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Human Rights Developments

The Ethiopian government, led by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF), continued to implement an ambitious program of political and economic reforms
with significant donor support. Ethnically-based federal regions assumed executive, legislative,
and judicial powers provided for under the 1994 constitution. The EPRDF maintained strict
control over this process through parties affiliated to it which dominated regional
governments. A handful of opposition parties, notably the All Amhara People Organization
(AAPO) and the Council of Alternative Forces for Peace and Democracy in Ethiopia
(CAFPD), preserved a precarious presence in the capital Addis Ababa, following years of
relentless government curtailment of their activities, particularly in the countryside. Tensions
persisted between the government and ethnic fronts which withdrew from earlier alliances
with the EPRDF over their insistence that constitutionally guaranteed self-determination rights
be immediately exercised in their regions. Sporadic clashes occurred in Oromia and Somali
regional states between government troops and fighters from the Oromo Liberation Front
(OLF) and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) respectively. Tension remained
high along the borders with Somalia where the government responded to incursions by the
fundamentalist Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (Islamic Unity) by striking at its strongholds across the
border and by backing armed factions in Somalia opposed to Al-Ittihad.

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. Overcrowding, poor hygiene, and inadequate food compounded the
plight of detainees. However, the government granted the International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) increasing access to places of detention in 1997 and 1998, and cooperated
with its efforts to assist inmates. The humanitarian agency reported visiting by the end of 1997
some 10,980 people held in connection with the 1991 ouster of the former regime or for
security reasons, and registering 5,660 newdetainees.

The close political and strategic alliance between Ethiopia and Eritrea collapsed in early May
when a minor border dispute flared up into brief violent confrontations. Hundreds were killed
on both sides, mainly civilians. The fighting displaced thousands of villagers on both sides of
the border. Fighting ceased in mid-June following intense mediation efforts, but a massive
military buildup by both states continued as a bitter propaganda war and the pursuit of
escalation by extremists on both sides reduced the chances of a negotiated settlement.

Both sides traded accusations of ill-treatment of their citizens whom the conflict had found on
the wrong side of the border. Eritrea denied deliberately expelling Ethiopians and said its
policy would remain one of welcoming and protecting Ethiopians willing to stay, but a
September 26 statement by the Eritrean foreign ministry put the number of Ethiopians who
had “voluntarily returned” to their country at 6,600.

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 campaign swiftly degenerated from selective
targeting to indiscriminate deportations. A government “policy” statement on June 11 said the
“550,000 Eritreans residing in Ethiopia” could continue to live and work peacefully there.
However, as a “precautionary measure,” the statement ordered members of Eritrean political
and community organizations to leave the country on account of their suspected support of
the Eritrean war effort, and gave a mandatory leave of absence of one month to Eritreans
occupying “sensitive” jobs. While authorities initially suggested an option of voluntary
departure for the targeted categories, they later began rounding up people on the sole basis of
their being Eritrean or of Eritrean extraction, and apparently without making an effort to
distinguish between the two categories. Not all who fell in the dragnet were deported. Those
of military age were sent to detention camps where an unknown number remained held by
late October without charge or trial. Others were trucked, after brief detentions, to remote
border posts and ordered to cross into Eritrea on foot. Those detained and expelled included
many elderly retired citizens of Ethiopia, mainly businessmen who had lived most of their lives
and raised their children in other provinces of Ethiopia while Eritrea fought for its
independence. The government ordered the freezing of their assets and revoked their business
licenses, stripping them and their families of their livelihood. Many families were separated
during the deportations from underage children who were not allowed to leave with them, or,
in a few cases, from children who were deported unaccompanied.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in an interview with Radio Ethiopia on July 9 said the deportees
were “foreigners,” adding that “. . . any foreign national, whether Eritrean or Japanese etc. . . .
lives in Ethiopia because of the goodwill of the Ethiopian government. If we say ‘Go, because
we don’t like the color of your eyes,’ they have to leave.” The issue was, however, more
complex than the prime minister’s assertion suggested. For the forty years preceding Eritrean
independence in 1991 both countries were part of the same internationally recognized state.
Strong cultural, religious, and linguistic affinities existed between the two people, and
intermarriages were common. The Ethiopian constitution, in its Article 6, grants citizenship by
birth to any person with one or both Ethiopian parents. Many Eritreans had retained their
Ethiopian nationality when Eritrea became independent, and Ethiopia did not take any legal
measure to rescind their citizenship then. As a consequence, the Ethiopian government had no
legal basis to consider many of the deportees as aliens. The roundup, detention, and the
ill-treatment of which the deportees, whether nationals or aliens, were the victims violated
rights of nondiscrimination and freedom of movement that the Ethiopian constitution
guaranteed. The deportations and accompanying violations of a range of rights of the
deportees also violated Ethiopia’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights and other human rights treaties it has ratified and indeed incorporated into the
law of the land.

The harassment and imprisonment on political grounds of opposition leaders continued.
Professor Asrat Woldeyes, the president of the opposition All Amhara People’s Organization
(AAPO) who was imprisoned in 1994, was hospitalized in January for treatment for diabetes
and other health complications; he was nearly seventy, and also suffered heart problems. The
government adamantly refused to bend to domestic and international appeals, including from
Human Rights Watch, for his release. By late October his condition had improved, but he
remained under guard in his hospital room. He was serving consecutive prison sentences of
two and three years in Addis Ababa central prison after convictions for “inciting armed
rebellion.” He credibly complained that he did not receive fair trials, but his appeals were
rejected. He and another twenty-two AAPO leaders faced another trial which began in 1995
on new charges of “armed rebellion.” The court refused to examine claims by several
codefendants that their confessions implicating the group were obtained under torture. Aberra
Yemane Ab, an activist jailed since December 1993 when he returned to Addis Ababa from
his U.S. exile to participate in a conference on peace and reconciliation, was allowed in late
September only a few minutes’ encounter with a son he hadn’t seen since he was
incarcerated. The government denied the son further visits on the grounds that he, a holder of
a U.S. passport, was a foreigner.

Security forces on September 17 surrounded the headquarters of the elected Ethiopian
Teachers’ Association in Addis Ababa, and ordered ETA’s officials to hand the premises
over to a government-sponsored “teachers’ association.” ETA’s executive committee
members present at the time, Shimeles Zewdi, Abate Angore, and Aweke Mulugeta, were
detained without a court order and were only released on October 15. The latter two were
briefly detained following a similar raid on ETA’s compound on August 13. The premises had
survived as a symbol of ETA’s autonomy, and were a nagging reminder of the association’s
persistent rejection of ethnic federalism policies, particularly when applied in the field of
education. Previous attacks on the association since its conflict with the government started in
1992 included the closure of its regional and local offices, the freezing of its accounts, and the
repeated detention of its officials. In May 1996, the association’s president Dr. Taye
Woldesemayat was arrested and charged, together with five others, with “armed conspiracy.”
Exactly a year later, Assefa Maru, his replacement as head of ETA and a human rights
advocate,was gunned down by the police who accused him after the fact of participating in an
armed insurgency.

Dr. Taye Woldesemayat was subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in Addis
Ababa central prison where he was transferred after his arrest and remained. The presiding
judge denied bail, and when the teachers’ leader repeatedly complained that he was being
harassed by his guards, the judge failed to act decisively to restrain them. The guards in
February placed Woldesemayat in a death-row cell known as the “darkness cell.” When he
again complained about the conditions of his detention in a July 28 hearing, the presiding
judge, holding him in contempt, ordered him put in chains for twenty-four hours a day until a
hearing scheduled for September 29. The constant stress from these conditions and daily
verbal abuse by his guards reportedly exacted a heavy psychological and physical toll on
Woldesemayat.

Authorities in March arrested thirty-four individuals and charged them with armed conspiracy
with the Oromo Liberation Front. They joined in prison an earlier group of thirty-one
prominent members of the Oromo community who were arrested in October and November
1997 and faced similar charges, punishable by from five years’ imprisonment to death. The
government claimed that some of the sixty-five Oromos were OLF fighters and accused the
others of membership in OLF “support groups.” The “groups” in question included the newly
founded Human Rights League; the Oromo Relief Association dissolved by the government in
1995; the newspaper Urji , which ceased publishing after the arrest of key journalists; an
Oromo cultural revival association; and a medical clinic catering for the Oromo community in
Addis Ababa. Typically, the trial started with a round of adjournments which the government
attributed to lack of judges.

Personnel shortages and meager resources indeed led to severe delays in the courts and
slowed down the restructuring of the judiciary in line with the federal system. With a backlog
of thousands of cases by late 1998 in Addis Ababa alone, and few judges to clear it, one
year adjournments became routine in the court system, with suspects and defendants having
to spend long months in pretrial detention. The legal rights of prisoners to speedy and fair
trials thus remained seriously compromised. Prisoners facing trial on political and security
charges credibly claimed that the government was using the near paralysis of the justice
system to neutralize them and their parties, associations, and newspapers for years at a time
without appearing to be using an iron fist. Long term detention before even coming to trial
faced some prisoners held solely for the nonviolent exercise of their freedom of expression
and association. Detention for indefinite periods also applied to those accused of serious
crimes and violence with political dimensions. A case in point of the latter was the
internationally supported trial of officials of the previous Derg regime for crimes against
humanity, an initiative once lauded as a major strike against impunity but which was seriously
tarnished by its unconscionably slow pace. On September 10, the Office of the Special
Prosecutor announced the release of thirty-one defendants who had been in pretrial detention
for seven years for lack of evidence.

Repression against the independent press escalated to unprecedented levels in the last quarter
of 1997 and in 1998. There were seventeen detained journalists in Ethiopia in late October.
The brief but often repeated detentions of journalists observed in most of 1997 gave way to
the crippling practice of wholesale arrests of key members of the editorial and managerial staff
of vocal publications, a tactic which amounted to the virtual banning of the targeted
publications. Five journalists from the pro-Oromo weekly Urji remained in detention since
their arrest in the last quarter of 1997, including the editor-in-chief and his deputy and the
reporter Garoma Bekele, who at the time was also secretary of the newly founded Human
Rights League. Together with other Oromo leaders rounded up during that period, they faced
charges of armed conspiracy with the OLF: prosecutors accused Urji of being an organ of the
OLF. The crackdown came shortly after an early October article in which the newspaper
challenged the official version of the killing of three Oromo activists in Addis Ababa which the
government claimed had occurred during a shootout. The newspaper cited eyewitnesses who
claimed the three were killed without warning. Urji ceased publishing following the onslaught.
The private weekly Tobia suffered a similar fate when four editors were arrested on January
16, 1998 following the paper’s publication of a leaked internal U.N. memorandum
recommending security precautions to its staff. Hours after their arrest, the newspaper’s
offices were burned to the ground, its equipment, archive, and database totally destroyed.
The newspaper ceased publishing but reappeared after the release of its journalists in July and
August. Despite repeated appeals by media watchdogs for an investigation of the fire, its
origin remained undetermined by late October. On July 13, Shimelis Kamal, Berhane
Negash, and Teferi Mokennen of Nishan , an independent Amharic weekly newspaper which
at the time had published just eight issues, were arrested for an article criticizing the
government’s deportation of Eritreans. Freed a day later, they were immediately rearrested
for issuing a press release criticizing their arrest and detained without a court order for a
month. In the interim, police ignored two orders issued by a judge to either charge or release
them immediately. The crackdown succeeded in eroding the commitment of the sole financial
backer of Nishan: the paper ceased publishing when he withdrew his support. For
denouncing in a press release in February the government’s muzzling of the independent
press, Kiffle Mulate, editor of Ethio-Time and national coordinator of the Ethiopian Free
Press Journalists’ Association, was himself detained for six months. Repeated arrests had
forced the leaders of that association and some twenty other journalists into exile.