(PresidentialWire.com)- The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission confirmed on Friday that ethnic unrest in June and July resulted in the deaths of more than 75 people at the hands of Ethiopian security forces, with a further 200 people injured. The unrest occurred in the African country after popular singer Hachalu Hundessa was killed.
The rioters more generally resulted in the deaths of 123 people with a further 500 injured. For months, the country endured one of the worst outbreaks of ethnic violence and unrest in many years in what the commission called a “widespread and systematic attack” against civilians. The Human Rights Commission also said that the actions taken by the nation’s security forces constituted crimes against humanity, with many victims being dragged through the streets, tortured, and even beheaded.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who previously won the Nobel Peace Prize, has worked to reduce ethnic violence in the country – a task that has proven extremely difficult with more than 80 different ethnic groups living in the country, which has the biggest population of all African countries.
While the unrest died down somewhat from July, Ethiopia is still struggling from political instability and riots.
#Gravitas | Ethiopia has reverted to chaos and violence. A bloody ethnic conflict has killed close to 250 people – mostly civilians. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (@AbiyAhmedAli) has used the unrest to ‘jail political opponents’. @palkisu tells you more. pic.twitter.com/Nm4OZh3CFu
— WION (@WIONews) July 8, 2020
Singer Hundessa, who was a vocal activist involved in anti-government protests that helped elect Abiy in 2018, became a center of the ethnic unrest with activists on both sides of the debate taking to the streets to address their grievances, one way or the other.
According to the commission, civilians were “attacked inside their homes by individuals and grouped perpetrators and were beaten and killed in streets in a gruesome and cruel manner with sticks, knives, axes, sharp iron bars, stones and electric cables” during the riots.
During the summer, over 6,000 people were displaced and almost a thousand properties were burned, looted, or vandalized, with much of the attacks targeting Orthodox Christians and the ethnic Amhara.
Isn’t it something when the United States sees similar destruction in its major cities as Ethiopia, during Black Lives Matter riots?
And, just like Ethiopia, the unrest in the United States is likely far from over.
