By Obang Jobi (USA) – The Anywaa communities in both Ethiopia and Sudan (now South Sudan) are bordering to the most hostile communities in Africa. Since 1955 until 2005, Sudan, like most African countries, has experienced three consecutive civil wars. The first civil war (Anyanya) erupted in 1955 and ended in 1972. The peace agreement which was signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1972 did last long. The discontented former Anyanya I leaders took up arms again in 1975 and formed Anyanya II. Continue reading
Ethiopian Airlines co-pilot hijacks plane to seek Geneva asylum
The hijacker – who has been arrested – waited for the pilot to go to the toilet to lock himself in the cockpit. He was unarmed. He has requested asylum in Switzerland.
The airline said in a statement that all 202 passengers and crew were safe.
Geneva airport, which was closed for a time, has now reopened. Continue reading
Foreign regimes use spyware against journalists, even in U.S.
(Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) – Neamin Zeleke, managing director of Ethiopian Satelite Television, suspects that the Ethiopian government has employed spyware to identify opposition supporters
By Craig Timberg – Mesay Mekonnen was at his desk, at a news service based in Northern Virginia, when gibberish suddenly exploded across his computer screen one day in December. A sophisticated cyberattack was underway. But this wasn’t the Chinese army or the Russian mafia at work.
Instead, a nonprofit research lab has fingered government hackers in a much less technically advanced nation, Ethiopia, as the likely culprits, saying they apparently used commercial spyware, essentially bought off the shelf. This burgeoning industry is making surveillance capabilities that once were the exclusive province of the most elite spy agencies, such as National Security Agency, available to governments worldwide. Click here to watch the video Continue reading
Ethiopia – Land for Sale
As the economy thrives, we examine the plight of Ethiopians forced from their land to make way for foreign investors.
Just a few decades ago, Ethiopia was a country defined by its famines, particularly between 1983-1985 when in excess of half a million people starved to death as a consequence of drought, crop failure and a brutal civil war.
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Ethiopian refugee misunderstands South Sudan curfew, nearly loses life
Ochalla receives treatment for a bullet wound at a UNHCR-run clinc in Gorom settlement near Juba, home to some 2,400 Ethiopian refugees.
GOROM SETTLEMENT, South Sudan, January 27 (UNHCR) – Punctuality is usually praised as a virtue, but how often is tardiness fatal? For Ochalla Omot, an Ethiopian refugee, a misunderstanding over an hour and a half nearly cost his life.
“I just could not believe I was going to die like that,” the 27-year-old says while receiving treatment for a bullet wound incurred after he got the hours of a government-imposed curfew wrong. He’s receiving treatment in a UN-run clinic in Gorom Settlement, some 25 kilometres west of Juba, the South Sudanese capital. The settlement is home to 2,400 Ethiopian refugees who live in their own small houses and compounds.
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Gambella Democratic Movement (GDM) Press Release
The central committee of the Gambella Democratic Movement (GDM) has been conducting self-evaluations beginning the first week of the New Year (2014). The central committee carefully looked into rules and regulations of the party’s standard operations procedures (SOP). Upon the revision of the rules, the party’s chairman, Okello Akway Ochalla has been found in violation of the rules and regulations of the GDM. Chairman Okello AKway Ochalla has Continue reading
S.Sudan rebel leader vows to fight on after losing key town
Displaced South Sudanese on the Nile after fleeing violence in Bor, where the UN said rebels had been ransacking property in the town. Photo: Nichole Sobecki/AFP/Getty
By Ashraf Shazly, AFP – South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar confirmed Friday that rebel forces had lost control of the key northern oil town of Bentiu, but vowed his fighters would continue their battle against the government.
“We withdrew from Bentiu, but it was to avoid fighting in the streets and save civilian lives. We fight on, we will continue the battle,” Machar told AFP by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location in the country.
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Israel Wakes Up to Ariel Sharon as Former Prime Minister Nears Death
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the lighting of a Hanukkah candle at his Jerusalem office, on Dec. 27, 2005.
By Karl Vick - During the eight years that Ariel Sharon lay in a hospital bed, sustained by a feeding tube and turned at regular intervals to prevent bedsores, his great body shrank and his legacy slowly shifted. Both admired and reviled as Israel’s signature warrior during 58 of his first 72 years of life, Sharon in his coma has been more remembered for his only term as prime minister, five years marked first by restraint, then by actions both bold and unexpected, starting with the decision to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005. Continue reading
South Sudan Peace Talks to Open in Ethiopia
By JASON STRAZIUSO and ELIAS MESERET, JUBA, South Sudan (AP) – Negotiators from South Sudan’s two warring sides arrived Wednesday in Ethiopia for peace talks, and a U.N. official urged both forces to bring the world’s newest country “back from the brink.”
Fighting continued in Bor, a gateway city to the capital of Juba, a government official said. Bor is just 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Juba. Continue reading
South Sudan crisis: Kenya and Ethiopia leaders in Juba for talks
The three leaders met behind closed doors in Juba
More than a thousand people are feared dead in violence that began 11 days ago and has raised fears of a civil war. Continue reading