Ethiopia lessons in repression: violations of academic problems, HRW

The Oromia State Council also reported one student killed and six wounded in Gedo. The council’s
statement said that, in addition to the five students who were killed, three militia members, five policemen, and
ten civilians were injured in the disturbances and that angry mobs killed a policeman, burned forty houses, and
engaged in looting in eastern Wollega outside Shambu. The statement added that nine policemen were wounded
in Bako and reported disturbances in Ghimbi, Najo, Dembi Dolo, and Guder. The state claimed that the OLF had
infiltrated schools, organized students and teachers, and “instigated them into engaging in violence and acts of
lawlessness.” 53 A journalist who had been on the scene told Human Rights Watch that angry residents in a village
outside Shambu, some of whom possess illegal firearms, shot at police who were pursuing a student leader
seeking refuge in the village. 54
Subsequent Arrests
“In [my home town], every educated person is a criminal to [the authorities] no matter what you do,” said
an Oromo university student who lives in Addis Ababa. He told Human Rights Watch researchers he was afraid
to go home to his village because so many people had been arrested in the wake of the protests. 55 Since March,
Human Rights Watch has received hundreds of reports of arrests of students, teachers, and others in towns
throughout Oromia including Ambo, Bale, Guder, Jimma, Nazret, Nekemte, and Shambu and in the eastern city
of Harar. Intellectuals have born the brunt of these arrests. 56 In the cases that Human Rights Watch has
documented, most detainees were arrested in March or April 2002 and held for weeks or months in the central
prisons of major regional towns. Some were ill-treated. Most had been released on bail by late July, although
Human Rights Watch received isolated reports of continued detention including, the detention of Gelana Nada
and two other high school students in Ambo and high school teacher Rago Ali in Nazret. 57
The largest number of arrests was reported in Ghimbi. A student told Human Rights Watch that 1,798
people were detained at the Ghimbi central prison while he was there in March 2002. 58 He estimated that up to
half of them had been arrested in the wake of this year’s student protests and that the remaining detainees had
been there as long as five or ten years on suspicion of collaborating with the OLF. He was arrested in late March
in his home village some twenty kilometers away, where he had been tutoring high school students while he was
suspended from Addis Ababa University in the wake of the 2001 student strike (discussed below). He was
detained for one week at his local district police station along with two other university students and fourteen high
school students. Police who interrogated him asked, “Why are you teaching high school students to be full men?”
He and another university student were then transferred to the central prison in Ghimbi. “They didn’t beat me,
but others faced that,” he said. “I know of at least ten or thirteen prisoners who were tortured. . . . I saw them tie
someone’s hands with an iron chain and make him sleep on the ground for a week without shelter.” 59 Human
Rights Watch also received reports of a priest and a group of high school students from Bila including a girl
named Lalise Abose who were detained at Ghimbi. 60
Hundreds of arrests were reported in Ambo town, where police housed detainees in Haile Selassie’s
former palace when their growing numbers overwhelmed the local jail. One Ambo teacher arrested at his office
on April 16 along with a teacher, a school administrator, and a shopkeeper was taken to the Ambo palace. The
first night, he was kept outdoors in the cold without a blanket or mattress. Later, he was held in a three meter by
52 “Oromia Shakes with Student Uprising,” Finfinne Post, April 11, 2002.
53 Letter from Oromia State Council.
54 Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, July 27, 2002.
55 Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, July 27, 2002.
56 For the most comprehensive list of arrests reported, see Oromia Support Group, “Human Rights Abuses in Ethiopia.”
57 Human Rights Watch interviews with an individual recently released from prison in Ambo, July 31, 2002 and with an
intellectual from Nazret, July 29, 2002.
58 Oromos living abroad told Human Rights Watch that relatives living near Ghimbi estimated some 1,500 were detained at
the town’s central prison in June. Human Rights Watch interview by telephone, Oslo, Norway, July 1, 2002.
59 Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, July 20, 2002.
60 Human Rights Watch interviews, Addis Ababa, July 26, 2002 and Nairobi, July 12, 2002.
Human Rights Watch
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January 2003, Vol. 15,No. 2 (A)