Ethiopia: 25 Years of Human Rights Violation

Ethiopia: 25 Years of Human Rights Violations
When the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took control of the capital,
Addis Ababa on 28 May 1991, Amnesty International hailed the day as a “…break with the past” and
an opportunity to put human rights protection at the top of the agenda for the future.
However, as Ethiopians celebrate 25 years of EPRDF rule, they have suffered persistent and pervasive violations, in particular, of civil and political rights that has become a hallmark of the EPRDF government

Ethiopian civil society’s engagement with human rights is shackled by the Charities and Societies

Proclamation 621/09, which violates Ethiopia’s Constitution and the country’s international human

rights obligations and commitments. The law places funding and other restrictions on human rights

organizations, and to violate it is a criminal offense. Since 2011, the law has been used to freeze

assets of more than one million US dollars belonging to the country’s two leading human rights

organizations: the Human Rights Council5 and the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association.

Amnesty International’s study on the impact of the Charities and Societies Proclamation found: “This

law has also had a devastating impact on the staff of human rights organizations, the human rights

defenders themselves. For many years human rights defenders have operated in a climate of fear in

Ethiopia, subjected to regular harassment, arrest, detention and even violent attack. The underlying

impact of the Charities and Societies Proclamation has been to entrench still further, and even to

institutionalise, this fear pervading the work of human rights defenders”.6 25 years since the EPRDF

took power, only one independent human rights monitoring organisation-the Human Rights Council

-remains operational in the country.

The Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP), which came into force in 2009, has also been used to silence

political opposition and voices critical of government policy and practice. The Proclamation’s

provisions defining ‘terrorist acts’, ‘moral support to terrorism and terrorist organizations’, and ‘search,

seizure, detention and arrest’ are vulnerable to abuse especially in a country not well known for

judicial integrity. The Government of Ethiopia denies that the law was aimed at political opposition

parties or journalists. Yet, journalists, political opposition leaders and dissidents, have been arrested,

and convicted for alleged involvement and links to the three domestic organizations that the

government considers to be terrorist groups - the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the

Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and Ginbot- 7

The ATP has been used against members and leaders of opposition political parties, journalists and

human rights defenders since its enactment in 2009. Political opposition figures such as Andualem

Arage, Nathanial Mekonnen and Asaminew Berhanu (all senior officials of the Unity for Democracy

and Justice Party), Zemene Molla, (General Secretary of the Ethiopian National Democratic Party),

Olbana Lelise, and Andargachew Tsige are among political opposition leaders charged and convicted

under the ATP. In 2014, Omot Agwa Okwoy, Ashinie Astin Titoyk, Jemal Oumar Hojele, land rights read more