a vicious cycle of violence
and looking closely at abortion rights
Hi there,
I’ve talked about Priti Salian’s newsletter — Reframing Disability — in the past before. But the last edition was particularly interesting for me, as it covered ableism in media. Ableism, ‘the discrimination against disabled people in favor of non-disabled people’, crops up in media a lot; from, ‘sympathy or pity towards a person’s disability in the narrative’, to depicting disabled people as a problem to be fixed. You can check out the latest edition here to see a list of things to look out for in avoiding ableism in storytelling, including inspiration porn, as well as examples of who’s getting ‘media representation right’.
Welcome to new subscribers; this is Sifter, a weekly round-up of the top five news and human rights stories in Ethiopia. I’m Maya Misikir, a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba, and I write it.
Now, to the news.
Human rights: a vicious cycle in Guji (I)
The Guji Zones, in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, need urgent attention and intervention, says a recent report by the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy. The report assessed the human rights conditions in the Guji Zones, which have been ‘major battle grounds’ in the ongoing fight between federal forces and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) since 2019.
Here’s a chilling paragraph that succinctly summarizes what’s been happening there:
Ethiopian National Defence Forces and allied regional security forces including local militia and Oromia Special Force (until 2023) have been battling the rebels plunging the regions into an atrocious insurgency and widespread insecurity…
Both sides in the conflict seem to prioritize their own political agendas over the well-being of the Guji community, fuelling violence, destruction, and instability.
The impact of the conflict, and especially the toll it has had on the civilian population, have been ‘overlooked in media coverage’ adds the report, which included observations from field visits to the area and interviews with community members in its findings.
While rural areas are controlled by OLA rebels, the urban parts of the zones are patrolled by government forces according to interviewees cited in the report.
In January, I wrote an update when a story came out in The Guardian that talked about how kidnappings were happening indiscriminately in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. Now, ‘government forces have followed the same path and are asking for ransom in millions of Ethiopian birrs,’ says one interviewee in this report.
The cycle of violence, through government and OLA forces, also extends to the ‘egregious acts of sexual violence’ on women and girls in the region. As a survivor of sexual violence, a woman or girl is also ‘deeply despised and dishonored within the community, and her prospects of marriage become highly uncertain’ it adds.
According to Guji culture, ‘rape of girls is strongly condemned’ says the report. Here’s an excerpt of what this means:
…community elders may hold traditional arbitration meetings to address such incidents. In these meetings, the perpetrator is required to pay reparations to the raped girl and her family. Additionally, the perpetrator may be asked to take the girl as his wife.
I will include the second, and final part update, of this report, entitled, ‘Voice for Guji: Grave Human Rights Situation in Oromia's Guji Zones, in next week’s edition.
In the meantime, if you would like to read the full report, hit reply and let me know. I’ll share it with you.
Women’s rights: on abortion
Ethiopia liberalized its abortion law in 2005, after a concerted effort by, ‘local doctors, women's groups and lawyers’. This change in law meant that abortion was legal under, ‘cases of rape, incest, and foetal impairment, as well as for women with disabilities and minors.’
Over the past two months, I worked on a story that looked at what abortion care services look like in Ethiopia. Along with two other journalists, we looked into what was achieved in Ethiopia over the past couple of decades since the law made abortion care widely available and what the threats to this right to safe and legal abortion in the country look like now.
But what was behind this change in abortion law in 2005? Here’s an excerpt from the story on New Internationalist:
Campaigners wanted a change for one reason: to end the epidemic of women dying from unsafe abortions, the leading cause of maternal death at the time.
Entire hospital wards were dedicated to treating women who had developed sepsis or other life-threatening complications from botched abortions. The coalition brought politicians to these wards to see first-hand the harms of the abortion ban, which ironically had just one exception: to save the woman's life.
So, is this ‘landmark law’ under threat?
People we interviewed for the story - professionals who had worked for decades in the sexual and reproductive health sector - say that there are anti-rights players working ‘in the shadows’; lobbying different groups like politicians and practitioners to change this law again.
Part of this effort also includes spreading misinformation including how abortion causes ‘infertility, cancer, and depression’.
The story, which looks into what the role of religion looks like in the pushback, the stigma of abortions, and the importance of this right, especially as it relates to survivors of gender-based violence in Ethiopia’s conflict zones, on New Internationalist, here.
Press freedom: more journalists set free
In last week’s update, I wrote that journalist Muhiyadin Mohamed Abdullahi, who had been sentenced to two years on charges of false news and hate speech, had been released.
Over the past few days, three more journalists, Belay Manaye, Bekalu Alamirew, and Tewodros Zerfu, were released after months of detention, according to a story by Ethiopia Insider.
The story says that the journalists were released after they made an appeal on the basis that they were being kept in jail unlawfully, and in contradiction with their constitutional rights. Two of the journalists (Bekalu and Tewodros) had spent the past ten months, basically accounting for the entire time the state of emergency was declared — since August last year — in detention. Belay had been in detention for over 6 months.
Earlier this month, the Ethiopian Press Freedom Defenders, a network of Ethiopian media professionals, had released a statement that since 2019, ‘over two hundred Ethiopian media personnel have endured unjust incarceration’. An update on that report, here.
The full story, on Ethiopia Insider, in Amharic, here.
Security: we don’t know her (XXIII)
A ten-month-long state of emergency came to an end earlier this month. The state of emergency was declared when open fighting started between the informal militia in Ethiopia’s Amhara region (Fano) and the federal forces.
Yet fighting has continued and civilians are being killed in retaliatory moves by government forces in the region’s East and West Gojam Zones, according to a story by Addis Standard.
Here’s an excerpt from the story on what happened in West Gojam:
An eyewitness, who asked to remain anonymous, reported that before the killings, there was a 20-minute fight between Fano militants and the Defense Forces in an area called Dembecha Ber…
Teachers, bankers, business shop owners, bajaj drivers and a mentally challenged person were among those who were executed in plain view of the public after they were forced out of the hotel, according to several local media outlets.
In East Gojam, it was “government forces,” who had reportedly ‘attacked a group of civilians attending a funeral’.
This is not the first time that government forces have retaliated against the local community. In February, over 80 people were killed by security forces in a town called Merawi, accused of being or supporting rebel fighters.
The full story on Addis Standard, here, and a chronological breakdown of the updates from Amhara region, since August 2023, here.
Book review: on the prime minister
A new book detailing the ‘era’ of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister has come out; The Abiy Project: God, Power and War in the New Ethiopia, written by the former correspondent for The Economist in Ethiopia, Tom Gardner.
Here’s an excerpt from an edited extract from The Guardian on what the vibes were like when the prime minister first took over in 2018:
All around the world, Ethiopian diaspora sang and danced into the night. A blanket amnesty was issued for all the many dissidents and opposition members who had fled the country since the EPRDF took power in 1991. The names of rebel groups were struck off the terrorist list, while the steady release of political prisoners was accelerated.
What of the years that followed? Here’s another brief excerpt:
That feeling would not last long.
The story goes into the prime minister's Nobel peace prize, won for striking a peace deal with Eritrea; a deal that not only ignored the ‘squeamishness about engaging with a serial human-rights abuser like Afewerki – who runs Eritrea,’ reads the excerpt but also, ‘a peace-building process that prioritized speed over deliberation and the goodwill of individual leaders over public consultation.’
It touches on how he had initially won over ‘audiences, both at home and across the western world’ when ‘reconciliation and forgiveness were the order of the day’. How, in such a short period, the ‘holiday romance turned sour’, with many initially overlooking troubling signs as upheavals to be expected in a country on the transition to democracy.
The full edited extract from the book, on The Guardian, here, and the book, for order, here.
That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week with more updates!
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