Group Watching Human Rights Says Bad Things Still Happening in Ethiopia and Asks for More Time to Keep Watching
UN-picked investigators said that more very bad things might happen in Ethiopia. They want to keep watching how Addis Ababa treats people’s rights, but some African leaders are against this.
A lot of people died in a two-year fight between the government and local groups in Tigray. This stopped in November last year. Both sides said the other did very bad things, like killing many people, hurting others, and locking them up for no reason. But neither side admitted to doing really bad things on purpose.
A group called the International Commission of Human Rights Experts studied Ethiopia. They found that very bad things like war crimes and crimes against humanity are still happening there.
They were supposed to watch for two years, and now they need permission to keep doing it. Some countries, mostly in Africa, don’t want them to. Ethiopia, which says they didn’t do these bad things, also doesn’t want them to keep looking.
The head of the commission, Mohamed Chande Othman, told a group of 47 leaders that it’s too early to stop. He said there are still problems in a place called Ahmara. If they stop now, it would be really sad for the people who suffered in this fight.
He hoped that an agreement signed in November 2022 would help stop this very deadly fight, which has hurt many communities in northern Ethiopia.
The agreement signed in November 2022 didn’t work like they hoped. It didn’t bring complete peace, and really bad things are still happening. Now, fighting, hurting, and problems are happening all over the country.
Othman said in their recent report that they found that soldiers from Eritrea and local groups from Amhara are still doing very bad things to regular people in Tigray.
He also said that Ethiopia’s way of dealing with justice is not good. They haven’t shown any real proof of fair investigations or trials for their soldiers, who are accused of hurting regular people.
Othman is worried about the safety of small groups called Irob and Kunama, who live close to the border with Eritrea. He’s also concerned that Ethiopia hasn’t made important changes.
The government and its armed forces of Ethiopia keep saying that their soldiers didn’t do many bad things, and they promise to look into individual complaints.
Ethiopia’s ambassador, Tsegab Kebebew, thinks the Commission didn’t understand the good things happening in Ethiopia. He didn’t talk directly about the other problems mentioned.
The Ivory Coast representative, Konan François Kouame, thinks the UN Commission’s job is done and wants the council to back efforts led by Ethiopia instead.
SOURCE:ALJAZEERA