denied bail, detained for a week
and on transitional justice, 'not an event but a process'
Hi there,
One of our colleagues, an Ethiopian journalist, spent the week in prison all of last week. The great news is that he has been let go. The bad news is that he shouldn’t have spent a week in prison to begin with. I have details in one of the updates below, but suffice to say, it’s concerning to see these scare tactics increasing, especially with recent reports of cross-border state repression in East Africa.
I have an interesting report on a security report and attacks on government officials (across the world) but with a case study on Ethiopia coming up next week, so keep an eye out for that – thank you for sharing C! If you work on or come across any reports you think I should include, please hit reply and let me know!
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 human rights stories in Ethiopia.
Now, to the news.
Press freedom: a week in prison
Tesfalem Waldyes is an Ethiopian journalist and the founder of Ethiopia Insider, one of the publications I regularly rely on for this newsletter. Last Sunday, he was arrested by plainclothes security officers.
He appeared in court three times over the past week, on account of ‘spreading false information’.
Police kept appealing the decision to release him by three different judges (at three different levels), before he was finally let go on Friday, June 13.
Here’s an excerpt from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ):
“The detention of Tesfalem Waldyes, even after a court-ordered his release, underscores the Ethiopian government’s disregard for judicial processes and press freedom,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo.
Amnesty International in their statement on his detention last week, said that ‘this reflects a troubling new reality in Ethiopia, where authorities are monitoring people’s private lives and opinions’.
In the days preceding his arrest, a panel discussion was underway (titled ‘Government and Commercial Media Collaboration on National Development Efforts’), where officials openly criticized media houses for neglecting ‘national priorities’.
This is not the first time Tesfalem has been arrested. In 2014, he was arrested and charged with terrorism, along with other journalists and bloggers. He was later acquitted of these charges, but not before spending 439 days in prison.
He spent two years in exile in Germany, after that, and started Ethiopia Insider upon his return. In July last year, the offices of Ethiopia Insider were broken into and they were robbed of several equipment, including cameras and laptops.
Several organizations had called for his release over the past week, including the Ethiopian Human Rights Defenders Center (which was suspended last year by the government).
The full statement from CPJ on his arrest, here, and an update on his release on Ethiopia Insider, here.
Elections: opposition political party gets property back
The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) has gotten its main office in Addis Abeba back after nearly five years. The party lost its access when police raided their property in 2020, according to a story on Addis Standard.
Here’s an excerpt on what the public relations officer of the OLF is quoted as saying:
Lemmi added that the OLF had repeatedly raised the issue of access to the office and that other political parties – particularly the Joint Council of Political Parties, Addis Abeba Branch – had also made efforts to resolve the matter. “The joint efforts led to today’s re-entry into our office, in the presence of council representatives and other stakeholders,” he said.
The former public relations officer of the party was the late Bate Urgessa. The arrest of Bate and visiting French journalist, Antoine Galindo, made headlines last year in March, when they were both arrested during an interview at a hotel in Addis Abeba.
Galindo was set free and left for France a few days later. A month later, Bate’s body was found by a roadside in his hometown, Meki, in Ethiopia’s Oromia Region.
The full story on Addis Standard, here.
Human rights: comparing two countries
It’s been over a year since Ethiopia adopted its transitional justice policy.
I wrote an update on a policy brief in July last year. The update includes highlights on what exactly the transitional justice policy is meant to do, what kind of crimes it deals with, and what the making of the policy looked like, shortcomings and all. You can take a look at that here.
This latest piece from the Institute for Security Studies argues that as Ethiopia deals with ‘ongoing unresolved tensions’ (among them two insurgencies), lessons can be drawn from, ‘other contexts such as South Africa’.
What kind of lessons? One is on the possibility of political interference in prosecuting perpetrators of crimes.
Here’s an excerpt:
“[South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority] susceptibility to political pressure may have contributed to the delays, but institutional separation alone does not ensure prosecutorial independence, as Ethiopia’s experience shows…This underscores the need for robust safeguards ensuring functional independence and insulation from political influence.
What else? Reparations (a key aspect of the transitional justice policy).
Here’s an excerpt:
Despite incorporating reparations, South Africa still struggles to effectively address the needs of apartheid victims… Another lesson relates to the role of the courts. Although South Africa benefits from an independent judiciary with a supreme Constitutional Court, its judiciary is still transforming and includes some judges who enforced apartheid-era laws.
In Ethiopia, where a survey revealed that less than a third of the population trusts judges or investigative systems, a vetting process for judges may help build ‘judicial credibility’.
The article continues to make more comparisons, including one about missing persons, including mass grave exhumations.
Read the full article, here.
Refugees: where are they finding safe refuge?
The UN’s Refugee Agency released its annual global trends report last week.
There are 122.1 million people who have been forcibly displaced, according to the report. This number is up by more than 20 million from last year. One of the main reasons for this increase is the war in Sudan (as well as Myanmar and Ukraine).
Sudan has become the world’s largest forced displacement situation, says the report, with 14.3 million refugees and internally displaced people. In February of this year, there were over 85,000 Sudanese who had crossed the border to Ethiopia seeking safety.
The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has also sent a warning on the risk of collapse for the country’s peace process.
Since March, when armed confrontations started escalating, more than 10,000 South Sudanese have arrived in Ethiopia, which is home to over 400,000 South Sudanese refugees in total. Their situation is further complicated by a cholera outbreak on both sides of the border.
Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
The report found that, contrary to widespread perceptions in wealthier regions, 67 per cent of refugees stay in neighbouring countries, with low and middle-income countries hosting 73 per cent of the world’s refugees. Indeed, 60 per cent of people forced to flee never leave their own country.
The group termed as ‘Least Developed Countries’, including Ethiopia (and 44 other countries), ‘were responsible for hosting nearly 23 percent of all refugees worldwide’.
The full press release from the UNHCR, here, and the full Global Trends Report report here.
Security: we don’t know her (XVII)
The conflict in Ethiopia’s Amhara region has been active since August 2023. Nearly two years of fighting between the federal government and the region’s informal militia, the Fano, has resulted in the displacement of over half a million people.
Shelters in the region’s North Wollo Zone and Debre Berhan city are in bad conditions, and people staying there say ‘they are experiencing worsening humanitarian conditions, citing delayed food aid’, according to a story on Addis Standard.
Here’s an excerpt from the story from an April report:
The report stated that the shelters “were never intended for extended use” and noted that many displaced families are “crammed into communal spaces or damaged structures,” with people with disabilities lacking “any specialized accommodations.”
The full story, which includes testaments from people sheltered at various camps, here.
A list of all updates on the security in the region, 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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I can’t even fathom millions of refugees. I’m guessing that economies cannot support such vast numbers of people. 😬🙈