GENEVA
The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) this Friday will hold a special session to address “the grave human rights situation in Ethiopia” after a request by the European Union and following a warning last week from the US, the council announced.
“In light of the aggravating situation, we believe the international community has a moral obligation to try to prevent further atrocities and ensure accountability and justice for victims and survivors,” Lotte Knudsen, head of the EU delegation to the UN in Geneva, said in a statement Monday.
Last Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Ethiopia is increasingly facing the prospect of an implosion that would be “disastrous” for its neighbors.
Blinken said Ethiopia’s warring parties have the option to turn to negotiations and prevent all-out collapse but warned that if civil war envelops the country, the consequences for the region would be dire.
“I am very concerned about the potential for Ethiopia to implode given what we’re seeing, both in Tigray, but also as we have different forces and different ethnic groups that are increasingly at odds,” Blinken said at the State Department.
Meanwhile, the council said that the request on Monday was supported by 17 nations – one more than the 16 required – including Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Fiji, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, the Marshall Islands, South Korea, Ukraine, and the UK.
The request for the special session was also supported by 36 observer states, including Australia, Belgium, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the US.
Draft resolution
A draft resolution by the council calls on the “Government of Ethiopia to implement the state of emergency declared on Nov. 2, 2021, in a manner that respects the principles of strict necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination, and to publish the list of detainees and guarantee the right to visits in detention centers.”
It expresses “deep concern at reports about the targeting, arrests, and detention of people based upon their ethnicity, the poor detention conditions of those arrested, the allegations of ill-treatment in detention and the lack of judicial review.”
Anadolu Agency
Reposted:
This is the result of the sinister and reckless policy of Debre and his predecessors. Their ego and run away confidence was so sky high that they ended up pitching those upright and innocent people of Tigray against the rest of the country ‘We are the gold race’, ‘We are your liberators’ so on and so on did not and does not sit well with those proud Oromos, Amharas, Afars, Somalis and the rest. In the mean time they have been feeding the noble people of Tigray as if they are the only people targeted and victimized by consecutive governments since King John. We all recall the way they painted the popular protests in 1995, 2005 and 2016. Every time Oromos, Amharas, Somalis, Afars and others marched into the streets to protest improprieties TPLF leaders called it Interahamwe, Radio Rwanda, prelude to genocide and with that pretext they went down into the streets and mowed down hundreds of peaceful protestors. They justified their killings as if it was done to avert Rwanda style genocide. Some of you may ask as to why the leaders of TPLF then and even now would do that. First of all those leaders were/are not some kind of illiterate individuals. But they were to the contrary. In fact they were and are some of the best educated/well read individuals that country ever produced. They know their reign is not to be eternal. The only way they can maintain their hegemony is by keeping their own people at odds with those they see as their nemesis. They have succeeded in keeping the noble people of Tigray busy looking over their shoulders. Meanwhile, those wicked leaders did not sit idle from helping themselves with what was in the nation’s coffers. In a matter of a decade 30 billion in cold and crisp US dollars was rendered untraceable. I dare any crafty financial detective in the world to tract it down. It was like smooth sailing into a black hole. If they took any economy or finance class it was also with the intentions in how to sharpen their stealing acumen. That is why they are still caught stealing cans of sardines from the UN food aid warehouses. That is how despots do business. Mobutu did not just kill but he was also an expert in how to dip sticky fingers in his nation’s coffers. Dare if you can locate those 15 billion or so might US dollars he was able to haul away out of the destitute Kinshasa. You know what? One Swiss outfit was able to locate a smidgeon 15 million in US dollars and who knows what happened to it. It might have ended up in the litigating lawyers’ pockets! Wow!!! What success!!!