Government accused of "intellectual repression"

The Ethiopian government is muzzling educators and students with a policy of harsh repression, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Friday. This policy included extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, and widespread denials of freedom of opinion and association, it said. "Ethiopia's security forces have targeted students and teachers, because they are among the most politically active elements of Ethiopian society," Saman Zia-Zarifi, the academic freedom director for HRW, is quoted as saying. "Ethiopia is on the brink of another famine, and it needs educated people to lead the country out of this disaster." The report, entitled "Lessons in Repression: Violations of Academic Freedom in Ethiopia", documents what it calls "an ongoing pattern of impunity among federal and state security forces", accusing them of using excessive lethal force to disperse protests by unarmed high school students and the other civilians. It cites the killing, last year, of five high school students who were protesting against economic conditions in Oromiya State, and the arbitrary arrests of hundreds of students, teachers and other intellectuals. The report also cites the killing of more than 40 Addis Ababa University (AAU) students in April 2001. The students had boycotted classes, demanding academic freedom, including the right of the students' union to meet and publish a newspaper. The report said a climate of self-censorship reigned at AAU and other campuses. The government had imposed a system of evaluations known as "gimgema", or self-criticism, which could be used to pressure academics into touting the ruling party's ideology, thereby forcing some of the most distinguished professors to resign in protest. The report says the government has also continuously harassed the independent Ethiopian Teachers' Association (ETA) over the past decade, arresting its leadership and some members, confiscating its assets and property, and threatening teachers who support the union. The government used similar tactics to repress journalists and civil society groups, including the Ethiopia Human Rights Council, in recent years, the report added. "These groups are being targeted because they are the most politically active elements in Ethiopian society," HRW said. Taken together, these actions had created "an environment strongly hostile to independent thought". As an important strategic ally in the US-led war on terror because of its position in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia had "escaped international censure for many of these violations". "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," the report quoted Zia-Zarifi as saying. Click here for full report