January 31, 2004

The brutal beating of Yenenesh Abera, a young Ethiopian woman working in Amman, Jordan, has highlighted the ongoing mistreatment, to which Ethiopians, most of whom are young females employed as domestics by Jordanian families, are often subjected to.

Yenenesh was severely beaten and her employer took her to the police station instead of the hospital. Yenenesh is under police guard in an emergency ward of one of the Amman government hospital while her employer claims she has had "a nervous breakdown". Yenenesh claims that the family that had employed her beat her senseless and the man dumped her at the police station. Yenenesh joins dozens of Ethiopian young women working in Jordan and other mid-Eastern countries that have been deprived of their basic human rights and beaten and mutilated by their employers. One such woman who had been sentenced to death in Bahrain because she struck back by killing her tormentor has now been condemned for life imprisonment. Dozens others have returned to Ethiopia raped, their faces disfigured by acid, their bodies mutilated and without their wages that had been confiscated by their employers.

SOCEPP has repeatedly called upon the ruling EPRDF to end the trafficking in young women and the ongoing sale of Ethiopian females to modern slavery in the Middle East, an operation in which the officials of the regime have been implicated. The trafficking continues and the victims of violations have not been able to get any assistance from the EPRDF embassies or authorities.

Please write to the Jordanian authorities on the case of the Yenenesh Abera calling on them to investigate her condition and bring to trial those who beat and damaged her. The authorities in Jordan should also be reminded of their obligation to assure that Ethiopians working. in their country are not deprived of their human rights.

Please write to:

H.E. The Prime Minister of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

p.o. Box 80352

Amman

Jordan.

Fax no 962-64-64 2520

or send your messages c/o

The Jordanian embassy in Washington DC

e mail: HKJEmbassy @aol. com

The Jordanian representative at the UN

e mail: Jordan@un.int

SOCEPP