(Photo:file)
\nEthiopian political activists opposed to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi\u2019s rule said they sabotaged power lines in the west of the country as part of a campaign against the government.<\/p>\n
The Tinsae Ethiopian Patriots Union said it cut electricity cables in Awi Zone on May 20, causing outages in towns including Asosa, 477 kilometers (296 miles) west of Addis Ababa, and Metekel, 400 northwest of the capital. Power still hasn\u2019t been restored in some parts of the region, it said in an e-mailed statement today. The group posted pictures on its website that it said showed the damaged cables.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey must be joking,\u201d Communications Minister Bereket Simon said a phone interview. \u201cThere were problems with power supply, but it\u2019s not related to sabotage,\u201d he said, adding that he had only previously heard of Tinsae on \u201csome foreign blogs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tinsae said it and other groups are planning a campaign of \u201cpeaceful civil resistance\u201d to bring about \u201cmultiparty Western- style democracy where government exists to serve the people\u201d in Ethiopia. A Facebook group calling for protests on May 28 against the rule of Meles\u2019s Ethiopian People\u2019s Revolutionary Democratic Front said 3,112 people had confirmed they would attend. The date is the 20th anniversary of when rebels marched into Addis Ababa to remove Mengistu Haile Mariam\u2019s Marxist military junta from power.<\/p>\n
Crackdown
\nTinsae says it is composed of members of the now defunct Coalition for Unity and Democracy that led street protests after a disputed 2005 election resulting in a crackdown by security forces that left 193 people dead.<\/p>\n
In March, the group said it distributed pamphlets in three of the major Ethiopian languages calling for protests this month. At the time, the group also appealed to the country\u2019s armed forces to support its campaign.<\/p>\n
The EPRDF won more than 99 percent of 547 parliamentary seats in May 2010 elections that European Union observers said failed to meet certain \u201cinternational commitments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ethiopia\u2019s economy has grown by an average of 11 percent for the last 7 years, International Monetary Fund data shows. The country ranks 157th out of 169 countries ranked in the United Nations Development Program\u2019s Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy, education and living standards.<\/p>\n
To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa via Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.<\/p>\n
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson in Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Photo:file) Ethiopian political activists opposed to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi\u2019s rule said they sabotaged power lines in the west of the country as part of a campaign against the government. The Tinsae Ethiopian Patriots Union said it cut electricity cables in Awi Zone on May 20, causing outages in towns including Asosa, 477 kilometers (296 miles) west of Addis Ababa, and Metekel, 400 northwest of the capital. Power still hasn\u2019t been restored in some parts of the region, it said in an e-mailed statement today. The group posted pictures on its website that it said showed the damaged cables. \u201cThey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amharic.zehabesha.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}