UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visits Addis Ababa (May 2 - 4)

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has appealed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, to use his visit to Ethiopia to advocate for an end to political persecution and impunity in the country. In addition, the human rights organization urged Zeid to unequivocally criticize the controversial NGO laws and the anti-terror legislation. The anti-terror legislation are a massive problem for the non-governmental organizations in Ethiopia, impairing their work and obstructing the establishment of a democratic civil society.

“We expect that Zeid will also demand the release of about 20,000 Oromo, Amhara, and members of other smaller population groups, who were arrested during protests in 2016. Their relatives have been waiting for sign of life from them ever since,” said Ulrich Delius, the STP’s Africa expert, in Göttingen on Tuesday.

During his three-day visit to Ethiopia, Zeid will also meet Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. The meeting is highly anticipated because the UN High Commissioner has been demanding independent investigations into the brutal suppression of peaceful protests by the Oromo and the Amhara for months. It was only in April 2017 that the Ethiopian government had rejected this request.

Zeid had reacted with skepticism to a report published by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on the clashes in the Oromia and Amhara regions. The EHRC had presented the report to the Parliament on April 18, 2017, stating that the security forces had reacted to the protests appropriately and that they had not used excessive force. However, human rights organizations and eyewitnesses had accused the security forces of unprecedented violence against the peaceful protesters, thus causing the deaths of hundreds of people.

“The figures presented by the EHRC are not credible,” Delius criticized. For example, the EHCR mentions that 495 people lost their lives in in Oromia – 462 protesters and 33 members of the security forces – in 2016, and a total number of 669 in the entire country. However, according to the STP, at least 2,000 people got killed in during this wave of protests in Oromia alone. “No one has yet been held accountable for this.”