By Barry Malone
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) — Ethiopia’s ruling party accused the opposition on Friday of killing one of its candidates ahead of this month’s national election, in an allegation denied by the main opposition alliance.
Both sides have stepped up rhetoric ahead of the May 23 election — the first vote in the Horn of Africa country since 2005 when a disputed poll ended with street riots and the jailing of politicians.
Ethiopian government spokesman Shimeles Kemal said one of the ruling party’s candidates had been stabbed to death, in a first murder accusation against Medrek, the country’s main opposition coalition.
“Itana Idossa was stabbed to death by Medrek members a week ago after he left a meeting,” he said. “Police have apprehended suspects — Medrek activists.”
Medrek dismissed the accusation. “The people who killed him have no connection with us,” Merera Gudina, leader of one of the coalition parties, the Oromo Peoples’ Congress, told Reuters.
The ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front is expected to win the election comfortably. Medrek is seen as the biggest political force challenging the 19-year-old government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
At the time of the 2005 vote, the government said the violence was part of a plan to force an unconstitutional change. Security forces killed 193 people on the streets and top opposition leaders were imprisoned. Seven policemen were killed.
The opposition says their candidates and voters are harassed and intimidated. The government, for its part, says the opposition plans to incite street violence and discredit the poll because it has no chance of winning.
The political climate in Ethiopia is watched closely by investors eyeing oil and gas exploration and large-scale farming projects there.
Last month, a senior Medrek official, Bulcha Demeksa, said an opposition activist was bludgeoned to death with a gun butt by ruling party members.
The ruling party responded by saying the man died of cancer and vowed to prosecute Bulcha. On Thursday, the man’s father told Voice of America radio station that his son was beaten to death by government militia men.
Both killings happened in the Oromia region, home to Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group, the Oromo, who number 27 million out of 80 million people.
In March, a Medrek candidate in the north of the huge country, Aregawi Gebre-Yohannes, was attacked and stabbed to death. The opposition says his killing was a political murder, but the government says he died in a bar fight. A man has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for his murder. (Reporting by Barry Malone, editing by George Obulutsa and Maria Golovnina)
2 thoughts on “Three politicians murdered in two months”
The incumbent regime will lose the election worse than the election of 2005.
There are plenty of reasons to mention for the demise of the tribalist woyane militarist Junta.
The tribalist governing force has started to collapse after the imprisonment of the opposition woman leader Birtukan mediksa.
No constitutional correction has been taken since 2005.
No prisoner has been released .
Ethiopia remains to be landlocked under the primitive system of government of Woyane Junta.
Forced membership of the governing clique become obligatory.
so the ruling Junta will lose the election bitterly.
“The ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front is expected to win the election comfortably”
This is absolutely wrong. Do not advertise please for the dying thugs of Woyane.
Woyane falls apart rapidlly within the next three months. If it uses military force to save itself from falling apart, its demise will be speeded and will be buried forever!
I expect that there will be a clash during the election. The ruling gang creates disturbances to ridicule the winners of the opposition. So it will wreak havoc in order to hijack the election result.
Woyane- the incumbent ruling group will lose
Opposition members are being killed everywhere in Ethiopia at faster rate and numbers. In all cases the killers are well trained in Meles Zenawi, lie, kill Universities well long before pseudo election campaign.
In SOUTHERN Ethiopia, the regimes agents would pressure groups they would want to commit mass murder against to attend their ralies, then, especially trained agents would hurl hand granade at the groups, families they plan to exterminate. Then, they arrest the local innocent people accusing them for the crimes.
Here, the victims are terrorized, forcing them to attend the gatherings they don’t want, then being exterminated technically, then, same people in the region who has nothing to do with the crime are hunted for extermination, acused of with what they did not see or do.
The above systems of killing two birds with one stone has all pre-planned and excuted by the regime that is doing anything and everything to shut down slimest hopes of democratic values never to be trusted by Ethiopians ever again. Here on in such fashion all power remains in the pockets of a few outsiders to do whatever the order.
By the way, the number of school children arranged for such mass killings are among the victims in Oromia few days ago, when such trained agents hurled granade at the OPDO gatherings in small SOUTHER TOWN. The dead are more than 10 including grade children with blown up limbs now in coma in regions hospitals the number is well over 50 victims, while the Demalash group report as only two.
All victims are from the poor Oromo families who were rounded up from schools by cohorsions
and intimidations to attend such fake rallies, before exterminations.
Even the arrested alleged accused are Oromos, which is genocide concocted to empty the sea, before killing all the fish.
Dangerous, genocide is being carried against free people and all leads point at the Meles Zenawi’ grand plans of eradicating those he despises.