February 17, 2000
MURDERS BY POLICE IN HADIYA ZONE:
BRING THE KILLERS TO JUSTICE EPRDF special armed police units (Fetno Derash) under the direct order of the Tigrai People's Liberation Front Central Committee (TPLF) member, Bitew Belay, continue to act contrary to the law and to the rights of the people in the Southern region. SOCEPP has previously documented gross human rights violations linked to the coming May elections and the government's opend desire to stifle opposition. On February 9, government forces in the Usmanicho Kebelle, Soro district, Hadiya zone, rounded up numerous peasants on the official charge that they have not paid the debts incurred when buying fertilizers (peasants have been forced to buy fertilizers from a government agency at exorbitant prices). More than 250 peasants were thus detained from the four zones now occupied by a large government armed force made up of the army and the police. On the fateful day, government police shot dead in prison ZELEKE ERGECHO and DEMEKE HOMEBO while wounding TESFAYE MAMO and WONDIMU HERTIRO. The police claim that the prisoners were "trying to escape" while other inmates assert that they had all opened the windows of their cells to look at the new arriving prisoners and that was when the police, unprovoked, shot and killed the above two. Actual reasons given by the people for the killings and the rounding up of so many prisoners are entirely political as the majority of the people in the zone have expressed their support to the opposition SEPDC which is trying to take part in the coming elections. Another such shooting incident was also witnessed in the same zone with police accused of killing a number of peasants. The government has dismissed the accusation of a massacre by arguing that " two or so trouble makers who resorted to violence have been shot". None of the killers have been apprehended, none has been brought before a court of law, the government has started no official inquiry. The repression, in fact, continues in many areas of the South. SOCEPP calls on the EPRDF government to stop the repression in the region, to bring the killers of the prisoners to justice and to open an official inquiry into the brutal actions of the government police commanded by none other than the TPLF leader Bitew Belay himself.
