A policeman beats a young student with the butt of his rifle during student protests after Meles Zenawi rigged the May elections (BBC photo June 2005)

ADDIS ABABA – Meles Zenawi, arguably Africa’s most ruthless dictator who has committed crimes ranging from rampant street killings to the Gambella Genocide during his 15 years of reign of terror, has continued to inflict attacks on school children in Addis Ababa, a capital where the eyes of the diplomatic community are intentionally turned away from the crimes in front of them to a sabre-rattling over a dramatized border dispute.

Federal police stormed Menen and Menelik High Schools on Friday after students protested against the continued arrest of the popularly-elected Kinijit leaders and journalists. Students were beaten severely and savagely, with mothers sobbing from outside school fences.

At Menen, students were forced to kneel down for over 10 hours, in the course of which many students were savagely beaten by the police. Many students at Menelik were rounded up before they were savagely clubbed. Afternoon-shift students were turned back.

Meanwhile at Teferi Mekonnen, talks between night-shift students and the school principal on how to resume classes after a previous protest broke down Friday with the students rejecting the preconditions of renouncing student protests in addition to an agreement to pay a 300-Birr fee for damaged properties.

In the face of government repression, student unrest continues unabated.

In rural Ethiopia, state-sponsored terrorism remains unreported, with the exception of an extensive finding from the Human Rights Watch which said: “The government is deepening its crackdown in Ethiopia’s rural areas, far from the eyes and ears of international observers in Addis Ababa. People are being terrorized by federal police working hand-in-glove with local officials and militias.”