April 24/2003

 THE TRUTH ON THE DISAPPEARED

 A number of international human rights organizations have, for one reason or another, failed to mention the increasing number of "disappeared" political prisoners in Ethiopia while a recent satement on the subject by one local human rights body has surprisingly reduced the number of the "disappeared" to a mere thrity nine (39).

 The EPRDF has in the past twelve years "disappeared" many dozen of political prisoners all over the country. In the so called Amhara, Oromia,Southern and Somali regioins or Kilils, for example, dozens of peasants,nomads,teachers,clerks,students and dissidents of all sorts have been "disappeared"in the past years. In the report of the local human rights group on the disappeared, the following are, for undeclared reasons, omitted:

These are but a sample of the many other disappeared who are unaccounted for. The EPRDF has made it a practice to deny that the prisoners were in its hands in the first place and this has fanned the suspicion that many of the disappeared had in fact been executed secretly. It is common knowledge that the EPRDF has mnay "ghost" or secret prisons all over the country and that many of its detention centers are off limits to local or foreign observers. Prisoners who die of torture and mistreatment have also been buried in secret and all records of their detention destroyed. The other ploy used by the EPRDF is to kidnap people at night or in secret and to "disappear" them consequently. Such acts are carried out not by the regular police but by the security units and death squads controlled directly by the dominant group within the EPRDF, that is to say the Tigrai People' Liberation Front of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

THE EPRDF should be made to account for all the disappeared all over Ethiopia.

SOCEPP