To whom it may concern:

The Government of Ethiopia's persecution of Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, the founder and first chairman of Ethiopia's Human Rights Council (EHRCO) and Dr. Berhanu Nega, an academic and human rights activist, is the latest manifestation of the FDRE's campaign to silence its critics.

The TPLF-dominated government continues to thwart efforts to nurture democracy by preventing public discussion. By confusing opposition with rebellion, the FDRE prevents key players, such as Mesfin and Berhanu, from participating in deliberations--an essential instrument of popular government. Thus, the popular sovereignty claimed by the TPLF is a sham and the constitution's rhetorical commitments to protection of rights of expression, assembly, and association vital to political opposition are pointless in practice. The legally protected right of opposition provides an essential precondition for the formation of a democratic public opinion--something that is not allowed to develop in Ethiopia.

Lessons from history tell of the ultimate futility of such attempts to compel adherence as are being used against Prof. Mesfin and Dr. Berhanu. From the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a challenge to its pagan unity down to the terror of the Derg as a means to Ethiopian unity, dictatorial rulers have failed in their efforts to prescribe what will be orthodox in politics, nationalism, or other matters of opinion. The TPLF should heed the warning of the American jurist Robert Jackson: "Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard."

Through its base and unconstitutional treatment of human rights organizations, academic associations, students, and faculty, the FDRE has brought disgrace upon itself and tarnished the record of Addis Ababa University, once the nation's pride and now but a shell of an academic institution. I join the international academic community in condemning the FDRE's treatment of Prof. Mesfin and Dr. Berhanu, and I request that we not forget the shameful fate of Prof. Taye Wolde Semayat who has been imprisoned on trumpt-up charges since March 1996.

Theodore M. Vestal

Professor of Political Science

Oklahoma State University

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