Pan-Africanist rips in Ethiopian government

(Meqdela's diary)

Tajudn Abdul-Rahim may not be well-know internationally; but in this part of the world he is taken seriously. Serious he is.

Yesterday I went to the ECA to attend the opening ceremony of Africa Civil Society Forum 2007. This year's topic is Democratizing and Governance at Regional and Global Level to Achieve the MDG . The forum is organized by Conference of NGOs and FEMNET.

Ethiopian government representative who spoke at the ceremony was one Ambassador Mohammed. With halting English, He spoke of his government's commitment to the advancement of civil society blah...blah...; some routine government official speech.

Then Tajudin Abdul-Rahim stood to spoke. He had nothing but contempt to what the government was doing to civil society here. Reminding the conference participants about the trial of Danie Bekele and Netsanet Demissie, two dedicated civil society members, for treason, he said the African civil society can't have a conference in Addis Ababa where the trial is taking place and leave the issue un-raised. He told the participants that the only thing to happen to them if they speak out is to be disallowed from participating in another civil society conference in Addis Ababa.

Tajudin also criticized Mugabe. He said Africans shouldn't fail to stand up to Mugabe's abuse of power just because he challenged White people. We need principled position, he advised.

Now who is Tajudin?

He is currently the Deputy Director of the Millennium Campaign and Director of Campaign for Africa.