EPRDF admits terror detentions

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Also in the news:
[More than 1,000 killed in Mogadishu clashes] - [Islamist chief vows to oppose foreign troops in Somalia] - [Ethiopia: CPJ Concerned About Journalists Still in Detention] - [One Ethiopian doctor has 37,000 patients: agency ]

International:
[UN: Sudanese Militia Killed 400] - [Hillary, Obama and Edwards Boycott Fox Debate] - [Millions face hunger from climate change] - [Serial car thief only after the fuel] and more of today's top stories!

Ashenafe Mekonen, a tour guide kidnapped alongside five European travellers in Ethiopia's remote Afar region in MArch. The five - three Brits, one Italian and one French woman - were released two weeks later after diplomatic pressure from their governments. Nothing has been heard of Ashenafe and eight other Ethipians taken with them.(Journalist Andrew Heavens)


PRESS RELEASE
Kinijit Canada Support Chapter
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Human Rights and Humans Without Rights in Ethiopia
Professor Alemayehu G.Mariam
Speech at the University of Minnesota Law School Human Rights Conference
April 6, 2007
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EASTER MESSAGE FROM KINIJIT CHAIRMAN AND PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE, HAILU SHAWEL - KALITY PRISON


B.S (short for Bereket Simon) in Action

April 4, 2007 (Associated Press)- "Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials. "No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia," said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi"

10 April 2007 (Associated Press) - The Ethiopian government admitted detaining 41 suspected international terrorists from 17 countries and said foreign investigators were given permission to question them...The statement comes a week after an AP investigation into the transfer of terror suspects from Kenya to Somalia and eventually to Ethiopia.
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As we all know, B.S is a major player in Prime Minister Meles’s administration. B.S runs the public relations and information’ campaign; as a matter of fact, B.S is involved in most aspects of the governments’ day to day activities.

Whenever the government gets caught with its hand in the cookie jar, B.S comes to the rescue. Who else is there working day and night, giving interviews, writing statements, coming up with innovative ideas to cast the government of Ethiopia in a better light? Yes, it’s all B.S.

(More on the secret prisoners below)

Ethiopia: CPJ Concerned About Journalists Still in Detention

Ethiopia’s High Court Monday acquitted and freed eight editors and publishers of Amharic language newspapers. The journalists had been in jail on anti-state charges since a November 2005 government crackdown.

Joel Simon is the executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). He said the CPJ welcomes the journalists’ release, but it was also concerned about the others still in jail.

“Obviously we’re pleased, yet at the same time we remain concerned about the other nine journalists who remain in jail facing serious charges. And of course we’re concerned that this verdict took so long. These journalists have been in custody for so long now, and that’s a period of their lives that can’t be returned to them,” he said.(More...)

Ethiopia's excess: U.S. bears responsibility in sad African tale

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

How Ethiopia has gone from being a developing country, focusing on economic improvement, with a fair record for honesty and an evolving, positive attitude toward democracy, to where it is now is a sad tale, and one in which the United States bears considerable direct responsibility.

In recent years, Ethiopia, along with Uganda, Botswana, Mozambique and a few other African countries, was among the favored ones of Africa in terms of prospects for the future. It joined the reform-minded New Partnership for Africa's Development, retained the headquarters of the new African Union and was working on becoming democratic in its political institutions.(More...)

Brutal killings in Mogadishu

The East African

Given the iron fist with which the Ethiopian army put down the protests in Addis Ababa two years ago following disputed elections, it was perhaps only to be expected that it would be only more vicious in its latest campaign against alleged Islamist extremist strongholds in Mogadishu.

Up to 400 people have died, and over 100,000 have fled Mogadishu in what the International Committee of the Red Cross has described as the worst fighting for 15 years in the Somali capital.

The Ethiopian invasion was justified by both Addis Ababa and the US on the grounds that the Islamic Courts government in Somalia had given sanctuary to Al Qaeda elements and was harbouring terrorists who were behind the terrorist attacks on the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in 1998. That if the Courts hadn’t been kicked out of power, the terrorist network would have blossomed and consumed East Africa and the Horn.(More...)

EPRDF admits terror detentions

Ethiopia's government has admitted that it detained 41 "terror suspects" who were captured in neighbouring Somalia.

The ministry of foreign affairs said the detainees were from 17 countries including America, Canada and Sweden.

It is the first time the government has admitted that it is holding the foreigners, defending the action as part of the "global war on terror". Ethiopia denied the detainees had been held incommunicado. It says five have been released, with 24 more to follow.(More...)

Also see:
-Ethiopia Allows Foreign Questioning Of Suspected Terrorists

Islamist chief vows to oppose foreign troops in Somalia

Somalia's Islamist movement has vowed to to oppose foreign troops deployed to help the weak government consolidate its tenuous grip across the war-fatiqued nation.

"We are not all prepared to allow invaders to trample upon our sacred rights and bring us under submission," Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, head of the executive arm of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) said, following a meeting with Eritrea's President Issaias Afeworki.

In a statement posted on Eritrea's information ministry's website on Monday, Ahmed said: "Somalis are united more than ever and their nationalism heightened."(More...)

More than 1,000 killed in Mogadishu clashes

MOGADISHU (AFP) - Recent heavy clashes between Ethiopian forces and Islamist fighters backed by clan militia killed more than a thousand people in the Somali capital, Hawiye clan elders said on Tuesday.

The fighting, which erupted late last month when Ethiopian forces launched a bloody crackdown on suspected insurgents in the Somali capital, also left 4,334 people wounded, Hussein Aden Korgab, the Hawiye clan spokesman, told AFP.

"Our assessment team counted 1,086 people killed ... (and) 4,334 wounded," he said.

Kograb said the death toll was collected by a clan panel that was formed to hold talks with the Ethiopian forces after active fighting subsided.(More...)

Also see:
-BBC: Mogadishu clashes 'killed 1,000'
-Somali clashes may have killed more than 1000

One Ethiopian doctor has 37,000 patients: agency

On World Health Day, the British medical aid agency, is highlighting the impact of a global shortage of four million health workers on some of the world's poorest countries.

The agency is listing countries which have the lowest ratios of health workers to patients, such as Ethiopia, where there is only one qualified doctor for every 37,000 people. In the UK there is one doctor for every 434 people.

"Comparing the number of doctors with the total population gives a crude indication of the paucity of health care in some of the world's poorest countries," said Carolyn Miller, Chief Executive of Merlin. "The effect of such ratios means that millions of children die from preventable diseases, women risk death during childbirth, and elderly patients endure debilitating illnesses without treatment."(More...)

Today's Top Stories

-UN: Sudanese Militia Killed 400
-Catholic pressure may sway Mugabe to reform - analysts
-Millions face hunger from climate change
-Hillary, Obama and Edwards Boycott Fox Debate
-N.Korea funds may be freed as nuclear deadline nears
-U.S. Files New Piracy Cases Against China(China Expresses "Strong Dissatisfaction" With Complaints Over Pirated Movies, Music)
-Female Suicide Bomber Kills 16 Police Recruits in Iraq
-Russia, France doubt Iran nuclear claims
-Assam's missing women and the sex trade(Thousands of its women, old and young, have gone missing over the past 10 years)
-Serial car thief only after the fuel



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