March 11,2001

The following appeal is written to UNHCR from the Petition Committee for Ethiopian refugees in the Sudan.

 The Honorable Prof. Ruud Lubbers

High Commissioner UNHCR

Geneva.

Dear High Commissioner,

We are writing this on behalf of the pre-1991 Ethiopian refugees living in the Sudan. We have been expressing our protest against the decision made to strip us of our refugee status as well as against the unfair ways and methods employed in conducting the interview programs that were carried out to implement the decision. Through out last year as well as from the beginning of this year to date, we have been appealing, repeatedly, to the local UNHCR office with the hope of getting fair treatment and our grievances redressed.

We are now fully convinced that our appeals were not given the proper consideration they deserved. We are therefore left with no choice other than bringing the matter directly to your Excellency. We hereby appeal to you to look into the matter with due urgency. For clarity's sake, we have enumerated the important points at issue:

1. Concerning the decision:

A) The circumstance in which refugees might lose their refugee-status is clearly stated in the clause, other wise known as the cessation clause, in the statutes of the UNHCR, in the Geneva Convention of 1951 and the 1967 protocol. The legal instruments mentioned above have made it quite clear that a refugee will only lose his/her refugee status if, and only if, the political reasons he/she evoked to become a recognized refugee are found to be non-existent. In the case of Ethiopia, one type of repressive regime, the Derg, was replaced by another type, an ethnic-based and regionalist one. Unfortunately, for Ethiopians, the repressive nature of the present one is glossed over by powerful forces in the West. The clear and real danger, and threat to life and personal well being which was the main cause for Ethiopians to seek asylum in other countries before 1991 is as starkly real and vividly under the current Tigrai People's Liberation Front (TPLF) controlled regime. It might be argued that the threat to life and security no longer exists only for one small sector of Ethiopians. They are the members and followers of the TPLF mainly from amongst the Tigrigna speaking section of the inhabitants of the former Tigrai province of Ethiopia, which is now known as kilil-one. As regards the rest of Ethiopians, gross violation of human rights and denial of fundamental freedoms continue to be carried out routinely.

 B)It is true that the Mengistu regime, which publicly declared a policy of wiping out its opponents and implemented it by launching '' red-terror campaigns'' openly against the target groups, was monstrously criminal, and was condemned by most as such. The difference in repression carried out by the current regime and that of Mengistu's is one of magnitude and slight shift in targets as well as in their methodology, and not of substance.

C)The false assumption that there is a democratic system of governance in Ethiopia under the TPLF is to blame. Multi-ethnic political parties with much greater popular base than the ruling TPLF, like the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, are still banned by the rulers. All pro-unity forces are suppressed. Civic groups like the Ethiopian Teachers Association, the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions, the Ethiopian Free Journalists Association (EFJA) are all suppressed. Even certain ethnic organizations like the Oromo liberation Front, which were part of the provisional government together with the TPLF, are now banned. The small political groups, most of them formed by the TPLF along ethnic lines, are not operating freely and independently either. There is no rule of Law and independent judiciary in Ethiopia. The elections that were held to date were not fair and free. It is wrong to assume that things have significantly changed for the better and for all Ethiopians after the demise of the Mengistu regime. We strongly urge you to have a thorough review of the premises on which the decision to strip Ethiopian refugees of their status is based.

 D) Further more, the so-called cessation clauses as contained in the 1951 UN Convention, and the 1967 Protocol, and other pertinent international instruments, should not have been applied to the pre-1991 Ethiopian refugees collectively. The cases of Ethiopians, who were forced to flee their country over a fifteen years period from different parts of the country and to escape from varied forms of persecution, all be it slightly, too do not warrant such a collective punishment, we believe. Both the words and the spirit of the relevant provisions neither foresee nor warrant such a collective denial of protection.

 2. Concerning the Interviews:

A) In a country where the rulers extra-judicially kill, detain and torture, disappear .. individuals by mere association, simply for belonging to a political organization or group that the rulers hate, the burden of proof on the refugees should have been to show that there exists such association with or membership in such organizations, and not something else. To demand from individual Ethiopian political exiles, who had been outside their country for more than ten years, proof about what the TPLF has done to them as individuals, is incorrect, improper and grossly unfair.

 b)We believe, inter alia, that the methods under which interview program was conducted were defective, and hence the results of the interview constituted a miscarriage of justice. First , as if there were a lack of well-informed, trained and well-experienced people in the world, the interview program was run by little informed, young and inexperienced personnel. These less-informed youngsters who made up the screening teams did neither know the complex political realities of Ethiopia nor did they show interest to know more about the category of people whom the victimized. As far as we could observe from their attitudes, behaviors, methods of questioning the interviewees, the sort of questions they were putting to the refugees etc we are reluctantly led to believe that they lacked the knowledge, professionalism, the ethics and skills that the job demanded. Their impatience, misbehavior, the sort of questions they were asking the refugees, and their haste to make recommendations and decision support the observation we have made.

Secondly, the local UNHCR office hired known TPLF /EPRDF agents and pro-EPLF/PFDJ Eritrean nationals to deal with the refugees and interpret for them. Refugees were denied to have interpreters on whom they have confidence. Obviously the TPLF cadres and Pro-EPLF Eritreans could not be trusted to present the cases of those who accuse and expose the TPLF and EPLF or the regimes the two groups lead. How on earth could a known TPLF/EPRDF police officer, named Fasil, a person who was in charge of TPLF's mass organization when it was a guerilla force (and then known as TSegaye),and another TPLF agent, known as Dawit who, having accomplished his duty, has now returned to Tigray, be allowed to interpret for refugees who are against the TPLF? These two and others were employed under dubious circumstances and they were defended by UNHCR officials as if they were champions of refugees, when the real facts about them were made known. Could allowing the agents of the victimizer continue their job of further victimizing those who fled from them be ever fair? The interview program was conducted by totally ignoring our protest against the continued use of such individuals. The people whom we elected to serve us as interpreters were summarily dismissed on the fourth day after election and those to whose continued service we objected to were maintained. This has made us doubt the neutrality of the UNHCR officials in Khartoum as well.

 Making erroneous decision on the basis of unfounded reasons and false assumptions was bad. The implementation of this decision by means of a wrongly organized and unfairly conducted interview program has made the outcome even worse. The end-result from the whole exercise is what we have long been afraid of: stripping the refugees, who otherwise would have deserved continued UNHCR protection, of their refugee status. We strongly believe that this action of the UNHCR office in Khartoum constitutes a great miscarriage of justice.

Those of us who have been stripped off our refugee status will have no legal ground to stay in the Sudan and stay in relative safety. The results of the recent screening have also shown another disgraceful act of the local UNHCR office. All the members of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party have been stripped off their refugee statues. This is done while accepting members of other opposition groups who might not have been as targeted as those of the EPRP. What else could that be if not a conspiracy with the ruling TPLF in Ethiopia, against a much victimized opposition force?

The pro-unity and multi-ethnic EPRP, has been declared by the TPLF as an enemy organization and remains banned from operating legally in Ethiopia. It is certainly the most popular and the strongest opposition political organization still forced to operate clandestinely inside Ethiopia. Some of its members were even kidnapped from the Sudan in 1992 by the present rulers in Addis Ababa in collusion with the current regime in the Sudan. Then the UNHCR had to intervene in order to secure the release of some of those who were kidnapped. Stripped off their UNHCR protection, the EPRP members are once more placed in great danger from similar kidnapping moves by the TPLF agents in collusion with the Sudanese regime.

We, in the Petition Committee for Ethiopian refugees, request Your Honor to intervene directly and save those deserving Ethiopian refugees from the danger to their life and security, now aggravated by the misdeeds of the UNHCR office in the Sudan. We humbly request Your Excellency to:

 a. expressly prohibit any move to forcibly repatriate us;

 b. launch investigation into the circumstances under which the decision to strip us of our refugee status was made; as well as to

c. review the screening process recently undertaken in the Sudan as a whole with particular emphasis to ascertaining the involvement of the agents of the Ethiopian regime, the objectivity and capability of those assigned to do the screening, as well as the biased and interrogatory nature of the interview. Finally, the Petition Committee for Ethiopian Refugees in the Sudan would like to make it quite clear to Your Excellency that it supports the voluntary repatriation of refugees. We are only requesting that the UNHCR continue its protection for those deserving refugees who have genuine fear for their lives and wellbeing should they be forced to return to the TPLF ruled Ethiopia.

 Respectfully

 The Petition Committee for Ethiopian Refugees in the Sudan