Ethiopian
security forces have killed more than 400 people, including children, in the
Oromia region by using excessive force to quell anti-government protests,
according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Tens of
thousands of people have been arrested and many remain in detention without
charge, HRW said in a report published on Thursday. The
organization called for Ethiopia to investigate and prosecute those among its
security forces responsible for abuses and demanded greater pressure be exerted
by the international community on the Horn of Africa state.
The protests in Oromia began in
November 2015 in
response to the Ethiopian government's proposed Addis Ababa Integrated
Development Master Plan, which suggested an expansion of the Ethiopian capital
that could result in farmers from the Oromo ethnic group being displaced and
losing their land. The Oromo are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia,
constituting around a third of the population at the last census in 2007.
Oromia is the largest state in Ethiopia and surrounds the capital Addis Ababa
on all sides.
The Ethiopian government announced in January that it was
dropping the expansion plan, but protests have continued in Oromia, in part
motivated by the brutal crackdown up until that point. According to Felix
Horne, Ethiopia and Eritrea researcher at HRW and the report’s lead author,
methods used by the security forces included firing live ammunition into
crowds. “It’s quite often indiscriminate, randomly spraying bullets into
crowds,” says Horne. “Children are often the ones at the front of the
protests—they’re more eager, [so] they’re often the ones that were hit.”
Abiy Berhane, minister counsellor for the Ethiopian Embassy in London, told Newsweek that HRW’s report was inaccurate. “The
allegations in the HRW report talking about 400 deaths are not acceptable. HRW
always gives exaggerated figures because it does not have a physical presence
in Ethiopia and relies on casualty numbers supplied by opposition groups,” says
Berhane. He cites a report compiled by the Ethiopian Human Rights
Commission that was submitted to parliament on June 10, which found that 173
people were killed—including 14 members of the security forces and 14 local
government officials—and 261 were seriously injured, 110 of whom were from the
security forces.
The HRW
report was based on more than 125 interviews with protesters, witnesses and
government officials, and documented around 60 of the 500 reported
demonstrations. The Ethiopian government has previously accused the Oromo
protesters of being armed and inciting
violence . Horne says
that HRW did document instances of violence by protesters—including the
targeting of government buildings and private farmland—but that, in the
majority of instances, the use of violence by police was unwarranted. “These
are not tens of thousands of protesters that are overwhelming security forces.
These are hundreds at most, so there’s no excuse for the level of force that
the security forces used,” says Horne.
Ethiopian migrants from the Oromo community protest against the
Ethiopian regime in Valletta, Malta, December 21, 2015. Hundreds of Oromo
protesters have been killed in the demonstrations.DARRIN ZAMMIT LUPI/REUTERS
Ethiopian
Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn—who previously accused neighboring Eritrea
of manipulating the protests to incite civil disobedience—issued an apology for the
deaths of protesters in
March but accused “anti-peace forces” of being responsible for the violence.
But according to Etana Habte, an Ethiopian author and PhD candidate at SOAS
University of London, the apology has proved hollow as the security forces have
not faced punishment for their actions. “If he apologized for what happened in
Oromia, [where] over 500 people have been killed, no one was brought to justice
in relation to this,” says Habte, citing a higher death toll. “No one was
released from prison, among the killers no one was brought to justice. The
government did nothing practical, it simply said ‘we are sorry.’”
Oromos have
suffered a difficult history in Ethiopia. The Oromo language was not taught in
schools for much of the 20th century, and activists from the ethnic group have
often clashed with the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF), which has ruled the country since 1991. A 2014 report by Amnesty International found that at
least 5,000 Oromos were arrested between 2011 and 2014 on the basis of alleged
opposition to the government.
According to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission’s report,
the violence was prompted by poor governance in Oromia and failure to address
public grievances. The Commission’s report said that legitimate demonstrations
were hijacked by armed groups including the Oromo Liberation Front—a group
established to campaign for Oromo self-determination but designated a terrorist
organization by the Ethiopian government—which used women and children as human
shields by placing them at the front of crowds during demonstrations.
Berhane says that the Ethiopian government has begun dealing
with the aftermath of the violence by arresting those alleged to be involved in
corruption and running public consultations. “In short, the government is
listening to the people and addressing their grievances,” says Berhane.
Coverage of
the protests has been limited in Ethiopia, which is ranked 142 out of 180
countries in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders.
Several journalists covering the protests were reportedly detained in March,
though a representative of the Ethiopian government said the detentions were
because the reporters had violated the terms of their accreditation.
newsweek
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