A
group of civil society organizations are calling for an independent and
impartial international investigation into human rights violations in Ethiopia,
including the unlawful killing of peaceful protesters and a recent spate of
arrests of civil society members documenting this crackdown.
DefendDefenders (East and Horn of African Human
Rights Defenders Project), the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE),
Amnesty International, the Ethiopia Human Rights Project (EHRP), Front Line
Defenders, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), are
concerned about the levels of persecution and detention of civil society
members in the country. Since last month, four members of one of Ethiopia’s
most prominent human rights organizations, the Human Rights Council (HRCO),
were arrested and detained in the Amhara and Oromia regions. HRCO believes
these arrests are related to the members’ monitoring and documentation of the
crackdown of on-going protests in these regions.
On 14 August, authorities arrested Tesfa Burayu,
Chairperson of HRCO’s West Ethiopian Regional Executive Committee at his home
in Nekemte, Oromia. Tesfa, who had been monitoring the protests for the
organization, was denied access to his family and his lawyer, and released on
16 August without charge. Two days earlier on 12 August, Abebe Wakene, also a
member of HRCO, was arrested and taken to the Diga district police station in
Oromia. Abebe Wakene remains in detention with no formal charges against him.
In addition, on 13 August, Tesfaye Takele, a human rights monitor in the Amhara
region, was arrested in the North Wollo zone and is still detained without
charge.
On 8 July, Bulti Tesema – another active member of
HRCO – was arrested in Nejo, Oromia. He had been working with HRCO to monitor
and document violent repression of the protests. Sources told DefendDefenders
that his whereabouts remained unknown for several weeks after his arrest, until
they found out that he had been transferred to the capital’s Kilinto prison and
charged with terrorist offences. He has not been given access to either
his family or his lawyer. The court has adjourned the hearing to 12 October.
“New levels of violence are being reported in the
crackdown on the largely peaceful protests that have taken place across Oromia
and Amhara regions in recent weeks,” said Hassan Shire, Executive Director of
DefendDefenders. “Instead of investigating and holding accountable those
responsible for rights violations, the government is jailing the few
independent human rights defenders left working in the country.”
HRCO’s
human rights monitors were arrested for attempting to document the large-scale
pro-democracy protests and the following violent crackdown by the authorities
in the Oromia and Amhara regions, as well as in the capital Addis Ababa on 6
and 7 August. Amnesty International reported that close to 100 protesters were
killed and scores more arrested during the largely peaceful protests.
Three
journalists were also arrested and detained by Ethiopian security officials for
24 hours on 8 August 2016 in the Shashemene area of the Oromo region. According
to the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Ethiopia, Hadra Ahmed, a
correspondent with Africa News Agency, was arrested along
with Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) reporters Fred de Sam Lazaro and Thomas
Adair, despite having proper accreditation. They were reporting on the
government’s response to the drought in the Oromia region, where protests have
been ongoing since November 2015. Their passports and equipment were confiscated and
they were forced to return to Addis Ababa.
“Despite the systematic repression of peaceful
protestors, political dissents, journalists and human rights defenders, the
absence of efficient and effective grievance redress mechanisms risks plunging
the country into further turmoil,” said Yared Hailemariam, Executive Director
of AHRE.
In
response to the on-going crackdown, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, has called for “access for independent observers to the country to assess the human
rights situation”. Ethiopia’s government, however, has rejected the
call and promised to launch its own investigation.
Ethiopia’s
National Human Rights Commission, which has the mandate to investigate rights
violations in Ethiopia, has failed to make public its own June report on the
Oromo protests, whileconcluding in
its oral report to Parliament that the lethal force used by security forces in
Oromia was proportionate to the risk they faced from the protesters. Since November
2015, at least 500 demonstrators have been killed and thousands of others
arrested in largely peaceful protests in the Oromia and Amhara regions and
other locations across the country.
“The lack of independent and transparent
investigation of human rights violations in Ethiopia strongly implies that the
Ethiopian government’s investigation of the ongoing human rights crisis will
not be independent, impartial and transparent,” said Sarah Jackson, Amnesty
International’s Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the
Great Lakes. “It is time to step up efforts for an international and
independent investigation in Ethiopia.”
DefendDefenders, AHRE, Amnesty International, EHRP,
Front Line Defenders, and FIDH urge the Ethiopian authorities to (i) immediately
and unconditionally release civil society members targeted for their work and
(ii) facilitate access for international human rights monitoring bodies
including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to
conduct thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into
the ongoing human rights violations in the Oromia, Amhara and Addis Ababa
areas.
defenddefenders.org
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