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66th Special Report: Another Ethnic Conflict in Bench-Maji Zone

Posted on 15th October 2003 by HRCO
Categories: Featured, Special Report
Posted on: Oct 15, 2003
Region: Southern Nations

“The Dizzi, Menit and Surma tribes live in Maji, Jebba, Toom and Surma weredas. The Menit and Dizzi tribes live in Maji, Toom and Jebba weredas, whereas the Surmas live in Surma wereda. EHRCO had learnt that the surmas used to live near the Sudanese border in areas called Tirmatid and Mardur. However, as they are nomads, they do not live in a fixed place. They also used to live as pastoralists different in areas in Surma woreda.

Recently, the Surmas have encroached the areas that are known to belong to the Dizzi and Menit tribes. And the main cause for this encroachment is the absence of government soldiers that used to guard the boarder with the Sudan and Kenya during the Derg regime. This fact made the Surmas vulnerable to attacks and looting from heavily armed Sudanese nomads who overstep the Ethiopian boarder and forced them to leave their localities and migrate to Jebba and Toom weredas.”

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64th Special Report: The Death Penalty Provision Should Be Deleted From the Country’s Laws!

Posted on 18th August 2003 by HRCO
Categories: Commentaries, Featured, Special Report
Posted on: Aug 18, 2003
Region: Addis Ababa

“The life of a human being is a natural virtue. Before anything else, the life of a person is the expression of identity for that particular, specific person only. Nobody can resemble or replace that person. Next, life would not only create for that person relations with his close relatives, but also help him establish basic obligatory and voluntary relations with his surroundings. Although it is assumed that life is a personal natural virtue, it is also an accumulation of community efforts and the environmental influences of the surrounding. That is why it is said that dignity is inherent in life. Nobody has given life to any person. And nobody should therefore take it away from him.

On the one hand, life creates complicated, and at times, strong relations amongst and between people, and, on the other hand, human beings are charged with rage and anger, filled with bitterness and disappointment; emotionally upset, and envenomed by jealousy and wickedness so much so that they harm or kill other people.”

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63rd Special Report:Displaced Persons Being Displaced Again

Posted on 28th July 2003 by HRCO
Categories: Special Report
Posted on: Jul 28, 2003
Region: Addis Ababa

” It is to be recalled that in 1991 and after the Ethio-Eritrean Conflict thousands of Ethiopians who have been displaced from their areas of residence in Eritrea have come and settled in Addis Ababa and other towns in the country. Ethiopians who were dispossessed of their property and made to suffer by the Eritrean government have continuously requested the Ethiopian government to provide them with shelter and other assistance. However, because the government did not accede to their request for permanent shelters, they have been forced to live in kebele conference halls and other temporary shelters in various districts of Addis Ababa. Many of these displaced persons have lived in these temporary shelters for the last eleven years.

These hopelessly destitute displaced persons who have no income for rent or for constructing dwellings, have continued to live in the temporary shelters, feeding their families by either begging or by working as casual laborers.

The Addis Ababa City Administration has continued to apply pressure on the displaced persons annually during the rainy seasons to leave the shelters. Last year, EHRCO has issued its 53rd Special Report opposing this unjust decision on the part of the City Administration. The Special Report entitled “ To Render Displaced People Shelterless” was issued on July 3, 2002.”

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53rd Special Report: To render displaced people shelterless is unjust

Posted on 3rd July 2003 by HRCO
Categories: Uncategorised
Posted on: Jul 3, 2003
Region: Addis Ababa

“For the past ten years, the displaced persons lived under such conditions in the various shelters located in the 14 Weredas of the city. Lately, the displaced persons who used to live in three of the fourteen Weredas were forcibly kicked out of their shelters by Region 14 Administration and the Police. As a result of this measure, they have been dispersed in all places and are facing extremely grave difficulties. The displaced Ethiopians who are staying in shelters located in some of the Weredas have been notified to evacuate. Their future lives are therefore at stake and quite uncertain. EHRCO staff have gone to the shelters, met the displaced people in person, spoke to them and gathered considerable evidence about their situation. In the process, EHRCO has established that the situation described has been worsened.

The government has spontaneously issued an urgent notice ordering the displaced people (who had lived in the shelters for over ten years) to evacuate the area. The government has taken such a measure without making any preparations and without taking the rainy season into consideration. The notice says that the displaced people is should each receive a small amount of rehabilitation fund from the Administration’s Public Relations and Development Cooperation Bureau and evacuate their temporary shelters within a few days. EHRCO has gathered sufficient information from the notices issued to the displaced people. EHRCO has verified the situation and has presented the following details relating to the number of displaced people who would be affected by the decision.”

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62nd Special Report:The Safety of Citizens Under Police Custody Should Be Ensured!

Posted on 23rd June 2003 by HRCO
Categories: Commentaries, Press Releases, Special Report
Posted on: Jun 23, 2003
Region: Addis Ababa

“On April 26, 2003 (on Saturday, the eve of Ethiopian Easter), at about 12:00 noon, two men in civilian cloth and two uniformed policemen from Wereda 19 came to Ato Abera Hey’s residence. Upon their arrival, Ato Yohannes Abay, who lived in the same compound as Ato Abera, opened the gate for them. One of the men in plain cloth pointed a gun at Ato Yohannes. Frightened by this, Ato Yohannes shouted and the policemen overpowered, handcuffed, and beat him. He sustained injuries on his lips and nose from the beating. While two of the four security officers were watching over Ato Yohannes, the other two rushed into Ato Abera Hey’s house and into his bedroom and, waking and informing Ato Abera that he was “wanted”, took him to Wereda 19 Police Station while still dressed in his night cloths. The security officers released Ato Yohannes informing him that he was not “wanted”.

The detainee’s wife took food and clothing to Wereda 19 Police Station, but the police refused her permission to give the food and clothing she had taken for her husband. As the detainee’s family members were waiting around the Wereda 19 Police Station, the police took Teodros Girma, a child that Ato Abera was bringing up, but released him after having kept him for about 15 minutes. Some twenty minutes afterAto Abera had been detained and as members of his family were assembled in front of the police station, the police took Ato Abera in double cabin pickup car (plate number not known) to an unknown place. Two armed persons in civilian cloths also accompanied Ato Abera.

Following information they had received, members of Ato Abera’s family had gone to Addis Ababa Criminal Investigation Department looking for Ato Abera, but the policeman on duty informed them that “there was no one here with the name of Ato Abera”. Suspicious of the policeman’s response, they patiently waited for further information. In the mean time, they saw one of the policemen and the driver of the car that had arrested Ato Abera. These two informed them that Ato Abera was undergoing investigation and told them to wait. After waiting for a long time, the policeman on duty told them that Ato Abera was at the Department and that they should bring him some bread. Ato Abera and his family members were able to see each other from a distance. His family members then left home.”

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61st Special Report: An urgent call For the Immediate disclosure of the Whereabouts People Who Have Been Abducted and Disappeared!

Posted on 21st March 2003 by HRCO
Categories: Press Releases, Special Report
Posted on: Mar 21, 2003
Region: Addis Ababa, Amhara, Dire Dawa, Oromia, Southern Nations

“It would have been the primary duty of a government that claims to stand for the cause of democracy, the rule of law, and the respect of human rights, to be governed by and ensure the respect of the very laws which it has promulgated and the universal declarations and conventions which it has ratified. In principle, the EPRDF government should, through its own initiative, take practical action to demonstrate its commitment to ensuring the rule of law, the establishment of a democratic system, and the respect of human rights. In cases where it finds it difficult to do so, the government should take practical action towards the achievement of these ends on the basis of the clues provided to it and calls made by bodies such as EHRCO. However, the regime continues to turn a deaf ear to the evidence, appeals, suggestions and views forwarded to it by EHRCO and other parties that are deeply concerned about the country’s fate and destiny. The unwillingness on the part of the government to give serious attention to the issues is perplexing indeed.

EHRCO has been repeatedly urging and entreating the government to take measures with a view to checking and putting under control various human rights violations that are being committed in the country. The cases of those persons whose whereabouts are unknown after they were abducted by state security forces are among most serious human rights violation issues. There are many people who have been abducted by state security forces from the streets, their residences, and offices and whose whereabouts remain unknown ever since. EHRCO has, in the reports it has issued so far, disclosed that 210 people have been abducted by state security forces and taken to unknown destinations. EHRCO has, through its investigative and follow-up efforts, discovered that a few of the individuals that were abducted have been released after having undergone great miseries and ordeals. The whereabouts of most of the rest still remain unknown. EHRCO has confirmed from the families of the abducted persons that the whereabouts of the persons whose names and photographs presented in this report are unknown since the time of their abduction.”

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