HRW reports govt repression in Ethiopia’s Oromia
By CHRIS TOMLINSON
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, May 10, 2005 (AP) — Systematic political repression in Ethiopia’s largest state has kept people there from freely participating in the country’s third general election campaign, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
In a report, the rights group calls into question the fairness of the electoral process in one the United States’ closest allies in Africa, saying the ruling party has cracked down on political activities in the state of Oromia.
The southern state is home to the Oromo people, who make up 32 percent of Ethiopia’s 73 million people, and it has been the center of dissent against the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front.
“The political freedoms required for elections to be a meaningful exercise of Ethiopian citizens’ fundamental right to participate in the selection of their government do not exist for many Ethiopians,” the New York-based organization says in the report.
Information Minister Bereket Simon dismissed the report as an attempt to undermine Ethiopia.
“Human Rights Watch are lying and they are fooling nobody,” Bereket told The Associated Press. “This organization is politically motivated and bent, as usual, on undermining Ethiopia.”
Opposition parties, however, disagreed.
“Oromia is a big problem,” said Berhanu Nega, vice chairman of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy. “From the information I have, in a good part of Oromia it is becoming almost impossible to hold a fair election.”
He said his party would ask the National Electoral Board to suspend the elections in many areas of Oromia and other places where the opposition has been unable to campaign freely.
Since 2001, the United States has increased relations with Ethiopia, despite two previous elections that were generally considered unfair. U.S. troops have been working with Ethiopian soldiers to improve security in the region, as Ethiopia shares a long border with Somalia, a lawless country the U.S. fears could be used by suspected terrorists as a hideout.
The May 15 elections are considered an important test of the ruling party’s willingness to bring democracy to Ethiopia, which has invited international observers into the Horn of Africa country for the first time.
U.S. President George W. Bush has made promoting free and fair elections an important issue in foreign relations, and U.S. officials will be observing the elections. But three independent U.S. groups promoting fair elections were expelled from Ethiopia last month for what the government said were visa violations.
Human Rights Watch noted in its report that the government has made some progress in opening up the media to the opposition, but that the situation in the countryside, where most Ethiopians live, remains oppressive, especially in Oromia.
The government has used a largely defunct rebel group, the Oromo Liberation Front, as an excuse to limit civil liberties in the state, the report says. Alleged participation in the rebel movement has been used to imprison thousands of Oromo, though there is little evidence the rebels are still capable of carrying out significant attacks in the country, it says.
Regional authorities use local officials to monitor the speech and activities of people in Oromia and then use their power to deny them the chance to work, or exclude them from the community, the report says.
“These abuses stand in fundamental contradiction to the human rights principles enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution and seriously call into question the Ethiopian government’s claim that it is making real progress in putting in place democratic forms of governance,” the report says.
The researcher interviewed 150 people for the report, from all walks of life and living both inside and outside of Oromia.