NAN-F-31
Riot
Addis Ababa, Oct. 18, 2016 (dpa/NAN) The police in Ethiopia on Tuesday arrested and detained
1,000 people over anti-government riots, an official said.
The official said the detainees were held at a town called Sebeta close to Addis Ababa, where protesters looted and torched factories, vehicles and company premises.
The rioting followed the deaths of more than 50 people in a stampede, sparked by police attempt to disperse protesters at an Oromo religious festival near the capital on Oct. 2.
The government subsequently declared a state of emergency on Oct. 8.
The Oromia region, which is populated by the country’s largest Oromo ethnic group and includes Addis Ababa, has seen repeated flare-ups of anti-government protests since late last year.
“Some of the 1,000 detainees have been released; however, many of them are still behind bars and are being investigated for causing the damages.
“Half of the detainees were not local resident and had come in from outside,” Sebeta Mayor, Ararsa Merdesa said.
He said the arrests had been made before the state of emergency was declared and that the town had been calm since then.
The Oromo, who constitute more than 30 per cent of the East African country’s 100-million population, feel excluded from political and economic power.
Felix Horne from Human Rights Watch said the “silencing of independent voices and use of brutality by security forces to crush those that peacefully protest has led to this crisis.
“Therefore, it’s hard to see how imposing even more restrictions to silence dissenting voices is going to improve Ethiopia’s long-term stability,” he said. (dpa/NAN)
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(Edited by Damilola Oyewole/Hadiza Mohammed-Aliyu)