Addis Ababa – Ethiopian opposition officials told a court on Monday that two anti-poverty activists on trial for allegedly trying to overthrow the government were never members of their movement. Daniel Bekele, 40, and Netsanet Demissie, 29, are the last two defendants out of 131 original charged in a long-running treason trial.
On Monday, Hailu Shawel, chairperson of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) told the court neither men had been a part of his organisation.
“Charges that they were CUD members are totally false,” he said. “If they had been members I would have known.”
Hailu Shawel and other senior CUD officials were also charged in the same trial, which human rights groups and donors said was an attempt to dismantle the opposition after it made strong gains in 2005 elections. They were all arrested after two bouts of violence after the disputed polls in which 199 civilians and police were killed, 800 people wounded and 30,000 arrested, according to a parliamentary inquiry.
They were freed on July 20 after the government published a letter it said CUD leaders had sent to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi admitting their guilt and repenting.
Defence lawyers say Bekele and Netsanet, who work for ActionAid Ethiopia and the Organisation for Social Justice in Ethiopia respectively, refused to sign and want to be acquitted.
The Honorable Congressman Richard Gephardt
Former House Democratic Leader
c/o : Richard A. Gephardt Institute for Public Service
Washington University in St. Louis
Campus Box 1196, One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
It was with a deep sense of betrayal and disbelief that we read a recent report suggesting that you might be involved in helping the Ethiopian dictator, Meles Zenawi, to derail the passage of a bill in Congress intended to protect the democratic rights of the people of Ethiopia.
If it is indeed true, your association with one of the most vicious dictators of the modern era would be inconsistent with your image as a leader who has dedicated his professional life to advancing the ideals of democracy and social justice.
Not too long ago, you declared to the world:
“One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, … The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth.”
On May 15, 2005 the people of Ethiopia took to the polls in unprecedented record numbers, and cast a vote of no confidence in Zenawi’s minority government. Instead of accepting the people’s verdict, Zenawi proclaimed a state of emergency, and declared himself a winner, against the testimonials of credible observers, including one by the EU-EOM group.
In the aftermath of the elections that he stole, Zenawi ordered the massacre of over 193 peaceful demonstrators, and imprisoned opposition leaders and thousands of opposition party members, as was unveiled by a commission set up by his own government.
In a move reminiscent of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge, he coerced the political prisoners into admitting responsibility for the crimes he had committed, and publicized to the world the confession obtained under duress.
“The long nighttime of communism and totalitarianism is not over, but we are entering a new era where ordinary citizens everywhere are speaking out freely and are no longer afraid of murderous dictators.”
Unfortunately, if the rest of the world is marching out of the “nighttime of totalitarianism,” it is still pitch dark for the people of Ethiopia. According to a recent report, Ethiopia topped the list of the worst countries for press freedom, with more jailed and exiled journalists than any other country in the world. In 2006 alone, eight newspapers were banned, two foreign reporters were expelled and several websites were blocked.
As the rest of the world enjoys the “peace dividend” from the end of the “Cold War,” the people of Ethiopia are going through extremely severe economic hardships, thanks to the rampant corruption and expensive lobbying that are characteristics of Zenawi’s regime. A recent World Economic Forum report indicated that Ethiopia had slid to the rank of 120th out of 125 countries in 2006 in the Global Competitive Index, down from the 116th place it had occupied in 2005. Economic analysts point out that the number of Ethiopians on less than a dollar a day, has nearly tripled since Zenawi took power in 1991, i.e., relative to the record of the discredited communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
You once made the observation:
“It’s amazing what happens when you ask yourself this question before you speak or act. ‘How would I like this said or done to me?'” So, before you venture to work for Zenawi, the people of Ethiopia would wish to remind you of the above and to ask yourself: “How would I feel if I were an Ethiopian living under a dollar a day and my leader squandered the money on expensive lobbying?”
You have also been quoted as saying: “I think the most important thing in life, …., is credibility,…” Your demonstrated position against tyranny in Ethiopia would give more credibility to the mission of the Gephardt Institute for Public Service that you so generously helped to establish, and whose purpose you so eloquently described as an institute, “… to help spread freedom, democracy, and capitalism across the globe so we can better prevent the creation of terrorists.” The stand you now take in distancing yourself from a brutal dictator will certainly be a metric by which the image of this promising institution will be judged for a long time to come.
Honorable Congressman,
In the days and weeks to come, Ethiopian Americans and other Ethiopians in the US, who unlike their compatriots back home enjoy their freedom of speech, will be contacting you in thousands to ask you to disassociate yourself from a brutal dictator, and to stand on the side of democracy and social justice. They will be doing so, not out of impertinence, but in the full knowledge and conviction that, as a man of integrity, you will listen to the voices of the 70 million oppressed Ethiopians and be a part of their struggle against tyranny and injustice.
Meles buys Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer
Ephrem Isaac lobbied hard against H.R. 2003
The Coalition for HR 2003 has learned that Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Tom Lantos was directed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (San Francisco) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Maryland) not to mark-up H.R. 2003 on July 31, 2007. The reasons for the directive are not clear.
Preliminary investigations suggest that neither Chairman Tom Lantos nor Chairman Donald Payne were consulted prior to issuance of the directive.
The Coalition is informed and believes that over the past few days, Meles Zenawi’s lobbyists from DLA Piper, State Department officials and others were engaged in intense lobbying of Pelosi and Hoyer.
The Coalition has further learned that Prof. Ephrem Isaac, who has recently been masquerading as a “shimagle”, has been engaged in intense lobbying efforts against H.R. 2003 in Congress. He was observed visiting various congressional offices today chaperoned and accompanied by Congressman Gary Ackerman of New York. The Coalition is investigating information that Ephrem Isaac is mobilizing powerful Jewish leaders and groups in the United States against H.R. 2003.
The Coalition respectfully notifies Ethiopian Americans in California and Maryland, particularly in the congressional districts of Pelosi and Hoyer, to prepare for vigorous and intense advocacy in the coming days.
The Coalition will provide further statement on these developments shortly. The Coalition will prepare an advocacy action plan in the near future.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — Dressed in a black Adidas track suit and seated amid a comfortable clutter of term papers and political science tomes in his modest office at Addis Ababa University, Prof. Merera Gudina hardly looks like a menace. But, ever since he was elected to parliament two years ago, people have been avoiding him.
There was, for example, the time that local mechanics were too terrified to repair his car when it broke down on the way back from his mother’s funeral east of Addis.
“The mechanic said somebody was giving him a signal and they ran away and we had to transport the car to Addis,” Prof. Gudina said. “What they do is that they don’t touch me as a person, but people in contact with me, after I leave an area, they harass them or detain them or whatever they want,” he said of government security agents.
Optimistic visitors from the United States, which will give $500-million (U.S.) in aid to Ethiopia in 2008, like to point out that the Ethiopian opposition pulled off a feat that would be unthinkable in America or Europe when they unseated more than 150 ruling lawmakers two years ago.
But civil-society groups and supporters of the opposition throughout Ethiopia describe the country’s parliament as little more than a Potemkin village. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling EPRDF party puts on a show of democracy for international donors, while enacting a brutal crackdown on supporters of the opposition outside of the capital.
Leaders such as Prof. Gudina say they’ve been denied offices, staff and access to their constituents and the media.
“At this point, Ethiopia has some of the trappings of democracy, but none of the substance,” said Bronwyn Bruton, a Program Officer for East and Southern Africa with the National Endowment for Democracy, which gets some funding from the U.S. government.
In the 2005 elections, the opposition made historic gains against the EPRDF, which is dominated by Mr. Zenawi’s own Tigray ethnic group.
Hundreds of demonstrators were killed and tens of thousands more jailed, including journalists, the elected mayor of Addis Ababa and the head of the country’s only independent human-rights organization.
The government only last week released 38 of the opposition activists who had been tried and found guilty of inciting violence, treason and trying to topple the government, but not before they signed statements admitting their guilt.
While a number of opposition members have boycotted parliament in protest against the election, scores of others followed the advice of Western countries including the United States and took office.
“I can’t run away from this place and expect some miracle,” said Beyene Petros, who has represented the opposition ever since Mr. Zenawi ousted dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.
Mr. Petros has seen so many colleagues jailed or killed that he seems somewhat bemused at his own survival.
“Not me. I’m sort of an alibi for a lot of bad things they do to others. They will say, ‘Look, Beyene Petros has been this, he’s a fierce opponent, he can say anything.’ Instead of coming to me, attacking me, they have gone and killed my immediate associates, they have abducted some. That’s not enjoyable position to be in.”
The government’s true face, people say, is shown in places like Dembi Dollo, a two-day journey from the capital along more than 480 kilometres of dusty, dilapidated roads. Few foreigners visit, and little news emerges from the area.
Dembi Dollo is the political heart of Oromia, Ethiopia’s most populous region. It’s the birthplace of the Oromo Liberation Front, a group once allied with Mr. Zenawi, but today the largest of half a dozen rebel fronts in the country.
It is here that men who once campaigned for an opposition party called the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement are still paying the price.
“You can say my home is the prison. I spend a lot of my life in the prison,” said one elder who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “Since 1991, every year I was in prison it’s only this time now, this year, I didn’t visit the prison.”
Though support for the rebels runs high here, the town’s elders campaigned for the OFDM, which eschews violence. Unfortunately for them, the local officials of the ruling party do not distinguish between political parties like the OFDM and the OLF, which was branded a terrorist organization by Mr. Zenawi’s administration late last year.
The elders had been jailed and followed. Telephone and power lines to Dembi Dollo were cut off. The OFDM’s office was vandalized and closed. After an elementary school teacher campaigned for the OFDM, riot police went after his 16-year-old daughter. They broke both her wrists, bludgeoned her in the abdomen and held her for a month.
“When she went to the court, the witnesses are the police who beat her – so how can this be?” said one teacher, who also insisted on anonymity.
Ethiopia’s ruling party attributes any heavy-handedness against the opposition to growing pains. “In most cases there are no problems,” said Bereket Simon, a senior adviser to Mr. Zenawi. “We feel there might be problems here and there because this is not a mature democracy like that of the West. It is an emerging democracy and we’re bound to make mistakes.”
Prof. Gudina has kept his full-time job at the university. After seeing 56 members of his party killed amid post-election violence, he says there’s very little he can do in parliament, where, unlike representatives for the ruling party, he has no offices, no budget and no influence. “In a year and a half, I’ve attended five, six sessions, that’s all,” Prof. Gudina said. “There’s nothing there to do. When Meles makes a report, you go so at least people see you are there.”
Two thousand Oromo people, part of the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, marched Thursday to the State Capitol to raise awareness of human rights violations in Ethiopia.
People came from around the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe to march from Dale Street and University Avenue to the Capitol in 94-degree temperatures. Last week and this week have been declared Oromo Week in Minnesota.
“We’re marching for the people who are arrested back home,” said Kamer Hurumo, holding a large U.S. flag and walking with marchers holding Oromo Liberation Front flags. Hundreds carried signs saying, “U.S., stop supporting the Ethiopian regime.”
Oromo people are the majority in Ethiopia but have no real representatives in the Ethiopian government, which is ruled by a minority ethnic group.
Thursday’s march was organized by the International Oromo Youth Association in cooperation with the Oromo Community of Minnesota and the Oromo American Citizens Council.
“Ethiopian regime [Woyanne] solders who are now in Somalia are committing atrocities against the Oromo refugees in Somalia,” said Gawar Mohamed, president of the youth association. “Since Ethiopia [Woyanne] invaded Somalia, more than 30.000 Oromo refugees were deported back to Ethiopia. Many of these are in prison now.”
Aduu Joba, 20, and her brother Olyad, 19, came from London for the march.
“We have so many relatives back home who cannot demonstrate peacefully like we can,” she said.
“Almost every person here today has lost either a father, a mother a sibling or close relatives,” said Rammy Mohamed, a student at the University of Minnesota and member of the International Oromo Youth. Her cousin was killed two months ago; he was an engineering student at the University of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
Oromo people have been experiencing persecution under the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party (EPRDF) led by Meles Zenawi. Many fled to neighboring countries and settled in refugee camps.
“We hope this is a wake-up call for the international community,” Mohamed said.
