EDITORIAL: The Beginning of the End: EPRDF�s Government Brutality Against University Students.

 Tecola W. Hagos: June 6, 2005

We are witnessing the beginning of the fall of the violent and dictatorial Government of Meles Zenawi. History is repeating itself, and we are looking at the beaten paths that all dictatorial regimes traveled of crackdowns on demonstrators, detention of university students for expressing democratic views, unleashing of brutal security and military unites on peaceful citizens et cetera.  How soon we forget the fate of Haile Selassie and later Mengistu who had used similar violent means, with different intensity, to subdue and quash the will and spirit of the people of Ethiopia epitomized in their sons and daughters attending schools who were rightfully revolting against relentless oppression. The situation now is even more paradoxical since the leadership of the Government of the EPRDF including Meles Zenawi its Prime Minister started their political lives as students who were thunder and brimstone spouting revolutionaries.

On Monday June 6, 2005, the Government of Meles Zenawi unleashed its ruthless force on peaceful demonstrators of University students. �Between 400 and 500 students were locked in at the medical school and between 300 and 400 at the social sciences school, according to an AFP correspondent on the scene.� The students were legitimately exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights under Article 30: The Right of Assembly, Demonstration and Petition of the 1995 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The Government claims, justifying its violent suppression and arrest of demonstrators, that it was enforcing its Emergency Decree of May 16, 2005 (a day after the closing of the 2005 Election) and banning all forms of constitutionally guaranteed expressions of protest for thirty days. To begin with, the Emergency Decree is illegal because it does not satisfy the 1995 constitutional standard, and second of all it is a further raw disregard of law that will corrupt further the election results such that to cover governmental fraud, vote ballot rigging et cetera and to quell the challenge in several districts for recounting and possible re-voting in Tygrei and several other districts. Moreover, no one is required to obey an illegal governmental action or decree. Just because Meles Zenawi says his statement is the �law of the land,� it does not make it so.

In the 1995 Constitution Chapter Eleven, the Special Provisions in Article 93 elaborate and set detailed standards and process for the federal or local governments to declare state of emergency. Only two governmental bodies can decree emergency declaration under the 1995 Constitution: the Council Ministers of the Federal Government on a national level for emergency as pointed out below, and by State Executives (i.e., local governments) limited to their particular �State� in case of natural disaster and/or outbreak of epidemics. This power to decree a state of emergency is not meant to enable or legitimize some whimsical arbitrary acts of the Prime Minister or that of the state executives, but an act to be carried out through definite steps after satisfying very narrowly defined standards because of serious national or local concerns.

Article 93: Emergency Proclamation states in Sub-article 1.

�a) The council of Ministers of the Federal Government shall have the power to decree a state of emergency when any of the following conditions affect the country or any part of the country:

-         External invasion;

-         A breakdown of law and order that regular law enforcement agencies and personnel cannot control;

-         Natural disaster; and

-         Outbreak of epidemics that endangers the lives of the population.

b) State executives can decree a state of emergency if their States are affected by natural disasters or by an outbreak of epidemic that endangers the lives of their peoples. States shall provide in their constitutions specific procedures in conformity with this Constitution.�

Article 93 further elaborates how such emergency is to be declared in sub-articles 2 to 6. The provisions of the Sub-articles deal with reporting procedure, the establishment of a Board to manage the emergency et cetera. The focuses for the purpose of this article are the criteria or standards set in Sub-article 1 (a) as indicated above for �decreeing� state of emergency by the Federal Government. Once such �emergency decree� is issued then and only then, the Council of Ministers would be in a position to run the Ethiopian government under emergency rule, which is outlined in Sub-article 4.  In Chapter Eight, the Power, function, and duties of the Executive branch of the Ethiopian government is laid out. None of the provisions in that Chapter gives the Prime Minister the right to declare or decree a state of emergency on his own. It is quite understandable that the provisions dealing with emergency need be wrested from the hands of the Prime Minister or any one individual because the tendency to use such emergency power by leader to promote his own political career at the cost of democratic principles is a real danger witnessed in the last fifty years in several other nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. It is with this possibility of abuse in mind against capricious, self-interest, political agenda et cetera that the constitution provided strict standard or occurrences of events when a state of emergency may be decreed.

The University students were within their constitutional rights to demonstrate, have their views heard, and solidify their unity with like-minded individuals and support the democratic process, condemn the Governments fraud and vote rigging in the 2005 Election et cetera. The Emergency decree was illegal since there was no 1 - external invasion; 2 - a breakdown of law and order that regular law enforcement agencies and personnel cannot control; 3 - natural disaster; and 4 - outbreak of epidemics that endangers the lives of the population. At the time of the emergency was issued by Meles Zenawi none of the dangers that an emergency decree supposed to counter was an event of concern in Ethiopia. The Emergency decree is illegal and has no binding effect on any Ethiopian. If we were fortunate enough to live in a democratic society, for that criminal and illegal decree of Emergency and the subsequent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators alone, Meles Zenawi would have been impeached and thrown in to jail after proper criminal legal conviction in a court of law.

We condemn the action of the Government of Meles Zenawi both for decreeing an illegal emergency, and the brutal attack on peaceful demonstrators and their detention on June 6, 2005. We demand that the Emergency decree be formally withdrawn with an apology to the people of Ethiopia, that proper investigation and impeachment procedure be started against Meles Zenawi. We trust and support the right to demonstrate as an inalienable right irrespective what dictators may decree. We support the students of Addis Ababa University.

Tecola W. Hagos