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ARTICLE ON COVID-19 TO ELIMINATE OPPOSITIONS
The current Ethiopian government
under Abiy Ahmed’s administration, ushered in what many believed would be a
transformative government. However, that dream was short lived as the noble
laureate turned into yet another dictator. When PM Abiy Ahmed came to power, he
admitted that the country’s prison was a torture camp. He publicly asked for
forgiveness about what has happened on behalf of the former regime.
Mr. Jawar Mohammed is a young
dynamic Ethiopian-born American political activist and media mogul. Educated at
the renowned Stanford University where he earned his bachelor's degree in
Political Science and later his Masters in Human Rights at Columbia University.
He is known for his relentless non-violent activism for the Oromo people.
He has more than 1.9 million
Facebook followers. From 2016 to 2018, he used social media to organize
protests that piled pressure on the former toxic government and play a big
role, in ushering Abiy Ahmed to power. Mr. Jawar is high-profile, well liked,
Oromo politician, and prominent opposition leader. He was expected by many to
win the upcoming election. But Dr. Abiy has already tried to assassinate Mr.
Jawar but fail in October 2019.
Following the postponement of the
election, Mr Jawar warned the Prime Minister that he would be an
"illegitimate" prime minister once the term of the current parliament
ended at the end of September 2020. The PM Abiy Ahmed who see Mr. Jawar as a
potential rival, he set up Mr. Jawar Mohammed and Mr. Bekele Gerba arresting them
while they were on their way to funeral of recently assassinated a popular
Oromo singer and activists Haacaaluu Hundessa.
Mr. Jawar’s Facebook is
deactivated and the only plausible reason that he could be forced to provide
his password during arrest or someone who has link with Ethiopian government
but working at Facebook might accessed his account. The large Oromo people are
urging Facebook to reactivate Mr. Jawar’s account.
After Mr. Jawar detained, his
party saying that both his lawyer and family had been denied access to him, and
that he had embark ed on a hunger strike the firsts two days. Abiy’s
administration came up with fabricated stories and accused Mr. Jawar Mohammed,
his security personnel and entire OMN media journalists having a link to
Haacaaluu’s murder, they closed the media headquarter office the following day.
Through his attorney Jawar expressed a serious concern.
Ethiopia is a country where torture
and impunity for torture, are well-entrenched problems throughout its detention
center as well as inside prison. Human Rights Watch regularly receives reports
of abusive interrogations countrywide using techniques such as detaining
underground, severe beatings, torturing as well as poisoning political
prisoners, similar to what Jail Ogden’s former prisoners describe.
The chance of killing detainees
once got infected with Coronavirus can be deliberated by depriving them for
medical attention. As recent breaking news indicates, one of Jawar’s guard was
reported to be infected with coronavirus recently.
The unilateral and arbitrary
arrests have brought onslaught of condemnation from Amnesty International and
Human right watch. As far as Human Rights Watch is aware, there have been no
reported instances of the federal government holding anyone accountable for
torture, and prisoners’ complaints of torture in detention are routinely
ignored by the courts. Human Right Personnel should closely follow up the human
right violation in recent mass arrests.
Ethiopian Government’s Actions of
Recent mass arrests in unsafe environment and torturing of innocent civilians
or political Prisoners during Coronavirus pandemic outbreak and Infecting them
with COVID-19
intentionally to kill them systematically is serious human rights violations
Crime.