hundreds more arrested

and the mother of all reshuffles

Oct 07, 2024

Hi there,

Were you in Ethiopia over the past weekend? State broadcaster EBC says that vibrations were felt across various parts of Addis Ababa on Sunday afternoon, due to what they called a ‘light earthquake’ (4 to 4.9 on the Richter scale).

I was at home and had just assumed it was a particularly aggressive case of the usual cats on the roof activity. I may need to put down these noise-canceling headphones now and then.

To new subscribers, welcome!

My name is Maya Misikir, and I’m a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba. I write Sifter, this newsletter where I send out the week’s top 5 stories on human rights and news in Ethiopia.

Now, to the news.

Security: we don’t know her (XXIX)

Hundreds of people in Ethiopia’s Amhara region have been arrested since I last sent out this newsletter a week ago. The arrests were made by government security forces, who had a ‘list’ of names, according to eyewitness accounts cited by Amnesty International, and no ‘arrest and search warrants’.

This is the 29^th part update on the security status of Ethiopia’s Amhara region, from when the conflict first started in August last year between the federal government and the region’s informal militia, known as Fano. You can find a chronological list of updates here.

These latest arrests included members of the academic community, including university lecturers across the region. A source I spoke to says that the arrests were made based on suspicions that they were ‘informants’ of Fano in the region. Some had gone into hiding before these arrests took place, and security forces were manning entries in the region’s Debre Markos University, cross-checking people on their ‘list’ with IDs.

The arrests in the region over the past month have included government employees, opposition political party members, and journalists. The arrests are not backed with court orders, nor have ‘suspects’ been taken to court until now, says another statement from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.

One of the people detained is Ethiopian journalist, Yeshihasab Abera, who works at a regional state-owned media house, Amhara Media Corporation.

Here’s an excerpt from an update I wrote last year in April that can better explain this dynamic:

Regional media house might have been considered as an extension of the federal government in the EPRDF days, but that is no longer the case. Their ‘political commitment is first to the regional government.’

Present credible charges against him, or release him immediately and unconditionally, says another statement from The Committee to Protect Journalists. The statement says that the journalist has yet to appear before the court, and has been moved to an unknown location.

The full statement from Amnesty International here, the statement from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, in Amharic, here, and the statement from The Committee to Protect Journalists, here.

Reshuffle: we have a new president

Ethiopia has a new president. The country’s foreign minister, Taye Astike Selassie, has replaced the country’s first female president, Sahle-Work Zewde, who had ‘reportedly fallen out with Abiy in recent years,’ according to a story on the BBC.

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

Sources close to the 74-year-old told BBC Amharic she had not been happy for some time and was eagerly awaiting the end of her term, due later this month.
During her presidency, she made several calls for peace across the country, though she was criticised for not talking more about the gender-based violence during the two-year civil war in Tigray.

In 2018, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed first came to power, one of the major headline-grabbing changes instituted at the time was the appointment of women ministers (‘Wow, gender parity!’, everyone had exclaimed at the time.)

Since then, there’s been a steady decrease in women in leadership roles; the first reshuffles happened months after the initial appointments were made.

In August 2021, I covered a story that looked into the representation of women in Ethiopian politics. Here’s an excerpt from that story on why it was hard to maintain this gender parity:

…the lack of institutional and legal frameworks for ensuring women’s participation in politics.
In their absence, the role and influence of women is tied to the benevolence of those who wield power.

The full story on the BBC here, and the in-depth analysis story from 2021, entitled, Ethiopian Women’s Modern Rise Hits Ancient Glass Ceiling, here.

Migration: racism finds a way

The update from last week was about how Ethiopian migrants were facing harassment and exploitation at the hands of Egyptian authorities following an ‘escalation of tensions’ between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (along with the recent port deal with Somaliland.)

I also briefly touched upon the status of Ethiopian migrants in Lebanon in that update. The war in Lebanon affects Ethiopians, who make up the majority of ‘an estimated 175,000 to 200,000 foreign domestic workers living in Lebanon’, according to a story on Al Jazeera.

Here's an excerpt from the story:

Everybody fled the city towards Beirut or other places where they have relatives. But for migrants, there is no place to go,” she said. “There are others sleeping outdoors with nowhere to go.

The story says ‘embassies in Beirut became increasingly pressed with repatriation requests’ as the war continued in Lebanon, but that, ‘the response of African diplomats in Lebanon has been close to absent.’

Any plans to repatriate citizens have been impacted by flight cancellations as the bombardment increases in intensity in the country. In the meantime, foreign domestic workers are being rejected from the shelters (and even the pavement!) for ‘not being Lebanese’, adds the story.

The full story on Al Jazeera, here.

Politics: another round of back and forth

Last month, I looked at what was happening in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, in particular the fracture in leadership of the region’s main political party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). You can go here to catch up.

Things have since then — you guessed it — escalated.

The TPLF, which had, through a congress held in August re-elected its chair (Debretsion Gebremichael), now says that it has removed senior members from its group including the region’s current interim administrator Getachew Reda, according to a story on Addis Standard.

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

The statement also noted, “officials serving in the interim administration, including President Getachew and other cabinet members and bureau heads, will no longer have the authority to lead, make decisions, or issue directives.”

The TPLF says that the interim administration was created to implement the Pretoria peace deal, which ended the two-year Tigray war, rather than, to ‘function as a regular regional government.’

The head of the region’s interim administration (IRA), Getachew Reda, has responded, on X, by saying:

The Tigray Interim Administration cannot and will not tolerate such reckless actions. Taking into account the fact that this faction had mistaken the IRA's prior efforts to preserve our people's unity for weakness, the IRA will take legal actions against this destructive faction's leadership.

Mistaking effort to preserve unity as weakness? Where else have we heard this before?

The full story on Addis Standard here, and the post on X by Tigray’s interim administrator, here.

Migration: on the way back home

Two migrant boats carrying more than 310 people capsized off the coast of Djibouti over the past week, according to a story by BBC. The incident resulted in the death of 48 people, which were later confirmed to be all Ethiopians.

Coastguards have managed to rescue nearly two hundred survivors from these boats which were coming from Yemen.

Here’s an excerpt from a story on the BBC:

The number of migrants arriving in Yemen from the Horn of Africa rose from about 73,000 in 2022 to more than 97,200 last year, according to the IOM.
Most of them are forced to rely on smugglers who use often dangerous and overcrowded boats for the crossings.

The full story on the BBC, here, and on Addis Standard, here.

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

In the meantime, feel free to share this with anyone you think can benefit from keeping up with what’s going on in Ethiopia.

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