- Bertukan Mideksa: A Career In Dissent

Bertukan Mideksa: A Career In Dissent

IPS - Oct 30, 2008 - Frozen in disbelief on the steps of the courthouse where she presided as a federal judge, Bertukan Mideksa watched as a man she had just ordered released on bail was detained by plain-clothes police with no warrant and no apparent regard for the law.

That was in 2001. She next saw that man when she became a fellow inmate at Kaliti Federal Prison in 2004, charged with crimes serious enough to have her imprisoned for life: treason, outrage against the constitution, inciting, organising or leading armed rebellion, obstruction of the exercise of constitutional powers, impairing the defensive power of the state and attempted genocide.

She claims her only true transgression was dissent.

"I couldn't stand the lack of human dignity," said Mideksa, seated behind her desk at her poorly furnished office in central Addis Ababa.

Mideksa is unique among Ethiopia's politicians. At 34 years old, she is exceptionally young; she was still in high school when rebels toppled the country's brutal military regime in 1991. And she is a woman, the first ever to head a political party in this notoriously patriarchal country. Read More.