Marking one year in Prison

FREE BIRTUKAN MIDEKSA!
Marking one year in Prison
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Birtukan Mideksa, an opposition party leader, is serving a life sentence in Kaliti Prison in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is a prisoner of conscience. Birtukan Mideksa was arrested in November 2005 after the Coalition for Unity and Democracy party, of which she was a leader, contested disputed local and parliamentary elections. Subsequent demonstrations turned violent, resulting in the deaths of almost 200 people. She was charged with treason in one of several trials, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Local elders negotiated a pardon with the Ethiopian authorities, and Birtukan Mideksa and others were released in June 2007 after serving more than 18 months in prison. The terms of the pardon remain unclear. In November 2008 she spoke about her pardon at a public meeting in Sweden. When she returned to Ethiopia, the authorities asked her to retract her statement; she refused and was rearrested in December 2008. The Ministry of Justice revoked her pardon and re-imposed her life sentence.

Source: Amnesty International

prisoner’s account of the abyss

Omot feared for his life every moment in prison.

‘“You will die like a dog now there is no one to defend you,”’ Omot recalls his jailers in Dimma taunting him. “They said, ‘In America, black people are treated like slaves and there are no white people who will come from America to save your life.’ I told them, ‘Did you see that in America we now have a black president?’ They said ‘Shut up!’”

“One night a group of soldiers came to me and said ‘We are going to teach you something,’” Omot recalls. “They blindfolded me and shoved me into a pickup truck. When they took off my blindfold they pushed me to the ground and I was surrounded by dead bodies. They were mostly skeletons but with pieces of clothing still stuck on.

‘The soldiers told me, ‘Unless you confess you will look like those bodies. You will die just like they did. We will kill you right now.’”

Source: Daily Planet