publications

<<previous  |  index  |  next>>

Government Use of Torture, Arbitrary Detention, Surveillance and Harassment to Discourage and Punish Dissent

Many local authorities and security officials in Oromia routinely commit various human rights violations against people they believe to be critical or unsupportive of the government.  These abuses range from arbitrary detention and torture to long-term patterns of surveillance and harassment that isolate targeted individuals from their communities and destroy their livelihoods.  In much of Oromia, these abuses are so widespread and so arbitrarily inflicted that they have left many people afraid to engage in any kind of public discussion related to issues of concern to their communities.  These abuses take on an added importance in the context of the coming elections, as they have tainted the entire electoral process by leaving many voters convinced that government authorities are certain to punish any sign of support for the political opposition.

Arbitrary Detention and Torture

Since 1992, security officials have arrested tens of thousands of Oromo whom they have accused of being members or supporters of the OLF since that organization was banned in 1992.24  According to former Ethiopian President Negasso Gidada, when he left office in 2001 roughly 25,000 people were in prison on OLF-related charges throughout Oromia and in Addis Ababa and no public moves have since been made to substantially reduce the number of detainees.25  Oromo civil society and community leaders have long complained that allegations of OLF involvement are used as a thinly veiled pretext to detain government critics and intimidate others into silence26.  One leading Oromo opposition figure, voicing an often-repeated complaint, lamented that “If you are a young man you are liable to ask questions.  But if you ask questions you are liable to go to jail as an OLF suspect.”27  A prominent Oromo academic put it this way: “OPDO officials feel that if you are not with them then you are their enemy.  If you are not OPDO, you are OLF, and if you are OLF you are a terrorist and a criminal.”28 

Human Rights Watch interviewed forty-one individuals who have been detained and released since 2001 by local or security officials who accused them of conspiring against the government.  Many had been arrested more than once and some had been arrested as many as ten times since 1992.  Most were accused of providing support to the OLF or of plotting acts of armed insurrection on the organization’s behalf.  Many were individuals who had been outspokenly critical of government actions or policies.

In all forty-one cases investigated by Human Rights Watch, courts or police investigators ultimately found the allegations against these detainees to be unsupported by any sort of evidence.  None were ever tried for any offense related to the allegations that led to their arrest, but all were nonetheless imprisoned for weeks or months before being released.29  In many cases, police and military officials also subjected these detainees to interrogation and torture aimed at forcing them to produce information about OLF activities that they did not possess.  Taken together, their testimonies describe a widespread climate of suspicion and abuse within which many security and government officials make widespread use of arbitrary imprisonment as a weapon in an ongoing war against dissent. 

Arbitrary Detention

Police and security officials often target people who publicly criticize government policies for arrest and detention.  One farmer from a village near Agaro said that he has been arrested four times since 1992 and accused of providing support to the OLF but has never been formally charged.  In several public meetings in June and July of 2004, he stood up and argued that Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi should be required to stand down because he has been too long in power.30  In August 2004, he was arrested along with more than a dozen other people and accused of conspiring with the OLF to “make the [May 2005] elections unsuccessful.”31  No evidence was presented against him, but he was detained for six weeks before being released.  “In meetings, I speak out,” he said.  “The others don’t.  That is my crime.”32 

Another man from Nekemte told Human Rights Watch that in the past, “many times in meetings when they said, ‘you are free to talk,’ I stood up and talked about the oppression that is taking place and said that these things should be corrected.  I used to ask why people were being arrested.”  In early 2004, he was arrested and detained for four months on charges of being a “member of an OLF cell.”33  A court ordered his release in May 2004 after the police failed to produce any evidence to substantiate the charges.  Human Rights Watch interviewed several other people who were detained shortly after publicly criticizing the government or specific actions of local officials.  All were eventually released after one or more months in prison without being charged with any crime.34 

Not all of those arrested by security officials on allegations of OLF involvement are outspoken critics of the government.  In fact, many of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch were at a loss to explain why they or their family members had been targeted for arrest.  One distraught mother whose teenage son had repeatedly been arrested and accused of being involved with the OLF and was being held in Dembi Dollo prison when she spoke with Human Rights Watch said:

They say he is a shifta [bandit] and that he raises unrest among the people.  I don’t know why they say this about him.  I was asking [the woreda] many times but they started showing signs they suspected me also and so I stopped asking them.  [My son] doesn’t speak much and because of this many people think he doesn’t like people or is hiding something.  But really he is just a quiet fellow.… Now every night at home I look at his exercise books and cry because my home seems so empty.35

The young man had not formally been charged with the commission of any crime and had never been tried on any of the other occasions when he was arrested.

In some cases, arrests of suspected OLF “terrorists” border on the absurd.  One 77 year-old farmer who has not seen his son since he ran away from home in 1992 told Human Rights Watch that he had been imprisoned ten times since his son’s disappearance and accused of collaborating with him to carry out acts of terrorism on behalf of the OLF:

The last time they arrested me was in September [2004].  I am not sure exactly what it is all about but it has something to do with my son.  He disappeared a long time ago but the imprisonment continues up until now.  They always tell me to bring them my child and I tell them that I have lost him myself.  They also say that I send provisions to the OLF.  They never bring any evidence or take me to court.  I go to jail and then I come out, sometimes after a month, sometimes after two weeks.36

In early 2004, police in Dembi Dollo arrested a twelve-year-old schoolboy and imprisoned him after discovering that he had tattooed “ABO,” the Afan Oromo acronym for “OLF,” onto his hand.  “They said he was a terrorist,” his father said.  “They said he was a supporter of the OLF.”37  The child’s family petitioned the local authorities and secured his release after two weeks of detention, but the police continued to follow and harass the boy until the family was forced to send him to live with relatives in Addis Ababa.  At least twenty other children under the age of fifteen have been imprisoned for similar reasons in Dembi Dollo alone since 2001.38  A relative of one of those boys shook his head incredulously when remembering the incident that led to his arrest in early 2003.  “I had an eleven-year old relative who wrote ‘ABO’ on the blackboard at school.  He was dragged off to the police station and imprisoned there.  They released him after several days because there was too much noise about it.  I mean, come on- you’re not supposed to imprison 11 year-olds.”  That child also experienced problems with the police after his release and eventually left to live with relatives in Canada.39

In most of the cases reported to Human Rights Watch, the courts eventually stepped in to order the release of detainees when the police failed to produce any evidence in support of the accusations against them.  This has not, however, prevented the authorities from detaining people for periods long enough to be punitive, or from detaining the same people repeatedly without any evidence.  In many cases, the courts allowed police to hold detainees for several months by acquiescing to repeated requests for more time to look for evidence even though the police had already failed to meet one or more court-imposed deadlines for the production of such evidence.  While prosecutors are legally obligated to promptly dismiss charges that are not supported by any evidence, they did not exercise that discretion in any of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch.40  Human Rights Watch also interviewed several people who had been detained on between five to ten separate occasions on allegations of OLF involvement only to be released each time when the police failed to produce evidence against them.41  Of the thirty-three people interviewed by Human Rights Watch who had been detained on suspicion of involvement with the OLF, not one had ever been brought to trial or confronted with any evidence that they had committed a crime.  Some were released after several weeks or months without explanation while others were released after a court ordered the police to free them if they could not produce any evidence that they had committed a crime.42  Police detained several of them for weeks without being brought before a judge, in violation of the Ethiopian Constitution.43

Prolonged Arbitrary Detention of High-Profile Oromo Defendants

In relatively high-profile cases involving Oromo civil society leaders, regional and federal authorities have used several methods to keep persons in detention for longer periods despite prosecutors’ inability to produce any evidence against them. 

As of April 2005, four prominent Oromo civil society leaders were being kept in detention after having been released on bail and then quickly rearrested and eventually charged with new offenses arising out of the same allegations.44 Four leaders of the Mecha-Tulema Association, the oldest and most prominent Oromo civil society organization,45 were arrested in May 2004 and accused of providing support to the OLF and of having plotted a grenade attack at Addis Ababa University that took place on April 29, 2004.46  A court ordered their release on bail just over three months later, but all four defendants were rearrested one week later.  When a second judge ordered that the original grant of bail be respected, the four were released only briefly before being rearrested on “new” charges of homicide related to the same grenade attack.  As of April 2005, nearly a year after the date of their original arrest, all four remained in detention awaiting trial.  One of the men responsible for organizing their defense told Human Rights Watch that he was not aware of any evidence that had been produced in support of the charges against them.47

In late April 2004, police arrested two employees of the state-owned Ethiopian Television’s Afan Oromo service, Shiferu Insermu and Dhabasa Wakjira, and charged them with involvement in acts of terrorism, transferring information to the Eritrean government and to the OLF, and acting as a link between the OLF abroad and students in Ethiopia.48  Shiferu was released on bail several months later but was then rearrested in August 2004 on new charges alleging his involvement in arms trafficking.  As of April 2005, roughly a year since the date of their original arrest, no evidence had been produced to substantiate the charges against either defendant.  “I have no doubt that they will be acquitted,” their lawyer told Human Rights Watch.  “But it may happen only after two or three years.”49

In another prominent case, eight founding members of the Human Rights League, an organization that set out to report on human rights issues affecting Ethiopia’s Oromo community, were detained in October 1998 and charged with involvement in terrorist activity.  No evidence was produced in support of these charges, but by the time the detainees were acquitted and released in 2002 they had spent three-and-a-half years in detention.  The organization itself fared little better; federal authorities denied the Human Rights League the registration it needed to operate legally for eight years; the League obtained formal recognition only in March 2005, two years after a federal court ordered the government to recognize the organization.50  All of the lawyers and Oromo civil society leaders interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they believed that these delays were deliberately used to keep outspoken Oromo in detention despite the lack of evidence implicating them in any crime, and to use their detention as an example to intimidate others into silence.51

Torture and Other Mistreatment

Police officials in Oromia often subject individuals who are arrested on suspicion of OLF-related activities to torture and other forms of mistreatment.  In some cases torture is applied in the course of interrogations, while in other cases it is used as a form of punishment.  Human Rights Watch interviewed several former detainees who had been severely beaten in police custody in 2003 and 2004.  One nineteen-year-old woman who had recently been expelled from school after arguing with another student was arrested in Agaro in August 2004 and accused of working with other detainees to sabotage the May elections:

They told me that I had gone to school not for education but to do politics.  They told me that I knew how much money [the other detainees] were receiving from abroad from the party [OLF].  Then they forced me to take off my clothes and I was naked except for my underwear when they started kicking me.  They had some kind of a stick and they hit me with that one as well.… [Then] they put a pistol in my mouth and said that they would kill me.  I couldn’t go to the bathroom after that because of how they kicked me.52

An elderly man who was arrested at the same time described being taken to an office inside the police station and beaten by several police officers.  He said, “I told them, ‘I am an old man.  Are you not afraid of God at least?’  But they beat me a lot.  After that they didn’t touch me but the others were taken out at night and beaten.”53

In other cases, Ethiopian military personnel have taken people accused of OLF involvement into their custody and subjected them to torture during interrogation in their own facilities.  Human Rights Watch interviewed one man who had been detained in a military camp near Mendi in West Wollega in 2001.  He was interrogated about his alleged involvement with the OLF and beaten severely by soldiers who nearly killed him when they fractured his skull with a blow from one of their rifles.  Nearly four years later when Human Rights Watch interviewed him, his forehead was marked by a deep depression left by that fracture.  In April 2004, the same man was again arrested and taken to a military garrison near Nekemte where he was imprisoned and tortured for nearly six months without ever being brought before a judge.  His “release” came when his captors abandoned his unconscious body in a riverbed near the garrison after a particularly severe beating.54 

In other cases, military personnel have participated in the torture during interrogation of individuals detained by the police.  One middle-aged merchant who was arrested in Agaro in August 2004 described being interrogated and tortured by a uniformed Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) officer who demanded that he find a way to bring his son home from London, where the police believed he was involved in raising money on behalf of the OLF, for questioning.  “He told me to sit on the floor and took off my spectacles.  Then he beat me,” he said.  “He said, ‘your son is with the OLF and you want to bring down the government.’  I said, ‘What power do I have to bring down the government?  I am just a person who is trying to survive.’  He replied [by] asking me why I had been in jail so many times unless it was because I was guilty.”55

Human Rights Watch interviewed two men, one in Nekemte and the other in Agaro, whom police and military officials had allegedly tortured in the same manner by having a partially full bottle of water tied to their testicles.  One man, a twenty-six-year-old arrested in August 2004, told Human Rights Watch that he was tortured and interrogated in the Agaro police station in the presence of police and military officials as well as an official from the woreda government56.  He was tied with his arms behind his back and beaten on the soles of his feet, and then made to stand naked with a bottle of water tied to his testicles.  “I couldn’t tell them anything,” he said, “and after three days they sent me to prison.”57  The other man, a thiryty-five-year-old businessman who was arrested in Nekemte in March 2004 and accused of providing financial support to the OLF, also alleged that he was forced to stand naked with a bottle of water tied to his testicles.  His police interrogators also broke several bones in his right hand and left him with injuries to his back and legs that had not fully healed a year later.  “When they continued to beat me and I couldn’t tell them anything, they didn’t think it was because I didn’t know anything,” he recalled.  “They just thought I was so disciplined that I would not let my secrets out.”58 

Human Rights Watch also conducted interviews with several current and former government and OPDO officials who confirmed that the practice of torture was widespread.59  One elected local official from a town in Wollega responded to allegations that police had tortured dozens of people in his community by telling Human Rights Watch that “what you are describing is going on here, but it isn’t something I can discuss.”60  A former police officer from Ambo, who said that he was dismissed from his post after refusing to testify against students who had been involved in student protests in Ambo in February 2004, told Human Rights Watch that “most people who go to prison here [in Ambo] are beaten, even people we call elders or respected people.”61

Continuing Harassment of Targeted Individuals

Many of the former detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that their eventual release from custody was only the beginning of their ordeal.  In many cases, police officials follow, harass and intimidate former detainees and their families for years after their release.  One man who has been detained six times since 1992 on suspicion of belonging to an “OLF cell”62 told Human Rights Watch that since his last release in May 2003, “The police follow me and watch my house.  They ask my neighbors whether they know anything about my involvement with the OLF.  They try to make them hate me—my neighbors tell me they say that I have admitted to the police that I am an OLF supporter and that they should watch me closely.”63  Another former detainee who was detained and beaten for six weeks beginning in September 2004 after being accused of hiding weapons for the OLF said that, “Since my release, if someone comes to visit me he is asked by the police what he was doing talking to me.  So people avoid me and I avoid them as well because I am afraid I will cause problems for them.”64  A young man in Nekemte told Human Rights Watch that since his release from two months of detention in a military camp outside of the town in October 2004, he has been followed and harassed continuously.  “Two weeks ago I went to Addis Ababa to visit my family,” he said.  “As soon as I came back they [soldiers] arrested me and took me back to the [military] camp and interrogated me.  They asked me why I went there and what I had brought back with me.…  I passed the night there.”65

Several former detainees told Human Rights Watch that they had been forced to close their businesses because after their release the police harassed and drove away most of their customers.  One man who had opened a modest but profitable tea house in Nekemte shortly after his release from detention in April 2003 said that the police quickly ran the business into the ground by harassing his clientele:

Teachers and people like that came and took their lunches there on a contract basis.  Then they started telling people that my tea room was of the OLF and a den of robbers.  They interrogated some of the teachers who used to come there about their relationship with me—they [the teachers] told me that they got into trouble just because of me…. I asked some of my other customers why they had stopped coming when I saw them on the street.  They said that they had been stopped by the police who asked them, “Why do you eat in that particular place?  What do you want with that man?”  They said they were afraid to be associated with me.66

The man was forced to close the shop, losing much of his initial investment, and was working as a day laborer on a farm in the countryside at the time of Human Rights Watch’s visit in March 2005.  Another former detainee who owned a bakery in Agaro was forced to close it shortly after his release from detention in late 2004.  “Since they [labeled me a member of] the OLF even the workers who baked the bread avoided coming to work.  When I asked them why they stopped coming they told me they were afraid.”67

In some cases security officials have harassed even the family members and friends of former detainees.  Several of the former detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that their relationships with those people had suffered as a result, and in some cases people had been ostracized almost entirely.  One woman who was detained in Agaro said that after her release, police harassment drove most of her family to reject her.

After I left I tried to go back to my family in the countryside but they could not accept me because they were afraid.… My brother who did not reject me because of this took me in but then he was arrested for two months.  They said that he is a thug, but he is a person with a wife and children and he has a job.  He is back home now but he avoids talking about anything now and [the police] are always telling him that he has the OLF in his house.68 

Several detainees told Human Rights Watch that police and woreda officials repeatedly told them that the only way to prove they weren’t involved with the OLF was to become a member of the ruling OPDO.  One man who was briefly arrested in October 1997 told Human Rights Watch that he has been summoned by the police for questioning related to suspected OLF activities in the area more than a dozen times since his release. “[A woreda official] called me to his office in December [2004].  He told me, ‘you have to prove that you are not an OLF by joining our party.’”69

Targeting Oromo Students for Harassment and Abuse

In past years, Oromo students at Addis Ababa University and in secondary and junior secondary schools throughout Oromia have organized several public demonstrations against unpopular government policies and actions.  Authorities have repeatedly responded to these demonstrations with mass arrests and violence.70  Most recently, in January 2004 between 330 and 350 Addis Ababa University students were arrested for participating in a peaceful student demonstration protesting the Oromia regional government’s decision to move its capital from Addis Ababa to Adama.  Police ordered both male and female students to run and crawl barefoot, bare-kneed, and bare-armed over sharp gravel for three-and-half hours; they were also forced to carry each other over the gravel, increasing the pressure on their soles and inflicting greater pain.71  When many of those students were subsequently dismissed from the University72, secondary school students in towns throughout Oromia reacted by staging public protests of their own.  Security forces responded with force and arrested hundreds of demonstrating students in towns throughout the region.73  Many students, teachers and parents were beaten as police and military personnel moved in to crush demonstrations in Ambo, Nekemte, Jimma, Dembi Dollo and other towns.74  At least one student was shot and killed by security forces during the protests.75  The Ethiopian government claimed that the student protests had been organized by “anti-peace elements” supported by the OLF, but produced no evidence to substantiate those claims.76 

Human Rights Watch interviewed several students in Ambo, Nekemte and Dembi Dollo who said that they were tortured after being detained during these demonstrations.77  One high school student in Nekemte said that he was stripped naked and interrogated by one police officer while another forced the barrel of his pistol into the boy’s mouth.  “They told us that we were planning to burn down the school and that we were OLF supporters,” he said.  “They pointed to a scar on my leg and said that I had gotten it while fighting with the OLF.”78

Students have frequently been arrested by security forces outside the context of student demonstrations as well.  Human Rights Watch interviewed several students who had been arrested and tortured in recent years by police and military officials who accused them of involvement with the OLF.  One fourth-year Addis Ababa University student who had yet to be readmitted to the University following his dismissal at the time of the January 2004 student demonstrations said that he has been arrested and interrogated repeatedly throughout 2004.  Most recently, he was arrested in December 2004 and taken to a police station in Addis Ababa’s Gulele district for questioning:

They took me to the police station and asked me to tell them what I knew about the OLF, about their structures here in Addis.  I said I didn’t know.  Then they asked me for the addresses of some OLF members.  I said again that I didn’t know anything about the OLF.  Then one of them took a chair and hit me on the head with it, and called in some other police officers to beat me.  They beat me repeatedly and locked me in a cell for three days.  After three days they brought me a paper that said that if I heard anything from here onwards about the OLF I would report it to the police.  Since I had no other option I signed it.  They didn’t even take me to court.79

Another young man, a high school student in Nekemte, was arrested by military personnel along with more than a dozen other students in January 2005 while returning to town from a picnic in celebration of the “European” New Year.80  The soldiers accused them of holding an OLF meeting cleverly disguised as a picnic and took them to a police station.  At the station, in the presence of several police officers, they tied, beat and interrogated the students about their alleged involvement with the OLF.  They kept the students in detention for five days, during which time they were alternately beaten and made to sit, bound, in the sun for hours at a time.81 

Pressuring Teachers to Monitor Students for Subversive Speech

Local authorities have also employed somewhat more subtle methods of controlling dissent among the student population.  School administrators routinely force teachers to provide them with information about who their students are associating with and what they are discussing in class.  Teachers in several schools told Human Rights Watch that they had been instructed to pay special attention to any incriminating drawings or notes they might find when reading their students’ exercise books.82  One teacher from Dembi Dollo said that the director of his school even told him to keep an eye out for anything suspicious his students might scrawl onto their desks.  One eight-year old student in Dembi Dollo was recently expelled from school for a year after making an “OLF” stamp for a school crafts project.83  “I have to follow them as he says and I have reported some students to the director,” the teacher told Human Rights Watch, “I worry very much about this because I am being made to oppress my own students.  They should have the right to do what they want on their exercise books.  But if I do not report and someone else sees they may say that I encouraged the students to do this.”84  One student in Ambo said that “teachers ask us about other students: ‘Who are his friends?  With whom does he pass the day?  He was seen talking to such-and-such person—what were they saying?’  There is no way for us to ask why they ask us these questions.”85  One former high-ranking local security official who was formerly responsible for supervising this sort of surveillance told Human Rights Watch that many teachers undertook to gather such information because they were threatened with transfer to remote postings far from their families if they refused.  “Many people in government jobs—especially in the school system—become party [OPDO] supporters even if they don’t want to,” he said.  “They have families to think of, and so they eventually submit.”86 

The Chilling Effect of Government Abuse on the Freedom of Expression

Several Oromo students told Human Rights Watch that as a result of all of the surveillance in their schools, they felt unable to express themselves in class discussions for fear of inadvertently saying something controversial.  One twenty-year-old student in Dembi Dollo described the atmosphere of tension and suspicion that most of the students interviewed by Human Rights Watch complained of:

They say you can ask whatever you want but afterwards they write down your name and that person will meet problems.  If a student or teacher stands up and airs his view, even if it is a very peaceful and mature thought, he is suspected of being OLF.  I am very careful about this and I avoid everything.  I don’t even breathe.  Because of this, up until now I have not had any problems.87

Another student expressed his frustration this way:  “We have to ask questions because our minds have been made active to do this.  That is our problem.  But they are the ones teaching us about democracy in our books.”88

Students were not the only ones to express concern about the situation in the schools.  One elderly farmer from a remote village in western Wollega complained that “When children ask questions about the problems that exist they go to jail or get [other] penalties.  We work a lot in order to send our children to school [in town], but then they don’t have the right even to think.”89

Many other people, even those who themselves had not been subjected to any sort of abuse, said that pervasive human rights abuses in their communities had left them afraid to air their views on issues of importance to their communities.  One tailor from Dembi Dollo said that “Before I used to speak at meetings about things that I thought were wrong.  But now I never do this… They are too suspicious of anyone whose ideas are not the same as theirs.”90  Another man from Nekemte who had been arrested on charges of involvement with the OLF and whose neighbors had ostracized him after his release because the police had questioned them about their relationship with him said, “I don’t talk anymore.  I don’t even go to meetings.”91  Most people said that their friends and neighbors were equally cautious.  As one retiree in Dembi Dollo put it: 

People are afraid to say anything at all—they are always suspicious of the person sitting next to them.  Even me—I choose the most neutral topic of conversation possible.  I cannot even talk about the shortage of electricity or water because it points to the government.  Even innocuous topics like that are off limits, let alone politics.92

Some former detainees said that they believed their arrests were carried out precisely in order to intimidate others into silence.  Human Rights Watch interviewed one prominent intellectual who was suddenly arrested without explanation in May 2003.  Rather than arrest him quietly, the police sent eight heavily-armed men to his home in the early evening and marched him away to the police station under guard as his neighbors looked on in confusion.  He said:

They never took me to court or said, ‘this is what you did, this is why we arrested you.’  I think it was intended more as a message to the rest of the people—‘even these individuals you see as more educated and so on, we can get them, so imagine what we could do to you.’… They took eight rifles to pull me in there.  It’s just to create terror and for people to see me taken from my home with all these guns.93

The only thing the police later reproached him with was that he was found to be in possession of a book written by Leenco Late, a founding member of the OLF.  The arresting officers found and seized the book when they searched his home.  “The book is still under arrest,” he said; the police had never returned it.94 



[24] While there is no provision in the Ethiopian criminal code dealing specifically with the OLF, allegations of involvement with the organization can lead to charges of inciting or participating in armed insurrection against the government, arms trafficking and treason, among other offenses.

[25] Human Rights Watch interview with Dr. Negaso Gidada, Addis Ababa, March 4 2005.  This figure includes a large number of OLF fighters who were captured almost immediately after relations between the OLF and TPLF broke down in 1992.

[26] Human Rights Watch interviews with Oromo civil society leaders, Addis Ababa, Nekemte and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[27] Human Rights Watch interview with Bulcha Demeksa, Addis Ababa, March 2, 2005.

[28] Human Rights Watch with Addis Ababa University professor, March 2 2005.

[29] None of the detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch outside of Addis Ababa benefited from any legal representation.

[30] Human Rights Watch interview, Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[31] Documentation provided by police officials to interviewee, on file with Human Rights Watch.

[32] Human Rights Watch interview, Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[33] Documentation provided by police officials to interviewee, on file with Human Rights Watch.

[34] Human Rights Watch interviews, Addis Ababa, Ambo, Nekemte, Agaro, Tokke, Jimma and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[35] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[36] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 10, 2005.

[37] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[38] Human Rights Watch interviews, Dembi Dollo, March 16-18, 2005; Documentation provided by parents of child detainees, on file with Human Rights Watch.

[39] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 17, 2005.

[40] See Ethiopian Criminal Procedure Code, Article 42(1)(a).

[41] Human Rights Watch interviews, Agaro, Addis Ababa, Dembi Dollo and Nekemte, March 2005.

[42] Human Rights Watch interviews, Addis Ababa, Nekemte, Jimma, Agaro, Tokke, Ambo and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[43] Article 19(3) of the Ethiopian Constitution requires that every detainee to be brought before a court within 48 hours of their arrest. 

[44] The right to bail is guaranteed by the Ethiopian Constitution and protected under international law.  Article 19(6) of the Ethiopian Constitution provides that “Persons arrested shall have the right to be released on bail.”  Article 9(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that bail be reasonably available to detainees as an alternative to pre-trial detention. Pre-trial detention generally is lawful only in exceptional cases where release on bail would impede due process of law.

[45] The Mecha-Tulema Association (MTA) was established in 1963 and played a leading role in building and nurturing a sense of Oromo nationalism among Ethiopia’s educated Oromo elite.  The MTA has always been a highly political organization; the OLF and most prominent contemporary Oromo civil society groups trace their roots back to Mecha Tulema, and many of their leaders are among those who helped to found and grow the MTA in the 1960s.  The MTA was banned by the Imperial government in 1967 after the Association’s leadership was implicated in an abortive assassination attempt against Emporer Haile Selassie.  The Derg did not permit any sort of independent civil society to exist in Ethiopia, including the MTA.  When the EPRDF government came to power in 1991, it won widespread praise among educated Oromo when it allowed the Association to resurrect itself and resume its work.

[46] The Association had aroused the ire of the authorities by organizing a large, unauthorized public demonstration in January 2004 to protest the Oromia regional government’s decision to move the regional capital from Addis Ababa to Adama.  The police broke that demonstration up by force and the event led to the Association’s being formally banned in July 2004 for involvement in “political” activities in violation of its charter.

[47] Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, March 3, 2005.

[48] Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, March 21, 2005.

[49] Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, March 21, 2005.

[50] Human Rights Watch interviews with Human Rights League representatives, March 4, 2005 and March 21, 2005; Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Garoma Waqassa, former Human Rights League detainee, February 26, 2005.

[51] Human Rights Watch interviews, Addis Ababa, March 2005.

[52] Human Rights Watch interview, Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[53] Human Rights Watch interview, Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[54] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 10, 2005.

[55] Human Rights Watch interview, Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[56] A woreda is a unit of local governance in Ethiopia.  Each region is divided into zones, with each zone divided into several woredas.  Each woreda, in turn, is divided into kebeles and Peasant Associations (PAs).

[57] Human Rights Watch interview, Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[58] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 10, 2005.

[59] Human Rights Watch interviews, March 2005.

[60] Human Rights Watch interview with local official, March 2005.

[61] Human Rights Watch interview with former police officer, Ambo, March 7, 2005.

[62] Documentation provided by police officials to interviewee, on file with Human Rights Watch.

[63] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 11, 2005.

[64] Human Rights Watch interview, Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[65] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 10, 2005.

[66] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 10, 2005.

[67] Human Rights Watch interview, Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[68] Human Rights Watch interview with woman from rural kebele near Agaro, March 15, 2005.

[69] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 11, 2005.

[70] In May 2000, students across Oromia demonstrated in protest of the government’s failure to effectively combat fires that ravaged huge swathes of forest in Bale.  Those demonstrations were put down by force and over 1,000 students were arrested in Ambo alone.  See Report on Human Rights Practices: Ethiopia (Washington: U.S. Department of State, 2001).  In April 2001, security forces crushed another wave of student demonstrations at Addis Ababa University in extremely brutal fashion, killing more than thirty people, wounding some four hundred, and arresting thousands.  Many of the detainees were beaten, and most of the students who participated in the demonstrations were barred from returning to University for a year.  In March 2002, student demonstrations in high schools throughout Oromia were met with force and police killed at least five students and arrested hundreds of others in the demonstration’s aftermath and in the following weeks.  See Human Rights Watch, Lessons in Repression, January 2003. 

[71] See Human Rights Watch, Letter to Ethiopian Ministers of Justice and Federal Affairs, March 17, 2004.

[72] Over two hundred Oromo students were dismissed from the University following the January 2004 demonstrations.  As of March 2005, twenty-two of them had yet to be readmitted.  Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, March 22, 2005.

[73] Ethiopian Human Rights Council, Special Report #76, 5 April 2004, [online], available at http://www.ehrco.net/reports/special_report_76.pdf (retrieved April 13, 2005).

[74] Human Rights Watch interviews with students, former students and teachers, Addis Ababa, Ambo and Dembi Dollo, March 2005;  see also U.S. Department of State, 2004 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Ethiopia, February 28, 2005; Ethiopian Human Rights Council, Special Report #76, 5 April 2004, [online], available at http://www.ehrco.net/reports/special_report_76.pdf (retrieved April 13, 2005).

[75] Ethiopian Human Rights Council, Special Report #76; U.S. Department of State, 2004 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Ethiopia, February 28, 2005.

[76] U.S. Department of State, 2004 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Ethiopia, February 28, 2005.

[77] Human Rights Watch interviews with current and former students, Ambo, Nekemte and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[78] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[79] Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, March 22, 2005.

[80] Many Oromo students have begun celebrating the “European” New Year on January 1 rather than the “Ethiopian” New Year in September as a form of protest against the dominance of Amhara culture.

[81] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 12, 2005.

[82] Human Rights Watch interviews, Ambo, Nekemte and Dembi Dollo, March 2005.

[83] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 16, 2005; Human Rights Watch interview with Dr. Negaso Gidada, Addis Ababa, March 4, 2005.

[84] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 15, 2005.

[85] Human Rights Watch interview, Ambo, March 7, 2005.

[86] Human Rights Watch interview, March 2005.

[87] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 17, 2005.

[88] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[89] Human Rights Watch interview with farmer from Abichu Shogo kebele, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[90] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[91] Human Rights Watch interview, Nekemte, March 11, 2005.

[92] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 17, 2005.

[93] Human Rights Watch interview, Dembi Dollo, March 18, 2005.

[94] Ibid.


<<previous  |  index  |  next>>May 2005