BY SOLOMON DIBABA
Ethiopia is marking the international Human Rights Day after the nation has completed its operation on ascertaining the rule of law in Tigray region with full compliance with international human rights laws.
The operation was undertaken by taking a greater care for ensuring human rights for citizens whereby no civil casualties were registered while efforts to rehabilitate those affected is in full swing.
Human Rights as recognized by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 9148 are natural rights that are acquired by nature. However, these rights are also recognized by the laws of almost all countries in the world including the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and other laws derived from it.
This year, Ethiopia is marking The International Human Rights Day after TPLF has conducted a series of human rights violations like the massacre in Mai Kadra and disclosure of mass graves in the same area, Humera and under the condition in which TPLF has organized the massacre of members of the Northern Army who were deployed in Tigray to protect the safety of citizens in the region.
For some 27 years, human rights were the most used but utterly abused cliché and buzz word in Ethiopia. During this period, human rights were violated by TPLF on daily and hourly basis. The violation of human rights in Ethiopia took five basic forms including legal -technical, institutional and ethnocentric and political. Just a few words on each one of them for my readers.
Ethiopia promulgated TPLF sponsored legal instruments like Proclamation on Agency for Charities and Societies which prohibited NGOs particularly foreign NGOs from participating on issues of human rights, advocacy and Convention on the Rights of Children to which Ethiopia was a signatory. Hundreds of NGO leaders were either harassed or arrested simply because they organized election monitoring teams to support the voter rights in the country.
In terms of institutional arrangements, correctional, reformatory and prisons centers as well as prison administrations across the country were used by TPLF cadres as legal institutions for torture, castration and decapitation of regular inmates and political prisoners who were targeted through various repressive laws of the country.
Besides, the anti-terrorism law was deliberately enacted to frustrate and crash any level of opposition to TPLF manned administration under the guise of fighting against international and regional terrorist organizations. Press laws and Broadcast law was used to effectively curb freedom of expression that is expressively provided in the constitution.
The ethnocentric strategy of violation of human rights by the TPLF under the guise of EPRDF took three forms. The first was deliberate instigation of conflicts that ended every time with untold bloodshed and ethnic cleansing by creating conflicts between, Somalis and Oromos in their common internal borders, between the Gedeo and Gujji, Afar and Somali, Afar and Issa, Konso and Burji, Oromia and Amhara, Benishangule Gumuz and Amhara and a myriad of other conflicts that according to Prime Minister Abiy added up to 113 well registered conflicts.
The second type was violation of the rights of political opponents through kangaroo courts and secret abductions and arrests made in unofficial dungeons specially prepared by TPLF officials to illegally silence and choke ideological and political pluralism in the country.
The third strategy employed by TPLF was igniting religious conflicts across the country between Muslims and Christians. This happened sporadically in Jigjga, Jimma area and in Amhara region.
Fourth, the highest level of human rights violations that has probably not occurred anywhere in the world was the barbaric massacre of the members of the Northern Command and the massive massacre of innocent daily laborers in Mai Kadra which the ICC has so far failed to investigate. The Ethiopian government will indeed take the perpetrators to the court of law.
Fifth, use of government’s official security apparatus and the intelligence units as well as resources to do whatever they wished opened the door for TPLF officials to commit crimes that are yet to be thoroughly investigated.
TPLF committed a staggering form of human rights violations not only by forcefully recruiting the youth and the elderly in Tigray but also by compelling new recruits to use cannabis to blindly get into the war front without caring for their lives or future life.
However, in line with the reform program of the government, laws pertaining to civil society organizations, Human Rights Commission, National Election Board and other lawswere revised to ensure wider democratic rights while rules and procedures for ensuring human rights in prisons were also laid down in such a way that the human rights of the inmates are safeguarded.
Having restored the rule of law in Tigray, the government is already recommitting itself for safeguarding human rights as provided in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Herald December 5/2020
