No region left behind
elections, human rights, and security
Hi there,
Today’s updates are a bit on the longer side. It includes a summary of two reports; an assessment done on human rights violations in Ethiopia’s Gambella region and one on the state of media and religion in the country. The latter doesn’t strictly fall under the category of news, but it is important in providing context to it. The report is long and so this edition will be the first of three parts.
A couple of quick important updates: Bate Urgessa has been released on bail (who is Bate? Go here to read a short update on how his story is a prime example of political dissent in the country). The full story on his release (which happened despite police request for yet another round of ‘10 more days for investigation’) can be found here.
Also from last week, the Addis Abeba city administration has promised to give replacement land and houses for people that have been told to move (and make way) for ‘rehabilitation’ of areas in the city’s Piassa and connecting neighborhoods (but why only give us a thirty day notice, say residents, according to this story on Ethiopia Insider.) To new subscribers, you can find the link to original story on that, here.
Also, welcome! This is Sifter, a weekly newsletter on Ethiopia, where you can catch up on the week’s top five stories in under ten minutes.
I’m Maya Misikir, a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba, and I write it.
Now, to the news.
Security: Gambella is in Ethiopia (in case you forgot)
This update is based on an assessment of the human rights violations in Ethiopia’s Gambella region done by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
The violations have happened within the context of conflict and insecurity in the region, particularly focused on incidents dating from May to July last year. The assessment itself was done in September and draws its information from interviews done with 93 people.
So what has it found?
That most of the armed groups in the region are operating along communal lines and attacks take place accordingly - this is an established pattern.
Here’s one example from the report illustrating what this means; on May 21, 2023, in an area known as Itang, a man went out to collect wood. He never returned home. People from his locality went looking for him in a neighboring area but he was not found. Fighting took place between these two communities because one blamed the other for his disappearance. Over 80 people have been killed in Itang because of this and similar incidents.
What are the drivers of conflicts? Resources, land, and the increasing pressure from a growing number of refugees in the region (Gambella hosts over 380,000 refugees - living in 7 refugee camps - from bordering South Sudan).
Based on the report, people are armed in the region, they attack (and defend) their communities and gangs are targeting men, women, and children indiscriminately. The report cites several instances of pregnant women being killed as well.
Where are these attacks happening? On farms, in people’s homes, on public transport buses, in the region’s capital (Gambella City) and in the refugee camps. Hundreds of homes have been burnt down as a result.
The report implicates the region’s security forces in the attacks but carefully framed as ‘people wearing the region’s police uniform.’
So, what’s being done about it?
Administrators of the region and police, suspected of being involved in the conflicts, are currently under arrest with investigations underway. Peace and reconciliation committees, aimed at getting the communities closer are also part of the local government’s strategy to provide solutions to the intercommuncal conflict.
When asked for a response, the head of the region’s capital said that he was aware of the loss of life and property damage due to the conflict but that he was new to the position and doesn’t have all the details. Come again?
The full report, in Amharic here, and the abridged executive summary, also in Amharic, here.
Election: better late than never?
When the sixth general elections were held in Ethiopia in June 2021, not everyone who could - and wanted to - vote, did. A variety of reasons including security issues and logistics among others (like printing errors) meant that certain constituencies couldn’t be included in the first (or the second and now third) round of elections.
The second round followed in September of the same year for constituencies including those in Ethiopia’s Harari and Somali regions.
Last week, a new date was set for another round of elections in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz, Afar, Somali and Central Ethiopia regions. Here’s an excerpt from a story on The Reporter:
The scheduled polling will only fill a fraction of Parliament’s 96 vacant seats. Most – including 38 reserved for constituencies in Tigray, 19 in Amhara, and 8 in Oromia – will remain vacant for the foreseeable due to security concerns, according to the Board.
There are a total of 547 seats in the Ethiopian parliament and it’s been more than two years since the general elections were first held.
The full story on Ethiopia Insider, in Amharic, here, and on The Reporter in English, here.
Security: we don’t know her (XX)
Amnesty East Africa asked for the internet ban in Amhara region to be lifted in a social media post last week. Internet connection has been off in some parts of the region since the conflict first started last year (in April of the same year, mobile internet was shut off across the entire region).
As of last week, most of the region has been without electric power, according to a statement from the region’s police commission. The commission says that a major power transmission line was hit by the region’s informal militia, Fano.
A story published last week on Foreign Policy warns that this conflict could escalate into another civil war in the country.
Here’s a chilling excerpt:
The series of tragedies underscore a fundamental and concerning shift in the nature of the conflict. As armed confrontation drags on, weary government soldiers inevitably start to consider the broader public complicit in the rebellion and are therefore more willing to engage in collective punishment of Amhara communities, which in turn intensifies animosity and cycles of violence.
The story talks about the nuances of the unfolding conflict, the impact of instability in Amhara region (as one of the country’s breadbaskets) and offers solutions to ‘stave off worst-case scenarios, including possible state collapse.’
The full story on Foreign Policy here, a chronological table of contents on the updates in the region since August last year here, the statement from the region’s police commission on the damage on the electric transmission lines (in Amharic) here, and a story on that by Addis Standard here.
Labour rights: workers from Southern Region kidnapped
This update is linked closely to the security in Ethiopia’s Amhara region but it is about the status of people from the country’s South Ethiopia region so I thought it was more fitting to give it its own section, especially as it also relates to labor issues.
A story run by Addis Standard last week says that 285 daily laborers were kidnapped in Amhara region, as they made their way in 6 buses to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, where they were expected to start work. The workers were hired by a private company which needed people to cut trees around the Dam’s artifical lake and managed to sign a contract with the local area bureau to enlist people for the job, according to the story.
Here's an excerpt from the story on the statement of the local council, where most of the workers come from:
The Gardula Zone Council has strongly condemned the incident, stating that the “laborers were innocent citizens who were simply traveling to contribute their labor towards the development of the crucial Renaissance Dam project.”
The council said workers have the right to work and generate wealth in any part of the country and travel as laborers, and that they “do not have any specific mission” apart from labor employment.
The story, published last week, says there’s no exact time or date for when this happened, but that video footage of the incident was widely shared on social media last week.
The full story on Addis Standard, in English, here.
Media and religion: have we come full circle? (I)
This first of three updates on media and religion (based on a report entitled, Media and Religion in Ethiopia), will include excerpts and summaries from the report’s first two sections: the history of media and religion in Ethiopia and the policy around it.
Media representatives, religious community members and the state regulator were interviewed for this research which starts off with a simple statement: ‘Religion has become an issue in the Ethiopian media.’
This is new because for the longest time, religious expressions have been excluded from the public media, it adds.
And it breaks down the historical chronology in four parts: the current regime (2018 to now), the EPRDF (1991-2018), the Communist Derg Regime (1974-1991) and the time before that as the imperial years.
The imperial years, states the report, was a time ‘when the Orthodox church and the state were two sides of the same coin’. There was one exception, in 1963, a Protestant radio station was established which was owned by the Lutheran World Federation, and which broadcast its programs from Addis Abeba throughout African and Asia.
This changed drastically when the Derg Communist regime took over. The regime was had no tolerance for ‘religious activity’ and even went as far as executing the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church at the time.
What happened to that Protestant radio station from the imperial times? Promptly taken over and rebranded from Radio Voice of the Gospel to Radio Voice of Revolutionary Ethiopia (which sounds misleadingly cool to a person with no context of the regime’s brutality.)
And during the EPRDF’s rule? The report says that independent outlets started emerging, including the first Islamic press in 1991. The government followed a ‘secular approach’ though less ‘neutral than ‘anti-religious’, it adds. This is visible through the state’s response to the Islamic revival movement during that time.
Here’s an excerpt:
During the protests against government interference in Islamic affairs between 2011 and 2014, a number of incidents occurred where faith-affiliated outlets and their journalists were targeted. The offices of different Muslim publications were raided; copies of Muslim news- papers were seized; Muslim journalists were abducted; Muslim editors were charged with terrorism; et cetera.
There was a ban on religious broadcasting the entire time.
And now (2018 onwards)? To sum it up, we now have a Prime Minister who ‘concludes speeches by calling for God’s blessing over the country’.
Here’s an excerpt from the report:
Abiy’s own affiliation is with the Pentecostal church, and his cabinet soon came to be associated with an Evangelical agenda which arguably reflects ‘pente politics’ (Haustein and Dereje, 2022) – with a view to ‘pentecostalize’ the government administration (Lefort, 2020).
When consultations for media law started in 2018, the questions of licensing religious broadcasters came into play. The report adds that the law gave the green-light for religious media to a certain extent – TV and not radio (airwaves for the latter are reserved for ‘content with broader appeal’).
Anchors and presenters started wearing crosses on their necks (a religious symbol), as well as hijabs, which the reports cites as ‘uncommon in Amharic content’ (as opposed to Afar and Somali programs with majority Muslim population audiences).
The peak of this freedom came during the COVID-19 pandemic when religious services were broadcast on major channels since people couldn’t get to churches due to the health restriction at the time. But this leniency comes to a grinding halt when it involves media coverage of religious conflict.
A final excerpt on this:
As with any other potentially sensitive topic, the state-affiliated media are cautious in their coverage of religious conflict, often resulting in negligence of the issue altogether.
As for Ethiopian journalists? A study cited in the report says that religion is more important to Ethiopian journalists than anywhere else in the world (66 other countries in the study). To quote, “Ethiopian reporters and editors say religion is ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ important to them”.
Hit reply if you want to read the full report, I’m happy to share!
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Obsessed with this week’s edition. Thank you, Maya! ⭐️ 🙏🏾