March 5, 20001
Prof. Drs Rudolphus Fraciscus Marie Lubber
UNHCR
1211 Geneva 2
Switzerland
Dear Commissioner: I am writing this letter of appeal on behalf of thousands of Ethiopians who fled their country fearing persecution by the current Ethiopian Government. Most of the refugees have been residing in refugee camps in the neighboring Sudan. The refugees in the Sudan are political exiles who fled the country during the dictatorial regime of the DERGUE and now the equally repressive EPRDF government in Ethiopia. They were forced to flee their beloved country Ethiopia. They also left their family and friends, their businesses, government posts, and their livelihood. These refugees fear persecution on account of their ethnic background and their political affiliations. More often than not opposition groups in Ethiopia even those who are conducting their activities peacefully are constantly, harassed, imprisoned even killed by the government security forces.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch for Africa, the US Department
Human Rights report and other human rights groups have c! ondemned and documented the EPRDF regime’s flagrant violation of Human Rights in general and of opposition political groups in particular. The 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees provided wide-ranging protections to refugees. According to the Convention, a refugee is “a person who is outside her country because she reasonably believes that her civil or political status puts her at risk
of serious harm in that country, and that her own government cannot or
will not protect her.” A refugee is entitled to refuge and shall not be forced to return to his or her persecutors. This principle is a well-established international norm that was specifically enacted by the Convention. The application of the principle of non-refoulement is mandated by
Article 33 of the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status
of Refugees. The article provides that “[n]o Contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, or membership of a particular social group or political
opinion.” Refoulement is similarly prohibited in section 243(h) of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA): “The Attorney General shall
not deport or return any alien . . . to a country . . . [where] such
alien’s life or freedom would be threatened . . . . ” Article 14(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also states “[e]veryone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” Contrary to such international norms and conventions, however, the UNHCR has informed a large number of these refugees in the Sudan that they no longer qualify as refugees thereby lifting all of the protections accorded to refugees and placing them in danger of forced deportation back to the country and a repressive regime from which they had fled.
The Sudanese newspaper, The Monitor, also referred to this story in its January 22 Straight Talk Column. The paper stated “[T]hanks to the refugees who revealed the involvement of Ethiopian government officials in screening Ethiopian refugees, many outsiders now have mixed feelings about the UNHCR which is required to be neutral in dealing with refugees. Although the UNHCR boss in the Sudan assured us that the Ethiopian government agent who posed as an interpreter within the screening
committee was removed, a lot of questions about the credibility of UNHCR officials remain unanswered. The incident in which an Ethiopian government agent was found to have penetrated the UNHCR system must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The UNHCR officials in Khartoum should know that our African refugees can return home when the conditions which forced them out are over.” The refugees have also raised legitimate issues raising improprieties in the screening process, such as the reluctance of the UNHCR personnel to grant refugee status to non-Oromo members of the group. While the EPRP members and others have been denied their refugee status, the members and supporters of the opposition Oromo Liberation Front have been deemed in danger and accorded protection. Several members of the EPRP who had in the past been deported from the Sudan and forcibly returned to Ethiopia have disappeared after the EPRDF government in Ethiopia seized them. The lives of those who are deported as a result of UNHCR’s arbitrary decision is threatened. One returnee, Leul Kassa, has already been detained by the EPRDF. Although the UNHCR denied that he was part of the returnees, Mr. Kassa’s fellow refugees or organizations that have been closely following the developments in the Sudan have not accepted its denial.
Particularly, given the EPRDF regime’s avowed hatred and history of viscous persecution of EPRP members and supporters, if the members of the EPRP in the Sudan to return back to Ethiopia, no doubt they would face imprisonment and execution. In the past few years, since the assumption of power of the EPRDF regime, a leading member of EPRP, Gayim Gberezgabier, was shot to death in broad daylight in Addis Ababa by the assassins of the regime.
Tesfay Tadesse, the well known human rights activist and a member of the EPRP, was mutilated by the squads of the Government security forces; hundreds of others have disappeared or been killed. Leading members of an opposition group, EPRP, such as Tsegay Gbere Medhin and Yishaq Debre Tsion and hundreds of others still remains in torture chambers in remote and desolate dungeon prison cells located in Tigray.
The whereabouts of hundreds of others still remain unknown. And today, according to the information received from Solidarity Committee for Ethiopian Political Prisoners (SOCEPP), an independent Ethiopian Human Rights Group based in Europe and North America, most of EPRP members and supporters have been stripped of their refugee status in the SUDAN. The logical end, which is deportation of the refugees back to Ethiopia, will surly endanger their lives in the hands of the hated EPRDF regime in Ethiopia and its murders cadres throughout the regions where
the UNHCR intends to resettle the refugees in general and members and
supporters of the EPRP in particular. In view of the aforementioned condition and facts, I appeal and strongly urge the UNHCR to stop this blatant violation of International norms and conventions, which violates the rights of refugees and their protection in the host countries. I strongly urge and appeal to your conscience, your firm belive in the Universal Declaration of Human rights not to send the refuges to their imprisonment and possible execution.
Gashu Habte, Ph.D.
Spokesperson
Ethiopian Democratic Action League
.