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By Paul Schemm | Washington Post
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – The Ethiopian Attorney General announced the dismissal of five senior prison officials for alleged human rights violations, hours before Thursday's release of a report by Human Rights Watch on torture in a regional prison. Berhanu Tsegaye said the top officials of the prison "were relieved of their duties for failing to respect the responsibilities and respected the human rights of the prisoners," according to the Fana Broadcasting agency. , affiliated with the state Wednesday
. A heartbreaking report from Human Rights Watch describing systematic torture in Jail Ogaden, a jail in Jijiga, the capital of the Somali region of Ethiopia.
The report's author, Felix Horne, said the federal and regional authorities had never responded to letters the group's findings. The report calls for an investigation into the abuses cited in the report as well as criminal charges against those responsible.
None of the dismissed civil servants were related to the prison described in the report.
Ethiopia has long been criticized for its gross violations of human rights and prison conditions, but the new prime minister Abiy Ahmed – inaugurated in April – has spoken out against Old way of doing things
at a historic question and answer session in front of Parliament in June. the historical use of torture by the security services, describing it as a form of "terrorism".
"Does the constitution require that people be badped, wounded, kept in dark rooms? This is not the case. It is the terrorist act of us, the government. "
Abiy, who will visit the United States this month, has also released thousands of prisoners and has reached out to the political opposition and rebel groups.The Human Rights Watch report focuses on on the Somali region, which has been criticized by advocacy groups of its president Abdi Mohamoud Omar, known as Abdi Iley, and his Liyu regional police
]the country's regions have a great deal of autonomy, and a real test of Abiy's measures will be whether they are extended to the Somali region, where rights groups claim that the authorities are particularly oppressive and that there is little federal supervision of prisons.He always told them to humiliate, but the worst was that one day they gathered a number of prisoners and that we told them to beat another person to death, "said a prisoner cit in the Human Rights Watch. t. "They had sticks of metal to give us for that, and it was said that if I refused, I had to commit suicide."
Interviews with 70 former prisoners revealed acts of torture, rapes and horrible conditions of detention.Women often became pregnant after being raped by guards and other prison officials and had to give birth in prison.
"I asked to be taken away at the hospital for birth. They laughed, "said a woman quoted in the report. "Then I gave birth in prison.The women had a sharp piece of metal that they used to cut the umbilical cord, and they tied it themselves."
Abdi is came to power about 10 years ago, when an anti-government insurgency raged. He brutally repressed and filled the prison with suspected rebel sympathizers
Over the past week, the rebel group that led the insurgency, the National Liberation Front of Ogaden , was removed from the list of terrorism by the federal government. the rest of the country has experienced some degree of democratic openness, the people of the Somali region, which was also shaken by record droughts, protested more and more against the Abdi regime.
The elders also went to Addis Ababa to complain to the federal government about Abdi's excesses.
According to journalist Zecharias Zelalem, who made part of the rare coverage of the unrest, these rallies decreased in the face of the strong repression of the regional government. What I heard, things have slowed down in recent weeks, especially after the arrest on June 5, of about forty alleged organizers of demonstrations, sympathizers in Jijiga ", has he declared. "The arrests and threats have taken their toll, I would say."
The question now is whether the Somali region will benefit from the democratic opening that is unfolding with great fanfare in the rest of the country under the leadership of Abiy.
However, a recent badysis of the report on Africa indicates that the president of the Somali region might be difficult to dislodge from his personal fiefdom.
"Abiy's leeway is limited. Any attempt to subdue Abdi's autonomy will likely encounter strong resistance. His power to remove regional elected officials is limited, "notes the badysis.
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