Sebhat Nega’s double language

Indian Ocean Newsletter N° 1209 03/03/2007
Although he does sometimes needle Meles Zenawi, Sebhat Nega is still a steadfast defender of the present government team.

An executive of the Endowment Fund For the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT), a consortium of companies supporting the government, and a member of the central committee of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF, hard core of the coalition in power in Addis Ababa), even though he did leave this party’s executive committee in September 2006, Sebhat Nega has for a long time been the grey eminence of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He is currently on a trip to Washington, where he is staying in his late brother’s large house, and has taken advantage of his presence there to meet some members of the Ethiopian Diaspora from Tigray (in the North of Ethiopia). According to information obtained by The Indian Ocean Newsletter in Washington from a well-informed source about these meetings, Sebhat Nega discussed mainly the “dangers which face the TPLF and the Tigrayans”.

He did not always have the same language during his private conversations with various people, blowing sometimes hot, sometimes cold about the opposition. But his overall message was to call the expatriate Tigrayans not to be duped by the “chauvinistic” Amhara, citing the name of the owner of the ethiomedia.com web site. Justifying Meles Zenawi’s policies, he told his audience that he considered that letting the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUPD, opposition) win the election in 2005 would have come down to letting the partisans of the old regime come back to the surface, which would have led to a massacre of Tigrayans. He reiterated that “enemies like the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party” should be neutralised “by all possible means” and did not hide that he was personally in favour of condemning Hailu Shawel and the other opposition leaders imprisoned.

Still speaking in informal discussion with members of the Tigrayan Diaspora, Sebhat Nega considered that the military incursion into Somalia had been necessary to keep the support of the United States, but that the Ethiopian forces would leave Mogadishu as soon as possible. He admitted that differences of opinion had appeared with President Hassan Omar el Bashir of Sudan due to this Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia and due to the fact that Meles Zenawi had not supported Bashir’s candidature to the presidency of the African Union (AU). He also pointed out that at the same time the Eritrean President Issayas Afeworki had got closer to Bashir. Nevertheless, for Sebhat Nega, the EPRDF, in power in Addis Ababa, must maintain good relations with Bashir to stop the Ethiopian opposition from having the slightest chance of using Sudan as a base.

Kidnapped tourists sighted in Eritrea

Britain warned Eritrea last night that it expected the prompt release of a group of diplomat tourists after claims that Eritrean soldiers were behind a cross-border raid on a remote region of neighbouring Ethiopia.

...British special forces have been placed on standby to mount a rescue mission if talks fail to achieve a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Warning to Eritrea over seized Britons (Telegraph UK) March 5, 2007

Foreign tourists missing

...British embassy officials and their relatives are among a number of foreign tourists missing in the north of the country, close to the Eritrean border.

Search for kidnapped UK tourists (BBC) March 3, 2007

Too little, too late?

New York City symbolically banned use of the word nigger on Wednesday, the latest step in a campaign that hopes to expunge the most vile of racial slurs from hip hop music and television.

New York City bans racial slur (Reuters) February 28, 2007

"Greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed." ... Steve Biko

Asmara's Ethiopian allies in trouble

Indian Ocean Newsletter N° 1208 17/02/2007

The attempts by the Eritrean authorities to manipulate certain Ethiopian opposition groups to their advantage have only worsened internal splits inside these groups.

In spite of the victorious military communiqués issued by Asmara, the Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF, Ethiopian armed opposition), whose members undergo training in Eritrea, is not always in a position to carry out military operations in Ethiopia that can make a serious dent in the Ethiopian armed forces. In fact, this group has completely fallen apart internally. Some of its members accuse the commander Meskeram Atalay of abandoning them to flee to Germany where he has settled after initially going there for medical treatment. They also call for the expulsion of Mussie Tegegne, whom they consider responsible for the internal split in their movement and the arrest of EPPF combatants by the Eritrean authorities.

The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), another Ethiopian opposition movement supported by Eritrea, is also subject to internal divergence. The friction is aggravated by the fiasco of Eritrean collaboration with the Somalian Islamists to create in Somalia a point of entry into Ethiopia for armed opposition groups like the OLF. Daoud Ibsa, president of the OLF, had already been considered too dependent on Eritrean strategy by a meeting of OLF partisans in Oslo in mid-December, which he did not attend. He is globally reproached for having operated policies which marginalised the OLF in the 2005 general election. The Oromo population had not really heeded his call to boycott the election. He had later accepted to form an alliance, that many Oromo activists consider “contrary to nature”, with the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP) consisting in their view of “chauvinists”.

More Ethiopian diplomats defect

Indian Ocean Newsletter N° 1208 17/02/2007
More Ethiopian diplomats have defected, bringing the total that has decided to leave the diplomatic service to seventy three. The latest to ditch the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and ask for political asylum in the United States is Ambassador Tayework Tilahun, who was his country’s consular attaché in Kuwait. Recently a staff member of the Ethiopian embassy in Ottawa (Canada), Dereje Ejigu, decided to do likewise. Several employees of embassies in London, Geneva, Stockholm and Paris, have defected the last few years.

The coffee lobbyists

Indian Ocean Newsletter N° 1208 17/02/2007
Two Washington firms are supporting the government of Addis Ababa in its fight against Starbucks to have Ethiopian coffee recognised internationally.

The Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office (EIPO) can count on the support of the lobbyists of the American legal firm Arnold & Porter LLP to argue for the rights of Ethiopian coffee against Starbucks. One of this firm’s partners, Robert Winter, based in Washington, is acting for Ethiopian efforts to register Ethiopian coffee brands around the world. Another of the firm’s partners, Ramon P. Marks, a former marine and a member of Business Executives for National Security (BENS), went to Ethiopia in October 2006 as part of a visit organised by this American association.

The other mainstay of the Ethiopian campaign to have its coffee brands recognised is the Washington based NGO Light Years IP (LYIP). This was created in 1999 by the consultant Ron Layton and is working to help Ethiopian coffee producers increase their share of the world market. This activity has been funded for the last two years by the British Department For International Development (DFID).

Black Gold: Wake up and smell the coffee

Millennium countdown

The countdown has started on a flickering billboard high above a roundabout in Ethiopia's capital, blinking out recently in red and gold letters: only 209 days, 15 hours, 22 minutes and 22 seconds to the Millennium.

Missed the millennium? Catch it in Ethiopia (Reuters) Feb 14, 2007

Timket in Lalibela

In pictures: Festival of Timket (BBC)

Azeb Mesfin receives award

Azeb Mesfin, EPRDF parliamentarian and head of its powerful Social Affairs Committee, head of TPLF owned multi-million-dollar Mega Enterprises and more notably wife to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia (conflict of interest, maybe?), was chosen by the Georgetown University lobbyists to receive the “John Thompson Legacy of a Dream Award” on Martin Luther King's birthday. Another sign of how ignorant Western nations can be to human rights abuses in Africa. Supporters of imprisoned opposition leaders and human rights activists were on hand to "welcome" Ethiopia's First Lady.