Ethiopia :The journalist

Image by (adalvoice)

Abebe Gellaw knows what it’s like to suffer for speaking out

Interview by Janet Murray Tuesday June 17, 2008 The Guardian

I came to the UK in 1998 as an asylum seeker. I’d been a journalist in Addis Ababa, but under the rule of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which was trying to divide Ethiopia along ethnic lines, life was increasingly difficult.Decide to become a journalist in Ethiopia and you may as well decide to serve in a war zone. There is no freedom of expression, and journalists are victimised and threatened. Today, 90% of Ethiopian reporters are in exile. The remaining 10% are in and out of jail. Fortunately, I am not easily intimidated. Freedom of expression is a God-given right.

In 1993, I was studying politics and international relations at Addis Ababa University. When 42 academics were fired for speaking out against the government’s ethnic policies, I joined a protest. I went into hiding, but was found and imprisoned. I was crammed into a small cell with 100 others. I was handcuffed. There was no food, no sanitation, no space to lie down and sleep.

After two months, I was released on condition I didn’t have any involvement in politics. The experience strengthened my resolve to fight for freedom.

I finished my degree and started an independent newspaper with friends, who were also journalists. But – determined to put newspapers out of business – the government raised printing costs by 300%. It became difficult for journalists to earn a living; most ended up working in restaurants and factories.

We struggled on, but were harassed. I received death threats every day, saying I would be shot if I carried on writing. I was followed everywhere. In 1998, I was accepted on to a journalism traineeship with the UK news agency Reuters, but I was refused a visa. I ended up bribing someone in the ministry of internal affairs to get me out of the country.

Once I’d finished the course in the UK, I had to declare myself as an asylum seeker. I slept rough, then I was moved to hostels with drug addicts and alcoholics. I didn’t know anyone in the UK.

The worst thing was not being allowed to work for the first six months. I wanted to work, but wasn’t allowed to. It is a basic human right to be allowed to work and I was denied that. Fortunately, my case was decided quickly.

It was hard to find work in journalism, so I trained to teach English as a second language, which I have been doing for 10 years. I teach part-time so I can still work as a freelance journalist. In 2005 I launched an independent Ethiopian news service, www.addisvoice.com.

I was recently awarded a fellowship which will allow to me to spend a year at Stanford University in the US. I’m going to work on a project on creating vibrant and sustainable media in Ethiopia.

If I’d stayed in Ethiopia, I would have been killed. My journalist friends who stayed have all been killed or died in jail.

I’d like to change the fate of millions of Ethiopians who have never had the chance to go to school or exercise their democratic rights. I hope one day it will be safe for me to return.

janet.murray@guardian.co.uk

· Abebe Gellaw teaches English as a second language at the College of North East London

Lottery winner’s brother hanged himself out of shame as family faced eviction over mortgage arrears of just £1,500

Duncan Wilby, who hanged himself the day before he was

due to be evicted because of unpaid mortgage bills

01/06/08

Mail online

By Chris Brooke

The brother of a multi-millionaire Lottery winner hanged himself out of shame the day before he was to be evicted from his home because he could not bear to ask his sister for another hand-out.

The spiralling cost of living caused part-time postman Duncan Wilby, 36, to slip nearly £1,500 in mortgage arrears and the married father-of-two faced losing his home for the third time in 12 months.

On two previous occasions, his sister Dawn Hyde, who won £4.2million, paid off his debts to save him from the bailiffs.

But an inquest was told that on the day he died Mr Wilby had sent a text message to his sister implying he was in turmoil over fresh cash problems and ending with the ominous words: “This time, there’s only one way out.”

Instead of talking to his wife – who had no idea of their financial troubles – or seeking help elsewhere he hanged himself from the garage roof, with the eviction notice in his pocket.

Yesterday, Mr Wilby’s heartbroken wife Mandy, 31, told how she rushed home on March 5 this year to tell her husband she had got a new shop manager’s job and found him dying.

She had tried in vain to call him 45 minutes earlier to tell him about the job.

Despite efforts by neighbours and paramedics to save him, Mr Wilby died in hospital later that day.

The couple have two children, Samantha, eight, and Nathan, five.

Last night Mrs Wilby urged anyone else in debt from higher living costs and the credit crunch not to bottle up their problems and seek help.

She said: “If I had known we would have gone to get help from the bank or the mortgage advisers. Anything would have been better than this.

“I believe that Duncan thought he was coping but lost control when fuel and everything else rocketed. Things got too much and plenty of other people out there must be in similar situations.

“I just hope they have the sense to forget their pride and seek help before another tragedy like this happens.”

Mrs Wilby said they had been together for 14 years and married for nine and was stunned to discover her husband had kept the eviction threat from her.

She has since found out he received a letter on February 15 demanding £1,421 or face eviction on March 6.

“I thought we were a really solid couple who told each other everything, but obviously he felt he couldn’t tell me this,” she said.

“He was a really proud man who loved his job and helping provide for the family. I just wish he had told me and we could have worked through the problems together.

“At the end of the day it’s only bricks and mortar, I’d give that up in a heartbeat to have Duncan back with me and the children.

“I knew that we had to be careful with money because everything is so expensive at the moment, but I never thought for a second it would come to this.”

For years, Mr Wilby stayed at home to look after the children because he had severe epilepsy and was unfit to work.

His sister won the lottery nine years ago and in 2000 bought her brother a terraced house in Wombwell, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, which is now worth £85,000.

“We’d just got married and had our first child and getting on the property ladder was a dream come true, everything was perfect,” she said. “I worked full time in retail and Duncan was a brilliant stay-at-home dad.”

The Barnsley home of Duncan and Mandy Wilby. The part-time postman was found by his wife

When their second child was born the couple decided to convert the attic to a third bedroom.

In 2005, after careful budgeting, they took out a £24,000 mortgage with a finance company to pay for the conversion work. Mr Wilby did as much of the building work as he could to reduce the costs.

In November last year Mr Wilby was able to start work as a postman and was “over the moon” to be providing for his family and getting out of the house.

But, unknown to his wife, they were already struggling to meet the £341.66 monthly payments for the loft.

She said: “We’ve never been an extravagant family and tried to cut back in places – silly little luxuries like food and new clothes -  to help with the payments.

“I’d be in charge of the utility bills and would give money from my wages to help with the mortgage payments, which Duncan dealt with.

“I’d ask him now and again as a matter of course if we were managing the payments and he said that everything was fine. I had no idea that he’d got into difficulties.

“Duncan was usually so good with those things that I never doubted him for a second. I just wish he’d told me and we could have got advice or help from somewhere.”

The mother-of-two who now works part-time in a local shop said that she thinks her husband’s death was a cry for help.

She told the inquest in Barnsley he was his normal “happy-go-lucky” self the day he died and coroner Donald Coutts-Wood recorded an open verdict.

She added: “Everyone, including me, thinks he believed I would have got to him in time.

“It was his way of telling me what went wrong – he’d never have left the me and the kids on purpose. I wish he’d had told me in the first place.

“I hadn’t a clue Dawn had bailed him out in the past. I found that out at his inquest.”

Frances Walker, of the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, said too many people worried about debt in silence.

She said: “Stories like this are very distressing. One thing that we can always sort out for people is debt. So often people don’t tell anyone what’s happening. But we can help. There is advice out there.”

Sometimes it seems Paul McCartney can’t win for losing.

In this April 23, 2008 file photo, Paul McCartney arrives to attend the exhibition of photographs by his late wife Linda McCartney, in a central London gallery. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, file

The hufington post

LONDON

01/07/08

The former Beatle has long been an outspoken advocate of environmental causes and animal rights. He is a vegetarian who won’t even wear leather shoes. But now he’s being criticized for having a hybrid Japanese car flown to him in Britain rather than having it sent by ship.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The car in question is an $158,000 Lexus LS 600h, a luxury sedan that offers both high performance and a reassuring “green” patina because it uses a hybrid system that relies on an electric motor at low speeds.

Best of all, it was to be a gift from the Lexus car company, which sponsored McCartney’s 2005 tour of the United States.

But environmentalists quickly pointed out that the use of a cargo plane to deliver the car to England completely offset any environmental gains resulting from the car’s use.

“It’s like driving the car 300 times around the world,” says Gary Rumbold, the director of the British branch of co2balance, which helps businesses and individuals gauge their carbon emissions footprint. “It seems like somebody at Lexus made an error in judgment. They wanted to get something to McCartney promptly, but it backfired. They should have waited a few weeks and sent it by ship.”

He said it would have been far less damaging to the environment in terms of carbon emitted into the atmosphere to have shipped the car by sea because so much more cargo can be fitted on a ship than in the cargo hold of a jet.

Rumbold also questioned whether a high performance car such as the LS Lexus 600h _ with a powerful 1.3-gallon (5-liter) V-8 engine and a top speed of 155 mph (250 kph) _ is actually the best use of promising hybrid technology.

It was not clear if McCartney knew the vehicle would be sent to him via air freight rather than by ship. Rumbold said it seems likely the singer was an innocent victim of a mistake made by Lexus executives.

McCartney’s spokesman, Stuart Bell, confirmed that the musician had received the car as a gift and that it had been flown to Britain, but said he could not comment about the decision to use a plane until he had all the details.

David Crouch, a spokesman for Lexus in Britain, said the company also would not comment on the McCartney car delivery.

He did say the LS 600h is a top-of-the-line hybrid designed to compete against the expensive Mercedes S Class and BMW 7 Series since its introduction in Britain late last year. Some 227 have been sold despite the starting price, which rises quickly when more options are added, he said.

“It’s selling very well,” he said. “You have a gasoline engine which works in conjunction with an electric motor. What it means is the car can run on either power source. At lower speeds it runs on electric power so there is no fuel consumption and no emissions, and if you need higher speeds, the petrol works with the electric motor to give you what you need.”

McCartney has had an unusually close relationship with Lexus in recent years. In addition to the sponsorship deal, the ex-Beatle _ who shies away from product endorsements _ has publicly praised Lexus for producing environmentally sensitive cars.

The carmaker also produced a one-of-a-kind McCartney-themed hybrid SUV that was sold off to benefit an anti-landmine charity favored by McCartney and gave one of his recent CD releases a special spot on the company’s Web site.