June 12, 2001

 DEPLORABLE PRISON CONDITIONS EXPOSED

 The recent detention of the leaders and members of the legal opposition parties in the Shoa Robit and Zwai prisons has exposed the deplorable condition of detention that exists within these two hell- holes. The same is the case with the Akaki-Kaliti prison, the Mojo road secret prison, Gondar and Bahr Dar prisons,etc...

In Shoa Robit, where no less than 3000 prisoners suffer abjectly, more than 560 people are held in a big holding room that can accommodate no more than 100. Prisoners are ill fed, hardly ever given medical care (malaria and typhus are debilitating many), prisoners are forced to do hard labour and are kept barefoot. In ZWAI, thousands of Oromo prisoners (accused generally of supporting the OLF but never brought before a court of law) are being held in inhumane conditions and scores are dying every month from one ailment or another. On the Mojo-Debre Zeit road, an arms depot dug into a mountain during the Haile Sellasie period and later enlarged by the Mengistu H.M. government has been turned into a secret prison where political prisoners are being held in dark rooms (chelema bet), incommunicado. While political prisoners (often held in secret "ghost" prisons) suffer the most, non political prisoners are also held in shocking conditions in Fitchie, Nazreth and other places. In Tigrai, the detention conditions in Quiha,Makalle,Tembien,etc prisons are just as bad.

 Please write to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Society and Prison Observation Groups to urge them to visit the prisons in Ethiopia. The government must be made to stop the practice of operating secret prisons and of treating prisoners in a brutal way.

SOCEPP