TPLF spying in America

Monday, February 24, 2014 @ 07:02 PM ed

(WND) A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a Maryland resident who claims the government of his native Ethiopia spied on him with an electronic program that was created – and is sold to governments – for the purpose of observing the life people have on their computers – unnoticed.

Amid all the reports of spying on Americans by the U.S. government, through the National Security Agency, FBI and others, the complaint filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of a man identified only by the pseudonym of Mr. Kidane takes allegations to a whole new level.

The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington alleges the Ethiopian government infected his computer so that it could wiretap his private Skype calls and monitor his family’s every use of the computer for months on end.

“We have clear evidence of a foreign government secretly infiltrating an American’s computer in America, listening to his calls, and obtaining access to a wide swath of his private life,” said EFF Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo.

“The current Ethiopian government has a well-documented history of human rights violations against anyone it sees as political opponents. Here, it wiretapped a United States citizen on United States soil in an apparent attempt to obtain information about members of the Ethiopian diaspora who have been critical of their former government. U.S. laws protect Americans from this type of unauthorized electronic spying, regardless of who is responsible.”

The EFF said a forensic examination of the computer revealed the spyware, which is made and sold to governments by the Gamma Group of Companies, was installed when Kidane opened a Microsoft Word document.

There was an attachment with a program called FinSpy, and that program over months recorded his activities on the computer. It was discovered because the spyware left traces of the files it copied and surreptitiously sent to a secret control server located in Ethiopia and controlled by that government, the claim alleges.

“The problem of governments violating the privacy of their political opponents through digital surveillance is not isolated – it’s already big and growing bigger,” Cindy Cohn, the EFF legal director, said. “Yet despite the international intrigue and genuine danger involved in his lawsuit, at bottom it’s a straightforward case. An American citizen was wiretapped at his home in Maryland, and he’s asking for his day in court under longstanding American laws.”

Officials with the EFF said the attack apparently is part of a systematic program by the Ethiopian government to spy on perceived political opponents in the Ethiopian diaspora around the world.

They said human rights agencies and news outlets elsewhere have made related claims.

And they said Ethiopia is not alone. They said CitizenLab, a team of University of Toronto researchers, has discovered evidence that governments around the world are using FinSpy and other technologies to spy on human rights and democracy advocates.

EFF reports, “Essentially, the malware took over our client’s computer and secretly sent copies of his activities, including Skype calls, web searches and indications of websites visited [and] other activity, to the Ethiopian government.”

“This case is important because it demonstrates that state-sponsored malware infections and can indeed are occurring in the U.S. against U.S. citizens. It seeks to demonstrate that warrantless wiretapping is illegal and can be the basis of a lawsuit in the United States, regardless of who engages in it,” EFF said.

The complaint explains FinSpy can record Internet telephone calls, text messages, and file transfers transmitted through Skype, record every keystroke on the computer, and take a picture of the contents displayed on a computer’s screen. It can even covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone even when no Skype calls are taking place.

The complaint said the Internet Protocol to which the spyware sent data was inside Ethiopia, and was under control of the state-owned Ethio Telecom communications company.

Trauma of Ethiopia’s needless baby deaths – Kate Garraway reports

February 24, 2014 (Mirror News) — Daybreak’s Kate Garraway visits Ethiopia and sees firsthand the heart break of needless baby deaths.

Emotion: Kate holding Zewdit’s hand on the ward. Jiro Ose / Save the Children

Lying in her hospital bed, Zewdit Mekonen looked up at me with a bereft, haunted expression that I will never forget.

I listened as she recounted how she had gone into labour at her home. But then, sensing something was going badly wrong, she had started on the three-hour walk to her nearest hospital.

She was expecting twins and as she walked the first twin began to emerge. Zewdit feared he was dead as he was so quiet. In agony and terrified that she had already lost one baby, she staggered on, desperate not to lose the second.

After her horrific ordeal I hoped that the doctors at the Dessie Hospital in Ethiopia had been able to save at least one of Zewdit’s babies.

But no, all that awaited her at the end of her journey was heartbreak.

Doctors told her the terrible news: both her twins had died.

On top of that, medics said she may have to endure an operation which would prevent her from having any more children.

I felt compelled to take her hand and, via an interpreter, tell her I was a mother myself. We looked into each other’s eyes and she squeezed my hand.

It was as if we were saying to each other: “Our lives are so different but in our hearts we are the same.”

Except, of course, I could never really know what she had gone through.

Hope: Bahirnesh teaching how to be a birth attendant. Jiro Ose / Save the Children

True, I have given birth to two children, Darcey, seven, and four-year-old William. But when I think of all the things I fretted about before my first labour, they seem so shamefully minor compared to what Zewdit had to deal with.

My children are healthily thriving. I can’t help but think that if Zewdit’s had been born in a developed country her two babies would have had a chance too.

During my visit to Ethiopia for ITV’s Daybreak and Save the Children, I saw the horrendous circumstances in which some children are brought into this world – and how quickly they can leave it.

This corner of Africa is one of the most deprived in terms of the medical expertise, staff, resources and facilities we take for granted in Britain.

The Dessie Hospital serves seven million people and simply cannot cope. Every year, 28,000 Ethiopian babies don’t live more than 24 hours. Across the globe, that number is one million.

Even more heartbreakingly, a report from Save the Children, called Ending Newborn Deaths, shows it’s possible for the number of these first-day deaths to be halved.

The biggest danger comes from complications during labour which can be avoided if mothers and babies have greater access to free healthcare and skilled midwives. Save the Children is now calling on world leaders to commit to a blueprint for change which would start to provide the resources.

The scale of the problem was obvious when I visited the hospital in the Amhara region.

Struggle: Cardboard in intensive care unit.  Jiro Ose / Save the Children

Even if an infant isn’t one of the 1.2 million who are stillborn around the world every year, they are at serious risk in those first few hours. It is not hard to see why.In the intensive care unit at the hospital the few cots they have are clad in old cardboard boxes, the only thing available to help keep these vulnerable babies warm.

There are no incubators – staff make do by putting old plug-in radiators between the cots. Yet, despite the lack of resources, the staff are dedicated and the mothers who come into the hospital are inspiring.

At another maternity facility, the Kelalla Health Clinic in the Kelalla district of Amhara, I asked male midwife Gashaw Geleta if pain relief such as epidurals were available. He grimaced and said: “I’m the only midwife looking after up to 25,000 women. We don’t have enough hygienic mattresses let alone pain relief. But the women don’t even ask.”

I found that amazing. The women here are so focused on doing the best for their babies they tolerate the pain. Despite the overwhelming number of patients, the dedication of staff is amazing.

And so is the gratitude the patients show – often in the face of huge adversity.

In a nearby village I met Asamenech Hamid, who was just 18 but had already become pregnant three times.

She became pregnant aged 11 and lost her first two babies when she went into labour as she walked to her parents’ home for help. Such prolonged labour, a result of not having services nearby, is a major cause of death for mums and children.

When she finally got medical help through a Save the Children-backed centre, Asamenech had her third baby safe and sound, and now encourages all mums to push for the help they need.

We hear a lot about tiger mummies in this country but women like Asamenech seemed to me to be the real tiger mummies. Surviving against the odds – fighting fiercely for their unborn babies.

One of the most emotional moments in my week-long trip was meeting a group of expectant mums, many aged 15 or 16, who had been abandoned by their partners.

They all said they were scared but they’d walked, often for miles, to get help. All of them would have been helped by education – by people being taught simple things such as washing hands to prevent infection, or how to extract a baby at the correct angle to prevent injury to mother and child.

In Ethiopia just 10% of births take place with skilled help and, around the world, some 40 million women are denied this.

I recall how scared I was to be 38 and having my first baby, even though I had the support of family, doctors and midwives.

I gave birth in a birthing pool for the first stage. My husband had made a CD of relaxing tunes, yet it was still terrifying and very painful. In Ethiopia my experiences would be a dream.

It’s a lottery there as to who survives and who dies. Yet people refuse to see their situation as hopeless.

At a farm in Kelalla I met 43-year-old Bahirnesh Legasse, who was 12 in the terrible famine of 1984. Most of her family died, but she miraculously survived.

She observed that the people who fared best when “the rains didn’t come” as she put it, were the ones who were educated.

So she vowed to strive to educate herself and her kids, and now is proud of the farm she runs for her family. She also trained as a birth attendant and volunteers to help others – proof that countries like Ethiopia can and do want to help themselves.

But they face difficult challenges and, for now, what they need most is our help. Save the Children wants us to put pressure on the world’s governments to act.

We might also, even though times are tough here, see if we can donate something that may be a sacrifice to us but might have made all the difference to Zewdit and her poor lost twins.

Source: Mirror News

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Dignifying Mining Corruption in Ethiopia Through EITI?

Sunday, February 23, 2014 @ 08:02 PM Alma

Alemayehu G Mariam

Cloaking corruption in international respectability and credibility

The regime in Ethiopia is making a desperate second run to bring international respectability to its corrupt mining sector by re-applying for admission as an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) candidate.  According to Anthony Richter, Chairman of the Board of the Revenue Watch Institute and a board member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), Ethiopia’s 2010 application was rejected because the  EITI

board concluded that Ethiopia’s ‘Proclamation on Charities and Society’ would prevent civil society groups from being sufficiently independent and meaningfully participate in the process.  The board decided, in effect, not to admit Ethiopia ‘until the Proclamation on Charities and Society is no longer in place.’ This is the only such instance in the history of EITI where a country has failed to be admitted and the grounds for this action was clearly rights-based. (Italics added.)

EITI is an international organization consisting of a “coalition of governments, companies, civil society, investors and international organisations” which “through robust yet flexible methodology company payments and government revenues from oil, gas and mining are published, and discrepancies are reduced.” Simply stated, EITI aims to promote accountability and transparency by requiring corporations and governments in  member countries to come clean on revenues generated in their extractive industries. EITI is widely recognized for its “standards that promotes revenue transparency at the local level.”

The regime in Ethiopia is seeking EITI membership not to promote genuine transparency and accountability in its mining sector. Its real purpose is to use EITI admission and certification as a badge of integrity and a stamp of approval of good governance and good business practices as it markets its corrupt mining sector to investors.   The candidacy appplication is a cynical ploy to use the EITI imprimatur to trick and lull potential international investors and financial institutions into believing that the regime is demonstrably committed to greater transparency and is in fact practicing accountability. It is a contemptuously audacious scheme to hoodwink EITI and foist on unsuspecting investors a false sense of political stability and convince them that they can expect full security for their mining investments.  The fact of the matter is that the regime has no respect for private property of its citizens or foreign investors and maintains an overall hostile business environment. In its 2014 report, COFACE, the multinational that provides credit insurance and credit management services worldwide concluded that Ethiopia has “a difficult business environment marked by the lack of public sector data transparency, corruption and the crowding out of the private sector.”

Ethiopia’s mining sector is “corruption central”

The mining sector in Ethiopia is a hotbed of corruption and hub for graft and fraud. The World Bank (WB) in its 2012 massive report “Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia” identified the mining sector as one of the most corrupt sectors of Ethiopia’s economy.

According the WB, there are “seven areas of corruption risk” in the Ethiopian mining sector” including the “three main risk areas” of “license issuing, compliance with license conditions, and mining revenues”. The other critical areas of corruption include fraudulent practices in “compensations and obligations to local inhabitants, contracts with contractors and suppliers to the mining companies, falsification by mining companies of product quality, and theft of mining products and equipment.”

In the area of “license issuing”, the WB report states that “officials may extort or be offered bribes by mining companies in return for issuing licenses, for issuing licenses more quickly, or for specifying less-onerous license conditions.” A related risk is that “officials may secretly have ownership stakes in companies to which licenses are granted; acquire land for which a license application has been made; demand a share in mining companies or in their profits; and manipulate license registration to give themselves or their associates prior registration.” In “license compliance”, “mining companies may deliberately breach mining conditions (for example, environmental, health, and safety regulations, as well as the extent or area of mining)” with impunity.

In the area of revenue, “mining companies may deliberately understate output and profit and overstate costs to reduce royalties and profit taxes.” The regime has no independent means of verifying the revenues of mining companies. According to the WB, “Collection of royalties and income tax apparently depends almost entirely on the mining companies’ self-certification of output and profit because of the lack of resources at the Ethiopian federal, regional, and city licensing authority levels. It would, therefore, be relatively easy for the mining companies to exaggerate their capital and operating costs and understate their output and profit.” When “license operation and mining revenue breaches are discovered, the mining company may also bribe inspectors to overlook the breaches.”

The catalogue of corrupt practices in the mining sector documented by the WB in its 2012 report cover the entire spectrum ranging from bribes, falsification of records, shakedowns and take downs of mining companies and stealing compensation designated for local inhabitants to criminal use of insider information and fraudulent shell corporations. The egregious examples of corruption documented by the WB are mind boggling and include the following:

A mining company could be required to pay a large premium in return for a mining license. Senior officials and the mining company could keep this premium secret, and the officials could receive payment in offshore bank accounts.

An official may require the mining company to make a large donation to a charity if it wants the license to be issued more quickly. Although the charity may appear to be genuine, it may in fact be a front for a political party or for the official’s personal or family gain.

A mining company may submit a health and safety plan for a mining license in accordance with good practice, but an official may tell the company that unless it pays a bribe, he or she will impose additional and unnecessarily onerous health and safety conditions.

A mining company may submit an environmental management plan for a mining license that will inadequately control the leaching of poisonous chemicals into the water supply. Proper controls would [be costly]. The mining company may pay the official responsible for approving the license a bribe to approve the deficient conditions.

Officials may demand a share in the profits of a mining company. A mining company may agree to give an official’s relative a free share in the profits of the mining project if it receives a license on beneficial terms.

Officials grant licenses to companies secretly owned by them. Officials secretly acquire land that is subject to a license application.

An official who is aware that mining may take place on an area of land may lease the land in advance of the mine licensing. Once the license is granted, the value of the land may materially increase. The official thereby profits from his or her inside knowledge by selling or licensing his or her rights to the land to the mining company.

Companies illegally on-sell licenses granted to them.

Officials manipulate license registration.

An official in the department that issues mining licenses may hear that a mining company wishes to apply for a license. The official may alert a businessperson with whom he or she has connections, and the businessperson may quickly apply for a license over the same area. The official grants the license to the businessperson. The mining company then has to purchase the license from the businessperson, and the businessperson shares the profit with the official.

A prospector may discover minerals, mark the area, and contact the relevant licensing authority to receive a discovery certificate. A corrupt official may not register the discovery in that person’s name but instead notify a business colleague and register the discovery in the colleague’s name. The corrupt official may then falsely inform the discoverer that someone else had previously discovered the minerals.

Officials collude with mining companies to grant subcontracts to relatives. The licensing authority could, as a condition of the license award or social development plan, require the mining company to undertake a large amount of additional infrastructure works at the mining company’s own cost. For example, the mining company may be obliged to build or refurbish a road, a school, or a hospital. A government official could then require the mining company to award one or more of these infrastructure projects to a contractor secretly owned by a member of the official’s family.

Officials or community leaders may steal compensation that should have gone to local inhabitants. Mining companies may bribe officials to set compensation below a proper rate.

Local inhabitants may falsely claim that they occupy land subject to a license application.

Contractors and suppliers may engage in fraudulent transactions in tendering, submitting claims, and concealing or approval of defective works.

Mining companies may commit fraud by making false declarations about the identity and quality of minerals or by bribing certifiers to approve false declarations. A major, ongoing investigation into corruption of this type is under way in Ethiopia. 

Smoke and mirrors in the Ethiopian mining sector?

The regime in power has been playing a magical game of smoke and mirrors with mining revenues.  According to a recent report citing official regime sources, “The Ethiopian government earned USD 419 million from the export of minerals supplied by artisanal miners operating in the country in the first 11 months of the current financial year.  Export of gold made up the largest proportion of minerals, generating USD 409.1 million in foreign currency, followed by gemstones and tantalum earning USD 9.3 million and USD 1.6 million. This income came from the export of 7878.3 kg of gold, 20,126.3 kg of gemstones and 32.95 tons of tantalum…. MIDROC Gold is the only company that is engaged in large-scale gold mining.” Other reports indicate the “export of minerals has become Ethiopia’s second largest foreign currency earner, contributing over 23 percent of overall export earnings.”

The fact of the matter is that no one, except those who hold the key to the lockbox of the mining revenues, know the actual amount of revenue generated by the mining sector. The regime claims it has no independent way of verifying mining revenues and must rely on information reported by the companies. How convenient! The fact of the matter is that principal beneficiaries of the mining sector revenues are the wealthy oligarchs and  the businesses fronting for the oligarchs and other enterprises owned by the “Tigray People’s Liberation Front”.  No one knows the depth and breadth of corruption taking place in the sale of mineral licenses and siphoning of mining revenues. There is credible anecdotal eyewitness testimony alleging that hundreds of pounds of gold are regularly spirited out of the country without inspection by plane from airstrips close to the gold mines. It is this brazen mining scam that the regime audaciously seeks to enshrine and consecrate  with EITI imprimatur!

Why EITI must reject the regime’s candidacy application?

In its 2011 Rules, EITI made it clear that civil society freedom and participation is a cornerstone of its candidacy and membership criteria. To be eligible, the regime in Ethiopia “must take effective actions to remove obstacles affecting civil society participation”. It must respect the “the fundamental rights of civil society and company representatives substantively engaged in EITI.”  The regime “must ensure there are no obstacles to civil society and company participation in the process” and guarantee that “ there is an enabling framework for civil society organizations and companies, with regard to relevant laws, regulations, and administrative rules as well as actual practice in implementation of the EITI.”

Moreover, the regime “must refrain from actions which result in narrowing or restricting public debate in relation to the implementation of the EITI”  and ensure that “ civil society and company representatives can speak freely on transparency and natural resource governance issues”. The regime must guarantee that civil society groups that participate as members of the multi-stakeholder group “must be operational, and, in policy terms, independent of government and/or companies” and “should be able to operate freely without restraint or coercion, including by liaising with their constituency groups.”  EITI emphatically requires that “civil society groups, companies and their representatives must be free to express opinions about the EITI without restraint, coercion or reprisal” and that “civil society groups involved in the EITI must be free to engage in wider public debates on the EITI.”

Civil society institutions have been decimated by the regime in Ethiopia

The regime’s 2009 charities and societies law (Charities and Societies Proclamation No. 621/2009)  has been weaponized to completely decimate civil society organizations in Ethiopia. In February 2008, I critically reviewed the draft of the proclamation in a long commentary titled, “Probing the Feared CSO Draft Law.” I listed 10 compelling reasons why it should discarded. I argued the proclamation is a preemptive legal strike aimed at neutralizing and abolishing civil society institutions so that they will not pose a threat to the regime by promoting democratic practices. The proclamation facilitated arbitrary and capricious  regulation of civil society institutions by granting unbounded discretionary quasi-judicial  power to the director to the regulatory agency of the NGOs without normal judicial review. The proclamation is extremely intrusive in the affairs of civil society, micromanages them and imposes unreasonable and extremely burdensome financial accountability requirements, which the regime itself does not practice. It is punitive and has a chilling effect on civil society membership and participation. Ultimately, I argued the proclamation is manifestly unconstitutional, mean-spirited and discriminatory. Human Rights Watch commenting on the draft warned that “the intended and actual result of this law would be to make it nearly impossible for any civil society organization to carry out work the government does not approve of.” As I have often said, preaching constitutional law, due process and accountability to the regime in power in Ethiopia is like preaching Scripture to a gathering of deaf-mute and blind Heathen or pouring water over a slab of granite. The draft proclamation became “law” in 2009.

In February 2010, U.S. Undersecretary of State Maria Otero raised serious concerns with the late Meles Zenawi over the Proclamation asserting that the law  “threatened the role of civil society” in Ethiopia. Meles ignored her concerns. However, the proclamation soon laid waste to civil society institutions in Ethiopia. According to one report, “the number of CSOs in Ethiopia has been reduced from about 4600 to about 1400 in a period of three months in early 2010.  Staff members have been reduced by 90% or more among many of those organizations that survive according to my informants.” Simply stated, the Proclamation wiped out 70 percent of the CSOs in Ethiopia in three months! In the same month, the regime froze the assets of Ethiopia’s Human Rights Council, Ethiopia’s oldest human rights organization, and the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association, effectively incapacitating these two vital institutions; indeed for all intents and purposes outlawing them.

In October  2012, the regime announced  closing down 10 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) under the Proclamation and threatened to revoke the licenses of dozens of other organizations for alleged misconduct. The regime also announced that 17 other organizations were under active investigation. The regime further alleged  400 organizations were operating in violation of the Proclamation and affirmed that appropriate action would taken against them. In November 2012, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a German NGO which promotes democracy and human rights, packed up and left in protest against restrictions on its activities.

In February 2013, the regime banned  three NGOs including  One Euro, the Islamic Cultural and Research Centre, and the Gohe Child, Youth and Women Development Organisation accusing them of conducting “illegal religious activities”.  In 2013, “out of  29 charities funded by US Agency for International Development, 27 can’t comply” with the Proclamation. In 2013, Human Rights Watch reported, “Ethiopia’s CSO law is one of the most draconian laws regulating nongovernmental activity in the world… Space for civil society, press freedom, and peaceful protest in Ethiopia has continued to shrink since 2010.”

The 2014 Bertelsmann Transformation Index reported, “The media and civil society organizations have been stymied by oppressive laws; trade unions and professional associations too have been forced either to toe the government line or, like the teachers’ union, be dissolved.” What is truly ironic is the fact that the majority of the current civil society stakeholders in EITI including Global Witness, Open Society Revenue Watch Institute, Transparency International  among others would not be allowed to operate in Ethiopia today!  Yet, the regime cynically and hypocritically seeks to join them and demonstrate to the world that it is committed to the free operation of civil society institutions.

Mockery of the EITI Protocol: The con game of the regime in Ethiopia must be stopped

The proffered candidacy application of the regime in Ethiopia makes a mockery of the EITI and its protocols. The regime knowing full well that it completely disregards EITI’s core value of respect for and protection of civil society organizations has nonetheless shamelessly applied for admission. The very act of submitting the candidacy application must be seen for what it is — an insult to the intelligence of EITI members and EITI as an institution, an affront to EITI values and a mockery of EITI members who have worked so hard for over a decade to bring about transparency and accountability in countries spinning in a vortex of corruption.

The bird-brained scheme of the regime to slide unnoticed into the EITI community by hoodwinking, duping and pulling the wool over the eyes of EITI’s Board reminds me of the old adage about the wolf in sheep’s clothing; better yet the proverbial pious Ethiopian wolf masquerading as a saint and praying among sheep. The regime wants to join the EITI in an attempt to mask its true nature to international investors– wolfish, predatory, rapacious, venal, corrupt, profiteering and devoid of any ethical sensibilities.

The whole idea in the EITI protocol is transparency and accountability. If the regime is unwilling to accept responsibility for its ongoing decimation of civil society institutions in Ethiopia, how can it reasonably expect to be a member of an organization whose sole purpose is transparency and accountability? A pious wolf praying among sheep? Which EITI country would not feel unsullied or willingly keep company with such an odious candidate?

Before the regime’s application for EITI candidacy is considered, it must first demonstrate its own EITI – Ethiopia  Institutional Transparency and Integrity by repealing the current proclamation and by enacting a civil society law that is civil, civic-minded and civilized.

The con game of the regime in Ethiopia to flimflam the EITI and sneak into that organization to gain undeserved international respectability must be exposed and stopped!

Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer.

Previous commentaries by the author are available at:

http://open.salon.com/blog/almariam/

www.huffingtonpost.com/alemayehu-g-mariam/

Amharic translations of recent commentaries by the author may be found at:

http://www.ecadforum.com/Amharic/archives/category/al-mariam-amharic

http://ethioforum.org/?cat=24 

Ethiopia: Land, Water Grabs Devastate Communities

Satellite Images Show Devastating Toll on 500,000 Pastoralists

February 19, 2014 (Nairobi) – New satellite imagery shows extensive clearance of land used by indigenous groups to make way for state-run sugar plantations in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley, Human Rights Watch and International Rivers said today. Virtually all of the traditional lands of the 7,000-member Bodi indigenous group have been cleared in the last 15 months, without adequate consultation or compensation. Human Rights Watch has also documented theforced resettlement of some indigenous people in the area.

The land clearing is part of a broader Ethiopian government development scheme in the Omo Valley, a United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, including dam construction, sugar plantations, and commercial agriculture. The project will consume the vast majority of the water in the Omo River basin, potentially devastating the livelihoods of the 500,000 indigenous people in Ethiopia and neighboring Kenya who directly or indirectly rely on the Omo’s waters for their livelihoods.

“Ethiopia can develop its land and resources but it shouldn’t run roughshod over the rights of its indigenous communities,” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The people who rely on the land for their livelihoods have the right to compensation and the right to reject plans that will completely transform their lives.”

Dassanech (“What will happen when hunger comes?”)

A prerequisite to the government’s development plans for the Lower Omo Valley is the relocation of 150,000 indigenous people who live in the vicinity of the sugar plantations into permanent sedentary villages under the government’s deeply unpopular “villagization” program. Under this program, people are to be moved into sedentary villages and provided with schools, clinics, and other infrastructure. As has been seen in other parts of Ethiopia, these movements are not all voluntary.

Satellite images analyzed by Human Rights Watch show devastating changes to the Lower Omo Valley between November 2010 and January 2013, with large areas originally used for grazing cleared of all vegetation and new roads and irrigation canals crisscrossing the valley. Lands critical for the livelihoods of the agro-pastoralist Bodi and Mursi peoples have been cleared for the sugar plantations. These changes are happening without their consent or compensation, local people told Human Rights Watch. Governments have a duty to consult and cooperate with indigenous people to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources.

The imagery also shows the impact of a rudimentary dam built in July 2012 that diverted the waters of the Omo River into the sugar plantations. Water rapidly built up behind the shoddily built mud structure before breaking it twice. The reservoir created behind the dam forced approximately 200 Bodi families to flee to high ground, leaving behind their crops and their homes.

In a 2012 report Human Rights Watch warned of the risk to livelihoods and potential for increased conflict and food insecurity if the government continued to clear the land. The report also documented how government security forces used violence and intimidation to make communities in the Lower Omo Valley relocate from their traditional lands, threatening their entire way of life with no compensation or choice of alternative livelihoods.

Ethiopia can develop its land and resources but it shouldn’t run roughshod over the rights of its indigenous communities. The people who rely on the land for their livelihoods have the right to compensation and the right to reject plans that will completely transform their lives.

Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director

The development in the Lower Omo Valley depends on the construction upstream of a much larger hydropower dam – the Gibe III, which will regulate river flows to support year-round commercial agriculture.

A new film produced by International Rivers, “A Cascade of Development on the Omo River,” reveals how and why the Gibe III will cause hydrological havoc on both sides of the Kenya-Ethiopia border. Most significantly, the changes in river flow caused by the dam and associated irrigated plantations could cause a huge drop in the water levels of Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake and another UNESCO World Heritage site.

Lake Turkana receives 90 percent of its water from the Omo River and is projected to drop by about two meters during the initial filling of the dam, which is estimated to begin around May 2014. If current plans to create new plantations continue to move forward, the lake could drop as much as 16 to 22 meters. The average depth of the lake is just 31 meters.

The river flow past the Gibe III will be almost completely blocked beginning in 2014. According to government documents, it will take up to three years to fill the reservoir, during which the Omo River’s annual flow could drop by as much as 70 percent. After this initial shock, regular dam operations will further devastate ecosystems and local livelihoods. Changes to the river’s flooding regime will harm agricultural yields, prevent the replenishment of important grazing areas, and reduce fish populations, all critical resources for livelihoods of certain indigenous groups.

The government of Ethiopia should halt development of the sugar plantations and the water offtakes until affected indigenous communities have been properly consulted and give their free, prior, and informed consent to the developments, Human Rights Watch and International Rivers said. The impact of all planned developments in the Omo/Turkana basin on indigenous people’s livelihoods should be assessed through a transparent, independent impact assessment process.

“If Ethiopia continues to bulldoze ahead with these developments, it will devastate the livelihoods of half a million people who depend on the Omo River,” said Lori Pottinger, head of International Rivers’ Ethiopia program. “It doesn’t have to be this way – Ethiopia has options for managing this river more sustainably, and pursuing developments that won’t harm the people who call this watershed home.”

Background

Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley is one of the most isolated and underdeveloped areas in East Africa. At least eight different groups call the Omo River Valley home and the livelihood of each of these groups is intimately tied to the Omo River and the surrounding lands. Many of the indigenous people that inhabit the valley are agro-pastoralist, growing crops along the Omo River and grazing cattle.

In 2010, Ethiopia announced plans for the construction of Africa’s tallest dam, the 1,870 megawatt Gibe III dam on the Omo River. Controversy has dogged the Gibe III dam ever since. Of all the major funders who considered the dam, only China’s Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) provided financing (the World Bank, African Development Bank, and European Investment Bank all declined to fund it, though the World Bank and African Development Bank have financed related power lines).

The Ethiopian government announced even more ambitious plans for the region in 2011, including the development of at least 245,000 hectares of irrigated state-run sugar plantations. Downstream, the water-intensive sugar plantations, will depend on irrigation canals. Although there have been some independent assessments of the Gibe dam project and its impact on river flow and Lake Turkana, to date the Ethiopian government has not published any environmental or social impact assessments for the sugar plantations and other commercial agricultural developments in the Omo valley.

According to the regional government plan for villagization in Lower Omo, the World Bank-supported Pastoral Community Development Project (PCDP) is funding some of the infrastructure in the new villages. Despite concerns over human rights abuses associated with the villagization program that were communicated to Bank management, in December 2013 the World Bank Board approved funding of the third phase of the PCDP III. PCDP III ostensibly provides much-needed services to pastoral communities throughout Ethiopia, but according to government documents PCDP also pays for infrastructure being used in the sedentary villages that pastoralists are being moved to.

The United States Congress in January included language in the 2014 Appropriations Act that puts conditions on US development assistance in the Lower Omo Valley requiring that there should be consultation with local communities; that the assistance “supports initiatives of local communities to improve their livelihoods”; and that no activities should be supported that directly or indirectly involve forced evictions.

However other donors have not publicly raised concerns about Ethiopia’s Lower Omo development plans. Justine Greening, the British Secretary of State for International Development, in 2012 stated that her Department for International Development (DFID) was not able to “substantiate the human rights concerns” in the Lower Omo Valley despite DFID officials hearing these concerns directly from impacted communities in January 2012.

Source:  Human Rights Watch

Related: The Suri Massacre in Omo Valley Ethiopia

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My second trip with OMO RIVER Adventures in the World has been made in 2013. Nel video shows images of the villages of the plateau Omo mursi Mursi , Hamer and the ” Jumping the bull ” , the Karo village Korcho , the Galeb of Omorate , and Erbore.Sono present all the most beautiful and important ethnic groups of the south Omo River.

The OMO RIVER journey with Adventures in the world was done in 2013. in the video shows images of the villages of the Highland Omomursi Mursi , Hamer and of ” Bull jamping ” , the village of Karo of Korcho , Galeb of Omorate , and Arbore are at present the most beautiful and important people of the Omo River area south .

Journey with me as OMO RIVER Adventures in the World has been made ​​in the video are led back 2013.Nel images plateau villages Omomursi Mursi, Hamer of and “Jumping the bull”, Karo village Korcho, the Galeb of Omorate, and presents Erbore.Están all nice and most important of the southern races of the Omo River.

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Posted by admin - 19/02/2014 at 12:15 am

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Ethiopian political refugee living in London alleges he was victim of ‘unprecedented example of espionage on British soil’

February 18, 2014 | Filed underEnglish News/PR | Posted by admin

The National Crime Agency has been asked to investigate the alleged use of computer software to spy on an Ethiopian political refugee living in London in an unprecedented example of espionage on British soil.

The charity Privacy International has made a criminal complaint to the agency’s National Cyber Crime Unit following the detection of the surveillance software FinSpy on a computer belonging to Tadesse Kersmo, who fled to Britain from Ethiopia in 2009.

FinSpy, a “Trojan” programme which was developed and produced by the British-German company Gamma International, allows a remote user to gain full access to a targeted computer and even to turn on functions such as microphones and cameras to record the computer’s owner without their knowledge.

Mr Kersmo, a university lecturer, claimed that he had been the victim of espionage by the Ethiopian Government because of his involvement with the political opposition group Ginbot 7. “I felt that the United Kingdom was a safe and free country but I was wrong and I feel very disappointed,” he said.

The FinSpy surveillance software first appeared on his computer in 2012 and was only detected after the issue was highlighted in a study by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which reported on a campaign to infect computers with FinSpy by sending a rogue email containing pictures of Ginbot 7 members.

Mark Scott, a lawyer with London firm Bhatt Murphy, said there was no legal justification for the software. “If your computer is in the UK and it’s intercepted and that’s without lawful authority then that is a crime. It’s very difficult to see what lawful authority.”

Mr Scott said he knew of no other similar incidents.

Mr Kersmo told a London press conference on Monday that documents and audio clips from Skype conversations involving him and other Ginbot 7 members had been published in doctored format online in order to discredit him. He said that the leaders of Ginbot 7 – a pro-democracy group formed from Ethiopian exiles in the United States and Europe – had feared they had a mole in their ranks. “The main purpose was probably to create suspicion among the executive committee members and it did to some extent.”

Calling on the NCA to investigate, he said: “It’s not only (about) my own personal liberty but also the UK’s interests and other Ethiopian citizens who live in the UK.”

Eric King, head of research for Privacy International, said: “Even when someone flees persecution in their own country, western-made surveillance technologies such as FinSpy can still be used by repressive regimes to monitor the moves of political activists anywhere around the world.”

The charity said that FinSpy was extremely difficult to detect. Trojan programmes are usually triggered by opening an email or download containing the invasive software.

According to the Citizen Lab research, command and control servers for FinSpy have been set up in 35 countries, including Ethiopia, Turkmenistan, Bahrain and Malaysia. Privacy International has asked HMRC to say whether Gamma International has an export licence for distributing the software to these regimes. Mr Scott said: “If the software needs to be exported to a country outside the European Union it requires an export licence. As far as the information we have, there has been no licence granted to Ethiopia or indeed any other country.”

John Campbell, a senior lecturer at the University of London’s SOAS, said the FinSpy case had “extensive implications” for the Home Office and could lead to more asylum claims if political opponents were being subjected to computer espionage. He said that scores of Ethiopian political dissidents had been arrested since the 2005 national elections and that some had been given life sentences.

Gamma International could not be reached for comment

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/

Criminal complaints filed against Ethiopia in UK and USA for spying on members of the Diaspora

February 18, 2014

The case is the latest sign that the government of Ethiopia, an American ally with a history of repressing political opponents, journalists and human rights activists, has used sophisticated Internet technology to monitor its perceived enemies, even when they are in other countries.

“The Ethiopian government appears to be doing everything it can to spy on members of the diaspora, especially those in contact with opposition groups,” said Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group based in San Francisco that prepared the suit. Ethiopian officials did not respond immediately to requests for comment Tuesday morning. Last week, for a separate story about the government’s alleged use of spyware against Ethiopian journalists working in the United States, a government official said, “The Ethiopian government did not use and has no reason at all to use any spyware.”

Tuesday’s suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, takes the unusual step of not naming the plaintiff, who alleges in an affidavit that revealing his identity would endanger him, his children and members of his family still in Ethiopia.

The man first came to the United States 22 years ago, won political asylum and now is a U.S. citizen living in Silver Spring, MD. He provides “technical and administrative support” to an Ethiopian opposition group, Ginbot 7, but is not a formal member of that group, the affidavit says. The suit uses a pseudonym, Kidane, which is a common name in Ethiopia. A judge must permit the use of a pseudonym in the suit.

“I would be extremely hesitant to continue to seek legal redress in this case should I be denied this request to proceed pseudonymously, as I fear the litigation would put my life and the lives of my family at substantial risk,” Kidane wrote in the affidavit.

Computer researchers tracking the spread of spyware have named Ethiopia among a list of dozens of countries that use such products. They typically can read e-mails, snatch documents and contact lists, record video chats, and remotely activate cameras and microphones, making a computer capable of spying on targets in their homes or work places. The market for spyware operates with few international restrictions, though using it can violate a range of laws.

Hidden files discovered by forensics experts show the hacking of Kidane’s computer began in October 2012, when he downloaded what appeared to be a Microsoft Word file attached to an e-mail, the suit alleges. The document, in Ethiopia’s Amharic language, contained a desperate plea from another Ethiopian expatriate requesting Kidane’s help in protecting a relative in danger. It also contained FinSpy, which gradually took hold of Kidane’s computer.

More than four months later, in March 2013, an independent research group published areport detailing evidence that Ethiopia was using FinSpy, produced by Gamma Group, a spyware maker based in Britain and Germany. That report, by Citizen Lab at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, singled out a server based at Ethiopia’s state-owned telecommunications company as controlling the spyware.

Five days after that report was issued — prompting widespread news coverage — the server in Ethiopia went offline and the hackers who had taken control of Kidane’s computer attempted to remove all traces of FinSpy from his machine, the lawsuit alleges.

But the attempted removal was incomplete, leaving behind the hidden files that forensics researchers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation eventually found.

Gamma Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment filed through its Web site, which describes the company as an “international manufacturer of surveillance & monitoring systems with technical and sales offices in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.”

The lawsuit, prepared in conjunction with private firm Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi, seeks a court declaration that the Ethiopian government was behind the hacking of Kidane’s computer, as well as attorney’s fees and $10,000 in damages, the maximum allowed under the U.S. Wiretap Act.

Privacy International, an advocacy group based in Britain, filed a criminal complaint there Monday urging investigation of the alleged use of FinSpy against an Ethiopian political refugee based in the United Kingdom. Last week, Citizen Lab issued a report detailing evidence that the Ethiopian government had used a different brand of spyware, produced by an Italian company called Hacking Team, against journalists working for Ethiopian Satellite Television, a news service with offices in the Washington area.

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Posted by admin - 18/02/2014 at 3:46 pm

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