The government’s media army

(disappointed but not surprised)

Hi there,

This week’s edition is on the shorter side of things, but if you are interested in what’s happening in the digital space in Ethiopia, this one is for you. Front and center is an investigation that exposes Ethiopian government-affiliated actors spreading misinformation and hate speech in the online digital space.

Also worth noting: on May 9, the Center for Information Resilience will co-host an event that includes its latest research findings on online violence in Ethiopia. If you’re in Addis, you can RSVP here and check it out. (I will also be exhibiting Sifter there.)

To the new subscribers, welcome! I’m Maya Misikir, a freelancer reporter based in Addis Abeba and this is Sifter, a newsletter where I curate the week’s top five stories on Ethiopia in under 10 minutes.

Now, to the news.

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Investigation: infiltrating government online groups

The ruling party in Ethiopia is called the Prosperity Party. A recent investigation by BBC Amharic has revealed that members of this party have been engaging in misinformation and hate speech online.

The party members implicated in this latest investigation are officials serving across different structures in the Addis Abeba City Administration and the story cites WhatsApp and Telegram groups used by these members for media campaigns.

The aim? To aggrandize government officials and their work. But the role of this ‘media army’ does not end at being hype men and women for the government. The story, conducted over three months, provides proof that these same actors also spread misinformation and hate speech.

How were they doing it? Party members create fake accounts that they then use to push false ‘image-building narratives’ about government officials, inundating online discourse with their messages and when ordered, attacking dissidents of the government. This included, at one point, members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the former State Minister of Peace.

Who gives these orders? A ‘core committee’ of party officials, who share prepared social media texts (in different local languages) in the groups, to be used across platforms along with photos.

How do they follow up on these orders? Party members are told to send screenshots as ‘proof’.

Not only is engagement in these campaigns mandatory for party members, but sources mentioned in the investigation say it also factors in work performance evaluations.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, after evidence presented by the investigation, has since deleted fake accounts and pages created by this ‘media army’, according to the story.

While Prosperity Party representatives have said they’re unaware of this ‘media army’, this claim was quickly debunked by the reporter who covered the story after he shared screenshots of Facebook posts explicitly mentioning this ‘media army’, shared by the party’s official page.

A few days before this expose, the Ethiopian Media Authority, the state regulatory body, had published a report on hate speech and false information, stressing the ‘threat posed… to both individual safety and societal welfare’, according to another story by Addis Standard.

The full story on BBC Amharic, here.

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Peace: the transitional justice policy is live

In early March, I wrote an update when the National Transitional Justice Policy was in its last stages (incorporating the feedback from the validation workshops).

In that update, a former spokesperson of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission had co-written a piece explaining the policy’s major shortcomings (expecting accountability from the perpetrators themselves is a ‘fool’s errand’.)

The policy was approved by the Council of Ministers last week, according to a story in The Reporter.

Here’s an excerpt:

The policy aims to address “the overlapping and wide range of victims of human rights violations, conflicts, narratives, and abuses that have occurred in different eras in the country,” according to a statement from the Council…However, experts and opposition party leaders still have reservations on the government’s neutrality and a lack of inclusion.

The feminist movement organization, Setaweet, has since published recommendations for implementing this policy, which includes accountability for attacks against women during conflict inflicted by government counterparts.

The 20-point recommendation list says that the transitional justice process should deal with issues related to children, people with disabilities, and women separately and according to their special nature.

The full story on The Reporter, in English, here.

If you want the full list of recommendations by Setaweet, hit reply and let me know. I’ll send it over.

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Migration: saved from traffickers

170 Ethiopian migrants, victims of human trafficking, were caught by the coast guards in Somaliland last week, according to a story in the Horn Diplomat. The story doesn’t have many details but adds that they were found while leaving for Yemen.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

An operation carried out by the Coast Guard in Sanaag Region in the area of Waqadariya on the eastern coast of Sanaag Region captured the illegal migrants as they were being smuggled out in boats.

Last week, I wrote an update on a shipwreck off the coast of Djibouti which killed at least 38 migrants, most of them Ethiopians, as the boat was coming from Yemen. You can read more on that and the major migrant routes from Ethiopia, here.

The story on Horn Diplomat, here.

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Security: Gambella gets new administrators

Last month, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission released a report on its assessment of human rights in Ethiopia’s Gambella region. The results were pretty bad; armed groups acting with impunity, indiscriminate attacks happening along communal lines, and regional administrators found complicit in these conflicts.

Last week, the region’s president announced that eight new officials have been appointed in response to calls, ‘for peace, development, and effective governance made by the people of Gambella’ according to a story by Addis Standard.

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

This decision follows the removal of several senior regional officials from their positions by the Gambela regional government two weeks ago.

The officials relieved of their duties include Akwai Ubuti, former Chief of the Regional Justice Bureau; Chol Kun, former head of the Peace and Security Administration Bureau; and Bitew Dak, former director-general of the Gambella Rural Roads Authority.

The full story on Addis Standard, here.

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Tigray: fighting has started again (in contested areas)

Earlier this month, I wrote about how fighting in the town of Raya had resulted in the closure of a major road leading to Tigray’s capital Mekelle. This violence has worsened over the past week, and open conflict has displaced over 29,000 people from their homes in the town of Alamata, according to UN reports. (Raya and Alamata are border towns between Ethiopia’s Amhara and Tigray regions.)

Here’s an excerpt from a story by BBC on this:

The contested district of Raya Alamata had been under Tigray until war broke out in 2020, but the Amhara forces have since seized it.

Following the resurgence of the latest fighting, Tigray forces have reportedly advanced towards some areas in the district.

The full story, here.

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That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week with more updates!

In the meantime, you can help support my work by forwarding this to friends and family (and help them keep up with what’s going on).

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