TPLF Can Not "Clean Its Record" Overnight

The TPLF regime has released thirty eight Eritrean exchange students from its prison camps. This is too little too late. The students languished in these brutal camps for eight months enduring beatings, poor conditions and lack of medical or humanitarian attention. One of the students, Gebrekidan Zecharias, died in detention. One thousand five hundred Eritrean civilians are still imprisoned in Ethiopian concentration camps and their death toll continues to rise.

These students should have never been touched; neither should the 1,500 young Eritreans who remain in detention in Blattien and other isolated prison camps around Ethiopia. The Eritreans who remain in detention are accused of being a security risk because some of them have completed their national service in Eritrea at some time.

The actions of the TPLF regime in this regard are beyond the pale. This was not reprisal or retribution. Indeed, the Eritrean government allowed Ethiopian students in the same exchange program to sit for their final exams before flying them back to Addis Ababa. This meant nothing to the TPLF regime. They have had a free hand with which to execute systematic repression of anyone with Eritrean connections and no retroactive pretence can exonerate them from the fact that they have destroyed thousands of lives and families for political gain. What will Ethiopia say to the family of Gebrekidan Zecharias? Indeed, what will they say to the families of thousands of Eritrean civilians who remain in remote prison camps in Ethiopia?

How can this have happened? How can a government that openly violates human rights and flagrantly unleashes its vengeance on innocent civilians continue to be pampered? How can the international community have turned their eyes from the unthinkable acts that were happening to people in their offices, in their neighborhoods, in their care and even in their homes?

The TPLF government has worked harder to shatter the relations of Eritreans and Ethiopians than any other government in our common history ever has. They have displayed a savage lack of scruples. Those who have said nothing and who have thought it suitable to deal with the TPLF while they committed these acts must hold themselves responsible as well.

The TPLF is using the confusion its current military offensive has created to "creep out the back door" on heinous crimes it has committed. Their guise is completely transparent. A solitary and insincere apology here, a long overdue concession there and now they hope that overnight they can clean a record tarnished by a public policy of persecution of innocent Eritreans. The international community must not tolerate this gimmick and should demand the release of the 1,500 innocent Eritrean civilians who remain in the TPLF's concentration camps.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Asmara, 14 February 1999