A couple of days after Ethiopia’ new Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn voiced his government’s stubborn stance towards the legitimate demands of the country’s Muslims, the faithful continued their nationwide protests against government interference in religious affairs. The mosque-based protest was staged on Friday, October 19, at Anwar and Nur mosques, two major mosques in the capital Addis Ababa, as well as at mosques in a number of towns across the country. Today’s protests took place in predominantly Muslim cities such as Harar, Dessie, Bati and Kemise, among others.
The Ethiopian federal police has once again killed two Muslim protesters in Garba town of Wallo. It is to be remembered that, last April, securities stormed a Mosque in Gadab Assasa in Oromia and killed four citizens. The latest conflict in Wallo is said to have started when the government rejected five delegates chosen during the widely boycotted Mejlis election two weeks ago. Witnesses say that the federal police publicly brutalized the delegates who protested against the rejection, an action that enraged residents who took to the street to denounce the brutality. Then the police fired live bullets which wounded unknown number of protesters. Activists put the number of civilian causalities at four, while state media claims two civilians and a police officer.
With hands clasped together as a symbol of unity, lines of Muslims gather under the beating sun outside Addis Ababa's Anwar mosque after Friday prayers chanting "Amin, Amin," or "thanks to God." They gather -- as they have all this year -- to protest what they call unconstitutional government interference in religious affairs, heightened by the election of Muslim leaders this month the protesters say were not free or fair. "We have requested an election, a peaceful one, a democratic one, and we didn't get (it)," said Zeinu Lopiso, 26, a merchant near Anwar mosque, speaking at a recent demonstration where hundreds took part. Zeinu, like many other protesters, refused to cast a ballot in the October 7 elections to appoint the leaders of the Supreme Council on Islamic Affairs, the community's main representative body.
Twenty-nine Ethiopian Muslims were charged Monday with plotting acts of "terrorism", the majority arrested after protests accusing the government of interference in religious affairs. According to court documents, the group is accused of "intending to advance a political, religious or ideological cause" by force and the "planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt of terrorist acts." The 29 accused -- including nine prominent Muslim leaders -- were jailed following protests in July staged by Muslims against the government. Among the accused was Habiba Mohammed, the wife of the former minister of civil service, charged with smuggling funds to support religious extremism.
The wife of a senior Ethiopian politician was on Monday charged with funnelling money from the Embassy of Saudi Arabia to Islamist terror groups, at a hearing at the Ethiopian Federal High Court, on Monday. Habiba Mohammed, wife of former Minister for the Civil Service Junedin Sado, was one of 29 Muslim activists accused of criminal conspiracy to commit unspecified acts of terrorism — charges that could attract the death penalty. Those arrested were accused of belonging to, or supporting, the “Solution Seekers of the Muslim Community’s Problems”, a group that the prosecution contended is a terrorist organisation. Lawyers for the accused denied the charges [...] According to the prosecution, Ms. Habiba allegedly tried to steal 1.5 million Ethiopian Birr [...] from the Islamic Council of Ethiopia. He also allegedly received more than 50,000 ETB from the Saudi Arabian Embassy to fund “illegal activities” amongst Ethiopia’s Muslim population. She was arrested in July this year and the money was recovered from her car, according to local media reports. The Embassy of Saudi Arabia could not be reach for comment.
As midday prayers came to an end at the Grand Anwar mosque in Ethiopia's capital, worshippers continued on to what has become a regular second act on Fridays – shouting anti-government slogans. The demonstrations this Friday did not turn violent. But tensions are rising between the government in this mostly Christian country and Muslim worshippers [...] One protester on Friday said his group is changing the color used in past protests, yellow, to white to underscore that the jailed leaders are peaceful activists, not terrorists.
A US religious freedom group has called on Ethiopian authorities to stop what it said was an emerging religious freedom violations against Muslim minorities in the Horn of Africa. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said that if Ethiopia continues to tighten its control against the Muslims, the ongoing mass protests in the east African nation could turn more violent and might lead to a larger destabilization in the already volatile region.
Ethiopia Muslim students at Bahardar University have been forced to stop their education and vacate the campuses after the university decided to deny them hijab and prayer places. “Over 95% of Muslim students of Bahardar University left the campus following the new directive of the University which bans women students from wearing Niqab and Hijab,” Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) website reported on Thursday, January 24.
On February 5, the regime in Ethipia released a documentary film entitled “Jihadawi Harakat”, which was wrongly put as “Jihadic Wars”(haraka is movement in Arabic). The documentary is not very different from the long list of multiple propaganda wars the ruling party has been running for several years. In fact, this film is a bit unlucky to have come after so many of its predecessors which were already dissected and eviscerated by many an observer. I think if at all some of its predecessors were a tragedy in some ways, I think this specific documentary will surely be regarded by too many people as a farce.
Today’s (8 February 2013) ground breaking Muslim protest and the voices they reverberated throughout the vast nation are the authentic voices of all Ethiopians, according to Jemmal Yassin, a 21 year old Unity college student. “As you see this is not savage rioting to destroy property and innocent lives. We are not here to destabilize our country’s political life and social balance by blindly demanding the implementation of the Sharia law in a secular nation. All this is the junta’s shoddy propaganda war against Muslims to scare off 40 million orthodox Christians from joining us.” The articulate young devout told reporters at Anwar Mosque in central Addis Ababa.
The strategic Horn of Africa country is one-third Muslim and two-thirds Christian; why is its state-TV ginning up religious tension? [...] Ethiopia, a US ally in the battle against Al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Somalia, added to mounting worries about religious discord in the diverse east African state by screening a provocative documentary on Islamic extremism.
The controversial imam of a prominent mosque in Arlington, Va., has urged immigrant Muslims in the United States to wage war for Islam. “The enemies of Allah are lining up. The question for us is, are we lining [up] or are we afraid because they may call us terrorists?” Shaker Elsayed told a crowd of Ethiopian Muslims during a lecture at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va [...] At the end of the imam’s incendiary speech, a representative of the Ethiopian group walked to the podium and declared the speech was not calling for jihad.
In her recent commentary in the New York Times Book Review, “Obama: Failing the African Spring?”, Dr. Helen Epstein questioned the Obama Administration for turning a blind eye to human rights violations in Africa, and particularly the persecution of Muslims in Ethiopia. She argued that “After more than four years in office… Obama has done little to advance the idealistic goals of his Ghana speech.” In fact, she finds the Administration playing peekaboo with Paul Kagame, the Rwandan dictator and puppet master of M23 (the rebel group led by Bosco Ntganda under indictment by the International Criminal Court) which has been wreaking havoc in Goma, (city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Youweri Museveni, the overlord of the corruptocracy in Uganda. Dr. Epstein is perplexed by President Obama’s lofty rhetoric and his paralysis when it comes to walking the talk in Ethiopia: Perhaps most worrying of all is the unwillingness of Obama and other Western leaders to say or do anything to support the hundreds of thousands of Muslim Ethiopians who have been demonstrating peacefully against government interference in their religious affairs for more than a year.
The film seeks to transform the "demands for freedom of religion" into a joint criminal enterprise with terror groups. On February 5, 2013, Ethiopia's only and publicly funded Television Station, ETV, aired a controversial documentary during prime time in violation of an outstanding court injunction. Oddly subtitled "Boko Haram in Ethiopia", Jihadawi Harekat - Arabic for "jihadi movement" - denounces leaders of Ethiopia's year-long protest movement for alleged links to foreign terrorists. Muslims in Ethiopia have been protesting the government's control of the Supreme Islamic Council and its imposition of al-Ahbash, an unknown Islamic sect across mosques in Ethiopia
With the convergence of the ‘war on terror’ with the war on political adversaries, draconian justice has returned with a vengeance in Ethiopia. Just as authoritarian and racist regimes during the Cold War used the fight against communism or imperialism for the repression of political dissent; the regime in Ethiopia is using the ‘fight against terrorism’ as a framework for justifying the liquidation of democratic mobilization, and political dissent.
