Why is Western media ignoring ongoing atrocity in Ethiopia?- huffington post

She spoke to me with tears in her eyes describing the calculated execution of her own people. Even though Atsede Kazachew feels relatively safe as an Ethnic Amharic Ethiopian woman living inside the United States, she is grieving for all her fellow ethnic Ethiopians both Amharic and Omoro who have been mercilessly killed inside her own country.

“There is no one in the United States who understands,” outlined Atsede. “Why? Why?” she asked as her shaking hands were brought close to her face to hide her eyes.

The Irreecha Holy Festival is a hallowed annual celebration for North East Africa’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo people. Bringing together what has been counted as up to two million people, who live near and far away from the city of Bishoftu, the Irreecha Festival is a annual gathering of spiritual, social and religious significance. It is also a time to appreciate life itself as well as a celebration for the upcoming harvest in the rural regions.

Tragically on Sunday October 2, 2016 the event ended in what Ethiopia’s government said was 55 deaths but what locals described as up to 700 deaths and casualties.

“The Ethiopian government is engaged in its bloodiest crackdown in a decade, but the scale of this crisis has barely registered internationally...,” outlined UK Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) David Mepham in a June 16, 2016 media release published by the International Business Times.

“For the past seven months, security forces have fired live ammunition into crowds and carried out summary executions...,” added Mepham.

So what has the U.S. been doing about the present crisis situation in Ethiopia?

With a long relationship of diplomacy that spans over 100 years beginning in 1903, that uilds up the U.S. to consider Ethiopia as an ‘anchor nation’ on the African continent, corrupt politics and long range U.S. investors in the region are an integral part of the problem. All of it works a head in the sand policies that pander to the status of the ‘‘quid pro quo’.

Spurred on by what locals described as Ethiopia military members who disrupted the gathering by threatening those who came to attend the holiday event; the then makeshift military threw tear gas and gun shots into the crowd. The voices of many of those who were present described a “massive stampede” ending in numerous deaths.

“This has all been so hard for me to watch,” Atseda outlined as she described what she witnessed on a variety of videos that captured the ongoing government militarization and violence in the region. “And there’s been little to no coverage on this,” she added. “Western media has been ignoring the situation with way too little news stories.”

“Do you think this is also an attempt by the Ethiopian military to commit genocide against the ethnic Omoro people?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered. The Amharic and the Omoro people have suffered so very much over many years, outlined Atsede. Much of it lately has been about government land grabs, on land that has belonged to the same families for generations, Atsede continued.

The details on the topic of apparent land grabs wasn’t something I knew very much about in the region, even though I’ve been covering international news and land grabs in Asia Pacific and China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region along with the plight of global women and human rights cases for over a decade.

JONATHAN ALPEYRIE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

One lone woman stands out surrounded by men during her march with Ethiopia’a Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a national self-determination organization that has worked to stop atrocity against rural ethnics inside Ethiopia beginning as far back as 1973. Today the Ethiopian government continues to classify the OLF as a terrorist organization. In this image the look on this unnamed woman’s face says “a-thousand-words.” Image: Jonathan Alpeyrie/Wikimedia Commons

Numerous ethnic women living inside Ethiopia today in 2017 are attempting to work toward peace in the northern and southern regions of Ethiopia as they continue to witness the destructive crackdown of the government against rural farming communities.

Under conditions of internal national and border conflict, ethnic Ethiopian women can often face increased stress under forced relocation, personal contact with unwanted violence including domestic abuse and rape, and discriminatory conditions for their family and children that can also affect conditions causing food insecurity and loss.

Increasing land grabs play an integral part of high levels of stress for women who normally want to live with their family in peace without struggle. But corruption on the leadership levels inside Ethiopia are encouraging land acquisitions that ignore the needs of families who have lived on the same land for centuries.

As Ethiopia’s high level business interests continue to be strongly affected by insider deals under both local and global politics the way back to peace is becoming more and more difficult.

Even foreign government advocacy agencies like the World Bank, DFID, as well as members of the European Union, have suffered from ongoing accusations of political pandering and corrupt practices with business interests inside Ethiopia.

With the release of the film ‘Dead Donkeys / Fear No Hyenas’ by Swedish film director Joakim Demmer the global public eye is beginning to open widely in understanding how land grab corruption works inside East Africa. With a story that took seven years to complete the film is now working to expand its audience through an April 2017 Kickstarter campaign.

“Dead Donkeys / Fear No Hyenas was triggered by a seemingly trivial scene at the airport in Addis Ababa, six years back. Waiting for my flight late at night, I happened to see some tired workers at the tarmac who were loading food products on an airplane destined for Europe. At the same time, another team was busy unloading sacks with food aid from a second plane. It took some time to realize the real meaning of it – that this famine struck country, where millions are dependent on food aid, is actually exporting food to the western world,” outlined film director Demmer.

It’s no wonder that anger has spread among Ethiopia’s ethnic farming region.

“The anger also came over the ignorance, cynicism and sometimes pure stupidity of international societies like the EU, DFID, World Bank etc., whose intentions might mostly be good, but in this case, ends up supporting a dictatorship and a disastrous development with our tax money, instead of helping the people...,” continued Demmer in his recent Kickstarter campaign.

“What I found was that lives were being destroyed,” added Demmer in another recent March 28, 2017 interview with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. ”I discovered that the World Bank and other development institutions, financed by tax money, were contributing to these developments in the region. I was ashamed, also ashamed that European and American companies were involved in this.”

“Yes. And yes again,” concurred Atsede in her discussion with me as we talked about big money, vested interests and U.S. investors inside Ethiopia, including other interests coming from the UK, China, Canada and more.

As regional farmers are pushed from generational land against their will, in what has been expressed as “long term and hard to understand foreign leasing agreements”, ongoing street protests have met numerous times with severe and lethal violence from government sanctioned security officers.

Ironically some U.S. foreign oil investments in the region vamped up purchasing as former U.S. State Department Deputy Secretary Antony Blinken showed approval of the Dijbouti-Ethiopia pipeline project during a press meeting in Ethiopia in February 2016.

In April 2017, as anger with the region’s ethnic population expands, Ethiopia has opted to run its government with a four month extension as President Mulatu Teshome Wirtu announced a continuation of the “State of Emergency.”

“How long can Ethiopia’s State of Emergency keep the lid on anger?” asks a recent headline in The Guardian News. Land rights, land grabs and the growing anger of the Oromo people is not predicted to stop anytime soon.

The ongoing situation could cost additional lives and heightened violence say numerous human rights and land rights experts.

“The government needs to rein in the security forces, free anyone being held wrongfully, and hold accountable soldiers and police who used excessive force,” said Human Rights Watch Deputy Regional Africa Director Leslie Lefko.

“How can you breathe if you aren’t able to say what you want to say,” echoed Atsede Kazachew. “Instead you get killed.”

Ethiopian maid's window fall 'filmed by employer

An Ethiopian housekeeper who was filmed begging for help as she hung from the seventh floor of an apartment complex while her Kuwaiti employer stood-by and filmed her, has spoken out about her ordeal and debunked media claims that she had tried to kill herself. The maid is heard shouting for help, saying "hold me, hold me", before losing her grip and falling seven floors onto another roof. AliveForFootball 

But it gets better. The Kuwaiti woman filmed the entire incident and posted it on social media. The woman recording the video can be heard telling the maid "you are insane, come back in" and then moves away from the maid instead of helping. Paramedics can be seen rescuing the maid at the end of the video. "I am fine, thank God, I am fine", she said in a video as she lay in a hospital bed after the fall, suffering from a broken arm and bleeding from her ear and nose. The maid had attempted to escape via the window in the Sabah al-Salem neighbourhood after she her employer locked her in the house, a member of the prosecutor's office told Kuwait's al-Qabas News. Both The Guardian and Russia Today perpetuated what seems to be the most common, but false, narrative, that the maid was attempting suicide. A report via middleeastmonitor told of the Ethiopian maid having resigned from her job and was being tortured as a result, locked in a room and refused food for two days before she made a decision to take her own life. Kuwait alone is said to be home to 600,000 foreign domestic workers while the United Arab Emirates, according to Human Rights Watch is home to upwards of 146,000. Since most of these are foreigners - Asian / African - they also tend to seek help from their embassies. According to Migrant Rights, an advocacy group that aims to advance the rights of migrant workers in the Middle East, 90% of all households in Kuwait employ foreign domestic workers. AliveForFootball 

http://aliveforfootball.com/2017/04/ethiopian-maids-window-fall-filmed-by-employer/

Ethiopian Worker Survives Fall From Kuwait Building

Last week, a horrifying video of an Ethiopian domestic worker falling from what media reports say is the seventh floor of an apartment building in Kuwait went viral. The video appears to have been filmed by the worker’s employer inside the flat with the woman dangling outside the window. The employer tells the woman to come back inside. The panicked woman calls out for her to grab her, but within 12 seconds of the recording starting, the dangling woman loses her grip and falls.

The Kuwaiti daily al-Seyassah reported that the domestic worker is being treated at a hospital for a broken hand, as well as nose and ear bleeding. Al-Seyassah also reported that the authorities arrested her employer, on Wednesday, and charged her for failing to assist her worker. The employer contends she tried to help. Another daily, Kuwait Times, reported on Saturday that members of the Ethiopian embassy visited the worker at the hospital.

This is not the first time a domestic worker – someone hired to clean, cook, and care for a household – attempted a dangerous escape or suicide. The Kuwaiti press often report such stories as “attempted suicides,” as with this recent incident. They don’t usually question whether these were suicide attempts or, rather, attempts to escape. In 2009, Human Rights Watch spoke to eight women who were reported as having “attempted suicide,” but who said they had really fallen from buildings trying to escape abuse or were pushed by their employers. No one has suggested that the employer in this incident was responsible for such abuse.

I have interviewed hundreds of domestic workers in the Gulf region. Many said their employers locked them inside, forced them to work excessive hours, and beat them. Some scrambled down or jumped off buildings to escape.

In 2015, Kuwait took steps to provide migrant domestic workers with labor rights, but it has not reformed the notorious kafala system, under which migrant workers cannot leave or change their employer without the employer’s permission. As a result, while domestic workers now have rights to a weekly day off, daily limits to their working hours, and overtime compensation – they can still be arrested for “absconding” if they escape from their employers, even abusive ones.

Kuwaiti authorities should investigate the working conditions that lead to all such attempted escapes or suicides and refrain from charging employees with “absconding.” No one should have to resort to climbing out of tall buildings to escape their workplace. Read more here

Journey to an Ethiopian volcano located in one of the hottest places on Earth

 
We stumbled along in the darkness, the path a lighter gray amid the deep charcoal of the dried lava fields surrounding us. Up ahead was our goal, the dull, angry, red glow our own personal Mount Doom just over the ridge. We were in the Danakil Depression, in Ethiopia, which has been called one of the hottest places on Earth.

In one hand I held a flashlight; in the other, the hand of my 7-year-old son, Ray, the youngest member of our intrepid troop that had set out to visit one of Africa’s most active volcanoes. Behind us stretched a faint row of flashlights and headlamps from the other members of the team. The camels carried our bags. The local guards carried old bolt-­action rifles across their shoulders. The dried lava around us still radiated the punishing heat of the day.

We were in what has been called one of the hottest places on Earth, so this final trek up to the Erta Ale volcano had to be made after the blazing sun had set.
After a three-hour hike, we crested the ridge. Before us was the glowing caldera, filled with dancing fountains of lava.

Ethiopia is increasingly making its mark on the global tourist map. Once just the province of dedicated Peace Corps workers and intrepid backpackers, newly built roads and new hotels are opening it up to the broader tourist market.

But even for the most veteran traveler to Ethi­o­pia — who has already visited the
baboon-infested northern highlands, the nearly inaccessible mountain monasteries of the Tigray Region or the rock-cut churches of Lalibela — the Danakil is in a category of its own.

A herder leads a train of camels carrying freshly mined salt tablets from Ethiopia’s Afar region in a trade that dates back millennia. (Paul Schemm/The Washington Post)

This punishingly hot lowland, set between the mountains of the Tigray Region and the Eritrean Red Sea Coast, is home to immense salt flats that once were a major source of wealth for the medieval Abyssinian Empire, as well as colorful sulfur pools and the Erta Ale — or “smoking mountain” — the most accessible of the region’s volcanoes.
And we decided to take the kids along. There was my son, as well as a 9-year-old and 11-year-old who, well protected by sunblock and broad hats, had a great time. Despite the region’s forbidding reputation, a well-organized tour in four-wheel-drive vehicles made for an unforgettable trip of four days that included the main sights of the region, including the salt flats, the sulfur pools and the volcano.

‘Danakil Diaries’

 

One of the first Europeans to make his way through the Danakil in the 1930s was the young British adventurer Wilfred Thesiger, who left behind the “Danakil Diaries” about his trips through a land that had meant the death of so many explorers before him, thanks to the exceptionally fierce and nomadic Afar people.

He wrote about how, for the Afar, you weren’t truly a man until you had killed someone. “A man can marry before he has killed, but no other woman will sleep with him,” he wrote, adding: “They invariably castrate their victims, even if still alive.”

Yet despite these dangers, he spent weeks exploring the area, hunting wild game and charting the course of the Awash River. “They were a cheerful, happy people despite the incessant killing,” he noted.
Thankfully, the rigors of the journey are much less now. Even a few years ago, the lack of roads through the Danakil meant long, spine-rattling trips over dirt tracks in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Now, new roads have been cut through the mountains from the neighboring Tigray Region, so a journey of days is now a matter of hours.

We set off from Mek’ele, the capital of the region and a bustling, comparatively new town located a short flight from Addis Ababa. Our convoy consisted of two Toyota Land Cruisers for our seven-member group (me, my wife and son, and the other two children who had a parent each) and the guide, as well as a third vehicle carrying food, equipment and the cook.

The twisting road into the mountains above Mek’ele is a beautiful drive with sharp-faced peaks, wild vegetation and cool temperatures, but soon we were descending into the lowlands of the Afar Region and the heat set in.
The first stop was the town of Berhale, little more than a collection of makeshift huts made of flapping canvas and corrugated iron near the highway. Truckers, explorers and others must stop here and pick up the permits to head into the rest of the region. A string of restaurants popped up and our guide led us into one, where our group gathered around a communal platter of the grilled Ethiopian meat-and-chiles dish known as tibs, accompanied by shiro, a chickpea sauce that is a national staple. We washed it down with cold beers in the sweltering noon heat.

In the distance, there was a collection of tents from a refugee camp of Eritreans that had fled across the not-very-distant border. It was a grim, hot, stony landscape. Clambering back into the air-conditioned cars was a real relief.

Timeless images

By late afternoon, we were slammed by the first of many unforgettable sights of the Danakil — the camel caravans of the salt trade, a timeless image that probably hasn’t changed in centuries.
Moving along at a steady pace, hundreds of camels marched across the brown, flat landscape in single file, with a herder walking along every dozen animals or so. Each camel carried tablets of salt that have been carved out of the ground for the last two millennia.

This “white gold” is the principal resource of the Danakil. Once, it was used as currency by the Abyssinian Empire. There also is archaeological evidence that the ancient empire of Axum, a contemporary of the Roman Empire, traded in these salt slabs.

The slabs are painstakingly chipped out of the ground, cut into uniformly sized tablets and loaded on to the camels every day. Each tablet is worth about a dollar.

At one time, the caravans would head all the way into Mek’ele, a trip of weeks, but now they generally just go to Berhale, our midday road stop, in a two-day, 46-mile trek. There, the salt is offloaded onto trucks and taken by the new road to the rest of the country.

There are about 700 registered salt miners from the Muslim Afar people and the Christian Tigrayans. As we snapped photos, they called out to us in Arabic, exchanged greetings and asked for cigarettes and water.
Some 30,000 years ago, the Red Sea covered this low-lying region before eventually receding and leaving behind the thick salt deposits. Just before dusk, we arrived at the flats, which look like a skating rink that stretches on to the horizon. A thin layer of water on the surface turns it into a mirror and reflects the images of the distant mountains.
The salt is white and looks like snow, making the lines of camels walking across it seem especially surreal — a bit like a Nativity scene in a Midwest town after a snowfall, but really hot.
We took off our shoes to keep them from being damaged by the salt before venturing out across the slick, ridged surface.
The squad of Ethiopian soldiers that accompanied us to the flats — we were, after all, just a few dozen kilometers from the Eritrean border, which was still in a state of tension with Ethiopia — was as enchanted by the scene as we were, posing for selfies in front of the endless, white plain as the sun set. The children danced across the salt, jumping in the air and marveling at the little bubbles coming up through the slick surface.

A soldier, part of an escort group, looks over the brightly colored sulfur springs in Ethiopia’s Afar Region. (Paul Schemm/The Washington Post)

We spent the night in the nearby village under the open air, with a steady wind that kept us cool despite the muggy heat. The next morning, it was on to Dallol, which has the unenviable reputation of being one of the hottest inhabited places on Earth, with an average temperature of 100 degrees. It is one of the lowest points on the continent, more than 300 feet below sea level.

A desolate, weird landscape

 

The ground became a grim, cracked brown with streaks of color until we reached a low rise that held bubbling sulfur springs. Cresting the hill, our eyes were assaulted by colors that should not exist in nature.
Bright yellow, red and orange mineral deposits surrounded bubbling pools as steam poured from vents in the ground. It was just 8 a.m., but the heat was intense: a hot, humid, cloying sensation that had us sweating profusely in a matter of minutes. Faces soon turned red and clothes became suffocating. I felt for the soldiers, in their heavy green camouflage uniforms, but they seemed to be fine as they merrily took more selfies and helped my son clamber over the rough ground.

In the distance were some ruined buildings from the 1920s, when the Italians set up a camp to mine potash until they were driven out by the British some two decades later in World War II. My mind boggled on how they were able to survive these temperatures and the rotten-egg smell of sulfur hanging heavy in the air for so long.

The garishly colored rocks brought to mind the landscape of an alien planet, but none of us could stay too long to admire the scene as the heat kept climbing. We soon headed back down to the Land Cruisers.
There was more to see in this desolate, weird landscape. Pools of oily mineral water bubbled up in the flat plains; towers of salt-encrusted mini-mountains rose up into fantastic shapes. For lunch, we headed back toward the highlands and stopped at a mountain spring with water gushing over the cliff into a small pool, which helped us to cool down and wash off the greasy scent of the mineral springs.
We drove south along the edge of the highlands to Erta Ale. Close to the mountains, it once again was a different Ethiopia on view, with green fields of barley and the local teff grain as well as herds of cattle with immense, curving, prehistoric-looking horns walking beneath the acacia trees on the side of the road.

Travelers in the author’s party admire their reflections in the massive salt flats of the Afar Region. (Paul Schemm/The Washington Post)

That night, we slept out under the stars again and dined on grilled lamb. There was an uncomfortable moment when a scorpion scurried out from the corner and I searched for a Kleenex to gently scoop it up out of harm’s way as I would a bug at home.

“Just kill it,” shouted one of my fellow parents, and it occurred to me that with at least three children around, it might be time to put aside my Buddhist sensibilities. I stomped on it with my Birkenstock-clad foot.
The explorer Thesiger talked about the scorpions during his Danakil travels. He described putting on his pants with one inside after a dip in a lake and getting “severely stung.” He reserved his main ire, however, for the hairy tarantulas — four inches across — that bedeviled his campsites.
“They scuttle around the camp as soon as the sun sets,” he wrote in his diary. “Last night we killed twelve in the camp. In my dreams they assume the most nightmarish proportions.”
Luckily for us, the tarantulas seemed to have gone the way of the big game that Thesiger so delighted in hunting during his travels.

Journey to the volcano

The trip the next day to the volcano was a study in the declining quality of roads. We went from a broad, paved highway to a wide, gravel track before driving over the tortuous, bumpy lava fields at just a few miles per hour.
Finally, it was even too much for our intrepid Land Cruisers and we reached a collection of round, stone huts with thatched roofs that became a kind of base camp for trips by foot up the volcano.
Here, camel drivers, soldiers and local militia members often hang out until expeditions like ours come for the final three-hour, six-mile trek to the caldera.
With our cars left behind, it suddenly felt like we were in the true Thesiger territory from his 1930s diaries, in which he talked endlessly about the state of his camels and donkeys, and negotiations with their owners.
We hired three camels for the trip, one for our gear and the other two for anyone who grew tired during the hike. We also had a few militia members to accompany us.
While the Danakil today is nothing like it was in the time of Thesiger, when strangers were often killed on the spot and rival tribes were engaged in incessant raids against each other, it does have a bit of a lawless reputation, making armed accompaniment now an official requirement.

In 2012, a group of tourists was attacked at the volcano by armed tribesmen. Five died and two were kidnapped. In 2007, another group that included British Embassy staffers was also briefly taken hostage. Since then, there has been a security post installed at the volcano, and embassies have gradually lifted travel restrictions.

Bright lines show the cracks in the moving surface of Erta Ale's lava lake. (Jim Keir/Alamy Stock Photo)

It was a rare cloudy day, so we were able to start the trek in the late afternoon instead of dusk, which is the traditional tactic to escape the sun. We walked across a stark, beautiful landscape of dark-gray lava flows that contrasted sharply with tufts of straw-colored grass. The lava had the cracked and folded appearance of asphalt at an abandoned city basketball court.

The three-hour trek on a slight incline isn’t challenging for someone in shape, and even my 7-year-old and the 9-year-old were able to make it, with the occasional stint riding high on a camel. The final hour, however, was in pitch black lit by our flashlights and the distant glow of the volcano.
At the summit, our guide led us down into the plain around the crater and we scrambled over lava flows that were just a day or two old. Once, you could camp right next to the crater. In the past year, though, Erta Ale has become quite active. We only made it within about 70 yards of the bubbling cauldron before the heat kept us back.

We watched in awe as the lava leapt and fell back into the glowing bowl and made a strange hissing noise. Exhausted and footsore, we made our painstaking way back across the lava plain and up the cliff to watch the light show.

Later that evening, the lava overflowed the crater at several points. It was hard not to wonder if there was now fresh magma where we had just been standing.
We awoke before dawn after a restless night. The bone-dry Danakil only gets seven inches of rain a year, but it all seemed to have fallen that night, resulting in a frantic scurry for the huts.
Thesiger often wrote about starting his treks at 5 a.m., before the sun grew too hot, and so we too started the climb down in the predawn grayness. A last glimpse of the volcano showed it to be as active as ever, with red patches of lava, cooling in the plain, visible to us even as the sky brightened Read more here

State of emergency extended by four months in Ethiopia

 
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - Ethiopia s parliament on Thursday approved a four month extension of a state of emergency that was first imposed in October to quell nearly a year of anti-government protests.

"The House unanimously voted to extend the state of emergency," said a report carried by state media.Defence Minister Siraj Fegessa said the "extension is needed so as to take the prevailing relatively good peace and security situations to the point of no return," the Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC) reported.
Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn declared a six-month state of emergency in October after months of protests in different parts of the country that were met with a strong security response that killed hundreds, according to human rights groups.

The protesters also targeted foreign farms and businesses, especially in the Oromia region close to the capital where unrest began in November 2015.
A key complaint of the protesters is the domination of the ruling Ethiopian People s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party, in power since 1991, and which holds all 546 seats in parliament.
Anteneh Terefe, an opposition Blue Party official was dismayed by the government s decision.
"This is a bad signal to all of us as political parties, as Ethiopians as individuals and for the state of country," he said.

"Extension of the state of emergency means things have not gone back to normal. I really wonder how it will possible for us to do any kind of politics."
More than 11,000 people were arrested under the state of emergency but most were released after receiving "renewal training" on the country s constitution and other topics, FBC reported last month.
As part of a crackdown on dissent some opposition leaders in the country have been arrested, while others in exile are facing trial in absentia.

Olympic silver medallist Feyisa Lilesa drew attention to the protests at last year s Rio games by crossing his wrists above his head -- a gesture that has become a symbol of the protest movement. He now lives in exile in the US.

The current state of emergency is the first in Ethiopia nationwide since the fall of communist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 Read more here