Statement of the National Assembly on Ethiopia's Human Rights Violations
The National Assembly:
Recalling the practice of ethnic hatred that the Ethiopian regime has been doggedly
pursuing in the last two and a half years as a matter of official, publicly
declared policy to impart an ugly dimension to the conflict;
Recalling further that the Ethiopian government has unilaterally revoked the
bilateral agreements and provisions that existed between the two countries allowing
each other's citizens to enjoy particular rights and privileges;
Mindful of the excessive financial and physical damages, as well as emotional
and psychological trauma, that these policies have inculcated on Eritreans and
Ethiopians of Eritrean origin who have been deported en masse from Ethiopia
purely on the basis of their ethnicity and through the confiscation of their
lifelong earnings and the cruel separation of families, often by stripping them
of their citizenship retroactively in violation of International Conventions
that Ethiopia itself has signed;
Strongly deploring the continued detention and deaths in detention in Dediesa
and other concentration camps of innocent Eritrean civilians who have been forced
to languish in these prisons for more than two years now without due process
of law;
Deeply concerned by the plight of over 18,000 underage Eritreans who have been
left behind in Ethiopia as a result of a deliberate policy of separation of
families;
Condemning further the illegal policy that the TPLF regime continues to pursue
to obstruct family reunion by preventing Eritrean youth from return voluntarily
to their country;
Deeply disturbed by the growing reports of thousands of innocent Eritrean civilians
missing in Ethiopia, and recently from the occupied areas, whose whereabouts
remain unknown after being taken from their homes and work places by the regime's
security authorities;
Deploring the wanton destruction of public, commercial and private premises,
including churches, mosques, holy shrines and historical monuments and artifacts,
and the looting of property that the TPLF regime has and continues to perpetrate
in the occupied areas, and especially prior to pulling out from sovereign Eritrean
towns and cities in an act of deliberate State vandalism and in contravention
of the provisions of the Cessation of Hostilities that it has signed on June
18, 2000, in Algiers;
Noting that the TPLF regime continues to plant new land mines in the occupied
areas in violation of operative paragraph 8 of the Agreement on Cessation of
Hostilities as well as UN Resolution 1320 on the deployment of the peace keeping
force;
Outraged by the groundless accusations that the TPLF has leveled against Eritrea
claiming that thousands of its citizens are languishing in "concentration
and labor camps in Eritrea"--preposterous accusations which are meant to
cover up its gross violation of human rights, to absolve itself from its obligation
of receiving its own nationals, and to fabricate a pretext for continuing its
war of invasion;
Noting with regret that lukewarm international reaction has encouraged the TPLF
regime to perpetrate acts of ethnic cleansing and gross violation of human rights
with impunity for the past two years:
1. Calls on the international community, and in particular the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN Commission on Human Rights, to
ensure the protection of the human rights of Eritreans held hostage in the occupied
areas in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, international law and Article
1 of UN Resolution 1320. In this regard, the National Assembly calls for the
immediate dispatch and placement of permanent human rights observer groups from
the ICRC, the UN Commission on Human Rights and other bodies to monitor the
situation and ensure the provision of relief assistance to these victims;
2. Calls on the international community to put pressure on Ethiopia to release
Eritrean civilian detainees in Dediesa and other concentration camps in accordance
with the Agreement on Cessation of Hostilities and the provisions of the Geneva
Conventions;
3. Calls upon the UN to expedite the deployment of the peacekeeping force so
as to eliminate, as early as possible, the gross violation of human rights perpetrated
by the TPLF regime in the occupied areas;
4. Urges the UN to put pressure on the TPLF regime to demine the landmines
it has planted and to stop planting new landmines in the occupied areas in violation
of operative paragraph 8 of the Agreement on Cessation of Hostilities and article
7 of UN Resolution 1320;
5. Recalling its Resolution of June 26, 1998, which stressed that Eritrea would
not react in a spirit of vindictiveness and reciprocity in the face of the TPLF's
cruel policy of ethnic cleansing, the National Assembly underlines Ethiopia's
national and international obligations to receive its own nationals and resolves
to ensure the repatriation of Ethiopians to their country will be conducted
as in the past safety and dignity and through the involvement of the ICRC.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2 October 2000