Tag: Ethiopia

NOVANEWS By Graham Peebles  The people of Ethiopia have been suppressed and controlled for generations. Under the current Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government, freedom of expression has been curtailed and an atmosphere of fear and intimidation fostered. Peaceful assembly has not been allowed, even though it is guaranteed under the constitution, and all political dissent is suppressed. In 2005, after parliamentary elections that many, including the European observers, deemed to be unfair, students took to the streets in the capital, Addis Ababa, to demonstrate against what they saw as electoral fraud. The regime responded by deploying armed security personnel who, according to Human Rights Watch, killed “dozens of protesters and arbitrarily detained thousa...

NOVANEWS By Graham Peebles Under relentless popular pressure the Ethiopian prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, has been forced to resign, and other members of the government are expected to follow. The ruling party responded with panic, and instead of entering into talks with opposition groups, imposed another state of emergency – this follows on from the previous one, which lasted 10 months (from October 2016), and achieved nothing. It is another mistake in a long line of errors by the government, which will do anything, it seems, to hang on to power. In his resignation speech Hailemariam Desalegn acknowledged that, ”unrest and a political crisis have led to the loss of lives and displacement of many”, Reuters reports. That is, “loss of lives” of innocent Ethiopians at the hands of Ti...

NOVANEWS Georges Gobet/AFP Alemayehu G. Mariam Shutting down and criminalizing use of the internet has become a weapon in the government’s cyber warfare strategy against the Ethiopian people, particularly the youth. The internet is making it exceedingly difficult for dictatorships to cling to power and rule tyrannically. It has created a walless, borderless, wireless, seamless, restless and fearless world. Last week, for the third time in the past year, the Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (T-TPLF) unplugged the internet. The reasons are a bit fuzzy. Some T-TPLF officials say the shutdown aims to prevent “student cheating on national exams”.  During a similar clampdown last year, a T-TPLF spokesman said the internet was unplugged because “s...

NOVANEWS By Graham Peebles What began as a regional protest movement in Ethiopia in November 2015 is in danger of becoming a fully-fledged armed uprising. Angered and exasperated by the government’s intransigence and duplicity, small guerrilla groups made up of local armed people have formed in Amhara and elsewhere, and are conducting hit-and-run attacks on security forces. Fighting at the beginning of January in the north-western region of Benishangul Gumuz saw 51 regime soldiers killed, the independent news outlet ESAT News, based in Europe and the United States, reported, and in the Amhara region a spate of incidents has occurred, notably a grenade attack on a hotel in Gondar and an explosion in Bahir-Dah. In what appears to be an escalation in violence, in Belesa, an area north of ...