Ethiopians in London hold vigil on Human Rights and Martyrs Day
By Wondimu Mekonnen
May 9, 2003

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LONDON (MAY 9) - Ethiopians commemorating trade union and human rights martyrs day on Thursday called on UK and US governments to see to the plight of Ethiopia where over 100,000 prisoners languish in dungeons. The protestors held vigil in front of the Ethiopian Embassy on 17 Prices Gate in London. Embassy functionaries shut doors and windows and videoed the flow of the protest on security cameras.

Much to the surprise of the London police, the protestors chanted:

Justice for the murdered!
Justice for the disappeared!
Justice for the illegally detained!
Stop persecuting teachers!
Stop persecuting Trade Unionists!
Stop persecuting journalists
Bring to justice Assefa Maru's murderers!
Bring to justice Tesfaye Kebede's murderers!
Meles is a dictator!
Meles should be brought to justice!

At the School of African and Oriental studies where a meeting was going on under the sponsorship of the Anglo-Ethiopian Society, the protestors brought key-note speaker British journalist Jonathan Dimbleby under fire for failing to side with the Ethiopian people and echoeing the policies of the regime known back home for murdering innocent university students, teachers trade union leaders, journalists and other peaceful activists.

"For the last 10 years, the TPLF regime has launched a merciless attack on the civil society of Ethiopia," said Gomorraw Kassa, Secretary General of Ethiopian Teachers Association (ETA), highlighting how deputy ETA secretary general Assefa Maru was slain in cold-blooded murder by the security agents of the regime in 1997. Gomorraw stunned the audience by detailing a list of victims of gruesome murders, as well as how the regime went on systematically destroying ETA by taking measures that range from freezing bank accounts to jailing and killing of its leaders.

Jonathan Dimbleby on his part sparked anger when he said Ethiopia's decline was the result of a slump in world coffee prices, and the regime was facing opposition only from the Amharas.

Rebuking Dimbleby's remarks, Commander Assefa Seifu on his part added fuel to the fire of a raging Ethiopian audience which took over the meeting that was supposed to toe government lines but ended up drenched with the speeches of the activists for peace and justice in Ethiopia.

"Sixty to seventy percent of the businesses in the country are controlled by the ruling TPLF regime," Commander Assefa said, adding corruption in the country was so pervasive that even the wife of the prime minister was now a multi-millionaire tycoon who prevails over any law in the land."

He said Dimbleby was wrong to single out the Amhara people as the only force opposing the regime which was now teetering on the verge of being thrown off the cliff by an entire nation of 65 million people.

Meles Zenawi, whose regime faces frequent charges of human rights violations from such reputable organizations as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, is in the eyes of the Ethiopian people a leader of a masked mercenary regime under whose conspiracy Ethiopia has been targetted for systematic destruction of her sovereignty and the independent existence of her civil society.