💭 Timnit Gebru Founder and Executive Director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) at UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day Global Conference 2022.
500,000 Tigrayan Christians were Massacred or Starved to death under 500 days by The Fascist Oromo Regime of Ethiopia – but, the world is still ignoring this devastating tragedy. The coverage of Ukraine has revealed a pretty radical disparity in how human Ukrainians look and feel to western and international – including African media compared to black Ethiopians Christians. 😠😠😠 😢😢😢
💭 Timnit Gebru, a widely respected leader in AI ethics research, is known for coauthoring a groundbreaking paper that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color, which means its use can end up discriminating against them. She also cofounded the Black in AI affinity group, and champions diversity in the tech industry. The team she helped build at Google is one of the most diverse in AI and includes many leading experts in their own right. Peers in the field envied it for producing critical work that often challenged mainstream AI practices.
A series of tweets, leaked emails, and media articles showed that Gebru’s exit was the culmination of a conflict over another paper she coauthored. Jeff Dean, the head of Google AI, told colleagues in an internal email (which he has since put online) that the paper “didn’t meet our bar for publication” and that Gebru had said she would resign unless Google met a number of conditions, which it was unwilling to meet. Gebru tweeted that she had asked to negotiate “a last date” for her employment after she got back from vacation. She was cut off from her corporate email account before her return.
Online, many other leaders in the field of AI ethics are arguing that the company pushed her out because of the inconvenient truths that she was uncovering about a core line of its research—and perhaps its bottom line. More than 1,400 Google staff members and 1,900 other supporters have also signed a letter of protest.
💭 Another Firing Among Google’s A.I. Brain Trust, and More Discord
The researchers are considered a key to the company’s future. But they have had a hard time shaking infighting and controversy over a variety of issues.
Less than two years after Google dismissed two researchers who criticized the biases built into artificial intelligence systems, the company has fired a researcher who questioned a paper it published on the abilities of a specialized type of artificial intelligence used in making computer chips.
Dr. Chatterjee’s dismissal was the latest example of discord in and around Google Brain, an A.I. research group considered to be a key to the company’s future. After spending billions of dollars to hire top researchers and create new kinds of computer automation, Google has struggled with a wide variety of complaints about how it builds, uses and portrays those technologies.
Tension among Google’s A.I. researchers reflects much larger struggles across the tech industry, which faces myriad questions over new A.I. technologies and the thorny social issues that have entangled these technologies and the people who build them.
But even as Google has promoted the technology’s potential, it has encountered resistance from employees about its application. In 2018, Google employees protested a contract with the Department of Defense, concerned that the company’s A.I. could end up killing people. Google eventually pulled out of the project.
In December 2020, Google fired one of the leaders of its Ethical A.I. team, Timnit Gebru, after she criticized the company’s approach to minority hiring and pushed to publish a research paper that pointed out flaws in a new type of A.I. system for learning languages.
Before she was fired, Dr. Gebru was seeking permission to publish a research paper about how A.I.-based language systems, including technology built by Google, may end up using the biased and hateful language they learn from text in books and on websites. Dr. Gebru said she had grown exasperated over Google’s response to such complaints, including its refusal to publish the paper.
A few months later, the company fired the other head of the team, Margaret Mitchell, who publicly denounced Google’s handling of the situation with Dr. Gebru. The company said Dr. Mitchell had violated its code of conduct.
The paper in Nature, published last June, promoted a technology called reinforcement learning, which the paper said could improve the design of computer chips. The technology was hailed as a breakthrough for artificial intelligence and a vast improvement to existing approaches to chip design. Google said it used this technique to develop its own chips for artificial intelligence computing.
In 1987 a West German teenager shocked the world, by flying through Soviet air defences to land a Cessna aeroplane in Red Square. He was jailed for more than a year – but a quarter of a century later, he has no regrets.
Turkey & Azerbaijan Begun Jihad Against Orthodox Armenia. Orthodox Russia Hesitated to help Orthodox Armenia. Orthodox Ukraine & Jewish Israel supported Muslim Azerbaijan. Wow!
Ukrainian cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, fatally shot on the movie set “RUST,” – a WESTERN filmed in New Mexico. The “RUST” CHURCH. Earlier: Halyna Hutchins Celebrating Orthodox Christmas in Kiev.
A month later, on 4 November 2020 the world was occupied with the results of the US election, when The Fascist Oromo Regime and its Arab, Turkish & Iranian conspiring allies launched a military offensive against Christian Tigray, Ethiopia.
Orthodox Russia gave diplomatic support to the Muslim-Protestant Regime of Abiy Ahmed. Orthodox Ukraine provided military support to him – even sending its own mercenaries, military advisors and drone operators.
[Proverbs 6:16-19]
“There are six things which the Lord hates Yes seven which are an abomination to Him:..And one who spreads strife among brothers.„
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on February 23, 2022
The United Nations is failing to support hundreds of ethnic Tigrayan members of a U.N. peacekeeping force as they fear returning home to Ethiopia and facing potential detention amid the country´s Tigray conflict, peacekeepers tell The Associated Press.
Their accounts highlight the concerns among Tigrayans after thousands of them, both military personnel and civilians, were detained throughout Ethiopia after the country´s war erupted in November 2020 between Ethiopian forces and fighters from the Tigray region. An unknown number have been released in recent weeks after much of the fighting eased, and Ethiopia this week lifted a state of emergency.
Two Tigrayan peacekeepers told the AP that they and hundreds of colleagues have ended their U.N. peacekeeping stint in Abyei, a region contested by Sudan and South Sudan, and are now expected to return to Ethiopia. They asserted that their peacekeeping camp is under Ethiopian control and U.N. personnel are not allowed access.
Sgt. Angesom Gebru, who slipped away from the camp with a few dozen others, said the remaining Tigrayan peacekeepers can only walk away safely once they are taken to a local airport for flights back to Ethiopia, which began this week. But as Tigrayans refuse to board them, he said, there are fears that those still in the peacekeeping camp could face retaliation.
Dozens of the Tigrayan peacekeepers held a protest against the war in Ethiopia this week. A photo taken and shared by Angesom shows the men and women, with their blue U.N. passes around their necks, standing with a handwritten sign reading “Stop genocide in Tigray.”
The Tigray region of some 6 million people has been largely blockaded by Ethiopia´s government since June of last year as authorities claim that humanitarian aid or other supplies could be used in support of the Tigray forces.
“Fuel, cash and supplies available for humanitarian partners in Tigray are at near-exhaustion level,” the U.N. humanitarian agency said last week.
A spokesman for Ethiopia’s military and government did not respond to questions about the Tigrayan peacekeepers with the U.N. mission. Ethiopia’s government has sought to portray a return to normal at home after the Tigray forces withdrew into their region in December under a drone-supported military offensive.
The two peacekeepers told the AP that Ethiopian authorities at the camp told the Tigrayans they would not be harmed if they returned home. But they said they weren´t reassured, and they and colleagues who left the camp are sheltering with newly arrived peacekeepers from Ghana.
The Tigrayans described themselves as stranded in a remote region on the border between two of the world´s most troubled countries, Sudan and South Sudan.
Officials with the U.N. peacekeeping mission and the U.N. refugee agency did not respond to questions about why the Tigrayans say the U.N. is not allowed to access the Ethiopians´ peacekeeping camp or what help the U.N. is giving the Tigrayans.
It is not clear how many Tigrayan peacekeepers have refused to board the flights home.
Ethiopia is one of the top five troop contributing countries to U.N, peacekeeping missions, and the nation’s war has turned the homecoming of Ethiopian peacekeepers into sometimes fraught, or even physical, affairs.
In February 2021, more than a dozen Tigrayan members of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan refused to board a flight home when their stay ended. And in April, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said a number of Ethiopians in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sudan´s Darfur region sought “international protection” as several hundred troops were being repatriated.
Ethiopia´s government has sought to restrict reporting on the war and detained some journalists under the recent state of emergency. Those still held include a video freelancer accredited to the AP, Amir Aman Kiyaro.
😈The following entities and bodies are helping the genocidal fascist Oromo regime of evil Abiy Ahmed Ali:
☆ The United Nations
☆ The European Union
☆ The African Union
☆ The United States, Canada & Cuba
☆ Russia
☆ China
☆ Israel
☆ Arab States
☆ Southern Ethiopians
☆ Amharas
☆ Eritrea
☆ Djibouti
☆ Kenya
☆ Sudan
☆ Somalia
☆ Egypt
☆ Iran
☆ Pakistan
☆ India
☆ Azerbaijan
☆ Amnesty International
☆ Human Rights Watch
☆ World Food Program (2020 Nobel Peace Laureate)
☆ The Nobel Prize Committee
☆ The Atheists and Animists
☆ The Muslims
☆ The Protestants
☆ The Sodomites
☆ TPLF?
💭 Even those unlikely allies like: ‘Israel vs Iran’, ‘Russia + China vs Ukraine + The West’, ‘Egypt + Sudan vs Iran + Turkey’, ‘India vs Pakistan’ are all united now in the Anti Zionist-Ethiopia-Conspiracy. This has never ever happened before it is a very curios phenomenon unique appearance in world history.
✞ With the Zionist Tigray an-Ethiopians are:
❖ The Almighty Egziabher God & His Saints
❖ St. Mary of Zion
❖ The Ark of The Covenant
💭 Due to the leftist and atheistic nature of the TPLF, because of its tiresome, foreign and satanic ideological games of: „Unitarianism vs Multiculturalism“, the Supernatural Force that always stood/stands with the Northern Ethiopian Christians is blocked – and These Celestial Powers are not yet being ‘activated’. Even the the above Edomite and Ishmaelite entities and bodies who in the beginning tried to help them have gradually abandoned them
✞✞✞[Isaiah 33:1]✞✞✞ “Woe to you, O destroyer, While you were not destroyed; And he who is treacherous, while others did not deal treacherously with him. As soon as you finish destroying, you will be destroyed; As soon as you cease to deal treacherously, others will deal treacherously with you.”
Stalin is portrayed as a strong and just leader who often intervened on behalf of the “common people” and even saved them from injustice. In one such post (link in Russian) the author describes how Stalin stepped in to help the starving peasants.
💭 Far From Toppling Statues, Former Soviet Union Puts Up New Monuments To Stalin
Many Russian Christian leaders were signatories to a letter to the Bishop of Moscow protesting Stalin’s inclusion in the cathedral mural due to his crimes,
After Cathedral of Russian Armed Forces almost unveiled a mural of late dictator on June 22, Moscow-born former MK Ksenia Svetlova explores a troubling new trend of Stalin worship
The radiant golden domes of the newly constructed Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces loom high over Moscow’s Patriot Park.
Also known as the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, the cathedral was originally scheduled for completion in time for a Victory Day parade on May 9. It was to have been a big celebration, in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Russia’s triumph over Nazi Germany in World War II.
Due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, the parade and the cathedral’s inauguration were delayed until June 22 — a day of memory and sorrow marking the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the launch of the Great Patriotic War.
By April’s end, photos of the cathedral’s interior were leaked to the press. Its mosaics featured not only saints and ancient Russian war heroes, but also some familiar faces from the 20th and 21st centuries. Along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, one can easily spot Joseph Stalin, the brutal Soviet leader who killed millions of his own citizens during a sadistic era of repression.
Stalin, a would-be priest who once studied in religious seminary in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia), was a determined enemy of the church and religion in general.
In 1931, Stalin ordered demolished the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a majestic Moscow fixture whose construction took 40 years and was initiated by Tsar Alexander I. It was turned into a swimming pool in 1958 by Nikita Khrushchev, and finally rebuilt between 1995 and 2000 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In 1932, Stalin launched a ruthless campaign for the eradication of religion. In 1937, the Great Purge, orchestrated by Stalin and executed by his loyalists, took the lives of millions of Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Tatar, Latvian, and Estonian men, women, and children, along with many others, including clergy.
Many Russian Christian leaders were signatories to a letter to the Bishop of Moscow protesting Stalin’s inclusion in the cathedral mural due to his crimes, but for some time the decision was defended by both the Russian Orthodox Church and the military.
By mid-May the images of both Putin and Stalin had disappeared from the mosaics. Some segments of the Russian public approved of the move, while many others expressed outrage. At the same time, the capitals of two pro-Russian entities — the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and South Ossetia — changed the names of their respective capitals, Donetsk and Tskhinvali, to Stalino and Stalinir.
Despite Stalin being one of the darkest figures in Russian history, according to a 2018 poll, half of Russian youth up to age 24 had never heard of the atrocities committed under his regime. So why is he currently trending among millions of Russians?
And equally troubling: Why is the Kremlin promoting his image today, and how will this propaganda continue to affect and shape modern Russia?
Brutal tyrant or ‘effective manager’?
During the years of the perestroika from 1985 to 1991, when I was growing up in Moscow, it seemed that not a day went by without the release of a new memoir, interview or book about the repression, hunger, torture, and extermination of human beings under Stalin.
It felt like everyone had read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyin’s “The Gulag Archipelago” and the painful memoirs of Lev Razgon. Suddenly, things hardly whispered about for decades sprang to life. It became safe to speak about relatives who disappeared during the horrible purges of 1937, when people were arrested in the dead of night so as to avoid witnesses. After interrogations, torture, and speedy trials, some were executed, while others were sent to gulags — notorious forced labor camps in the Urals, Siberia, and other remote areas.
As the flow of this information increased, statues of Lenin and Stalin were toppled and broken, and people began to talk, reopening old wounds and reaching for forbidden memories.
This is how I learned about the fate of my own grandfather Constantin, my father’s father, who was arrested in 1937 and executed in 1938, as well as the “Doctors’ Plot” of 1951 to 1953. The latter was a vicious, anti-Semitic campaign in which thousands of Jewish doctors — including my grandmother Victoria — were accused of plotting to poison Stalin. They lost their jobs and were preparing to be sent to Siberia, until a few weeks after Stalin’s death the new Soviet leadership declared the plot a fabrication.
My family’s story is shared by thousands, even millions, of other Soviet families. It is not unique — and this is what makes it even more terrifying.
Three decades after the perestroika, everything has changed. That era’s heroes are now seen as naive intellectuals or opportunists who destroyed what was left of the Soviet empire, while Stalin’s legacy regains its old popularity.
According to a 2019 poll conducted by Russia’s nonprofit Levada center, a record 70 percent of Russians approved of Stalin’s role in Soviet and Russian history. In 2016, that number stood at 54%.
“By 2010 we already felt the influence of pro-Stalinists on our society, and we sort of understood what was going on,” said Irina Sherbakova, a Russian historian, author, and founding member of human rights organization Memorial, which has been following the rise of Stalinism in Russia for years.
“One of the participants in some discussions that we held was a girl whose grandfather was once forcefully exiled by Stalin from Lithuania to Siberia,” Sherbakova said. “She mentioned that in her opinion, Stalin was an ‘effective manager.’ This was at a time when Putin used to speak a lot about the need for a strong state with an effective manager — and Stalin quickly became a symbol of such a state, a leader whose authority was unlimited.”
There has been talk of strong figures since the time of Russian president Boris Yeltsin, Sherbakova said, but even Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible didn’t resonate like Stalin. This is because Stalin is able to represent strong anti-Western and anti-liberal sentiments without alienating older people who, frustrated by economic decline and corruption, still support a left wing Leninist ideology, she said.
“Even the church adopted Stalin as a ‘powerful state’ symbol, hence the decision to include him in the cathedral, and the icons that bear his image as if he were a saint,” Sherbakova said.
Each year on October 29, the official day commemorating the victims of Soviet repression, members of Sherbakova’s Memorial organization gather near Lyubyanka — the imposing building in Moscow that once served as KGB headquarters — and read names of the victims out loud.
“We need to gather permits from 12 different offices, and each year it becomes more and more difficult, but we come back there and read the names of those who were starved, tortured, incarcerated, and murdered,” said Sherbakova.
The poignant ceremony draws a growing crowd each year. At the same time, more and more flowers appear every day by Stalin’s grave near the Kremlin walls.
A different spin
“I have a theory about this kind of Stalinism – when people wear t-shirts with Stalin’s image and say that under his rule we were a great empire,” Olga Bychkova, an influential Russian journalist and host on the Echo of Moscow radio station, told The Times of Israel.
“I believe that it’s not necessarily real fascination with Stalinism, but rather a dissatisfaction with today’s reality,” Bychkova said.
“My family had no warm feelings for Stalin,” Bychkova said. “My grandfather Matvei Glikshtein was a military doctor. He was recruited and sent to war in 1939 during the war with Finland, participated in the liberation of Bucharest and Budapest, and returned home only in May, 1945. His whole family was murdered by the Nazis in the city of Rostov in 1942.”
Bychkova said that during the Doctors’ Plot in 1952, all of her family’s friends were fired from their jobs and some were arrested. Despite her grandfather’s medals and wartime bravery, he was also fired and never regained his former status.
Bychkova’s great-uncle was arrested in 1937 for telling a joke about Stalin. The family still doesn’t know what the joke was, she said. He was only released from the camps in 1953, after Stalin’s death. It was there at the camps that he met his wife, who was sent to the gulags at age 17.
“There are not enough words to describe what they did to her there,” Bychkova said.
What they don’t know still hurts them
The 2018 poll by the VCIOM public opinion research center that found that nearly half of young Russians had never heard of Stalin’s purges, can partly explain the late despot’s growing approval rate.
Some had never met a relative who lived through that terrible time; many never learned about the repression, intentional starvation of peasants, persecution of prisoners of war who were arrested for “being spies” when they returned home after the end of WWII, horrific anti-Semitic campaigns, and the regime of fear that ruled the country for so long.
By 2010 many Russian universities were using a textbook that excused the Soviet repression as a “necessary measure” and included a false quote attributed to Winston Churchill: “Stalin received Russia with a plow and left it armed with a nuclear weapon.”
After a public outcry this book was removed from the curriculum, but many others depicting Stalin as an “effective manager” with some anger issues remained.
“My daughter went to school in the 2000s and her textbooks claimed that the victory in WWII was achieved only due to Stalin’s talent and stamina. The kids who read those textbooks are now 25 or 30 today, and if no one told them better, that’s the knowledge they have,” said Bychkova.
Sherbakova agreed. “There is a problem with how they teach history. If the narrative is ‘reforms that coincided with repressions,’ there is a problem,” she said.
If textbooks used in schools and universities imply that the atrocities perpetrated by Stalin paled in comparison to such achievements as creating “the most beautiful metro in the world,” and victory in the Great Patriotic War, how will young Russians be able to learn about their country’s dark past, especially in an age of fake news and alternative facts?
Facts are still under wraps and even the official numbers of gulag prisoners and people who were summarily executed are unavailable.
Some historians believe that 5.5 million Soviet citizens went through the conveyor belt of speedy trials, gulags, and executions; others claim that if one were to include all those forcibly deported and exiled, starved to death, interned in psychiatric hospitals, and maimed, that number would be closer to a stunning 100 million people.
In Facebook groups such as “Reading Stalin,” however, there are no trace of these numbers. In thousands of posts, Stalin is portrayed as a strong and just leader who often intervened on behalf of the “common people” and even saved them from injustice.
In one such post (link in Russian) the author describes how Stalin stepped in to help the starving peasants after receiving a complaint from renowned writer Mikhail Sholokhov.
This is historical revisionism mixed with longing for a mythical, strong-but-just brother-leader who wasn’t corrupt like the current leadership. A simple web search will lead the reader to the horrific details described by Sholokhov — babies who died from the cold, people blamed for hiding flour and forced to die of hunger, and the brutal policies spearheaded by Stalin that led to all this suffering.
Perhaps it was exactly this sort of curiosity that drove Russian YouTube star Yuri Dud to explore the connection between Stalin, repression, and gulags. In his powerful 2019 documentary, “Kolyma: The Birthplace of Our Fear,” Dud says: “I wanted to understand — where does the older generation’s fear come from? Why are they convinced that acts of courage, no matter how small, are bound to be punished?”
The documentary was viewed by millions on YouTube and was soon at the center of a vivid discussion on Russia’s past.
Steps to bridge knowledge gap
Dud’s generation might know little, but they want to know more, said Sergei Bondarenko, a historian at Memorial who researches the circumstances of arrests and executions during the Stalinist repression of the 1930s.
“What we witness today is an attempt to normalize this past and to make a label out of Stalin. Dud’s generation, very young people, naturally protest against authority — any authority. If this symbol is fed to them, they want to know why and what he’s all about. That’s why this documentary was born,” said Bondarenko.
Another recent series, “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes,” aired on the state-run Channel 1, tells the story of uprooted Tatar woman who was exiled to Siberia. It also puts Stalin’s brutality on display and has added more fuel to an already heated discussion.
Normalized brutality?
In the 30 years since I left Russia, many things have changed. Old, forgotten symbols were resurrected from the ashes of once-powerful forces. Today I wonder: Will Stalin, the brutal dictator who built a sophisticated machine of death, torture, and forced labor to promote his nationalist agenda, be normalized and accepted by the Russian people and establishment?
Sherbakova doesn’t believe so. “[The authorities] cannot go on like this for long. They cannot offer real ideology, because in order to mobilize people one needs power and faith, and we have none today. They also cannot recreate Stalin’s system of repression — again, due to lack of massive support and faith. I believe that the surge of Stalin’s appeal is past us already,” she said.
Perhaps. While working on this feature, I asked my Facebook friends to send me their personal accounts from Stalin’s time. Within an hour I received hundreds of stories that included chilling details about arrests and gulags, fearing for loved ones, and broken lives and families.
For the sake of all of Stalin’s victims and their families, for the sake of my own grandfather — who will forever remain a 40-year-old and whose grave is unknown — I do hope that Sherbakova is right. I fervently hope that nostalgia for the “glorious past” and the narrative of an “efficient manager” will not be able to silence the truth.
❖ The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow is:
1. The tallest Orthodox Christian Church in the world. Height of it is 103 metres.
2. It is the biggest Orthodox Church in Russia
3. A capacity is 10,000 people
4. Outstanding painters and architects reconstituted the church
5. Breathtaking panoramic view
6. It’s a majestic, impressing, picturesque and very beautiful church
The original Christ the Savior Cathedral was consecrated 130 years ago, on June 8, 1883. Since then, it has been blown to bits, replaced by a swimming pool, rebuilt and, most recently, at the epicenter of the controversial performance by activist punk rockers Pussy Riot. Here is that story told through archival footage.
Built as a result of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, the Cathedral was a thanksgiving for Russia & the victorious Russian Army. Construction lasted for 40 years & resulted in the largest Orthodox Cathedral in the World. Following the Russian Revolution, Stalin had the Catherdral blown up to make way for the Palace of Soviets, a “skyscraper” to Socialism & the memory of Lenin. Only the foundations were built by the time Hitler invaded Russia in 1941. Work ceased & following victory in 1945, the foundations were turned into an open-air pool. I actually swam there in 1966…… In 1994, the pool was closed and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour rose again. This time taking a mere fraction of the time to build.
US Congress Advances Bill to Sanction Those Fueling War in Ethiopia
“The war in Ethiopia has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, and all the combatants, along with their foreign backers, are responsible for horrific abuses of basic human rights.”
“Today, Congress is coming together to say that the conflict must end, and to hold accountable all those responsible for perpetuating it.”
One of the issues of ongoing concern to Congress is also the mass detention of Tigrayan civilians in several cities across Ethiopia, including the capital, Addis Ababa. Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, say ethnic Tigrayans have been targeted since the start of the conflict in November 2020, citing reports of forced disappearances and arbitrary arrests among other human rights violations.
The mass detention of Tigrayan civilians in unlivable conditions is a human rights violation so outrageous that it demands a forceful U.S. response. I’m pleased that H.R. 6600 passed @HouseForeign with my amendment to respond to this atrocity.
“The mass detention of Tigrayan civilians in unlivable conditions is a human rights violation so outrageous that it demands a forceful U.S. response,” tweeted Congressman Brad Sherman of California, calling for action on what he called an atrocity.
The bill calls on the State Department to determine whether war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide has been perpetrated by any party to the conflict. It also asks State to report on the role of foreign governments including those of China, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey in fueling the conflict.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on February 10, 2022
“Prisoners were getting two pieces of bread to eat a day. Other detainees [who didn’t pay for water] were eating this without ever washing their hands, even after toilet use.”
The mass detention of Tigrayan civilians in unlivable conditions is a human rights violation so outrageous that it demands a forceful U.S. response
Civilians held without charge accuse Ethiopian security officers of systematic extortion and increasing abuse.
Ethiopian security officers have been systematically extorting and abusing Tigrayan civilians held without charge, including minors and the elderly, since a wave of nationwide mass arrests began last year, according to alleged victims and their families.
Estimates say thousands of civilians have been rounded up since the conflict between rebels from the country’s northern Tigray region and Ethiopia’s national army began 15 months ago.
At least 1,000 Tigrayans – including United Nations staff – were arrested in two weeks in November 2021 in the capital Addis Ababa, according to the UN.
The Ethiopian government says it only targets those suspected of supporting the rebels. But as profiling and detentions increased, so did the extortion of detainees by police and prison wardens, according to victims and relatives of victims who spoke to Al Jazeera over the past month.
“We have become a commodity in prison,” said Kirubel*, who spent up to seven months detained in an Addis Ababa facility until his family paid for his release. “They slap a price on you. Then your loved ones have to find the money and buy your freedom.”
Prison wardens, government prosecutors and officials from the local attorney general’s offices are among those alleged to have demanded exorbitant bribes for release. Detainees also told Al Jazeera that payments are often required to secure medicine, and in some cases to use toilets and showers throughout their indefinite detentions.
Segen*, also in Addis Ababa, told Al Jazeera that the police phoned to demand a 2,500 birr ($50) payment to cover cleaning and drinking water for his imprisoned brother.
“Prisoners were getting two pieces of bread to eat a day. Other detainees [who didn’t pay for water] were eating this without ever washing their hands, even after toilet use.”
Some relatives of prisoners described being asked to deliver as much as 500,000 Ethiopian birr ($10,000) in ransom payments.
But in Ethiopia, where the average annual income is less than $1,000, the majority of detainees have languished behind bars, with their impoverished families unable to afford the release price.
Haimanot* said she was asked to pay the equivalent of $1,200 for the release of her 17-year-old son held in Addis Ababa. He had been in detention for more than a month.
“I don’t have that kind of money,” she said, sobbing over the phone.
In response to queries from Al Jazeera about allegations of extortion, an official from Ethiopia’s Ministry of Justice conceded that he was aware of cases of “bribery” but denied that the problem was systematic and said action was being taken to stamp out the practice.
“Several federal and municipal police commission members have been charged with bribery,” said Awel Sultan, communications head at the justice ministry. “But they don’t represent the majority of our committed and ethical police force.”
But alleged victims told Al Jazeera of pervasive extortion and increasing abuse.
State of emergency
Conflict erupted in Ethiopia in November 2020 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military incursion into Tigray after Tigrayan forces attacked federal military bases in the region. Abiy’s government took the regional capital, Mekelle, within three weeks and declared victory.
But the conflict has dragged on, killing tens of thousands of people, displacing millions, and leaving nearly 40 percent of the 6 million people living in the Tigray region facing extreme food shortages, according to the latest report from the World Food Programme.
The government declared a state of emergency in early November 2021 after Tigrayan forces had regained territory and threatened to march on Addis Ababa. Thousands of Tigrayans were rounded up in the Ethiopian capital and sent to detention centres that month.
“Government security forces have subjected Tigrayans from all walks of life and ages to sweeping ethnically based arrests, enforced disappearances since the beginning of the conflict, in Ethiopia’s capital and beyond. Thousands have been lingering in detention for months,” Laetitia Bader, Human Rights Watch director for the Horn of Africa, told Al Jazeera by email.
“Releases seem to be as arbitrary as the arrests, with many detainees never seeing a day in court or having a chance to plead their cause.”
Family members describe receiving phone calls from mysterious middlemen who instruct them on how to transfer the sums of money demanded to a specific bank account.
Al Jazeera is aware of one case where a detainee was allegedly allowed to call his relatives to arrange his own ransom payment.
Wardens are said to take particular care to ensure that there are food shortages and enough beatings to induce regular payments.
Kidane* was released in December after spending four months at a police holding centre and another two months at a larger detention facility.
He and the other five were held at a police station in the town of Bishoftu in July, half an hour’s drive outside of Addis Ababa, where he recalls being beaten on three different occasions by the guards.
“The first time was because they wanted money. They had implied and even asked nicely but I didn’t give them [money] because I didn’t have any, so one of the wardens, there are good ones and bad ones, just beat me up.”
Other times, Kidane says, he and others were simply beaten for being Tigrayans.
Kidane, who says he is a civilian with no link to the rebels, said he was taken to court five times in those first four months in police detention but not charged.
He was later moved to another detention facility within Bishoftu, he said, as the cells at the police stations could not manage the sudden influx of detainees after the federal government declared the state of emergency in November.
He said the larger detention centre was severely overcrowded, with 500-600 people in one large hall that was not designed for more than 150.
“In the detention centres, there were men as old as 88. I would estimate there were as many as 50 minors, if you are referring to anyone under eighteen,” he said. “Even the sickly elderly were denied medical assistance. The place was overcrowded, hot and they didn’t turn the lights off because they wanted to keep an eye on us the whole time.”
In January, Human Rights Watch accused the Ethiopian government of arbitrarily detaining, mistreating and forcibly disappearing Tigrayan migrants deported from Saudi Arabia.
The rights group’s findings corroborate testimony shared with Al Jazeera by detainees including Kidane, who said deportees from Saudi Arabia were being sent to detention centres in droves.
“The guards assume that returnees from the Middle East have money, so they would beat them. They would take four or five out at night and beat them up to be an example for the rest of us to cooperate,” Kidane said.
Kidane estimates he paid more than 50,000 birr (just over $1,000) to prison guards to shower, use the toilet, and be allowed to visit a clinic for typhoid and bronchitis he says he contracted while behind bars.
Justice ministry spokesman Awel admitted that he was aware of reports of mistreatment of prisoners and arrests of minors, but said the erosion and suspension of civil rights are to be expected under a national state of emergency.
“The detention of minors in juvenile facilities isn’t guaranteed either. There could be many reasons why young offenders are detained with adults. It could be space limitations or perhaps police may not be sure of their ages,” Awel added.
“As the number of people detained is higher (than usual), it’s difficult to permit them to exercise all of their rights. We are working to prevent crime and sustain the country,” Awel said.
“The target of the state of emergency is to limit the rights of a few people in order to protect the rights of the entire nation.”
‘A very valuable hostage’
Federal forces have regained territory in recent months, forcing the Tigrayan rebels to retreat to the northern region in December.
But despite the Tigrayan losses and Awel’s claims that many corrupt security officers have been reined in, there are no obvious signs of a slowing in the extortion racket for current prisoners. Nevertheless, there does appear to be a decline in indiscriminate arrests of Tigrayans.
During January, when Ethiopian Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas and Timket, a holy day commemorating the baptism of Christ, detainees say that there was an upscale in ransom payments, with police and middlemen taking advantage of the desperation of families to be reunited with their loved ones for the holidays.
Middlemen are also said to have preyed on detainees with family members abroad.
Kidist*, who lives in the United States, told Al Jazeera she was asked to pay 500,000 birr ($10,000) to free her brother and an elderly uncle who is on medication. They had been held at an Addis Ababa centre for over a month.
Meanwhile, Meseret* said she sent large sums of money from the UK to free her younger brothers.
“If they think they can get euros and dollars for you, you become a very valuable hostage.”
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