ETA’s Urgent Appeal to the International Community

ETA Press Release
Monday, December 05, 2005

The Ethiopian Teachers’ Association (ETA) urges the international community to intervene to save the lives of Mr. Hailu Shawel, age 71 and Chairman of CUD, and Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, age 75 and a member of CUD. The two are among the top leaders of CUD who are currently languishing in jail on tramped up charges by the ruling party in Ethiopia.

Both Mr. Hailu Shawel and Professor Mesfin Woldemariam have serious medical conditions.

Mr Hailu Shawel suffers from severe brittle diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, and severe peripheral vascular disease. The danger to him from the ailment of diabetes is death or complications from hyperglycemia (too high blood sugar) or hypoglycemia which is a condition of too low a blood sugar. In the situation that he is in, the coronary heart complication could lead to his death from heart attack. Mr Hailu Shawel was due to have cardiac surgery when he interrupted his treatment to return back home to Ethiopia to help diffuse the political crisis instigated by the regime.

Professor Mesfin suffers from severe emphysema, as well as severe lumbar disc disease with neuroradiculopathy (shooting pain down the legs from nerve compression). The pain is so severe and so excruciating that he constantly needs pain killers and assistance to get in and out of bed. The professor is prone to periodic attacks of asthmatic bronchitis from the emphysema where he requires a ready supply of oxygen, bronchodilaters and antibiotics.

The international community has the ethical responsibility to put stupendous and immense pressure on the regime currently in power to immediately release them from prison. Apart from their declining health, the atrocious prison conditions in Ethiopia will cost the lives of these prisoners of conscious unless the international community acts immediately to save them.

The world must not allow the Ethiopian regime to facilitate the death of Mr. Hailu Shawel and Professor Mesfin Woldemariam in illegal detention as it did to Professor Asrat Woldeyes.

Taye Woldesemayat, Ph.D.,
President of the Ethiopian Teachers’ Association
[email protected]

CC: The White House
The US State Department
The US Congress
The Red Cross
Kofi A. Annan, UN Secretary-General
European Union
Amnesty International