Addis Ababa University students expressed outrage and anger on Tuesday after doctors at Menelik II hospital allegedly took out some parts from the body of a student. Daily Monitor reports as follows:

The deceased Ahmed Abdurrahman, a 3rd year physics student from Harar, fainted in class while he was doing a presentation, before he died later.

One of his class mates told The Daily Monitor on conditions of anonymity that, after he died , Ahmed’s body was taken to the hospital for autopsy and the doctors there [b]”took his brain, his eyes and his kidneys.” [/b]”The students demanded that was outrageous, that it was inhuman, and that they wanted those who did this to be brought to justice,” the student said.

According to the same source, the University’s student community went to the University President’s office the same day to demand that those responsible for the inhuman act on their colleague be named and brought to justice.

The students also demanded a guarantee to be given to them that this would not happen again.

One student said he wondered if the same thing happened to the student who died in a shower room two weeks ago, the source said.

Responding to the students’ plea, Professor Andreas Eshete, the University’s President said, the doctors didn’t have any right that allows them to do what they did on the student’s body.

Only his parents had the right to decide on their child’s body, Andreas told the students adding he heard reports that the doctors had permission from the police,according to the source.

Professor Andreas Said, some food had been sent for examination.

The students have decided to cut classes and not to go to their cafés for a few days.

The source said that from the University President’s office, after they with screams and shouting slogans: “You have to replace his body parts!”; “We don’t want to bury his skin!” and “We want our rights to be respected!

The students marched down to Arat Kilo intending to submit their complaints to the Prime Minister’s Office.

But then, they though to have a film off the body, believing that could serve a strong evidence to file a lawsuit against the “evil acts” on the part of the Medical Doctors at the Menilik Hospital.

In a meeting they held there afterwards, they elected representatives to film the corpse with Dr. Araya, the source said was a lecturer who shared the students’ anger over the incidence.

Meanwhile about 90 students of the Sidist Killo Main campus have been admitted to the Black Lion hospital as a result of a supposed food poisoning, another student who also did not want to be named told The Daily Monitor.

He said some students assert that the major symptom was “acute diarrhea”.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopian rebels who killed 74 people and seized seven Chinese workers in a raid on an oilfield said on Thursday they had no plans to hold the hostages or to attack other foreign companies.

A London-based spokesman of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) said the group had warned investors the area was a war zone and that it expected the conflict to escalate.

“We have no new plans to attack foreign companies at the moment,” Abdirahman Mohammed Mahdi told Reuters by telephone.

“But our general policy is that foreigners are not allowed to explore for oil or gas in the Ogaden. Any company which does that will be responsible for what happens.”

The separatist rebels, who have been fighting the government since 1984, stormed the oilfield in Ethiopia’s barren southeast region on Tuesday, killing 65 locals and 9 Chinese in one of the worst attacks yet on Beijing’s growing interests in Africa.

Mahdi said the ONLF was “terribly sorry” for the deaths of the Chinese, who he said were caught in the crossfire during a mission the guerrillas had planned for six months. And he said the group was trying to return the seven Chinese it had seized.

“We do not consider them hostages. We took them away for their own safety. We are trying to contact the appropriate authorities, the Red Cross or whoever, to return them,” he said.

ARMY THREATENED

He warned the military against launching a rescue mission.

“They will be responsible for any debacle that happens,” Mahdi said. “That would be a most foolish thing to do.”

The ONLF has repeatedly told energy companies they will not allow oil and gas exploration in the area as long as the Ogaden people are “denied their rights to self-determination”.

Last year it told a state-run Indian company vying for a gas concession to drop its plans.

Mahdi said the rebels had captured lots of weapons in recent operations against Ethiopian troops and he expected the fighting in Ogaden to intensify as the military retaliated.

“We control the countryside … Ethiopian army camps will be attacked wherever they are,” he said.

China has condemned the killings of staff working for Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, part of the larger China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (Sinopec).

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said China had sent foreign and commerce ministry officials as well as Sinopec representatives to the Horn of Africa nation.

Chinese diplomats were also helping efforts to secure the release of the kidnapped staff, he said, adding that China was evaluating the safety of its workers overseas.

Ethiopia renewed its vow to hunt down the rebels it says are “terrorists” backed by its arch-foe and regional rival Eritrea.

Asmara denies the allegations and accuses Addis Ababa of trying to divert attention from the two nations’ border dispute.

“The defence forces are in hot pursuit to apprehend ONLF criminals who committed this heinous crime,” Ethiopian Foreign Affairs spokesman Ambassador Soloman Abebe told Reuters.

“We will bring them to justice.”

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing)

News24 (SA)

Addis Ababa – Dozens of students were injured on Thursday in clashes with each other and the police at Ethiopia’s largest university, said students.

One student said he saw another killed by demonstrators, and about 50 wounded in the clashes at Addis Ababa University.

Other students also reported dozens of injured.

But federal police spokesperson Demsash Hailu said no one had died, although there had been some injuries.

There are “no dead, peace has been restored in the area,” Demsash said, adding that police reinforcements had bought the situation under control.

Students and police said the riots began on campus on Wednesday evening, sparked by the alleged theft of the body organs of a dead student by a government hospital.

“The doctors took over some of his body parts without any authorisation from his family,” said a demonstrator, asking to remain anonymous.

“We asked the dean of the university to intervene but he refused. That is why we are demonstrating.”

Students also cited the poor quality of food served in the university canteen as a reason for the riots.

University officials were unavailable for comment on Thursday.

By Anita Powell in Addis Ababa
The Guardian

Rebels stormed a Chinese-run oilfield in eastern Ethiopia yesterday, killing 74 workers and destroying the facility, guerrillas and government officials said.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front, an ethnic Somali group that has fought alongside insurgents in Somalia, also kidnapped seven Chinese workers, said an Ethiopian government official, Bereket Simon. “This was a cold blooded killing,” Mr Bereket, a special adviser to the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, told Associated Press. “This was organised.”

The rebel group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement sent to AP. It also warned all international oil companies not to operate in the region.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency identified the Chinese workers and Ethiopian guards as employees of the Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, a division of a huge state-run oil company.

Xu Shuang, the general manager of Zhongyuan, based in Addis Ababa, said nine of its Chinese oil workers were killed, seven Chinese workers were kidnapped and 65 Ethiopians were killed.

The attack took place early on Tuesday morning in Abole, a small town 75 miles from the Somali regional state’s capital Jijiga, close to the Somali border. Mr Bereket said several Ethiopian soldiers were wounded in the gunbattle. “The army is pursuing them. We will track them down dead or alive. We will make sure these people will be hunted and be brought to justice.”

He said the group was also linked to the Eritrean government, which Ethiopia has repeatedly accused of waging terror attacks. Eritrea denies the claims.

The countries fought a border war that ended in 2000 and are accused of backing rival sides in the Somali conflict.

China has increased its presence in Africa in recent years in the hunt for oil to fuel its rapidly growing economy. But forays into politically unstable areas have exposed Chinese workers to attacks.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front warned last year that it would not tolerate investment in the Ogaden area that also benefited the Ethiopian government.

Reports of torture in Ethiopia are widespread

By Nick Wadhams
San Francisco Chronicle

Ghimbi, Ethiopia — First, the police threw Tesfaye into a dark cell. Then, each day for 17 days, it was the same routine: Electric shocks on his legs and back, followed by beatings with rubber truncheons. Four or five officers would then surround and kick him. At last, a large bottle of water would be tied around his testicles. He’d pass out.

Tesfaye’s crime? Maybe it’s that he refused to join the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He was accused of organizing street protests in late 2005. Police suspect he’s a member of a rebel group called the Oromo Liberation Front. Tesfaye doesn’t know for sure because no court ever charged him with a crime.

“They took us turn by turn to a dark place, and they would shock us and say, ‘What do you think now? You won’t change your ways now? Do you want to be a member of our party now?’ ” Tesfaye recalled of his time in prison early last year. He refused to give his last name for fear of being rearrested.

Accounts like this are common in today’s Ethiopia. Interviews with dozens of people across the country, coupled with testimony given to diplomats and human rights groups, paint a picture of a nation that jails its citizens without reason or trial, and tortures many of them — despite government claims to the contrary.

Such cases are especially troubling because the U.S. government, a key Ethiopian ally, has acknowledged interrogating terrorism suspects in Ethiopian prisons, where some detainees were sent after being arrested in connection with Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in December. There have been no reports that those jailed have been tortured. The invasion ousted an Islamic movement accused of having ties to al Qaeda that threatened to topple an interim Somali government struggling to control the country.

The Bush administration maintains that Meles’ government, a leading partner in its war on terror in East Africa, is committed to democratic and human rights reform. The government was severely criticized for a 2005 crackdown that saw tens of thousands of opposition members jailed and nearly 200 people killed following elections in which the opposition made major gains.

People across Ethiopia recounted stories of a government backsliding on human rights issues. They told of confinement for days in tiny, dark cells with their hands bound 24 hours a day; electric shocks; beatings with rubber clubs; police who held guns to prisoners’ heads; mutilation or pain inflicted on the genitals.

“If you think differently, that is enough to put you on the side of the opposition,” said 34-year-old Teferi, who recently was released from prison after two months without being charged with a crime. “If you say, ‘This is not right, this is right, it’s good to rule peacefully,’ if you talk something fair, it’s over for you because there is no fairness from them.”

Teferi said a police source told him that he was arrested because he played too much pingpong — and that police suspected he was recruiting people to a rebel group while he played. He said he was imprisoned at a police training camp called Sankele outside the city of Ambo, which the International Committee of the Red Cross has been barred from visiting.

Ethiopian officials dismiss stories of torture as lies, and have taken the further step of expelling everyone from foreign journalists to representatives of human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Ethiopian reporters for the U.S.-financed Voice of America must work in secret for fear of harassment.

Bereket Simon, a top adviser to Meles [and a psychopathic liar], said it’s in the interests of rights groups to lie about the situation, and he rejected the idea that torture occurs in Ethiopia.

“No way. No way. No way. I think you know, these are prohibited by laws, by Ethiopian laws — torture, any human treatments,” Bereket said. “In fact, we have been improving on our prison standards. We’ve been working hard to train the police forces, the interrogators.”

U.S. officials say Washington’s close alliance with the government in Addis Ababa allows it to raise concerns about Ethiopia’s record privately. The State Department is requesting more than $500 million for Ethiopian aid in fiscal 2008, almost all of it for HIV/AIDS relief. The United States trains Ethiopian troops, and the two governments have shared intelligence about Somalia.

U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto said he wants to investigate claims of abuse, but warned against making allegations about Ethiopia’s actions without proof.

“There’s a lot of misinformation about Ethiopia — I mean, it’s amazing,” Yamamoto said. “The problem comes in trying to divide or separate what is fact and what’s fiction, and trying to keep an open mind on every issue. … There are problems, and we’re free to admit that, and the Ethiopians are open to admitting that as well.”

Ethiopia’s critics are skeptical of the government’s promises to improve its human rights record.

“Over the years, the more I see, the more I become convinced that not only does the government tolerate it, but I think they direct this kind of behavior,” said Ethiopian-born Theodros Dagne, a senior aide to Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., a leading critic of Ethiopian practices on human rights.

European diplomats and employees of Western aid groups, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they keep quiet about abuses because they fear the government will freeze them out of aid work. About 2.8 million of Ethiopia’s 75 million people depend on foreign food aid.

Washington’s steadfast support has led some Ethiopian opposition leaders to assert that Meles’ government has only been emboldened.

“We fully believe that the international community is not going to democratize this place — it’s going to be the tough task of the Ethiopians,” said Beyene Petros, a lawmaker and leader of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, a coalition of opposition groups. “Simply, the U.S. State Department’s or the U.S. government’s position on Ethiopia is that it’s a friendly government, and how can you go and quarrel with your friend because somebody told on him?”

Zoe Alsop contributed to this story, which was reported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.