From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Tue Mar 09 2010 - 00:56:19 EST
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article7048914.ece
>From The Times
March 4, 2010
Bob Geldof rages at BBC over claim Live Aid millions were used to buy arms
The Live Aid concert in 1985 helped to raise £170 million for famine
victims
(Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features)
114 Comments
The Live Aid concert in 1985 helped to raise £170 million for famine
victims
Image :1 of 4
Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent
Bob Geldof reacted angrily yesterday to claims broadcast on the BBC that
millions of dollars raised by Band Aid were diverted to Ethiopian rebels.
The allegations that 95 per cent of aid money donated to help victims of
the 1985 Ethiopian famine were siphoned off were made in a BBC radio
programme broadcast yesterday.
Geldof told The Times that “it would be a f***ing tragedy” if the
British people stopped giving to charity because of allegations made by the
same broadcaster that inspired him to fight poverty and hunger in Africa.
His conversion from rock musician to internationally renowned fundraiser
began in December 1984 when he and his partner, Paula Yates, watched
Michael Buerk’s report on the unfolding famine in Ethiopia.
Yates was moved to tears and the next day Geldof found a note that she had
left on the fridge instructing anyone who entered the house to leave £5 in
a box. Geldof thought that they could do more and formed Band Aid, which
produced a pop single at Christmas. This was followed the next summer by
the Live Aid concert. His actions raised $250 million (£170 million) for
famine victims in five African countries.
In interviews, however, two former senior commanders in the Tigrayan
People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) told the BBC that the vast majority of
the money was stolen by rebels to buy weapons for their fight to overthrow
the Ethiopian Government.
The claims sparked controversy, not least because one of the rebel leaders
implicated was Meles Zenawi, now the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and still a
leading recipient of Western aid. Previous allegations have centred on the
role of the Government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, which had been accused of
stealing aid and diverting food supplies away from rebel areas.
Band Aid officials used networks of aid agencies to deliver relief through
Sudan to the epicentre of the famine in rebel-held Tigray. Aregawi Berhe,
the former military commander of the TPLF, told the BBC that rebels put on
a “drama” to get their hands on the relief money, posing as merchants
and handing over bags of sand instead of grain in exchange for cash
delivered by naive Western aid workers.
Gebremedhin Araya, another former rebel leader, told the BBC that he was
“given clothes to make me look like a Muslim merchant”. He added:
“This was a trick for the NGOs.” Mr Berhe estimated that 95 per cent of
the $100 million that went through the rebels’ hands was diverted in this
way.
Nick Guttmann, Christian Aid’s director of emergency relief operations,
fell short of denying the allegations but said that the story needed to be
put into context. “We were working in a major conflict, there was a
massive famine and people on all sides were suffering. Both the rebels and
the Government were using innocent civilians to further their political
ends,” he said.
Geldof dismissed the claims, saying that “the story and the figures just
don’t add up”.
“If that percentage of money had been diverted, far more than a million
people would have died,” he told The Times. “It’s possible that in
one of the worst, longest-running conflicts on the continent some money was
mislaid. But to suggest it was on this scale is just b******s.”
Geldof’s stance was supported in a letter to the BBC by former Band Aid
officials, including their Ethiopia director, which said that all the money
dispensed in Tigray had been accounted for by the organisation. “The
public should not think that the money they so generously contributed to
one of the poorest countries in the world was misused or given in vain,”
it said.
Max Peberdy, a Christian Aid worker whom the rebels claimed to have tricked
into handing over $500,000, said he did not believe that the money was
diverted. “It’s 25 years since this happened and it’s the first time
anybody has claimed such a thing,” he said.
Geldof blamed the story on the grievances nursed by the two former rebel
commanders, who had since fallen out with their former compatriots and fled
into exile in the Netherlands.
Jamie Drummond, executive director of One, the charity co-founded by Geldof
and Bono, said that he had travelled to Tigray with Geldof six weeks ago to
see agricultural projects that were funded by Band Aid and Live Aid —
which he said could not have been achieved if the BBC’s allegations were
true.
There was no comment on the allegations from Mr Meles’s office in Addis
Ababa. The BBC stood by its report last night.
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