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Ethiopian PM denies aid was diverted
Ethiopian News

PM Meles ZenawiTuesday, 09 March 2010  Independent

Stung by BBC allegations that Live Aid money was spent on weapons, Meles Zenawi tells Paul Vallely that the report is based on lies

The prime minister of Ethiopia has stepped into the row between Sir Bob Geldof and the BBC which has claimed that 95 per cent of the $100m aid raised, by Live Aid and others, to fight famine in rebel-held northern Ethiopia in 1985 was diverted to be spent on weapons.

Meles Zenawi, who was one of the leaders of the rebel group the Tigrean People's Liberation Front, is now the country's Prime Minister. In an interview with The Independent he said that the BBC had fallen for lies put out by his political opponents on the eve of a general election in Addis Ababa next month.

"The notion that a decision was taken to spend 95 per cent of aid on the military is a complete lie," he said. "Anyone who knows anything about the situation in Tigray in 1984-85 would know that. The logic of that would be just ridiculous."

The rebels were then fighting the army of the Mengistu dictatorship whose troops were mainly conscripts who often ran away and abandoned their weapons when fighting began. "We captured large amounts of guns and tanks. We did not need to buy arms. What we needed was food. So why would we sell food to buy arms?" Mr Meles said.

"We needed food because by 84-85 we had an extensive liberated area under our control. But it was terribly hit by famine. The danger was that the population, on whom we depended, would leave the liberated area and go over to the government area in search of food. So we needed the food to keep our people in our area.

"There would have been no military logic in selling food to buy guns. It would have been completely suicidal to starve our own people to buy guns. We would have had no movement if we had had no people. When not enough food was available we encouraged hundreds of thousands of people to make the long trek across the border to Sudan."

The BBC yesterday insisted it was standing by its story. It issued a statement that said: "Aregawi Berhe, the TPLF military commander in the mid-1980s, told the programme that the relief society connected to the TPLF received about $100m and that a decision was made that only 5 per cent should be spent on helping famine victims. The balance, he said, was used to fund the TPLF and a linked political party. The programme made clear that the assertion was made by a once high-ranking TPLF figure, now in exile."

The Ethiopian Prime Minister offered some telling detail on timing. "When the planting season arrived we encouraged all the able-bodied to go back to plant. That was the summer of 1985. That was when the cross-border feeding operation began in earnest. The only significant amounts of aid going across the border from Sudan were in that period."

Significantly, that was a year after Aregawi Berhe had left the area. It was also a year after a photograph was taken showing a Christian Aid worker, Max Peberdy, buying grain from the second rebel quoted by the BBC, Gebremedhin Araya, who claimed he had duped Christian Aid by selling them sacks full of sand. "Gebremedhin Araya was not the head of finance of the TPLF, as has been claimed," Mr Meles said. "He was in no leadership position. He was just a paramedic." Christian Aid yesterday disclosed that Mr Peberdy had also left the area a year earlier.

Five other leading aid agencies have criticised the BBC report. Oxfam, Save the Children and Christian Aid were yesterday drawing up a joint complaint. Band Aid's lawyers were preparing an official complaint for the broadcasting standards watchdog Ofcom.

Sir Brian Barder, a former British ambassador to Ethiopia, stated: "The erroneous impression given by the BBC risks doing great damage to future international disaster relief programmes."

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Ethiopians honour victims of Mengistu purge
Ethiopian News

 ADDIS ABABA, (AFP) Sunday, 07 March 2010  — Ethiopia inaugurated a museum on Sunday in memory of the victims of former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam's so-called Red Terror purge which killed tens of thousands in the 1970s.

Dozens of family members and government officials attended a sombre ceremony at the memorial in Addis Ababa to remember their loved ones, whose bodies were mostly dumped in mass graves.

The museum took three years to complete and honours the dead with photographs of the 1977-78 campaign of state terror carried out under the orders of Mengistu to wipe out his opponents.

"Our aim is to promote unity and tolerance. Ethiopia has had a troubled past, and we don't want that suffering to be experienced again," Ayne Tsige, chair of the organising committee, told AFP.

Mengistu, now in exile in Zimbabwe, was sentenced to death on genocide charges two years ago along with 17 of his henchmen following a decade-long trial in Addis Ababa.

The former army lieutenant colonel was a member of the Marxist junta known as the Derg which ruled Ethiopia from between 1974 and 1991 after the ouster of emperor Haile Selassie.

Experts say as many as 100,000 people were killed during the campaign as Mengistu sought to transform the country into a Soviet-style workers' state.

The regime, then battling a number of insurgencies throughout the country, used several tactics to scare opponents, one of which was leaving dead bodies on streets as a warning.

The corpses were later exhumed from mass graves. A number of their belongings are exhibited in the museum.

Eighty-five year-old Tedla Zeyohannes, whose son was killed by the regime called on African leaders to press Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to hand over Mengistu.

"I'm very happy with the sentence, but Zimbabwe should hand over Mengistu. He is a convicted criminal who must face justice," he said.

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Geldof Slams BBC Over Ethiopia Weapons Claims
Ethiopian News

Julia Reid, Sky News Online Saturday, 06 March 2010

Bob Geldof and the Band Aid trust are set to make an official complaint to the BBC over its claims that millions of pounds in donated aid for Ethiopia was spent on weapons.  
 
Complaint follows claims by two former rebel fighters
The complaint will be made jointly with agencies including Christian Aid, and will denounce the "false and dangerously misleading impression" created by the BBC World Service's Africa editor, Martin Plaut.
His report claimed that 95% of the aid which went to Ethiopia's northern province of Tigray during the famine of 1985 was diverted for military use by rebel forces.
Paul Brannen, Head of Advocacy and Influence at Christian Aid, confirmed that the charity would be signing up to the complaint to BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons.
"This affair is a good example of the old adage that a lie can be halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on," he said.
There is not in fact a shred of credible evidence that this happened.
 
Draft letter of complaint seen by The Independent
"In these days of rapid and international communications it is more important than ever that the BBC independently verifies every single fact that it intends to broadcast."
Oxfam says it will decide next week whether to sign up to the letter.
But campaigns and policy director Phil Bloomer said: "The British public, who in good faith donated money to help distressed, starving people, need to know that these allegations are preposterous.
"Aid distribution during this conflict held risks but it is indisputable that aid and the efforts of the humanitarian agencies saved many thousands of lives in Ethiopia.
Geldof, who raised $144m for Africa in the Live Aid concert in 1985, will also report the BBC to Ofcom.
 
"This story has gone around the world on the internet and created a totally false impression of what actually happened," he said.
"At the time of Live Aid we had journalists crawling all over everything we did trying to find something wrong - and they couldn't.
"And now, on the strength of one disgruntled soldier, the BBC has undermined the faith of ordinary people across the world in the effectiveness of giving to people in their hour of need.
 
"It is a disgrace."
 
The Independent newspaper claims a draft of the complaint to the BBC speaks of "disgracefully poor reporting" by the BBC and reliance on "dubious sources and rumour".
"There is not in fact a shred of credible evidence that this happened," it reads.
 
"There is overwhelming evidence that tens of thousands and even millions were saved by these efforts, which were in fact spurred by reporting by the BBC."
Mr Plaut's story was broadcast on the World Service, Radio 4 and via the BBC website.
It relies on accounts by two former senior Tigrean rebels, one of whom, Aregawi Berhe, was expelled from the guerilla movement in the summer of 1985.
Geldof said Berhe had a political axe to grind and could not have witnessed the alleged transactions.
There are fears that the BBC's report could undermine public generosity towards charity appeals for Haiti and Chile in the wake of the recent disasters.
A BBC spokesman says the corporation stands by the story and the documentary did not say that most famine relief money was used to buy weapons.
 
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BBC faces complaint over 'misleading' report
Ethiopian News

Press TV  Saturday, 06 March 2010

The Band Aid Trust is planning to report the BBC to the British broadcasting watchdog, Ofcom, over a controversial report on the alleged fate of relief money raised for the Ethiopian famine.

Other charity agencies are set to join the complaint, which is aimed at denouncing the "false and dangerously misleading impression" created by the BBC World Service's Africa editor, Martin Plaut.

A BBC investigation report claimed that millions of dollars donated to a Band Aid charity event in 1984 were siphoned off by rebel forces in Tigray province on weapons.

The report estimated that 95% of the USD 100 million (EUR 73.41 million) sent to the province in 1985 were used in arms purchases.

The report “relied on dubious sources and rumor," The Independent daily cited the draft of the complaint letter endorsed by Oxfam, the Red Cross, UNICEF, Christian Aid and Save the Children.

The draft goes on to defend the relief work:

"There is not in fact a shred of credible evidence that this happened. There is overwhelming evidence that tens of thousands and even millions were saved by these efforts, which were in fact spurred by reporting by the BBC."

On Wednesday, the charity Christian Aid announced that its "investigations do not correspond to the BBC's version of events."

"This affair is a good example of the old adage that a lie can be halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on," Sky News quoted Paul Brannen, Head of Advocacy and Influence at Christian Aid as saying.

ZHD/MMN

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Ethiopia rejects Live Aid theft
Ethiopian News

The Australian  Friday, 05 March 2010

ETHIOPIA'S government has rejected accusations that millions of dollars from Bob Geldof's Live Aid, intended to feed the starving, were used by its former rebel militia to buy weapons, saying most aid sent was food and not cash.

Ethiopia's honorary consul-general, Graham Romanes, who managed the 1984 famine relief effort for Community Aid Abroad, said the rebels used AK47s captured from the then military government and did not need to buy weapons.

"I agree with Geldof, the numbers don't add up," he said yesterday. "There were monitors like myself inside Tigray at the time who could clearly see that the food aid had stemmed the tide of death that was about to happen."

A former Tigray People's Liberation Front member now living in Perth, Gebremedhin Araya, has claimed TPLF leaders tricked aid groups by pocketing the donated money for themselves instead of buying food.

Mr Romanes said Mr Gebremedhin fled to Sudan in 1989 after being accused of embezzlement.

Mr Gebremedhin could not be reached for comment yesterday.

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