Capacity Building

Source: ayyaantuu.com

Posted by Mesfin Tadesse

A group of concerned Oromo individuals made a series of meetings and arrived at a conclusion: to create an independent media (that host/serve diverse  Oromo) opinion and direct them to arrive at a consensus. It is not an exaggeration if we say we are very successful in creating Ayyaantuu.com. Today, it is the most widely read Oromo social media. In addition to the feedback we get from readers, our engineers also track, compare and analyze the traffic periodically and give us a feedback. Prominent Oromo intellectuals and leaders have also frequently gave us a feedback and encouraged us to keep up the good work.

Once again, we have taken our time and discussed with opinion leaders as to how to proceed to the next steps where by the social media need to take in order to transform the role of media in a liberation struggle. We came to a conclusion to implement the following ideas in the second phase to transform the Oromo people’s struggle.

1. Advocacy: Ayyaantuu managed to mobilize and network Diaspora Oromos through the social media. What Ayyaantuu has been doing mostly as introvert; we have been mostly communicating with one another. It helped to mobilize the people but that is not enough. We need to be extrovert and advocate our cause to the international community in general and donor nations in particular. Therefore, we must strengthen other Oromo advocacy. We must be able to finance our activists and scholars who are advocating for the Oromo cause.

2. Media: We need to bring the fragmented media outlets under one strong brand name. Instead of listening to what we want to hear over and over again from local media, we have a plan to reach the Oromo people people in Oromia. The Wayyaanee regime wants to isolate Oromo intellectuals from ordinary Oromos to keep them in the dark and rule them forever. To break this conspiracy of isolation, we must reach Oromia and educate Oromo people.

3. Promotion: We will continue promoting Oromo language, culture, art and literature. In addition, Ayyaantuu.com will soon promote Oromo products and services to introduce them to world markets. We will also promote inter-Oromo trade and business to build our capacities in every sector.

4. Resource Mobilization: We will mobilize our human and material resources to generate revenue effectively and efficiently by implementing our plans, in order to sustain all these projects, to assist Oromo community organizations and Oromo civil society institutions.

5. Preserving and promoting Oromo cultural heritages and social values, etc.

6. Publicize the protection of Oromo natural resources and the environment

7. Supporting refugees stranded in various parts of the world by generating funds for Oromo Relief Organizations

We honestly and humbly demand from all honest and sincere Oromos to own all these noble projects and cooperate and implement them and translate them into action. We are talking  for long time and let us now walk the talk. We were determined to continue and contribute something to Oromo cause and we are very glad for doing that. Now, no honest Oromo is interested in bickering and accusation. That has become history. We need action and we can do it together as an Oromo. We had the confidence when we started Ayyaantuu.com and it worked pretty well. We have also the confidence and capabilities to implement these and other projects as a united people. Let us do it together.

Ethiopia: Jailed hero journalist Woubshet Taye off to Zeway death camp

Ethiopia: Jailed hero journalist Woubshet Taye off to Zeway death camp

The Horn Times News 20 April 2013
By Getahune Bekele, South Africa
As the unpopular, corrupt and inefficient minority junta
continues to govern the police state Ethiopia with brute
iron hand, dealing ruthlessly with political prisoners and
jailed journalists whom it blames for causing the late
despot Meles Zenawi’s “ untimely” death; Ethiopian
political prisoners have fallen on hard times filled with
dread and terror.

he former Editor of Awramba Times, Wubeshet Taye is the latest
Prisoner to be sent to Zeway death camp to serve the remaining time of his 14
years sentence away from his family, with the likes of Bekele Gerba, Albana Lelisa
and several others who are already condemned to the notorious facility.
Chained in leg iron and carrying his belongings in tiny bag, hundreds of curios
inmates at Kilinto prison watched the young scribe taken away by more than 20
TPLF soldiers on Tuesday morning April 16 2013.
A friend of the terrorized journalist confirmed to the Horn Times that Woubshet

ye is currently in Zeway, still in leg iron like all political prisoners.
The 2011 trial of Woubshet Taye was at the time described unfair and was way
below the international fair trial standard under the controversial and draconian
anti-terrorism law designed to persecute and silence dissenting voices.
The Horn Times franticly tried to talk to TPLF officials in charge of prison
administration to find out the reason behind sending opposition prisoners
particularly Ethnic Oromos and the Amharas to Zeway during the known malaria
season, but none of them were willing to reply including the office of the man
himself, warlord Berket Simeon

Imprisoned Ethiopian Journalist Win the 2013 UNESCO-World Press Freedom Prize

Posted by Mesfin Tadesse

Imprisoned Ethiopian journalist Reeyot Alemu has won the 2013 UNESCO-Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. She is given the prize in recognition of her “exceptional courage, resistance and commitment” to freedom of expression. According to UNESCO’s news report, she was recommended by an independent international jury of 12 most outstanding media professionals.

Reeyot Alemu is one of the very rare outspoken Ethiopian women journalists. She bravely fought falsehoods, brutality, and oppression in Ethiopia, with pen — a power of words. She is currently serving a five-year jail sentence in Kality, a notoriously brutal prison of the authoritarian regime in Ethiopia. She was charged with ‘terrorism offences’ on June 2012, under the vaguely worded and broad-reaching Anti-Terrorism law, passed by the regime in 2009.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), all of the charges against Reeyot Alemu were only based on her journalistic activities–emails she had received from pro-opposition discussion groups and reports and photographs she had sent to opposition news sites.

Reeyot Alemu is among a number of journalists who have been prosecuted under the anti-terrorism law in Ethiopia. According to Amnesty International, only during 2011 and 2012, over 100 journalists and political activists were arrested and prosecuted on charges of terrorism and other offenses in the country, for exercising their rights to freedom of expression. The actions that were the basis for such charges and prosecutions included writing articles critical of the government, calling for peaceful protest, and reporting on peaceful protests.

A Woman Born to Stand for the Truth

Born in 1980, Reeyot Alemu studied in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. She received her BA in English Language and Theatrical Art from Addis Ababa University in 2005. Willing to risk her freedom and peace of mind, she began writing articles for independent newspapers in 2009, as a freelance writer.

Reeyot Alemu joined the now-defunct most prominent weekly newspaper called Awramba Times in 2010, where she worked as a columnist and wrote critically about the social and political crisis of her country. In 2011, she worked, among other roles, as a columnist for the weekly independent paper Feteh, which was later shuttered by the regime.

In 2010, Reeyot Alemu was able to found her own publishing house and a monthly magazine called “Change” that covered a wide range of political and social issues. However, after operating for a while, both of them were subsequently closed.

On June 21, 2011, Reeyot Alemu was taken from the school she taught, and arrested in Ma-ekelawi, an interrogation center, where dis-speakable torture is a normal practice of police and security officials in attempts to elicit confessions before cases go to trial. It was without charge. Four days before her arrest, she had written a sharp critique against the regime’s illegitimate fundraising methods for a dam project, and had apparently compared the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi with Ethiopia’s then-Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who ruled the country for 21 years with a rod of iron.

Judged a “terrorist” by the tyrannical regime’s court, Reeyot Alemu was sentenced to 18 years in prison in January 2012. An appeals court, however, subsequently reduced the sentence to five years and dropped some of the charges.

Reeyot Alemu was offered clemency if she agreed to testify against journalist colleagues, who were arrested with her and accused by the regime of abetting terrorist groups. She, however, refused to do so and was consequently sent to solitary confinement as a punishment.

According to different sources, since her imprisonment in June 2011, the health of Reeyot Alemu has deteriorated. Recently, she has underwent surgery to remove a tumor from her breast. Her families reported that after the surgery she was forced to return to jail with no recovery time, and two days later she was, therefore, bleeding.

In 2012, Reeyot Alemu was the recipient of the prestigious 2012 Courage in Journalism Award that recognizes courageous actions of journalists around the world. She was given the prize for her “refusal to self-censor in a place where that practice is standard, and her unwillingness to apologize for truth-telling, even though contrition could win her freedom.”

source: ECDAF