20100121

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia denounced on Thursday a rights group report that accused it of cracking down on the opposition and restricting the work of aid agencies ahead of national elections in May.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) annual report said Ethiopia jails opposition members and has passed laws that outlaw most human rights organisations.

"Ethiopia is on a deteriorating human rights trajectory as parliamentary elections approach in 2010," the report said.

"Broad patterns of government repression have prevented the emergence of organized opposition in most of the country," it added.

HRW also condemned the jailing of opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa. She was imprisoned in 2005 and released in a 2007 pardon deal but was rearrested in December 2009 after she said she had never asked for a pardon.

Government spokesman Shimeles Kemal rejected the findings, telling Reuters: "Most of this report is based on fabrications from the Medrek (opposition party) and the ONLF rebel group.

"We don't have any policy of suppressing opposition. But nobody is above the rule of law in Ethiopia, whether members of the opposition or not."

The elections will be the first since a disputed 2005 poll ended in violence when about 200 opposition protesters were killed on the streets by police and soldiers.