Ethiopia is cracking down on human rights workers, journalists and civil society workers in an attempt to stifle criticism, says Amnesty International in a new report published on Tuesday.
“Ethiopian authorities have gone to extreme lengths to stifle independent scrutiny and criticism in clear violation of fundamental rights to freedom of expression and association, the organizations said. Human rights organizations in Ethiopia need to be able to conduct their work without fear of reprisals,” Amnesty said.
This week, UN Human Rights Council also criticized Ethiopia for human rights violations. Liz Throssel of UN Human Rights Council in a briefing said that Ethiopian security forces were involved in more than 2/3 of human rights abuses committed in one year ending in January.
Ethiopian parliament imposed state of emergency to launch a military operation against Fano militias in the Amhara region last year. Under the state of emergency proclamation, hundreds of people, suspected of supporting Fano, were detained by security forces. The SoE expired earlier this month. Gradually detainees are being releases. Three journalists were released after courts granted them bails this week. But still unknown number of people are in prison.
Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and Ethiopian Human Rights Council in recent statement complained of high handedness and harassment by security forces.
Opposition political parties including OFC, OLF, ONLF etc are of the view that the Ethiopian government is denying due political space to opposition parties. These parties boycotted a meeting called by the Ethiopian Prime Minister more than a month ago.
Amnesty urged international and regional players to put pressure on Ethiopia. “Ethiopia’s international and regional partners should press Ethiopian authorities to respect the rights of political opponents, journalists, human rights defenders, and activists, call for scrutiny in this regard by UN human rights bodies, including the UN Human Rights Council, and provide visible recognition, including by issuing public statements, that the situation facing human rights defenders in Ethiopia
remains critical,” Amnesty said.
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