August 13, 2001

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The speaker of Ethiopia's upper house of parliament said on Monday she was seeking political asylum in the United States to escape what she called the persecution of the Oromos, the country's largest ethnic group.

"Over the last two years, the government have been very harsh on the Oromos because Oromos have been challenging and calling for their rights," Almaz Meko, speaker of Ethiopia's Council of the Federation, told Reuters in Nairobi.

Meko was speaking from the United States, where she had stopped in transit on her way home to the Horn of Africa country from a convention of women parliamentarians in the Caribbean.

Instead of going on to Addis Ababa, Meko said, she had applied for political asylum with her eight-year-old daughter. Her husband and two sons remain in Addis Ababa, she added.

There was no immediate comment on Meko's statement from the authorities in Ethiopia. As a matter of policy the State Department does not comment on asylum requests or approvals.

Meko, a member of the central committee of the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), said she had been increasingly targeted by the authorities for being a vocal supporter of the Oromo people, who make up at least 22 million of the 65 million population. The EPRDF central committee is a key body in the apparatus of power in sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous country.

Almaz said Oromos were persecuted by the EPRDF government led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, adding her own party, the Oromo People's Democratic Organization, had been stripped of significance by the ethnically-based federal administration.

She named the dominant force in her alleged persecution as Meles's Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the most influential component of the EPRDF government.

"When I began as speaker [in 1995] I had one bodyguard. Before I left I had six, I was surrounded. I could not meet people, or even talk privately on the telephone," she said.

"Hundreds of thousands of innocent Oromos have disappeared, perished in detention centers from torture and many, many more have been forced to flee the country."

It was clear to all Oromos there was neither democracy nor federalism in Ethiopia, she said. "Talk about democracy [by the government] is done only to impress Western donor countries."

Almaz said the Oromos had suffered in terms of expenditure on education and development projects.

"Those budget allocations are made by the upper house, but I knew we had no real power. I could not follow my convictions," she said. "We were just rubber stamping the TPLF plans, and the responsibility I felt to my people became just too much."

Almaz said she had jointed the exiled Oromo Liberation Front, which commands guerrillas who make sporadic armed attacks on government forces in some parts of Ethiopia.

Meles has faced a power struggle within the TPLF in recent months and has sought to consolidate his grip on power.

Analysts in Addis Ababa say much discontent in Ethiopia comes from a perception that the government is dominated by the minority ethnic Tigrayan community and the EPRDF's insistence on ruling through an ethnic-based federation.