Ethiopian panel calls for police reform after poll violence

Nov 7, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — An Ethiopian parliamentary panel probing deadly post-election violence last year called Tuesday for reform of the security forces, saying a lack of police training contributed to the chaos.

In calling for changes, the inquiry committee also said the government needed to explain its actions in clashes that erupted in June and November 2005, killing 193 civilians and six police officers and wounding 763.

The committee’s report, published last week, has been denounced by opposition leaders and some former panel members who accuse it of whitewashing the events by not determining that excessive force was used.

But committee members said they never intended to absolve the government from all blame.

“We never said the government was totally clean and the report says that the government has a lot to account for,” said panel member Gemetchu Megerssa, referring to the casualties that were three times higher than the official toll.

“The mentality of the police needs to be changed, then we will be able to minimise those kind of casualties,” he told reporters at a news conference attended by five of the 11 committee members.

“That is what the government has to think about seriously,” Gemetchu said.

“They could have brought other ways of dispersing the riots,” he said. “The security forces here lack the training and the equipment you can find in developed countries.”

Gemetchu added that democratic institutions needed to be built in Ethiopia in order for its human rights record to improve but cautioned that is a slow process and that police reform was a step that could be taken immediately.

“Building of institutions is required, but that is going to take time,” he said. “We need to do today what needs to be done today. Without democratic institutions, human rights will be hard to respect.”

The violence in Addis Ababa and other cities came amid protests against alleged vote fraud in the May 15, 2005 elections, which were won by the government but denounced as rigged by the opposition.

The ex-deputy chief of the panel, now in exile due to alleged government threats, said the crackdown amounted to a “massacre” and accused the government of trying to coerce the committee to alter its findings.

Opposition legislators said last week they could not accept the report, arguing that it was was biased toward the government and fell short of representing the magnitude of the unrest.

The government has blamed the violence on the main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), nearly the entire leadership of which is currently on trial for allegedly using the protests to foment a coup.

Their trial has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and international donors.

(AFP)