OSG PRESS RELEASE SUMMARY |
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Government Purge of Oromo Intelligentsia
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Garoma Bekele, writer, journalist, General Secretary of the Human Rights League, detained October 1997. |
Tesfaye Deressa, poet, song writer and journalist, detained October 1997. |
Moti Biyya, writer, journalist and political analyst, detained September 1997. |
International PEN, in a press release on the Day of the Imprisoned Writer, 15 November 1998, announced its appeal to the Ethiopian government for the immediate and unconditional release of URJII newspaper journalists Moti Biyya, Tesfaye Deressa and Garoma Bekele, unless they are promptly charged and tried. All the staff of URJII were used to detention and the payment of extortionate fines. Organisations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists have long campaigned against the notorious Ethiopian Press Law, under which the detention of journalists has put Ethiopia in the top ten enemies of the press for each of the last three years. No other country in Africa imprisons more journalists. But these arrests were different. They were part of an orchestrated attack by the government against the flower of the Oromo movement, as promoted by the government journal, Hizbaawi Adera, two years ago (reported in Sagalee Haaraa, No. 21, Jan-Feb 1998). Moti Biyya, 42 year old father of three, had been behind bars for a month before 37 year old Tesfaye Deressa and his immediate boss, Editor in Chief of URJII, Solomon Namarra, were taken on 16 October 1997. Garoma Bekele, 38 year old father of one, was the General Manager of URJII For eight months before his arrest, he was also General Secretary of the Human Rights League. Their arrest was part of a sweep across the cream of Oromo society, including board members of the Human Rights League (a recently formed and legally registered human rights education and reporting group), the Macha-Tulama Association (a 35 year old Oromo self-help organisation), staff of the Oromo Relief Association (a major indigenous relief and development organisation, closed by the government in 1995) and Oromo journalists. Three murders, several disappearances and 31 detentions of prominent Oromo occurred in Addis Ababa in October and November 1997. In March 1998, another 34 of the most skilled Oromo were detained, including medical staff who had worked for a clinic caring for Oromo in Addis Ababa. Sixty five Oromo - nurses, doctors, judges, civil servants, accountants, teachers etc. - were detained and charged with conspiracy, as the government’s grip on the Oromo nationalist movement tightened and nearly all prominent Oromo - the innovators, the leaders, the organisers, the thinkers and the writers - were targeted. They have now spent 10-16 months in prison without their cases being settled. After lengthy periods of poor conditions and solitary confinement in Maikelawi Special Investigation Centre, the journalists can now see visitors, at Karchale prison. Moti Biyya, however, is said to have recently been transferred to Asella, Arsi province. Solomon Namarra was chained hand and foot until recently and relied on other detainees to be fed. Beyene Belissa, a 51 year old amputee and employee of the Ethiopian Telecommunications Agency, spent months on the floor, unable to care for his bodily needs, because his artificial leg was smashed. URJII newspaper closed down after two more of its journalists, Waqshum Bacha and Alemu Tolessa were detained in December. Waqshum has since been released and Alemu’s release is expected. Tamrat Gemeda, a journalist with the other Oromo newspaper, Seife Nebelbal, remains in detention, along with at least ten other journalists. Amnesty International considers many of the detained Oromo to be prisoners of conscience, including the URJII journalists and members of the Human Rights League. Among them are Addisu Beyene, a founder member of the Human Rights League and Director of the Oromo Relief Association, who was trying to fight the government’s closure of ORA in the courts, and Sister Zewditu Deressa, detained in April 1998, mother of four and a nurse in the Black Lion hospital who used to work at the Hiot Ber (Gate of Life) clinic - closed by the government in 1996. She had been trying to reclaim confiscated equipment from the government, through the legal system. Also included in the 65 charged with conspiracy, are Hussein Abdi, former Ministry of Foreign Affairs official; Beyene Abdi, 73 year old member of the Committee of Oromo Elders, teacher, parliamentarian and judge; Tilahun Hirpassa, unwell following chest surgery, torture victim from 1992-3, former ORA official and teacher; Gabissa Lemessa, Save the Children Fund accountant; Haji Sahlu Kebte, member of Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and former civil servant; Zewde Chamada, geography teacher; Gadissa Bultosa, employee of Oromia Agricultural Bureau; Adam Hassen; Adugna Fitee; Mohammed Wayu, employee of Oromia Civil Service Bureau; and Hailu Terfassa Tasso, Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus hostel manager. All are board members of the Human Rights League or belong to the Macha-Tulama Association, or both. Other health professionals include Dr Gizaw Irana and nurse Tsige Kebede, who used to work at the Hiot Ber clinic. Killings and disappearances Despite information, received from several sources within Addis Ababa, that presently there are widespread detentions and disappearances of Oromo throughout the capital, OSG has received little detailed data. Seven disappearances and six killings previously unreported by OSG are included in the current Press Release. Extra-judicial killings by the current government now total 2,418 and OSG has recorded 676 disappearances. Since a security clampdown in Addis Ababa, most of OSG’s information comes from refugees and there is little information on recent abuses. Two Oromo were taken by government forces in December 1998 and have subsequently disappeared. Imiru Gurmeessa, ‘a resident of Addis Ababa (Kebele 13, Higher 8), was kidnapped by members of the government security forces on December 12, 1998 while he was having tea at a recreational club near his residence. His family and friends do not know his whereabouts.’ He had been detained and tortured previously, by the Derg administration. Alemayehu Itafa, ‘a resident of Adama, East Showa, was kidnapped from his private clinic on December 1, 1998, at 4 pm, by three government security agents. His family and friends do not know his whereabouts.’ (Seife Nebelbal newspaper, Addis Ababa, 18 December 1998.) The Eritrean government statement about killings, detention and expulsion of Eritreans and Ethiopians with Eritrean ancestry, is reported in the Press Release, including the deaths of three young men in detention in Bilate camp, in October. Imprisonment, torture and harassment OSG continues to receive testimonies of experiences in detention under the current regime in Ethiopia. Kassim Hasso Finkilla, a farmer in Genale, near to Dodolla town, Bale, has been detained and harassed since 1993. On 11 December 1998, he wrote: On November 2nd 1993, my house was surrounded by EPRDF or TPLF armed forces and broken into and I was beaten hard on my back and leg. [He complains of continued pain since that beating.] I was driven to the nearby town of Dodolla army camp, where human beings were being threatened at gunpoint and sometimes would be killed. He was detained for eight months. I was kept in a small dark room where nobody could differentiate between day and night. Both my hands and feet were tied so that the palm side of my feet remained raised up. They put an iron rod between my arms and feet and suspended between the edge of two tables. I was gagged to avoid my shouting. I was beaten on the palms of my feet. . . . I was released on condition that I would report weekly, putting a signature in their office. Following local skirmishes between government forces and soldiers of the Oromo Liberation Front, he was again detained and tortured at the same camp on 1 June 1996. He was released sixteen months later, again under security surveillance, . . . on condition that I should not attend public gatherings or meetings, not to go out of my home town, Dodolla, etc. When I was released from prison, I learned that one of my sons, Abdulahi Kassim had been killed by the army of EPRDF and the rest of my family displaced. Because of many problems, they were forced to scatter in different directions . . ., also all my property was stolen and taken by government security men. By this time he had contracted TB from the detention centre. He risked going to Addis Ababa for treatment. While he was in the capital he heard that government soldiers had been to his home, looking for him. He therefore fled the country. The story of Efrem Benyam Sado, a 29 year old primary school teacher from Kofale district, Chillalo, Arsi province, records continuing harassment from 1992 to 1996, when he fled. He was initially detained in military barracks at Shashamene from 6 July to 13 October 1992 in the first wave of detentions (of between 20,000 and 45,000 Oromo) following the withdrawal of the OLF from government. He wrote: In detention, I was cruelly treated . . . I have witnessed the killing of fellow detainees. I myself was threatened with death several times. They pointed a gun at my forehead and put the muzzle of a gun into my mouth and vowed to kill me if I failed to respond positively to their interrogation. I was also kept in solitary confinement and not allowed medical assistance for injuries . . . Denial of food is one of the punishments. . . . Finally, after long suffering I was given strong warning to not do any political activity and they made me sign a document . . . they released me on October 13 1992. In 1994, I was elected as executive committee member of the Ethiopian Teachers Association (ETA) in my district. After learning of the allegation that I was an OLF member, the government suspended me from the ETA committee and then sacked me from my teaching job. In 1995, to provide for myself and my family, under supervision of the district education office, I opened an adult education school in the town of Kofale to teach Oromo alphabet and Oromo language. Again they gave me last warning to stop the teaching process which they alleged I was doing for the OLF political objective. I was teaching pure language and alphabet of Oromo, how to write and read and I was forced to stop. In 1996, government security men came to his home. I was not at home and I got the information that they were following me. I hid myself and as a result of that they looted all my belongings. They arrested my father to get me back and up to now my father is languishing in their prison. After that I went into hiding, changing from one place to another. They followed me up still. The Ethiopian government security never stopped searching for me. I narrowly escaped arrest quite a few times. (Letter from victim, 30 November 1998.)
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH WORLD REPORT 1999 The chapter on Ethiopia in Human Rights Watch’s annual report, including detail of the current purge of Oromo intelligentsia, is printed in full in the current OSG Press Release. The following are extracts from the document. Wide-scale human rights violations occurred in the context of the government’s suppression of armed insurgency and political dissent. The military and rural militia associated with parties affiliated to the EPRDF arrested thousands for months without charge or trial on account of their suspected support of armed insurgencies. Opposition activists, editors of the private press, and leaders of labor organizations who continued to challenge the EPRDF’s monopolization of political space were systematically targeted through harassment and repeated detentions. . . . . [Re conflict with Eritrea] . . . Compelling evidence pointed to a deliberate campaign by the Ethiopian authorities to expel Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean origin to Eritrea. By late October, an estimated thirty thousand, most of them Ethiopian citizens who had not taken up Eritrean nationality in the aftermath of Eritrea’s 1991 secession from Ethiopia, were deported after experiencing systematic denial of their human rights. |
The full version of OSG’s Press Release may be obtained without charge from OSG. |
