Ethiopian Teachers’ Association repressed but resilient - PR2

Ethiopian Teachers’ Association repressed but resilient

I attended the opening session of the General Assembly of the Ethiopian Teachers’ Association (ETA) on 31 August. Ethiopia’s government is headed by Meles Zenawi one of Blair’s handpicked Commissioners for Africa who spouts about the need for democracy, development and poverty reduction whilst giving orders to imprison, torture and murder political activists and trade unionists.

The meeting of some 200 delegates started with General Secretary Gemoraw Kassa speaking on the union’s work in combating HIV-AIDS, campaigning for education for all and for curriculum changes. He gave a graphic update on the repression the union has faced, with its meetings broken up and members arrested. Last year the union’s bank account was frozen and its offices raided with all computers and files stolen, including a list of all members. At least forty teachers that the union knows about were imprisoned. Kassa ended with an appeal for international solidarity.

Rewayne Mbaye from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) gave a long and detailed speech about various ILO conventions, in particular 87 and 98, which guarantee freedom of association and collective bargaining.

He seemed at times to suggest that if the teachers simply learned these laws inside out and quoted them at the right times they could avoid repression! However, events were soon to rebut this interpretation. The meeting became more animated after members from the floor gave accounts of repression in local areas, meetings physically prevented, activists sacked or jailed; they asked how the ETA could function in these conditions?

At lunchtime, as if in dramatic confirmation of delegates’ concerns, armed police and soldiers surrounded the building, refused to allow delegates into the afternoon session and started to disperse the crowd. After capturing some of this on film I left the meeting with some teachers in a minibus belonging to the union. However, about an hour later the minibus was forced to a halt by three unmarked cars and three men entered the bus by force and grabbed my bag. In the ensuing struggle they identified themselves as “police” and flashed a non-descript ID card before pinning me down and forcibly taking my bag with the camera and various documents. The next day the ETA office was raided again with other equipment seized, including the minibus. Several ETA members and staff, including the minibus driver, were arrested too, adding yet more to the list of political prisoners, including the current chairperson of the Addis Ababa branch of the ETA, Kassahun Kebede.

The ETA is being targeted for a very simple reason: it is the last independent trade union in a long bitter struggle with a government determined to smash workers’ organisation.

In the early 1990s, after the fall of the dictatorship, there was a revival of trade union militancy leading to the formation of the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions. However, one by one these unions were purged by the government which arrested activists, froze bank accounts, disrupted meetings and seized equipment and offices for new “normalised” – i.e. pro-government unions. The government tried this approach with the ETA too, setting up its own tame rival organization of the same name. However, despite ETA’s Deputy General Secretary Asefa Maru being murdered in the street and its President Dr Taye languishing in prison for six years the union has continued to function.

Last year, following an attempt to fraudulently steal the elections in the capital, a general strike in Addis Ababa and mass struggles around the country sharpened tensions and increased repression for ETA’s 100,000 or so members. There was a mass demonstration well over a million strong in the capital. Unrest gripped the country, with strike waves hitting universities and high schools. Hundreds of students and other protestors were beaten and murdered, with over 40,000 people arrested and rounded up in makeshift camps, often in football grounds. Many activists are still in jail or missing presumed dead Under these conditions the international workers’ movement must offer material and financial solidarity and support. We need to build a campaign for prisoners’ release, with demonstrations outside embassies and against the actions of our own government, which is effectively sponsoring a dictatorship. We must start this campaign in the British NUT by continuing to build links with the ETA and campaigning against its repression.

Jason Travis / _Bolton NUT President in a personal capacity

LINKS

www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=698

Fri 01, June 2007 @ 14:46