As the international
community has been condemning the Burmese military junta
for dragging Aung San Suu Kyi to a Kangaroo court once more, another
pro-democracy movement leader is spending her precious time in a harsh maximum
security jail. Birtukan Mideksa, 36, is one of the thousands of political
prisoners jailed in connection with a disputed national election in 2005. She is
held in solitary confinement condemned to life imprisonment without due
process.
Her people call her the
Ethiopian Aung San Suu Kyi. But there is at least one big difference between the
two women of courage in spite of the fact both are suffering for freedom's sake. The real Suu Kyi
is an iconic figure known across the globe while Birtukan is virtually unknown outside Ethiopia, a key U.S.
ally on the "war on terror" in the Horn of Africa.
When Suu Kyi appeared in
court to plead not guilty a few weeks ago, even US President Barack Obama issued
a statement. "Aung San Suu Kyi's continued detention, isolation, and show trial
based on spurious charges cast serious doubt on the Burmese regime's willingness
to be a responsible member of the international community," the President said.
Obama called on the junta “to drop all charges against Aung San Suu Kyi and
unconditionally release her and her fellow political prisoners.”
President Obama may not even
know that Meles has appeared determined to enforce the life term imprisonment he
imposed on Birtukan, whose soaring popularity appeared to him too costly to ignore. He told
journalists a few weeks ago that she has a “zero chance” of being released.
Despite the fact that Amnesty International considers her a prisoner of
conscience, she is held in a notorious maximum security prison called Kaliti.
Only her frail mother, 72, and her four-year old daughter are allowed to see her
for half an hour a week.
The military junta ruling
Burma [Myanmar] is isolated and loathed by Western governments. On the contrary,
the regime of Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia is a well-pampered ally of the United
States and its European partners. The Bush administration used to refer to the
Meles regime as a “linchpin” of the war on terror in the Horn of Africa and its
"strategic" partnership with the US seems to have been secure even today.
While the US imposed economic
sanctions against Burma in 1997, Meles has been enjoying a stream of financial
and military aid from the US and Europe since he came to power in May 1991.
Meles is still leader of the Tigrian People’s Liberation Front, a minority
ethnic guerrilla group that waged a bloody civil war to depose Mengistu Haile Mariam, another brutal dictator who fled to Zimbabwe
as the rebels led by Mr Zenawi started besieging the capital. Since 2005, Meles has even attended all the G8 summits and this year’s G20 meeting in London
despite noisy protests by Ethiopians in the Diaspora and human rights activists.
A
Swedish parliamentarian tried to visit Birtukan after hearing a testimony by the
father of Ethiopian human rights movement, Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, 76, who
has been jailed four times by the regime. He had a chance to detail the horrible
conditions under which she was held for Swedish MPs. Apparently, she has been
jailed in a dark cell with no toilet and shower. It is reportedly infested with
rats, lice and flees. There is neither a mattress nor a bed. She sleeps on the
bare floor.
Disturbed by what she heard,
Mrs Carina Hägg of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and member of parliament,
Riksdag, and the parliamentary subcommittee on foreign affairs, flew to
Addis Ababa in April to see Birtukan. Despite her best efforts, Meles Zenawi
refused to let her meet his most popular prisoner of conscience in the country.
But the Swedish legislator met Birtukan’s weak and downcast mother, Almaz
Gebre-egiziabher, and her daughter, Hale Mideksa, who constantly asks when her
mum will come home.
“She is caged in like a
beast. She is locked up in a tiny room day and night…I feel that she is in a
grave,” Birtukan’s mum told the Swedish MP.
Birtukan was accused of
breaching the terms and conditions of her release from her 20-month long
incarceration, from November 2005 to July 2007. After a mediation effort by a
group of elders culminated in a political deal, the regime was supposed to drop
the charges and release the prisoners. In breach of the deal, the court
convicted over 100 opposition leaders journalists and civic leaders of treason
and outrage against the constitution, a document that has won little respect
from its creators. The majority were sentenced for life before they were
released a few days later. The government used the occasion for propaganda
purposes and the state media heaped accolades on Prime Minister Meles Zenawi for
being too merciful and magnanimous.
While touring a few European
countries to galvanize support for the pro-democracy movement in Ethiopia, Birtukan made a few rousing speeches last November to her supporters and
admirers. In Sweden, Birtukan said that she sought neither amnesty nor pardon
from the regime as she never committed a crime and the whole proceeding was a
travesty of justice. That was indeed a bold statement in the eyes of Zenawi who
lets no dissent passes by unpunished.
A few days after she returned
home, she was summoned by the Federal Police Commissioner, Workineh Gebeheyu,
who is widely feared as a leading perpetrator of the ruthless crackdowns against
dissidents. She was asked to make a public apology for what she had said in
Sweden. She made it clear that she spoke the truth and changing facts publicly
amounts to lying. In the meantime, the state-controlled media launched vicious
propaganda against Birtukan accusing her of sedition and treason. When the media
onslaught against her intensified, she issued a statement boldly explaining
that she, along with over one hundred opposition leaders, journalists and civic
leaders, were released after a long and complicated process of mediation efforts
by a group of elders. She analysed the legal interpretation of the deal and
asserted that it was actually the regime which was breaching the terms of her
release.
In Ethiopia, challenging the
wishes and whims of the rulers is taken as an act of sedition. On December 29,
2008, Birtukan was re-arrested by security agents and the 76-year old Professor
Mesfin Woldemariam, who was with her at the time, was beaten up for asking the
security agents to produce an arrest warrant. While Birtukan was taken to
prison, the aging professor was rushed to hospital.
The outgoing US Ambassador to
Ethiopia, Donald Yamamoto, broke the long tradition of U.S. silence and caution
by saying that the re-arrest of Birtukan was tragic. But that was not even the
official position of his government; he was just expressing his personal
opinion. “To me the case is very tragic for the Ethiopian government and
Birtukan, including all opposition parties in Ethiopia,” he told reporters in
February.
Burtukan’s troubles with the
Ethiopian government started in June 2001. She was the presiding judge at the
Federal First Instant Court that allowed bail rights to one of Zenawi’s allies
turned rival, ex-Defence Minister Seye Abraha. After Seye and his supporters
openly challenged the Prime Minister over questionable issues surrounding the
1998 bloody conflict with Eritrea, Seye and almost all his supporters were
charged with corruption. Despite the sensitivity of the case, Birtukan decided
to respect the bail right of the defendant. But before the defendant was
released, the Prime Minister sent an amendment bill to parliament. “Persons
suspected of corruption shall have no right to bail,” the amended
“anti-corruption” act declared.
Disappointed with the absence
of the rule of law in the courtrooms and mounting political pressures, Bertukan
decided to resign soon after the government reversed the court decision. She
started practising law as a private attorney.
In the run up to the 2005
national elections, the first contested election ever in the history of
Ethiopia, she joined the Coalition for Democracy and Justice Party. Within a few
months, she was elected the party’s first vice president. Her party won a
landslide victory in most of the places where there were foreign election
observers. In the capital, Addis Ababa, CUD, had a clean sweep. The ruling party
could only win one single municipal seat. All the 23 contested parliamentary
seats went to Birtukan’s party. It was a depressing time for Zenawi, who never
doubted that his monopoly on the media, state resources and security apparatus
would ensure him a commanding win at the polls. But it proved to be a fatal
miscalculation.
Before the vote count was
completed throughout the country, Zenawi ordered a state of emergency and froze
the count in the remaining districts. Local election observers were chased away
despite protests by foreign observers, most notably Ana Gomes, Chief of the
European Election Observation Mission to Ethiopia.
In Addis Ababa and other
towns, supporters of CUDP, who felt
that the election was stolen, started protesting. In June and November 2005, the
security forces opened fire and killed 193 protesters including minors and
wounded over 780 others. Within a space of one week in November 2005, over 40,000 civilians were rounded up
and were detained in harsh military camps. Associated Press correspondent
Anthony Mitchelle, who died in a plane crash a few months later, was expelled for
reporting on the crackdowns. Over 100 opposition leaders, including Birtuakan,
journalists and civic leaders were charged with genocide, treason and outrage against the constitution.
Fear gripped the nation and there
were few reports coming out of Ethiopia. In December 2005, one of the few
reporters who witnessed the scale of the atrocities, Daily Telegraph diplomatic
editor David Blair had filed a story, Protesters killed and 40,000 jailed as
Blair’s friend quells ‘insurrection’. He wrote: “A leader handpicked by Tony
Blair to champion Africa has smashed his opponents with the biggest crackdown in
the continent's recent history, jailing 40,000 people including boys of 15….A
crackdown on this scale has not been seen in Africa for 20 years and the
repression exceeds anything by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for the past
decade at least. Apartheid-era South Africa's onslaught against the black
townships in the 1980s provides the only recent comparison.”
In Ethiopia, until the
bells of freedom toll, the unknown Aung San Suu Kyi and thousands of
political prisoners who demanded democracy and justice will continue to languish
in harsh jails without even attracting much attention from world leaders.
