To: Senators Biden and Lugar, Secretary Rice, and others
I am writing to express my concern about the widespread violations of human rights which the Meles-led Ethiopian government is committing against its citizens, particularly those in the Oromia, Gambela, Ogaden and other regions. I graduated from high school in Addis Ababa and lived in Ethiopia for several years prior to that during the 1960s while my parents were there working. I know the Ethiopian people to be wonderful human beings and my heart goes out to them in their efforts to bring democracy and the rule of law to their beautiful country.
I recently learned of the Ethiopian government’s militaristic “carpet bombing” to “flush out rebels” in the Ogaden, acts which annihilate defenseless civilians while destroying their livestock, granaries, wells and shelter. Human rights advocacy organizations like the Empowerment Initiative are calling for our government to verify that our military trainers have in no way been complicit to these actions of the Ethiopian military and that the weaponry and ordinances being used against defenseless civilians are not being supplied by the United States.
The violence which the Meles-led government commits is not limited to Ethiopian citizens living within the country. Physical assaults and the assignation of Oromo refugees in Kenya have been reported in the media and documented by the Advocacy for the Fundamental Rights of Oromos and Others (AFRO-O), a human rights organization based in Maryland. These victims were living in a guarded camp in Nairobi and are believed to be registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
International human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, are unanimous in their recognition and condemnation of the Ethiopian government’s extra-judicial imprisonment and torture of citizens who are believed to support opposition political parties and their leadership. The AFRO-O recently released the names of 148 Oromos currently being detained in this effort to suppress any opposition to the tyranny of Meles and his government.
Please help bring the fate of these victims to the attention of appropriate agencies and leaders and join with efforts to change the conditions under which Oromos and other Ethiopians suffer at the hands of the Meles-led Ethiopian government. I urge you to put the principles framed in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights into practice and act now to hold the Ethiopian government accountable for these crimes against humanity and, in particular, support HR 2003 (the Ethiopian Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007), a bipartisan bill authored by Representatives Payne and Smith which is now pending in the Senate.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – An international commission charged with setting the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea dissolved itself on Friday, leaving the two states who fought a border war that killed some 70,000 people to work it out alone.
Thousands died in World War One-style trench warfare in the 1998-2000 clash between the Horn of Africa neighbours and, according to the United Nations, the two sides have again amassed thousands of troops and artillery at the frontier.
The Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission, part of Permanent Court of Arbitration, fulfilled its mandate of determining the border in 2002. But a deadline for the two states to demarcate the boundary expired on Friday, with neither complying.
“Until such time as the boundary is finally demarcated, the delimitation decision of 13 April 2002 continues as the only valid legal description of the boundary,” the commission said in a statement on Friday.
Tensions between the countries have ratcheted up in recent weeks with the approach of the deadline to physically mark the 1,000-km (620-mile) frontier.
Asmara and Addis Ababa have been at odds over the border since the boundary commission gave Eritrea the flashpoint town of Badme in 2002.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi dismissed the commission’s deadline and called its demarcation ruling “legal nonsense”, but tried to allay concerns that a new border war could break out.
“We will never, ever go to war with Eritrea, unless there is full scale invasion,” Zenawi said on Thursday.
“I do not think that the Eritrean government would launch a full scale invasion, because it would be suicidal for them.”
Last November, the commission said it was fed up by the lack of progress with the border and gave both nations one year to make moves to mark the frontier or it would fix it on international maps.
CONFLICT FEARS
The United Nations and the United States have urged both countries to show restraint, and analysts were at odds over whether further violence might ensue.
“I don’t think the commission will stop the drift towards some sort of conflict,” said Patrick Smith, editor of the London-based Africa Confidential newsletter.
However, David Mozersky of the International Crisis Group think tank said he did not think the border commission’s end would trigger a move from either side, adding both countries were still bound by the terms of the internationally-brokered peace agreement which ended the war.
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Ethiopia next week for meetings on the conflicts in the region.
Rice is scheduled to meet leaders from the African Great Lakes region — Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda — in Addis Ababa on December 5.
The Absurdity of Asking a Slayer to Investigate His Murderous Regime
Now that the gruesome details of the ethnic cleansing tactics being employed by the current autocracy in Addis Ababa are slowly coming out, it is not unexpected for the Ethiopian prime minister to come out swinging against the veracity of the genocidal stories trickling out of Ogaden with the Ogaden refugees. After all who expects a slayer, at the level of Mr. Meles Zenawi, to own up to the military indiscretions of his minions and militias in Ogaden.
Coming out to claim that the fact that he was a former ‘insurgent’ makes him to avoid carrying out an ethnic cleansing in Ogaden is quite absurd to say the least. Given the documented and widely publicized human rights abuses and genocide reported in Ogaden, is it not that Zenawi is simply trying to deflect attention away from the very public decapitations, mutilations, and mass execution of innocent civilians that his poorly paid soldiers have been carrying out under his orders in Ogaden?
The only thing that is more absurd than Zenawi’s denials of ethnic cleansing and genocide is the otherwise impeccable U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes asking Zenawi to investigate the very murders and crimes against humanity that he has planned and ordered in Ogaden.
No one in their right mind asks a murderer to investigate his murders. The mass displacement, country-wide blockade, public beheadings, extra judicial killings, and the actions of the death squads that Zenawi has unleashed against the Ogaden masses should be investigated without delay by NOT ONE but by a panel of multi-UN agencies and human rights organizations. The Ethiopian regime should neither have no role nor a say in these investigations.
When the multi-UN agency panel convenes and since Zenawi has emphatically denied ‘that there have been no widespread human rights violations in the Ogaden, not only because we believe in the respect for human rights, but because we know how to fight the insurgency’ he should be personally held responsible for all the crimes against humanity that have so taken place in Ogaden.
Zenawi’s crimes are no less immoral than those carried out by the Hutu Interhamwe militias during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. These, Zanawi’s, crimes are no less wicked and gruesome than those carried out by Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.
Why initiate a global search for criminals like Interhamwe militias, Ratko Mladic, and Radovan Karadzic while allowing Zenawi to act like a statesman and even listen to his diatribes? If crimes against humanity are one and the same Zenawi and his murderous regime should be brought to justice instead of absurdly asking him to investigate his murderous regime.
Ethiopian anti-poverty activists Daniel Bekele and Netsanet Demissie will remain in prison for at least another 24 days, as Judges in Ethiopia’s High Court today delayed their verdict for the third time in two months, postponing it until 24 December.
“We are deeply dismayed by the court’s decision to delay the verdict yet again. These numerous postponements are unacceptable and infringe the rights of these innocent civil society leaders to a fair and swift trial. But we will not be deterred – we and others around the world will continue to insist on their immediate and unconditional release,” said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of CIVICUS and Co-Chair of GCAP.
After 25 months in prison, Daniel and Netsanet, both coordinators of the Global Call to Action against Poverty in Ethiopia, are the last two accused in the high profile Ethiopian treason trial that originally charged 131 politicians, journalists, organisations and civil society leaders in the wake of the country’s May 2005 parliamentary elections. They were due to hear their verdict this morning in Addis Ababa, on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government, specifically, “outrage against the constitution and constitutional order,” which carries a possible sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty.
In delaying the verdict, the court announced that one of the judges is ill and must be replaced. The postponement is allegedly to allow the replacement judge to familiarise himself with the case.
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For more information or interviews, please contact:
Julie Middleton, CIVICUS at +27 82 403 6040, [email protected]
Ciara O’Sullivan, GCAP at +34 679 594 809, [email protected]
For more information on CIVICUS: www.civicus.org
For more information on GCAP: www.whiteband.org
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Will Travel to Ethiopia and Belgium First Week of December
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Secretary will attend a meeting with leaders from the African Great Lakes states (Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda) to discuss issues of regional peace and security on December 5. Secretary Rice also will engage in consultations on current developments in Somalia and on implementation of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with cabinet ministers from east African countries as well as senior representatives of the African Union and United Nations. She also will hold bilateral meetings with the Government of Ethiopia.
Secretary Rice will arrive in Brussels on December 6 to attend foreign ministerial sessions on December 7 among NATO’s 26 Allies. This includes a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, which is likely to discuss Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty regime, and the upcoming NATO Summit in Bucharest. She will participate in a meeting of the 26 Allies with NATO’s seven Mediterranean Dialogue partners (Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Israel, Jordan, and Tunisia) and a session of the NATO-Russia Council. There will also be a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission. She will also take part in a transatlantic dinner bringing together EU and NATO foreign ministers.
KEBRIDEHAR, Ethiopia — In the desert stretches of eastern Ethiopia, locals accuse soldiers fighting an insurgency of burning villages to the ground, committing gang rape and killing people “like goats.”
The allegations have drawn the attention of international human rights campaigners to this remote corner of a key U.S. ally.
Ethiopia’s prime minister dictator says his troops are fighting against a separatist movement in the region known as the Ogaden, and he denies that soldiers have committed such atrocities.
“This is a counterinsurgency. I am not going to tell you there hasn’t been anyone beaten up. I am absolutely confident that there has not been any widespread violation of human rights,” Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told journalists Wednesday.
But a thin, pensive 30-year-old man, who spoke on condition of anonymity this week because of fear of reprisals, told The Associated Press that the army had burned two villages — Lebiga and Korelitsa — to the ground November 23, killing one man.
The army, the man said, was killing his neighbors “like goats.”
Officials in the area, which covers nearly 80,000 square miles, said they had heard similar reports. They also asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The 30-year-old man described gang rapes and public hangings, and said villagers had been told not to speak to international observers. Officials in the area also said villagers had been told not to speak to outsiders, and that also was mentioned in a September report by a U.N. fact-finding mission.
A 26-year-old man, who also asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, accused the government of withholding food to punish fighters and supporters of the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
For more than a decade, the ethnic Somali rebels have been fighting for greater autonomy in the region, which is being heavily explored for oil and gas. In April, they attacked a Chinese-run oil exploration field in the region, killing 74 people. The Ethiopian military began counterinsurgency operations in May.
The ONLF accuses the government of human rights abuses; the government accuses the rebels of being terrorists funded by its archenemy, Eritrea.
The U.S. looks to Ethiopia Woyanne to help fight the war on terror in East Africa, where al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for several attacks, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 225 people.
But working with Ethiopia Woyanne against terror means an alliance with a country accused of violating human and political rights. Last year, the Ethiopian Woyanne government acknowledged its security forces killed 193 civilians protesting a disputed election but insisted excessive force was not used.
Earlier this year, New York-based Human Rights Watch accused the Ethiopian Woyanne army of blocking aid, burning homes and displacing thousands of civilians in the Ogaden region.
Ethiopia Woyanne expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Dutch branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres from Ogaden. But in recent weeks, the government has allowed 19 non-governmental organizations to return.
In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, the prime minister dictator told journalists Wednesday that human rights abuses and a humanitarian crisis, “didn’t exist. Doesn’t exist. Will not exist” in the Ogaden.
Meles, a former rebel, said that he would not repeat the measures taken against him by previous regimes and his government will not commit “widespread human rights violations.”
“We know firsthand how to fight an insurgency and how to avoid stupid mistakes,” Meles said.
John Holmes, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief, visited the region Tuesday and on Wednesday described the humanitarian situation there as “potentially serious.”
He said that he had talked with Meles and other Ethiopian officials about opening up transport and trade, expanding food distribution and addressing human rights concerns. He said Meles took the human rights “issue seriously.”
Holmes said he heard many secondhand reports of human rights abuses and said that “they come from numerous and sufficiently varied sources to be taken seriously.” He did not give details.
The U.N. fact-finding mission said in September that the situation in the Ogaden had deteriorated rapidly and called for an independent investigation.
The mission also said that recent fighting in the region had led to a worsening humanitarian situation and called for a substantial increase in emergency food aid.
