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67th Special Report: Stop Violating the Human Rights of Journalists!

Posted on 23rd October 2003 by HRCO
Categories: Featured, Special Report
Posted on: Oct 23, 2003
Region: Addis Ababa

“Ato Araya Tesfa Mariam (the victim) is a resident of Yeka sub-municipality, kebele 06; house number 404.He is 28 years old and is father of a 9-year-old girl. He had been a reporter for The Reporter newspaper from1996-1998. He has been working with the Ethiop newspaper and magazine since2002.

Ato Araya told EHRCO that three men who were wearing the Federal Police uniform had made an attempt on his life. According to him, on 1 October 2003 at about 9:30P.M. he was returning home from work when he saw a car parked at a place where there was no street light. Alerted by the strangeness of the situation, he continued walking to the direction of his home. And when he got close to the car, three men in Federal Police uniform came out of their hiding place in the dark and hit him twice on the head by a ball-pointed iron rod. When he fell to the ground, the men continued to hit him with the iron rod.

While laying on the ground, Ato Araya heard one of the men ordering in Tigrigna, to kill him and the other one responding that he was dead. Then, the attackers went to their car and, put the car’s lights on and watched the situation of their victim. Then, they lifted him up, took him to the Abo Bridge and threw him into the riverbed under the bridge. He fell on a rocky ground in the river. The bridge is 5-6 meters high. Afterwards, the three men entered their car and took off. Ato Araya remained unconscious for about half an hour as a result of the injury he sustained by hitting the ground when he was thrown into the river. When he became conscious, he was too weak to be on his feet. He crawled on all fours and managed to reach and knock at the door of a house located on the riverside. The residents of the house opened the door and let Ato Araya in and called his family, as they happen to know him.”

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67th Special Report: Stop Violating the Human Rights of Journalists!

Posted on 23rd October 2003 by superuser
Categories: Special Report
Posted on: Oct 23, 2003
Region: Addis Ababa

It is to be recalled that EHRCO has issued reports at different times condemning the imprisonment and harassment of journalists by government security forces. It has also repeatedly appealed that the illegal acts committed by government security forces on journalists are in clear contravention and violation of the basic human rights of citizens. Article 29 of the FDRE Constitution stipulates in the following Sub Articles that;

  1.  Everyone has the right to hold opinions without interference.
  2.  Everyone has the right to freedom of expression without any interference. This right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of an art, or through any media of his choice.
  3.  In the interest of the free flow of information, ideas and opinions that are essential to the functioning of a democratic order, the press shall, as an institution, enjoy legal protection to ensure its operational independence and its capacity to entertain diverse opinions.

Moreover, Article 19of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights similarly provide those rights. Nevertheless, in utter disregard of these constitutional and international principles, government forces have recently committed an illegal act against a journalist who works for the Amharic weekly, Ethiop. The details of the human rights violation committed on the journalist are presented in the full report.

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68th Special Report:The Problems of an Ill-Prepared Resettlement Programme

Posted on 17th October 2003 by HRCO
Categories: Special Report
Posted on: Oct 17, 2003
Region: Amhara, Oromia

” Ethiopia is one of the few countries that are subject to periodic droughts and severe famines. The fact that the number of people that need relief food reached its all time record is an indication that the problem of drought has become chronic. It is saddening to see the peasant population starved and waiting for others for their daily bread in a country where more than 80% of the population depends for their livelihood on agriculture and the economic policy is said to have been agriculture-led.

Identifying the right cause of the famine is not only an achievement by itself it also help to seek lasting solution to the problem. However what could be gathered from the fact that the famine is striking repeatedly is that a consensus has not been reached between the government on the one hand and the general public on the other as to identifying the real cause of the problem and seeking solutions.

In a situation where the real causes of the problem remain obscure, it is highly doubtful if measures that are being taken to deal with the famine would bring about a lasting solution. Some measures are not well panned and end up in worsening the situation rather than solving the problem. One of the measures that the government is taking to do away with the famine is to resettle victims of the famine to different areas. The resettlement activity which is being carried out without sufficient preparation has caused different problems on the resettles. Based on the information it received, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) conducted investigations on different resettlement villages in Bale and North Gondar Zones.

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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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