His Excellency Mr. Jens Stoltenberg
Prime minister of Norway
Glacisgata 1
Postboks 8001 Dep,
0030 Oslo, Norway
sfb@sm
Your Excellency Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg,
The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) is writing this letter in an attempt to bring to your attention the case of 400 refugees from Ethiopia who were dined political asylum in Norway, and the agreement recently signed between the Ethiopian and the Norwegian governments in relation to the case of those refuges. The agreement, which appears to have been politically motivated, aims at returning the 400 refugees to Ethiopia. Norway has a proud tradition of providing shelter for refugees from the Horn of Africa, including thousands of Oromo nationals, who fled their homeland to escape extrajudicial killings, kidnappings, disappearances, and imprisonments. We thank the government and the people of Norway for welcoming the victims of human rights abuses in Ethiopia, especially Oromo nationals, who were forced to flee their homeland in search of safety and security. We are truly disheartened and greatly alarmed by the prospect of those very refugees to be returned to Ethiopia, where the Oromo and other peoples of Ethiopia are subjected to arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention without trial, denials of job opportunities due to political reasons, confiscation of property without compensation and extrajudicial execution without any due process of law.
We believe that none of the 400 refugees will return to Ethiopia voluntarily. This means, if the recent agreement between Norway and Ethiopia is implemented, their return would be involuntarily, which is equivalent to deportation. We also believe that those refugees, if returned, would undoubtedly be facing all sorts of extrajudicial punishments. So, we now request that those refugees who were denied political asylum be allowed to stay in Norway until such a time when a government that believes in the rule of law, respects human as well as democratic rights of all nations and nationalities is established in Ethiopia. We presume that, as the Prime Minister of Norway – the beckon of hope for the survival of those refugees, and as a head of state of one of the politically and diplomatically respected nations of the world, you very well understand that have a huge moral responsibility not to allow the deportation of those refugees to Ethiopia.
The Honorable Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg,
Although Oromia, the Oromo regional state in Ethiopia, is autonomous on paper, the Oromos have never been allowed to have any meaningful voice in the affairs of their own state, which is totally controlled by the ruling Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is the leader of the TPLF, an organization that represents not more than 8 percent of the population of Ethiopia, while the Oromos, who constitute the single largest national group in Ethiopia and the third largest in the whole of Africa, are denied the basic democratic right to freely organize and democratically express their political opinions. Today, it is a serious crime that results in severe punishments such as death penalty and life imprisonment, under the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, to support and/or sympathize with any political organization that is independent of the ruling TPLF/EPRDF Party. As the underlying principle of this ruling party “You Are With Us; or Against Us” goes, any individual, group, or organization outside this umbrella of TPLF/EPRDF is always deemed “a terrorist”. The goal for such characterization is to persecute members, supporters, and/or sympathizers of any non-TPLF/EPRDF political organization under what is known as “anti-terror law”, which was intentionally made for this particular purpose under the guise of the international agenda of war on terror. Likewise, those refugees would undoubtedly be facing such harsh political punishments should they be forced to return to Ethiopia.
As reported by several local, regional, and international human rights and diplomatic organizations including the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Ethiopian Human Rights Council, the Oromia Support Group, Survival International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Commission of Jurors, the U.S. State Department Annual Human Rights Report, the European Parliament, and our own agency the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa, under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s regime, hundreds of thousands of members of various nationalities have been condemned to imprisonments of varying lengths, thousands have been killed extra judicially, and as a result, hundreds of thousands others have fled the country. What is more, even those who temporarily avoided such extrajudicial persecutions by fleeing the country are continuously being hunted in neighbouring countries in the Horn of Africa. Again as reported by those human rights organizations mentioned above, there have been hundreds of cases of kidnappings and forced deportations back to Ethiopian. There have also been some cases of extrajudicial killings by armed security agents of the Ethiopian Government, one case in point being that of Mr. Jatani Ali, that happened in Nairobi, Kenya in 1994.
In light of what has been briefly stated above, which is a tip of an iceberg in terms of massive human rights violations which forced so many Oromos and other nationals to flee their homeland, HRLHA appeals to you not to implement the agreement recently signed between Norway and Ethiopia. We believe no calling is more urgent and noble, and no responsibility is greater to your Excellency at this moment than averting the deportation of those 400 individuals from Norway to Ethiopia. We request that your administration set an example by using its enormous influence to put political, economic and diplomatic pressure upon the Ethiopian government so that it would start seeking peaceful settlement for its internal political instabilities.
Finally, we kindly request you, using this extraordinary opportunity of being a head of state of such respected country, to help bring to an end such human sufferings in Ethiopia. And, the first concrete step in that direction is by not implementing the recently signed agreement with the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
“We Fight for Human Rights”
Sincerely,
Garoma Wakessa ;- Executive Director
