Friday, April 20, 2012
OLF condemns eviction of Amharas from the South
April
15 (ESAT News) The faction of OLF that is led by Brigadier General
Kemal Gelchu has condemned the wholesale eviction of Amharas from
Southern Regional State province of Guraferada.
The statement was
given on behalf of the faction by the Chairman General Kemal Gelchu. In
his statement, he accused the government of Meles Zenawi of using
boilerplate divide and rule political tactics. The General also said the
recent incidences of tensions and conflicts in Afar, Gambella, Southern
Ethiopia and Oromia regional state are the workings of the ever unease
government of Meles Zenawi and should be condemned unequivocally by all
Ethiopians.The General also said the government uses religion as yet another fault line to divide and weaken the people’s unity and resolve to extend its tyrannical rule. He called upon all Ethiopians not only to shun this diabolical ploy but also to expose and fight back those who serve as agents to the regime involved in these nefarious and highly consequential political plots.
The statement concluded that this wholesale eviction of Amharas from their households and properties constitute a crime of ethnic cleansing. General reiterated Ethiopians’ right to abode anywhere within the country irrespective of their ethnicities.
Søksmålet fra 342 etiopiere blir avvist av staten
I vinter har folk over hele Norge engasjert seg for å få etiopiske asylsøkere til
å bli i Norge. I stavangerområdet har Ulf Ludvigsen (midten) og rundt
40 andre skrevet omgjøringsbegjæringer for å få utlendingsmyndighetene
til å endre vedtaket for noen av de rundt 400 etioperne som kan bli
tvangssendt ut av landet.Foto: Mari Friestad/NRK
Publisert 20.04.2012 18:18.
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Regjeringsadvokat Kirsten Berger slår i tilsvaret fast at vilkårene for gruppesøksmål ikke er til stede, melder Stavanger Aftenblad.
- LES OGSÅ: Tegest har ikkje sove i det heile
- LES OGSÅ: – Kanskje eg blir drepen
- LES OGSÅ: Frivillige skrev omgjøringsbegjæringer
Girum Zeleke.– Da blir de enkeltsaker
I slutten av januar undertegnet Norge en utleveringsavtale med Etiopia. For etiopiere som ikke returnerer frivillig, åpner avtalen for tvangsretur.- LES OGSÅ: Ingen tvangsreturnert
- BAKGRUNN: Dette er Etiopia
Regjeringsadvokaten: – Ikke i fare
Saksøkerne har ulike asylgrunnlag og ulik tilknytning til Norge, og de kom hit på ulike tidspunkt, påpeker Berger.- LES OGSÅ: FN med kritiske Etiopia-spørsmål
Artikkelen fortsetter under videoen.
VIDEO: NRK møtte en av dem som har gått i dekning, og som var med på søksmålet mot staten. (Arkiv 2. april 2012)
– Alle risikerer forfølgelse
Det er Zeleke helt uenig i.– Alle som tvangssendes til Etiopia, risikerer forfølgelse. Landet er et knallhardt diktatur som nådeløst både fengsler og torturerer alle som kritiserer eller har kritisert det sittende regimet, sier han
ዲያስፖራው ለአባይ ግድብ ግንባታ ያሳየው ተነሳሽነት መንግስትን ማሳዘኑ ታወቀ
ሚያዚያ ፲፪ (አስራ ሁለት) ቀን ፳፻፬ ዓ/ምኢሳት ዜና:-የውጭ ጉዳይ መስሪያ ቤት ሰሞኑን ይፋ ባወጣው መረጃ መሰረት በውጭ የሚገኙ ኢትዮጵያውያን ለአባይ ግድብ ግንባታ ያሳዩት ተነሳሽነት ዝቀተኛ መሆን፣ መንግስትን በእጅጉ ያበሳጨ ጉዳይ ሆኗል በማለት ዘጋቢያችን ከአዲስ አበባ መልእክቱን አስተላልፎአል። መንግስት ለግንባታው የሚውለውን አብዛኛውን የውጭ ምንዛሬ ከዲያስፖራው ለመሰብሰብ አቅዶ የነበረ ቢሆንም፣ ዲያስፖራው እስከ ዛሬ ያዋጣው ገንዘብ ከ7 ሚሊዮን ዶላር በታች መሆን መንግስት በዲያስፖራው ላይ የነበረውን እምነት እንዲያጣ አድርጎታል። አንድ የውጭ ጉዳይ ሰራተኛ ” ዘ ጋቨርመንት ኢዝ ፒስድ ኦፍ” በማለት የመንግስትን ስሜት ለማንጸባረቅ መሞከሩን የደረሰን ዜና ያመለክታል ።
መንግስት ለዲያስፖራው ምላሽ መቀዝቀዝ ተጠያቂ ያደረገው የተቃዋሚ ሀይሎችን ሲሆን፣ ኢሳት ቴሌቪዥን፣ ግንቦት7 ፣ የአሜሪካ ድምጽ፣ እንዲሁም ከድረገጽ ኢትዮሚዲያ፣ ከፓልቶክ ወቅታዊ የመወያያ መድረክ አፍራሽ ሚና መጫወታቸውን የውጭ ጉዳይ መስሪያ ቤት ሰራተኛው ለዘጋቢአችን ቃል በቃል ተናግሯል።
የአባይ ግንባታ ኮሚቴ ከውጭ ጉዳይ መስሪያ ቤት ጋር በመተባበር የፋሲካ በአልን ምክንያት በማድረግ ወደ አገራቸው የገቡ ኢትዮጵያውያንን ለማወያየት ማቀዱም ተስምቷል።
በውጭ የሚገኙ ኢትዮጵያውያን ብቻ ሳይሆኑ በአገር ውስጥ የሚገኙ ኢትዮጵያውያንም በአባይ ግንባታ ዙሪያ የሚያሳዩት የስሜት መቀዛቀዝ መንግስትን ያስደነገጠው ጉዳይ ሆኗል። አቶ መለስ ዜናዊ ከአመት በፊት መላውን የኢትዮጵያ ህዝብ በማስተባበር ግድቡን እንደሚጨርሱት ተናግረው የነበረ ቢሆንም፣ ከአመት በሁዋላ ኢትዮጵያዊያን ከ15 እስከ 20 በመቶ የሚሆነውን ወጪ ከሸፈኑ እንደ ትልቅ ስኬት እናየዋለን በማለት፣ በተዘዋዋሪ መንገድ በህዝቡ ምላሽ አለመርካታቸውን መግለጻቸው ይታወሳል። በርካታ ኢትዮጵያውያን አባይ አፈራችንን ብቻ ሳይሆን ኪሳችንን ጭምር ጠራርጎ እየወሰደው ነው በማለት ስሜታቸውን ሲገልጹ ይሰማል።
በአማራ ክልል የሚገኙ አርሶአደሮች ለአባይ ግድብ ቦንድ እንዲገዙ መገደዳቸው ከኢህአዴግ ካድሬዎች ጋር እያላተማቸው እንደሚገኝ መዘገባችን ይታወሳል። ብአዴን የአማራ አርሶ አደሮች እስከ ያዝነው ወር መጨረሻ ድረስ የ1 ቢሊዮን ብር ቦንድ መግዛት አለባቸው የሚል መመሪያ አውርዷል። መመሪያውን ተግባራዊ ለማድረግ የተንቀሳቀሱት ካድሬዎች ከገበሬው ያገኙት ምላሽ አሉታዊ በመሆኑ፣ ገበሬውን ማስፈራራት መጀመራቸውን ነው ደረሱን መረጃዎች የሚያመለክቱት።
ሙስሊሞች ዛሬ በአወልያ መስጊድ ተገኝተው ተቃውሞአቸውን አሰሙ
ሚያዚያ ፲፪ (አስራ ሁለት) ቀን ፳፻፬ ዓ/ምኢሳት ዜና:-በብዙ መቶ ሺዎች የሚቆጠሩ ሙስሊሞች ዛሬ በአወልያ መስጊድ ተገኝተው ተቃውሞአቸውን አሰሙ::
በዛሬው የጁመዓ ጸሎት እጅግ በርካታ ቁጥር ያለው ሙስሊም ተገኝቶ በተለይ አቶ መለስ በቅርቡ ያደረጉትን ንግግር መቃወሙን የደረሰን ዜና ያመለክታል። ወጣቱ፣ ጎልማሳው አዛውንቱ የአቶ መለስ ንግግር ክርስቲያኑን ከሙስሊሙ ለማጋጨት ሆን ተብሎ የቀ ረበ መሆኑን በመረዳት በተለያዩ መንገዶች ተቃውሞውን ሲገልጽ ተሰምቷል።
ከአራት ቀን በፊት አቶ መለስ ዜናዊ በፓርላማ ቀርበው ባደረጉት ንግግር ላይ ህዝበ ሙስሊሙ ቅሬታ የተሰማው መሆኑን የገለጹልን አንድ ታዋቂ ሙስሊም፣ ሰውየው ሆን ብለው ህዝቡን የሌለ ሥጋት በመፍጠር በሃይማኖት ለመከፋፈል የሚያመቻቸውን ንግግር ብለዋል። ታዋቂው ሙስሊም ከእንግዲህ በየመስኪዶች በምናደርገው የተቃውሞ ስብሰባ ላይ ፈቃደኛ የሆኑ ክርስቲያን ወንድሞቻችንና እህቶቻችን ተገኝተው ፣ መንግሥት በሀሰት የሚጭንብን ክስ መሠረት የሌለው እና በሠላማዊ መንገድ ሃይማኖቴን በመንግሥት ሰዎች ምርጫ ሳይሆን ራሳችን በመረጥናቸው ዑላማዎችና የአህባሽን ሳይሆን እስልምና የሚለንን ዶክትሪን እናምልክ፣ የሚል መሆኑን እንዲያረጋግጡ እንጠይቃለን “ብለዋል፡፡
በየመስኪዱ አቅራቢያ የሚገኙ የአጥቢያ ቤተክርስቲያን ክርስቲያኖችም ጥሪ ተላልፎላቸዋል ሲሉ ለኢሳት ዘጋቢ ገልጠዋል።
በአስኮ አቅራቢያ የምትኖረው ኢክራም ሞሀመድ በበኩሏ “እኔ መምህርት እና ሙስሊም ነኝ፣ ጠ/ሚንስትሩ በፓርላማ ቀርበው ንግግር ያደርጋሉ ሲባል ስለመምህራንና ስለሙስሊሙ ማህበረሰብ ያላቸውን ግንዛቤና አዎንታዊ የመፍትሄ ምላሻቸውን አደምጣለሁ ብዬ ጓጉቼ ነበር ፤ ሆኑም ተራ ቅጥፈት፣ ዛቻ፣ ማስፈራራያ፣ ንቀት እና እውነታውን በማድበስበስ ጥያቄዎቹን የጥቂቶች የማስመሰልና የማደፋፈን ንግግር ነው ያደረጉት፣ እንዲያውም እኛን በዘወርዋራ መንገድ የክርስቲያኖች ስጋት ሁሉ አስመስለው አቀረቡን ስለዚህ ይህ ሀሰት መሆኑን ለማሳየት ስብስባችን ላይ ክርስቲያን ወንድሞቻችንና እህቶቻችን እንዲገኙ እየጠየቅን” ነው ብላለች፡፡
ሌላ ወጣት ደግሞ ተቃውሞው ከእንግዲህ በመላ አገሪቱ በሚደረጉት መስኪዶች ተጠናክሮ የሚቀጥል መሆኑን፣ መንግስት የፈለገውን የሀይል እርምጃ ቢወስድ ወደ ሁዋላ እንደማይመለሱ ገልጦ፣ መንግስት ጥያቄውን በሀይል ለመጨፍለቅ የሚያደርገው ሙከራ ህዝቡን ይበልጥ እያስቆጣ የሚሄድ እንጅ የሚያረጋጋው አይሆንም ብሎአል።
ይህ በእንዲህ እንዳለ ባለፈው ዓርብ ቃሊቲ ቻራሊያ አቅራቢያ በሚገኘው መስኪድ ውስጥ መጅሊስ አይወክለንም የሚል ቲሸርት የለበሱ ሙስሊሞችን የፌዴራል ፖሊስ ከመስኪድ እያስወጣ በቁጥጥር ሥር እንዳዋላቸው ለማወቅ ተችሏል፡፡
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Bedrock of art and faith
By Holland Cotter, The New York Times | April 20, 2012
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| St. George of Lalibela |
LALIBELA, Ethiopia -- ON the roads through Ethiopia’s highlands traffic
raises a brick-red haze that coats your clothes, powders your skin and
starts a creaking in your lungs. Despite the dust people wear white.
Farmers wrap themselves in bleached cotton. Village funerals look like
fields of snow. At churches and shrines white is the pilgrim’s color.
I wear it too, protectively: long-sleeved white shirt, tennis cap, Neutrogena sun block. A pilgrim? Why not?
I’m here for something I’ve longed to see, Ethiopia’s holy cities:
Aksum, the spiritual home of this east African country’s Orthodox
Christian faith and, especially, the mountain town of Lalibela, with its
cluster of 13th-century churches some 200 miles to the south.
Lalibela was conceived as a paradise on earth. And its 11 churches, cut
from living volcanic rock, are literally anchored in the earth. In
scale, number, and variety of form there’s no architecture or sculpture
quite like them anywhere. They’re on the global tourist route now,
though barely. To Ethiopian devotees they’ve been spiritual lodestars
for eight centuries, and continue to be.
Heaven seekers and art seekers are, in some ways, kindred souls,
impelled to spend precious time and travel mad distances in search of
places and things that will, somehow, fill them up, complete them. For
the religious, pilgrimage is a dress rehearsal for salvation. For the
art seeker, it can transform a wish list of experiences into a catalog
of permanent, extended, relivable memories. But why do art seekers go to
the particular places and things they do? This is a personal matter;
complicated, with roots in the past.
As an American teenager in the early 1960s I sensed Africa all around
me, secondhand. African independence was on the evening news; names like
Lumumba, Nkrumah and Senghor chanted by jubilant crowds. “Civil rights”
was turning into “black power,” with preachers in suits replaced by
Huey Newton holding a spear in one hand, a shotgun in the other.
In college I took an anthropology course called “Primitive Art.” It met
in an ethnological museum that had a collection of masks from West and
Central Africa. I loved them instantly, these things made for dancing,
healing, telling stories, changing identities. They looked old but felt
new. I wanted to go to where they came from.
But not ready yet, I went that first college summer to Europe, where I
dashed through countless museums in 15 countries before ending up in
Istanbul. Again, love, immediate. One look at Byzantine art — the
lifting-off dome of Hagia Sophia, the Buddha-calm saints of the Chora mosaics — confirmed what I had begun to suspect: my compass was not set westward.
At that point I didn’t yet know that Byzantium and sub-Saharan Africa
had once fruitfully intersected. I later learned, and that intersection
is what I’ve come to Ethiopia to see.
The history of Ethiopian culture is deep, going back — if the national
epic, the “Kebra Negast” or “Glory of Kings,” can be believed — to at
least the 10th century B.C., when an Ethiopian ruler, the biblical Queen
of Sheba, traveled to Jerusalem in search of the wisdom of Solomon. The
two monarchs met, bonded and had a son, Menelik, who would become
Ethiopia’s first emperor.
Solomon, the story goes, wanted to name Menelik as his heir. But the
young prince, with Africa on his mind, left Jerusalem behind. He did
not, however, leave empty-handed. Secretly he took with him the Ark of
the Covenant, which held the tablets given by God to Moses, and brought
it to Ethiopia, in effect, establishing a new Israel there.
History, if that’s what this is, then fades out for stretch, until
around 300 B.C., when a new empire coalesces in northern Ethiopia, with
the city of Aksum as its capital and a still-existing group of immense
stone stelae, carved with architectural features, as its grand monument.
Another fade-out. By the fourth century A.D. Ethiopia has become
officially Christian, and the Ark is in Aksum, enshrined in a cathedral
named St. Mary of Zion, where it remains.
Its presence makes Aksum the country’s holiest city, and St. Mary of
Zion its holiest shrine, though materially both have seen better days.
The town is a sketchy, low-rise place perched on a still barely tapped
archaeological site. The original cathedral was leveled by a Muslim army
in the 16th century. Its modern replacement is a circular domed
structure built by Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, in the early
1960s.
It’s a curious thing. Its wide, unbroken interior has the blank,
functional ambience of a skating rink. And it doesn’t feel quite
finished, as final touches of some kind were still needed. On a day I
visited the church was closed to the public.
Benches were roughly lined up. Free-standing paintings of the Virgin and
saints, in a melty neo-Romantic style, leaned against walls.
Two men on a scaffold were working on, or perhaps touching up, a mural.
A priest, in white, stood at a lectern and read aloud from an
illuminated book as a European video crew fussed with sound checks, then
asked him, please, to start again. To an outsider the general
impression was confusing, disconcerting. Can this newish, nondescript,
somewhat disheveled, in-progress space really be the physical and
psychic center of one the world’s oldest versions of Christianity?
The priest at the lectern burst into song, a long, gorgeous melismatic
chant that bloomed in the dome. Everyone stopped to listen, enraptured.
There was the answer. Yes, it can.
The evidence was even stronger outside. I was in Aksum just before an
important holy day dedicated to Mary, the object of acute devotional
focus in Ethiopian Orthodoxy. Pilgrims from far and near were already
gathering, camping out in the park around the cathedral, prostrating
themselves on its steps. A day later the city would be a sea of white,
and St. Mary of Zion would be open, full and finished. People were the
completing ingredient.
By the 10th century A.D. the long-lived Aksumite empire, once a rival to
Persia and Rome, was out of steam, and the city itself a backwater. New
rulers, known now as the Zagwe dynasty, appeared. They retained the
distinctively Judaic form of Ethiopian Christianity, with its Saturday
Sabbath and practice of circumcision, and further promoted the concept
of an African Zion by giving it physical manifestation in a new capital
city to the south of Aksum.
The force behind the new city was the 13th-century Zagwe emperor
Lalibela, for whom the new capital eventually came to be named. He is
credited — and here we are again in a tangle of fact, fantasy and
informed surmise — with planning and creating the extraordinary group of
11 churches there, all chiseled directly from sandstone cliffs and
gorges, that exist at Lalibela today.
According to legend the emperor himself, spelled by angels on night
shifts, did the work, wrapping the whole job up in 20-some years.
Whether or not the results can justifiably be called, as they often are,
the eighth wonder of the world, they are certainly wondrous. And
sharing, as they do, in a tradition of sculptured architecture that
extends from Turkey to China, they are indeed world-spanning.
They are also, however, a phenomenon apart. Although no confirming
scholarly study of Lalibela has yet appeared, there is reason to think
that the complex, which is divided into two groups of churches, was
envisioned as a mystical model of the holy city of Jerusalem in both its
earthly and heavenly forms, with each church filling a very specific
symbolic role within that topography.
One church, dedicated to St. George, Ethiopia’s patron saint, stands
apart from the others. Probably the latest of them, it is meticulously
executed and gives a clear sense of the labor-intense strangeness of the
whole endeavor.
Basically a monolithic, walk-in Greek cross, it’s free-standing but set
in a deep, square pit, so that your first view is, angelically, from
above looking down on a relief of three nested crosses cut into the
church’s flat roof. To reach the entrance, you descend into the
canyonlike excavation, into the earth. The church interior, dimly
lighted by high windows, has an organic, hand-molded texture. It’s as if
it were shaped from loam and you were a seed being planted.
Here too the impression of the interiors coming to life is especially strong when they’re crowded with people.
On St. Gabriel’s day the Lalibela church dedicated to the archangel who
announced the birth of Jesus to Mary is open before dawn. The sound of
chanting, amplified by loudspeakers, pours out. Following a stream of
pilgrims, I go in.
The interior is tight. Lay worshippers are permitted only in one section
of it; a second area, closed off by a curtain, is reserved for clergy
members. A third, inner compartment holds, as all churches do, a version
of the Ark of the Covenant, and is off limits to almost everyone.
The service, continuous for hours, is diffuse but enfolding. Priests and
deacons are in a huddle in an alcove, beating drums, rattling sistrums,
doing a small-step, hopping dance, and breaking, now and then, into
Arabic-sounding ululation.
They face one another rather than the church or worshippers. It’s as if, like certain rock bands, they’re jamming.
Nearby a single priest massages worshippers with a hand-held brass
cross; one bent-over man gets a full-body rubdown, one palsied woman a
prolonged pacifying touch. Another priest charges out from behind the
sanctuary holding flaming tapers straight out in front of him like wands
or prods. A third swings a silver censer in hazardous arcs in front of a
painting: a modern icon in an old style, of St. Gabriel with European
features, Ethiopian skin, and pooling Byzantine eyes.
The ceremonial choreography is all-over, ecstatic, sensually
overpowering. It’s the opposite of the face-the-altar focus of most
western Christian services, closer to the dynamic of masquerade dances
in other parts of Africa, performances that effortlessly combine
spiritual efficacy and spectacular entertainment.
To be in the middle of this is discomfiting — What’s my role? What do I do? — then a release. Just stand there.
Time dissolves. There’s no reason to leave. Isn’t this what you came
here for? Then, some commotion, a fresh wave of pilgrims pushes in,
nudging the priests further into their alcove.
But these pilgrims are wearing slacks, and sport shirts and sunhats.
They’re middle-aged Europeans on tour. They were at the hotel last night
having dinner at a long table and watching the news in the lobby. There
must be close to 20 of them shouldering into what’s little more than a
scooped-out monk’s cell. They blink, bunch up, hesitate, not sure what’s
going on, where to look first. When in doubt, take a picture. Flash,
flash.
They’re part of the Ethiopian present, which is part of the African
present, which, along with pilgrims, priests and video teams, is now, at
last, part of my present, just as it has always been, twice-removed;
part of my past. It’s reality, and it doesn’t stay still, any more than
the pilgrim’s desire stays still. I inch through the throng, out the
narrow door and head back down the red-dust road. The sound of chanting,
ancient, amplified, follows me to a waiting car.
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