HRW (Human Rights Watch), the International watchdog disclosed this on its annual Human Rights Report for 2014 today. According to HRW's investigation following the death of Ethiopia's former Premier,
Hopes
that Ethiopia’s new leadership would pursue human rights reforms
following Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s death in August 2012 have
been shattered; there was no tangible change of policy in 2013.
Instead, the Ethiopian authorities continue to severely restrict the
rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly,
using repressive laws to constrain civil society and independent
media, and target individuals with politically motivated
prosecutions.
Muslim protests against perceived government
interference in their religious affairs were met by security forces
with arbitrary arrests and detentions, beatings, and other
mistreatment throughout the year. The trial of 29 protest leaders who
were arrested in July 2012 has been closed to the public, media, and
family members since January. Others convicted under the country’s
deeply flawed antiterrorism law—including opposition leaders and
four journalists—remain in prison.
Ethiopia’s ambitious
development schemes, funded from domestic revenue sources and foreign
assistance, sometimes displace indigenous communities without
appropriate consultation or any compensation. Security forces have
also used violence, threats, and intimidation to force some groups to
relocate, such as in the Lower Omo Valley where indigenous people
continue to be displaced from their traditional lands, which are
earmarked for state-run irrigated sugar plantations.
Freedom
of Peaceful Assembly
Since
early 2012, members of Ethiopia’s Muslim community—which
constitutes at least 30 percent of the country’s population—have
organized regular public protests. Demonstrations were triggered by
perceived government interference in the Supreme Council of Islamic
Affairs and the Awalia mosque in Addis Ababa.
The government
has clamped down heavily on the protests, arbitrarily detaining and
beating protesters, including 29 prominent activists and leaders who
were arrested in July 2012 and charged in October 2012 under the
Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. In January, the High Court closed those
hearings to the public, including media, diplomats, and family
members. Some defendants have alleged mistreatment in detention and
the trials raise a number of due process concerns, including lack of
access to legal counsel for some defendants for almost two months,
and erratic access to relatives.
The government has also
undermined the defendants’ presumption of innocence by broadcasting
inflammatory material and accusations against them on state
television. In February, the state-run Ethiopian Television (ETV)
broadcast a program called “Jihadawi Harakat” (“Jihad War”)
that included footage of at least five of the defendants filmed in
pretrial detention. The program equated the Muslim protest movement
with Islamist extremist groups, casting the protest leaders as
terrorists.
Despite the arrests, protests continued throughout
2013. In early August, protests were organized in the capital, Addis
Ababa, as well as in other cities to commemorate Eid al Fitr, the end
of Ramadan. Witnesses described a heavy police presence in Addis
Ababa, and credible sources said that police used excessive force to
disperse the demonstrators and detained hundreds, at least
temporarily.
The Semayawi Party (“Blue Party”), a newcomer
to Ethiopia’s political scene, held a peaceful protest in June—the
first large-scale protest organized by a political opposition party
in eight years. A planned protest in August was cancelled when the
Blue Party offices were raided by security forces, resulting in the
arrest of dozens of people and the confiscation of equipment. The
Blue Party had earlier been denied a permit by government to hold the
protest.
Arbitrary
Detention and Ill-Treatment
Arbitrary
detention and ill-treatment in detention continues to be a major
problem. Students, members of opposition groups, journalists,
peaceful protesters, and others seeking to express their rights to
freedom of assembly, expression, or association are frequently
detained arbitrarily.
Ill-treatment
is often reported by people detained for political reasons,
particularly in Addis Ababa’s Federal Police Crime Investigation
Center, known as Maekelawi, where most individuals are held during
pre-charge or pretrial detention. Abuse and coercion that in some
cases amount to torture and other ill-treatment are used to extract
information, confessions, and statements from detainees.
Individuals
are often denied access to legal counsel, particularly during
pre-charge detention. Mistreated detainees have little recourse in
the courts and there is no regular access to prisons and detention
centers by independent investigators. Although the
government-affiliated Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has visited
some detainees and detention centers, there is no regular monitoring
by any independent human rights or other organizations.
In
July, a delegation from the European Parliament was denied access to
Kaliti prison in Addis Ababa by Ethiopian authorities, despite having
received prior authorization.
Freedom
of Expression and Association
Since
2009, when the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation and the Charities and
Societies Proclamation (CSO Law) were passed, freedoms of expression
and association have been severely restricted in Ethiopia. The CSO
law is one of the most draconian laws regulating nongovernmental
activity in the world. It bars work on human rights, good governance,
conflict resolution, and advocacy on the rights of women, children,
and people with disabilities if organizations receive more than 10
percent of their funds from foreign sources.
Ethiopia’s most
reputable human rights groups have either dramatically scaled down
their operations or removed human rights from their mandates. Several
of the country’s most prominent human rights activists have fled
the country due to threats.
Ethiopian media remains under a
tight government stranglehold, and many journalists practice
self-censorship. Webpages and blogs critical of the government are
regularly blocked, and foreign radio and TV stations are routinely
jammed. Journalists working for independent domestic newspapers
continue to face regular harassment and threats.
The
Anti-Terrorism Proclamation has been used to target political
opponents, stifle dissent, and silence journalists. In May, the
Supreme Court upheld the 18-year sentence of journalist and blogger
Eskinder Nega Fenta, who was convicted in July 2012 for conspiracy to
commit terrorist acts and participation in a terrorist organization.
Eskinder received the PEN Freedom to Write award in 2012. Reeyot
Alemu Gobebo, a journalist for Feteh,
was convicted on three counts under the terrorism law for her
writings. Her sentence was reduced from 14 to 5 years on appeal, but
her appeal of the remaining five-year sentence was dismissed in
January. Reeyot was awarded the prestigious 2013 UNESCO/Guillermo
Cano World Press Freedom Prize.
Journalists covering the
Muslim protests were threatened and arbitrarily detained. Solomon
Kebede, chief editor of the now-defunct Yemuslimoch
Guday
(“Muslim Affairs”), was arrested in January and charged under the
Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. Yusuf Getachew, his predecessor, was
charged under the same law in 2012. Several other journalists fled
Ethiopia in 2013, making it one of the top three countries in the
world in terms of the number of journalists in exile.
Forced
Displacement Associated with Development Programs
Both
the government of Ethiopia and the donor community have failed to
adequately investigate allegations of abuses associated with
Ethiopia’s “villagization program.” Under this program, 1.5
million rural people are being relocated, ostensibly to improve their
access to basic services. However, some of the relocations in the
first year of the program in Gambella region were accompanied by
violence, including beatings and arbitrary arrests, and insufficient
consultation and compensation.
On July 12, the World Bank’s
board of executive directors approved the recommendation of the
Inspection Panel, the institution’s independent accountability
mechanism, to investigate a complaint from ethnic Anuak refugees
alleging that the bank violated its own safeguards in Gambella. The
investigation was ongoing at time of writing.
Ethiopia is
proceeding with development of a sugar plantation in the Lower Omo
Valley, clearing 245,000 hectares of land that is home to 200,000
indigenous peoples. Displaced from their ancestral lands, these
agro-pastoralists are being moved to permanent villages under the
villagization program.
Key
International Actors
Ethiopia
enjoys warm relations with foreign donors and most of its regional
neighbors. Ethiopia has forged strong ties based on its role as the
seat of the African Union (AU), its contribution to United Nations
peacekeeping, security partnerships with Western nations, and its
progress on some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These
strong relationships have contributed to the international
community’s silence on Ethiopia’s dismal human rights
record.
The year 2013 saw Ethiopia continue to play a
mediation role between Sudan and South Sudan, while its troops
maintained an uneasy calm in the disputed Abyei region. Ethiopia
continues to deploy its troops inside Somalia, but outside the AU
mission.
Ethiopia also continues to receive significant
amounts of donor assistance—almost US$4 billion in 2013. As
partners in Ethiopia’s development, donor nations remain muted in
their criticism of Ethiopia’s appalling human rights record and are
taking little meaningful action to investigate allegations of abuses
associated with development programs.
Relations with Egypt
worsened in 2013 due to Egyptian concerns that Ethiopia’s Grand
Renaissance Dam will divert valuable water from the Nile River. An
estimated 85 percent of the Nile’s waters originate in the
Ethiopian highlands and Egypt is completely dependent on the Nile for
all its water needs. At 6,000 megawatts of electricity, the dam will
be Africa’s largest hydroelectric project. Construction started in
2012 and the dam is scheduled to be completed in 2018.
In
addition to Western donors, China, India, and Brazil are increasingly
financing a variety of large-scale development initiatives. Foreign
private investment into Ethiopia is increasing with agro-business,
hydroelectric, mining, and oil exploration all gaining prominence in
2013. Agro-business investment is coming mainly from India, the Gulf,
and the Ethiopian diaspora, attracted to very low land prices and
labor costs. As seen in several of Ethiopia’s other large-scale
development projects, there is a serious risk of forced displacement
of people from their land when some of these programs are
implemented.
Eskinder
Nega, an Ethiopian publisher, journalist and blogger who is serving
an 18-year jail sentence under anti-terror legislation, has been
awarded the 2014 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom
prize of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers
(WAN-IFRA).
DireTube, an Ethiopian video sharing website quoting a local oppositional newspaper Sendek said that Mikiyas Nigatu of the Ethiopian Airports Enterprise’s Gambella Airport
Security personnel, who was charged by the federal prosecutor for
delivering sensitive information to the ESAT journalist named Fasil
Yenealem for 4,460 Br is sentenced to four years in prison by the
Federal High Court’s Fourth Criminal Bench on January 20, 2014.
