May 10/2003

WORLD HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

WORSENING HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION IN ETHIOPIA

 Dozens of 'disapepared' people. Hundreds shot to death in Awassa and Tepi. Inhumane conditions of detention all over the country. Another journalist (this timeMeles Zhine) thrown into jail. Forced labor camps thriving in Shoa Robit and other places. Independence of the juduciary further negated.Due process of law trampled upon. Torture becoming routine. Political opponents railroaded to long prison terms.Violations of the rights of children and women becoming widespread. Repression against priests and religoous officials continuing. And more. The human rights situation in Ethiopia has worseend in the last years so much so that the EPRDF and its usual apologists have been unbale to hide the truth from the world.

It had been a common practice to compare the EPRDF with the defunct regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in an effort to find something "positive" in the former one.However, twelve years after the EPRDF took over power, it has to be judged by its own merits and actions. The EPRDF has been named one of the worst predators of the free press, it has more than 15 thousand political prisoners, dozens of secret prisons, and a federal special police and flying squad force that has murdered hundreds of peaceful demonstrators. The difference from the past could be that there is now much talk of human rights.democracy and the rule of law while the tramplings and the violations are the reality. Donor countries have given the EPRDF too much lattitude and even collbaorated with its violations directly or otherwise. Britain trains the repressive police force and intelligence agents and exports what one newspaper had called "instruments of torture" to the EPRDF. The security guards who cold bloodedly murdered human rights activist Assefa Maru were driving Land Rovers given to them by Britain. Germany also assists the EPRDF financially and otherwise and development agencies and NGOs from this country have aided and abetted the EPRDF's campaign to project a false image of itself. America's criticism of the human rights record of the EPRDF it calls an ally has been weak and restrained. Lacking pressure from these and other donor countries, the EPRDF has persisted in its trampling of the rule of law and violation of human rights all over the country.

On this day, SOCEPP pays hommage to the victims of the human rights violations, to those like Tesfaye Tadesse who have been murdered, to the thousands invcarcerated illegally in the jails and prisons, to the tortured and maimed, to the political prisoners like Tsegaye G.Medhin who have been "disappeared" and to all those who are struggling against the human rights violations of the EPRDF.

SOCEPP