June 5, 2001

URGENT ACTIONS,VIGOROUS PROTESTS NEEDED

 * Reports reaching SOCEPP reveal that more than a dozen university students have been hiding in Nairobi afraid of deportation action by the local authorities. Contact has now been established with these students but all the students who have fled and continue to flee to Kenya need urgent assistance and support.

 * The health condition of many of the detained EDP and AAPO leaders and members continues to be very alarming. Ato Habtamu Tesfaye and Ato Atnafu Gebre Meskel,EDP members held in Shoa Robit, are in serious conditions as are others including the secretary general Lidetu Ayalew, Ato Tadios Tantu,and Abebe Tuilahun. Ato Tekle Yeshaw, who had been already sick in the 6th Police Station (Addis Abeba) is suffering from typhus/typhoid infection in Shoa Robit. The deplorable conditions in which the political prisoners are being held in Shoa Robit and Zwai calls for a vigorous world- wide protest.

* Among the many disappeared in connection with the student protests of last April, SOCEPP has received the names of student Mekonen Tafu (Menelik school) and Ethiopian Air Lines employee Fikre Mariam Tafesse Agde.

SOCEPP calls on Ethiopians abroad and on all peace loving people to help the exiled students and to call for the immediate release of the prisoners in Zwai and Shoa Robit.

SOCEPP