Millennial Challenge: The Dirty Loony Left Liberal activists pushing an ageda!

Global Strategic Enterprises, Inc for Peace and Prosperity- www.globalbelai4u.blogspot.com; www.SolomonicCrown.org


Re: Loony Left Liberal Media Authors change their associations but push the same agenda.

Here is an author who moves between institutions (Private, public, international and pushes the same agenda- Wow, imagine how one person can present so many faces and expect to have the world believe this is the story of different institutions.

Here is Tom Porteous another Gettleman who manges to jump between institutions and push the same loony left liberal agenda

Tom Porteous has been the London director of Human Rights Watch since October 2006. As a journalist he worked for the Guardian (as Cairo correspondent from 1986 [to] 88) and for the BBC World Service. Between jobs in journalism, he participated as a political officer in UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia and Liberia in the mid 1990s. He joined the UK Foreign Office in 2000 as conflict-prevention adviser for sub-Saharan Africa, but resigned in March 2003, over the Iraq invasion. He has written extensively on Africa and the Middle East.

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The same loony Tom is one time a jounalist, a spy at another and even a conflict prevenition adviser aand then a Jihadist sympathiser, is now doinghis dirty work on Ethiopoians and Somalis!

Here is his dirt and the cleaners on the same page.

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Sunday, August 12, 2007
Ethiopia asks Human Rights Watch to refrain from implicating based on fabricated information
Addis Ababa, August 11, 2007 (Addis Ababa) - Ethiopia has urged on Human Rights Watch the need to take upon itself to refrain from being catalyst, wittingly or otherwise, to forces that prove themselves unheeding to human rights.


In a statement it issued on Saturday, the Ministry of Information said Human Rights Watch has launched persistent campaigns against Ethiopia and other African countries in the disguise of human rights violations. “It has been preparing as part of this campaign to issue a statement with an aim of victimizing Ethiopia.”


The latest campaign by Human Rights Watch revolves around the usual fabrication of a claim that Ethiopia has committed a war crime in Somalia, and that the world showed indifference, the statement said.


It goes without saying that Somalia has suffered from anarchy for nearly two decades, during which time and in the absence of any functional government, Somalis paid dearly in the face of turmoil and in the hands of gangs and those who could muster some muscle to exercise local power, the statement noted.
The wounds left in Somalia by the anarchy and civil strife is still fresh to remind how the international community failed the state of Somalia all through those years of civil ordeals, the statement said.


It said, during those long years when Somalis were suffering untold suffering and paying sacrifices with their lives, Human Rights Watch had never raised its voice calling for an end to the injustices Somalis had been burdened with. “What was Human Rights Watch doing then,” it asks, “during those decades when the hopes of Somalis for good governance and development had very much been eroded and they had been made to suffer at the hands of the benefiting warlords.”


Human Rights Watch did not seem to have eyes to see and ears to hear when, to add insult on injury, the extremist forces came with their coercive and tyrannical rule whereby they persecute Somalis for watching movie, the statement said.


Human Rights Watch has now come out of the blue with recriminations and finger pointing at Ethiopia and the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia at this time when Somalia has come back on the road to peace and stability.
The statement recalled also that those extremist forces had gone farther than exercising their tyranny in Somalia to have expressed time and again their resolve and determination to bring all the Somali speaking peoples in Eastern Africa under their hegemony.


Human Rights Watch turned a blind eye also to the unprovoked aggressions of the extremist forces against Ethiopia, the country which they see their prime enemy.


Ethiopia strongly held that the people in Somalia shouldered the brunt of the anarchy that had prevailed in their country, the statement said. But, it would surely have spread to other societies in the Horn of Africa, it indicated.
Ethiopia has been firm on its stance that any international effort aimed at supporting Somalia should take off from an honest bid to extricate Somalis from the turmoil and warlordism, it said. “Ethiopia has also been unequivocal on its natural right to defend itself from aggressions it was beginning to suffer at the hands of the extremists in Somalia and stooges harbored there.”


Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia, which only followed a request by the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, was grounded on these two basic matters, the statement noted. “And it paid off now that Somalia is well on the road to sustainable peace and security.”


The recent peace and reconciliation conference ongoing in Somalia, but shows this trend, it added. This being the fact, however, Human Rights Watch has been busy as of late to incriminate Ethiopia and the TFG as has been catalyzed by groups and organizations linked directly to the deposed UIC (Union of Islamic Courts), it said.


These groups and organizations operate under orders from UIC leaders now in their hideouts, it indicated. Human Rights Watch would do better trying to get to the bottom of things before making allegations on the basis of information obtained from such sources, that cannot in any way claim impartiality, it said. Directly or indirectly, Human Rights Watch has thus been being instrument to the propaganda of the UIC, the statement said.


It would be self-defeating for Human Rights Watch trying to incriminate Ethiopia on the basis of fabrications by those groups who refuse to see through the window of hope now created in Somalia.
Therefore, Ethiopia would like to urge on the H

uman Rights Watch the wisdom of refraining from being a catalyst, wittingly or otherwise, to these forces that proved unheeding to human rights.










August 13, 2007
Ethiopia's dirty war: A new humanitarian crisis has developed in the Horn of Africa (by HRW's Tom Porteous)
A "Comment Is Free" post from about a week ago (also reprinted on the HRW site)...

While the west agonises over Darfur, another humanitarian and human-rights disaster is brewing in the Horn of Africa.

In June, the Ethiopian government launched a major military campaign in the Ogaden, a sparsely populated and remote region on Ethiopia's border with Somalia. The counter-insurgency operation was aimed at eliminating the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), a rebel group which has been fighting for years for self-determination for the Ogaden's predominantly Somali population.

In less than two months, Ethiopia's military campaign has triggered a serious humanitarian crisis. Human Rights Watch has learned that dozens of civilians have been killed in what appears to be a deliberate effort to mete out collective punishment against a civilian population suspected of sympathising with the rebels.

Villages have been attacked, sacked and burnt. Livestock - the lynchpin of the region's pastoralist economy - have been confiscated or destroyed. A partial trade blockade has been imposed on the region, leading to serious food shortages. Relatives of suspected rebels have been taken hostage. Thousands of civilians have been displaced, fleeing across the borders of Ethiopia into northern Kenya and Somaliland.

Last week, with little objection from the international community, the Ethiopian government expelled from the Ogaden the International Committee of the Red Cross, one of the few neutral observers of the crisis left in the region.

This is not Darfur. But the situation in Ogaden follows a familiar pattern of a counter-insurgency operation in which government forces show little regard for the safety of the civilian population and commit serious abuses, including deliberate attacks on civilians, mass displacement of populations and interference with humanitarian assistance.

Unlike in Darfur, however, the state that is perpetrating abuses against its people in Ogaden is a key western ally and [a] recipient of large amounts of western aid. Furthermore the crisis in Ogaden is linked to a military intervention by Ethiopia in Somalia that has been justified in terms of counter-terrorism and is firmly supported by the United States and other western donors.

Ethiopia has often justified military action in Somalia on grounds of cooperation between what it calls "terrorist" groups in Somalia and the rebellion in Ogaden. The ONLF certainly has strong ethnic and political links to Somali insurgents now fighting against the Ethiopian military presence in Somalia. It may have decided to escalate its rebellion in Ogaden in response to Ethiopia's full-scale military intervention in Somalia in December [of] last year.

Now there are reliable reports that, as a result of Ethiopian military pressure inside Somalia, Somali insurgents, including members the militant Islamist al-Shabaab, have sought refuge in Ogaden, where they could be regrouping. Thus instead of containing and calming the situation in Somalia, the actions of Ethiopia's forces there may well be exacerbating the conflict and regionalising it.

The emerging crisis in the Ogaden is indicative of an increasingly volatile political and military situation in the Horn of Africa. Predictably civilians are bearing the brunt of the crisis both in the Ogaden and in Somalia, where hundreds of thousands have been displaced by fighting since the Ethiopian intervention. Predictably human-rights abuses and violations of the laws of war are being perpetrated by all sides. It could all get a lot worse, especially if it leads to a resumption of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

So why isn't the international community doing more to address this crisis. Hasn't the UN being saying for years that crisis prevention is better than cure?

The EU and the United States have significant leverage over Ethiopia in the form of foreign aid and political influence. They should use it, instead of turning a blind eye to abuses carried out by the Ethiopian security forces in the name of counter-terrorism.

Western support for Ethiopia's counter-insurgency efforts in the Horn of Africa is not only morally wrong and riddled with double standards, it is also ineffective and counterproductive. It will lead to the escalation and regionalisation of the conflicts of the region, and may well help to radicalise its large and young Muslim population.

Tom Porteous has been the London director of Human Rights Watch since October 2006. As a journalist he worked for the Guardian (as Cairo correspondent from 1986 [to] 88) and for the BBC World Service. Between jobs in journalism, he participated as a political officer in UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia and Liberia in the mid 1990s. He joined the UK Foreign Office in 2000 as conflict-prevention adviser for sub-Saharan Africa, but resigned in March 2003, over the Iraq invasion. He has written extensively on Africa and the Middle East.

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Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Press Statement

Human Rights Watch’s Morally Repugnant Report

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs regrets that it finds the latest report by Human Rights Watch on Somalia factually and morally unacceptable. It suffers from numerous errors, displays seriously partial attitudes, demonstrates dangerously flawed motives, conspicuously fails to understand recent events in Somalia and shows no understanding of the current progress towards a settlement.

Most extraordinarily, nowhere does this report address the issue of terrorism. It only refers to “the insurgency”, even though it notes that al-Shabaab is the key element in this so-called insurgency, and Al-Shabaab has been widely identified as a terrorist organization.

Its leadership includes Sheikh Aweys. The report notes that Sheikh Aweys is on a US terrorist list, and identifies him as a leader of Al-Itihaad, but then fails to classify him as a terrorist.

The report even goes so far as to refer to “allegations” of al-Itihaad activity despite the fact that al-Itihaad has admitted to such terrorist activities as the attempted assassination of an Ethiopian minister, and the bombings of a number of civilian targets including hotels in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. Do terrorist operations only become such when they take place outside Africa? This kind of mentality infuses this report and makes it appear more of a geo-political document than a human rights report.

The report gives no indication that the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is the legitimate, and recognized, government of Somalia. Time and again it appears to equate the TFG and the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Its account of the Khartoum meetings in 2006 is simply wrong. At the first meeting, the two sides did not recognize each other as equal.

The ICU recognized the legitimacy of the TFG and agreed to put its forces under TFG control. The TFG merely accepted the ICU as a recognized force. The result of this meeting was the hard line takeover of the ICU by the shura headed by Sheikh Aweys. There was no subsequent possibility of any serious negotiation as Sheikh Aweys himself made clear.

HRW suggests that the so-called insurgency supported Somali nationalist ideals. Whether deliberately or not, this effectively legitimizes the irredentist claims on Ethiopia and Kenya which took Somalia into two wars with Ethiopia in the 1960s and 1970s, and launched the concept of Greater Somalia. The report makes no mention of IGAD’s unanimous decision in March 2005 to support the creation of an IGASOM force, the precursor of AMISOM.

HRW says nothing about how this was aborted even though the initiative had been endorsed by all IGAD countries, including Eritrea. The omission is not a simple matter because this failure more or less shaped subsequent events with respect to the ascendancy of the ICU and al-Shabaab. There is no mention that it was an offensive by the ICU, backed by a significant foreign component, including Eritrean troops, against the legitimate government of Somalia in Baidoa, which led to the TFG’s request for Ethiopian assistance.

Eritrea gets no more than a passing mention despite the detailed evidence of UN Monitoring Group reports. The nonsensical suggestion that Ethiopia is trying to fight a proxy war with Eritrea in Somalia, the reverse of the reality, underlines the failure of HRW to understand the regional dimensions of the Somali situation, and its total refusal to even try to talk to any Ethiopian officials.

The HRW report is carefully constructed to misrepresent Ethiopia’s role and its activities. The “intentions” of Ethiopian military commanders are questioned though these can hardly be discerned in the absence of any contact with Ethiopian military officers or even civilian officials.

No effort was made to reach anyone at any time. Ethiopian troops actually have an excellent reputation for discipline, as accounts of peace-keeping operations in Liberia and elsewhere have made clear. Ethiopia does not need to boast about this.

The report very carefully refuses to acknowledge that the actions of the so-called insurgency are war crimes. Its actions are merely classified as posing “grave risks to civilians”, or mere violations.

Alleged Ethiopian actions are identified as war crimes, and, even more, HRW claims to know the intentions of Ethiopian commanders and troops. And this without making any effort whatever, at any time, to talk to any Ethiopian sources whether in Mogadishu or Addis Ababa.

In fact, HRW does not normally comment on “intentions”, and it certainly hasn’t done so in reports on other areas of the world. Why now? And why Ethiopia? It is morally repugnant that HRW should put Ethiopian troops and terrorists on the same level, and that it should deliberately moderate its account of terrorists in Mogadishu while recklessly talking about alleged “intentions” of Ethiopian troops.

In its recommendations, HRW calls on Ethiopian troops to “cease” all attacks that target civilians; the so-called insurgency is merely asked to “avoid” these “to the extent possible”.

Why the distinction? It makes no sense if HRW is being balanced as it claims to be. It is not of course. Why does HRW ask the European Union, the United Nations, the African Union, the Arab League and the United States to call on the Ethiopian government and the TFG to avoid any attacks on civilians.

What has happened to the so-called insurgency which even the report admits earlier, if somewhat grudgingly, was guilty of such attacks.

It is clear from these and other comments that most, if not all, of HRW’s sources, most un-named, appear to be opponents of the TFG and critics of the presence of Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu.

This was not an independent investigation. As HRW itself acknowledges, many of its sources come from al-Shabaab and its supporters, and, as it admits, they also leave many details about events, intent and actions, “murky”.

All this raises the question of why HRW has written such a report, which is not so much the independent investigation it claims as a carefully framed attack on Ethiopia. What are the motives?

It is clear that this is not a question of human rights, otherwise some effort would have been made to raise the issue of terrorism, rather than ignore it.

In the absence of other explanations, we have to speculate. One possibility is that HRW, a New York-based organization, needs to enhance its credibility in some regions, by attacking Ethiopia, if unjustifiably. It cannot succeed.

There has been a strong tendency in the last few months in the US to downplay the dangers of terrorism, to de-emphasize the threat, with the pendulum swinging away from the post 9/11 situation.

To use Ethiopia in this respect provides an easy option for HRW. It also perhaps makes sense in terms of geo-political considerations. Not is it the first such attack aimed recently at Ethiopia by HRW. HRW recently issued a report on the Somali Regional State of Ethiopia. Exactly the same techniques, of misrepresentation, of suppression, of the use of highly partial evidence, were apparent.

The Foreign Ministry would also make the point that the timing of this report is particularly disappointing as it comes when all the evidence points to genuine progress being made in Somalia.

The National Reconciliation Congress is now in its fourth week, and has been making significant progress through its agenda of reconciliation. The levels of security have improved in Mogadishu as well as elsewhere in Somalia.

The TFG has managed to oversee democratic elections for district and regional councils and for official posts including that of governor, in Bay and Bakool regions.

If the international community would now provide the resources for the TFG, and for the support for AMISOM, there is every reason to believe that this window of opportunity will be successful, and therefore produce sustainable conditions for improved human rights in Somalia. No doubt, no one, least of all Somalis, should now expect HRW to contribute to this noble effort.

14.08.2007





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