1. The imposition of large-scale repression continues unabated

The physical, psychological, moral and human cost of the after-math of the election in Ethiopia is both unforgivable and unforgettable. There was absolutely no reason why the country had to be in the situation it has been forced to be right now. There is no justification for repression. No justification for state of emergency. No justification for curfew. No justification to charge those who speak out for Ethiopia as committing ‘treason.’ There is no justification to allow the people to vote in the first place, and then deny them from knowing the true result. Why invite the people to participate in what the regime billed as a democratic election only to de-fraud the very election itself? If all along the regime has no intention to play by the democratic rule of the game, why play it and even more clumsily pretend to implement a democratic election when it has neither the intention nor the will to honour and respect the true verdict of the people.

It is now a fact that the people voted, but the true result of the election is not known, and now probably it will never be known. Only a re-run of a national re-election can rectify this electoral injustice. A well-meaning, humble Government would have done exactly that—a re-run of the national election. That of course requires a government with high ethics and a high sense of public service and historical responsibility. Unfortunately the Meles regime wants to be ‘honoured’ as a responsible regime when it does the most irresponsible things such as defrauding a national election. A national re-election is the last thing that the regime wants to concede, despite the fact of its acknowledgment also that the election had irregularities. Meles in fact in a BBC World Hard Talk interview said that a re-run was an option he would not find difficult to recommend. Why move from such a seemingly ‘reasonable’ position to ordering to shoot those that demanded to rectify what Meles himself talked about wishing to see rectified? We live in an Orwellian universe where the most unforgettable casualty is always the truth. This regime kills not only the people but also truth itself.

It is the regime that asked the people to vote! And when the people voted expressing their choices, the regime pounced and unleashed large-scale repression and massacres in June and November changing what started as a highly promising beginning into a nightmare of blood, tears and sorrow for the people. Now the repression is moving into high gear and the country has been gripped by fear and intimidation. The whole atmosphere has been poisoned. Young people have been targeted. The security forces have been unleashed ferociously.

Why did the regime panic so much? Why did it translate every demand for justice and democracy into a play for taking power? And why harbour such deep insecurities of loss of power with a grotesque belligerence and arrogance from any critical remark? Why choose to unleash barbaric repression when it is so easy to talk, to discuss, to enter into reasonable dialogue and solve problems? Why ignore all the counsels of friends and opponents to solve the post-election problems with reason, persuasion and argument? Why resort to force, targeting and removing young people to unknown destinations, change the whole country into an armed camp?

The people, the opposition and foreign friends of the regime pleaded for the release of the opposition leadership. The regime turned the other way. Until the leaders of the opposition are released and the country comes back to the pre- election situation, the people of Ethiopia both at home and abroad must keep the pressure on the regime to relent, to show humility, to apologise for all the crimes, deaths and harm that they put the country into. The regime is ferociously attacking the people.

Meles failed victim to a self-imagined scenario that the democratic resurgence will overthrow him. Having built such a false scenario, he took command over all forces, declared a state of emergency and paved the way for a mis-direction of the democratic process altogether. He violated both the constitution and the rule of law and exposed fully the superficiality and shallowness of his conversion to democracy in the first place.

2. Call for a worldwide protest to turn every day as an investment for justice and democracy

We must try to make every day as an investment for justice and democracy. January 6, 2006 is the Ethiopian Christmas Eve. It is a day that is especially useful to draw attention to the plight of the suffering in our country from blood, tears, sorrow and imprisonment. For all of us who resist the unjust imprisonment of all the people struggling for justice and democracy, it is a day to show our solidarity with them. It is a way of communicating our defiance and resistance against the same injustice they are struggling against. It is our way of expressing our solidarity and it exemplifies and highlights our demand that they be released without any delay. There is absolutely no reason to put them in jail or cart young people to far away places and camps. The regime must not suppress dissidence with violence. This is a call for all of us to persist in resistance against those that have imposed violence on the nation. We have chosen to resist with non- violent means of civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience shuns violence or force as a method of democratic struggle. It is a struggle by moral power and example. Those who dissent may be attacked by violence, but those that are committed to civil disobedience will not fight back. It is anti-constitutional to accuse those who called for civil disobedience as inciting violence or insurrection liable to death penalty. It is tasteless and ugly to treat these prisoners of conscience as hostages. Forcing them to negotiate as prisoners and not free people is immoral. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Free them first unconditionally and negotiate and enter into genuine dialogue that will not be sabotaged again by the greed and selfishness that agitates the soul of a soulless regime. To accuse Emeritus Professor Mesfin, Dr. Berhanu, Engineer Hailu, Judge Birtukan, Dr. Befekadu, Dr. Yakob and all the 131 prisoners from the professions of treason and genocide knowing full well these are people with impeccable record for their work on human rights, democracy, peaceful struggle to bring democratic transition against the odds is the height of madness. Our symbolic hunger strike on the Ethiopian Christmas day constitutes a form of civil disobedience. It would not surprise us if the regime takes this symbolic action as ‘treason’ and’ genocide’ as well!!

What worries us deeply is that the regime may have committed the genocide it accuses of others. The accusation against the opposition of committing genocide betrays a possible self-revelation that the scale of repression unleashed by the regime is tantamount to genocide. There is a need for an international investigation to discover the scale of genocide that may have occurred since the regime is using it to undermine and keep opposition leaders in jail. It has even accused people outside the country, academics, journalists, artists and others for the same crime.

3. The Call for a one-day symbolic hunger strike

We call on all the people of Ethiopia, and friends of Ethiopia both inside and outside to undertake a hunger strike for one day on January 6, 2006.

We call on all media outlets to relay this message on this Ethiopian X-Mas day eve, so that people throughout the world learn, debate and come together to put pressure on the regime to release the prisoners of conscience, stop mass repression and stop targeting young people and schools.

We call for the launching of a democratic atmosphere with the protection free press and right of association and assembly and the unconditional release of all journalists. Democracy means to tolerate the expression of views that power may find intolerable. The regime must not get away in translating everything it finds intolerable as’ treason’ and inciting ’genocide.’

The international community must insist that the regime respects human rights, the rule of law, democracy and open and transparent Government.

The regime has changed the call for the right to assembly and association as ‘insurrection’ and ‘treason’ deliberately to keep prisoners of conscience into prolonged imprisonment.

The international community must demand that it drops this outrageous conflation of right to dissent with crimes against the state and the people.

The international community must form an international inquiry commission and take up the EU parliament’s resolution and implement it including the targeted sanctions on the regime’s top officials that have contributed so much in changing the vibrant democratic environment into a state of fear and repression.

Let us say happy Ethiopian Christmas with a one-day symbolic hunger strike together in spirit with the prisoners of conscience with our families and friends all over the world, and in every hemisphere. We hope the churches in Ethiopia everywhere will encourage their publics to stand for justice and democracy by making Ethiopian Christmas eve – January 6, 2006, a worldwide conscience day to come united and resolve to defeat injustice and repression in Ethiopia.

Professor Mammo Muchie, Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Berhanu G. Balcha, Vice- Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter
Tekola Worku, Secretary of NES-Scandinavian Chapter

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