and we'll tell you. in 60 minutes. it's not easy to go to another country you know nothing about. because we can't stay. asleep. that matters. made for mines. he's cleaning up your mess isn't it normal how do you sleep at night with an apology for my people live in the middle east from ethiopia has come a long way in a short time there's a new peace deal with eritrea and the new prime minister apparently determined to bring accountability for the human rights abuses of the past my guest this week here in brussels this is previous haile mariam who denied for many years that human

rights violations have taken place and whose government locked up many thousands of political prisoners have seen no shame for the torture that was perpetrated and the lives that were ruined during his time in office. hi liam i am welcome to come back so thank you so much thank you for having me ethiopia has a new prime minister now of the who took over after you resigned last year he's now received the nobel peace prize basically for undoing many of the evils of your government and doing what you couldn't do within a 100 days. something of a failure when you look at what you. know that. because. i have done my share

to bring this change to happen. premise that abby has not come from blue moon it has come from the party which i was it is a thing you have but he's begun correcting the massive human rights abuses which were a prominent feature of your telephone service that is it is my party which started the reform process and we say. the process should be no one to the country basically but also to the party itself so i think that is a process which yielded prime minister rabin. prime minister so he continued with the process pro reform my gender that my party and his party whether this is nobel committee cited his achievements as lifting the country state of emergency granting amnesty to thousands of political prisoners for years

you always denied there were in the scrapping media censorship legalising outlawed opposition groups dismissing military and civilian leaders suspected of corruption all the things that you failed to do when you were in office by the way do you know that 9095 percent of the prisoners released due to my office. before i left office and before i signed so i think what i did was they remain in 5 percent we trust the police so the decision was the decision of the party. and i took that action before i resigned how many did you release almost all the millions something. more than 3000 or so you know where there were many more than 3000 in jail yeah but it's only young people who've recently been arrested been released but the main political figures which has been adverse to been released during my term before the. because in may this year the attorney general. filed

criminal charges against your former intelligence chief get to ask alleging human rights abuses and corruption he's gone missing that you know where he would i don't know i'm not in office now i have no information 20 other people were charged with him he had served until june 28th seen. he had served you as prime minister who were denying that any human rights abuses were being committed i think you're you're lucky information lucky evidence it is my government and my party who admitted that there has been. abuse if you start the year off to here in interview say nobody's being mistreated we have no political prisoners one north to the other you gave interviews sitting smiling across the opinions of us say oh everything's fine here you know you got these for you you have to understand there will be how our part to operate not a minor one of

a step in the way you operate within islam if you like yourself let me finish 1st if that's the case then you know that we have been historically we have to understand that in the 1st place this is a party fighting left and you know us. when there is a communist mentality and when it's a marxist mentality there is a centralism where you door into after war after your party decides one issue even though you have differences in as a minority you take with you so you just hold the line whatever it is because you're too cowardly to say anything about what's really going on all i see is the internet skews that misplacing and the whole thing here is that we believe that in our party and the government that we need to reform our system we need to bring about changes. and we need to democratize our country because that's

a country with number of interest this and there is an introduction of ethnic mobilized politics which is very dangerous and therefore we have we have disabled that we need to go how does that end deeply into forming our country only for something that you've been busy in washington you didn't get it i would need a force doing well if you had done that prime minister when he came in brown is that abby wouldn't have had to condemn police brutality pledged to retrain in the security services to what he called economic mismanagement corruption and rights abuses all of this spending find you want to spin off this is also misplaced see because prime minister abbott has not come from a blue moon he has doesn't matter where he came from there with us he's cleaning up the whole mess isn't a no no it's not he's not cleaning up these messes he's going on your messed up the mess you left dark knight i think this is also misplacing and i really always say

that you know correctly this is our party's admission of our collective mistake and then we put in place properly these 2 of the things that you failed to do by november last year dozens of intelligence officers and high level officials have been arrested including people from the military run the metals and engineering corp met tech on charges of corruption and human rights is this is that will put those charges through that speed that is the study which i introduced 1000000 to be finished i mean it. november last year you weren't in office i did it you don't have been even those i did it i launch in the studies and then completion of the 2 studies then action has been to the attorney general said $63.00 people have been arrested that months november last year 27 for corruption $36.00 on charges of human rights violations that included the former head of mattick conflict dagny or

a brigadier general over whom you did nothing you did nothing about that study you lucky with this i love the study and the group of people who study the study is charging people with human rights in norfolk in charge of every issue to you when you show up to challenge people after you said after concretely when there is a criminal investigation unit that investigation has been launched by may 3rd local media said huge sums of money were missing from this company a matter of whether the girl let the let the court decide on it as prime minister he was supposed to look after the public places the military was supposed to follow your orders. and you for seem to fail spectacularly to make them do that since you feel any remorse at the crimes you were allowed to take place when you were prime minister no i think i have resigned because i was not able to change dramatically whether mitch has to come be going to week. i say fiction actually i have my own

this train this and i have my own weaknesses and you have to not to look into only the weaknesses but you have to also see the strength of this country has gone and you know you know that my country has been visited during my tenure by 6 of the 77 leaders and they all announced that this country has been working very hard at double digit gross and they cannot make. achievements where we have it's dictated our people out of poverty the only country which has actually and. 7 out of this 8 images and now where the by the united nations by my time so i think you have to see all those positive things we have achieved last november the last of them mr the attorney general. said investigated her uncovered serious abuses by security services at secret prisons in the capital and elsewhere to know

what your security officers were doing in the single presence i don't know those states rights machine or if you were asked to a visit how can i do or if your intelligence doesn't give me information how can you know there were plenty of foreign reports that torture was going on which you do knowing it and you're not you're telling me you didn't know what was going on or i did it so your so now you also serves your denials we're just pro forma denials no are not going to deny everything when you were in office no not at all you did you said they don't know everything you didn't you didn't know what was going on in these prisons you didn't ask you weren't interested. they know in these oarfish only we know some of the appeal abuses and i have taken in my time some of the actions. of those things but i didn't know that there are you know informal prisons which has been there the attorney general said there are people who have

been blinded and held in darkness for long periods of time others have been left infertile because of blows to their genitals there are some that have been in this program women have been subjected to go rape and men have been sort of modest all this happened until your rule so i ask you what you were shame that this was going on until you were ruled normal i mean it is a shared that when this happened but i didn't know those things and if i knew those things i would architected them because this is a very sacred things happened well it didn't take long for this prime minister to find out what was going on so obviously nice looking in like place and you did not believe you know either you didn't want to look to tell you i am near whom for this prayer to art i tried been very hard to bring him to power and i did every you lost your job that's why you gave up you lost control of the party lost faith in you that's why you gave up what i think you can you can say that when you're

struggling to control others rest in the country because failure caitiff their eyes will i mean it myself i did it intentionally because i wanted to see that this change should come so i think this is genuinely what has happened and i did my best in paving the way for this to happen so i think that has to be clearly kind of did i did i think a big clearly wriggle of it when we had been in your prisons during your term in office with being subjected to gang rape and men to some of them are ization now that you know this even if you say you didn't know it at the time. on the train to the victims i didn't have a permit was when they when they said when they resigned because that's the system which was open to be done maybe you meant to the victims and apologize personally to them if there is only to be a will you haven't done so have you and i have heard them get the chance and i will

we have been conciliation and threw them into consideration commission established and asked process is how do you sleep at night knowing that this was going on in your torture centers carried out by your officials when you were prime minister how do you sleep at night. if i knew then i said to you that i was there to collect everything in my disposal if i knew it but i did notice your meal your said to be a religious man from a family of pentecostalists is that right that's wrong. how others gang rape and sodomy is ocean fit in with your religious values no i didn't know i say if a new it doesn't fit in in my prayers but he went on denying it denying it denounce news for nearly every interview that that's the report they're the noisy despite

the reports coming out of every room in human rights groups all over the world which you just rubbished you said that's not true they're outside as there are enemies don't listen to them everything is fine you said i think i have never say everything is fine you said there was no known history of us and said there was no mistreatment going on there is a problem but i was saying that my report is that it's not to the extent where has been said that's what i see by then any case i report which i wish i was giving to the public which which was the case let's take another detention center should you go central prison otherwise known as jail or get the regional detention center in the east of the country but ministered in public by your special police it was closed in august last year do you know what was going on there as well no i don't know why not you knew the prison existed and you know what you are right you have

little during our city you have no curiosity mr high among you didn't want to know what was going on in your jails no it's not their kids you know that if you tell governments have their own rights and i think the whole thing is i did my my work according to the reports they get from my intelligence and from my sources and therefore that's what what was the kids. people reported there were many of the former prisoners who said they saw people dying in their cells after being tortured by officials in this or garden jailers as it was called what should happen to the officials who carried out this torture. i mean what should happen to them they're in prison and that's it. just prison sentences and what should happen to you for turning a blind eye to it that depends on the legal system of the country you know i had his own simply because to take all the responsibilities but what is extraordinary

is that with all the abuses that were carried out when he would probably minister you accepted from the new prime minister the nation's highest award for service without even blushing without any embarrassment whatsoever now that you know what was going on while you were prime minister why didn't you give back a little more. why should i because i have a number of positive things i have because you failed to show all this is one part of you and it's a dark incident that says your trollish is in you much maurice ward at the moment my country that doesn't explain that's not the only thing you know i have done many good things there are issues in the system which are definitely what i initiated to the form and the conduct before them because i understood that age of you know before now is admission and a student there are something going on therefore i initiated this reform and then i

have released 95 percent of the humor in if you were in office for 6 years and this new prime minister has come in and done more for human rights than you did in all the time you were there this because they paved the way for him billy the us state department in 2016 published a catalogue of the human rights abuses taking place on the your rule which of course you deny it but then the known to be true arbitrate killings disappearances torture harsher life threatening prison conditions detention without charge you know minute where they really weren't but it's what they said but how are you sad if you didn't know what was going on when all these reports were pointing to what was years old whenever they knew that there are things going wrong i initiated that form and the serious reform and the before and that new south where the prime minister has come into power. you said when you result in that you wanted to be part of the solution in ethiopia how can you be part of the solution when you so

much part of the problem. you know i would you become part of the solution because in there is a problem which would result in procuring to be created the atmosphere of permissive doubtless fear in which your security officials believe they could torture but it was alright to torture go on torturing disappearing people no judicial experience no deal creating the atmosphere in which that was possible no i didn't create the atmosphere so our profile is then the constitutional system has been established then anyone who's in a world where there is could be accounted for but i didn't create this this point this the environment for them it is a deep system which i was not able to look into because of my background and because of my you know i must say that are coming into the deep system so i

couldn't see that when mr our big came into power he couldn't wait to condemn the legacy of your government and draw a line in the time in office could be a pro last year he said that government your government had sanctioned torture of its prisoners and said it had been guilty of state terrorism he said it he said in parliament does the constitution say anyone who was sentenced by a court can be tortured put in a dog let's say doesn't that's the rule that the government was in his eyes were not only mine you were the prime minister i was our prize in this order by the way he was there also the buck stopped yes politically decided to reform including indian out of what the responsibility lay hailes not to you how do you yet is yes it is not to try to get out of it why do you try to get out his wife and she did that for that's why you should that you know why i'm here to thank you for this here in a shared vision for you blocked every attempt by the united nations special

rapporteur that should tell you where you are as a girl from as we have issued to your only for you. come up from us and the only message needed locked i release a new block to my english the gating that was because you didn't want them to find out what was going on i did and that i initiated that before before my eyes that mission a unit will undoubtedly for me is that what the result of pain is that i get to come to power conjured so beautiful light it could all but in him to power the conscience of people were killed in the your regime and you refused to have an independent investigation led by the u.n. chief human rights official if you ask the killings the last one and half years the number of killings side passed in 6 years what happened in my town if you ask for killings look darkest of dicky's so the whole thing is you know i initiated this new form a year ago before my dissemination and i paved the way in for the new system you

would have in the bush was mean you say you are surely the reform you created the regime where people were tortured and disappeared and had their rights taken away from them consistently tens i have our sense of people i was not needed and while since i am basket an apology to my people that the region has some abuses of it of you my doubts and the deficit in democracy and that has happened i am i still feel that and sort of for that but i can dish it out substantial come that's not much of an apology as it really isn't a half hearted apology no it is not a new we are not resigning you know it would have taken me into the last as many leadership program as ours i didn't want you to spell you lost the faith or not i haven't the most that security forces have and it was the army they're all going to have a rest for their big arrest and they should know better that they should have been investigated under your time when they were only one to continue as the others you

know i could have used everything up to the. last of my bit if you want you know more spirit is a dictatorship yet you always claim that democracy took time you always said this is a fledgling democracy it takes time and this isn't this is what every dictator says like the way they just said well if you give i'll follow you and yourself in europe you pass through a number of civil wars before you can use this you want to present 3 to you terry davis says it's not our big boss molly and that son harry these days in the past while they show even in europe united states everywhere in the western countries you democracy has taken time and it has not come in one shot in one day and one week and 1000000 it has taken years to much and that the school and that will continue democracy is building democratic culture here is not justice everything to slow it down mistrial or more and we've never shied away from associations or

friendships either with indicted or convicted war criminals they hold some special fascination for you know these people which runs like mr r. by sheer the former president of the bill in august you posted a controversial picture on facebook of you smiling next to ethiopia as exiled marxist leader mengistu haile mariam and then you took it down when there was a huge outcry because this man of course was found guilty and of sent here of genocide by the way i met him incidentally when i was there in some buy when he was in the president's office when i was there in the president's office when i made him and i talked to him so that's what happened in any case and you posted a comment saying i wish to see more former heads of governments and states in my country contributing their parts in different capacity of the peaceful transition of political blogger that is not me it is the officers there who did it and they

say this is wrong. so only you don't want mr mingus to with his conviction for genocide to play a part in the new ethiopia i think if we go through tools and then you can see mission commission and if he is also given a chance to know to apologize and then anything what the through is any consolation commission brings into it i then that leads the country needs to quincy mission i have a deep belief that we need conciliation what mother says when some of the past even the future is words of support from others that genocide isn't something you just you just are there suggest feeling our way anyhow you did it it was relation to the to make country explained to me please how a conviction for one of the most serious crimes on the planet would qualify mr mengistu to contribute to the well being of your country howard i would imagine with a qualification like that. i think it depends on how hard it is but conviction for

the side of genocide for the most serious problem as you heard him tell you this is south africa as you can say apartheid isn't genocide it's the home are not for you it's not just for a few times it is more than genocide where is your truth and reconciliation commission it is it has been established and we see that it is that for you your support and this not by for us it is so your quite happy for convicted war criminals to come back to your country and play their part good old boy is good all the more solutions it allows that yes if not then no how should future generations in africa protect themselves from people like you this should happen is that countries get growth dictators like you know. i think levelling media title is wrong is wrong this is use is not my my people.

so i think this is misplacing again this is a good from yourself. i like. thank you very much for being the culprits.

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