Ethiopia lessons in repression: violations of academic problems, HRW

Alemayehu Teferra, president of AAU, on charges of human rights violations under the Derg. As of November
2002, he was still in detention awaiting judgment, his trial reportedly delayed because of a shortage of
magistrates. 34
After the university reopened in April 1993, the newly appointed university president imposed new
contract requirements on all professors. The government-dominated administration also sent letters to forty-one
professors who had been critical of the government, summarily informing them of their dismissal—in violation of
their contracts, as well as of government and university policies. One of them told Human Rights Watch that their
demand for an inquiry into the government response to the protest was among the “political activities” for which
they were dismissed; the president of the university reportedly said they had incited students to demonstrate.
They and other educators had also been critical of a new policy that local elementary schools teach in local
languages and of other government policies.
Those dismissed at AAU in 1993 included five of the university’s eleven full professors, its only
specialists in some fields, and professors who had won international recognition for their scholarship. Some of
them were subsequently harassed by government soldiers. The government also made efforts to ensure their
continued marginalization, for example by intimidating their families and friends and staff of NGOs that hired
them. Yet another professor, Fesseha Zewde of the history department, was dismissed in June of the same year. 35
At the end of a three-week capacity-building workshop for university professors in July and August 2002, Prime
Minister Meles was quoted as saying that the government had dismissed the professors because they had made the
university their “political headquarters” and that he now “regretted the way the dismissal measure was taken.” 36
Despite the latter acknowledgment, the legacy of these firings continues to stifle academic freedom today.
Although the status of academic freedom in neighboring Eritrea (which gained independence from
Ethiopia in 1991) is beyond the scope of this report, it is worth noting that the leaders of the newly independent
country inherited the same disdain for academic freedom shown by Ethiopian authorities. In a 1993 study of
prospects for academic freedom in Eritrea, Human Rights Watch detailed a sustained policy of brutal repression
under both Haile Selassie and the Derg amounting to a “systematic policy of denying educational freedom to
Eritreans” for more than thirty years. 37 Human Rights Watch has continued to receive frequent disturbing reports
of arrests of students and other violations of academic freedom in Eritrea in recent years. 38
34 Human Rights Watch interview, Washington, DC, November 3, 2002.
35 Human Rights Watch interviews, Addis Ababa, July 21 and 24, 2002 and Washington, DC, September 23, 2002; Ivo
Strecker, “Addis Ababa University Under Siege”; Donald N. Levine, “Is Ethiopia Cutting Off Its Head Again?” Ethiopian
Review, No. 8 1993.
36 “Meles ‘regrets’ dismissing 42 university teachers,” Menelik, August 31, 2002, cited in Ethiopian Press Digest, September
5, 2002.
37 Africa Watch (now Human Rights Watch/Africa), “Freedom of Expression and Ethnic Discrimination in the Educational
System: Past and Future,” A Human Rights Watch Report, Vol. 5 No. 1, January 1993.
38 In 2002, for example, the government of Eritrea embarked upon a campaign to conscript youths, including university
students, who had not completed their mandatory service. An Asmara resident said the roundups were carried out ruthlessly
and that the city streets were practically deserted—most boys and men between the ages of fourteen and forty had either been
rounded up or had gone into hiding. 38 In May 2002, some forty Asmara University students were reportedly arrested and illtreated
for refusing to participate in a summer work program “Nearly Forty Dissident University Students Arrested,”
awate.com, May 13, 2002. (retrieved May 15, 2002). The former leader of the student council told the press that the same
thing happened to him and tens of others a year earlier; he managed to escape after spending a year in solitary confinement.
Chalachew Tadesse, Interview of Semere Kesete, Sub-Saharan Informer, August 2002 available at www.waltainfo.com,
(retrieved September 5, 2002).
Human Rights Watch
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January 2003, Vol. 15,No. 2 (A)