NAIROBI
Amnesty International has accused the Ethiopian authorities of using brutal tactics – including arbitrary arrests, torture, detention without charge and killings – against people of the Oromo ethnic group.
"Often these people are accused of supporting the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the rebel group in the region," Clare Beston, Amnesty International's lead researcher in the Horn of Africa, told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday.
"This is just a pretext that the government uses because it fears dissent in the Oromia region, and therefore takes efforts to brutally suppress it," she said.
"If you refuse to join the ruling party, you are brought under suspicion of having anti-government sentiments," Beston asserted.
According to an Amnesty report released in Nairobi on Tuesday, the Oromos, Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, are subjected to a range of brutal methods to suppress any suggestion of political dissent.
The 138-page report, entitled "Because I am Oromo," accuses Ethiopia of using arbitrary arrests, torture, detention without charge and killings against the Oromo people.
Amnesty has documented testimonials from 240 Oromo refugees at four major locations in Kenya, Somaliland and Uganda between 2013 and 2014.
Beston said that researchers had interviewed ordinary individuals, including farmers, teachers, businessmen and students.
"We also conducted face-to-face interviews with 30 Oromians from Egypt and Ethiopia," she told AA.
"We also had around 40 telephone calls, which were conducted with people in Oromia in the same time-frame – before the government denied us access to Ethiopia to conduct our research in 2011," the researcher added.
Beston said that over 5,000 people had been arrested for openly expressing dissenting views or for suspicions regarding their political opinions.
She said that 90 percent of those interviewed had started their stories by saying, "I was arrested..."
She said that most of those interviewed had been tortured and mistreated by the government.
"Methods that were reported included beating with metal sticks and rubber batons, burning with heated metal and plastics, rape and electrocution," Beston said.
"Those we interviewed had scars all over their body," she asserted.
The rights researcher said many people had been arrested for the slightest association with the rebel group.
She recalled that a midwife, for example, had been arrested because she delivered the baby of an Oromo Liberation Front member.
"There were a couple of pharmacists who were also arrested because of supplying medicine to members of the Oromo Liberation Front," she told AA.
Beston said the Ethiopian government had repeatedly shown its unwillingness to even acknowledge the issue.
"We as Amnesty International believe there is an urgent need for the international human rights community to intervene and conduct thorough, independent investigations to bring pressure on the Ethiopian government to end these violations," she said.
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