JUNE 2/ 2001

PRISONERS IN PERIL

 Reliable reports reaching SOCEPP reveal that leaders and members of the EDP and AAPO as well as many students who have been taken to the hell- hole called Shoa Robit are in peril due to inhumane detention conditions. Specific reports indicate that EDP secretary general Lidetu Ayalew, who is asthmatic, had contracted malaria and was suffering because the authorities denied him and others adequate medical treatment. The EPRDF government has often adopted this method (brutal condition of detention and denial of medical treatment) to deliberately cause the deaths of political prisoners. This is indirect murder as we have witnessed so many times in the Kaliti prison and in the treatment of the late professor Asrat. The harsh conditions of detention at Shoa Robit and Zwai have already been documented in the past but recent reports state that a typhus epidemic has struck Shoa- Robit and the corpses of dead prisoners are being taken out on a daily basis.

SOCEPP calls on the red Cross and other prison observatory bodies to demand a prompt visit to Shoa Robit, Zwai and other such detention centers. A vigorous campaign must be launched immediately to assure the immediate release of those illegally detained in these places.

SOCEPP