ETHIOPIA: Ethiopian authorities have intensified harassment and imprisonment of critics in the run-up to Sunday's parliamentary election, according to a report by Human Rights Watch published yesterday.
Its researchers say institutions set up by regional government in the guise of promoting development are in fact strangling free speech and political activity.
The elections are seen as a key test of the country's fledgling democracy.
However, European election observers also criticised Meles Zanawi, a former rebel leader turned prime minister, for warning that the country risked being plunged into genocide if the opposition won.
Human Rights Watch investigators visited the country in March, interviewing dozens of people who claim to have been imprisoned or beaten by officials in Oromia, Ethiopia's most populous region.
"They forced me to take off my clothes and I was naked apart from my underwear when they started kicking me," said a 19-year-old woman. "They put a pistol in my mouth and said that they would kill me."
In its report, the human rights watchdog accuses regional authorities of using exaggerated concerns about armed insurgency to justify harassing its critics.
Teachers interviewed by researchers claim they have been pressured into informing on students. The report also details the existence of quasi-governmental community organisations, known as gott and garee. Although the government claims the new bodies are delivering development programmes, farmers claim to have been harassed after criticising the ruling coalition at meetings.
Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division, said: "The Ethiopian government claims that the elections demonstrate its commitment to democratic principles.
"But in the run-up to the elections the authorities have intensified the repression they have used to keep themselves in power for 13 years." The ruling coalition has held power since 1991, when Meles led rebels into Addis Ababa to overthrow the totalitarian military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Multi-party elections were held in 1995 and again in 2000, won both times by Meles and his Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Front and its allies.
This time the country's main opposition parties have set aside their differences to mount what is seen as the strongest challenge yet to the governing coalition. They are campaigning on a series of economic reforms in a country where almost half the 70 million population live beneath the poverty line.
However, the contest has been dogged by allegations that opposition candidates have been beaten and detained.
Local election observers have been barred from monitoring the polls, although EU observers have been allowed in for the first time.
International monitors have so far welcomed signs of freer elections, with the opposition allowed access to state media for the first time, but have protested against the use of inflammatory language by the governing parties.
Last week, in a televised address, Meles accused the opposition of fomenting ethnic hatred and raised the spectre of Rwanda's 1994 descent into genocide.
"Their policies are geared toward creating hatred and rifts between ethnic groups similar to the policies of the Interahamwe when Hutu militia massacred Tutsis in Rwanda," he said.
Ana Gomes, head of the EU observer mission, wrote to the electoral board expressing concern about "unfair" campaigning using images calculated to cause alarm. She also listed acts of violence, intimidation and harassment of opposition figures.