Ethiopia:
Human Rights Watch World Report 2011
25 January, 2011 | Human Rights Watch
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Events of 2010
aimed at increasing support for the ruling party, including by
reserving access to government services and resources to ruling
party members.
Although the government released prominent opposition leader
Birtukan Midekssa from her most recent two-year stint in detention
in October 2010, hundreds of other political prisoners remain in jail
and at risk of torture and ill-treatment. The government’s
crackdown on independent civil society and media did not diminish
by year’s end, dashing hopes that political repression would ease
following the May polls.
The 2010 Elections
Although the sweeping margin of the 2010 victory came as a
surprise to many observers, the ruling party’s win was predictable
and echoed the results of local elections in 2008. The 99.6 percent
result was the culmination of the government’s five-year strategy of
systematically closing down space for political dissent and
independent criticism. European election observers said that the
election fell short of international standards. In the run-up to the
2010 elections there were a few incidents of violent assaults,
including the March 1 killing of Aregawi Gebreyohannes, an
opposition candidate in Tigray. More often, voters were influenced
by harassment, threats, and coercion. The Ethiopian government’s
grassroots-level surveillance machine extends into almost every
community in this country of 80 million people through an elaborate
system of kebele (village or neighborhood) and sub-kebele
administrations, through which the government exerts pressure on
Ethiopia’s largely rural population. Voters were pressured to join or
support the ruling party through a combination of incentives—
including access to seeds, fertilizers, tools, and loans—and discrimi-
natory penalties if they support the opposition, such as denial of
access to public sector jobs, educational opportunities, and even
food assistance. During April and May officials and militia from local
administrations went house to house telling residents to register to
vote and to vote for the ruling party or face reprisals from local
party officials, such as bureaucratic harassment or losing their homes
or jobs.
Political Repression, Pretrial Detention, and Torture
In one of Ethiopia’s few positive human rights developments in
2010, in October the government released Birtukan Midekssa, the
leader of the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice Party,
after she spent 22 months in detention. Along with many other
opposition leaders, Birtukan was initially arrested in 2005 and then
pardoned in 2007 after spending almost two years in jail. She was
rearrested in December 2008. In December 2009 United Nations
experts determined that her detention was arbitrary and in violation
of international law. Hundreds of other Ethiopians have been
arbitrarily arrested and detained and sometimes subjected to torture
and other ill-treatment. No independent domestic or international
organizations have access to all of Ethiopia’s detention facilities, so it
is impossible to determine the number of political prisoners and
others who have been arbitrarily detained.
Torture and ill-treatment have been used by Ethiopia’s police,
military, and other members of the security forces to punish a
spectrum of perceived dissenters, including university students,
members of the political opposition, and alleged supporters of
insurgent groups, as well as alleged terrorist suspects. Secret
detention facilities and military barracks are most often used by
Ethiopian security forces for such activities. Although Ethiopia’s
criminal code and other laws contain provisions to protect
fundamental human rights, they frequently go unenforced. Very few
incidents of torture have been investigated promptly and impartially,
much less prosecuted.
Torture and ill-treatment of detainees arrested on suspicion of
involvement with armed insurgent groups such as the Oromo
Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front in
Somali region remains a serious concern. The Ethiopian military and
other security forces are responsible for serious crimes in the Somali
region, including war crimes, but at this writing no credible efforts
have been taken by the government to investigate or prosecute
those responsible for the crimes.
Freedom of Expression and Association
The government intensified its campaign against independent voices
and organizations, as well as its efforts to limit Ethiopians’ access to
information in late 2009 and 2010. By May, when the parliamentary
elections took place, many of Ethiopia’s leading independent
journalists and human rights activists had fled the country due to
implicit and sometimes explicit threats. While a few independent
newspapers continue to publish, they exercise self-censorship. In
December 2009 government threats to invoke the 2009 Anti-
Terrorism Proclamation against the largest circulation independent
newspaper, Addis Neger, forced its editors to close the paper and
flee the country. A few days later, police beat an Addis Neger
administrator responsible for winding down the newspaper’s affairs.
Other newspapers were also threatened or attacked. The
Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 15 journalists fled the
country between late 2009 and May 2010. An official of the
government’s media licensing office accused the Awramba Times
of “intentionally inciting and misguiding the public.” In August
unknown assailants smashed windows and doors of its office. In
September police interrogated the editor of Sendek after it
published interviews with an opposition party leader; the police
purportedly were investigating whether the newspaper was licensed.
In March a panel of the Supreme Court reinstated large fines against
the owners of four publishing companies convicted in 2007 for
“outrages against the constitution” solely for their coverage of the
2005 parliamentary elections. In February a judge sentenced the
editor of Al Quds to one year in prison for an article he wrote two
years earlier challenging Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s
characterization of Ethiopia as an Orthodox Christian country
Foreign media did not face much better. The government began
jamming the Voice of America language programs in Amharic,
Oromo, and Tigrinya in February 2010 and followed by jamming
Deutsche Welle; the jamming ended in August. Prime Minister
Meles personally justified the jamming on the grounds that the
broadcasters were “engaging in destabilizing propaganda”
reminiscent of Rwandan radio broadcasts advocating genocide. The
assault on independent institutions extends to nongovernmental
organizations, particularly those engaged in human rights work. The
repressive Charities and Societies Proclamation, enacted in 2009,
forbids Ethiopian nongovernmental organizations from doing work
on human rights or governance if they receive more than 10 percent
of their funding from foreign sources. The effects of the law on
Ethiopia’s slowly growing civil society have been predictable and
devastating. The leading Ethiopian human rights groups have been
crippled by the law and many of their senior staff have fled the
country due to the sometimes blatant hostility toward independent
activists.
All organizations were forced to re-register with the newly created
Charities and Societies Agency in late 2009. Some organizations
have changed their mandates to exclude reference to human rights
work. Others, including the Ethiopian Human Rights Council
(EHRCO), Ethiopia’s oldest human rights monitoring organization,
and the Ethiopian Women’s Lawyers Association (EWLA), which
engaged in groundbreaking work on domestic violence and women’
s rights, slashed their budgets, staff, and operations. The government
froze both groups’ bank accounts in December 2009, allowing them
access to only 10 percent of their funds. Meanwhile, the government
is encouraging a variety of ruling party-affiliated organizations to fill
the vacuum, including the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a
national human rights institution with no semblance of independence.
Key International Actors
Regional security concerns-particularly regarding Sudan's upcoming
referendum and the increasing reach of Somalia's Islamist armed
groups-have thus far insulated Ethiopia from increased human rights
pressure from Western donors. Ethiopia's African neighbors have
been mute in the face of Ethiopia's deteriorating human rights
situation, while China, South Korea, and Japan have increased
engagement in 2010, although their contributions remain small
compared to Western aid. Chinese money largely flows into
infrastructure, although trade also increased 27 percent to more than
US$800 million in the first six months of 2010, according to The
Economist.
Few governments commented publicly on the increasing political
repression gripping the country in the months before and after the
May elections. In a rare exception, the United States noted in late
May that "an environment conducive to free and fair elections was
not in place even before Election Day." The European Union's
election observers also raised multiple concerns with the unlevel
playing field and constraints on freedom of assembly and
expression. Yet even after the election result proved the EPRDF's
consolidation of a single-party state, Ethiopia's donors continued to
channel enormous sums of development assistance through the
government. The government received more than $3 billion in
development assistance in 2008 alone.
The final report of the UN Human Rights Council's Universal
Periodic Review of Ethiopia's human rights record was adopted in
March 2010. Ethiopia committed to ratifying the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It rejected recommendations that
it repeal or amend the Charities and Societies Proclamation and that
it end the impunity of Ethiopia's security forces.
Courtesy
Human Rights Watch World Report 2011
25 January, 2011 | Human Rights Watch
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Events of 2010
- The ruling Ethiopian People’s
Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF) consolidated political
control with a striking 99.6 percent
victory in the May 2010
parliamentary elections. The polls
were peaceful, but were preceded
by months of intimidation of
aimed at increasing support for the ruling party, including by
reserving access to government services and resources to ruling
party members.
Although the government released prominent opposition leader
Birtukan Midekssa from her most recent two-year stint in detention
in October 2010, hundreds of other political prisoners remain in jail
and at risk of torture and ill-treatment. The government’s
crackdown on independent civil society and media did not diminish
by year’s end, dashing hopes that political repression would ease
following the May polls.
The 2010 Elections
Although the sweeping margin of the 2010 victory came as a
surprise to many observers, the ruling party’s win was predictable
and echoed the results of local elections in 2008. The 99.6 percent
result was the culmination of the government’s five-year strategy of
systematically closing down space for political dissent and
independent criticism. European election observers said that the
election fell short of international standards. In the run-up to the
2010 elections there were a few incidents of violent assaults,
including the March 1 killing of Aregawi Gebreyohannes, an
opposition candidate in Tigray. More often, voters were influenced
by harassment, threats, and coercion. The Ethiopian government’s
grassroots-level surveillance machine extends into almost every
community in this country of 80 million people through an elaborate
system of kebele (village or neighborhood) and sub-kebele
administrations, through which the government exerts pressure on
Ethiopia’s largely rural population. Voters were pressured to join or
support the ruling party through a combination of incentives—
including access to seeds, fertilizers, tools, and loans—and discrimi-
natory penalties if they support the opposition, such as denial of
access to public sector jobs, educational opportunities, and even
food assistance. During April and May officials and militia from local
administrations went house to house telling residents to register to
vote and to vote for the ruling party or face reprisals from local
party officials, such as bureaucratic harassment or losing their homes
or jobs.
Political Repression, Pretrial Detention, and Torture
In one of Ethiopia’s few positive human rights developments in
2010, in October the government released Birtukan Midekssa, the
leader of the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice Party,
after she spent 22 months in detention. Along with many other
opposition leaders, Birtukan was initially arrested in 2005 and then
pardoned in 2007 after spending almost two years in jail. She was
rearrested in December 2008. In December 2009 United Nations
experts determined that her detention was arbitrary and in violation
of international law. Hundreds of other Ethiopians have been
arbitrarily arrested and detained and sometimes subjected to torture
and other ill-treatment. No independent domestic or international
organizations have access to all of Ethiopia’s detention facilities, so it
is impossible to determine the number of political prisoners and
others who have been arbitrarily detained.
Torture and ill-treatment have been used by Ethiopia’s police,
military, and other members of the security forces to punish a
spectrum of perceived dissenters, including university students,
members of the political opposition, and alleged supporters of
insurgent groups, as well as alleged terrorist suspects. Secret
detention facilities and military barracks are most often used by
Ethiopian security forces for such activities. Although Ethiopia’s
criminal code and other laws contain provisions to protect
fundamental human rights, they frequently go unenforced. Very few
incidents of torture have been investigated promptly and impartially,
much less prosecuted.
Torture and ill-treatment of detainees arrested on suspicion of
involvement with armed insurgent groups such as the Oromo
Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front in
Somali region remains a serious concern. The Ethiopian military and
other security forces are responsible for serious crimes in the Somali
region, including war crimes, but at this writing no credible efforts
have been taken by the government to investigate or prosecute
those responsible for the crimes.
Freedom of Expression and Association
The government intensified its campaign against independent voices
and organizations, as well as its efforts to limit Ethiopians’ access to
information in late 2009 and 2010. By May, when the parliamentary
elections took place, many of Ethiopia’s leading independent
journalists and human rights activists had fled the country due to
implicit and sometimes explicit threats. While a few independent
newspapers continue to publish, they exercise self-censorship. In
December 2009 government threats to invoke the 2009 Anti-
Terrorism Proclamation against the largest circulation independent
newspaper, Addis Neger, forced its editors to close the paper and
flee the country. A few days later, police beat an Addis Neger
administrator responsible for winding down the newspaper’s affairs.
Other newspapers were also threatened or attacked. The
Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 15 journalists fled the
country between late 2009 and May 2010. An official of the
government’s media licensing office accused the Awramba Times
of “intentionally inciting and misguiding the public.” In August
unknown assailants smashed windows and doors of its office. In
September police interrogated the editor of Sendek after it
published interviews with an opposition party leader; the police
purportedly were investigating whether the newspaper was licensed.
In March a panel of the Supreme Court reinstated large fines against
the owners of four publishing companies convicted in 2007 for
“outrages against the constitution” solely for their coverage of the
2005 parliamentary elections. In February a judge sentenced the
editor of Al Quds to one year in prison for an article he wrote two
years earlier challenging Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s
characterization of Ethiopia as an Orthodox Christian country
Foreign media did not face much better. The government began
jamming the Voice of America language programs in Amharic,
Oromo, and Tigrinya in February 2010 and followed by jamming
Deutsche Welle; the jamming ended in August. Prime Minister
Meles personally justified the jamming on the grounds that the
broadcasters were “engaging in destabilizing propaganda”
reminiscent of Rwandan radio broadcasts advocating genocide. The
assault on independent institutions extends to nongovernmental
organizations, particularly those engaged in human rights work. The
repressive Charities and Societies Proclamation, enacted in 2009,
forbids Ethiopian nongovernmental organizations from doing work
on human rights or governance if they receive more than 10 percent
of their funding from foreign sources. The effects of the law on
Ethiopia’s slowly growing civil society have been predictable and
devastating. The leading Ethiopian human rights groups have been
crippled by the law and many of their senior staff have fled the
country due to the sometimes blatant hostility toward independent
activists.
All organizations were forced to re-register with the newly created
Charities and Societies Agency in late 2009. Some organizations
have changed their mandates to exclude reference to human rights
work. Others, including the Ethiopian Human Rights Council
(EHRCO), Ethiopia’s oldest human rights monitoring organization,
and the Ethiopian Women’s Lawyers Association (EWLA), which
engaged in groundbreaking work on domestic violence and women’
s rights, slashed their budgets, staff, and operations. The government
froze both groups’ bank accounts in December 2009, allowing them
access to only 10 percent of their funds. Meanwhile, the government
is encouraging a variety of ruling party-affiliated organizations to fill
the vacuum, including the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a
national human rights institution with no semblance of independence.
Key International Actors
Regional security concerns-particularly regarding Sudan's upcoming
referendum and the increasing reach of Somalia's Islamist armed
groups-have thus far insulated Ethiopia from increased human rights
pressure from Western donors. Ethiopia's African neighbors have
been mute in the face of Ethiopia's deteriorating human rights
situation, while China, South Korea, and Japan have increased
engagement in 2010, although their contributions remain small
compared to Western aid. Chinese money largely flows into
infrastructure, although trade also increased 27 percent to more than
US$800 million in the first six months of 2010, according to The
Economist.
Few governments commented publicly on the increasing political
repression gripping the country in the months before and after the
May elections. In a rare exception, the United States noted in late
May that "an environment conducive to free and fair elections was
not in place even before Election Day." The European Union's
election observers also raised multiple concerns with the unlevel
playing field and constraints on freedom of assembly and
expression. Yet even after the election result proved the EPRDF's
consolidation of a single-party state, Ethiopia's donors continued to
channel enormous sums of development assistance through the
government. The government received more than $3 billion in
development assistance in 2008 alone.
The final report of the UN Human Rights Council's Universal
Periodic Review of Ethiopia's human rights record was adopted in
March 2010. Ethiopia committed to ratifying the Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It rejected recommendations that
it repeal or amend the Charities and Societies Proclamation and that
it end the impunity of Ethiopia's security forces.
Courtesy
| All rights reserved. |
| Ethio Quest News Together We Can Make It! |
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
| A row over human rights (Economist) INDEPENDENT voices in Ethiopia are finding it ever harder to be heard. Suffocated by an irascible government,... More |
| Human Rights |
| Previous Stories Ethiopia: Amend Draft Law Human Rights Watch New Ethiopia law may criminalise opposition - group By Barry Malone The law would classify acts that cause serious damage to property or disruption of a public service as terrorism. It would also...More Ethiopia's opposition parties resist new draft law on terrorism Sudan Tribune Is Rock Throwing Punishable by Death in Ethiopia? SMNE |
| Ethio Quest News: For latest Ethiopian News, views, Reviews and More |
| Related Stories Human Rights Watch Honors Yoseph Mulugeta (Human Rights Watch) Yoseph Mulugeta is the former secretary general of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), Ethiopia's leading rights monitoring organization,...More Ethiopian Asylum Seekers Run Gauntlet of Abuses (Human Rights Watch) Ethiopia: Human Rights Watch World Report 2010 (Human Rights Watch) Human Rights Watch Honors Daniel Bekele (Human Rights Watch) |
