ESAT News (May 8, 2017)

The Ethiopian regime should allow the opposition, free media and rights council to thrive, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said over the weekend.

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, who visited Ethiopia last week, told Deutsche Welle in an exclusive interview that he would push the government to allow his agency to investigate rights abuses.

A government sponsored Commission said last month that 669 people were killed from June to October 2016. The country declared a state of emergency on October 8, and tens of thousands of people were detained since the martial law was put into effect. The government Commission in its report said the actions of security forces were “proportionate.”

Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn had said that the Hussein had endorsed the government’s own report.  But Ra’ad said he wouldn’t endorse that report. “I also made it clear to the authorities that I couldn’t endorse the report or corroborate their views because I had no independent means of verifying what they were saying. That’s why we made the request again.”

The Commissioners said he hopes the regime would open up access in his next visit in January.

The Ethiopian regime repeatedly rejected calls by the Rights Commission and other watchdogs for an independent investigations into the killings of protesters in anti-government protests that engulfed Oromo and Amhara regions.

Ra’ad told Deutsche Welle the need to “open up civic space, the need to have more latitude for free media, the need to assure that the human rights commission enjoys deep independence.”

“Ethiopia is at a critical point. I see that it needs to now deepen its work on human rights, and it certainly needs to invest more on the civil and political side,” the commissioner said.

Ra’ad renewed calls for his teams to have access for an independent investigations into the killings.

“I renewed my request for authorization to send my teams there to properly understand what happened there from all perspectives,” he said.