Ethiopia: Torture in the heart of Addis, even as leaders gather in gleaming AU building

Laetitia Bader

October 21, 2013 (HRW) — Many journalists and diplomats who attend events in Addis Ababa’s gleaming new African Union building are probably unaware that it rests on the site of one of Ethiopia’s most notorious prisons. While that prison was torn down in 2007, its legacy of torture and abuse continues today at the heart of the capital.

Over the past year, I have spoken to dozens of people who were held in a detention centre called Maekelawi in central Addis. They described dire conditions and a range of abusive interrogation methods to extract information and confessions.

Are Oromos Singled Out and Disproportionately Tortured in Ethiopia?

October 21, 2013 (Oromo Press) — You may ask people in Oromia, what is the language most widely spoken in Ethiopia’s prisons? Who are the ethnic groups singled out and subjected to extreme torture in Ethiopia’s notorious torture facilities? The answers to both questions are Afan Oromo (the Oromo language), and Oromo people respectively. People have pointed to this time and again to the point that torture and political imprisonments are almost becoming synonymous with one ethnicity in Ethiopia, the Oromo people.

Human Rights Watch just released a riveting account of torture in Maekelawi (comparable to Auschwitz of the Nazi era  and Gitmo of the post-9/11 period). The conditions Oromo political prisoners, including school children, who have barely come of age, face in Maekelawi and Kaliti and other facilities of torture is similar to those faced by the Jewish community during the Holocaust. The comparison to Gitmo might be a little far-fetched since Oromo detainees are innocent and unarmed civilians who get thrown into torture prisons in most cases for no other valid reasons than their default belonging in a nationality group that is different, politicized and competing with the nationality group that controls the levers of power through totalitarian parties known as the Tigire Peoples Liberation Front/ The Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front.

Ethiopia: Political Detainees Tortured

Police Abuse Journalists, Opponents to Extract Confessions

Ethiopian riot police crackdown on riots

October 18, 2013, Nairobi (Human Rights Watch) – Ethiopian authorities have subjected political detainees to torture and other ill-treatment at the main detention center in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian government should take urgent steps to curb illegal practices in the Federal Police Crime Investigation Sector, known as Maekelawi, impartially investigate allegations of abuse, and hold those responsible to account.

The 70-page report, “‘They Want a Confession’: Torture and Ill-Treatment in Ethiopia’s Maekelawi Police Station,” documents serious human rights abuses, unlawful interrogation tactics, and poor detention conditions in Maekelawi since 2010. Those detained in Maekelawi include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies. Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 35 former Maekelawi detainees and their relatives who described how officials had denied their basic needs, tortured, and otherwise mistreated them to extract information and confessions, and refused them access to legal counsel and their relatives.