January 7, 2002

CHRISTIAN ETHIOPIANS PERSECUTED IN SAUDI ARABIA

Scores of Ethiopians jailed by the Saudi Arabian police on the grounds that they had been practicing/"preaching"/ their Christian faith are still in prison despite the Saudi officials claim that they would be released. Several of the jailed Ethiopians had been brutally tortured for days and days reliable reports indicate.

It is to be noted that thousands of Ethiopians work in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which does not respect human rights and has been known to mistreat and other foreigners horribly. Ethiopian women and young girls employed as maids in Saudi Arabia have been routinely beaten up, deported without payment, aped, jailed, disfigured and mutilated, and even murdered without their killers ever being brought before a court of law. The EPRDF, whose officials are engaged in the lucrative traffic of dispatching Ethiopian girls to the Middle East, maintain good relations with the Saudi government and have refused to protest on the mishandling of Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia. That many other African workers in Saudi Arabia share the same mistreatment has not made the suffering any more easier for the Ethiopians.

The Saudi government is intolerant of Christians and impedes them from exercising their religious rights while it enjoys the right to send its preachers and mosque builders to Ethiopia and all over Africa. A Saudi national who changes his religion is condemned to die by law and the Saudi officials imnpose their religious laws on non- believers too. It is ironic to note that Ethiopians, whose country was used as a sanctuary by the followers of Prophet Mohamed, are now being persecuted in Saudi Arabia just because they adhered to their Christian faith.

 SOCEPP calls for the immediate and unconditional release of the jailed Ethiopian Christians and a legal process to be launched against those who ordered and did the torture of so many Ethiopians.

 Please write to the Saudi government or the Saudi embassy/consulate near you to voice your protest against the Saudi treatment of Ethiopian Christians working there.

SOCEPP