From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu May 13 2010 - 09:21:51 EDT
Ethiopia Will Keep Opposition Leader in Prison Beyond Elections May 13,
2010, 7:52 AM EDT
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By Jason McLure
May 13 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopia’s government will ignore foreign and domestic
pressure to free opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa from prison and keep her
incarcerated beyond this month’s elections, Communications Minister Bereket
Simon said.
“We are not in a position to intervene in any legal affair,” Bereket told
reporters yesterday in Addis Ababa, the capital, in response to a question
about the jailed leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice party. “The
government has repeatedly declared its position is not to budge to any
foreign or local pressure.”
Birtukan, 35, has spent 500 days in prison since she was arrested on Dec.
29, 2008, after the government accused her of violating the terms of a
pardon under which she was released in 2007. She was originally jailed on
treason charges following protests after Ethiopia’s disputed 2005 elections.
Her continued imprisonment comes amid claims by government critics that the
May 23 vote won’t be free and fair.
“The best evidence that these elections cannot be genuine democratic
elections is that this woman, who should be running, is unable to do so
because she is jailed for life,” Ana Gomes, a Portuguese member of the
European parliament who headed the EU’s electoral mission to Ethiopia in
2005, said in a May 11 phone interview.
Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department labeled Birtukan a political
prisoner, and the United Nations Human Rights Council listed her as a victim
of arbitrary detention.
Her supporters say the former federal judge was jailed because she was the
opposition leader most likely to organize a successful nationwide challenge
to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic
Front, which has ruled the country since 1991.
“Had she been part of the election, not only the people here but the whole
country would have voted for her,” Leulseged Wubeshet, a 23-year-old
Birtukan supporter, said from her home neighborhood in northern Addis Ababa.
“She’s more popular than the others.”
--Editors: Paul Richardson, Philip Sanders.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via
Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin in
Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.
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