Ethiopia lessons in repression: violations of academic problems, HRW

Then, the same two officers came to me and said that the political roots of the organization are
known, and even though I know there could be no evidence of that [because we were merely
students requesting academic freedom, we had no ulterior political motivation], they said that
other students gave them the evidence. I was not political, I only wanted to pursue my chance to
have an education. I gave up everything to go to university. I even sold my property to have the
chance to pursue my education. They were linking my motives with the destruction that
happened in the country—but I was not in control of what other people did. One night they put
pistols in my mouth and made sounds like it was going off. They played with my life this
way. . . . I had no information about those people. I could tell them nothing, and still they
tortured me. . . .
They told me to separate myself from the student riots and to call all the students back to the
University. They told me to retract everything I had said and done and to tell the other students
that everything they did was a mistake. Otherwise, they told me I would be charged under a
provision of the criminal law, but they showed me no evidence that I had done what they said I
did.
They forced me to tape seven videocassettes saying these things. They beat me every time to say
I had not done it properly, and then I had to start over again. They told me to retract the
demonstration. They told me to [denounce] the intellectuals that spoke at the human rights
meeting. They told me to take responsibility for the three students who had been killed in Addis.
Later I learned that they had cut those seven tapes together with a speech they already had on tape
from before. I had given a talk about the need for unity of everyone, and I said that the fire that
occurred in the Oromo area is doing harm to all of us. I was calling for unity, saying that what
the OLF does is wrong, but saying that we should all be one country. They [edited] that speech
with the others and made it look like I spoke against the Oromo. 106
Another leader of the student movement, Daniel H., told Human Rights Watch he was arrested at home
on April 19.
I tried to escape out the window when the police came to my house. My mother said I wasn’t
there. They said they would take my older brother as a guarantee; he is a student at the
commercial college. My mother fell to the ground and cried, so I came and turned myself in. My
brother had not demonstrated. 107
He was taken first to a central police station for three days, then to his district police station for two days and later
transported overnight to Zewai prison. Police beat him at the district station and at Zewai. At the district station,
they beat him and forced him to sign a confession. At Zewai, police threatened to kill him and hit him with a rifle
butt. “I was never so afraid in my life,” he said. “I thought I would lose my life the next morning.”
His family had no idea where he was. They looked for him at prisons and police stations throughout
Addis Ababa and at Sendafa and Shoa Robit prisons, where large numbers of students had been detained, but had
not known to look at Zewai. He was released after twenty-two days in detention. He says he asked for
documentation confirming the time he had spent in detention, but the police refused. “They said, ‘do you want to
go home or not.’ I said ‘yes.’ They said, ‘then don’t ask such questions.’” He was never charged with a crime. 108
106 The detainee escaped from detention and fled the country. Human Rights Watch interview, Nairobi, April 4, 2002.
107 Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, July 19, 2002.
108 Human Rights Watch interview, Addis Ababa, July 19, 2002. Human Rights Watch interviewed three other people who
also said their families had no information about their whereabouts while they were detained at Zewai. One, an unemployed
man aged twenty-four, contracted tuberculosis there and almost died due to lack of medical care. Human Rights Watch
interviews, Addis Ababa, July 23, 26, and 29, 2002.
Human Rights Watch
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January 2003, Vol. 15,No. 2 (A)