Following up on previous resolutions on Ethiopia, MEPs take another look at the unstable situation that has persisted in that country since the 2005 elections. Opposition leaders who led protests at the outcome of the elections have been convicted in court and may now face the death penalty. While calling on the Ethiopian authorities to respect fundamental rights, MEPs also believe the EU institutions could be doing more and indeed that the EU bears some responsibility since it persuaded Ethiopians not to boycott the elections.
In the wake of the May 2005 elections, whose results are widely held to have been falsified by the government, opposition demonstrations were met with violence from the authorities, resulting in 193 civilian deaths and 763 injured, according to a Commission of Inquiry set up by the Ethiopian Parliament. Members of the Commission were later “forced to flee following pressure by the government to reverse the Commission’s findings”.
Ethiopia urged to release political prisoners and review court verdicts
Now, on 11 June 2007 an Ethiopian court has found 38 senior opposition figures guilty of charges “ranging from ‘outrage against the constitution’ to aggravated high treason”. Sentencing is expected next month and most of the accused could face the death penalty.
Among a range of demands on the Ethiopian authorities in their resolution, MEPs call on the government “to release immediately and unconditionally all political prisoners, including elected members of parliament, CUD leaders, human rights activists, journalists, teachers, students, trade union activists and ordinary citizens”.
The EP also “urges the Ethiopian judicial authorities to reconsider their verdict, and calls on the Ethiopian Government to repeal possible death and/or prison sentences”. In addition, it “calls for the establishment of an international independent Inquiry Commission”.
Greater involvement and pressure from the international community
MEPs strongly believe the international community should play a bigger role. They ask the EU, the African Union and the UN “to encourage and support an all-inclusive inter-Ethiopian dialogue, with the participation of political parties and civil society, in order to work out a lasting solution to the current political crisis”.
MEPs call on the UN “to appoint a ‘special rapporteur’ to conduct an investigation in Ethiopia into judicial independence and arbitrary detentions, the human rights situation, including minority rights, post-election violence and killings, and charges of treason and outrage against the constitutional order directed at opposition leaders, journalists and civil-society activists”.
In addition, the EU Commission and Council should “pursue a coherent post-electoral policy in Ethiopia” and “consider the application of targeted sanctions against senior government officials”. The EP points out that “development cooperation programmes under the Cotonou Agreement should depend on respect for human rights and good governance”. It hence calls on the Commission and Council to “take a coordinated stance” consistent with Article 96 of the agreement.
SUPPORT THE FORBES AMENDMENT TO H.R. 2764
June 21, 2007
Dear Colleague:
As Chair of the Congressional Ethiopian American Caucus, I urge you to vote YES to Representative J. Randy Forbes amendment to H.R. 2764 restricting certain economic assistance to Ethiopia until the Secretary certifies that the Government of Ethiopia is not wrongfully holding political prisoners.
The Amendment reads:
SEC. ll. None of the funds made available in this Act under the heading ”Economic Support Fund” for assistance for Ethiopia may be obligated or expended until the Secretary of State certifies to the Committees on Appropriations that Ethiopia has released all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Ethiopia. The President may waive the limitation under this section if the President determines and reports to the Committees on Appropriations that it is vital to the national security interests of the United States to do so.”
A YES vote would send a unified message to Ethiopia on promoting higher human rights standards of our allies. This amendment will restrict $3 million of the Economic Support Fund (ESF) for Ethiopia. The amendment carefully excludes $478 million that Ethiopia is expected to receive in humanitarian accounts such as Development Assistance, Child Survival, HIV/AIDS, as well as various Security Assistance funding given U.S.-Ethiopian activities in the war on terror. The amendment also includes a waiver for a compelling national security interest.
This amendment is in response to last week’s Ethiopian Federal High Court conviction of 38 members of a political opposition party, including elected parliamentarians and human rights advocates, for “outrages against the Constitution,” and mounting an armed insurrection against the Government of Ethiopia. Other political prisoners, such as elected Parliamentarian Kifle Tigneh, had their trials postponed until the late date of October 2007, leaving them imprisoned for a total of 2 years. Among those convicted last week are internationally renowned Mesfin Wolemariam, a senior Fulbright Scholar and founder of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRC), and Dr. Yacob Hailemariam, a former professor at Norfolk State University for 20 years and the l ead attorney for a U.N. tribunal on war crimes in Rwanda. They face sentencing on July 8, 2007 and could face the death penalty.
I am deeply concerned about the plight of these individuals. We must send a clear message to Ethiopia – that the full participation of political opposition is absolutely necessary in a democratic society. By continuing their imprisonment, the Ethiopian Government suppresses the most fundamental element of democracy.
I will vote YES on Mr. Forbes Amendment with full understanding of the historical context in which the democratic process must progress in Ethiopia. I will continue to be an advocate of humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia, and for promoting policies that promote trade and economic development there – but I cannot comply with such a clear offense to the democratic process.
If you have any questions, please contact Ryan Kaldahl in Mr. Forbes Office at 5-6365 or [email protected]. To join the Congressional Ethiopian American Caucus, and to learn more about other ways of getting involved in this issue, please contact Selam Mulugeta at 202-225-2631 or at [email protected]. See the below links to learn more about the history of this issue.
Sincerely,
/s
Michael M. Honda
Member of Congress
Chair of the Congressional Ethiopian American Caucus
Additional Background:
1. H.R. 2003 Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007 http://www.congress.gov/cgi-lis/bdquery
2. Virginia Pilot Article: http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=126530&ran=4292
3. State Department Briefing that includes comments on Ethiopian court decision: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2007/jun/86337.htm
4. BBC Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6743721.stm
5. Amnesty International press release: http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGUSA20070615001
The Guilty Verdict and Why The TPLF is So Predictable
By Ethiopian-Americans for Democracy
After an 18-month charade, a politically compliant Ethiopian court on June 11, 2007 found 38 members of Ethiopia’s main opposition party, CUD-Kinijit, guilty of leading armed rebellion and “outrages against the constitution.”
The fate of Prime Minister Zenawi’s political opponents was sealed on May 15, 2005 when the people of Ethiopia cast a vote of no confidence in the TPLF regime. The guilty verdict therefore came as no surprise to those who have endured fifteen years of indignity and brutality under Zenawi. Even once comrades in arms such as the former Defense Minister Siye Abraha and his brother Assefa Abraha continue to languish in jail on false charges.
“What the Ethiopian security forces are doing may amount to crimes against humanity,” Georgette Gagne of Human of Human Rights Watch told the New York Times in a recent interview.
In its lust for power, the TPLF leadership has compromised the long-term security of the nation by declaring an unjustified war on the Somali people, and subjecting them to unimaginable suffering, although they did not present any tangible threat to the interests of Ethiopia.
Why did Ethiopia’s Prime Minister persist with patently false charges and finally order his court to find his political opponents guilty?
Only one conclusion can be drawn from this drama: Mr. Zenawi never intended to have a legitimate, viable opposition. Using indeterminate sentences as well as mental and physical abuse, he hopes to kill the prisoners over time through mental and physical torture.
With the verdict, the Prime Minster has single-handedly shut all avenues to peaceful political change. The trial and the guilty verdict show the regime’s commitment to democracy has been a farce all along.
The verdict has to be viewed in the context of the following circumstances:
1. The court decision is an attempt by Zenawi to divert attention from his lack of legitimacy and the ever-rising human rights abuses.
3. The verdict is also Zenawi’s attempt to shift responsibility for the post-election massacre and human rights abuses to the political opposition.
• Various bodies — including the inquiry commission appointed by Zenawi’s own government — have extensively documented the crimes committed by the Prime Minister and his lieutenants.
4. Under the cover of fighting terrorism, the Bush administration, and especially the Pentagon, has given license to a group of criminals in Ethiopia. These thugs, under the leadership of Meles Zenawi, have created an elaborate, corrupt and brutal machinery that has manufactured phantom terrorists and bought its way to the corridors of power in Washington using donors’ money to hire expensive lobbyists. Because it has protection from the Bush administration, the ruling Tigrai Liberation Front slaughters Ethiopians with impunity; it also continues to imprison and sentence political opponents on fabricated charges. There is speculation that Zenawi may also be playing political games with the lives of the prisoners. According to this line of reasoning, he will order his court to pass death sentences. He will then “magnanimously” commute the sentences to life imprisonment.
5. Zenawi never intended to have democracy, but always sought the foreign money that comes with the talk of democracy.
• Zenawi never, ever had legitimacy in the eyes of the people he ruled. But foreign powers were quick to give him the benefit of the doubt, to shower him with money, to flatter him with kind words (remember the “new breed of African leader”?) and to provide legitimacy.
• George Bush and Tony Blair have been among the foremost enablers of a tyrant that has brought untold suffering to a much-abused nation of 80 million people.
What is the way out?
• The May 2005 vote should be respected. Ethiopians should be allowed to be ruled by a government of their own choosing, and not by a brutal minority regime imposed by a foreign power.
• We call on the Bush Administration to dissociate itself from a vicious dictatorship and to support the democratic aspirations of the Ethiopian people.
• We call for the immediate release of political prisoners without any preconditions.
• We call for an independent, internationally supervised investigation of post-election violence as well as all the arrests and extra-judicial killings that have taken place under Zenawi’s regime.
• We call on the international community to bring to justice officials of the current regime responsible for human rights abuses and for crimes against humanity.
• We call on all opposition groups in the Diaspora and at home to set aside their differences, to create new alliances, to seek out appropriate methods of struggle and to keep their eyes on the prize: the release of all political prisoners, the liberation of Ethiopia from tyranny and the establishment of a truly democratic order.
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — Ethiopian opposition leaders jailed in a brutal crackdown following 2005 elections have signed a document accepting partial responsibility for the violence in exchange for their release, senior U.S. and Ethiopian officials said.
Only some of the 38 political detainees, whom Amnesty International has called prisoners of conscience, have agreed to sign the document. Others, including the senior opposition leaders, have refused, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are involved in the discussions.
Those who signed could be freed within days, the officials said.
Negotiations on the prisoners’ release have proceeded despite their conviction last week on charges including “outrage against the constitution” and aggravated high treason in a trial that human rights groups and some U.S. officials condemned as a sham. The prisoners are to be sentenced in July and could face the death penalty.
The prisoners’ families have accused the United States of softening its criticism of Ethiopia’s human rights record because the country is a key military ally in the fight against terrorism in the Horn of Africa.
The 2005 elections were generally hailed as free and fair, and the opposition made significant gains. But when opposition members took to the streets to protest some of the results, Ethiopian security forces, including sharpshooters, responded with massive force, arresting about 30,000 protesters and killing at least 193 people.
That the Ogaden has been neglected by the current regime in power in Ethiopia is not in question. That what is unfolding in Ogaden amounts to war crimes is what the world is beginning to see placing upon it a moral obligation to intervene.
Since 1994 the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has appealed to the international community to hear the cries of countless victims of the current Ethiopian regimes systematic repression of our people. Today, the Ogaden is one of the most underdeveloped areas in the world not because of a lack of resources, but a deliberate policy of suppression against civilians and an open hostility to the wishes of the people of Ogaden to have legitimate institutions serving the needs of the people.
The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Release dated 19 June 2007 and authored by Seyoum Mesfin, a senior member of the ruling Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) which also heads the government was a knee jerk reaction to the uncovering of this regimes dirty little secret in Ogaden. The same regime that professes to be moving Ethiopia toward a more democratic order is also the same regime that has planned and executed a campaign of terror against the nomadic cattle herders and villagers of Ogaden.
The Ministry made several claims in its Press Release which have no basis in reality and are designed to spin what was clearly accurate reporting by the New York Times. At one point, Seyoum Mesfin compares the New York Times journalist to an intelligence agent leaving one to wonder whether his government is sending a veiled message to the United States. Since a free press has become a rare commodity in Ethiopia, it comes as no surprise to us that Seyoum Mesfin would consider any journalist as an intelligence agent.
The Press Release made mention of the word terrorist in conjunction with the ONLF so many times that it was clear that this was the only message this regime was trying to convey through this statement. The statement makes no mention of the fact that the ONLF was actually part of the government when the marxist regime of strong man Mengistu Haile Mariam was overthrown in Ethiopia. It further ignores that fact that in the first elections held in Ogaden in 1992, the ONLF won 84% of seats in the regional parliament with additional seats being won by parties holding a platform similiar to the ONLF.
This regime seems to have forgotten that following those elections many of our parliamentarians were arrested and some killed including an attempt on the life of the then ONLF chairman in 1994 resulting in the massacre of 81 civilians at the hands of TPLF militia.
The TPLF led regime in Ethiopia also conveniently forgets that despite its campaign of terror against our people, the ONLF has always maintained a policy of welcoming direct dialogue subject to the presence of a neutral third party in a neutral country a position that the TPLF has rejected due to its unwillingness to have a third party present.
Instead, the TPLF has left no stone unturned to convince the international community that the ONLF is a terrorist organization despite being the only organization enjoying widespread legitimacy and support from the people of Ogaden. It seems that it has become fashionable for this regime to label anyone who opposes its policies as terrorists in order to divert attention from the legitimate grievances of the people.
The TPLF, itself an armed liberation movement labeled as terrorists by the previous regime before taking power themselves is fond of referring to the recent operation in Obole as a terrorist act, yet when members of the opposition asked the regime to furnish the names of Ethiopian civilians harmed in the operation, it did not, resulting in a vote of condemnation supported only by the ruling party members. Are we to believe that the 90 or so members of the opposition who refused to support the resolution were not people of conscious, or did they see the sinister motive of the TPLF led regime to seek to label a legitimate organization as terrorists in order to continue to justify their abuse of our people and continued neglect of Ogaden.
If the regime is justified in claiming a massacre, why did it refuse the calls of opposition parliamentarians to provide a full and detailed report following an investigation? Why are even the hand picked parliamentarians from the region silent about what took place other than the so-called regional President who claimed that Eritreans attacked the oil exploration facility, a claim that even his masters in the TPLF thought too sensational to make themselves.
The fact of the matter is that senior leaders of this regime had personal ties to the oil exploration facility at Obole, a factor which contributed to our selection of that target. In addition, our people were forcefully removed from grazing lands without compensation and with little warning. In short the ONLF targeted this regimes armed forces and not oil workers or civilians. The ONLF as a matter of policy and principle does not target civilians a claim the TPLF regime cannot make given its current record. It is this regime that has practiced a policy of assassinations, torture and intimidation. It is the TPLF that has acted as judge and jury in Ethiopia.
That the ONLF has joined hands with a diverse array of organizations with drastically different platforms forming the Alliance for Freedom & Democracy (AFD) demonstrating a commitment to peace through dialogue and calling for an all inclusive conference to chart a new political future for Ethiopia is also conveniently forgotten by this regime. The member organizations of the AFD were able to overcome their political differences in order to work together for a better future, something the TPLF has demonstrated that it is incapable of doing.
At every turn, this regime has labeled any initiative of the people as being hatched in Eritrea as though the people have no aspirations of their own. As though the desire for justice is imported and not homegrown. Are we to believe that all the victims of this regime are controlled by Eritrea? Are we all in a mass comma feeling nothing ourselves and needing to be directed from abroad?
Is it soo hard to believe that civilians have been massacred in Ogaden away from cameras by the TPLF when this regime did not hesitate to massacre civilians in the Streets of Addis Ababa after a rigged election in front of cameras?
What the New York Times reported and the world is now beginning to see is a human catastrophe this regime will do anything it can to conceal. That is why western journalists are denied entry into Ogaden. That is why the TPLF regime is desperate to label the ONLF as terrorists. That is why even the recent census was never initiated in Ogaden. That is why the rigged elections of 2005 did not even take place in Ogaden until several months later when the machinery of the TPLF was fully in place and ballot boxes were often found in army barracks.
The current regime in Ethiopia does not want the world to hear the cries of our people. It is a slow genocide away from the cameras and global attention. At this very moment there is a widescale crackdown taking place against throughout Ogaden. Trucks carrying food are being denied entry into towns like Degah-Bur, Qabri-Dahar and Gode. Several of the the very traditional leaders this regime claims to have been envoys of peace in their Press Release now find themselves in prison. Over thirty political prisoners have been loaded on trucks and driven out of Jijiga with no word on where they have been taken. Many of our civilians are leaving major towns because of this state of siege and seeking refuge with the ONLF. It is to put an end to these atrocities and many more that the ONLF struggles for in partnership other members of the AFD.
The ONLF calls upon the European Union and the United States in particular to hold this regime to account for its war crimes against the people of Ogaden and countless other political prisoners and prisoners of conscious who currently languish in Ethiopian jails including the duly elected leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) who were unjustly convicted of fabricated crimes simply because they won their seats in parliament and the countless members of the OLF,SLF and EPPF who are detained, tortured and harassed by this regime simply because they exercised their right to freedom of association. We further call upon the human rights organizations to defy the ban placed on them by the TPLF authorities and come to Ogaden to see for themselves the plight of our people.
The moral burden rests on the shoulders of the worlds leading democracies. While the people have spoken on their views of this regime, it is up to freedom loving people everywhere and their governments to make sure their voices are heard. To do anything less would be to turn away from the very aspirations for democracy and rule of law that they seek to expand accross the world.
Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)
Foreign Affairs Bureau
Jijiga, Ogaden
20 June 2007
Tegbar League’s executive committee in Addis Ababa today has called on the people of Ethiopia to rise up in unison for a nationwide civil disobedience to force the Woyanne dictatorship free our leaders.
The call is made to citizens through out the country to participate in the civil disobedience by blocking roads and major highways in the month of August unless the Woyanne dictatorship releases the legitimate representatives of the people of Ethiopia from jail.
It is the duty and obligation of a people to protect its legitimately elected leaders. In our case, we Ethiopians have allowed our leaders to languish in jail for over a year now. We must say no more.
