Concern for Victims Outweighs Compassion for Derg Officials
By The Kassa Family*
January 13, 2011

We are the children of the late Kassa W. Mariam (Dejazmach) and Princess Seble Desta. Our father; our uncles; and our great-grandfather, Emperor Haile Selassie; were illegally murdered by the Derg regime, without trial or sentence. 

Our mother; our grandmother, Princess Tenagne Worq Haile Selassie; our aunts; and our cousins along with many other members of the Imperial Family were thrown into Alem Bekagn, a prison for hardened criminals. They were imprisoned under the harshest conditions for over thirteen (13) years, also without trial.

We are writing this in response to recent discussions about commuting the sentences of former Derg officials, for there to be no confusion as to where we stand on the matter. Our family is unequivocally opposed to releasing any Derg officials who were tried, convicted, and sentenced for crimes against humanity and genocide.

We believe in forgiveness, and we believe in mercy. However, we also believe in justice and in the rule of law. We believe that not a single Ethiopian should suffer the losses that our family, and hundreds of thousands of other families, have suffered at the hands of the Derg�s murderous regime. We also believe that releasing the Derg officials would set an immoral and dangerous precedent for Ethiopia�s future.

The actions of the Derg have been universally condemned as crimes against humanity. Releasing the Derg officials would send a message to current and future generations of Ethiopians that leaders who commit even the most heinous crimes will one day be pardoned and walk free. It would not only diminish the gravity of the Derg�s offenses, but may also lead others to commit similar crimes with the expectation of being pardoned. 

It would not advance mercy or justice - only impunity and future atrocities. 

The Ethiopian Constitution is unequivocal on this matter. It does not allow the head of state to issue amnesty or a pardon for crimes against humanity, but only to reduce a death sentence to life in prison. The Constitution cannot be circumvented by anyone, including the Parliament, the President, the Prime Minister, or the Courts.

To do what the religious leaders are asking would require violating the Constitution, or changing this prudent and far sighted provision that has become woven into the very fabric of Ethiopia�s legal system.

Pardoning the Derg officials would undermine the rule of law in Ethiopia. They were tried in a court of law, where they were represented by counsel. They were convicted and sentenced in an open and fair trial. They have already received much more than they accorded any of their victims, who they tortured, secretly took from their cells in the middle of the night, gunned down, and murdered in countless brutal ways. 

Releasing Derg officials now, without justification, would suggest that their sentences were a mistake. It would cast a shadow over the judicial proceedings that produced their sentences, and undermine confidence in Ethiopia�s judicial system. It would send a message to our children, and to future generations of Ethiopians, that it was not the Derg who wrongfully inflicted atrocities on the Ethiopian people, but rather, that Ethiopia was wrong for imprisoning them.

Is that the message we want to send?

We understand that the religious leaders are motivated by compassion and a desire for reconciliation, but asking the victims of the Derg�s crimes and their survivors to give up what justice we have achieved in the name of compassion and reconciliation is wrong and counterproductive. 

Allowing the Derg officials, who were at the very heart of these killings and imprisonments, to walk free among their victims and their families would only tear open old wounds and add insult to injury.

Our family wants justice, not revenge. We are not asking for the death sentences that have already been passed to be carried out. If the religious leaders want to seek commutation of the death sentences to life imprisonment, we would not oppose such an effort.

However, our compassion for the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity cannot outweigh our concern for their victims, or our determination to prevent the atrocities of the Derg from ever being repeated. �When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations,� said A. Solzhenitsyn.□

The Kassa Family
*Jote Kassa, Yeshimebet Kassa, Debritu Laly Kassa, Kokeb Kassa, and Amaha Kassa are the children of Kassa W. Mariam (Dejazmach), who was President of Hailesellasie I University. He was murdered together with sixty (60) of the most senior officials of the Imperial Government on November 24, 1974.