January 7, 2004

Government police have beaten up more than 120 peaceful demonstrators and detained scores of others at Meskel Square in Addis Ababa last Sunday. The Metcha Tulema self help association that was protesting against the transfer of the administrative HQ of the Oromiya region from Addis Abeba to Nazreth/Adama/, a hundred kilometers away, initially called the peaceful demonstration.

The permit for the demonstration was denied late on Friday, a deliberate move often employed by the authorities. Hence, the association did not have the time and possibility to inform all that the permit has been denied. A situation that led to the gathering of people at Meskel Square for the proposed demonstration and the intervention of more than a thousand police who beat up the assembled people. The government also blocked attempt by the association to hold a meeting in a public hall.

The laws adopted by the ruling EPRDF recognize the right of the people to hold peaceful demonstrations but in reality this right has been consistently denied. The authorities use one pretext after another to deny peaceful demonstrators the required permit and past experience (with students for one) has also shown that police intervene brutally and with guns to break up demonstrations. The brutal beating that took place at Meskel Square is not an accident but symptomatic of the EPRDF and its violations of human rights. Fundamental human rights are denied though they are ostensibly assured by the EPRDF constitution.