SUMMARY of PRESS RELEASE
March-May 1998, No. 22

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[Index of Previous OSG Press Releases]
[Read Various Campaigns for Oromo Victims...]

A remaining independent newspaper, Seife Nebelbal, which publishes accounts of disappearances and killings by government forces carried a report on 20 March of the disappearance of two teachers from Ambo, W. Showa.

Ashebir Oncho and Belay Hunduma were abducted on 11 February by security forces in Addis Ababa. They were among 60 residents of Ambo who were detained after taking part in a protest against the killing of Mr Derara Kefani, during his funeral ceremony in September 1994. Like many others in state employment who joined the protest, they were sacked.

Both had gone to Addis Ababa for court appearances. Their whereabouts are unknown since their abduction. The families of both men are reported to be without support.

Committee to Protect Journalists Report

Attacks on the Press in 1997 : Ethiopia

The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued its annual report recently. The organisation named the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, the seventh worst enemy of the press in the world. The following is printed directly from CPJ’s website http://www.cpj.org

‘There were at least 16 journalists in jail at the end of the year. All of them were newly imprisoned during the course of 1997, sustaining Ethiopia's status as one of the world's worst offenders of press freedom. Most of the mass media are owned, funded, and controlled by the state.

In January, the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced its first state-owned Internet service provider with a capacity of 5,000 clients whose rates favoured large organisations, effectively shutting out most individual users and smaller nongovernmental organizations.

As the cost of printing continues to rise, Zenawi's government has attempted to bring a poorly funded but boisterous independent press in line by the use of arbitrary restrictions on the print media - detention, imprisonment, and the imposition of prohibitive fines and bail on journalists and editors is commonplace. Journalists and editors work under threat of arrest and prosecution by either a poorly trained police force or an inexperienced, partisan judiciary working in a backlogged court system.

The authorities regularly use the Press Law of 1992 to detain journalists for lengthy periods and sometimes try them for allegedly publishing false information or incitement against the government.’

Ethiopia : Journalists in Prison – Press Freedom under Attack

Amnesty International’s latest special report on Ethiopia (AFR 25/10/98) updates the long running pattern of attacks by the Ethiopian government on the country’s independent private press.

During the last four months of 1997 and the first quarter of 1998 over thirty journalists have been arrested with offences under the 1992 Press Law which Amnesty says has an ill-defined scope and arbitrary application.

The report says that the government’s harassment of the private press happens at every level, from proprietors right down to street vendors.

It concludes: The government’s recently intensified attacks against the private press have put it at the forefront of repression of the press in Africa.

Despite urgent requests from human rights organisations, from officials within UNHCR, and despite every level of the organisation being informed of the plight of Oromo refugees in Djibouti, the UN High Commission for Refugees has not officially acknowledged the difficulties of these refugees nor has it done anything to alleviate their desperate situation.

Oromo refugees in Djibouti face extreme hardship and persecution in Djibouti, anyway. This was eloquently and expertly documented in Fossati, Namarra and Niggli’s report on their fact finding tour there for Berliner Missionswerk (epd-Dokumentation. Evangelischer Pressedienst 45e/96. 5 May 1997 – available from OSG). Few Oromo refugees are located in UNHCR camps, where recent explosions and shootings have demonstrated lack of security. Most live a precarious existence in Djiboutiville or on nearby farms, where they are even less secure. They are prone to be rounded up by local police, robbed, raped and, sometimes, deported.

In October last year, after the governments of Ethiopia and Djibouti signed an agreement to return each other’s wanted people, nine Ethiopian government agents were seen in Djiboutiville. Friendly Djibouti government employees warned Oromos they were even less safe in Djibouti. Oromos who were suspected of having the potential or the inclination to organise an effective voice expressing Oromo ideas, whether or not they support the Oromo Liberation Front, have since been hounded from lodging to lodging by Ethiopian agents and Djibouti government forces.

The refoulement of eight Oromo refugees from Djibouti in January was widely reported. At the time there were unconfirmed reports of many more, including a single report of 100 being refouled by train. UNHCR tried hard to intervene but was denied access to the victims.

Oromo refugees in Djibouti, after suffering detention, torture, rape and the death of loved ones in Ethiopia are being hunted by the co-operating forces of the government from which they have fled and the government which hosts them.

As one UN official privately admitted to OSG, the only viable escape from their dire straits is for the at-risk Oromo refugees in Djibouti to be resettled quickly. This will necessitate a more sympathetic ear being given by the protection officer in Djibouti and a large increase in the numbers accepted for resettlement. Lives will be lost if UNHCR does not take immediate action.

Letters requesting help in obtaining resettlement through UNHCR are regularly sent to the Oromia Support Group. Many more are received by UNHCR officials.

Scores of Oromos are under threat of forced repatriation from Germany. Along with refugees of other nationalities, some have already been deported and there are rumours of many more.

An Oromo refugee in Germany claims that since May 1997, refugees are denied any kind of visa by the German authorities and are told to obtain a passport from the Ethiopian embassy. Those who refuse to approach the Ethiopian embassy are imprisoned and returned by plane to Addis Ababa.

OSG has received two reports of Dr Demanalash Arada Bifa, a veterinarian living in Augusburg, being forcibly repatriated on 13 March, after four days in prison. Asfaw Wadajo, a physicist living in Nurenberg, was rejected asylum and was forced to leave Germany in February. His present whereabouts are unknown.

There is scant information about two men named Dereje and Berhanu (the latter from Munich), and at least three others who are said to have been forcibly repatriated to Ethiopia.

OSG has received letters from other refugees in Germany who have been refused asylum and are in fear of repatriation.

In Germany, asylum seekers are denied work permits and their activities are limited to small administrative districts, sometimes a small town or one small part of a city. In the federal state of Bayern, where the authorities are said to be particularly harsh on asylum seekers, a food allowance is not given. Inadequate (in quality more than quantity) food parcels are provided twice weekly, instead. Asylum seekers have great difficulty affording legal advice and representation.

One correspondent writes, Thus, any asylum seeker who reached Germany since 15 May 1997, has to live where he/she is assigned, can’t have work permission, can’t move from place to place and must eat what he/she is provided but not what he/she would choose to eat, and hardly can have access to a lawyer, since he/she would not have anything to pay with.

On 17 March, Adotei Akwei, Amnesty International’s Africa spokesman in Washington, spoke in a briefing about President Clinton’s Africa tour. He called for more support from the US to be given to human rights in Africa. He included specific references to Ethiopia, Congo-Kinshasa and Nigeria. In Ethiopia, the Human Rights League, members of which have been detained over the last couple of months, continue to face harassment and continue to fight obstacles, basically for trying to educate people about human rights violations committed by the Ethiopian security forces, he said. He urged President Clinton to show support for African civil society during and after his tour.

The Oromia Support Group is a non-political organisation which campaigns for the international recognition of the extent of human rights abuses and lack of freedom in Ethiopia.

OSG has now reported 2,385 extra-judicial killings and 646 disappearances of civilians suspected of supporting groups opposing the government. Most of these have been Oromo people. Scores of thousands of civilians have been imprisoned. Torture and rape of prisoners is commonplace, especially in secret detention centres, whose existence is denied by the government.