Along with Human Rights Without Frontiers and other international NGOs, we are very concerned about a recent wave of mass arrests and disappearances of Amhara activists, journalists and other critics by the Ethiopian federal government.
More than four thousand five hundred people were arrested in the Amhara region by the end of May, officials said.
Among them:
a four-year old boy Ashenafi Abebe Enyeu
a seventy six year old historian, Tadiôs Tantou
academician Mèskèrrem Abèrra
journalists Tèmèsguen Dèsalé and Mahaza Mohammed.
By mid-June, the little boy, the academician and journalist Mahaza were released after spending some time in detention.
The Amharas, the second-largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, have repeatedly complained about the lack of protection of the federal government when Tigray and Oromo forces invaded their region and attacked civilians.
We recommend that the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia investigate the recent mass arrests of Amharas, locate their places of detention and the way they are treated.
