01/12/2018

Ethiopia is still far from a political spring and democratization

13 regime critics sentenced to prison terms following announcement that political prisoners will be released (Press Release)

On January 3, 2018, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn had announced that several political prisoners were to be released. Foto: UNIDO via Flickr

Despite an announcement regarding the release of political prisoners, Ethiopia again sentenced 13 dissidents to prison terms during the past two days – as the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) in Göttingen reported on Friday. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court in Addis Ababa sentenced nine alleged supporters of the opposition movement Ginbot 7 to prison terms between three and sixteen years. On Thursday, four more people, including the leading Oromo opposition politician Bekele Gerba, were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for singing a song during court proceedings, as a form of protest.

“The recent harsh judgments against regime critics show that Ethiopia is still far from a political spring and democratization,” criticized Ulrich Delius, the STP’s director. “The situation in Ethiopia will not calm down without far-reaching political reforms and without respect for the basic human rights, especially regarding the Oromo people, who have been marginalized and persecuted for decades.” On January 3, 2018, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn had announced that several political prisoners were to be released. Then, there had been media reports that the authoritarian country was planning to set all political prisoners free – but the government had contradicted this statement two days later.

According to the STP, the case of the Oromo politician Merera Gudina, who has been in custody since November 30, 2016, clearly shows that Ethiopia is far from fundamental changes in the political landscape. Gudina has been answering to the Supreme Court in Ethiopia for months. Together with other opposition politicians, he had attended a hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels – and the authorities are now treating them as “terrorists”. Previously, he had informed Chancellor Angela Merkel about the catastrophic human situation in Ethiopia, during her visit to the country in October 2016.

It was only on December 29, 2017, that the court rejected an objection from Gudina’s defense lawyers. They had tried to keep the prosecutors from submitting further alleged “evidence” against the Oromo politician. The defense lawyers repeatedly accused the court of violating international standards of fair trial. For example, the defense lawyers were denied access to a list of prosecution witnesses, so the identity of the witnesses is still unclear.

Header Foto: UNIDO via Flickr