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Summary PRESS RELEASE |
Human Rights Abuses in Ethiopia
OSG has now reported 2,592 extra-judicial killings and 838 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, as the following case reports show. A full version of the press release may be obtained from OSG at the above address. |
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A
close friend of Geremew
Ketema reported his being killed to OSG on 17 June. Geremew, a 32 year old teacher at Tulu Amara
school, W. Showa, was repeatedly accused of being an OLF sympathiser by
his school director and had reluctantly accepted the decision by the
educational bureau to transfer him elsewhere. On the eve of the day he
was intending to move, in October 1999, he was shot dead by TPLF
soldiers near his house. He had previously been detained and tortured
for two weeks in Gedo, in 1996. On
10 July, an OSG investigator based in the USA reported the killing of Aman Kawo
on 20 June, in Shashemane, S. Showa. He was about 30 years old, born in
Jigessa, and educated in Shashemane. He joined the OLF in 1989 and was
detained from 1992 to 1996, in Dhidhesa and Hurso military camps and
finally Zeway prison. He was detained three times in 1997-8. He
attempted to join Beza College, Shashemane, in 1999, but left because of
harassment. Similarly, he left Arba Minch Water Technology Institute
after six weeks. He went back to Jigessa, but was ordered back to
Shashemane by security men, with one week’s notice. He
had signed documents distancing himself from the OLF and was living
peacefully. He had complained, along with others, that the private
Amharic Beza College was detrimental to development of the Oromo
language locally. On
the afternoon of his murder, he was invited by a friend to the local
government Oromo party office in a military camp. He was searched and
left his ID card with the sentry. After a few minutes he was ordered off
the premises. Discharged explosives are reported to have been planted at
the camp and, at 5 pm, a joint arrest warrant was issued by police and
the head of security, Tadesse Aweke Haddis (former Dergue police
corporal). At
8 pm, Aman Kawo was beaten to death by four TPLF soldiers of the 2nd
Southern Emergency Force. Seven bullets were then fired into his body at
close range. His parents were denied permission to take the body away
for two days. The authorities claimed he had been killed by OLF
soldiers. T.R.,
a 38 year old from E. Hararge, was interviewed by OSG in the USA on 24
August 2000. He related how TPLF soldiers came to his home at 11 pm one
night in August 1993. He was shot six times and dragged, bleeding, to
the military camp at the old cotton and textile factory in Dire Dawa,
known as ‘Cotton’ to many detainees who have reported being tortured
there. The attackers took 7,000 Birr. He received bullets to his head
and abdomen, three of which are still present. Scars were evident to the
interviewer. He was given rudimentary first aid and
interrogated about contacts with the OLF. From ‘Cotton’ he was taken
to nearby killing fields and shown
the dead bodies of six neighbours
whom he recognised. A gun was placed in his mouth and he was told he
would be killed if he did not co-operate. In order to avoid his being located by
relatives, he was moved to detention centres in Gara Mul’ataa, Deder,
Chalanko and Midhaga before being taken to Hurso detention camp, where
he reports at least another 7,000 being held. His arms were tied tightly
behind his back for three days but he was not tortured apart from being
beaten, thereafter. He was released from Hurso in 1998, after five years
detention. ‘Dabarssa Dina’, a 48 year old businessman from Robe, Bale Zone, was interviewed
in the USA by OSG on 24 August. He was taken from his home at 10 pm in
February 1995 by six TPLF soldiers, to Sinje military camp. He reports
other detainees being brought there from Wallega, Showa and Hararge
Zones, as well as from within Bale. After three months in Sinje, he was
detained in ‘Parti’, dark underground cells in front of the Ras
Hotel in Goba, Bale. He was held 24 hours per day in a single room with
250 others for six months. He was then taken to Malka Wakana, the site of the hydro-electric station in Bale, and held there for twelve months before media reports forced his captors to transfer him and nine other detainees to Washa Sebsebbe military camp in the Bale mountains for two months, to avoid his detection by the International Committee of the Red Cross and his relatives. He was then returned to Malka Wakana. As reported by other detainees there, he was threatened with being thrown down a deep airshaft at the power station. He was asked if he had any last words for his relatives. He was then beaten and lowered down the shaft with a rope around his chest. He reported 300 detainees, including 60
women, being held there. He corroborated the previously reported death
of Shamsi Shabo, who was raped
repeatedly until she died. He also
remembered a 90 year old man, Mohammed
(father’s named not known), dying
after being interrogated every night and accused of keeping arms for the
OLF. His body was left in the cell for three days before being removed. ‘Dabarssa’ told how 25 of his
acquaintances in the detention centre were tortured. Water containers
were suspended, on metal wire via a hook on a wall, from the end of the
victims’ penis, resulting in impotence. One of the victims, Shambel
Jimma, from Showa, died
after gangrene set in. Twenty detainees broke out of Malka Wakana. Only
two arrived in Kenya. Others were shot or drowned at a river crossing. ‘Caaltu’,
a 26 year old from E. Hararge, was also interviewed by OSG in the USA in
August 2000. She was detained for two months in Chiro military camp,
from August 1992. She was then taken to Hurso detention camp and held
for three years. She was tortured repeatedly for the first 28 days of
her detention. She was taken to killing fields outside the
camp and forced to witness the shooting dead of two civilians, accused
of supporting the OLF. She was made to kneel with her arms tied behind
her back and accused of harbouring OLF fighters. When she refused to
name or locate OLF supporters, she was subject to mock execution. A
pistol held by her ear was fired. ‘Caaltu’ estimated that 50% of the 450 female detainees were raped. All who were taken for torture were raped.
She personally knew of 10 rape victims in her immediate circle at Hurso.
Two of the victims died. The victims were raped by several soldiers
at a time, repeatedly over long periods. A 25 year old Amhara [name withheld by OSG]
spoke of the persecution of the All Amhara Peoples Organisation in his
asylum statement, written on his arrival in the UK in March 1999. He
reported the death of his father, an AAPO activist, in 1996. ‘My father was
detained for 4½ months.
Two weeks before he died, we were told he was ill, but not allowed to
visit him. He was transferred to hospital two days before he died. We
were not told what he was subject to in detention, so we do not know the
exact cause of death. My father was a healthy 42 year old when he was
first detained.’ The informant became active on behalf of the
AAPO when a first year student in Addis Ababa University in 1995. In
1997, he was taken from his campus dormitory by plain clothed security
men, along with two other students, to the Third Police Station in
Addis. He was accused of organising and recruiting students to the AAPO
and held for four days. He was banned from the university and moved
to a large town in Amhara Region. In August 1997, he was detained for
1½ days in the local police station, before ‘the people who detained
me in Addis Ababa the first time came to . . . [name of town] and
transferred me to another location which I don’t know. . . I was
blindfolded and kept for two days without speaking to or seeing anyone.’
He was then put in with other members of the AAPO ‘who had been
arrested all over the country and transferred there’. The detainees
were offered release if they signed a declaration that they would
withdraw from the AAPO. They refused this offer until their food was
restricted and they were repeatedly beaten. ‘When the suffering became
unbearable and after I had been stabbed, I was forced to sign.’ Shambel
Alemayu, an AAPO member and
one of the 21 co-defendants of Professor Asrat Woldeyes who were given
sentences of 20 years hard labour at the end of March 1999, died in detention in
Maikelawi Special Investigation Centre in May or June 2000, according to
reliable sources within the AAPO. Vice-president of the Macha-Tulama
Association (MTA), Dr Moggaa
Firissa, was taken from his
home during the week preceding 20 August 2000. His house was searched
and material, including cassettes of Oromo music, was taken. He was held
in Maikelawi Special Investigation Centre, initially incommunicado.
Previously, Dr Moggaa was detained and his clinic ransacked, in 1996. Under
cover of their normal monthly meeting, the MTA, an Oromo cultural and
self-help organisation, held a rally on 20 August in protest at his
arrest. Twenty thousand rallied in the stadium. One of the organisers,
hydrogeologist Abera Aguma,
was detained on the eve of the rally. Another 14 MTA officials were
detained and, four days after the rally, other officials were told that
the MTA would be banned. Dr
Moggaa and Abera were released on 14 September but eight other MTA
members, who were arrested with them, remained in detention. No evidence
was given against Dr Moggaa when he appeared for the third time in
court, and police requests for his continued detention were refused. Four board members and several other
members have been detained without their trial being completed, for over
two years. MTA officials and members have been targeted for detention by
three successive regimes in Ethiopia, since the organisation was formed
in 1964. Seife Nebelbal newspaper,
Addis Ababa, Aug/Sept., 2000.
Unfair trials, harsh sentences, death in
detention and threats of more Clandestine sources in Ethiopia reported in
July that only two prosecution witnesses were called to give evidence
against 285 OLF members who have been held in Zeway, S. Showa, since at
least 1995. The witnesses, Teshome Asgedom and Shamsaddin Legessa, are
soldiers who were in charge of Hurso and Dhidhesa military camps where
captured OLF fighters and suspected OLF sympathisers were detained from
mid-1992. At the hearing in the Fifth Federal Higher
Court in Addis Ababa in May 2000, Legessa, the S. Omo prison officer
from Dhidhesa, admitted he did not know where the prisoners were from
and had merely accepted them as members of the OLF, as was reported to
him on slips of paper sent with the prisoners. He said that as deputy in
chief of Dhidhesa ‘Training Centre’ he could not remember each case
as there were over 12,000 detainees. The other witness, Teshome Asgedom,
from Hurso Camp, gave similarly vague testimony against the other
defendants. Neither the defendants nor their lawyers were allowed to
answer the charges. Of the 30 who had been sentenced by June
2000, Ahmed Mustafa Ali, from Harar, received 17 years and 18 others
received 10 – 15 years. The prisoners were not offered the usual three
months per year reduction. ‘This is practised on all Oromo prisoners’,
the report said. There are 229 other Oromo prisoners at Zeway
who were informed that they were to be released in November 1999.
However, they remain in detention and are due to appear again in court. One has died in detention. Three who are charged with collaborating with armed
uprising, Dachassa Abata, Mekonnen Tola and Taye Abdissa, are reported
to have been threatened with death unless they co-operate. Kenya Y.G.D. wrote on 19 July of his own detention
and torture and the killing in June 1999 of a colleague, Tesfaye Mekonnen, in central Oromia (see Press Release). Y.G.D. arrived in Kenya
in late 1999 and was awarded refugee status, but refused to go to Kakuma
camp. On 15 October 1999, when going for post-torture counselling at the
Jesuit Refugee Service in Nairobi, he was approached by Sisayk Tulosa,
whom he knew as an informant from his time in detention in Adama
military camp. He refused to give his address and there were threatening
verbal exchanges between them when he met Sisayk and two colleagues
again later that day on the Ngong road, near the UNHCR protection
office. Four days later (19 October), he was pushed
into a stream of heavy traffic by two of the men he had met and one
other. He wrote, ‘I had to stand at the nearest bus stop to keep the
company of people for my security, hoping for help should it go beyond
just pushing me to the street. But they too stood for two hours on the
same bus stop. After two hours, I boarded a bus hoping they had given up
and gone . . . [but] they alighted at the same stage as myself. I ran
into the compound and told the watchman not to let any man of Ethiopian
origin come in. On 20 October, the watchman told me four men
came at about 9 pm and enquired for me. The cautious watchman denied
knowledge of me though they tried to outwit him. But on 27 October, four
men came to the gate at 10 pm and roughed him so that he would let them
have access to me. They even threatened to shoot him should he persist
in being “stubborn”. After a few noise, neighbours came to his
rescue.’ His landlord told him to leave after this
incident because he did not want trouble with the police, should there
be a shooting. T.W.A. wrote in August 2000 that following a
festival on 2 July in Nairobi, commemorating Oromo assassination victims
and ‘attracting the attention of the Kenyan government’ to these,
one of the program co-ordinators, Endale Mekonnen, was severely beaten
by Ethiopian government agents. Two weeks later, ‘similar attempts
were made on me’ he wrote. He escaped unharmed. Five Oromo, Mohammed Kedir Duressa, Mohammed
Surur, Mohammed Aman Abdurahim, and
Romala Haji Kadir and her two year old son, Gammachu Mohammed Haji Aman,
were arrested by Kenyan police and detained in Kilima prison around 15
August, according to correspondence from Nairobi. They were rehearsing
Oromo music in a hall in the Eastleigh district and were detained on
suspicion of being supporters of the OLF. They were held incommunicado and are reported
to have been mistreated. The mother and child were reported to have been
released by 6 September. The same correspondent reported large numbers
of Oromo refugees arriving from Qoriole, Somalia, in August and
September. Kakuma
Refugee Camp Correspondents continue to report fear and insecurity due to Ethiopian government agents and the Hagere Fikir group in Kakuma. Instances of beating, detention and one disappearance, in 1999, have been reported and are being investigated by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office. Further details will be published by OSG after these investigations are complete. Meanwhile, UNHCR has no alternative to instructing mandate refugees to go to Kakuma as it has proved impossible to follow up the overwhelming number of cases and organise resettlement among the mobile refugee population in Nairobi. Resettlement is becoming increasingly difficult to arrange, unless refugees are in Kakuma.
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