UN outraged at mass killings, abuses in Ethiopia

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and of association says it was outraged at reports of mass killings and abuses in Ethiopia. 

“We are outraged at the alarming allegations of mass killings, thousands of injuries, tens of thousands of arrests and hundreds of enforced disappearances,” said the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, the Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances and Agnes Callamard, on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

In its latest press release, the UN Special Rapporteurs called the crackdown a “systematic violence against protesters” and called on the Ethiopian regime to allow an international commission of inquiry to investigate the protests and the violence used against peaceful demonstrators.

“Curtailing assembly and association rights is never the answer when there are disagreements in a society; rather, it is a sign of the State’s inability to deal with such disagreements,” Mr Kiai said. “Suffocating dissent only makes things worse, and is likely to lead to further social and political unrest.”

“We are also extremely concerned by numerous reports that those arrested had faced torture and ill-treatment in military detention centres,” the rapporteurs said.

UN human rights experts renewed their calls for an end to the deadly crackdown against peaceful protesters and for an independent investigation into the killings in Ethiopia by the ruthless regime.
The rapporteurs believed the crackdown on protesters in Ethiopia was a deliberate effort to wipe out any kind of opposition to the regime. “The scale of this violence and the shocking number of deaths make it clear that this is a calculated campaign to eliminate opposition movements and silence dissenting voices,” Kiai added. The experts reiterated the urgent need to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for the violence.

A group of UN experts made a similar call in January 2016, which went unheeded, according to the group.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights late last week renewed a request to the Ethiopian government seeking access to the country to conduct an independent assessment of continuing protests.


(UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai)