Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 17:23:29 +0100
A British Man Is on Death Row in Ethiopia
By <http://www.vice.com/author/oscar-rickett> Oscar Rickett
Oct 29 2014
Andargachew Tsige, known to his friends and family as Andy, is a British
citizen from Ethiopia. He came to England as a political refugee in 1979.
Now he's back in Ethiopia, locked up and possibly enduring torture for being
a political dissident, and the UK stands accused of not doing enough to
help.
Tsige is the secretary general of Ginbot 7, an opposition group banned by
the Ethiopian government. In 2009, he was sentenced to death at a trial held
in Ethiopia in his absence for supposedly planning a coup. Then, in June
this year, he was seized in Yemen, which has a security arrangement with
Ethiopia. For two weeks, it seemed as though he had disappeared off the face
of the Earth. Then, he emerged on Ethiopian state TV broadcasts, where it
was revealed that he was being held in a secret detention facility. While
he's unlikely to face a rarely imposed death sentence, he is currently on
death row.
In the <http://youtu.be/LhxDIINPi7M> first video released, he appears for a
short time and looks fairly healthy. But in the
<http://youtu.be/fv_zK0HQfnk> second, screaming can be heard in the
background (just after the one-minute mark), and Tsige, looking thin and
exhausted, is presented as if he is making a confession. A narrator says, in
a haltingly edited piece of propaganda, that Tsige has been working with
neighboring Eritrea-which has a longstanding feud with Ethiopia-that he has
been disrupting the "peace and economic growth of Ethiopia," and that he has
been "training various people and sending ammunition through Eritrean
borders." His lawyers are concerned that evidence obtained through torture
will be used to justify the sentence imposed on him.
Since his arrest, a UK Foreign Office (FCO) spokesperson told me, Tsige has
only seen the British ambassador to Ethiopia once. That was back in August.
"We are deeply concerned about his welfare," the spokesperson said. "We want
consular access and are pressing for further access to him." David Cameron
has written to Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn "to request
regular consular access and his assurance that the death penalty will not be
imposed."
Despite this diplomatic action, a British citizen is languishing on death
row based on evidence that could have been gained through torture, and there
has been no public condemnation of Ethiopia's actions. His advocates say
it's not good enough. Human rights charity Reprieve has initiated legal
proceedings against the Foreign Office (FCO) for its failure to treat
Tsige's abduction as a serious breach of international law.
http://assets.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/195756/unnamed.jpg
Andy Tsige (right) with Yemi Hailemariam and their children
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)