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49th Special Report: A Conflict That Resulted in Many Deaths in Tepi, Shekicho Zone

Posted on 2nd May 2001 by HRCO
Categories: Special Report
Posted on: May 2, 2001
Region: Southern Nations

“Beginning from 1992, members of the Shekicho ethnic group who had organized themselves under the Shekicho Peoples’ Democratic Movement (SPDM) and become supporters of the ruling party have been administering Yeki Wereda. Objecting to this, the Sheko and Mezengir ethnic groups demanded that the Sheko and Mezengir pull out of the Shekicho Zone, and that Yeki Wereda be included in Gambella Administrative Region. In a referendum held in 1993, it was agreed that Shekicho Zone would remain in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Administrative Region (SNNP) and Yeki Wereda too would continue within Shekicho Zone.

Yeki Wereda’s 120,000 population is a mixture of Sheka, Mezengir, Menja, Amhara, Oromo, Kefa, Agew, Menit, Tigre, and Bench peoples. It is believed that most of these ethnic groups participated in the 1993 referendum when it was decided that the regional status of both Shekicho Zone and Yeki Wereda would remain unchanged. Members of the Sheko Mezengir ethnic groups who were dissatisfied with this decision raised the issue once more through their Sheko-Mezengir Peoples Democratic Unity Organisation (SMPDUO), which they established in 2001. However, all officials from the regional to the Wereda government told them that their demand was inappropriate.”

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41st Special Report: Inhuman and Cruel Violation of the Rights of Children

Posted on 30th April 2001 by HRCO
Categories: Featured, Research and Studies, Special Report
Posted on: Apr 30, 2001
Region: Addis Ababa, Amhara, Dire Dawa, Harari, Oromia, Southern Nations

“The recent Ethio-Eritreen war, inter-ethnic conflicts in different corners of the country and the spread of HIV-AIDS have increased the number of the dislocated. There is no dispute as to the pathetic fact that most of the victims of these tragedies are children. Due to the reasons mentioned above, children who do not have parents or economically strong relatives to support them are forced to discontinue their education. The streets, churches, mosques, bus and taxi stations of cities in Ethiopia are crowded by a frighteningly increasing number of these defenseless citizens.

From the beginning, the government tried to solve this problem by rounding them up and taking them to and abandoning them in the woods outside cities. But, besides being inhuman, cruel and illegal, this action of the government could never resolve the problem. Children who are less than 10 years of age and without parents, parents who have lost their houses and properties due to different reasons, shoeshine boys, newspaper vendors and others who are forced to make the streets their homes have been victims of this government action. As of February 2001 the government is once more engaged in similar cruel and illegal actions against children and destitute adults in Addis Ababa.”

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42nd Special Report: An Appalling and Dangerous Violation of the Rights of Students

Posted on 21st April 2001 by HRCO
Categories: Research and Studies, Special Report
Posted on: Apr 21, 2001
Region: Addis Ababa
Ethiopian_Student_Protest_2001_02
Addis Ababa University Student Protest

“On 11 April 2001, the students were peacefully awaiting responses to their demands when security police entered the University campus and systematically beat, as one would snakes, the heads of the students who had no arms other than pencils and exercise books. According to information collected by EHRCO, no less than forty students sustained both heavy and light bodily injuries as a result of these brutal attacks by the security police. Some government and University officials admitted, on television, their ignorance of the security force’s entry into the University campus, the atrocious actions taken by it against the students, and expressed their disapproval of both. Nevertheless, because the Minister of Education was unwilling to pursue her own public condemnation of the security police’s illegal actions, the situation deteriorated further.”

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40th Special Report: Stop the Violation of the Rights of Human Rights Defenders!

Posted on 18th March 2001 by HRCO
Categories: Laws, Special Report
Posted on: Mar 18, 2001
Region: Addis Ababa, Amhara, Dire Dawa, Oromia, Southern Nations

“EHRCO has been issuing numerous reports on the human rights situation in the country. It is only after collecting and verifying information that EHRCO issues its reports. To collect and verify information, EHRCO usually dispatches its staff and, when necessary, members and supporters to those places where complaints and reports of human rights violations are said to have occurred. But, in trying to carry out their assignments, EHRCO’s workers often face many difficulties. These include maltreatment and threats by officials and armed government cadres of the different regions of the country.”

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Special Report No. 38: The Harm Done by Ethnic and Religious Conflict

Posted on 23rd February 2001 by HRCO
Categories: Featured, Research and Studies, Special Report
Posted on: Feb 23, 2001
Region: Amhara, Oromia, Somali, Southern Nations

“During the past two years alone, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) has issued no less than six reports about such ethnic conflicts in the country. These reports have been disseminated to the public, concerned governmental and non-governmental organisations and officials. However, because of resource and other constraints, EHRCO could report on a relatively smaller portion of the damage caused by these conflicts. EHRCO has reported on the limitations facing it in each of the reports it has issued. The indifference, sometimes partisanship, of government officials at various levels of responsibility appears to suggest that these conflicts were intentioned. Not only has the party in power refrained from taking lasting and just solutions to the ethnic and religious conflicts arising from the government’s ethnic policy, but it has also covered up the problem, thereby preventing the public from assisting in the search for such peaceful resolutions of the problem.”

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37th Special Report: Stop the Repeated Violation of the Rights of Students

Posted on 23rd January 2001 by HRCO
Categories: Research and Studies, Special Report
Posted on: Jan 23, 2001
Region: Addis Ababa, Amhara, Oromia

“Since the beginning of the new Ethiopian year (i.e., September 2000), various human rights violations have occurred against students of Jimma and Bahir Dar Universities, students of Awassa Teachers College and Tabor Junior and Senior High School as well as residents of the town, and against students of Addis Ababa University.

At Jimma University, medical science students had recently submitted peacefully their complaints about their education and the inadequacy of facilities. Instead of having open and free discussions with the students, were threatened and intimidated into vacating the University campus. Not only did this disrupt the learning-teaching process, but also it did not resolve the students’ and the University’s problems.

At Bahir Dar University, many students have been suffering from typhoid as a consequence of which two students died, over one hundred have sustained serious injuries to their health due to lack of appropriate and prompt medical assistance.”

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