(IAAF) — Ethiopia’s Birhanu Legese and Kenya’s Cynthia Limo came out on top after thrilling battles over the last kilometre for both the men’s and women’s titles at the 2015 Airtel Delhi Half Marathon on Sunday (29).
After a leading pack of 10 runners went through 10km in 27:56, five men were still in contention with just 500 metres to go ahead of the finish line in the Indian capital’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
After an initial surge by Ethiopia’s Mosinet Geremew, Legese overtook his compatriot with barely 100 metres remaining and crossed the line in a personal best of 59:20, with Geremew one second in arrears.
“I am very happy, I enjoyed the course and enjoyed the race. It was very easy for me,” reflected Legese, whose winning time equalled the third fastest mark in the world this year
Just 21, Legese notched up his second major half marathon victory this year, having also won the Berlin Half Marathon back in March where he set his previous best of 59:45. In Delhi, he was just 14 seconds outside the course record set in 2014 by another Ethiopia, Guye Adola.
Legese first came to international attention as a 19-year-old when he ran 27:34 to finish second at the well-known Taroudant 10km road race in Morocco. His first half marathon came in the German capital eight months ago and he returned to form in Delhi after two relatively lacklustre half marathons in September.
As the fastest Ethiopian on the 2015 world lists, Legese will possibly make his international championship debut at the IAAF/Cardiff University World Half Marathon Championships Cardiff 2016 on 26 March next year, where he potentially could bid to give his country its first individual men’s title since Haile Gebrselassie also won on British soil, in nearby Bristol, back in 2001.
Eritrea’s world record holder and four-time half marathon world champion Zersenay Tadese, now 33, is another man who may well be in Cardiff.
Strength in depth in Delhi
In Delhi, Tadese did not quite have the sheer acceleration of his younger rivals over the final few hundred metres on Sunday but will still have been satisfied with third place in 59:24, his fastest time for more than four years.
The Kenyan pair of Edwin Kiptoo, who made much of the pace from halfway until the final kilometre, and Jonathan Maiyo finished fourth and fifth respectively but were given the same time of 59:26 to provide an exceptional depth of performances at the top end of the men’s race, as only two other half marathons in history have had five men run under 59:30.
Limo took the women’s race in 1:08:35 after outsprinting her compatriots Helah Kiprop and Gladys Chesire over the last 200 metres, although she always looked the most likely to triumph after increasing the tempo at the front of the race with three kilometres to go.
Kiprop snatched second place in the final 30 metres and was given the same time as the winner while Chesire was one second further back to complete an all-Kenyan women’s podium.
After being dropped coming into the last kilometre, Ethiopia’s Genet Yalew finished fourth in 1:08:46.
In eighth place, 2015 IAAF World Championships 3000m steeplechase finalist Lalita Babar showed that she is also a talented runner over longer distances with this year’s Asian champion over the barriers taking exactly four minutes off the Indian national record with a time of 1:10:52.
However, women’s pre-race favourite and world record holder Florence Kiplagat, from Kenya, failed in her bid to win in Delhi for a third successive year and had a disappointing day.
The 2015 Chicago Marathon winner clearly had last month’s marathon in the Windy City still in her legs and she started to struggle from six kilometres into the race, eventually dropping out around halfway despite the relatively modest initial pace which saw the seven women in the leading pack pass 10km in 33:43.
More than 13,000 runners took part in the Delhi Half Marathon itself, with an estimated 36,000 participants in all the associated running events in the Indian capital on Sunday.
The pro-Ethiopian administration established in Hargeisa arrested at least 11 civilians from Ogaden region. All of them are women and children including an infant, Ogaden News Agency (ONA) reported on Saturday.
” On 26 November 2015, Somaliland administration arrested and detained a dozen of innocent women and children including an infant. Four others were disappeared earlier; believed to be extradited to Ethiopia,” said the source.
According to ONA, it is not the first time that the administration established in the northwestern Somalia has extradited civilians from Ogaden region to Ethiopia, where they Ogadenis risk persecution.
These detained civilians will likely be extradited to the Ethiopian government, it added.
Somaliland has a continuing record of detaining and extraditing people from Ogaden region to appease Addis Ababa for alleged countering those want to destroy the good relations between Somaliland and ( Ethiopia) Abyssinia.
An Ogaden National Liberation Front Press released on October 11, 2015, stated that the Somaliland handed over two Ogadenis from Ogaden to Ethiopia.
The ONLF statement said Mr. Ahmed Sheikh Muhumed Omar and Mr. Kayd Mohamed Askar were traveling to Southern Somaliland on their way to the Kenyan refugee camps.
“The relatives of the two victims contacted the administration and the elders in Hargeisa and were given assurances that the detainees will be released.”
However, after signing a new one-sided security agreement with the Ethiopian regime in Dire Dawa in August this year, the administration in Hargeisa is now proving its loyalty to the Ethiopian regime by starting again the handing over of civilians from Ogaden Somaliland to the Ethiopian government, the ONLF said.
Somaliland shares Somalis from Ogadenia, like any other Somali speaking inhabitants, language, culture, ethnicity, religion and even border, but favored Ethiopia over Ogadenis and has been repeatedly handing over Somalis From Ogaden region to Ethiopian Security forces over the past 10 years. Those extradited to Ethiopia have been detained, tortured, executed in this way or coerced into confessing or naming family members accused of supporting the Liberation movement, The Ogaden National Liberation Front, who were in return arrested, tortured and killed.
Rice farm of the company « Star » Saudi Arabia in Ethiopia ,
RIYADH (ArabNews):Saudi investorshave accused some Ethiopian government officials of robbing them of their land and equipment.
Mohammed Al-Shehri, who leads a body of investors in the African country, claimed that certain Ethiopian officials falsely accused him and others of criminal activities so that they could confiscate their property.
Al-Shehri was quoted as saying in a local publication that the alleged corruption was rife in certain areas, with some investors imprisoned and accused of forgery, and not allowed to bring their equipment back to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Land-Owners in Ethiopia Export 10,000 Tons of Fruits and Vegetables to Saudi Arabia Every Month. Child labor is popular here
He said that all farming operations of Saudi citizens in Ethiopia had come to a virtual standstill six years after their inception. The African country had failed to live up to promises made to investors, he said.
Al-Shehri said that 50 percent of Saudi investors in Ethiopia have left the country, some leaving behind their farms and others selling them. He said many do not want to return there because they fear being framed for crimes they did not commit.
He said that the investors have contacted the foreign ministries of both countries but have yet to get a response on the allegations. Saudi investors were facing similar problems in other countries, including Sudan, he claimed.
It is at least the sixth time Ethiopia has crossed into Kenyan territory, and could strain erstwhile strong bilateral ties
(m.mgafrica) — NAIROBI will seek an explanation from Addis Ababa after Ethiopian soldiers killed three Kenyan police officers in foreign territory, Kenyan media reported Sunday.
Kenyan security forces including the army have since been deployed to the border following the Friday incursion, the Sunday Nation, the country’s largest circulating, reported.
The Ethiopian soldiers are said to have entered Kenyan territory and shot the officers in an ambush before destroying a police vehicle and seizing a reported four fireams.
The bodies of the slain officers were Saturday flown to the capital Nairobi, Kenyan authorities said.
“All cross-border issues are supposed to be addressed at diplomatic level, hence we will be seeking an explanation from Ethiopia on why this happened,” Moffat Kangi, the County Commissioner of Marsabit, the northern region in which the incident occurred, told the publication.
“We want to know why they engaged our police yet we have never intruded into their territory,” Mr Kangi said.
The Ethiopian soldiers are said to have been pursuing members of the proscribed Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) who had killed an Ethiopian chief on Thursday.
But Mr Kangi said they had not received any prior alert from Ethiopia.
Ethiopian soldiers have reportedly crossed into Kenya five times in the last nine months.
Self-rule Established in 1973, OLF has been pushing for the self-determination of the Oromia region. The Oromo are the country’s largest community with 30 million members, or a third of the Horn of Africa country’s population.
The central government will have none of it, the region being a breadbasket and accounting for nearly two-thirds of its top export coffee.
Rights groups accuse the government of “ruthlessly targeting” the ethnic group with Amnesty International in October 2014 releasing a report that claimed the torture of thousands of Oromos.
Amnesty said that the majority of Oromo people targeted are accused of supporting the OLF, but that the “allegation is frequently unproven” and termed it “merely a pretext to silence critical voices and justify repression.”
Kenya and Ethiopia are allies, and have a defence pact dating back to the days of Emperor Haile Selassie and Kenya’s independence leader Jomo Kenyatta.
The two countries were so closely allied strategically, Kenyatta gave Selassie a generous piece of land close to State House Nairobi for Ethiopia to build its mission.
But the latest incident, coming on the back of other incursions, is likely to test those relations.
The Abyssinian history and that of its 135 years old Empire has been stitched together by lies and cover-ups, false and obdurate mantras of 3000 years nonsensical politics, political assassinations including their own siblings for power, false flag and unity, deceptions and manipulations of their subjects under various slogans, dictating assimilationist ideology and preaching of their cultural and religious superiority over their subjects thereby dehumanising and depersonalising the later, maintaining the secrecy of their infamous superstitious witchery and Debtera culture whilst denigrating cultures of the others, nepotism, bribe and corruption and much more. Although this is a common characteristics of all evil colonialists world over, such heinous actions have been the exclusive privilege reserved for organized criminals of successive Abyssinians’ ruling elites for centuries – the current being as canniest and barbaric as all its predecessors, if not the worst.
The Looqqe massacre of the Sidama civilians on May 24, 2002 and that of the others nations and people’s massacre and genocides during the TPLF’s 24 years of reign of terror are part and parcels of such continued barbarism of successive Abyssinian regimes.
On the evening of May 23, 2002, the bottom listed Ethiopian TPLF’s high level and low ranking Officials (whilst the current puppet PM ‘Hailemariam Desalegn’ was the President of ‘56’ nations’ prison so called Southern Ethiopia regional state thus assigned to Chair the Sidama massacre planning meeting); held an extraordinary meeting in Sidama capital, Hawassa, where they have meticulously planned the Sidama civilians Loqqee massacre. Their meeting has been ordered by late TPLF’s PM Meles Zenawi; therefore it has been based on federal and regional regime’s premeditated objective of silencing the Sidama nation by blocking their elementary constitutional quests for regional self-determination that has been nominally granted to the others nations whose populations are 16 times smaller than that of the Sidamas.
After extensively discussing their methods of conducting the atrocity, on their planning aforementioned extraordinary meeting, all the involved politicians from federal to regional and Sidama Zone level have unanimously agreed the immediate ordering and deployment of about 3 battalions of heavily armed security forces with modern machine guns to butcher those Sidama civilians who had no weapon of any kind or shape in their hands apart from carrying leaves of trees, SLM’s and Abyssinian flags as sign of peace and non-violence. To affect their hideous plans, TPLF agents who held the said meeting of massacre planning have ordered one of the Sidama’s infamous quisling cadres known as ‘Melese Marimo’ (then deputy southern regional state puppet president who’s been after the Sidama massacre temporarily appointed as fake Ethiopian Ambassador to south Africa for his role in promoting TPLF’s interest by massacring his own people) to warn the Sidama people during prime time Television program by stressing that if they were going to go on with their plan, all of them will be out rightly shot dead. The Sidama didn’t believe that the regime would be such barbaric in broad day light against unarmed civilians. The Sidama civilians were wrong!
Under such strong humane and democratic belief, in the morning of May 24, 2002 after the Sidama people have fully satisfied the constitutional requirements whilst engaging in such demonstrations, the Sidamas’ staged on demonstration of peacefully taking their grievances to the streets of their capital city, Hawassa. They have gathered and began their strides from the outskirts of Hawassa city at the village known as Looqqee (about 3km from the city centre) when they suddenly met with highly mechanised TPLF killing squads who have been waiting and prepared to shoot on unarmed and nonviolent civilians. Without any warning, within a blink of an eye, civilians immersed in each other’s bloodbath. The voices of dying civilians echoed from Duummete tulloo (mount Tabour) without no one there to listen to their harrowing experiences. Fathers, mothers, students, businessmen, men and women, civil servants and children- all indiscriminately slaughtered by merciless security forces of colonising enemy. Those Sidama civilians who had nothing to defend themselves with have been indiscriminately shoot at from nearby distances by regime’s military andsecurity forces.
Abruptly, the Sidama’s peaceful demonstration turned to be one of the bloodiest massacres the successive Abyssinian regimes have committed on Sidama civilians in Sidama land since the nation has been colonised in late 1880s. The regime has deployed its special killing squad known as ‘Agiazi’ commando who are known for their barbarism throughout the Empire thus have indiscriminately shot dead the involved Sidama civilians in broad day light. The shooting lasted for about 20-30 minutes although the numbers of causalities have been significant simply because there was neither resistances or preparedness nor weapons for the Sidama people to defend themselves. The Sidama civilians weren’t prepared for such violent encounters in the first place. Such coward massacre of unarmed civilians shocked the Sidama people of all walks of life, therefore, the nation unanimously revolted from corner to corner despite the fact that the regime has immediately imposed ‘severe curfew’ in entire Sidama region following the massacre.
Subsequently, over 15, 000 prominent Sidama civilians of all walks of life have been arbitrarily arrested and tortured. Almost all of these have been released after several months in prisons without any charges and compensation. The Sidama nation remain a prime target of successive Abyssinian rulers the reason why all focus on Sidama nation time and again since 1880s.
Loqqee’s state-sponsored terrorism and massacre of Sidama’s non-violent civilians who have been peacefully demonstrating the denial of the government of their constitutional rights to regional self-determination is inherently brutal which defies not only regime’s own constitution, but also reveals its inherently hideous nature. TPLF’s regime has got constitution which hypothetically incriminates their own actions against the Sidama civilians although it didn’t refrain from indiscriminately massacring them with impunity. The Sidama’s Loqqee massacre has received little or no attention from West’s political elites who’re sustaining the life of Ethiopian brutal regime. However, the massacre isn’t a unique incident to Sidama nation. Such massacres and genocides of the civilians of various nations and peoples are common for instance, in Oromia, Ogadenia, Gambela, Kaffa Shakicho and others subjugated nations of the empire where the regime’s killing squad commits massacres and genocides of various degrees.
Immediately after the aftermaths of the Loqqee massacre of at least confirmed 69 civilians including 12 years old primary School boy and wounding over 200 Sidama civilians, TPLF’s regime has deployed various repressive methods. For example it has deployed tens of thousands of army andsecurity personnel throughout the entire Sidama districts and villages to effectively appease their reactions. Much worst, the nation was unable to collect the bodies of their beloved ones for over the period of 48 hours or more after the massacre. The wounded Sidama civilians were denied paramedics and Ambulance attendances. Those professionals who been allowed to attend on latter stages have been extremely biased thus deployed racially motivated approaches against the dying Sidama civilians. This is simply because health professionals of the settlers have been ill-advised with false information that the Sidama people are fighting to remove settlers from their region. Therefore, the doctors and nurses as well as paramedics of the settlers in Hawassa deliberately ignored a lot of potentially surviving victims to die agonisingly. Additionally, an unknown numbers civilians’ dead bodies have been eaten by Hyenas on the date of massacre and during the following 48 hours in various maize fields between Loqqee village and Hawssa. Eventually, the families of massacred Sidama civilians had to pay government security forces a lot sum of money to be allowed to collect the bodies of their beloved ones for a proper burial.
Neither perpetrators of the Sidama Loqqee massacre have been held accountable to this date, nor has the quest of the Sidama nation for regional self-administration for the important cause the Sidama civilians have paid precious sacrifices with their lives- has been responded. Those criminals who have meticulously masterminded and implemented the massacre, appeased the Sidama nation’s reaction, tortured and dehumanised Sidama civilians who have stood for the rights of the nation as they continually impose iron rule of TPLF’s regime on Sidama nation haven’t been brought to justice. Instead they are all widely circulating everywhere and promoted to higher authority level including the current inapt PM who has been elevated to higher status after he has completed his darkest mission of coordinating the massacre of the Sidama civilians by late PM, the infamous authoritarian Meles Zenawi. His accomplices also have been appointed to be able to continue with subjugating and brutalising of the Sidama nation including the criminal loathsome ‘Shiferaw Shigute’ (half Sidama half Wolayta) and numerous others.
The following are some of the key criminals who have attended the meeting and ordered the Sidama massacre on the eve of May 24, 2002 Loqqee massacre:
1. Hailemariam Desalegn (Current Ethiopian PM, then southern regional state President, Chaired meeting) 2. Abay Tsehaye, (then Federal TPLF/EPRDF’s Ethiopian secret system leader, led the meeting on behalf of TPLF) 3. Bereket Simeon (then Federal Information Minster and TPLF/EPRDF’s spokesperson) 4. Abadula Gamada (then Federal Defence Minister) 5. Girma Biru (then Industry Minster) 6. Mulugeta Alemseged (TPLF’s Polite Bureau, then PM Meles Zenawi’s Adviser) 7. Tadessie Kassa (then Amhara regional government Executive) 8. Melese Marimo (then southern regional State deputy president) 9. Galalcha Janje (then Sidama zone Police commander) 10. Dr Kebede Kanchula, (soviet educated Sidama quisling) 11. Shiferaw Shigute (then Zone department head in the process of being mentored by Number one to learn how to brutalise the Sidama people) 12. Others 9 low ranking regional and Sidama zone cadres from whom only 2 Sidama cadres braved and officially rejected the plan of the regime on massacring innocent civilians and arrested on later stage for doing so.
At the final phase of their massacre planning meeting, Mr Bereket Simeon and Abay Tsehaye have emphatically stressed that all Sidama civilians who might defy TPLF’s regime orders to be taught unequivocal lesson (Yemayashama timhrt- in Habesha language) not peacefully, but with bullet. He has also reiterated that, in the south no nation or peoples are allowed to exercising such fundamental rights.
Today these criminals are peacefully circulating in Sidama land and in the entire empire enjoying absolute impunity and further terrorising their subjects day and night. More essentially, TPLF’s filthy and extremely deep seated corruption, nepotism and undermining of its own constitution which in black and white stresses the rights to nations and peoples to regional self-administration and others citizens fundamental rights without being implicated by the regime and its agents- potentially and inevitably brings its own demise closer -if all could work hard. Therefore, the Sidama nation has to work hard both in Diaspora and within Sidama land to bring those criminals who have butchered the Sidama civilians in Looqqee to justice in free Sidama land after the very regime brutalising the nation has been removed from power with consorted struggle of all subjugated nations. The Sidama nation must work with its neighbour cousins (the Oromo) in particular and with the others subjugated nations who are fighting to assert these rights in general.
There isn’t and never be an easy and free bread in the world. In human history, there has been no evidence where the oppressors have freely and voluntarily allowed their subjects to be free. Unless the subjects fight for their rights, asserting own rights remain illusion and nightmare. Therefore, it’s critically essential for the people who are under the yoke of Abyssinian colony unite and fight together for their own rights. Otherwise, don’t make mistakes; remain assured that our future generation will inherit worst kind of slavery than ours. How many of us need this to have an end now? If all of us, then let’s get up and unite today!
May the souls of Sidama Loqqee martyrs rest in peace. The souls of Oromo, Ogadenia, Gambela and others peoples martyrs’ who have been massacred by TPLF’s killing squad in the past 24 years of reign of terror rest in peace until those who have planned, ordered, executed and monitored your killings and massacre are brought to justice in free and independent kingdoms of all oppressed peoples.
FDG har’a Sadaasa 30,2015 Oromiyaa dhaabbilee barnootaa fi godinale garagaraa keeysatti itti fufee jira.
