Testimonies from “Lessons in Repression: Violations of Academic Freedom in Ethiopia”


About the chilling effect of human rights violations on students and educators
We can’t complain publicly or we will be arrested. The students are afraid of such things. Not only the students. We teachers, too.
—Schoolteacher, July 30, 2002

About detention and torture after the 2001 AAU strike
They pushed me into a police car and took me to an unknown place…. Once we arrived at the compound, they pulled me out of the car. They started beating me everywhere. They slammed me on my ears, and blood started to come out. They beat me on my back, legs, arms and hands. I don’t know how I spent that night—I was unconscious much of the time…. The officers tied my hands and my ankles together with rope. They threw me down into the sand, and at night they torched me with electricity. When they beat me, they did it with a stick. They pushed my head into a bucket of water so I could not breathe, and I was so weak I couldn’t resist, and my hands were tied together. The hardest thing for me is that those people knew my feelings, they were also Ethiopians. They knew what they were doing to me . . . They tortured me like that for three days.
—Student refugee, Nairobi, April 4, 2002

About ongoing harassment against the Ethiopian Teachers’ Association
Teachers are expected to… follow the [ruling party] line, or else they will be blacklisted. To be blacklisted includes not getting promoted, not getting a salary increase, being transferred to remote areas, being transferred away from your family, having your salary docked, losing your housing, getting fired, and even being excluded from social events like weddings.… I was blacklisted three times.
—Former teacher now refugee, Nairobi, July 10, 2002