Urgent call to all Ethiopian forces
Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES)
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a
spirit of brotherhood”. (Article 1)
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers”. (Article 19)
“Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and
association”. (Article 20)
-UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
On October 2, 2005, Ethiopians both at home and abroad have resolved to
demonstrate for democracy, the rule of law, human rights and to redress all
the election injustices, the killings, thefts and the unstoppable arrests
and threats to life and freedom coming from the regime. People have a right
and responsibility to protest the way the regime and its election board
appropriated the peoples’ will, votes and voice.
All efforts have been made to open dialogue with the regime. The regime
shut its doors and its ears. The people are left with no recourse except to
show through peaceful protest their displeasure with the power that refuses
to listen and hear their grievances, and prefers to intimidate and
threaten. The people have a right to uphold the sacred rights enshrined in
article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “The will of the
people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be
expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and
equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free
voting procedures.” These are rights that Meles has put his signature
to, and claims to uphold through the constitution. It does not make any
sense to pre-judge and condemn the pro-democracy world- wide demonstration
as ?illegal or unconstitutional’ by Meles and the immediate inner core
circle around him.
People have an inalienable right to the “freedom of peaceful assembly and
association”. Meles traduces this right and criminalises the people who
choose to stand with courage to protect democracy as a ?danger’ to
constitution. He falsely and wilfully ascribes criminal and violent intent
to the people. He spews out the most unimaginable threat against the people
and democracy by saying that he “will take the necessary measures not
only to prevent the danger, but also to make sure that it shall never
happen again”. What kind and scale of horrific suppression and bloodshed
is Meles plotting? He must remember that his party lost the elections by
landslide in many cities and towns of Ethiopia. What does this open threat
to violate the peoples’ human rights make Meles out to be? We expect the
turnout in the demonstrations to be the largest ever in Ethiopia, as people
have been genuinely angered by the cheatings, deceptions, and killings and
tired of the threats and cruel bulling of an incredibly myopic bunch of
rulers Ethiopia has ever been lumbered with in its long chequered history.
The nation has fallen under rulers so conniving, short sighted, impervious
to dialogue and reason, and unrestrained either by values or principle from
pursuing activities that put people in harms way! All they have to do is
claim the true as false, the black, white, the constitutional demonstration
of October 2, unconstitutional; the legal demonstration as illegal; the
peaceful demonstration violent-in order to make it easier to degrade and
dehumanise the population to carry out perfidious murder.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in article 30 declares that no
one has any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at
the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set in the Declarations.
Once again the decision by Meles to outlaw the global pro-democracy
demonstration as “a danger” exhibits violation of universal human
rights found in the declaration and the constitution. We remind Meles that
any resort to murder any peacefully demonstrating citizens by using any
pretext will be pursued with utmost seriousness for crimes against
humanity. There is already the case of the 42 innocent peoples that were
killed that is still open. Any attempt to deny the people their irreducible
right to the “freedom of peaceful assembly and association” and
intimidate them by threat and use of force must be exposed as intolerable
and anti-democratic.
The Global Demonstration is a rally for Democracy
If Meles has shown a willingness to enter into dialogue in the first place,
there would have been no need to demonstrate now. The people wanted the
regime to engage with them with open, transparent and accountable dialogue.
Truly, Meles brought this demonstration upon himself. He has no one but
himself to blame; not the people; not the opposition; and not least foreign
observers. He has been given a lot of opportunity to engage and rectify, he
refused and chose a dual strategy of trying to increase salaries, reduce
taxes and throwing other hurried ?incentives’ whilst centralising force
under his own command leading now to the murder of the 42 that provoked
world wide anger and protest.
In the face of this gross injustice, the people showed patience and finally
they wanted to make a point. They are right to make their point and show
clearly their dissatisfaction. From here on what will create problems would
be the overreaction and threats from Meles to outlaw and use force and
violence to attack the people. Meles does not have to do this. He must not
attack the people and create tears, blood and sorrow. He will be held
solely responsible if anything bad happens like the death of even one
person by gunfire ordered by him and others obeying his command.
The clamour by Meles and Bereket that the demonstration is about
overthrowing their Government is simply false, if not a self-serving lie.
The people are calling for democracy, and will be demonstrating to respect
democracy and not to undermine it. They call for changing Government
through no other recourse and means other than creating the conditions for
vote and voice expression first. If they are demonstrating, it is because
the regime has abused their votes and voice and refuses to admit this fact
even after foreign observers attested to it. The demonstration is not thus
about overthrowing the government or curtailing the rights of the people of
Tigray, as Meles and his inner circle spin and try to sell their misleading
stories to the world. The rally is not for and about denying the rights of
ethnic groups either, as planted and false stories from the regime
supporters allege; it is about Meles’ refusal to listen to the demand for
dialogue, and for the people being fed up and trying to put pressure on
Meles and his inner core to listen to them. We in the NES find the attempt
to separate the Ethiopian people from Tigray from this democratic movement
by Meles and co. as an abhorrent and cynically criminal measure. The false
story of making out that the pro-democry rally is against the people of
Tigray is perverse and twisted. NES believes that Tigray like their
brethren in the rest of Ethiopia are entitled to freedom of expressions,
assembly, press and speech. We have been informed from Tigray that they
face more draconian Stalinist control, which is said to be more brutal than
that faced by the people in the rest of Ethiopia. Even the foreign
observers of the election omit reporting the situation or the election in
Tigray, whose people do not seem to have the opportunity during the
pre-election days to hear different arguments about the programmes of the
different parties. It is criminal to shut out the people from Tigray from
being informed and try to set them apart and set them up against the rest
of their brethren for the overriding and morally bankrupt purpose of
protecting a highly selfish elite who lavishly indulges in wealth, comfort,
and living by virtue of its total control of economy, force, information
and authoritarian power.
Meles controls the firepower. He controls the trigger. Whoever controls the
trigger can fire. The people are unarmed and peaceful. They only have
moral power, and the will to resist injustice. They are no threat to anyone
even to those who do not wish them to show their dissent. Meles can choose
not to fire against peaceful and unarmed civilian dissenters. He will go
down well if a pro-democracy rally takes place and ends without any shot
fired and any without any incident taking place that smacks of human rights
violation. That is what he should be working on to enter into immediate
dialogue with the organisers and try to avoid any life no matter whom from
being lost. Meles must show, having been responsible for the numerous human
rights violations, not to add one more violation. He needs to know the
pursuit of justice is boundless and we will all do our part to continue to
the end to get justice done unto all.
Beware of Provocateurs!
At home the people joining the rally must be all ears and eyes and protect
themselves from Meles and the soldiers he commands. We call on all the
oppositions and the people to be wary of those who wanted to use the
opportunity of popular mobilisation to spread ethnic hate speeches. The
oppositions and the people should be watchful of regime elements and regime
saboteurs that can easily muddle up the rally and use it to instigate
ethnic hate speech, bloodshed, violence and lawlessness in order to fulfil
their diagnosis of threat against them they imagine this rally expresses.
No one should take lightly the extent to which frightened persons like
Meles can do. His bragging that he will use a scale of force and
violence… “To make sure that it (meaning the rally) shall never happen
again.” What kind and scale of horrific suppression and bloodshed is
Meles contemplating? What does it mean to say that he will take measures
that demonstrations can never happen again? How is he going to see his
donor benefactors in the eye after he carried out the horrific murders he
contemplates to stop all future demonstrations or democracy itself? Meles
is not simply talking. It is alarming that as we write this, Meles has
begun his moves already and arrested illegally some 43 opposition members
of CUD and EUDF.
The people must remain vigilant and try to maintain steadfastly their
stamina to achieve peacefully democracy, human rights and good government.
The people have a duty to control provocateurs and other regime bought
elements at their rally and focus on the single objective of the rally that
is to expose the theft of Meles and co of the May 15, 2005 election.
The global pro-democracy rally is not also about opposing the
self-administration or the rights of the ethnic groups in Ethiopia, as
Meles and co have been deceptively misrepresenting and spreading stories.
The rallies in Nazareth, Shashemene, Jima, Metu Nekemt, Gimbi Fiche, Ambo,
Woliso and other Oromia areas are not aimed to overthrow the government or
to oppose the right of the Oromo people for self-determination, but they
are aimed to expose the dictatorial rule of the Meles regime and to show
the solidarity of the Ethiopian people for the cause of reconstructing
their common nation with respect and recognition of each other’s claims
and needs. The rallies in Awassa Hosahna Wolqite and other Southern
Ethiopia areas are not planned for dismantling the Southern Ethiopia
people’s right for self-administration; rather they are calls to expose
the authoritarian refusal to enter into dialogue by Meles and his inner
core. The rally all over the country is not to overthrow the government. It
is against the rulers that prefer to threaten than listen to the rallying
cries of the people to do that and claim rights that they are entitled to
as human beings as inscribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This rally is to expose fraud, deception, and theft of votes and voice, and
it is also a refusal or NO to surrender against the imposition to accept
the broad day light theft of the peoples’ vote and voice.
Calls and Demands
1. We call on the security forces to respect the people’s right to
?freedom of peaceful assembly and association.’ As you are part and
parcel of the Ethiopian people, we call upon you to protect them and never
follow orders from the regime that seems to have decided to pull the
trigger on a peaceful and unarmed people exercising their legitimate and
universal right to dissent.
2. We call on the people to engage in peaceful protest and dissent to
express their disgust at the way the election has been mishandled by the
regime.
3. We call on the opposition to give leadership to this peaceful rally and
continue the democratic momentum.
4. We call on the regime to stop all its brutal and cruel threats and
enter into dialogue with the opposition to create a favourable environment
for embedding a sustained and vibrant democracy in our country.
5. We call on the international community not to tolerate the Meles regime
what so ever to commit further crimes against the Ethiopian people by
mounting massive violations of human rights.
– Professor Mammo Muchie, Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
– Berhanu G. Balcha, Vice- Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
– Tekola Worku, Secretary of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Contact address:
– Fibigerstraede 2
– 9220- Aalborg East,
– Denmark
– Tel. + 45 96 359 813 or +45 96 358 331 Fax + 45 98 153 298
– Cell: +45 3112 5507
– Email: [email protected] or [email protected] or
[email protected]