(May 12th, 2012 / by Graham Peebles)--Arrested, tortured, and imprisoned. This is the recipe for justice
that the Ethiopian government serves up to dissenting voices, men and
women peacefully exercising their democratic right, demanding their
human rights, crying out for their moral rights.
The victimised are not only those living within Ethiopia who attempt to offer an alternative to the current dictatorship, who form and organise political opposition to the Meles regime, but journalists inside Ethiopia and abroad, who dare to speak out in criticism of the government’s criminality, human rights violations and policies of indifference.
Amnesty International, in its damning report of the Ethiopian government, Ethiopia: Dismantling Dissent (DDE),states that from March to November 2011 “at least 108 opposition party members and six journalists have been arrested for alleged involvement with various proscribed terrorist groups.” By November they were all charged with crimes under the internationally criticised Anti Terrorist Proclamation. In addition, Amnesty continues, “six journalists, two opposition party members and one human rights defender, all living in exile, were charged in absentia.”
The ‘T’ word, as former Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan called terrorism, is the umbrella term used by the Ethiopian government (amongst others) to justify the unjust, the dishonest and the criminal. If there is a terrorist organisation flourishing in Ethiopia, committing crimes against humanity and violating the human rights of the people, it is State terrorism delivered by the EPRDF government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, as this UN definition of terrorism makes clear:
Related topics:
Media Control in Ethiopia (by Graham Peebles)
Disempowerment and suppression of freedoms in Ethiopia (by Graham Peebles)
The victimised are not only those living within Ethiopia who attempt to offer an alternative to the current dictatorship, who form and organise political opposition to the Meles regime, but journalists inside Ethiopia and abroad, who dare to speak out in criticism of the government’s criminality, human rights violations and policies of indifference.
Amnesty International, in its damning report of the Ethiopian government, Ethiopia: Dismantling Dissent (DDE),states that from March to November 2011 “at least 108 opposition party members and six journalists have been arrested for alleged involvement with various proscribed terrorist groups.” By November they were all charged with crimes under the internationally criticised Anti Terrorist Proclamation. In addition, Amnesty continues, “six journalists, two opposition party members and one human rights defender, all living in exile, were charged in absentia.”
The ‘T’ word, as former Secretary General of the UN Kofi Annan called terrorism, is the umbrella term used by the Ethiopian government (amongst others) to justify the unjust, the dishonest and the criminal. If there is a terrorist organisation flourishing in Ethiopia, committing crimes against humanity and violating the human rights of the people, it is State terrorism delivered by the EPRDF government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, as this UN definition of terrorism makes clear:
Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable.Fear of the government, fear of reprisal, of violence and [false] imprisonment casts a deep shadow across the people of Ethiopia, whose human rights are being ignored by the Meles regime that seized power twenty years ago and has brutalised and systematically restricted the people’s freedom and human rights ever since. Read more from Dissident Voice »
Related topics:
Media Control in Ethiopia (by Graham Peebles)
Disempowerment and suppression of freedoms in Ethiopia (by Graham Peebles)
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