THANK YOU TO ALL THOSE WHO MADE Dr. BERHANU'S VISIT SUCCESSFUL; TOGETHER WE DID A FANTASTIC JOB. BRAVO KINIJIT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY.
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Saturday, April 26, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Ethiopia: Repression Sets Stage for Non-Competitive Elections
"It is too late to salvage these elections, which will simply be a rubber stamp on the EPRDF’s near-monopoly on power at the local level. Still, officials must at least allow the voters to decide how and whether to cast their ballots without intimidation. "
Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch
Opposition Candidates, Voters Silenced Ahead of Local Polls
(New York, April 11, 2008) – The Ethiopian government’s repression of registered opposition parties and ordinary voters has largely prevented political competition ahead of local elections that begin on April 13, Human Rights Watch said today. These widespread acts of violence, arbitrary detention and intimidation mirror long-term patterns of abuse designed to suppress political dissent in Ethiopia.
" It is too late to salvage these elections, which will simply be a rubber stamp on the EPRDF’s near-monopoly on power at the local level. Still, officials must at least allow the voters to decide how and whether to cast their ballots without intimidation. "
“It is too late to salvage these elections, which will simply be a rubber stamp on the EPRDF’s near-monopoly on power at the local level,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Still, officials must at least allow the voters to decide how and whether to cast their ballots without intimidation.”
Human Rights Watch carried out two weeks of field research during the run-up to the polls and documented systemic patterns of repression and abuse that have rendered the elections meaningless in many areas. That research focused primarily on Oromia, Ethiopia’s most populous region and one long troubled by heavy-handed government repression.
The nationwide elections for the kebele (village or neighborhood councils), and wereda (districts made up of several kebeles administrations), are crucially important. It is local officials who are responsible for much of the day-to-day repression that characterizes governance in Ethiopia. Many local officials in Oromia have made a routine practice of justifying their abuses by accusing law-abiding government critics of belonging to the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which is waging a low-level insurrection against the government.
Candidates allied with the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) will run unopposed in the vast majority of constituencies across Ethiopia. On April 10, one of Ethiopia’s two major opposition coalitions, the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), pulled out of the process altogether. UEDF officials complained that intimidation and procedural irregularities limited registration to only 6,000 of the 20,000 candidates they attempted to put forward for various seats. By contrast, state-controlled media reports that the EPRDF will field more than 4 million candidates across the country.
Violence, Arbitrary Detention, and Intimidation
Local ruling party officials have systematically targeted opposition candidates for violence, intimidation, and other human rights abuses since the registration period began three months ago. Particularly in areas with established opposition support, local officials have arbitrarily detained opposition candidates, searched their property without warrant, and in some cases physically assaulted them.
Credible reports collected by Human Rights Watch indicate a pattern of cooperation among officials across all three tiers of local government – zone, wereda, and kebele administrations – in carrying out these abuses. Victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch across different locations in Oromia recounted a consistent narrative. Some were arbitrarily detained and then interrogated or threatened by wereda administration officials in the presence of zonal officials. Others were arbitrarily detained by wereda police and then transferred to the custody to zonal security officials or federal soldiers.
One 31-year-old school teacher in western Oromia was detained by police and then interrogated by wereda and zonal security officials when he sought to register as an opposition candidate. “I was afraid,” he told Human Rights Watch. “They accused me of being on OLF member and said I would be shot... They put a gun in my mouth, and then made me swear that I wouldn’t go back to the opposition.” He was released nine days later, after the deadline for candidate registration had passed. Human Rights Watch interviewed other OPC candidates who had also been detained after trying to register in other constituencies.
Prospective voters who might support the opposition have been similarly targeted by the government. Secondary school students in Oromia’s Cheliya wereda, many of whom are of voting age, reported to Human Rights Watch that they have been compelled to provide a letter from representatives of their gott/garee – unofficial groupings of households into cells that are used to monitor political speech and intimidate perceived government critics – attesting that they did not belong to any opposition party. Local officials said that unless they produced those letters, they would not be allowed to register to vote. One civil servant in Gedo town was warned by a superior that he would lose his job if he supported the opposition.
“The same local level officials who are directly responsible for much of the day-to-day political repression that occurs in Ethiopia have their jobs at stake in these elections,” Gagnon said. “As such, their efforts to intimidate ordinary people into returning them to office are especially intense.”
Local authorities have also prevented the registration of opposition candidates in many constituencies where the opposition’s success in 2005 parliamentary polls appeared to give them a chance at winning. In Fincha in western Oromia, for example, the opposition Oromo People’s Congress (OPC) made three attempts to register a candidate for an open parliamentary seat. The seat had been vacated by an OPC candidate who won 81 percent of the vote in 2005 but was later forced into exile after local authorities accused him of being an OLF supporter. The OPC tried to replace him on the ballot with three different candidates but each was prevented from registering. All three candidates were physically threatened by members of the wereda administration and police and one was detained for more than a week when he tried to register.
The opposition Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) has encountered similar problems in western Oromia, with 10 of its 14 candidates resigning in response to pressure from local officials. In February, police in Dembi Dollo arrested 16 OFDM members and accused them of belonging to the OLF. Although a court ordered them all released two weeks later when police could provide no evidence to support their allegations, they were subsequently threatened with physical harm by local officials.
The home and crops of one OFDM member in the same area were burned. He reported this to the police with the aid of OFDM officials but alleged to Human Rights Watch that the police then failed to investigate the incident.
Such repression has been widespread in Oromia. The OPC gave Human Rights Watch the names of more than 300 party members it claims have been detained since November 2007. Investigations carried out by the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), Ethiopia’s preeminent human rights monitoring organization, corroborate claims that many opposition supporters in Oromia have been arrested or illegally detained for periods ranging from days to months, often on the basis of alleged links to the OLF.
Procedural and Other Bars to Opposition Participation
In many cases, acts of intimidation have gone hand-in-hand with unjustifiable bureaucratic and procedural bars on free opposition participation in the polls. Some representatives of the NEB responsible for the registration of candidates at the constituency level have worked with local officials to block opposition registration. In some cases NEB agents have cancelled the registration of opposition candidates either without explanation or based on age and residency criteria despite clear evidence to the contrary. In other instances, NEB representatives provided the names of opposition candidates to local officials and to the police. Police in some of those constituencies then cordoned off access to NEB offices and physically prevented suspected opposition candidates from entering.
Across western Oromia, the country’s largest state, local officials have refused to allow candidates of the two main opposition parties there, the OPC and OFDM, to register more than a token share of candidates. In some constituencies, authorities have closed down OPC and OFDM offices and threatened their candidates with arrest if they persisted in competing.
In some cases, local authorities offered bribes to opposition candidates to withdraw. One OFDM candidate interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that local ruling party leaders offered to pay his college tuition and guaranteed him a job in the local administration if he withdrew from the election.
“The run-up to these elections illustrates how meaningless the process of voting can be in an environment of intimidation and fear,” Gagnon said. “The Ethiopian government must publicly commit itself to ending the systemic human rights abuses that have become part of the foundation of its hold on power.”
Background
The patterns of repression and procedural manipulation that surround the upcoming polls are motivated in part by the increased importance that control of wereda and kebele administration has taken on since 2001. Financed in part by the World Bank and other donors, the Ethiopian government has decentralized the provision of basic services such as health and education. This has effectively empowered wereda administrators, who are appointed by the elected councils, with greater discretion in the allocation of budget expenditures.
The kebele system in particular is also a central part of the ruling party’s elaborate system of surveillance, intimidation, and coercion of ordinary people who are perceived as being unsympathetic to the government. The kebele were originally created by the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam for precisely this purpose and have been put to the same use by the current government since Mengistu’s ouster in 1991. Because of the kebele system’s importance in this regard, the EPRDF is particularly loathe to contemplate losing control over them.
A dominant theme in the EPRDF’s political discourse on Oromia is the need to combat the activities of the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which has been fighting a low-level insurrection against the government for years with Eritrean backing. Across much of Oromia, local officials have routinely and for many years used unproven allegations of links to the OLF as a pretext to subject law-abiding government critics to arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killing, and other forms of human rights abuse.
Local officials in Oromia have also made extensive use of the kebele system, along with smaller cells called gott and garee, to keep residents under constant surveillance for signs of government criticism. The overwhelming majority of local and regional authorities in Oromia belong to the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), which is the regional arm of the EPRDF.
Ethiopia’s last elections were parliamentary polls in 2005. The run-up to the elections saw signs of openness in some areas, though in most constituencies the same patterns of repression documented above prevailed. Following the elections, opposition efforts to contest the results sparked a heavy-handed government crackdown that saw several hundred people gunned down in the streets of Addis Ababa, mass arrests of perceived opposition supporters, and several prominent opposition leaders jailed on charges of treason that were ultimately dropped.
Elections for city councils, kebele councils, and vacated parliamentary seats will be held on Sunday, April 13, 2008. Elections for the wereda councils will follow on April 20. The exercise is a vast one – Ethiopia is made up of 547 weredas, and each of those is broken up into numerous kebeles whose governing councils each seat 300 representatives. The weredas are grouped into zones, whose administrations are not at stake in these elections, and the zones are grouped into nine ethnically-based regions.
Ethiopia’s government is highly dependent on donor assistance but donor governments, including the United States and United Kingdom, have largely refused to criticize repression in Ethiopia or to demand improvements in the country’s human rights record. The United States in particular views Ethiopia as a key ally in the “war on terror,” and donor governments in general often express fear that Ethiopia’s government will react poorly to human rights-related criticisms. The Ethiopian government has refused to allow any foreign observers to monitor the upcoming elections.
Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch
Opposition Candidates, Voters Silenced Ahead of Local Polls
(New York, April 11, 2008) – The Ethiopian government’s repression of registered opposition parties and ordinary voters has largely prevented political competition ahead of local elections that begin on April 13, Human Rights Watch said today. These widespread acts of violence, arbitrary detention and intimidation mirror long-term patterns of abuse designed to suppress political dissent in Ethiopia.
" It is too late to salvage these elections, which will simply be a rubber stamp on the EPRDF’s near-monopoly on power at the local level. Still, officials must at least allow the voters to decide how and whether to cast their ballots without intimidation. "
“It is too late to salvage these elections, which will simply be a rubber stamp on the EPRDF’s near-monopoly on power at the local level,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Still, officials must at least allow the voters to decide how and whether to cast their ballots without intimidation.”
Human Rights Watch carried out two weeks of field research during the run-up to the polls and documented systemic patterns of repression and abuse that have rendered the elections meaningless in many areas. That research focused primarily on Oromia, Ethiopia’s most populous region and one long troubled by heavy-handed government repression.
The nationwide elections for the kebele (village or neighborhood councils), and wereda (districts made up of several kebeles administrations), are crucially important. It is local officials who are responsible for much of the day-to-day repression that characterizes governance in Ethiopia. Many local officials in Oromia have made a routine practice of justifying their abuses by accusing law-abiding government critics of belonging to the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which is waging a low-level insurrection against the government.
Candidates allied with the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) will run unopposed in the vast majority of constituencies across Ethiopia. On April 10, one of Ethiopia’s two major opposition coalitions, the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF), pulled out of the process altogether. UEDF officials complained that intimidation and procedural irregularities limited registration to only 6,000 of the 20,000 candidates they attempted to put forward for various seats. By contrast, state-controlled media reports that the EPRDF will field more than 4 million candidates across the country.
Violence, Arbitrary Detention, and Intimidation
Local ruling party officials have systematically targeted opposition candidates for violence, intimidation, and other human rights abuses since the registration period began three months ago. Particularly in areas with established opposition support, local officials have arbitrarily detained opposition candidates, searched their property without warrant, and in some cases physically assaulted them.
Credible reports collected by Human Rights Watch indicate a pattern of cooperation among officials across all three tiers of local government – zone, wereda, and kebele administrations – in carrying out these abuses. Victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch across different locations in Oromia recounted a consistent narrative. Some were arbitrarily detained and then interrogated or threatened by wereda administration officials in the presence of zonal officials. Others were arbitrarily detained by wereda police and then transferred to the custody to zonal security officials or federal soldiers.
One 31-year-old school teacher in western Oromia was detained by police and then interrogated by wereda and zonal security officials when he sought to register as an opposition candidate. “I was afraid,” he told Human Rights Watch. “They accused me of being on OLF member and said I would be shot... They put a gun in my mouth, and then made me swear that I wouldn’t go back to the opposition.” He was released nine days later, after the deadline for candidate registration had passed. Human Rights Watch interviewed other OPC candidates who had also been detained after trying to register in other constituencies.
Prospective voters who might support the opposition have been similarly targeted by the government. Secondary school students in Oromia’s Cheliya wereda, many of whom are of voting age, reported to Human Rights Watch that they have been compelled to provide a letter from representatives of their gott/garee – unofficial groupings of households into cells that are used to monitor political speech and intimidate perceived government critics – attesting that they did not belong to any opposition party. Local officials said that unless they produced those letters, they would not be allowed to register to vote. One civil servant in Gedo town was warned by a superior that he would lose his job if he supported the opposition.
“The same local level officials who are directly responsible for much of the day-to-day political repression that occurs in Ethiopia have their jobs at stake in these elections,” Gagnon said. “As such, their efforts to intimidate ordinary people into returning them to office are especially intense.”
Local authorities have also prevented the registration of opposition candidates in many constituencies where the opposition’s success in 2005 parliamentary polls appeared to give them a chance at winning. In Fincha in western Oromia, for example, the opposition Oromo People’s Congress (OPC) made three attempts to register a candidate for an open parliamentary seat. The seat had been vacated by an OPC candidate who won 81 percent of the vote in 2005 but was later forced into exile after local authorities accused him of being an OLF supporter. The OPC tried to replace him on the ballot with three different candidates but each was prevented from registering. All three candidates were physically threatened by members of the wereda administration and police and one was detained for more than a week when he tried to register.
The opposition Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) has encountered similar problems in western Oromia, with 10 of its 14 candidates resigning in response to pressure from local officials. In February, police in Dembi Dollo arrested 16 OFDM members and accused them of belonging to the OLF. Although a court ordered them all released two weeks later when police could provide no evidence to support their allegations, they were subsequently threatened with physical harm by local officials.
The home and crops of one OFDM member in the same area were burned. He reported this to the police with the aid of OFDM officials but alleged to Human Rights Watch that the police then failed to investigate the incident.
Such repression has been widespread in Oromia. The OPC gave Human Rights Watch the names of more than 300 party members it claims have been detained since November 2007. Investigations carried out by the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), Ethiopia’s preeminent human rights monitoring organization, corroborate claims that many opposition supporters in Oromia have been arrested or illegally detained for periods ranging from days to months, often on the basis of alleged links to the OLF.
Procedural and Other Bars to Opposition Participation
In many cases, acts of intimidation have gone hand-in-hand with unjustifiable bureaucratic and procedural bars on free opposition participation in the polls. Some representatives of the NEB responsible for the registration of candidates at the constituency level have worked with local officials to block opposition registration. In some cases NEB agents have cancelled the registration of opposition candidates either without explanation or based on age and residency criteria despite clear evidence to the contrary. In other instances, NEB representatives provided the names of opposition candidates to local officials and to the police. Police in some of those constituencies then cordoned off access to NEB offices and physically prevented suspected opposition candidates from entering.
Across western Oromia, the country’s largest state, local officials have refused to allow candidates of the two main opposition parties there, the OPC and OFDM, to register more than a token share of candidates. In some constituencies, authorities have closed down OPC and OFDM offices and threatened their candidates with arrest if they persisted in competing.
In some cases, local authorities offered bribes to opposition candidates to withdraw. One OFDM candidate interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that local ruling party leaders offered to pay his college tuition and guaranteed him a job in the local administration if he withdrew from the election.
“The run-up to these elections illustrates how meaningless the process of voting can be in an environment of intimidation and fear,” Gagnon said. “The Ethiopian government must publicly commit itself to ending the systemic human rights abuses that have become part of the foundation of its hold on power.”
Background
The patterns of repression and procedural manipulation that surround the upcoming polls are motivated in part by the increased importance that control of wereda and kebele administration has taken on since 2001. Financed in part by the World Bank and other donors, the Ethiopian government has decentralized the provision of basic services such as health and education. This has effectively empowered wereda administrators, who are appointed by the elected councils, with greater discretion in the allocation of budget expenditures.
The kebele system in particular is also a central part of the ruling party’s elaborate system of surveillance, intimidation, and coercion of ordinary people who are perceived as being unsympathetic to the government. The kebele were originally created by the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam for precisely this purpose and have been put to the same use by the current government since Mengistu’s ouster in 1991. Because of the kebele system’s importance in this regard, the EPRDF is particularly loathe to contemplate losing control over them.
A dominant theme in the EPRDF’s political discourse on Oromia is the need to combat the activities of the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which has been fighting a low-level insurrection against the government for years with Eritrean backing. Across much of Oromia, local officials have routinely and for many years used unproven allegations of links to the OLF as a pretext to subject law-abiding government critics to arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killing, and other forms of human rights abuse.
Local officials in Oromia have also made extensive use of the kebele system, along with smaller cells called gott and garee, to keep residents under constant surveillance for signs of government criticism. The overwhelming majority of local and regional authorities in Oromia belong to the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), which is the regional arm of the EPRDF.
Ethiopia’s last elections were parliamentary polls in 2005. The run-up to the elections saw signs of openness in some areas, though in most constituencies the same patterns of repression documented above prevailed. Following the elections, opposition efforts to contest the results sparked a heavy-handed government crackdown that saw several hundred people gunned down in the streets of Addis Ababa, mass arrests of perceived opposition supporters, and several prominent opposition leaders jailed on charges of treason that were ultimately dropped.
Elections for city councils, kebele councils, and vacated parliamentary seats will be held on Sunday, April 13, 2008. Elections for the wereda councils will follow on April 20. The exercise is a vast one – Ethiopia is made up of 547 weredas, and each of those is broken up into numerous kebeles whose governing councils each seat 300 representatives. The weredas are grouped into zones, whose administrations are not at stake in these elections, and the zones are grouped into nine ethnically-based regions.
Ethiopia’s government is highly dependent on donor assistance but donor governments, including the United States and United Kingdom, have largely refused to criticize repression in Ethiopia or to demand improvements in the country’s human rights record. The United States in particular views Ethiopia as a key ally in the “war on terror,” and donor governments in general often express fear that Ethiopia’s government will react poorly to human rights-related criticisms. The Ethiopian government has refused to allow any foreign observers to monitor the upcoming elections.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Ethiopia' "war crime tribunal" violated human rights
Appolon | April 8, 2008
The Ethiopian legal system has accused several thousands of brutal war crimes. Now the war crimes tribunal has itself violated fundamental human rights.
Tekst: Yngve Vogt, Translated by Kathrine Torday Gulden
Ethiopia's trial against the criminals of war from the harsh Derg regime (1974-1991) undermines human rights, says Associate Professor Kjetil Tronvoll at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo.
He has studied the political development in Ethiopia since 1990 and has attended the elections as a researcher and election monitor both in Ethiopia and Eritrea. His book on the trial, which is a result of collaborative work between anthropologists, legal practitioners, historians and political scientists from Ethiopia, Norway and USA, is to be published at the publishing houses James Currey (Oxford) and the Ohio University Press (Athens).
Red Terror
After the revolution against Emperor Haile-Selassie in 1974, the Mengistu Hailemariams military junta took power. The regime supported by Moscow withheld power until 1991.
Even thought the regime and opposition maintained Marxism, they're interpretations differed. Severe punishment of those in opposition to the military junta was executed. The purifications at the end of the seventies, known as Red Terror, were similar to the Moscow processes in the 1930s. Approximately 55 000 political intellectuals were liquidated. The victims consisted mainly of urban, young students.
– The method of torture was dreadful. The goal was to spread public fear. Eye witnesses tell that the victims were cooked in oil and their nails were pulled out. Mothers were raped in front of their children. Pieces of clothing soaked in urine and covered with other excrements were stuffed in the victims' mouths. The torturers used a pair of pincers to break noses. Then they would slit the victims' throats or strangle them slowly, says Kjetil Tronvoll to the research magazine Apollon.
Many were shot at night. The regime attached tags which read «contra-revolutionary» on the bodies. Relatives were only permitted to fetch the bodies if they paid for the bullets used to kill them.
The political party EPRP was acknowledged as the main enemy, but they also had blood stained hands and killed thousands of people, among these several mayors and governors. All in all almost 200 000 people were killed during the seventies and eighties due to the conflicts in the multi-ethnic society where «everyone was at war with each other».
– One could say that it was legitimate of the state to defend itself against «illegal opposition», but the defence method they used got out of hand.
The Trial
Contrary to South Africa, which chose a commission of truth and national reconciliation, Ethiopia leans on the penal settlement.
Several thousands were interned when EPRDF came to power in 1991. Not everyone had connections with Red Terror. The government also used the situation to cleanse out political enemies and dissidents within their own party and kept them interned for years.
2258 people were accused of war crimes. The accused can be divided into three groups.
Group one: Colonel Mengistu and the political and military leadership, all in all 55 men.
Group two: 200 people from the military interlayer who channelled the orders to kill and burn down villages.
Group three: The last group consisted of approximately 2000 men who were enlisted foot soldiers accused of torture and murder.
Many of the executions during the Red Terror were carried out on written order. These documents were used as evidence in the trial.
Long-drawn-out
The trial began in 1995 and lasted for 13 years. The sentence in regard to the top leaders was passed in December 2007. This sentence has been appealed. The appeal case can take time.
– The most important criticism in regard to human rights is the length of the case process. The custodians had to wait for 16 years. Some of these were given shorter sentences than the time they had spent in custody. Some were released due to lack of evidence.
– The defence was denied access to the evidence material before the prosecutor presented the material in court. Some counsels for the defence were denied meeting their client in court. The process has undermined public security.
The judges were biased
EPRDF replaced most of the judges from the Megistu Regime with their own. Many believe the replacement was based on ethnic issues.
– The new judges were loyal to the party, lacked juridical competence and education. The sentences of the leadership were based on the paragraph on genocide. International legal practitioners are sceptical to the use of this paragraph.
– The murders were ideological and not ethnically motivated. It is therefore difficult to define this as genocide.
The problem with a trial that has lasted for 13 years is that many judges have been replaced during the process. The person who is to pass the sentence has therefore not heard the first submission of evidence.
The trial took long time due to an ineffective administration and lack of resources such as too few secretaries and copying machines. The trial was too thorough and the submission of evidence was too extensive.
– Instead of 100 witnesses and 10 000 pages of documents, it would have been more than enough with five witnesses and 100 pages to pass a sentence.
That the court only met every second week did not improve the situation either.
Loss of legitimacy
A few death sentences were passed, but the real bad guy Mengistu and his generals were not sentenced to death. This was most likely a political decision to get Mengistu extradited from Zimbabwe.
– The court process started to educate the Ethiopian public about the political divide after the fall of Mengistu. The process became the main cause of the new regime. They signalized that they took human rights seriously.
When the government met an increasing political opposition after 1995, the regime itself became the perpetrator.
– Today, Ethiopia has thousands of political prisoners, the regime is not democratic or based on human rights. That in itself demeans the legitimacy of the court process.
As an example of this three generals from Red Terror are mentioned. They were pardoned of having partaken in the war against Eritrea in 1998-2000. Friends became enemies and vice versa. Soldiers of the Derg Army were asked to enlist the new Eritrea war.
This in itself indicates that the court process has a political lopsidedness.
The government has not pardoned those who have been interned for a longer time than their sentence would entail.
Uncertain future
Tronvoll fears the judicial authority in Ethiopia.
– The legal system has not been consolidated and does not have sufficient capacity. They have a long way to go. The danger of new politicians yet again replacing the judges with their own loyal party fellows, is most definitely present, says Kjetil Tronvoll at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights.
The Ethiopian legal system has accused several thousands of brutal war crimes. Now the war crimes tribunal has itself violated fundamental human rights.
Tekst: Yngve Vogt, Translated by Kathrine Torday Gulden
Ethiopia's trial against the criminals of war from the harsh Derg regime (1974-1991) undermines human rights, says Associate Professor Kjetil Tronvoll at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo.
He has studied the political development in Ethiopia since 1990 and has attended the elections as a researcher and election monitor both in Ethiopia and Eritrea. His book on the trial, which is a result of collaborative work between anthropologists, legal practitioners, historians and political scientists from Ethiopia, Norway and USA, is to be published at the publishing houses James Currey (Oxford) and the Ohio University Press (Athens).
Red Terror
After the revolution against Emperor Haile-Selassie in 1974, the Mengistu Hailemariams military junta took power. The regime supported by Moscow withheld power until 1991.
Even thought the regime and opposition maintained Marxism, they're interpretations differed. Severe punishment of those in opposition to the military junta was executed. The purifications at the end of the seventies, known as Red Terror, were similar to the Moscow processes in the 1930s. Approximately 55 000 political intellectuals were liquidated. The victims consisted mainly of urban, young students.
– The method of torture was dreadful. The goal was to spread public fear. Eye witnesses tell that the victims were cooked in oil and their nails were pulled out. Mothers were raped in front of their children. Pieces of clothing soaked in urine and covered with other excrements were stuffed in the victims' mouths. The torturers used a pair of pincers to break noses. Then they would slit the victims' throats or strangle them slowly, says Kjetil Tronvoll to the research magazine Apollon.
Many were shot at night. The regime attached tags which read «contra-revolutionary» on the bodies. Relatives were only permitted to fetch the bodies if they paid for the bullets used to kill them.
The political party EPRP was acknowledged as the main enemy, but they also had blood stained hands and killed thousands of people, among these several mayors and governors. All in all almost 200 000 people were killed during the seventies and eighties due to the conflicts in the multi-ethnic society where «everyone was at war with each other».
– One could say that it was legitimate of the state to defend itself against «illegal opposition», but the defence method they used got out of hand.
The Trial
Contrary to South Africa, which chose a commission of truth and national reconciliation, Ethiopia leans on the penal settlement.
Several thousands were interned when EPRDF came to power in 1991. Not everyone had connections with Red Terror. The government also used the situation to cleanse out political enemies and dissidents within their own party and kept them interned for years.
2258 people were accused of war crimes. The accused can be divided into three groups.
Group one: Colonel Mengistu and the political and military leadership, all in all 55 men.
Group two: 200 people from the military interlayer who channelled the orders to kill and burn down villages.
Group three: The last group consisted of approximately 2000 men who were enlisted foot soldiers accused of torture and murder.
Many of the executions during the Red Terror were carried out on written order. These documents were used as evidence in the trial.
Long-drawn-out
The trial began in 1995 and lasted for 13 years. The sentence in regard to the top leaders was passed in December 2007. This sentence has been appealed. The appeal case can take time.
– The most important criticism in regard to human rights is the length of the case process. The custodians had to wait for 16 years. Some of these were given shorter sentences than the time they had spent in custody. Some were released due to lack of evidence.
– The defence was denied access to the evidence material before the prosecutor presented the material in court. Some counsels for the defence were denied meeting their client in court. The process has undermined public security.
The judges were biased
EPRDF replaced most of the judges from the Megistu Regime with their own. Many believe the replacement was based on ethnic issues.
– The new judges were loyal to the party, lacked juridical competence and education. The sentences of the leadership were based on the paragraph on genocide. International legal practitioners are sceptical to the use of this paragraph.
– The murders were ideological and not ethnically motivated. It is therefore difficult to define this as genocide.
The problem with a trial that has lasted for 13 years is that many judges have been replaced during the process. The person who is to pass the sentence has therefore not heard the first submission of evidence.
The trial took long time due to an ineffective administration and lack of resources such as too few secretaries and copying machines. The trial was too thorough and the submission of evidence was too extensive.
– Instead of 100 witnesses and 10 000 pages of documents, it would have been more than enough with five witnesses and 100 pages to pass a sentence.
That the court only met every second week did not improve the situation either.
Loss of legitimacy
A few death sentences were passed, but the real bad guy Mengistu and his generals were not sentenced to death. This was most likely a political decision to get Mengistu extradited from Zimbabwe.
– The court process started to educate the Ethiopian public about the political divide after the fall of Mengistu. The process became the main cause of the new regime. They signalized that they took human rights seriously.
When the government met an increasing political opposition after 1995, the regime itself became the perpetrator.
– Today, Ethiopia has thousands of political prisoners, the regime is not democratic or based on human rights. That in itself demeans the legitimacy of the court process.
As an example of this three generals from Red Terror are mentioned. They were pardoned of having partaken in the war against Eritrea in 1998-2000. Friends became enemies and vice versa. Soldiers of the Derg Army were asked to enlist the new Eritrea war.
This in itself indicates that the court process has a political lopsidedness.
The government has not pardoned those who have been interned for a longer time than their sentence would entail.
Uncertain future
Tronvoll fears the judicial authority in Ethiopia.
– The legal system has not been consolidated and does not have sufficient capacity. They have a long way to go. The danger of new politicians yet again replacing the judges with their own loyal party fellows, is most definitely present, says Kjetil Tronvoll at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Will democracy defeat a despot?;
Toronto Star: April 03, 2008
Election could spell the end of Mugabe in ruined Zimbabwe
The bell finally seems to be tolling for Robert Gabriel Mugabe, as the party led by the octogenarian Zimbabwean strongman suddenly finds itself without
a parliamentary majority for the first time in nearly three decades.
The loss marks a critical and perhaps fatal blow for a man once seen as the hope of a troubled continent slowly freeing itself from the shackles of European
colonialism, but a politician now more widely regarded as an iron- fisted power monger who battered his opponents and presided over his country's economic
decline.
In recent years, it has seemed only a funeral would wrest Mugabe from the presidency of a beautiful and once prosperous land - prosperous by African standards
- a land that he himself ruined.
But yesterday, it was starting to appear that a democratic election, of all things, might finally serve as the mechanism to bring the despot down.
After four suspenseful days, a trickle of voting results released by Zimbabwe's electoral commission following Saturday's elections finally produced a clear
result, with Mugabe's long-ruling ZANU-PF party losing to the combined opposition, led by the Movement for Democratic Change, in the country's national
assembly.
But, days after the elections, there was still no word on the outcome of the crucial presidential race, which was held alongside the parliamentary vote.
Meanwhile, the 84-year-old Mugabe, who has run this land-locked southern African republic since 1980 when Zimbabwe won independence under majority rule,
has not been seen or heard in public since casting his ballot on Saturday.
Nonetheless, his sombre, bespectacled visage continued to glower down upon Zimbabweans from campaign banners and nearly ubiquitous official portraits, much
as it has done for decades.
Once the breadbasket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe in recent years has suffered a breathtaking economic collapse, and Mugabe, his policies, and his cronies
are widely held to blame, both for this country's financial misery and for its bleak human-rights record.
The opposition MDC insists its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has won the presidential contest, as well as the legislative vote, and yesterday released its
own figures, showing Tsvangirai besting Mugabe with 50.3 per cent of the presidential ballots cast against 43.8 per cent for the long-time ruler.
But a government spokesperson warned Mugabe's adversaries against drawing hasty conclusions.
"You are prejudging the election, aren't you?" Deputy Information Minister Brighton Matonga told a television interviewer yesterday. "It's not over until
it's over."
If no presidential candidate captures a majority of the ballots cast in Saturday's vote, a runoff between the top two candidates would have to be held within
three weeks.
Based on its own unofficial results, the MDC has claimed another vote isn't needed, but Tendai Biti, a party official, said yesterday the MDC would agree
to a second round if necessary. "We accept under protest," he said. "It's just a delaying of the inevitable."
As for the legislative contest, according to official results, the opposition won 109 seats in the country's 210-seat legislative chamber, versus 97 seats
for Mugabe's party and one for an independent candidate. Three seats must be decided in by-elections after candidates died or withdrew.
Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier welcomed the results.
"This opens a window of opportunity for real and significant democratic change in Zimbabwe," he said in a news release. "Specifically, we look to the new
Zimbabwean government to implement policy changes that will improve the human rights situation in Zimbabwe.
"Canada commends the Zimbabwean people, who have remained calm and peaceful in the face of inexplicable delays. We call upon Zimbabwe's leaders to seize
this critical opportunity for positive change in a manner that respects freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law."
Most Zimbabweans seemed to be taking the unfolding drama in stride yesterday, condemned as they are to a daily battle, trying their best to get by despite
their country's economic free-fall.
Inflation is reckoned to be spiralling at a breakneck annual pace of more than 100,000 per cent, as the central bank continues to churn out banknotes in
ever larger quantities and denominations, never mind that they become worthless almost as soon as they hit the streets.
At Greaterman's Department Store on Jason Moyo Ave. yesterday, a small tin of pilchards in tomato sauce was selling for 47 million Zimbabwe dollars. A can
of tinned beans cost 75 million. A bar of deodorant soap bore a price tag of 81 million. And a single apple would set you back by 25 million.
At the Clicks Health Home Beauty Store, a basic Phillips toaster could be yours for just 3.5 billion dollars.
Based on the black market exchange rate prevailing yesterday (it will be different today), a Canadian loonie was worth about 38 million Zimbabwean dollars.
Along Harare's First St. pedestrian mall, large queues formed all day near automated telling machines, as city-dwellers patiently waited to withdraw seemingly
vast quantities of currency.
One woman outside a branch of the ZB Bank on First St. said she meant to withdraw a cool half-billion dollars.
But how much is that? A little or a lot?
"It depends on your budget," she replied.
But a man in the same lineup quickly contradicted her.
"No, it's very little money," he said. "It's just for a day."
At yesterday's black-market rate, a half-billion Zimbabwe dollars were worth about $13.16 Canadian.
That won't go far, considering that the Drumstick Special at the Chicken Inn ("Luv Dat Chicken!") outlet was priced at 110 million Zimbabwe dollars yesterday.
Other queues formed on the basis of hearsay. About 50 people were lined up late yesterday outside the OK Supermarket because they had heard a rumour that
a delivery of wheat flour was expected soon.
"There hasn't been any flour for days," said one man in the lineup.
An hour later, there was still no flour, and yet the queue remained.
Mugabe blames the country's woes on economic sanctions imposed by Western nations, but outside observers and local opposition leaders say the former schoolteacher
and longtime freedom-fighter brought on Zimbabwe's misery through a succession of disastrous decisions, including the expropriation of white commercial
farmers - long the country's economic backbone - and a costly military adventure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other financial fiascos.
With his party's now official loss in legislative elections, it seemed difficult to imagine Mugabe - who is widely believed to have manipulated elections
his way before - could now engineer a remotely credible victory in the presidential contest. After 28 years of unbroken and nearly dictatorial rule, it
seemed likely - though not yet certain - that the patriarch's days in power were finally numbered.
But the electoral commission's continuing silence on the results of the presidential vote was cause for concern and even alarm.
Oakland Ross
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