Ethiopia charges opposition CUD members with genocide

Dec 21, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopia on Wednesday charged 131 opposition members with treason, inciting violence and planning to commit genocide during deadly clashes that followed a disputed parliamentary election.

Senior political figures from the opposition CUD coalition and 13 journalists were among those charged at an Addis Ababa court, where only 43 were present when the charges were presented. The rest were out of the country or otherwise free.

Under a section entitled “genocide”, the charge sheet seen by Reuters specifically accused the CUD of trying to isolate the Tigrayan people of Ethiopia, who are largely supporters of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s victorious Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

“The accused organised under the CUD umbrella and conspired with the intent to cause physical and mental harm to the people of Tigraya region and the attempt to isolate members of the EPRDF from society,” the charges presented in court read.

The genocide charge carries a penalty of death or life in prison upon conviction.

The court denied those under arrest bail and ordered them to make a plea by next Wednesday.

The opposition have rejected the charges and said they are politically motivated.

The Ethiopian government arrested thousands of opposition members and others after two spasms of violence struck the capital Addis Ababa, in July and November, over the results of the May 15 election.

At least 82 people were killed in clashes with police and soldiers, and Zenawi accused the CUD of fomenting the violence. The CUD and other opposition parties, who gained parliamentary seats in the vote, had accused the government of vote fraud and intimidation.

Meles promised to deal harshly with those the government believed were usurping peace in the Horn of Africa nation, sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous state.

Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom group, called for the United Nations to send a legal observer mission to the trial.

“The Security Council must be given detailed information about this coming political trial, of which the motives – as far as we know right now – are disturbing, to say the least,” the group said in a statement.

It also said Meles “should not try to defuse the criticism against him at the expense of the freedom or lives of citizens.”

The elections and the government’s handling of protesters and opposition members afterward has dented the democratic credentials of Meles, who has been feted by Western leaders in the past.

(Reuters)