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afrol News, 25 January - Human rights groups criticise the Ethiopian government for "muzzling educators and students with a policy of harsh repression that includes extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, and widespread denials of freedom of opinion and association." The US group Human Rights yesterday released a 52-page report, 'Lessons in Repression: Violations of Academic Freedom in Ethiopia,' which it says "documents an ongoing pattern of impunity among federal and state security forces accused of using excessive lethal force to disperse protests by unarmed high school students and other civilians." Being an intellectual can be a risky business in Ethiopia. Students and teachers, often among the most politically active elements of society, are frequent victims of human rights violations including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest, and denial of freedom of association and expression, the new report shows. According to the report, "Ethiopian leaders since Haile Selassie have targeted the academic community; the current government's continuation of such abusive practices emphasizes the serious obstacles facing Ethiopia before basic rights are respected and enforced not only on university campuses but across the country." For example, five high school students had been killed protesting economic conditions in Oromiya state last year and hundreds of students, teachers, and other intellectuals arbitrarily arrested. The state government claimed it could not afford to use non-lethal means of crowd control like teargas or water cannons, and had threatened to continue to shoot students if they continued protesting. - There is no excuse for shooting unarmed students or civilians exercising their rights, Saman Zia-Zarifi of Human Rights Watch said. "The United States and the United Kingdom should question the value of allying with a government that is so callous in dealing with its own citizens." In April 2001, students at the capital's Addis Ababa University had gone on strike to demand academic freedom, including the right of the student union to meet and publish a newspaper. Federal Special Forces however had "quelled their demonstrations with excessive force—storming the campus, killing more than forty, and arresting thousands. The government admitted wrongdoing but has not prosecuted those responsible," the US groups said. - Today, a climate of self-censorship reigns at Addis Ababa University, as on other campuses, the report says. Having been forced to drop their demands for academic freedom, the university's students went back to school a year after the strike. Professors say they curb independent political speech and activity because they are government employees who can be fired at will. The government has imposed a system of evaluations known as "gimgema," which may be used to pressure academics to tout the ruling party's ideology, the report alleges. Some of the university's most distinguished professors had resigned last month in protest of the gimgema system. According to Human Rights Watch, "the government has also continuously harassed the independent Ethiopian Teacher’s Association over the past decade, arresting the union's leaders and some of its members, confiscating its assets and property, and threatening teachers who support the union." Teachers, who represent the largest educated population in the country, have been critical of education policy and other government policies. The government had also used similar tactics "to repress civil society groups including the Ethiopian Human Rights Council and journalists in recent years," the US group noted. "Taken together, these actions create an environment strongly hostile to independent thought," Mr Zia-Zarifi concludes. The group's report had primarily been based on research conducted in
Ethiopia and Kenya in July 2002. Human Rights Watch researchers had
interviewed students, teachers, professors, members of civil society, and
international diplomats. Because government surveillance was perceived to
be nearly omnipresent, many people had "expressed fear when speaking about
human rights violations."
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