Category: Legal-Judicial

Elmshorn – What happened behind the red brick facade on the third floor on Friedenstrasse?

The police are still investigating at full speed, but are holding back with information. The fact is: two young women (19, 23) were killed in the apartment. Neighbors report that they were Eritreans.

The emergency call came in at 1:20 p.m. on Saturday. Several patrol cars arrive, paramedics, two emergency doctors.

And soon thereafter also forensic doctors from the UKE in Hamburg. Because it quickly becomes clear: nothing can be done, the injuries are too serious.

Before that, however, police officers who were the first to arrive at the crime scene ran through the pools of blood. Hoping to be able to help the victims. To be able to distinguish their shoeprints from those of the murderer, the soles are photographed.

While the officers from the homicide squad secure clues in the apartment and carry out blood-smeared objects, colleagues search the area for possible perpetrators.

And you will find it! Not far from Friedenstrasse, they arrest a 29-year-old man from Baden-Württemberg.

Since he is an urgent suspect, a judge issues an arrest warrant for double murder. However, the motive remains in the dark.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

ADDIS ABABA — The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has published a detailed report on human rights violations over the past year. According to the findings, the country has suffered its worst record of rights violations as conflicts result in a surge of civilian killings.

The report documents violations in almost all parts of Ethiopia, from conflict in the north to fighting on Oromia and ethnically motivated killings in the southern Gambela, among other regions.

According to the report, 740 civilians have been killed, including women, children and the elderly, due to the war with Tigray that has advanced into the Amhara and Afar regions. The Oromo Liberation Army, an entity that the Ethiopian parliament calls “Shane” and has labeled a terrorist organization, has also been implicated in civilian killings in the Amhara, Oromia, Gambela and Benishangul regions.

The report also notes an alleged massacre in western Oromia last June. In Gambela and Benishangul, other groups have carried out ethnically targeted killings during the past year, while in the south several people have died due to unrest.

The report also blamed government forces for violations targeting civilians, including killings, torture and the jailing of over 50 media personnel.

The rights commission called on the conflicting parties in northern Ethiopia to solve differences and bring individuals implicated in rights violations to justice. It has also called on federal and regional authorities to release all detainees in police custody without due process.

Source: Voice of America

Yellow journalism, a practice usually characterized by sensational reports and media coverage of dubious accuracy and taste, has been widely practiced by both mainstream as well as social media outlets during wartimes and conflicts. Such reports resort to eye-catching headlines; exaggerate news events, and treat news in an unprofessional and unethical manner. Sensationalism is mainly intended to gain a huge number of readers and viewers and thereby promote a certain agenda to influence or rather hoodwink the audiences. Media coverage of the conflict in Tigray Region of Ethiopia is a typical case in point.

Most often, “ war crime, gang rape, ethnic cleansing, blockade, and looting” are terms associated with the ongoing Tigray conflict. The excessive hyperbole that is gratuitously invoked without rigorous examination of facts on the ground, and its timing, invariably invoked whenever the TPLF is on the back foot, indeed belie a sinister political agenda of external intervention designed to salvage the culpable party. Furthermore, most of the reports by media and “Rights Groups” are done from outside Tigray by consulting people affiliated to the TPLF. Hence, a person or a group who has never been to Tigray since the start of the war cannot come up with a concrete and empirical report that reflects the actual reality on the ground.

An illustrative example of such reporting is a self-contradictory article entitled, ‘Ethiopia’s Invisible Ethnic Cleansing – The World Can’t Afford to Ignore Tigray’, written by Agnes Callamard of Amnesty International and Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch on Foreign Affairs on June 2, 2022.

This article has made several allegations of abuses, but, paradoxically, it made the following statement as well: ‘…many of these abuses have been hidden from view. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has imposed communication restrictions throughout Tigray and obstructed the efforts of independent investigators, journalists, and humanitarian workers, making it difficult to verify accounts from the region.’

If it is indeed difficult to verify purported “accounts of abuses” in the region, how can the authors justify their outrageous allegations without minimum validation and verification? This fact alone renders their report a mere diatribe of “activists and militants” rather than an objective and professional account of facts and events gauged through established procedures, norms and metrics of humanitarian laws of war.

The article is also guilty of gross omission of key facts and events. It glosses over the cardinal question on the causes of the war. Long before the war broke out, TPLF was preparing for the offensive, covertly as well as overtly. The indelible fact is that TPLF launched pre-meditated, massive and coordinated attacks on all the positions of Ethiopia’s Northern Command on the night of November 3, 2020. TPLF wrongly believed that it could neutralize the Northern Command, and seize all its heavy weaponry which constituted 80% of Ethiopia’s total arsenal in its blitzkrieg. In addition to this, in launching its war of choice, the TPLF’s twin objectives were to seize power in Ethiopia and to pursue its hostile agenda “of territorial expansion” against Eritrea.

Most mainstream media reports of the conflict do not only lack depth and objectivity, largely carried out as they are through remote sensing, but they also ignore reality and context. In this perspective, they totally ignore or do not take into account the TPLF’s crimes in the Amhara and Afar regions. For instance, TPLF soldiers deliberately massacred dozens of civilians, raped women and underage girls, and vandalized civilian as well as public properties when they seized control of the town of Kobo in the Amhara region.

In the event, TPLF and its handlers do not have any moral ground to accuse other parties on the basis of fallacious allegations. TPLF, an organization designated as a terrorist group by the Ethiopian government, should be accountable for all the miseries the people of Tigray facing today. In addition to their past miscalculations, TPLF leaders are beating war drums and instilling siege mentality on Tigrayan society to perpetuate the sufferings of the people of Tigray. However, these are issues willfully ignored by most mainstream media outlets that are largely at the beck and call of the TPLF’s principal Enablers.

Nonetheless, there are a handful of reporters covering the situation in Tigray objectively and professionally, by travelling to the battle grounds and through extensive contacts and validation of testimonial and other evidences. An article entitled, US Threatening Ethiopia and Eritrea with Illegal “Designation of Genocide”, written by Ann Garrison on May 26, 2022 underscored the reality of unhindered flow of humanitarian aid into Tigray region to the world. She wrote her article by travelling to the Afar region of Ethiopia.

In her article, Ann Garrison asked New Zealand journalist Alastair Thompson, who had recently travelled to Ethiopia’s Afar region, to describe the aid convoys he saw while travelling to a town found on the border between Afar and Tigray. He described the situation as follows:

On the way I saw a large number of trucks driving up. We drove past them because they were traveling more slowly than we were. And on the following day, when we returned, we saw more trucks traveling up and we also saw a large convoy staged at Silsa, about maybe 100 kilometers from Semara that was about to depart from Mekelle.

He, furthermore, testified that, . . . after the convoys depart from Silsa, the security is fairly simple. There are a series of checkpoints, not that many of them, at different intervals along the road manned by the Afar. There’s no sign of the Ethiopian army in the area. And there seems to be a very orderly running of the convoys.

The stark difference between media willful distortion and fact-based, objective reporting largely mirrors the distinct political agenda of different players.

The situation transcends normal “fog of war”, or inevitable inaccuracies that stem from issues of access and/or paucity of information. The distorted portrayal of facts and events; the gratuitous use of defamatory terms without irrefutable evidences; are indeed derivatives and manifestations of the Revisionist Narrative that TPLF Enablers have been pushing to portray the villain as the victim to pave the ground for its eventual rehabilitation.

Source: Ministry of Information Eritrea

Unlike Mathieu van der Poel, Biniam Girmay did claim the victory in the bunch sprint of the fifth Giro stage towards Messina. The winner of Gent-Wevelgem seemed to start his sprint, until Phil Bauhaus handed out a quack. Girmay had to move heaven and earth to stay straight and crossed the finish line in fifth.

Quinten Lafort

Today at 16:32

It didn’t matter if Biniam Girmay made a very ugly crash in the fifth stage of the Giro. The 22-year-old Eritrean seemed to be on his way to fight for victory, until he was hit by Phil Bauhaus. Girmay flirted with the crash, but miraculously stayed upright.

Despite the near fall, the winner of Gent Wevelgem finished in fifth place. A missed opportunity for Girmay, who in the points classification over Mathieu van der Poel, but has to tolerate Arnaud Démare. A sprint train from Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert could have helped Girmay to victory today. Would Hilaire Van der Schueren like to reach for a sprint train in function of his gold nugget.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

The literary writer’s organization PEN America is expanding its support of writers around the world who face imprisonment for their work by hiring human rights advocate Liesl Gerntholtz to head the new PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center.

The new center will build on PEN America’s work advocating for imprisoned writers like the Ukrainian freelance journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko, who was first arrested in 2021 in Crimea and remains imprisoned.

PEN America awarded him the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write award in 2022 to draw attention to his case in hopes that he will be freed, like many of the prize’s prior recipients, thanks to the award’s profile and the advocacy of other major international writers.

Yesypenko’s wife will accept the award in his stead later this month in New York and PEN America highlighted his case at a demonstration outside the Russian embassy last year and through press releases following his arrest and sentencing to six years in prison in February.

Under Gerntholtz’s leadership, the new center will help PEN America monitor more cases of imprisoned writers in real time and try to help them leave their country or otherwise protect themselves. This work is often done out of the public eye because of the hostile environment the writers face from countries like Egypt, China and Myanmar.

Gerntholtz, who formerly led the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch among other roles, said the center already has a database of some 700 “writers, intellectuals, visual artists, journalists under threat,” adding that list will be updated and expanded.

Men are disproportionately represented among imprisoned writers, “which means that we are obviously missing the ways that women are silenced,” said Gerntholtz, a native of South Africa.

In another measure of the state of free expression around the world, the Committee for the Protection of Journalists documented the imprisonment of 293 journalists as of Dec. 1, the sixth year in a row that it has documented more than 250 detained reporters.

Within the U.S., CPJ found that 59 journalists were arrested in 2021, usually while they were covering protests.

Source: Voice of America

Once again, good afternoon.

We had useful and meaningful talks. We stated that the traditionally friendly relations between Russia and Eritrea continue to develop successfully, despite all the vicissitudes of the international situation. We are developing a political dialogue and contacts between departments that are responsible for trade, the economy, and humanitarian ties. Today we have agreed to provide all possible assistance to our businessmen in both countries in the interests of agreeing and implementing mutually beneficial projects in energy, transport infrastructure, information and communication technologies and agriculture. There is mutual interest here.

Much attention was paid to the task of preventing the negative impact on our practical cooperation of the action of unilateral illegitimate sanctions imposed by the states of the “collective West”, which has made sanctions almost the main and only instrument of its foreign policy.

We noted the coincidence of our approaches to key topical issues of our time, including the need for further democratization of international life, respect for the right of the peoples of the world to choose their own destiny and determine the paths and models of their political and socio-economic development.

We have a good level of coordination at the UN platform and at other multilateral platforms. We have a common position to counter the persistent attempts made by Western countries to undermine the foundations of the UN, the principles of international law and establish a unipolar world, promoting Western dominance in all spheres of international life under the strong leadership of Washington.

We examined in sufficient detail the issues of the all-African agenda. We noted the importance of the soonest normalization of the situation in the “hot spots” of Africa. Particular attention was paid to the situation in the Horn of Africa region. We, like our Eritrean friends, are convinced that in order to overcome regional crises, it is necessary, first of all, to promote an integrated comprehensive approach that involves concerted action by the African countries themselves with the support of the world community. We reaffirmed that Russia, including as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, will continue to contribute to strengthening security and stability on the African continent, based on the well-known principle of “African problems – an African solution.” So that decisions are not imposed on Africans from outside. There are many such attempts.

At the request of our friends, we shared our assessments of the situation in Ukraine and around it. Once again, we emphasized the goal of our actions – the protection of people from the military threat from the Kyiv regime and the need for the demilitarization and denazification of this country.

We highly appreciated the objective and responsible position of Eritrea regarding the situation in Ukraine. We appreciated the understanding of the fundamental nature of this situation, which is inextricably linked with the global crisis of the European security architecture as a result of the aggressive policy of the North Atlantic Alliance, which grossly violates the commitments made at the highest level, including in the OSCE, that no one should strengthen their security at the expense of the safety of others.

We told our colleagues about yesterday’s talks in Moscow with UN Secretary-General Anatoly Guterres, who, in particular, focused on the humanitarian components of the current situation. We talked about what really impressive efforts the Russian side is making to solve humanitarian problems in Ukraine. Secretary General A. Guterres called for the UN, together with the International Committee of the Red Cross, to assist in organizing humanitarian convoys and evacuating civilians. President Vladimir Putin accepted this interest with understanding. We positively assess the desire of the UN to play a constructive, unbiased role. We explained to the Secretary General and his delegation how exactly the UN could contribute to the solution of humanitarian problems. There are several representatives from the UN here.

That’s what we were talking about. The talks were helpful. We agreed to continue working on all areas of our agenda.

Question: How are the preparations for the Russia-Africa summit going? Will it take place? In what areas does Russia intend to develop cooperation with African countries?

Foreign Minister Lavrov: The Russia-Africa summit is being prepared. This will be the second summit meeting. The first one took place in 2019 in Sochi. Now, with our African friends, we are developing organizational aspects that will allow us to announce the parameters of the upcoming summit, taking into account the situation, which is heavily influenced by coronavirus restrictions. We must find a convenient time and form for all heads of state.

The areas of cooperation with Africa were determined in the decisions of the first summit in Sochi in October 2019: political dialogue, cooperation in the economy, investment, humanitarian and educational ties (a huge number of Africans study at Russian universities), and assistance in solving the problems of the African continent. All-encompassing dialogue. The Association for Economic Cooperation with African Countries has been established. Our Ministry has formed the Secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, which in practice is engaged in the preparation of further contacts.

Question: One of the conditions for Russia and a number of countries to recognize the Taliban government is to ensure inclusiveness, i.e. participation of all ethnopolitical forces in the government of the country. The Taliban have been in power for eight months. The old leaders of political parties fled, except for H. Karzai and A. Abdullah. New alternative political forces that would declare their readiness to enter a new inclusive government with the Taliban did not identify themselves during these months. Why do you think the Taliban failed to ensure the formation of a truly inclusive government during this period? Is it possible to form it in Afghanistan under the Taliban?

Foreign Minister Lavrov: The question of why the Taliban succeeded or not is largely artificial. You can always argue why the Americans and their allies failed in Afghanistan. For 20 years of their stay and complete total control over the country, they have not created a single facility that would generate jobs, an increase in Afghanistan’s GDP, etc. The subjunctive in diplomacy does not help.

With regard to ethnopolitical inclusiveness. This was not so much a condition of the international community as a promise, an obligation. It was proclaimed by the Taliban themselves when they came to power, among the steps they will take to restore order in the country and ensure national harmony.

You rightly noted that in addition to ethnic and confessional harmony, there should also be political inclusiveness. So far this is not good. All members of the current government (it is still temporary) are political Taliban, despite the difference in their ethnic origin. Former President H. Karzai and former senior official (de facto Prime Minister) A. Abdullah remain in Afghanistan. I think that they are quite authoritative figures who are open to dialogue with the Taliban. We encourage such contact. I hope it will allow us to further stabilize Afghanistan.

Question: The head of the Civic Chamber of Crimea, AA Formanchuk, spoke about the possibility of incorporating the Kherson region into the Russian Federation. This region and a number of other regions of southern Ukraine are under the control of the Russian Armed Forces. They are in close contact with the people. Was the desire of local residents to join Russia noticed? Is it possible to talk about a new form of the map of Russia, including some regions of the south of Ukraine?

Foreign Minister Lavrov: From the very beginning of the special military operation, we made a statement that the goal is to protect civilians who suffer from the militarization and nazification of their country. From the fact that frank neo-Nazis “rule the show” in power structures. They do not even hesitate to demonstrate the appropriate symbols of Nazi Germany. The population suffers from the fact that the government, headed by the president, passes laws that consistently kill the Russian language, culture, and education in Ukraine. These laws encourage the theory and practice of Nazism. People are under totalitarian oppression. Their mood must be put in the first place, given full priority.

Announcing the start of a special military operation, we said: we proceed from the fact that the citizens of Ukraine will determine their own fate. Decide for them, not for anyone else. Ukraine has been under external control for many years. People are tired of this.

Speech and answers to media questions by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov following the talks with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Eritrea O. Saleh, Moscow, April 27, 2022

Lavrov and Eritrean’s FM Saleh give press conference in Moscow

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Eritrean counterpart Osman Saleh give a joint press conference following bilateral talks in Moscow on Wednesday, April 27.

The top diplomats are expected to discuss a wide range of topics, regional and global issues, including current developments in Ukraine.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

April 13, 2002, is the date on which the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) – the Arbitral body composed of five judges established with the express mandate of delimiting and demarcating the Eritrea-Ethiopia boundary based on pertinent Colonial Treaties (1900, 1902 and 1908) and Applicable International Law – gave its final and binding verdict. Through this adjudication, the putative “border dispute’’ of the two countries was legally settled once and for all.

Nonetheless, the defunct TPLF regime reneged on its treaty obligations and resorted to all sorts of subterfuges to obstruct the implementation of the Arbitral Ruling. The TPLF’s endless prevarications and impediments ultimately pushed the EEBC to opt for virtual demarcation of the border in November 2007 invoking legal validity of the procedure and recent precedence in other similar cases. The EEBC accordingly provided both countries with full digital details of the virtually demarcated border while duly depositing these maps at the UN Cartographic Unit.

I was only a child when the TPLF declared war against Eritrea in 1998. But I can vividly remember, among other things, the mobilization of able-bodied citizens, including my father to the war front; the bustling of women to prepare dry food; constant news coverage on local radio; general anxiety and hopes for victory in the imposed war; the new songs that depicted the new reality and the pounding of the artillery.

I also remember Wedi Shawl’s song of “Natna Aynihbin, Zeynatna Ayndelin”, which I later found out was indeed extracted from the historic speech of President Isaias Afwerki on 24 May 1998; two weeks after the TPLF’s declaration of war on Eritrea.

Wedi Shawl came up with another fitting song with the lyrics, ‘Koyna Zbelnayas Koyna’ – which roughly translates into: “What we have said all along is done” – when the EEBC’s decision contained in a 125-page document was solemnly announced on April 13, 2002. This was a very popular song at the time. Not only did we sing the song but wrote the lyrics on classroom walls with colored chalk.

In retrospect, it’s easy to understand why we wrote and sang ‘Koyna Zbelnayas Koyna’. As young students, we only knew that the war erupted due to Ethiopian territorial claims on Badme. As young students, we assertively argued, even if we had no clue on the complexity of border issues, “Badme Natnaýa – Badme is ours”, on sheer gut feeling. The ‘Koyna Zbelnayas Koyna’ of the time, unlike our narrow interpretation which was confined to the EEBC’s Award, had a far greater meaning and implication. The nation, including artist Wedi Shawl, was celebrating the overall victory of the rule of law over the rule of jungle.

As Secondary School students, our understanding of legal concepts and clauses in the Algiers Agreement – such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, the rule of law etc, was limited and confined to what we read/listened in local newspapers/radio broadcasts. On the occasion of the 14th anniversary of the Independence Day on May 24, 2005, I participated in a general-knowledge contest representing my school. I was asked to list the Guarantors of the Algiers Peace Agreement. I got it right. But I did not win as I failed to come up with the correct answer for the subsequent question. The host asked me to spell out the full names of the five judges of the Commission. I was dazed. I could only mention Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, the President, in prattler accent. I heard the remaining names of Prince Bola Adesumbo Ajibola, Professor W. Michael Reisman, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel and Sir Arthur Watts from the host.

Boundary disputes are not limited to Eritrea and Ethiopia. This is especially the case in Africa where, at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, colonial powers carved out boundaries without regard for inhabitants and local geography. But it is also the case in other continents.

With regard to the Eritrean border with Ethiopia, this was delimited through the three agreements signed in 1900, 1902, and 1908. The integrity of this border remained unchanged in subsequent periods and was endorsed as such by the UN in 1952. We also knew that the OAU Summit in Cairo in 1964 adopted a Resolution on the sanctity of the colonial boundaries to avert a Pandora’s Box of interminable border disputes and conflicts.

But the TPLF embarked on reckless attempt of redrawing the political maps of Ethiopia and Tigray Region to incorporate adjacent territories within Ethiopia as well as from sovereign Eritrea. The latter act was in flagrant contravention of the basic OAU Resolution and accepted African norms and practices. Concerted efforts made by Eritrea to settle the problem through good-faith negotiations failed to bear any fruit. TPLF’s obduracy was followed by its declaration of a needless and costly border war that raged for two year inculcating the loss of over one hundred thousand lives; and, the displacement and deportation of tens of thousands more.

When TPLF’s military campaigns was thwarted by a costly defeat at the Assab Front in June 2000, it was finally forced to accept the Cessation of Hostilities and later the entire Algiers Peace Agreement on December 12, 2000.

The Algiers Agreement created a court of arbitration, the EEBC. The Algiers Agreement also stipulated, in categorical terms, that “the parties agree that the delimitation and demarcation determinations of the Commission shall be final and binding”. But notwithstanding the unequivocal provisions of the Algiers Agreement, the EEBC decision was not enforced by the UN Security Council because principal sponsors – especially the US and the EU – failed to honour their obligations for their own narrow geopolitical considerations.

When the EEBC decision was announced, Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister at the time falsely claimed that “Badme was awarded to Ethiopia”. He urged the international community to use punitive sanctions if necessary, to secure Eritrea’s full and immediate compliance with the provisions of the EEBC Award. The Foreign Minister and his government were soon to make a u-turn, sing a different song and reject the EEBC Award. Subsequent sessions of the EEBC were marked by Ethiopia’s dilatory tactics. Thus, in its 16th Report to the UN in 2006, the Commission was compelled to write: “Ethiopia is not prepared to allow demarcation to continue in the manner laid down in the demarcation directions and in accordance with the timeline set by the Commission.”

TPLF bad-faith acts and obstructions were tacitly endorsed by its principal sponsors. John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN, in his book, “Surrender is not an Option”, revealed the various ploys employed by the US Department of State to nullify the provisions of the Algiers Agreement and the EEBC final and binding decision. He wrote: “For reasons I never understood, however, Frazer reversed course, and asked in early February [2005] to reopen the 2002 EEBC decision, which she had concluded was wrong, and award a major piece of disputed territory to Ethiopia. I was at a loss how to explain that to the Security Council…”

In 2008, I was assigned to Elala, a small village found at about an hour’s walk on foot southwest of Shambuko crossing the Mereb River, to do my National Service as a teacher. Elala was a temporary village established by the displaced inhabitants of Denbe Hmbrti, Sef’a and Hazegga. They were deprived of their farm and grazing land due to the continued illegal occupation of TPLF forces. Through the help of binoculars provided by the Eritrean forces stationed there, I observed the movement of the enemy in the mountain facing Shambuko. Elala, found deep inside the Eritrean sovereign territory, was turned into “a contentious battle-ground” and Eritrean forces were standing between us and the enemy.

The course of events changed when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared Ethiopia’s readiness to accept and implement in full the Decision of the Boundary Commission. Following his visit to Asmara, a Joint Declaration on Peace and Friendship was signed between Eritrea and Ethiopia on July 9, 2018. The Declaration brought to an end eighteen years of ‘no war no peace’ between Ethiopia and Eritrea and opened a new era of peace and friendship. Article four of the Joint Agreement stipulates that “The two countries will implement the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission decision.”

Natna Aynhbn Zeynatna Ayndelni represents Eritrea’s principled legal position that augurs well for a peaceful resolution of good-faith border disputes. It is an immutable recipe for enhancing good-neighbourly ties for enduring regional peace and stability. Eritrea has paid a heavy price because this was not reciprocated by the TPLF and certain powers in the international community that accommodated its excesses. Whatever the case, Eritrea’s flag, raised on the unbreakable pillar of truth, continues to fly high over its sovereign territories.

Source: Ministry of Information Eritrea