Politicians from the United States, United Kingdom and
the European Union have sent a letter to Ethiopian Prime Minister
Hailemariam Desalegn urging the release of British citizen Andargachew
“Andy” Tsege, a political activist who has been held incommunicado for
more than a year and has been sentenced to death.
The father of three was on his way to Eritrea to attend an opposition
conference on June 23, 2014 when he was detained in Sana'a, Yemen,
during a layover, at the behest of the Ethiopian government.
Tsege, 60, a former secretary-general of a banned opposition party,
had already been sentenced to death in absentia by an Ethiopian court in
2009.
The letter, obtained only by Al Jazeera, criticizes the Ethiopian
authorities for conducting a “deeply flawed” trial and demands the
release of Tsege, who is kept in solitary confinement and subjected to
artificial light 24 hours a day.
“You have emphasized in the past Ethiopia’s commitment to human
rights, but it is unconscionable and illegal for your government to have
targeted Mr. Tsege in this way. Your government’s treatment of him is a
stain on its reputation, and threatens to isolate Ethiopia
internationally," said the letter, co-authored in June by California
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican member of the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs.
Other politicians who signed off on the letter include British
parliament members Jeremy Corbyn, Baron Dholakia, and Emily Thornberry
along with European Parliament officials Ana Gomes and Richard Howitt.
British officials have only been permitted to see Tsege three times
since his arrest in monitored visits that take place away from his jail
cell, circumstances that lawyers say prevent him from speaking openly
about his mistreatment.
The Independent reported that during one of those visits, in April,
Tsege told Greg Dorey, the British ambassador to Ethiopia that he would
prefer being executed to remaining in detention.
“Seriously, I am happy to go — it would be preferable and more humane,” Tsege reportedly said.
Yemi Hailemariam, Tsege's partner and mother of his children, said the ordeal has left the family devasted.
“It's dreadful, what has happened. The way he was taken, it's really
terrifying. I was hoping things would evolve quickly and he would be
released, but it feels like it's only getting worse and worse,” she told
Al Jazeera America in an exclusive interview.
Concerns that he is being mistreated by Ethiopian authorities, who
routinely subject political detainees to torture, grew after the
Ethiopian government released videos of a gaunt and disoriented Tsege
apparently confessing to a number of offenses.
UK-based legal charity Reprieve submitted the videos to an expert for
analysis who concluded that Tsege exhibited signs of torture.
“The expert found that there are signs of significant deterioration
in his mental condition, an indicia of PTSD [post-traumatic stress
disorder] that could be the result of torture. And we already know that
torture is pretty endemic at Ethiopian detention sites,” said Maya Foa,
director of Reprieve's death penalty team.
She described Tsege's arrest in Yemen and rendition to Ethiopia as a “politically motivated abduction.”
Ethiopia's embassy in Washington and its mission in New York did not respond to Al Jazeera's calls and e-mails for comment.
Dedicated reformer
Tsege was tried in
absentia in 2009 along with a group of opposition members and
journalists under Ethiopia's controversial anti-terrorism laws, which
human rights experts say are used to repress peaceful political dissent.
The charges leveled against Tsege include high treason, espionage and involvement with a terrorist organization.
He was an active member of Ginbot 7, a political party founded in the
U.S. – home to the largest Ethiopian population outside of Africa –
that advocates for democratic reforms.
Ethiopia designated Ginbot 7 a terrorist group in 2011, a move that human rights experts say was meant to quash opposition.
"They are not considered a terrorist group by any government apart from the Ethiopian [government]," Foa told Al Jazeera.
She added Tsege's arrest was part of a larger crackdown on dissent by
the country’s authorities in the run-up to the May 2015 elections, in
which the ruling party won by an overwhelming majority.
Human rights experts have denounced the elections as an exercise in "political theater."
“A decade-long campaign by Ethiopia’s government to silence dissent
forcibly has left the country without a viable political
opposition, without independent media, and without public challenges to
the ruling party’s ideology,” wrote Daniel Calingaert in The Guardian.
Calingaert is the executive vice-president of Freedom House, an
International human rights organization. “For most Ethiopians, these
elections are a non-event,” he added.
The ruling party - Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPDRF) - has been in power for the last 25 years, following the 1991
ouster of the country's military junta, the Derg.
When the EPDRF ascended to power, Tsege – who sought asylum in the UK
in 1979 – traveled back to Ethiopia for the first time in 20 years to
help his homeland rebuild and to serve as the secretary of the Addis
Ababa City Council.
He resigned from that post 18 months later, having grown
disillusioned with the new government, which showed no signs of
implementing genuine democratic reform, according to his partner
Hailemariam.
Tsege returned to the UK, where he had become a full citizen in 2006,
and although he lost his Ethiopian citizenship (dual citizenships are
prohibited under Ethiopian law) he continued to advocate for change in
Ethiopia from the UK.
"He never stopped believing change would come to Ethiopia. In the UK,
he saw the difference between those who live in a free society and
people who live in authoritarian regimes like Ethiopia. He really
couldn’t let it go. Anytime he saw an opportunity to get involved, he
was always involved," said his partner, Hailemariam.
In 2005, Tsege published a book entitled Freedom Fighters Who Don’t
Know What Freedom Is – a scathing indictment of the EPDRF leadership.
The following year, he traveled to Washington D.C. to speak on
Ethiopia's human rights record before a Congressional committee, telling
them that “the scale of repression has exceeded Ethiopia's darkest
hours during the military dictatorship.”
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