Madam Speaker, my petitioners call for the release of Ms. Birtukan Mideksa from arbitrary imprisonment. Ms. Mideksa is the president for the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party of Ethiopia. She has been held in prison by the Government of Ethiopia since December 2008, without charge, on a politically motivated life sentence.
She is a confirmed prisoner of conscience according to international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International. She was pardoned of all charges against her before being rearrested for apparently no reason. In contravention of Ethiopian law, Ms. Mideksa was imprisoned without any formal hearings and was not given full access to her lawyer.
International human rights monitoring organizations have been denied access to Ms. Mideksa as well. Serious allegations of human rights abuses have been made, indicating that Ms. Mideksa has been held in solitary confinement in life-threatening conditions and has been prohibited from reading books and visiting her family.
The petitioners call on the House of Commons to pass private member's Motion No. 334, which requests that the government make use of every means at its disposal, in addition to working with its allies in the international community and the United Nations, to exert maximum pressure on the Government of Ethiopia to immediately and unconditionally release Ms. Mideksa and allow her to participate fully in her position as leader of a political party.