Press Realease

Protest against Meles Zenawi’s presence at the G20 in Toronto (Canada):

Media Release

June 26, 2010

WHO WE ARE:

• We are concerned Canadians of Ethiopian origin congregated here today from the greater Toronto area, Ottawa, London, other surrounding cities including the United States to be part of the protest organized by the members/supporters of the Diaspora Ethiopian human rights and political opposition groups namely: Unity for Human Rights and Democracy (Toronto), Solidarity Committee for Ethiopian Political prisoners-Canada (SOCEPP Canada), Supporters of the Ginbot 7 movement, and EPRP (Democratic) in collaboration with the Ethiopian Association in greater Toronto and the Surrounding Region. We are all members of the Ethiopian Diaspora community forced out of our country by this and the regime before it at different times and are particularly and gravely concerned about the human rights tragedies that has befallen our people in Ethiopia, who continue to suffer under the cruel and dictatorial rule of PM Meles Zenawi and his party – the EPRDF.  

WHO/WHY/WHAT WE PROTEST AGAINST:

• We are protesting AGAINST the presence of Ethiopia’s de-facto ruler: Mr. Meles Zenawi who is in town invited by PM Stephen Harper to be present at the G20 Summit here in Toronto. We also protest against PM. Stephen Harper’s decision to invite this dictator, who should instead be held criminally responsible for the crimes he committed against humanity, as to be part of the G20 Summit.

• We protest against Meles Zenawi  as this dictator represents himself and his one party - EPRDF’, only, not Ethiopia’s interest. He and his party came to power 20 years ago by the barrel of the gun and stayed in power through the rule of terror and repression. The May 23, 2010 fake election that fell far below international standards only crowned the group and this dictator with a contest free totalitarian rule and a fully narrowed political space similar only to that of his predecessor – Col. Mengistu H/Mariam’s and/or the late dictator - Sadam Hussein of Iraq.

• What we protest against are a number of issues. To name the major few:

• We reject the process leading to and the outcomes of the so-called May 23, 2010 election held in Ethiopia for it fell far below international standards, as also variously and pointedly addressed by the EU Election
• Observers (with which Canadian Observers were part of ), the US State Department, Human Rights Watch and various other impartial groups and state actors.

• The closing of the political space in Ethiopia under the totalitarian rule of the EPRDF where political freedom and human rights continue to vanish and political opponents of the regime like Birtukan Mideksa, Bashir Amhed Makhtal (Canadian), Abera Yemaneab and many others continue to suffer in the dungeons of the regime and the “disappeared” like Tsegaye G/Medhin, Aberash Berta and thousands of political prisoners languish in various jails, and many continue to remain an accounted for, is not acceptable to us. 

• The two laws enacted leading up to the fated election in May 2010 – the CSO law and the “Ant-Terrorism” law continue to play a crucial role for the incumbent as tools of repression for muzzling the free press, human rights activism and political dissent despite the mountain of opposition lodged against such laws by the world community at the last December UN Human Rights Review of Ethiopia last December in which Canada too played a crucial role.  (See: UNHCHR 16^th Annual Human Rights Review in their site).

• Hence, it is our undivided view and position that Meles Zenawi has become a symbol, or rather an icon of repression, who should not have been invited to be present to this prestigious Summit which should have been left only for those leaders who respect and abide by international human rights conventions and laws.

Why was Mr. Zenawi invited to the G20 Summit? : THE RATIONALE

• We are informed by DFAIT who extended the invitation to Mr. Zenawi that, he was invited not because of his democratic credentials; it is because Ethiopia is the seat of the OAU, and
• We are also briefed that the invitation was forwarded because Meles represented Africa at the climate change meeting in Copenhagen last year.

And we say: irrespective, is this rationale good and prudent enough when tested against the criminal records of Mr. Zenawi and his party they perpetrated against their own people during the last 20 years they have been in power. Let’s enumerate some without getting into further details:

• He/they muzzled and completely decimated the free press imprisoning and/or forcied into exile over 123 Ethiopian journalists and closing over 100 independent news papers. Now there are almost none let. The last strong independent press Addis Neger’s editors and journalists were forced to exile in Dec 09.

• VOA Amharic Service the DW-de Amharic service and the New Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) are regularly jammed; the Meles Zenawi openly said that he would give the order to shut independent media, and he did that.

• All pro democracy Web pages are blocked and Ethiopia is second in the entire Africa for jailing journalists and No.1 for blocking web sites.

• Civic societies are paralyzed – the draconian legislations such as the Charities and Association act, the media law and the anti terrorism laws have paralyzed the civic society and the political opposition.

• The 2005 and the 2010 election processes and outcomes remain to be illegal and below standard and the regime continues as the de-facto ruler of Ethiopia.

• The election commission is fully controlled by the ruling party. The election officers all over the country are specifically chosen for being loyal to the ruling group. The so-called code of conduct forced through the throats of the opposition that took part in the election was abrogated by none other than the regime itself when it started killing opposition members in Tigrai, Southern Ethiopia and elsewhere.

• Political prisoners continue to languish in prisons including Birtukan Mideksa, Abera Yemanab, Bashir Makhtal (the Canadian) and many more. The detained and “disappeared” like Aberash Berta, Tsegaye Gebremedhen, and many others continue to remain unaccounted for.

• Crimes against humanity committed in the regions of Gambella, the Ogaden and mass killings in Addis Ababa and many other cities still remain uninvestigated and unpunished and the perpetrators including this leader are still walking free amongst us as if they belong to the civilized, humane and just world. 

Acknowledgements and Demands:

• We are thankful of all the law makers/parliamentarians and human rights groups in Canada, the US and Europe who have listened to our appeals and stood with us to address the continued human rights and political abuses of our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia. We specially acknowledge the works of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the ICG, Genocide Watch, ICFPJ and the like for their critical and central role in exposing the crimes of Meles Zenawi to the world.

• And to the less involved and ambivalent Canadian, American and European politicians We say: we hear what you tell us may make sense to a certain extent but WE ASK OF YOU TO DO MORE FOR THERE IS ONLY ONE  INTERNATIONAL STANDARD: THE FULL RESPECT OF THE VARIOUS
• HUMAN RIGHTS CONVENTIONS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW INCLUDING THE PRINCIPLES OF FREE & FAIR ELECTIONS irrespective of who you are dealing with! Would you not rather have a partner in democracy and justice to justify the millions of taxpayers money you invest on someone who is a terrorist himself against his own people and yet stands with you to “fight” terrorism elsewhere?  

The Venue & Time of the Demonstration, Events that Follow & Contact Info:

• The demonstration will be held on June 26^th starting at 9 am EST/ NYT/ Toronto time at the designated area at Queen’s Park.
• Following the demo, we will have a dinner solidarity evening at 40 Donalds Street (Toronto) - Meeting Hall, located in the east end of Toronto, Near Donlands Subway Station, starting at 7 pm.

For media inquiry please contact: Mr. Yousuf Omar at (416)570-3041 Mr. Aklilu Wendaferew at (647) 223-0404 

Canada and "the butchers"

 By Brodie Fenlon

A quick taxi ride this morning suggests the Harper government will have to mend relationships with at least some people in one of Canada’s immigrant communities after the G8/G20 summits.
My driver, an Ethiopian-Canadian whose name I didn’t get on the 10-minute ride, nearly spat with disgust when I raised the topic of the G20.
“They invite the butchers here. Why? Why they bring butchers to Canada?” he asked in heavily accented English.
He spoke with disdain of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who seized power in an armed takeover in 1991 and whose party most recently won a landslide election in May. Many observers, including Human Rights Watch, said the election was marred by government intimidation, threats and pressure on the electorate.
Mr. Zenawi is one of a half-dozen African leaders invited to the June 25 summit in Muskoka, Ont., as part of an outreach to African countries.
My cabbie recalled the last Ethiopian election in 2005, which led to angry protests and a violent crackdown by government security forces. An estimated 200 people were shot dead.
“We come here because Canada is a democratic country. Then they invite him ... Why?”

With a report from Canadian Press

The human-rights abuser on the G20 guest list

Ahmed Hussen, National Post · Tuesday, Jun. 8, 2010

National Post

Later this month, leaders from Ethiopia and Malawi will be in Toronto as invited guests of the G20. While it is to be expected that the Malawian President would be invited in his capacity as the Chair of the African Union, it is more surprising to see an invitation extended to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia.

Mr. Zenawi has been a disappointment to the international community. Since coming to power, he has not lived up to his promises to democratize Ethiopia and end the abuses of the country's minorities. In fact, the opposite has occurred: Mr. Zenawi heads a government that has been accused by the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of systematically attempting to destroy ethnic minorities in the Ogaden region and southern Ethiopia.

Mr. Zenawi's government also has a history of repressing democratic opposition groups, banning or severely restricting the activities of NGOs, manipulating food aid to reward political allies, starving opposition supporters and cracking down on free media.

After opposition parties protested peacefully against rigged 2005 general elections, Ethiopian government troops opened fire on protesters, resulting in the deaths of 193 opposition supporters. The opposition leader at the time, Birtukan Mideksa, is still in prison serving a life sentence on trumped-up charges, and her plight has been compared to that of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Ethiopian government's disregard for human rights and the rule of law has been felt beyond the country's borders. Canadians, for instance, have been alarmed by its treatment of Canadian citizen Bashir Makhtal, who has been detained in Ethiopia for more than three years after being illegally rendered to that country by Kenyan authorities. The Ethiopian government has refused to release him despite being unable to prove any wrongdoing. Federal Transport Minister John Baird recently made a trip to Ethiopia in order to lobby for the release of this Canadian citizen, but Mr. Makhtal remains in jail.

Ethiopia also has been a destabilizing force in Somalia. Despite Ethiopian troops officially withdrawing from Somalia at the end of 2008, they are still unofficially entering that country in their quest to fight a proxy war with Eritrea. This has led to gross violations of human rights by Somali groups that are funded, trained and armed by these two neighbouring countries in clear violation of the United Nations arms embargo on Somalia. Just two weeks ago, Ethiopian troops entered the relatively peaceful Somali district of Buhoodle to carry out military actions that resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians. The totality of these actions make Mr. Zenawi the wrong type of head of government to be invited to a G20 summit. This invitation sends the wrong message to Ethiopia and other African countries that are gradually backsliding on earlier promises to democratize and improve human rights.

At a minimum, Canada should stand up for one of its own by making it clear to the Ethiopian government that Mr. Zenawi would be admitted into Canada only if he immediately and unconditionally releases Canadian citizen Bashir Makhtal. Future Canadian aid to, and diplomatic engagement with, Ethiopia should be tied to a demonstrable improvement in democracy, human rights, rule of law and governance.

- Ahmed Hussen is the national president of the Canadian Somali Congress. He analyzes issues related to politics, peace, security and governance in the East African region.

Beloved, and behind bars Birtukan Mideksa, the country’s main opposition leader, has been in jail for 18 months

Two months ago, Halle Mideksa celebrated her fifth birthday. For the fourth time, the bubbly little girl—dressed, to meet Maclean’s, in pink and purple, hopping on one foot, a yellow sucker gripped between her teeth—had to celebrate without her mom, Birtukan Mideksa. The 36-year-old former judge is Ethiopia’s most famous opposition politician. But she was forced to miss Ethiopia’s state elections on May 23—along with the party for her only child. Mideksa, the only female leader of a main opposition party in Africa, is being held in a two-by-two-metre cell she shares with two other prisoners. She’s been at Kaliti jail for 18 months—her second stay in the hot, crowded maze of sheet-metal shacks at the southern edge of Addis Ababa, the capital. She is accused of violating the terms of a pardon under which she was released in 2007.

Mideksa was initially jailed on treason charges after elections in 2005 in which her opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice party—widely popular in cosmopolitan Addis—fell curiously short of expectations. Many took to the streets to protest results observers deemed fraudulent; 30,000 were jailed, including hundreds of journalists and human rights activists; 200 unarmed protesters were shot dead and 70 opposition politicians were tried en masse, Mideksa among them.

The crackdown by Meles Zenawi’s government—which took 99.9 per cent of seats in last year’s local elections—hasn’t slowed. Four months ago, the newspaper Addis Neger, one of the country’s lone remaining independent voices, was shuttered after intimidation and harassment by government. Tsion Girima, one of the country’s only female political journalists, was jailed for misidentifying a judge in the high-profile trial of singer Teddy Afro, whose songs compare the government to a brutal junta. Ahead of these elections, the government jammed broadcasts from Voice of America, a move Zenawi defended by likening VOA to Radio Mille Collines: hate media that stoked Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

All this as the West, Ottawa included, lavishes record amounts of aid on Ethiopia, subsidizing a government now ranked among Africa’s most repressive and dictatorial regimes. Surrounded by basket-case neighbours, the country is a key Western ally in the war on terror; without Zenawi, it would join the rank of anarcho-hellholes like Somalia—or so the argument goes.

In the past five years, Mideksa, a brilliant speaker with a quick, agile mind, has become a symbol for democracy and change: a female leader in a country where, outside Addis, female circumcision remains the norm, and a single mom who staunchly opposes the politics that divide Ethiopia along ethnic lines. Her sacrifice has captivated the country—terrifying its leadership. “I wish everybody hated her,” her 76-year-old mother tells Maclean’s, tears washing down her face. “The only reason she is in jail is because everyone loves her.”

Mideksa’s books, among them works by legal philosopher John Austin, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jean-Paul Sartre, and a poster of her idol, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, still line the walls of the family’s tidy green and white house. But hope that Mideksa might be released following Zenawi’s landslide, preordained victory was dashed by the PM. No, he announced on the campaign trail, she won’t be released—“ever. Full stop.”

Spotlight on the Struggle of Birtukan Mideksa: Ethiopian Human Rights Activist in the Global Women's Movement

 Zainab Salbi

Posted: June 1, 2010 09:14 AM

Today I would like to tell you the story of Birtukan Mideksa, an Ethiopian prisoner of conscience who is facing life imprisonment for speaking out against an oppressive government. Birtukan is an opposition leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice (formerly Coalition for Unity and Democracy) party and is advocating for democracy and rule of law in Ethiopia. After years of civil unrest and war with Eritrea, Ethiopia is still struggling to overcome oppression and establish political freedom. The parliamentary elections in 2005 spurred violent protests, which led to the arbitrary arrest and detainment of hundreds of opposition leaders, journalists, human rights advocates and civilians. Birtukan was one of those arrested in 2005, and she received a life imprisonment sentence. Then, in 2007, Birtukan received a pardon and was released from prison, only to be put back into prison once more in 2008 for discussing the details of her prior arrest. Her original sentence of life imprisonment has since been reinstated.
Much of Birtukan's time in prison has been spent in solitary confinement. The only people allowed to visit Birtukan are her mother and her four-year-old daughter. Before her arrest, Birtukan was the main provider for her family, who is now suffering not only emotionally but also financially from Birtukan's imprisonment. She is not allowed to meet with any legal representation and the government refuses to listen to her needs. There are even reports that she is being denied medical treatment, despite numerous requests for a physician. The Red Cross and other humanitarian officials are being denied access to the prison, and the exact treatment of Birtukan is unknown.
When addressing the U.S. Congress in 2007, Birtukan stated that "only through dialogue and negotiation will stability and peace be guaranteed" in Ethiopia. In the context of the rampant human rights violations and other oppressive government actions, advocates for peace and freedom are desperately needed in Ethiopia. And yet, women like Birtukan are still being denied the opportunity to negotiate this peace.
Birtukan's story represents the struggle women across the world are facing to have a political voice and to stand up for human rights. Take Jameela, a Palestinian woman from Gaza, who was imprisoned in Israel for 2 years when she was 18 years old for smuggling letters for the PLO. She was tortured. She was hanged from her hands for long periods, put in solitary confinement for about 6 months, and had drops of water dripping on her forehead for hours at a time. When she was finally released from prison, her entire community wanted to abandon her because they assumed she had been sexually abused in prison and thus had her honor taken away. Only her father and her future husband stood by her side. She is now living in a half-destroyed one-room house with her entire family.
Or take Mona, a young activist from Iraq, who was continually raped by a captain during the war so that he would not kill her brothers. This captain started a habit of visiting her daily at her family home. There, he would take her to a bedroom in her house, close the door behind him (her brothers, mother and sisters are still in the living room), and rape her. He would then leave her home. "Day after day, week after week, month after month he did that and not once did my brothers or mother said anything. As a matter of fact, when I would refuse to go with him, they would scold me and urge me to go to him so he wouldn't get upset. In the beginning, this whole ordeal was to save my brothers from prison." Mona is now activist dedicated to rescuing prostituted girls and women who, no different from her, ended up in a path not because of their desires but because they were saving loved ones as she saved her brothers.
According to the UN, 90% of modern war casualties are civilians, 75% of which are women and children. That reality only addresses the death tolls created by war. Statistics have yet to capture the price women pay for wars often just for living in it and trying to survive it. On top of political and military pressure, women are often faced with another layer of community and traditional demands. Then there are the women, like Birtukan, Jameela and Mona, who are trying to take a stand against these wars and who end up facing extreme oppression and human rights violations imposed by governments and military groups.
The bravery of these women despite all odds is inspirational. Women everywhere are paying a personal price for their political reality. It is these women, and the millions of women survivors of conflict who are striving every day to carry on in the midst of astronomical challenges, who are pushing us forward in the global women's movement. It is these women who are standing up for peace and equality, finding their voices and speaking truth in the face of oppression and fear. These women deserve to have their voices heard.