SIMIEN MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, Ethiopia — Thousands of Ethiopian wolves once roamed much of this country’s mountainous north but their number has fallen dramatically as farmers encroach on their habitat and introduce domestic dogs that carry rabies.
Only 120 wolves are estimated to remain in this national park and they are elusive, usually seen shortly after sunrise or just before sunset.ves
“They are almost at the brink of extinction. So my vision is to increase their number significantly,” said Getachew Assefam, coordinator of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program.
The movement of people move in search of fertile land in the highlands has put pressure on the park. Across the country less than 500 Ethiopian wolves remain in a few mountain enclaves, the Britain-based Born Free Foundation says.
Efforts are underway to move most of the settlers out of this national park in the hope of saving the remaining wolves. The local community currently uses more than two-thirds of the park’s area for grazing, agriculture and settlement, according to the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority.
The wildlife authority said 38 villages with a total of 3,000 people are living within the park’s boundaries.
Gichi village in the heart of the park had more than 418 households before the resettlement program began three years ago. Now there are none. Now the government is focusing on settlers in other areas.
The relocated settlers “are all now living in a better condition,” said the park’s chief warden, Maru Biadgelegn.
But some farmers said the compensation they received for the move is not enough.
Requests by The Associated Press to gain access to the resettlement area were denied. In a recent meeting, residents rejected the government’s compensation offer to resettle the remaining farmers.
“I believe we can come to an agreement on this in the future,” said one park resident, Zezo Adugna.
”Africa is currently experiencing another form of slavery through Pentecostalism.
We are now mentally lazy and our ability to reason scientifically has been incapacitated.
The African pastor won’t talk about Usain Bolt or Serena Williams. The African Pastor won’t talk about Steve Jobs or the young people in Silicon Valley reshaping our world.
They won’t talk about young American scientists spending endless hours in search of a cure to a disease that’s predominantly in the Tropical African Region.
The African pastor won’t talk about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Ben Okri. In every corner of the world, there exist young men and women who have defied all odds and become successful through hard work, creativity and dedication….
The African pastor won’t talk about them, neither will he ask his members to emulate the spirit of these individuals.
He would rather talk about sister Agatha who got a job she *WAS NOT THE MOST QUALIFIED FOR*because she prayed and fasted in line with their church programme or brother John a millionaire because he used all his salary as a seed in the church, or Papa Miracle who he laid his hands on and 3 of his children got admission in the university, or Mama Esther paid her tithe and her business started growing everywhere across the nation with no business plan, just boom, everywhere.
This has led to a new breed of mentally lazy young people who now see God as a rewarder of mediocrity.
To the African pastor, the only way to prosper is by paying your tithe and ‘ seeds in the church. So they will never talk about those, who have through hard work and dedication placed themselves on the world map.
No…..the African God only blesses the first 30 people that rush to the alter to drop $100 as seed.
The African God abhors hard work and creative thinking, he only gives to those who sow seeds and offerings…..and those who shout: “I am a millionaire” every morning and do nothing the rest of the day.
You want the Almighty to come down and help you use the talent He gave you and bless you because you are going to church to shout: “Daddy I receive it”, these are all jokers.
Can someone tell these jokers that irrespective of your creed, faith or religion, blessings and favours follow you once you start using your talent and become useful to your society?
The Bible tells the story of the Talents.
Use it. Blessing is already bestowed upon us. When we use it positively, we ask the Lord to bless it. The Bible says His Grace is sufficient for us.
The Western world and Asians are excelling and dominating the world.
Let no Imam or Pastor manipulate our minds while they themselves drown in amassing wealth and luxurious splendour, while our people are living in abject poverty.
Be Wise. Worship of God is from the heart. But study, work hard and always watch & pray! May God Almighty bless us all, in Jesus’ name!!”
”Africa is currently experiencing another form of slavery through Pentecostalism.
We are now mentally lazy and our ability to reason scientifically has been incapacitated.
The African pastor won’t talk about Usain Bolt or Serena Williams. The African Pastor won’t talk about Steve Jobs or the young people in Silicon Valley reshaping our world.
They won’t talk about young American scientists spending endless hours in search of a cure to a disease that’s predominantly in the Tropical African Region.
The African pastor won’t talk about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Ben Okri. In every corner of the world, there exist young men and women who have defied all odds and become successful through hard work, creativity and dedication….
The African pastor won’t talk about them, neither will he ask his members to emulate the spirit of these individuals.
He would rather talk about sister Agatha who got a job she *WAS NOT THE MOST QUALIFIED FOR*because she prayed and fasted in line with their church programme or brother John a millionaire because he used all his salary as a seed in the church, or Papa Miracle who he laid his hands on and 3 of his children got admission in the university, or Mama Esther paid her tithe and her business started growing everywhere across the nation with no business plan, just boom, everywhere.
This has led to a new breed of mentally lazy young people who now see God as a rewarder of mediocrity.
To the African pastor, the only way to prosper is by paying your tithe and ‘ seeds in the church. So they will never talk about those, who have through hard work and dedication placed themselves on the world map.
No…..the African God only blesses the first 30 people that rush to the alter to drop $100 as seed.
The African God abhors hard work and creative thinking, he only gives to those who sow seeds and offerings…..and those who shout: “I am a millionaire” every morning and do nothing the rest of the day.
You want the Almighty to come down and help you use the talent He gave you and bless you because you are going to church to shout: “Daddy I receive it”, these are all jokers.
Can someone tell these jokers that irrespective of your creed, faith or religion, blessings and favours follow you once you start using your talent and become useful to your society?
The Bible tells the story of the Talents.
Use it. Blessing is already bestowed upon us. When we use it positively, we ask the Lord to bless it. The Bible says His Grace is sufficient for us.
The Western world and Asians are excelling and dominating the world.
Let no Imam or Pastor manipulate our minds while they themselves drown in amassing wealth and luxurious splendour, while our people are living in abject poverty.
Be Wise. Worship of God is from the heart. But study, work hard and always watch & pray! May God Almighty bless us all, in Jesus’ name!!”
Photo Credit: Dr Chris Okafor. https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/drchrisokafor
At the core of my ongoing study of Pentecostal pastors and changing forms of authority in Africa are two related premises.
First, due to a variety of factors, partly socio-economic, but also cultural as well as political, the landscape of authority across a majority of African states has altered radically over the last three decades. For example: if one effect of the combined militarization of the state and ‘Structural Adjustment’ of the economies of many African countries in the 1980s was the impoverishment of the academy, its logic has been the delegitimizing of universities themselves as authoritative centers of knowledge production.
With the entire system of tertiary education more or less stripped of its epistemological raison d’être, growing numbers of the African intelligentsia have had to look elsewhere for intellectual fulfillment and compensation that is commensurate with their status and skills. Hence my claim: that for all that this exodus has bequeathed a social and intellectual void, Pentecostal pastors have been the indirect beneficiaries, purveyors of a new kind of authoritative clerical speech-act which tends to be valorized over and above secular law or normativity.
The Pentecostal pastor is no mere direct substitute for the intellectual though. True, he (or in far fewer cases, she) now occupies what once was the academic’s spotlight as authority on economic, political, and cultural matters, to such an extent that today, even the academic tends to genuflect to his (i.e. the pastor’s) authority. But that is where, seemingly, the comparison ends. At the peak of his influence, the African intellectual was a mere defender of the public good, in which capacity he defined and contributed to public debates, built bridges with popular organizations like trade unions, resisted military and other forms of dictatorial rule, and generally aligned with efforts to hold the state accountable. In short, the intellectual was a crucial cog in an emergent postcolonial public sphere.
In terms of his authority, the modern-day Pentecostal pastor is a different beast. Contra his predecessor the intellectual, his power and influence project over a wider range of social life, including the most intimate. He is a widely sought after existential micromanager: a blend of spiritual guide, financial coach, marriage counselor, fashion icon, travel advisor, all-purpose celebrity, and last but not least, and as we are beginning to see from a stream of media reports from across the continent, center of an erotic economy.
He is the one with the power either to command female congregants to come to church without their underwear so that they can be ‘more easily receive the spirit of Jesus Christ,’ as was reportedly the case with Reverend Pastor Njohi of the Lord’s Propeller Redemption Church, Nairobi, Kenya; or, as we saw more recently with Kumasi-based pastor ‘Bishop’ Daniel Obinim, the one with the license to openly massage the penises of male congregants with erectile anxiety.
Whilst the political sociology of the pastor is a well-trodden ground, the idea of the pastor as an object of erotic fascination, part sexual healer, part sex symbol, the throbbing center of an intense Pentecostal sexual economy, is comparatively less frequented. Yet, this is something that my research has persistently thrust on me, and one I would argue holds immense riches.
For one thing, it furnishes a radical approach to the study of African Pentecostalism by allowing us to corral and cross-fertilize issues and subjects typically allocated in separate intellectual compartments. Foremost amongst these are: masculinity, gender, patriarchy, femininity, studies of affect, crowd engineering and crowd control, the religious spectacle, media studies, emotions, pornography, sex and sexuality, and ethics.
For another, it allows us, taking provocation from theorists Niklaus Largier, Birgit Meyer, and Nimi Wariboko’s respective works on the religious sensorium, to approach the physical space of the church as a sensual space, a place where people go to find pleasure, and where sounds, ululations, music, dance, bodies in motion, bodies flailing and sprawling, bodies in collision [whether casually or intentionally], bodies sometimes literally thrown at or surrendered to the mercy of the pastor; all combine to produce ecstatic worship.
Photo Credit: Ebenezer Obadare. Lagos, Nigeria.
Accepting the Pentecostal church as sensual space frees us to imagine the altar as a special stage repurposed, if not in fact designed, for the pastor’s hypersexual posturing. On this altar—increasingly, the ritualistic center of worship in many mega churches—the sexualized pastor channels masculine performances that bristle with erotic intimations. Through him, female congregants may lay a vicarious claim to ‘spiritual impregnation;’ often times, and as vindicated by countless examples across African Pentecostal churches, it goes beyond that.
Thus, to place the pastor at the center of a Pentecostal libidinal economy is, in essence, to put the persona of the pastor under a completely different analytic light. What my study appears to mandate, and what I am proposing here, is a critical shift from the idea of the pastor as the one who dictates sexual mores, who gives counsel on sex and proper sexual conduct, the physical symbol of heteronormativity whose stable (sexually and otherwise) domestic life is invoked as an example to the congregation; to the idea of the (body of) the pastor as an object of desire whose sexual energy comes from a strategic choreography of dress, mode of preaching and performance on the pulpit, aesthetics, personal ‘tone,’ automobile, travel, and ‘connections’ (either proven or suggested) to transnational networks.
Suffice to say, the backdrop to all this is extremely complex. It involves—and is in part enabled by—the rise of the celebrity pastor in Africa; the rise of pastoral ‘calling’ as the quickest route to social prestige, critical in a context in which the need to ‘be somebody’ has become very acute; and its corollary, the emergence of pastoring as a virtually automatic guarantor of social mobility.
But perhaps of utmost importance is what appears to be Pentecostalism’s theological project of producing a new man, which tends to translate all too literally into a man shorn of his masculine properties, i.e. highly domesticated, abjuring the company of ‘sinful’ former friends, and most important, sexually ‘tamed.’ A ‘demasculinized’ man, in short. The consequence, I would argue, is that often times, the only ‘man’ left standing in the Pentecostal church is the pastor occupying the altar. Cherished, beloved, and, dare I suggest, eroticized.
Ebenezer Obadare is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, and Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, University of South Africa. He is author of Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria (University of Rochester Press, 2016) and co-editor of Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century (James Currey, 2014). His ongoing Contending Modernities research focuses on Pentecostal pastors and changing patterns of authority in Nigeria and Ghana.
Photo Credit: Dr Chris Okafor. https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/drchrisokafor
At the core of my ongoing study of Pentecostal pastors and changing forms of authority in Africa are two related premises.
First, due to a variety of factors, partly socio-economic, but also cultural as well as political, the landscape of authority across a majority of African states has altered radically over the last three decades. For example: if one effect of the combined militarization of the state and ‘Structural Adjustment’ of the economies of many African countries in the 1980s was the impoverishment of the academy, its logic has been the delegitimizing of universities themselves as authoritative centers of knowledge production.
With the entire system of tertiary education more or less stripped of its epistemological raison d’être, growing numbers of the African intelligentsia have had to look elsewhere for intellectual fulfillment and compensation that is commensurate with their status and skills. Hence my claim: that for all that this exodus has bequeathed a social and intellectual void, Pentecostal pastors have been the indirect beneficiaries, purveyors of a new kind of authoritative clerical speech-act which tends to be valorized over and above secular law or normativity.
The Pentecostal pastor is no mere direct substitute for the intellectual though. True, he (or in far fewer cases, she) now occupies what once was the academic’s spotlight as authority on economic, political, and cultural matters, to such an extent that today, even the academic tends to genuflect to his (i.e. the pastor’s) authority. But that is where, seemingly, the comparison ends. At the peak of his influence, the African intellectual was a mere defender of the public good, in which capacity he defined and contributed to public debates, built bridges with popular organizations like trade unions, resisted military and other forms of dictatorial rule, and generally aligned with efforts to hold the state accountable. In short, the intellectual was a crucial cog in an emergent postcolonial public sphere.
In terms of his authority, the modern-day Pentecostal pastor is a different beast. Contra his predecessor the intellectual, his power and influence project over a wider range of social life, including the most intimate. He is a widely sought after existential micromanager: a blend of spiritual guide, financial coach, marriage counselor, fashion icon, travel advisor, all-purpose celebrity, and last but not least, and as we are beginning to see from a stream of media reports from across the continent, center of an erotic economy.
He is the one with the power either to command female congregants to come to church without their underwear so that they can be ‘more easily receive the spirit of Jesus Christ,’ as was reportedly the case with Reverend Pastor Njohi of the Lord’s Propeller Redemption Church, Nairobi, Kenya; or, as we saw more recently with Kumasi-based pastor ‘Bishop’ Daniel Obinim, the one with the license to openly massage the penises of male congregants with erectile anxiety.
Whilst the political sociology of the pastor is a well-trodden ground, the idea of the pastor as an object of erotic fascination, part sexual healer, part sex symbol, the throbbing center of an intense Pentecostal sexual economy, is comparatively less frequented. Yet, this is something that my research has persistently thrust on me, and one I would argue holds immense riches.
For one thing, it furnishes a radical approach to the study of African Pentecostalism by allowing us to corral and cross-fertilize issues and subjects typically allocated in separate intellectual compartments. Foremost amongst these are: masculinity, gender, patriarchy, femininity, studies of affect, crowd engineering and crowd control, the religious spectacle, media studies, emotions, pornography, sex and sexuality, and ethics.
For another, it allows us, taking provocation from theorists Niklaus Largier, Birgit Meyer, and Nimi Wariboko’s respective works on the religious sensorium, to approach the physical space of the church as a sensual space, a place where people go to find pleasure, and where sounds, ululations, music, dance, bodies in motion, bodies flailing and sprawling, bodies in collision [whether casually or intentionally], bodies sometimes literally thrown at or surrendered to the mercy of the pastor; all combine to produce ecstatic worship.
Photo Credit: Ebenezer Obadare. Lagos, Nigeria.
Accepting the Pentecostal church as sensual space frees us to imagine the altar as a special stage repurposed, if not in fact designed, for the pastor’s hypersexual posturing. On this altar—increasingly, the ritualistic center of worship in many mega churches—the sexualized pastor channels masculine performances that bristle with erotic intimations. Through him, female congregants may lay a vicarious claim to ‘spiritual impregnation;’ often times, and as vindicated by countless examples across African Pentecostal churches, it goes beyond that.
Thus, to place the pastor at the center of a Pentecostal libidinal economy is, in essence, to put the persona of the pastor under a completely different analytic light. What my study appears to mandate, and what I am proposing here, is a critical shift from the idea of the pastor as the one who dictates sexual mores, who gives counsel on sex and proper sexual conduct, the physical symbol of heteronormativity whose stable (sexually and otherwise) domestic life is invoked as an example to the congregation; to the idea of the (body of) the pastor as an object of desire whose sexual energy comes from a strategic choreography of dress, mode of preaching and performance on the pulpit, aesthetics, personal ‘tone,’ automobile, travel, and ‘connections’ (either proven or suggested) to transnational networks.
Suffice to say, the backdrop to all this is extremely complex. It involves—and is in part enabled by—the rise of the celebrity pastor in Africa; the rise of pastoral ‘calling’ as the quickest route to social prestige, critical in a context in which the need to ‘be somebody’ has become very acute; and its corollary, the emergence of pastoring as a virtually automatic guarantor of social mobility.
But perhaps of utmost importance is what appears to be Pentecostalism’s theological project of producing a new man, which tends to translate all too literally into a man shorn of his masculine properties, i.e. highly domesticated, abjuring the company of ‘sinful’ former friends, and most important, sexually ‘tamed.’ A ‘demasculinized’ man, in short. The consequence, I would argue, is that often times, the only ‘man’ left standing in the Pentecostal church is the pastor occupying the altar. Cherished, beloved, and, dare I suggest, eroticized.
Ebenezer Obadare is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, and Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, University of South Africa. He is author of Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria (University of Rochester Press, 2016) and co-editor of Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century (James Currey, 2014). His ongoing Contending Modernities research focuses on Pentecostal pastors and changing patterns of authority in Nigeria and Ghana.
A freedom of information request by international human rights organisation Reprieve has shown that senior members of Ethiopia’s police, military, justice ministry and diplomatic corps are studying for an MSc in Security Sector Management, as part of a UK-aid funded program.
The revelations come amid growing concerns for British father of three Andy Tsege, who is on death row in Ethiopia.
53 MPs and peers from across the political spectrum have written to the Foreign Office to request that ministers “make representations – privately or publicly – for Mr Tsege’s release.” The politicians, representing the Conservatives, Labour, SNP, Lib Dems, Greens and SDLP, criticise what they say is a set of “limited demands” that the government has made to Ethiopia so far, in relation to his case.
Mr Tsege has been imprisoned unlawfully in Ethiopia since 2014, when he was kidnapped at an international airport and rendered to a secret Ethiopian prison. Mr Tsege is a prominent critic of Ethiopia’s ruling party, and his ordeal is thought to be linked to a wider crackdown on dissent in the country. In 2009, while Mr Tsege was living in London, an Ethiopian court handed him an in absentia death sentence.
The Foreign Office has stopped short of requesting Mr Tsege’s return to the UK, instead focusing on a regular consular and legal access for him. However, the Ethiopian authorities have only agreed to sporadic consular access, while Mr Tsege has been prevented from contacting a lawyer. Ethiopian officials have said Mr Tsege faces no prospect of appealing his death sentence.
In 2014, the Department for International Development told Reprieve that it had cancelled a similar MSc programme because of “concerns about risk and value for money”. However, the programme was restarted several months later under the £1bn Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), with the oversight of the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence.
Ethiopian officials told the ‘Ethiopian Reporter’ newspaper in 2016 that “some 90% of the senior officials currently serving in Ethiopia’s intelligence institutions have completed their masters degree in the UK on subjects related to security.” They added: “The courses are fully financed by the UK government.”
Commenting, Harriet McCulloch, a deputy director at Reprieve, said:
“It’s shameful that the UK is funding Ethiopia’s security sector, when Ethiopian forces are holding a British dad illegally on death row. MPs are right to express serious concern over the government’s approach. Boris Johnson must explain why his department is training Ethiopian security officials, but refusing to negotiate Andy Tsege’s return home to Britain.”
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The headline in Britain’s Daily Mail couldn’t have been more triumphant: “Aid: Now they’re listening,” it shouted in huge letters.
The conservative paper was celebrating the withdrawal of British funding for an aid project in Ethiopia it has dubbed “the Ethiopian Spice Girls.” These “girls” are a five-member all-female band known as Yegna, or “Ours.” It was founded three years ago and produces a radio drama and music videos aimed at helping girls through the perils of adolescence in Ethiopia.
The Daily Mail attacked the project for yearswith a string of vitriolic articles, calling Yegna “the most wasteful, ludicrous and patronizing” aid project in Africa. That coverage apparently convinced Britain’s Department for International Development to withdraw its funding on Jan. 6.
Yet the aid agency had previously given the program high marks, presenting it as an innovative way to empower Ethiopia’s young women. And while Ethiopia is the second largest recipient of British aid, getting $470 million a year, Yegna received only $6.4 million in total from the British government from 2015 to 2018.
Aid workers and activistssay the rush to scapegoat Britain’s aid policy not only hurt a program that is helping adolescent girls but unfairly attacks the idea of using media for social change, a method development workers say is getting good results around the world.
Members of the Yegna band greet fans in the capital Addis Ababa. (Noni Rossini/Girl Effect)
The show features the five members of Yegna, each from different backgrounds, confronting and overcoming many of the challenges specific to Ethiopia’s young women. Girls in this nation of 100 million suffer alarming secondary school dropout rates, domestic violence and a culture that in many places restricts them to doing chores at home. Many young women are also forced into early marriages.
The program was an initiative of Girl Effect, an organization that advocates for more development programs focused on young women across Africa. In Ethiopia, it hiton the idea of using music and entertainment to convince its audience rather than typical public service announcements.
“Music is deeply rooted in Ethiopian culture,” said Selome Tadesse, Yegna’s managing director, pointing out that both young woman and their parents responded to the tactic. “If there is anything that will bring the Ethiopian people together, it is music.”
The band has put out more than 20 singles and produced eight seasons of the radio drama, which consists of weekly hour-long shows tackling forced marriage, teen pregnancy, taboos around menstruation and other topics.
Though the project has only been running three years, its organizers already cite substantial attitude changes, based on independent annual surveys carried out by advertising agency M&C Saatchi — part of the monitoring requirements of the program.
According to the latest survey, conducted in 2016, 76 percent of the girls who listen to the show say it inspired them to stay in school. Listeners are also twice as likely to agree that parents beating their children should be reported to the authorities compared to those who don’t listen to the show. Some 3,000 schools in the Amhara region also use the radio program as part of their teaching materials.
Edem Birouk, a slight 17-year-old student in Addis Ababa, said the radio drama is the only show that talks about girls’ issues. “It helps us cope because the characters in the drama are around our age,” she said. “We learn how to deal with the issues they face, whether it is harassment or issues of self worth.”
Her friend Sarra Ayele, 16, said the show has encouraged her to open up to her mother and discuss the challenges she faces. “Since it’s not what I used to do, my mother finds it very surprising,” she said with a shy smile. “My mother now tells me her experiences and it makes her happy.”
The challenge is also getting boys and adults to listen to the show as much as they listen to the group’s songs. “Those who harass girls on the streets would be less likely to do so if they were regular listeners because they would then get what it does to the girls,” said Hikma Jamal, 16.
Yegna isn’t the only project in Ethiopia that uses media to challenge deep-seated social behaviors. In fact, it’s a tactic increasingly used by international development organizations.
“There is still a lot of skepticism on the influence of media for social change,” admitted Bill Ryerson, founder of the Population Media Center, which has been producing radio dramas and soap operas for development purposes across Africa since long before Yegna appeared on the scene. But Ryerson said social research proves that well-produced, well-written dramas are the best way to tackle such intractable problems.
For Ethiopian women’s rights activist Sehin Teferra, the fate of Yegna is a lesson not only in tactics but the limitations of foreign funding — and how much anti-aid sentiment exists in many countries.
The United States is no exception: President Trump’s transition team sent letters to the State Department asking pointed questions about aid to Africa as well as international programs promoting “gender equality,” suggesting there could be a major rethink in the U.S. aid approach.
“This is always the problem with the aid model,” said Teferra. “The funding can be taken away.”
The show will attempt to continue with other sources of funding.
Paul Schemm is the Post’s overnight foreign editor based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, joining the paper in 2016. He previously worked for the Associated Press as North Africa chief correspondent based in Morocco and prior to that in Cairo as part of the Middle East regional bureau.
On 9th April 2016, Reuters reported, more than five hundred migrants; 15 from Ethiopian, 190 from Somalia, 80 from Egypt and 85 from Sudan have drowned as an overcrowded Ship ferrying them left Alexandria, Egypt heading to Greek capsized in Mediterranean ocean. Same year in similar incident tens and hundreds of migrants illegally on transit to Europe drown. It’s truly a horrible human disaster! My prayer is with bereaved families and loved ones.
“If this Mass Sinking is not to be thoroughly investigated then three things will continue to happen. One, smugglers will continue to be richer. Second, Europe won’t put pressure on host country like Egypt in this case. Third, more people will drown”, BBC Newsnight reported.
Egyptian authorities, it sounds, have at least now picked interest in tracking and tracing how it – the Mediterranean human trafficking ring is centripitaling migrants from Somali, Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia, has kept enriching the traffickers. There should be a serious crackdown on the money-making cobweb.
In explaining why the migrants left their home country, it’s largely asserted; inobservance of, at least core, universal human rights principles, and absence of viable democratic governance from their respective country of origin is listed as a major push-factor.
Ethiopia, much as it’s praised to have hosted almost a million refugees from neighboring countries like South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia, annually it produces quite good number of refugees crossing Mediterranean.
Each time on a transit these unauthorized migrants from Ethiopia risk massive sinking in Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and a deadly desert corridor to a destination country – Europe and Middle East in most cases.
Some lucky ones have made through; others (simply many) are either have gone forever or ended up in wrong hands. But for many unregistered brokers – like human traffickers, it’s been a lucrative business. They say; one man’s problem is another man’s solution!
Oromo Media Network (OMN) while it has been trafficking Oromo issues, its branch manager in Cairo is reported to have involved in the Mediterranean Human Trafficking saga. BBC Newsnight reported, Muaz Mahmoud from Ethiopia, one of the victim survivors who lost his wife and two month old child, has narrated a very painful story of the tragic April 2016 shipwreck. Muaz implicated Nasibo Abdalla of Oromia Media Network Cairo branch who later on 1st January 2017 came under arrest in Cairo by Egyptian police. Egypt’s state sponsored investigation is underway and a conclusive report is yet to be made public. Here, an interesting question someone might ask is; ‘whether the said media organization is involved or not’.
Quite controversial with its management assembly, leadership disposition and its true intent; Oromia Media Network (OMN), is a television media outlet broadcasting ethnic Oromo’s exclusive social, political and economic perspective to Ethiopia. Down the road, irrefutably and for subtle end, the Diaspora based television is engaged on a serious business of fishing-out ‘Oromo community’ from its generic and natural setup – Ethiopia.
The rationale behind it sounds clear. The group like its program partner in charge of state power in Ethiopia does simply want to disrupt the age long line – Ethiopian National Identity, to which Oromo has been contributing its best to keep it more natural, vibrant and inclusive. It’s not a far-fetching fact that this media organization, then had slowly but surely involved in trafficking genuine Oromo issues unlinked with the people’s critical demand.
Ethiopia and Egypt are in a delicate relationship. In this heightened diplomatic rift one cannot rule out Egypt’s invisible hand on issues involving refugees from Ethiopia.
Egypt’s irrational Nile insecurity is standing toll than ever as Ethiopia’s retentive hydro-investment, if its self-induced ethnic challenges handled, is touching a probable momentum. But the establishment is no longer in the hands of Egypt; it’s not simply working out. From the backdoor, in order to ride the hydro-diplomacy drift in its favor, then Egypt has to remotely but expertly hold a trigger of an ethnic sling inside Ethiopia.
With its attached demographic, socioeconomic and geopolitical implications more than any other group ‘Oromo’s ethnocentric narrative’ graduates to be a soft target. That shouldn’t be taken for granted. Unlike some extreme leftist ethnic Oromo elites in the Diaspora who have been crafting an ‘ethnic identity’ as an anti-thesis to Ethiopian National Identity, back home substantial number of Ethiopians belonging to this sociolinguistic community are convincingly up to seeing Ethiopia where democratic principles are in full dispensation, human rights are respected, electoral democracy is ensured and economic marginalization is addressed.
Behind all this mess lays Marxist-Leninist oriented Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) led regime in Addis Ababa who ill-conceived and institutionalized ethnic politics in Ethiopia for the last 25 years.
Oromia Media Network (OMN) beyond its main subject – journalism, strategically bent on exploiting the Tigray First Ethiopia and the Nile Politics – then it ‘Loves Egypt’ more than it does ‘Ethiopia’. Either from Johannesburg or Cairo the love story will be live on its Arabic programming soon.
In Gondar, a city in Ethiopia’s northern highlands, a lone tourist pauses to take a photo of a fortress built more than two centuries ago. Nearby, past a row of gift shops, lies the wreck of a coach torched during unrest in August.
Gondar, known as “Africa’s Camelot”, was once the centre of the Ethiopian empire – at a time when that empire was defined mainly by Amhara traditions.
Today, the city is facing new tensions that have a complex history. A territorial dispute between elites here in the Amhara region and those in neighbouring Tigray has been simmering for at least 25 years.
Tigrayans have been accused by opponents of wielding undue influence over Ethiopia’s government and security agencies since 1991. In recent months, these and other grievances have led to protests, strikes, vandalism and killings in Gondar, causing a drastic reduction in foreign visitors to the tourism-dependent city and an exodus of fearful Tigrayans.
Shops and schools have reopened in Gondar, after the authorities reasserted control in urban areas by declaring a state of emergency on 8 October. But sporadic clashes with the military continue in the countryside.
“We don’t feel like it is our country. We feel like it is the time when the Italians invaded. We are like second-class citizens,” says a prosperous local businessman. Like all interviewees, he requested anonymity due to fear of reprisals from the authorities. Europeans never colonised Ethiopia, but Mussolini’s army occupied the country from 1936 to 1941.
Gondar’s predicament is a microcosm of Ethiopia’s: a toxic brew of uneven development, polarised debate amid a virtual media vacuum, contested history, ethnic tensions, a fragmented opposition and an authoritarian government. Ethiopia’s rulers show few signs of being able to solve the morass of problems, which many believe the government itself caused.
Trouble began in Gondar in July 2015, when word went around that the authorities intended to arrest Col Demeke Zewdu, a former rebel and retired military officer.When security forces tried to arrest Zewdu, who is a member of a committee campaigning over the contested Wolkait territory, armed Amharas protected him and several people, including security officers, were killed.
Wolkait is an administrative district in Tigray that borders Amhara. The committee says Wolkait and others areas were taken out of Gondar’s control by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front in 1992, when Ethiopia was divided into a federation along ethno-linguistic lines. Allied rebels led by the TPLF, who unseated a military regime in 1991, introduced the system and still monopolise power.
Critics of the committee point out that a 1994 census found more than 96% of the people of Wolkait were Tigrayan , and that the complaints of annexation stem from the town of Gondar, not the district itself. The activists say the TPLF moved Tigrayans into the area during the rebellion.
The issue struck a chord in Gondar. After Demeke’s arrest, rural militiamen paraded through the city on 31 July, firing bullets into the air during a large, peaceful demonstration. It is thought that the demonstration was facilitated by the Amhara wing of the TPLF-founded Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – a four-party coalition that, along with allied organisations, controls all the country’s legislative seats.
A Tigrayan lecturer at Gondar University said he abhors Ethiopia’s ethnicised politics and believes jostling between the Amhara and Tigrayan EPRDF wings lay behind the Gondar violence. The TPLF is the predominant party in the EPRDF, and Amhara National Democratic Movement politicians are seeking greater power, he said. “I don’t believe in parties which are organised on ethnicity. I prefer it to be based on the individual.” An end to ethnic politics would make a resolution of the Wolkait issue possible, he believes.
Among activists from Amhara, disavowal of the ethnicity-based system is at the crux of disagreements over how to oppose the EPRDF. Because federalism formally protects the rights of communities marginalised during previous eras, when Ethiopia was a unitary state, promoting national unity at the expense of ethnic autonomy is often cast as regressive.
Groups promoting Amhara identity within a democratised federation are therefore at odds with those focused on national cohesion, according to Wondwesen Tafesse, a commentator on Amhara issues. “Since most diaspora Amharas support Ethiopianist political parties, they seem to have this fear in the back of their mind that a resurgent Amhara nationalism, and the possible emergence of a strong Amhara political organisation, might undermine their political designs,” said Wondwesen.
In the weeks after Demeke’s detainment, there was more unrest, amid allegations that Tigrayan businesses were being targeted and Tigrayans attacked. People in Gondar say the companies were targeted because of their connections with the regime, rather than the owners’ ethnicity.
Amba Giorgis town in the North Gondar district of Ethiopia’s Amhara region. A territorial dispute has recently caused clashes between farmers and the military
Unrest in Amhara was preceded by protests by the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, who also complain of marginalisation and repression. In response, the government has reshuffled officials – and intensified repression. During the state of emergency, the government has sent at least 24,000 people to camps for indoctrination under rules that allow the suspension of due process. According to the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, security forces killed some 600 demonstrators over the past year.
Since the beginning of November, a new federal cabinet has been announced and similar changes made in the Amhara government. But while maladministration and corruption were tagged as the pre-eminent problems, there is little evidence of officials being punished, or of policy reforms. An Amhara government spokesman said systemic changes were not required.
In August, on the outskirts of Gondar near Demeke’s neighbourhood, a crowd looted Baher Selam hotel. It was targeted following a rumour that the Tigrayan security officers allegedly involved in the operation to arrest the colonel were staying there.
Near the wrecked hotel, an elderly lady was roasting coffee beans. On the morning of the incident she was coming home from church when she heard gunshots.Business has since declined and large numbers of unemployed young people have been mobilised against the government, she said.
People here believe Wolkait was part of Gondar throughout history. “If they take that place, where else are they going to take?” the woman asked. “The situation is not going to go back to normal. If you light a match, it’s small – but it can burn a whole area.”
Michael Atsbeha | AP
