Timeline: Human Rights Situation in Ethiopia

Foto courtesy of the BBC
Sparked by the Ethiopian Government’s plan to incorporate parts of the Oromia region surrounding Addis Ababa to the capital municipality in 2014, the Oromo people, the largest Ethiopian ethnicity, have used the latest round of protests that started in November 2015 to make their more basic grievances of lacking political participation and persecution on grounds of ethnicity heard. In all cases, the Government met their people’s expression of discontent with excessive and often lethal force, leaving more than a thousand Oromo dead within less than a year.
The Ogaden Somali ethnic group and other minorities, such as the Benishangul and Amhara, have during the same timeframe also experienced continued Government suppression. Local and federal police and militia have been indiscriminately killing civilians and pillaging whole communities where people refused to make way for government-backed investment projects.
The international community, after initially only reluctantly addressing the severe human rights violations, have in October 2016 found clear words condemning the Ethiopian Government’s abuses of their citizens’ basic freedoms.....See More