He has a policy which he calls "Ethiopia first," which to him means, with regard to the Falashas, obliterating their Jewish identity and punishing anyone who will not give in to this effort to obliterate their identity. The attitude is aggravated by the fact that he is fiercely anti-Zionist. He has claimed that the Falashas are somehow inaccurately claimed-alined with the CIA here in America.

In January of this year, Dr. Bruce Gottlieb of London interviewed him and Melaku made very clear his disdain for the Jews and his belief that their connection with Israel is something for which they had to be punished.

There have been a couple of very severe examples of this. One has to do with education. The International Development Program, ORT (Organization of Rehabilitation and Training) which is a Jewish philanthropy, had been working in Ethiopia before the revolution. They continued until Major Melaku closed it in 1981, and there was a school there which was teaching people Hebrew, teaching Jewish religious values, and culture.

The people there were the subject of incredible persecution, including imprisonment, and with imprisonment came, for the Falashas, particularly harsh treatment. They were singled out for beatings, for being held in solitary confinement for completely inhumane forms of treatment, again because of their Jewishness.

Now obviously the Horn of Africa is in upheaval. There is fighting between Somalia and Ethiopia. There is the Eritrean succession problem. Our role is limited; I understand that. But I do not think the State Department has done enough. I think we ought to be pursuing efforts to discuss and maintain contacts with the Ethiopian Government, making clear that this systematic oppression and mistreatment of Jews not so much by the central government but by Major Melaku in the Gondar region is simply intolerable, that it is a burden that must be lifted if we are ever to have the kind of normal relations we someday hope to have with any other government.

It is important that the State Department, in its relationships with the government and its activities in Africa, be cognizant of this. We should not have to be fighting with the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs at the State Department to recognize that these people are being persecuted. We should not have to have people living under a cloud of uncertainty as to whether or not they will be able to accept asylum if that was, in fact, available to them.

Finally, in addition to pressing the State Department, I welcome this opportunity again to simply give some attention to this. We have to believe that when the Congress of the United States focuses on governmental action which denies people such a basic right as the right to practice their religion, that it does some good. We know that to be the case from the reaction of those on whom we focus.

You will be hearing today, in addition to my colleague Tom Lantos, who has done so much in this field of human rights, a number of people who have worked very hard at great personal sacrifice, and in some cases at personal risk, on behalf of the Falashas of Ethiopia. I have come to know these people in my own

work in the last year and a half. They have educated me on this subject and they have inspired me.

I just want to express publicly my admiration for the people whom you are going to be talking to, both American and Ethiopian-people who, as I said, at great sacrifice to themselves have voluntarily made the cause of these beleagured and oppressed people their own.

Mr. Chairman, again I want to thank you very much for the chance to testify, and I will submit a written copy of the statement for the record.

Mr. BONKER. Thank you, Mr. Frank.

[Mr. Frank's prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. BARNEY FRANK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to be testifying before this committee again today and I would like to reitterate my thanks to the committee for conducting this series of hearings on religious persecution.

The condition of the ancient Jewish community in Ethiopia is a perilous one and it is an important step forward that a committee of the Congress has granted recognition to this unfortunate and extremely disturbing situation. This community has suffered endless hardship as a result of their determination to maintain Jewish values and customs in a society which views any belief that is not distinctly Christian or Muslim with suspicion. The vast majority of the Ethiopian population has no knowledge of the practice of Judaism and there has been an historic tendency to view the Falashas as an alien people despite the fact that they have lived in Ethiopia for centuries. A direct translation of the word Falasha confirms this fact; the word means "stranger" or "one who does not own land" when translated from Gh'ez, a native Ethiopian language.

Once a strong and vibrant community, the Falashas have now dwindled from a population of 250,000 in the 19th century to less than 30,000 today. Despite the hardships and acts of blatant harassment, the Falashas have persisted in the strict observance of their Jewish faith. To visualize observance of Shabbat, study of the laws of Torah, the rite of Bar Mitzvah, and other ritual practices in the Horn of Africa might at first seem incongruous to our perceptions and understanding of the African continent. Yet, the Westerners who have

visited the Jews in the Gondar regions of northwest Ethiopia

have returned in awe of the religious dedication of the Ethiopian Jewish community which has continued religious observance despite repeated attacks upor their efforts

to practice the Jewish faith and despite the fact that the Falashas have been cut off from the diaspora community for such a long period of time.

The Ethiopian Jewish community is determined to maintain the Jewish faith; it is a community which is truly remarkable when one examines the history of these people. The victims of historic discrimination, including enslavement, forced conversions and land confiscation, the Ethiopian Jewish community has faced a constant struggle to sustain its identity and has steadfastly overcome the obstacles which they have encountered over the centuries. As a distinct minority in a country where the majority of the people are either Christian or Muslim, the Falashas have been the victims of distorted perceptions including linking the Falashas with the superstitious powers such as Black Magic and the Evil Eye. While it might seem difficult to make such associations in our own minds, this kind of cultural prejudice has resulted in the scapegoating of the Falasha Jews, making them the victims of undeserved hostility on the part of the ruling authorities and the local population.

The Ethiopian Jewish community is now at a critical juncture. With approximately 25,000 Jews left in Ethiopia today, it appears that the toll of this historic discrimination against the Falashas

has had a devastating impact upon the community.

Mr. Chairman, there have been several missions bý

Americans who have traveled to Ethiopia in the past year, and the news we have been receiving does not bode well for the Ethiopian Jewish community. I would like to share with the committee some of the circumstances which surround the Falashas' existence in Ethiopia today.

The most obvious place to begin a discussion of this nature is with the revolution of 1974 in which the regime of Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in a Marxist coup led by Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam. Although Selassie's reign had produced some improvement in the tolerance of Jewish religious practices, it is significant to note that the Jews were not legally allowed to own land under his rule. It was believed that there might be significant improvement for the Falashas under the new regime as a result of the land reform program that the Mengistu government had promised to implement. While it would appear that the land reform program, known as the Green Campaign, would aid the Falashas, it became apparent rather quickly that the Jews would become entangled in the cross-fire between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces. The net effect of the land reform progam was a trap in which the Falashas were terrorized by the landowners and conservative backers of the old regime, who wanted to halt the reforms, and the revolutionary government on the other side which sought to extract concessions from the Falashas in their efforts to solidify the power of the