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June 18, 2024- Human rights groups, including FIDH and OMCT within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, urge the Ethiopian authorities to halt their escalating crackdown on civic space, human rights organisations, and independent media. Ethiopia’s international and regional partners must press the authorities to respect human rights obligations and ensure a safe environment for human rights defenders and journalists.
The
Ethiopian authorities should immediately end their escalating
crackdown on civic space and independent domestic human rights
organisations,
including through physical and digital surveillance, verbal
harassment, intimidation, and threats, said five international human
rights organisations
today. These actions send a chilling signal and prevent human rights
organisations
from carrying out their essential work to promote and protect human
rights and accountability in the country.
In
recent months, Ethiopian security and intelligence forces increased
the intimidation, harassment, and threats against prominent Ethiopian
human rights organisations
in the country, including the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO),
Ethiopia’s oldest independent human rights organisation.
Since
February 2024, government security forces and intelligence personnel
have followed staff members of human rights organisations
at places of work and at home, and demanded that they stop their
human rights reporting and work. The threats have escalated in recent
weeks. For instance on May 23, security officials visited
EHRCO’s branch office in Addis
Ababa in search of information,
and threatened two staff members in the process. In May, human rights
defenders raised the alarm that the harassment and intimidation was
continuing and had further intensified.
On
April 6, 2024, two security personnel dressed in civilian clothing
came to the home of one staff member of the EHRCO and warned them to
cease their human rights work or face consequences. This incident
followed other similar incidents against EHRCO staff. On January 5,
2023, Ethiopian police arrested
and arbitrarily detained four
EHRCO staff members who were investigating cases of forced evictions
outside Addis Ababa. On January 12, 2023, an Oromia court released
the four staff on bail.
On
September 6, 2022, security forces broke
up a peace conference organised
by a group of 35 local civil society organisations
in Addis Ababa. The event was later held online, and the group
subsequently issued a joint
statement calling for peace. Two
days later, a federal official intimidated the group insisting that
they retract their statement. Also in September 2022, the
director-general of the Authority for Civil Society organisations
(ACSO) – a federal body mandated to monitor and register all civil
society organisations
– told
state media that the agency
would make organisations
working against Ethiopia’s sovereignty and public interest
accountable by law.
Human
rights defenders also shared their concerns that the ACSO stopped
registering new human rights civil society organisations
since at least August 2023.
Attempts
to silence civil society have been accompanied by continued attacks
on independent media and dissenting voices. Space for civic
activities and respect for human rights including the rights to
freedom of expression and association in Ethiopia have been
undermined over the past few years.
Since
the declaration of the state of emergency in Amhara in August 2023,
at least nine
journalists have been detained.
For instance, Ethio News chief editor Belay
Manaye was detained in Awash
Arba military camp on December 6, 2023, without access to health
care, family visits, or his lawyers, and under harsh detention
conditions. After his relocation to Addis Ababa in late June,
authorities did not charge him or bring him before a court of law. On
June 17, Ethiopian authorities released Belay from detention.
A
new
report from the Ethiopian Press
Freedom Defenders, a collective of Ethiopian media professionals,
found that around 200 journalists have been arrested by the Ethiopian
government since 2019. The Committee to Protect Journalists said that
as of late 2023, eight journalists remained in prison, and that four
media staff members faced terrorism allegations, which could lead to
the death sentence if convicted. For the past 10 months, internet
access has also been restricted
in parts of Amhara region where there is an ongoing armed conflict.
Due
to the ongoing and growing crackdown on civic space and civil society
organisations,
several human rights defenders and journalists have fled the country
in the past year. These intensified attacks severely reduce
independent scrutiny, and investigation of government actions and
human rights abuses in the country. The growing intolerance for
independent human rights reporting and government criticism echo
previous
tactics of harassment, raids on
offices, and the imposition of bureaucratic impediments employed by
the Ethiopian government against human rights defenders and civil
society organisations
following the enactment of the repressive
legislation, the Charities and Civil Society Proclamation in 2009.
The government significantly reformed this legislation in 2019.
Ethiopian
authorities have gone to extreme lengths to stifle independent
scrutiny and criticism in clear violation of fundamental rights to
freedom of expression and association, the organisations
said. Human rights organisations
in Ethiopia need to be able to conduct their work without fear of
reprisals.
The
Ethiopian authorities need to abide by their human rights obligations
under the Ethiopian Constitution, the African Charter on Human and
Peoples’ Rights, the Convention against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to respect,
protect, promote, and fulfil the rights to freedom of expression,
association, and freedom of peaceful assembly.
In
2022 and 2023, the United
Nations Human Rights Committee
and the Committee
against Torture
respectively recommended to the Ethiopian government to protect
journalists, human rights defenders, government critics, and
activists against harassment, attacks, or undue interference in the
exercise of their professional activities, and to take all
appropriate measures to prevent the occurrence of acts of
intimidation or reprisal and promote a safe and enabling environment
for engagement with the United Nations, its representatives, and
mechanisms in the field of human rights.
We
also urge the authorities to cooperate with the UN Special
Procedures, among them the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of
human rights defenders. The authorities should also cooperate with
the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACPHR) Special
Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals in
Africa.
Ethiopia’s
international and regional partners should press Ethiopian
authorities to respect the rights of political opponents,
journalists, human rights defenders, and activists; call for scrutiny
in this regard by UN human rights bodies, including the UN Human
Rights Council; and provide visible recognition, including by issuing
public statements, that the situation facing human rights defenders
in Ethiopia remains critical.
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