Rights Group Claims Ethiopia Repression

By CHRIS TOMLINSON,  Associated Press Writer

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - Systematic political repression in Ethiopia's largest state has kept people there from freely participating in the country's third general election campaign, a leading human rights group said Tuesday.

In its report, New York-based Human Rights Watch calls into question the fairness of the electoral process in one of the United States' closest allies in Africa, saying the ruling party has cracked down on political activities in the state of Oromia.

The southern state is home to the Oromo people, who make up a third of Ethiopia's 73 million people, and it has been the center of dissent against the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front.

"The political freedoms required for elections to be a meaningful exercise of Ethiopian citizens' fundamental right to participate in the selection of their government do not exist for many Ethiopians,'' the group said its report.

Information Minister Bereket Simon dismissed the report as an attempt to undermine Ethiopia.

"Human Rights Watch are lying and they are fooling nobody,'' Bereket told The Associated Press. "This organization is politically motivated and bent, as usual, on undermining Ethiopia.''

Opposition parties disagreed.

"Oromia is a big problem,'' said Berhanu Nega, vice chairman of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy. "From the information I have, in a good part of Oromia it is becoming almost impossible to hold a fair election.''

He said his party would ask the National Electoral Board to suspend the elections in many areas of Oromia and other places where the opposition has been unable to campaign freely.

Human Rights Watch researcher Christopher Albin-Lackey said donors finance about a fifth of Ethiopia's budget, but they have been unwilling to criticize the government's human rights record.

"The government has been so consistently hostile of any kind of criticism of its human rights record that they seem to have been largely successful in cowing the donor community into silence, which is surprising,'' Albin-Lackey said in Nairobi, Kenya.

Since 2001, Washington has had improved relations with Ethiopia, despite two previous elections that were generally considered unfair. U.S. troops have worked with Ethiopian soldiers to improve regional security, as Ethiopia shares a long border with Somalia, a lawless country the United States fears could become a terrorist haven.

Ethiopia's May 15 national elections are considered an important test of the ruling party's willingness to bring democracy to Ethiopia, which has invited more than 150 international election observers here for the first time.

President Bush has made promoting free and fair balloting a cornerstone of American foreign policy, and U.S. officials will also be observing. But three independent U.S. groups promoting fair elections were expelled from Ethiopia last month for what the government said were visa violations.

Human Rights Watch noted in its report that the government has made some progress in opening up the media to the opposition, but that the situation in the countryside, where most Ethiopians live, remains oppressive, especially in Oromia.

The government has used a largely defunct rebel group, the Oromo Liberation Front, as an excuse to limit civil liberties in the state, the report says. Alleged participation in the rebel movement has been used to imprison thousands of Oromo, although there is little evidence the rebels are capable of carrying out significant attacks in the country, it said.

Regional authorities use local officials to monitor the speech and activities of people in Oromia and then use their power to deny them the chance to work, the report said. (PROFILE (COUNTRY:Ethiopia; ISOCOUNTRY3:ETH; UNTOP:002; UN2ND:014; APGROUP:Africa;) (COUNTRY:Kenya; ISOCOUNTRY3:KEN; UNTOP:002; UN2ND:014; APGROUP:Africa;) (COUNTRY:Somalia; ISOCOUNTRY3:SOM; UNTOP:002; UN2ND:014; APGROUP:Africa;) (COUNTRY:United States; ISOCOUNTRY3:USA; UNTOP:021; APGROUP:NorthAmerica;)