ADF STAFF
Tedla Hirigo, 17, worked as a street vendor in Adama city in Ethiopia’s Oromia region on November 11 when police detained him.
“When I visited the station in the evening, officers told me that he would be sent to a military training camp unless I paid 30,000 birr for his release,” Tedla’s mother told Ethiopian newspaper The Addis Standard. She said Tedla was her family’s primary source of income. “He was raised without a father, and we don’t have the financial means to pay such a large sum.”
Multiple sources report that the federal government is forcibly conscripting people to bolster its military strength for the intensifying Amhara region conflict.
“Youths are being rounded up and sent to military camps in many places in Addis Ababa,” Meseret Media reported on October 28. “Our sources told us that after they take these children who do heavy work to the police station, they keep them in prison for some time and then take them to the military camp.”
Another source told The Addis Standard on condition of anonymity that authorities in Fital town and surrounding villages announced an effort to have young people voluntarily enlist for military training. The resident said that no one volunteered, and “government forces, in collaboration with local administrators, began rounding up individuals.”
The Standard reported similar stories in Sheger city, which surrounds the federal capital, and of the detention of more than 20 Oromians who were threatened with military conscription at the Setema district police station in the western Jimma zone, several hundred kilometers southwest of Addis Ababa.
In a November 15 statement, the Oromia regional government refuted allegations that security forces are abducting people for ransom, describing them as “unfounded propaganda” and “defamation.”
The Amhara region conflict has escalated significantly since the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) launched an offensive that it called a “final operation” against an Amhara militia known as Fano. An additional 40,000 troops reportedly were deployed.
Calls for peace have “fallen on deaf ears,” ENDF spokesperson Col. Getnet Adane said on October 1, according to Voice of America.
“The only language they understand is force,” he said. “From now on we will talk to them in that language. For peace to prevail they need to be met with force. They have to be targeted, hit.”
Members of Ethiopia’s security forces have been implicated in kidnapping and extortion cases, according to a late September report by the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
“It is being done in broad daylight, especially in Sheger city,” an Oromia government source told Meseret Media.
On the same day that the ENDF announced its military offensive, human rights group Amnesty International accused the army of conducting “mass arbitrary detentions” in the Amhara region.
Tigere Chagutah, the organization’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, alleged that hundreds have been held, including members of the academic community, in major towns across the Amhara region since September 28.
“The Ethiopian army and police’s ongoing campaign of arbitrary mass detentions in Amhara region is yet more evidence of the government’s total disregard for the rule of law,” he said in a statement.
“Eyewitnesses have stated that authorities came with a ‘list’ and failed to obtain arrest and search warrants before detaining hundreds of civilians across the region. Those detained have largely not been brought before a court of law within 48 hours, as required by the country’s national laws and constitution.”
Amnesty International urged Ethiopian authorities to halt the use of arbitrary arrests and detentions as tools of repression.
“Immediately end these arbitrary arrests, press charges against those detained for internationally recognized crimes and follow due process, or release them without further delay,” the group said.
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