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Shumet Sishagne, formerly of Ethiopia, has visited the Kilati prison where his longtime friend, retired Norfolk State University professor Yacob Hailemariam has been detained since Oct. 31, 2005. The last time was a few years ago during a return visit to his homeland.
“If you can envision hell, that is it,” Sishagne, a history professor at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, said last week, a day after he participated in a candlelight vigil at Norfolk State to protest the human rights atrocities by Ethiopia’s dictator government on its people and pray for Hailemariam’s release.
“You can’t live in that country and not know those prisons,” Sishagne says. He calls them “places of horror” because of abuse, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.
“It’s very difficult for an American to imagine what it is like.”
Hailemariam was 60 when the Ethiopia’s military accused him of being a traitor and arrested him.
The regime also targeted journalists who reported on the pro-Democracy movement, said Sishagne, who attended the same university as Hailemariam.
“He was a few years ahead of me. He was in the law school, and I was a student of history,” Sishagne said. Although Sishagne never met Hailemariam while at the university, he said he had heard of him.
Hailemariam was president of his law school class, said Aberra Meshesha, a professor of public administration at Norfolk State, who like his former colleague, left Ethiopia for the U.S. in the early 1970s. He not only is a former colleague of Hailemariam, but he and Hailemariam and his wife lived in the same Virginia Beach neighborhood.
After law school, Hailemariam had worked for the United Nations on several projects in different African countries. He served as a UN prosecutor in the Rwanda genocide case and was an advisor in the border dispute between Nigeria and Camaroon in West Africa.
Known by his students as “Dr. Yacob,” Hailemariam retired from his faculty position to run for a parliament seat in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government billed the May 2005 elections as the first truly democratic election in the country’s history.
The former NSU professor who taught international law was elected in a landslide over the incumbent from the ruling party.
“On Oct. 31, 2005, the government, led by Zeles Menawi, arrested and imprisoned Dr. Haile Mariam along with the rest of the CUD party leaders,” stated the program for the candlelight vigil.
Prior to lighting candles last Tuesday, the students assembled in the auditorium to hear faculty and student leaders and an Amnesty International representative decry Ethiopia for human rights violations and urge the NSU family to fight for Hailemariam’s release.
To raise money for the cause, students sold T-shirts that carried a message on the front: “Imagine standing up for what is right, and being imprisoned …” The letters on the back give the Web site, “freeyacob.com.”
Students collected signatures on petitions that ask Virginia’s senators and congressman to intervene and pressure Ethiopia’s regime to stop the oppression, torture and imprisonment of citizens for their pro-democratic views.
James Mayo-Pitts of Amnesty International Hampton Roads cited the case of a Hampton University professor who was also a political prisoner in Ethiopia and was released with the help of Amnesty International not long ago.
“I share this with you to offer some hope, to show that when people get together like we are tonight and organize to protest human rights violations such as political imprisonment and torture that we can make progress,” Mayo-Pitts said. “It is up to us to band together and hold government accountable.”
But human rights violations are not just in Ethiopia.
“Currently there are attacks on human rights around the world, and a lot of these attacks are happening under the guise of the War on Terror. I bring this up because Ethiopia is an ally of the United States in the War on Terror,” Mayo-Pitts said. “This creates two problems. One, the U.S. is reluctant to criticize an ally, but a more serious, global concern is that it opens the door for other countries to ignore human rights.”
“In looking at the different places around the world, we have to make sure we are telling these other governments and our own that we do not stand for this type of treatment.”
“You have a responsibility to let your voices be heard and protest these actions,” Curtiss Wall, a mathematics professor and president of the NSU Faculty Senate, told the audience.
Hailemariam’s wife, Tegist, thanked the students and faculty for their support and prayers. She had not talked to her husband since Oct. 28, two days before his arrest.
Larry Curtis, vice president of student affairs, visited Hailemariam at his home in Virginia Beach prior to his returning to Ethiopia where he was elected to a seat in parliament. Curtis says he asked himself why a father, husband, brother, colleague would leave his home and travel to Ethiopia to run for political office, knowing the risk and danger.
“The only answer is that Dr. Yacob loves his country and loves its people.,” Curtis said. He called Hailemariam “a man of conscience, a political prisoner.” “He went there to do good, and was taken away.
Keep him in your prayers.”
Shishagne, who attended two different prayer services for his imprisoned friend that drew a much smaller audience, was impressed with the program put together by groups of NSU students.
But the key to a successful resolution is the work yet to be done, he says.
“I am not optimistic, not until the U.S. government takes a firm stand against the Ethiopia regime. I think the government officials and to a certain extent the international community are blinded to the reality of what is going on in that country because Ethiopia is an ally in the war on terror. The people need to approach their elected officials and educate them about U.S. foreign policy and the injustices going on over there. •
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