March 27, 2002

STOP THE REPRESSION AGAINST STUDENTS

 Three students have been gravely wounded and several hurt when police used force to break up demonstrations by students in Ambo town. The Ambo protests came a week after similar demonstrations by students in Nekemte. The Students are protesting the much- condemned so- called new educational policy and the policy of re-entrenchment. Teachers had in the past raised a vigorous protest against the education policy calling it a discriminatory policy aimed at spreading ignorance rather than education.

 Two years ago, similar protests by students in Nekemte and Ambo were brutally put down with some students killed. Lat year, student protests in Addis Abeba were also violently out down with dozens of students killed, hundreds herded into concentration camps and dozens forced to flee into exile to Djibouti and Kenya. The EPRDF has repeatedly manifested an incapacity in peacefully handling peaceful student protests and has resorted to repression and violence instead. At present, many students from Ambo and Nekemte are jailed and there are reports that many have been subjected to beatings. The so- called New Educational Policy that has been arbitrarily adopted by the Ministry of Education following the express order of the Prime Minster has been condemned as destructive and pernicious by educators, parents and students too.

SOCEPP demands the immediate release of the detained students of Ambo and Nekemte whose demands should be given due and proper consideration.

 STOP THE REPRESSION AGAINST STUDENTS!!

SOCEPP