April 23/2005

Twelve years ago, Ms Aberash berta, Lemma Hailu and Tesfaye Kebede were arrested in Addis Ababa following the martyrdom of the EPRP leader Gebre Igziabher (a.k.a. Gaim) who died in a shootout with the police of the ruling TPLF/EPRDF. The above three were all long time members of the opposition Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party/EPRP/ which had been declared illegal and is still repressed by the new regime.

Aberash berta, Lemma Hailu and and Tesfaye kebede thgus joined the many other EPRP "disappeared" (some since 1991) like Tsegaye Gebre Medhin,Sitotaw Hussein, Yishak Debretsion, Belete Amha,Teklai Gebre Sellasie, Hagos Bezabih, Berhanu Ijigu, Azanaw Demile, Demissie Tesfaye,Eyob Tekeba,Mot Baynor, Wondu Sirak Desta,Teshome Beyene and Deslaegn Amsalu among others. Tesfaye, Aberash and Lemma were held in dark room,their legs chained to the wall, in one of the ghost prisons of Addis Abeba.They were later transferred to Holeta and held there but their where about has been unknown for the last six tos even years. Tesfaye Tadesse,a lawyer and human right activist who was first jailed with them and later released, was subsequently brutally killed in Addis Abeba by the death Squad of the ruling front.

Repeated demands addressed to the regime of Prime Minster Meles Zenawi have been ignored. Sadly enough, the local human rights body and international organizations like Amnesty have also, for reasons known only to themselves, refrained from demanding on the account of the above disappeared.

SOCEPP calls on all human right organizations to demand information on the where about of the disappeared in Ethiopia.