(Qeerroo, Finfinnee, 15 September, 2011), The TPLF’s  Government is preparing new  draft law by which Identification Card can be issued  to all Ethiopian nationals in the country and administered.

Qeerroo sources from the Ministry of Justice revealed that the background research and the preparation of the draft legislation have already been completed in order to promulgate the proclamation.

When this law, which has the official name of Vital Statistics and Registration Proclamation, intends to regulate the issuance and administration of Identification Card, is  proclaimed as law, those who does not hold this identification card will not able to get basic services that one should get to live in that country. Moreover, this draft proclamation directly targets Oromos, Somalis and Eritreans.

The TPLF’s Government wants to prepare the law that severely limits the issuance of identification Card to members of Oromo, Somalis and Eritreans background because currently TPLF considers the members of these groups of people as a serious threat to “National Security”.

Our sources said that “identifying and targeting citizens in their own country as a threat of national security to their own country is a new trend.

Furthermore, our sources commented that “according to international law and customs one may consider aliens or foreigners as the threat to national security but it is unique to TPLF’s Government to deem its own people or citizens as the threat of national security”

According to this new draft proclamation, the members of Oromo nation, Somalis and Eritreans may not be entitled to get the Identification Card without which they cannot get any basic service they should get as the citizens or residents of that country.

A legal scholar on Ethiopian legal system, who did not want to disclose his name, gave his comments on this new draft law to Qeerroo News by saying that “if a citizen cannot get an unlimited right to get the Identification Card within his own country, then his rights to get the benefit of being a citizen, his right to live in peace, learn, and prosper in his own country is unjustifiably limited.”

According to the legal analysis of this legal scholar, “those groups of peoples who are targeted by this draconian draft law are assumed to be non citizens if they fail  to present evidence that shows they are citizens.”

According to this scholar, having such kind of legal presumption in Ethiopia, where there are no proper systems of  registration of vital events,  does not genuine motives than creating  the situations in which millions of citizens remained without any legal status in their own home or  country.

This scholar also added that “if this law is promulgated and get legal status, it will be one of the best examples of immoral and dangerous piece of legislation in modern Ethiopian legal history.”