Tag Archives: Violence by security forces

Ethiopia needs all the help it could garner, including by visiting UN Special Rapporteur to ensure respect for human rights sticks in a nation that has been through a lot!

7 Dec

By Keffyalew Gebremedhin The Ethiopia Observatory (TEO)

Backgrounder

Ethiopians have not as yet officially heard of David Kaye’s assessment of the human rights situation in Ethiopia. I guess he still happens to be in the country, having arrived in Addis Abeba on Monday December 2, 2019.

I know he still is in Ethiopia, as we have not learned from the media about his mission culminating in an exit meeting with the nation’s prime minister, as is the tradition.

Otherwise, a quiet exit may emit a different message, an ominous sign Ethiopia’s ugly past of habitual refusal of cooperation with the UN Special Procedures mechanism having made a quiet comeback. Human Rights Watch once described this state of affairs with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) as a “history of [Ethiopia’s] non-cooperation…with UN special mechanisms…” It is only in 2006, Ethiopia was compelled to accept the UN special rapporteur on Eritrea.

Therefore, the present non-meeting with special rapporteur with the highest level of the ruling Oromo Democratic Party (ODP) government may come as a confirmation that past negative habit is alive and well and is still kicking. 

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Open Letter to the 2019 Nobel Laureate Abiy Ahmed

1 Dec

Part II

Dear Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed

By your admission, Prime Minister, eighty-six Ethiopians were killed in various ways up until the last week of October 2019, on account of activist Jawar Mohammed’s incitements—almost all of the killings savage and gruesome.

Troubling as it is, the word “protection”, as a duty of the state, is mentioned fifteen times in the Ethiopian constitution. Ethiopians—including some Ethiopian Oromos—as I am, are accusing you of not having carried out your responsibilities in the spirit of Ethiopian laws and international law, thereby rendering Ethiopia one of the unsafe places in the world today. 

The killings are now minimised in Ethiopia. It is not because the security forces you are the overall commander have opted to protect the helpless victims, but because:

(a) Most Ethiopians have expressed anger in defence of victims, irrespective of ethnicity;

(b) The target populations in Oromia have left their dwellings and are sheltered in nearest churches. How can this be explained?

Today, you are a very fortuitous person the world toasting you in admiration of your selection to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Foreign Policy  describes your input as superficial.  That notwithstanding, I too would underline your prize is important for our country to become a source of your encouragement to do more and better in future, instead of what you have done so far. There the Nobel Committee too has come with carefully worded statement to the effect: “The Norwegian Nobel Committee believes it is now that Abiy Ahmed’s efforts deserve recognition and need encouragement.”

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Open Letter to the 2019 Nobel Peace Laureate PM Abiy Ahmed

30 Nov

December 1, 2019

Part I

Dear Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, 

As Ethiopia’s first Nobel Peace Laureate, allow me, Sir, to congratulate you for the honour the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee has bestowed upon you and, through you, on our nation. I admit such congratulation may be a bit late, coming as it does from an Ethiopian. I beg you to consider it my way of extending to you an early welcome to this part of the world, Scandinavia, on your way to Oslo, Norway, to receive your Nobel Peace Prize on December 10.

I have decided, therefore, before you get too busy with the events surrounding your award ceremony on that day, to put across to you through this Open Letter my worries about the clear signs of fragility that increasingly is besieging our country since you took over. In its more pronounced form especially after last October’s incident, the cause of which was the anti-Ethiopian American of Oromo Muslim extraction whose goal has been to politically profit from Ethiopia’s ensuing crises.

It is already common knowledge around the world now by that he has caused deaths of scores of Ethiopians, the living surviving indignities of violation of all forms—either because of one’s origin, faith or language or all of them—notwithstanding that it is against national laws of many states and international law. 

Continue reading →

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

%d bloggers like this: