President of France Nicolas Sarkozy will travel to Ethiopia on January 30. The Human Right Watch (HRW) has issued a statement today urging Sarkozy to speaking out against human rights abuses in Ethiopia by the regime of brutal dictator Meles Zenawi. Read the statement below:
HRW (Paris) — The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is scheduled to arrive in Addis Ababa on January 30, 2011, for an official visit to Ethiopia. Human rights concerns, including the misuse of development aid to repress dissent, should be high on Sarkozy’s agenda, Human Rights Watch said.
The ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian Revolutionary People’s Democratic Front (EPRDF), won 99.6 percent of parliamentary seats in the May 2010 general election. Space for independent civil society and media has diminished sharply over the past five years, but particularly since 2009 when Ethiopia passed a restrictive law regulating civil society activity. Most independent human rights groups and media outlets have been forced to close, and the ruling party operates a system of cell structures in the country that monitor the political activity of every household.
While repression in Ethiopia has increased, so has development assistance to Ethiopia from the European Union, the United States, and other major donors.
In October 2010, Human Rights Watch published a report, “Development without Freedom,” which described how international development aid is used by the Ethiopian government to discriminate against political opponents and dissenters. Government services, funded by the European Union and other donors, are administered in a partisan way so that essential agricultural inputs, land, and even food for work programs are used as tools to reward loyal supporters and punish the families of members of the opposition, with serious humanitarian consequences.
International donors, especially the European Union and its member states, are aware of this partisan discrimination in some areas but have not conducted an independent investigation into the serious allegations contained in the report. President Sarkozy has the authority and the responsibility to demand that Ethiopia allow donors to assess independently how their money is being used, Human Rights Watch said.
“President Sarkozy should make clear that Ethiopia’s worsening human rights situation is a major concern not just in France, but throughout Europe,” said Jean-Marie Fardeau, Paris director at Human Rights Watch. “He should stress that Ethiopia’s crackdown on independent civil society and the media is unacceptable, and needs to be reversed.”
8 thoughts on “Sarkozy urged to speak out on abuses in Ethiopia”
My Ethiopian brothers and sisters, No Sarkozy No Obama will remove an African cancer, Meles!. If VP Biden Calls Egyptian President Mubarak an “Ally” – and would not Call Him a Dictator, how can you hope from Obama or Sarkozy. Meles is stronger because of Leaders from the USA, France, UK, Russia, China, … all Haters of Africans. Let us learn from our North African brothers and sisters to remove the ugly face dictator of Africans asap. Meles should be treated just like Ceausescu (x-president of Romania) in his final days.
freedom is not a gift from anyone, you earn it. Don’t except anything from the west. stand up for your right.
Elias,
This is your own writing. It is fool of you to try to fool we the wise.
Sarkozy is going to the AU summit and will stay in Addis only fr a few hours.SOCEPP had already written hima message. why did you not publicize that?
We Ethiopian should depend on ourselves not the west, Obama or any other foreign leader.
The peoples revolution may not be seen as soon as we want it BUT we we know for sure it will happen no matter when.
Our dictator know this too.
Every Time I think about tunisa, Meles and his looter wife comes right in my mind and the mind of many.What similarity between the two witches
Those of you that reside in France please take the issue to government officials.
Sarkozy, to lecture Tyrant Meles on human right is unthinkable!!!
Meles belongs to his Anglo-Saxon masters & the Dranco-phone western African satellite states belong to their French masters….. Both are puppets who ignore the plight of their people & are acountable to their masters in the west. Let alone Sarkozy who is a more right wing man than his predecessor, Jacqui Chirac…. The later once confronted a west African leader, who tried to become more accountable to his people than to France….. The African leader tried to convince Chirac on the basis of the country’s constitution….. Jacque Chirac replied back to him…..”stuff the constitution”….. There you go…
Just recently in January this year, following Romania accepting its EU presidency for the next 6 month, Sarkozy criticized Romanian Media law which enraged the Romanian president. The Romanian replied to Sarkozy….. Don’t throw a stone while in a glass house as France is the only country in EU that has its head of TV media appointed by the president Sarkozy…… You can have worse than that where in Italy the media is owned by the 82 year old teen-age chaser president Berlusconi and in England, the BBC serves the foreign policy of the UK government while it stays impartial in domestic politics.
Your biggest handicap is your expectation of your freedom to come from the very West that has always worked in cahoots with the most brutal & despotic dictators of the world. Freeing your mind from perpetual dependency must be the absolute priority.
It’s naive to expect Sarkozy to criticize Meles. They are a cabal of criminal gangs with Meles & Museveni the junior puppets while the US, UK & France pull the strings.
Just as the People’s revolutions in the Latin America’s, and the eastern EU in recent years that reversed Bush’s colour revolutions, one by one with the exception of Georgia which is hanging by the skin of its teeth & now followed by the North African uprisings that is unseating the western propped up dictators…… More of similar revolutions will continue to isolate the dwindling western empires.
Long may the people’s revolution continue!!!