Reuters, Nov 27, 2005 – Detained Ethiopian Opposition leaders facing possible treason charges said yesterday they would go on hunger strike this week to pressure the government to release them.
Members of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) arrested earlier this month amid deadly violence during protests over disputed May elections said they would begin refusing food today.
“As of Monday, all who are behind bars, with the exception of diabetics, are starting a hunger strike until the government responds to our demands and releases us from prison,” CUD deputy chief Bertukan Mideksa said.
She and a number of other jailed CUD officials, including party chief Hailu Shawel, denied any wrongdoing as they spoke with reporters allowed a rare visit to the central Addis Ababa police facility where they are being held.
“There is no crime,” Hailu said. “If there is none, you have to create fictitious ones. We have not (even) committed a petty crime, let alone a crime that could be described as treason.”
The hunger strikers are among 48 prisoners, most of them CUD officials, held at the Criminal and Forensic Investigation Department since early November when four days of violence erupted in the capital and outlying towns, killing at least 48 people.
Last week, the country’s high court denied them bail, agreeing to a police request for more time to complete their investigations before presenting formal charges.
However, the government accuses them of trying to foment a coup by calling for mass protests over the May 15 poll result. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said they could face treason charges, which carry the death sentence.
The CUD, which won 109 seats in Parliament, but says massive fraud by the ruling party robbed it of victory, is boycotting the legislature and has urged a campaign of civil disobedience to force a new election.
Meles and his Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) have rejected the fraud charges and ruled out fresh elections.
Protests against the poll result turned deadly in June when police fired on protesters in Addis Ababa, killing at least 37. Violence broke out again on November 1 after efforts to find a compromise failed.
Authorities then launched a crackdown on the CUD leadership, arresting most of the party’s leadership.
“There is no crime to charge us with, even the police can’t link our party to the violence in Addis Ababa,” said Bertukan. Earlier yesterday in the capital, hundreds of competitors exploited a 10-kilometre charity race to berate the government.
More than 200 runners flashed victory signs, a CUD symbol, as they crossed the finish line and shouted anti-Meles slogans.
A similar number of people later disrupted the prize-giving ceremony by whistling and making victory signs with their arms.
Standing nearby were baton-equipped police, but they did not intervene.
Meanwhile in a DPA news report CUD leaders declared they were ‘political prisoners’.
The 48 men were detained in connection with post-election violence in June and early this month, but they insist their sole crime was opposing the government in power, that of the ruling EPRDF party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
‘Ours is a political, not a criminal case, and the government is wasting the resources of this poor country,’ Berhanu Nega, CUDP executive member and mayor-elect of Addis Ababa, said.
Hailu and Brehanu castigated the international community for ‘giving lip service’ to democracy, but failing to act during gross human rights abuses during the post-election disturbances this year in which many people were reported killed and scores of others were injured.
‘It is a mockery of human rights when such leading democratic countries as Germany and Britain greet the leader of a country only a few days after his government was involved in mass murder of demonstrators,’ Mesfin Wolddedmariam, CUDP member and civil rights activist, said.
He was referring to Meles’ visit to Bonn for a meeting of the German-African Forum hosted by President Horst Koehler, and to Prime Minister Tony Blair for congratulating Meles on his election for a third five-year term.