Judge Birtukan Mideksa. who is from the country's largest Oromo ethnic group, is the first woman political party leader in Ethiopian history
Ethiopia's UDJ opposition leader faces fresh challenges
Jimma Times
The leadership of Ethiopia's biggest opposition party, the Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ), faces fresh threats from the Ethiopian government after the party made statements that angered Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's ruling party. UDJ's chairperson Judge Birtukan Mideksa told her supporters in Europe that her party never asked for pardon to the government to be released from jail last year.
The Meles government wants her to renounce her statements or face life imprisonment.
UDJ-Andenet is a party born out of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) party which won the most number of opposition seats in parliament after the disputed 2005 election in Ethiopia. The post-election violence killed almost 200 protestors, with police shooting bullets in the head of civilians, while some bystanders were also gunned down. This election crisis, and the following imprisonment of the CUD leadership, tarnished the image of the Ethiopian government worldwide but Birtukan and her colleagues were later released after allegedly signing an apology letter to the government.
According to local media, the federal police has warned Birtukan Mideksa's party and gave a three-day ultimatum to rectify her statements. Jimma Times sources state that she had organized a meeting to discuss this new problem with the leadership committee and supporters, but the final decision from this meeting is unknown.
One UDJ official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a Jimma Times correspondant in Ethiopia that Birtukan should apologize for her statement because it would not make a difference. "The world already knows who killed the 200 civilians in 2005 and the world knows the rationale for this apology letter drama, so Birtukan should rectify her words in Sweden to avoid going to jail for the regime's crimes the second time," he added.
Many opposition supporters in Ethiopia still want to see the policemen who shot the civilians to be held accountable but they are concerned such pursuit will lead to opposition leaders being put back in prison. According to sources in the capital, various pro-government private newspapers in Ethiopia are taking advantage of this crisis by connecting the unrelated resignation interests of UDJ officials to the police ultimatum in order to portray an internal division inside the UDJ.
Next national elections in Ethiopia are scheduled for 2010 but it is unknown whether opposition parties will participate.