NEW YORK — Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam
Desalegn told Foreign Policy on
Tuesday that when Olympic marathoner Feyisa Lilesa raised his arms in an
“X” at the Summer Games in Rio, he wasn’t protesting mistreatment of Ethiopia’s
Oromo population at the hands of government forces, but had instead been
coerced into the protest by an armed secessionist group.
But in an email to Foreign Policy on Friday, Feyisa called
Hailemariam’s claims “baseless, completely false, and insulting.” He totally
dismissed the idea that any outsiders — including naturalized American citizens
loyal to the anti-government Oromo Liberation Front — convinced him to protest
as he crossed the finish line in second place.
“OLF did not tell me to speak
out or be a voice for my people,” Feyisa wrote. “My conscience made me do that.
I spoke out because I wanted to expose the gross violation of human rights in
Ethiopia.”
Feyisa went on to say that his friend, Kebede
Feyisa, “was shot and burned to death along with other prisoners in the Qilinto
prison” in central Ethiopia this month. According to him, that friend was
arrested during a peaceful protest and later killed by security forces. It’s
stories like his, Feyisa said, that inspired him to protest his government and
then flee to the United States under the pretext that he would potentially risk
his life by returning home.
Hailemariam told FP on Tuesday that he does not blame
Feyisa for the protest because he strongly believes it was “orchestrated by
someone else from outside,” and pointed multiple times to the OLF and its
sympathizers in the United States. He said that Feyisa will be safe and greeted
like a hero if he chooses to return home.
But Toleeraa Adabaa, a spokesman for the OLF based
in Eritrea, told FP
in an email that Hailemariam lied about the secessionist group’s involvement in
Feyisa’s protest because he preferred “to point his finger to OLF rather than
solving the problems which are causes for the protest all over Ethiopia.”
And Feyisa said in his email that it was “the Oromo
people and friends of the Oromo, not the OLF, who facilitated my trip to the
United States.”
“Hailemariam’s government has jailed and killed far
too many people under the pretext of supporting the OLF,” he said. “The Oromo
people can no longer be fooled.”
Although Feyisa has not yet announced any intention
to seek asylum in the United States, he appeared alongside Rep. Chris Smith
(R-N.J.) at a press conference on Capitol Hill this month, when Smith announced
plans to introduce legislation that would ask Ethiopia to allow an independent
rapporteur to enter the country and examine the human rights situation there.
In his Tuesday conversation with FP, Hailemariam said he would under no
circumstances allow the rapporteur into the country, “not because there is
something to be hidden, but it’s because we have a sovereignty that needs to be
kept.”
Human rights groups say that some 400 Oromos have
been killed in protests since November, and accuse security forces of
using excessive force against civilians in order to silence their demands for
equal representation in the country’s government.
In his statement to FP, Feyisa said he has continuously
witnessed the mistreatment of his ethnic group, and was for that reason
compelled to raise his arms in protest in Rio.
“I was not surprised by his comments
because individuals who are always controlled by others
Source: foreignpolicy.com
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