the “uncontested control” of the sole political party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), over society in the Horn of Africa nation.

GRI, which works to advance political, economic and social rights and support development alternatives, began its Eritrea program in 1983 when the country was still engaged in the fight for independence from Ethiopia.

It said the PFDJ was reneging on pre-liberation promises of openness and political pluralism and social transformation for which the country and outsiders had high hopes when de facto independence was achieved in 1991 and formalized two years later.

“Sadly, the economic, social and political situation in Eritrea has deteriorated and the bright optimism about the movement and what it could achieve has faded,” it said.

“Given the continuing human rights abuses and the anti-democratic policies of the Eritrean government … GRI can no longer in good faith continue our current partnerships,” it said.

The statement added that the decision to halt the Eritrea program had been taken reluctantly but that continuing to work there would implicate GRI “in covering up (the government’s) anti-democratic character.”

It said it would continue to provide humanitarian assistance to Eritrea and expressed hope that conditions in the country would improve.

Western nations, notably the United States, have regularly criticized Eritrea for a lack of democracy and poor human rights record, charges the government rejects.

Europe’s worst sugar subsidies threaten poor farmers like in Ethiopia

Multinational sugar company, Tate & Lyle topped the list of farm subsidy recipients two years in a row, according to information released today by the UK government’s Rural Payments Agency. In 2003-4 Tate and Lyle received over £120m in Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments, equivalent to around half their annual profit.

According to Oxfam, the majority of these payments were export subsidies, which enabled Tate & Lyle to dump excess sugar on world markets, undermining poor farmers overseas.

Also prominent in the list, were members of the British aristocracy, including the Dukes of Westminster (£448,000), Marlborough (£511,000) and Bedford (£366,000), the Earl of Plymouth (£459,000), and the Marquess of Cholmondely (£306,000).

“These figures confirm what we already suspected: the EU’s agricultural subsidy scheme is skewed in favour of the richest landowners and biggest companies. While these people rake in millions, poor farmers at home and abroad are going under,” said Phil Bloomer, Head of Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair Campaign.

“Export subsidies, like those paid to Tate & Lyle, are the worst of all. They bridge the gap between the EU price and the world price and thereby enable Europe to dump its unwanted produce overseas, undercutting local farmers. In Mozambique, Malawi and Ethiopia, farmers and their families are struggling to survive because of a system that pays out £120m a year to Tate & Lyle,” said Bloomer.

In January 2004 Oxfam published a report, Spotlight on Subsidies, in which they estimated the farm payments to the Dukes of Westminster, Bedford and Marlborough, Lords de Ramsey and Ilife and the Earl of Leicester.The release of figures today, prompted by the Freedom of Information act coming into force, have proven Oxfam’s estimates to be very accurate.

Three months later, in April 2004, Oxfam published a report on sugar, Dumping on the World, in which they estimated that Tate & Lyle got £109m in export subsidies. Today’s release from the Rural Payments Agency shows Tate & Lyle received over £120m in total in 2004, most of which was export subsidies.

“We welcome the increase of transparency from the UK government and urge other European countries to follow suit. This information shows just how rotten our agricultural trade system is and paves the way for urgent and radical reform,” said Bloomer.

“We want the EU to change agricultural trade rules in a way that benefits the poorest farmers both at home and abroad. The immediate elimination of export subsidies and a radical overhaul of the sugar regime would be a good place to start. At the WTO ministerial in Hong Kong at the end of this year, rich countries will be judged on their willingness to reform trade rules so that they work for the poor. They must start now. (Source: Oxfam)

Scandal of water aid that goes to wealthier countries

International aid to tackle the water crisis is going to wealthier countries rather than the poorest, claimed the Christian aid agency Tearfund, in a hard-hitting new report launched on World Water Day.

Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries receives 10 times more water aid that Egypt, a middle-income country, the report points out. Richer countries are giving in their own national interest rather that directing the aid to the world’s poor, Tearfund claimed.

Even more damning, according to the aid agency, is the fact that much aid is given in the form of loans rather than grants, contributing to mounting international debt which has been the subject of campaigns by the churches and the agencies themselves. Ethiopia, for example, receives more than one-third of its international aid for water and sanitation in the form of loans to be repaid.

And far from meet the Millennium Development goals of halving the number of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015 the prospect is diminished further, according to the charity. “Our research clearly shows that aid is not being delivered to the poorest people most in need of safe water and sanitation,” said Joanne Green, Tearfund’s water policy advisor. “Africa will currently miss by 35 years and 95 years respectively the Millennium Development Goal.”

She argued that while aid will have to be redoubled, it also needs to be more effectively focussed on the poorest countries “to get us back on track.”

The report also reveals the disagreements over water policy among the experts, with estimates of the amount of aid required to meet the Development Goal, ranging from £5.6 billion to £19 billion.

Acknowledging that donor governments are deterred from giving aid due to poor governance in some poor countries, the report nevertheless calls for great international co-operation to ensure aid gets to where it is needed most.

Middle-income countries receive almost half of all grant aid to water and sanitation programmes. In the four years between 1998 and 2002 the top 10 recipients of aid received £279 for every person not served by water and sanitation services, while the countries most in need received just £10 per person.

“Without access to water and sanitation poverty eradication will not happen,” concludes Andy Atkins, Tearfund Advocacy Director. “It is central to health, nutrition, education and the ability to work. We need both more aid money from governments for water and sanitation programmes and better coordination to ensure it reaches the people who most need it.” (Source: tearfund.org)

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