Alemayehu Atomsa didn't resign and was poisoned says EthSat

The controversy of Alemayehu Atomsa’s ‘resignation’

A high placed source within the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation (OPDO), a member party of the EPRDF, said the recent reports that the ex- Oromia region president and Chairman of the OPDO, Alemayehu Atomsa did ‘resign himself’ as was ‘false’.

Alemayehu had reportedly held a full day evaluation on February 17, 2014 regarding the corruption, lack of good administration and nepotism in the Oromia region.

Most members of the Organisation and others who served as senior officials during the times of the former chairman of the Organisation, Abadula Gemeda, now Speaker of the Parliament, have been arguing with Alemayehu. He was even being forced to speak louder than he would when he was in such a precarious health status.

When the row between the Central Committee members was being tensioned, Alemayehu was later in the evening forced to close the meeting. When most members of the Council left the building and the meeting, Aster Mamo, OPDO’s Head of Organisational Affairs and considered by many as the loyal representative of the TPLF within OPDO, stayed back in her office.

Aster asked Alemayehu why he was not leaving and minutes later she called an ambulance to take him to a hospital near Gerji. The next day Alemayehu was flown abroad per the referral of the hospital for further treatment.

When the Central Committee learnt that Alemayehu’s illness was life threatening, it met the next day and wrote a letter stating that Alemayehu Atomsa has officially resigned from his post.

Alemayehu had entered no letter of resignation.

After some competition for the post, Muktar Kedir, considered by many as pro-Abadula Gemeda, has taken over the chairmanship.

It is to be recalled that ESAT, quoting some officials of the OPDO, had reported that Alemayehu Atomsa was ‘poisoned’ after consuming a food two years ago. Alemayehu’s bodyguard has been also suffering from a similar disease since then. He is also now being treated at a hospital near Gerji in Addis Abeba.

Alemayhu had started a new movement of clearing the Oromia region from corruption days after he became the region’s president.

Insiders say Muktar Kedir’s election is a big relief to TPLF.

_Oromowiki_

Ethiopians return home to a bleak future

More than 150,000 Ethiopians have been deported from Saudi Arabia in recent months. Rebecca Murray Ahmed woke up in a Riyadh hospital with his kidney removed [Rebecca Murray/Al Jazeera] Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Ahmed, 20 years old, weakly sits down in a chair under the hot sun, dazed, as young men and women jostle in the yard around him. He has just been deported from Saudi Arabia after a month-long imprisonment, like the others at this crowded migrant transit center in Ethiopia's capital. But Ahmed's ordeal is unique. He bears fresh scars across his knees, down his upper arms, and across his stomach. With a medical investigation by an Ethiopian doctor still ongoing, preliminary results show so far that Ahmed is missing his left kidney.  His short-term memory fails him. Ahmed, who comes from Ethiopia's central Amhara region, does remember paying a couple hundred dollars to human smugglers for the dangerous, illegal passage to Djibouti, across the sea to Yemen, and north to Saudi Arabia.  He worked for a year and a half as a carpenter in Riyadh, living with other Ethiopian migrants and sending home meagre wages to his impoverished family.  Three months ago Ahmed recalls waking up in a Riyadh hospital room with jagged wounds crisscrossing his body, but with no recollection about how he got them, or how he got there. Promptly transferred to an overcrowded Riyadh prison because of his illegal immigration status, Ahmed was finally deported home by plane a few weeks ago. He is waiting to hear the doctor's final prognosis before he returns to his village, a sickly version of his former self.  Saudi deports 'up to 150,000' Ethiopians 'Coming back empty-handed' "It's not just the return, it's also the effect of what happens after," explained Sara Hamo, a protection officer with the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) in Addis Ababa, about the thousands of deportees. "They are coming back empty-handed. They used to supply money and now they are a burden on the families they used to provide for. So the return is just the beginning." While accounts like Ahmed's missing kidney are rare, many Ethiopians at the migrant transit centre talked about torture in ad-hoc detention centres run by traffickers, most often for ransom, as well as beatings, sex abuse, gruelling work hours and wages withheld by Saudi employers.  Bereket Feleke, a health ministry official, said respiratory tract infections were the most common ailment returnees suffer, which they get from being held for weeks in overcrowded and filthy detention centres before deportation.  Ethiopian women and girls, often recruited by employment agencies as domestic workers, fly to Saudi Arabia and are legally bound to their employers, who withhold their passports. If the workers break their contract - willingly or forced - their status becomes illegal. A similar system of employee "sponsorship", known askafala, exists across many of the Gulf states. But many more Ethiopian migrants in Saudi Arabia are smuggled in, further increasing their vulnerability for exploitation.  Travel ban Because of widespread abuse, the Ethiopian government has issued a temporary travel ban on domestic workers while it works on a protection law. Critics say this could encourage more illegal migration.  Last November, the kingdom's authorities enforced strict labour laws governing foreign workers after a seven-month reprieve, spurred partly by the potential security threat of thousands of unemployed Saudi youth. And Saudi Arabian vigilante groups in Riyadh, armed with clubs and machetes, brutally attacked Ethiopian migrants in November, prompting tens of thousands of the workers to turn themselves in to the kingdom's authorities out of fear. When I asked for payment, and permission to call my family, the man of the house said: 'You have no family, so why do you need money?' He tied my hands behind my back, put cloth in my mouth and beat me. He then kicked me out of the house. Abigail, Ethiopian orphan Unskilled labourers from neighbouring Yemen, the Horn of Africa and southeast Asia have been particularly hard-hit by the deportations, which the Saudi Arabian interior ministry claims have reached around a quarter of a million. Adam Coogle, a Middle East researcher with Human Rights Watch, suspects the number is much higher. "I think workers from different nationalities are taking a wait-and-see approach to what is happening in Saudi Arabia," Coogle said. "They will want to see if this is a labour crackdown that is sustained, or if it is just to scare them, and will end up being business as usual." IOM in Addis Ababa estimates that nearly 160,000 Ethiopians have been detained and deported from Saudi Arabia because of their irregular status. The peak was in November, when 9,000 deportees arrived on planes to the Ethiopian capital every day. These days, the numbers have dwindled to around 300 a day.  At nearly 92 million, Ethiopia has Africa's second-largest population after Nigeria, and a rapidly growing economy. Agriculture is the country's leading economic sector, but drought, poor cultivation practices, land-grabs and mass displacement of rural populations have garnered headlines recently. The youth unemployment rate is high. Many choose to seek work abroad and send remittances home. 'They have been targeted' Abigail is a 15-year-old orphan from an Amhara village who quit school when she was in the second grade. Her seven-month trip to Saudi Arabia was arduous. Her uncle paid an agency to find her work in the kingdom, and send money home. With her passport withheld, she cleaned and took care of the children in the household she was assigned to, as well as their relatives' homes. "When I asked for payment, and permission to call my family, the man of the house said: 'You have no family, so why do you need money?'" she recalled. "He tied my hands behind my back, put cloth in my mouth and beat me. He then kicked me out of the house." The police arrested Abigail. Without her passport and valid working papers, she was imprisoned and deported. "There is an anger within the Ethiopian population," said Temesgen Deressa, a guest scholar with the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institute. "They have been targeted - killed, or tortured and dehumanised." "In terms of the whole economy, the remittances might not be significant, but the returnees' families are going to be hard-hit," he said. "There is a high level of poverty in Ethiopia, and I don't think the Ethiopian government has the capacity for rehabilitation. Basically, the returnees will have a very hard time." Follow Rebecca Murray on Twitter: @BeccaMurr _Aljazeera_

US slams Ethiopia's human rights abuse

(OPride) — The United States in a scathing report on Thursday accused Ethiopia of curtailing freedom of expression and association, using politically motivated trials, harassment and intimidation of activists and journalists.

Ethiopia holds estimated 70,000-80,000 persons, including some 2,500 women and nearly 600 children incarcerated with their mothers, in severely overcrowded six federal and 120 regional prisons, the U.S. said in its voluminous 2013 Human Rights Reportreleased by Secretary of State John Kerry. “There also were many unofficial detention centers throughout the country, including in Dedessa, Bir Sheleko, Tolay, Hormat, Blate, Tatek, Jijiga, Holeta, and Senkele,” the report said.
While it said pretrial detention in local police stations were marred with poor hygiene and police abuse, the report also highlighted impunity for security forces who often commit politically-motivated killings against dissidents and opposition party members as “a serious problem.” The Ethiopian government rarely, if ever, took actions “to prosecute or otherwise punish officials who committed abuses other than corruption,” the report added.
The report named some of the well-known political prisoners and journalists including Eskinder Nega, Bekele Gerba, Olbana Lelisa, Reeyot Alemu and Woubeshet Taye.“Federal Supreme Court upheld the 2012 convictions under the criminal code of Bekele Gerba and Olbana Lelisa, two well-known political opposition figures from the Oromo ethnic group, for conspiracy to overthrow the government and conspiracy to incite unrest,” the report noted.

“The Supreme Court subsequently determined the Federal High Court did not consider mitigating circumstances and reduced Bekele’s sentence from eight years to three years and seven months. The Supreme Court also reduced Olbana’s sentenced from 13 to 11 years. Courts convicted 69 members of Oromo political opposition parties, charged separately in 2011 under the criminal code with “attacking the political or territorial integrity of the state.”

Gerba, who has fully served out his reduced time, was widely expected to be released last month. However, according to family sources, prison officials gave conflicting reasons for his continued imprisonment, including that his time at the Maekelawi prison doesn’t count or his file was misplaced. Meanwhile, both Gerba and Lelisa are reportedly ill with restricted and limited medical care.

Terminally ill

Lelisa is a longtime Oromo rights activist with Oromo Peoples Congress (OPC), who rose through the ranks of the organization from a sole member to top leadership. He competed in the last three elections representing the Caliya district in West Shewa. He was elected to the Oromia regional parliament in 2005. He was subsequently arrested on concocted charges of plotting to overthrow government by working with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), recruiting youth for armed rebellion and for inciting the frequent youth revolt in Ambo and West Shewa.
Lelisa, who has so far served three years of the 11 years sentence, reports being mistreated while in prison. He has repeatedly been beaten by unidentified men at Kaliti prison with orders from security services. He has sustained serious wounds from the beatings by government agents who pose as prisoners, according to OPride sources. Lelisa, who is terminally ill and said to be on a long-term medication for undisclosed condition, had repeatedly appealed to the higher court about his mistreatment but received no response to date.
Singling out the Oromo

While the State Department’s report is short on details, there are several evidences that show the Ethiopian government continues to single out Oromo dissidents. Last year, the OLF released a partial list (independently verified by a reputable OPride source) of 528 individuals sentenced to death and life imprisonment on purely political grounds.
The list includes names of individuals, their gender, and ethnic backgrounds. Underscoring the disproportionate repression of the Oromo, of the 528 individuals who were sentenced to death or life imprisonment by the Ethiopian courts, 459 are Oromo nationals followed by 52 Amhara nationals. “This list clearly indicates that the minority regime in Ethiopia is using its kangaroo courts for destroying Oromo and Amhara nationals who are viewed as potential threat to the regimes hold on to power,” one informant, who asked not to be named, told OPride.

As documented by various international human rights organizations, today, it is a serious crime, under the Tigrean dominated Ethiopian government to support any independent Oromo organization. Thousands of Oromos have been imprisoned, tortured and killed extra-judicially for no apparent reason other than expressing Oromo national feeling and for their support of Oromo organizations such as the OLF.

The selective and systematic targeting of Oromo in Ethiopia by the current began in 1992 when the OLF which jointly ruled Ethiopia from 1991-1992  with the Tigrayan Liberation Front (TPLF) was banned and its members and supporters jailed for years and hundreds executed without due process of law. Although Oromia, the Oromo regional state in Ethiopia, is autonomous in name, the Oromo do not have any meaningful voice in the affairs of their own state, which is totally controlled by the TPLF.

The later represents no more than seven percent of the population of Ethiopia, while the Oromo, who constitute the single largest national group in Ethiopia and the third largest national group in the whole of Africa. The Oromo are denied the basic democratic rights to organize freely and legally and express their political opinions. There is no single independent newspaper or media outlet catering to the Oromo populace in their native tongue.
The TPLF fears the Oromo numerical strength deliberately characterizes all independent Oromo organizations, which it does not control as the “terror wing” of the OLF.  The goal for such characterization is to persecute peaceful supporters of the OLF behind the façade of fighting against a “ terrorist organization.” Under the anti-terror law of the current Ethiopian regime, anyone who is suspected of peacefully supporting the OLF, could be sentenced to life imprisonment or executed. The above mentioned 459 Oromo nationals who were sentenced to death or life imprisonment are all  suspected OLF supporters.

Destroying the lives of 528 innocent human beings on political ground is a crime against humanity, which must be condemned by all civilized nations. The tearless cry of the U.S. AnnuaL Human Rights report notwithstanding, at this moment no calling is more urgent and more noble and no responsibility greater for those who believe in human rights than raising their voice for pressuring the government of Ethiopia to free the 528 innocent individuals who were sentenced to death and life imprisonment  on purely political grounds.

In the last year alone, two Oromo activists have died in prison under mysterious circumnances. Last year, OPride reported about the death in prison of former UNHCR recognized refugee, engineer Tesfahun Chemeda. Last month, a former parliamentary candidate from Chalenqo in Western Hararghe, Ahmed Nejash died in prison. According to an OPC source, Nejash successfully run and challenegd Sufian Ahmed, Ethiopia's Minister of Finance and Development, during the 2010 elections. He was subsequently arrested in 2011 alleged of being an OLF activist. Although his death recieved scant media coverage even within the Oromo community, a close relative of the late Jarra Abba Gadaa, Nejash is one of the veterans of Oromo people's struggle. "He was sentenced to seven years, which was also upheld by the higher court," the OPC source told OPride. "He was in Zuway with Bekele and Olbana and he was healthy the last time I saw him in 2013."

_opride_