Day: November 18, 2021

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Thursday that six U.N. staff members had been released but five others, along with one of their dependents, remain in detention in Addis Ababa.

At least 16 U.N. staff and dependents were detained earlier this month amid reports of widespread arrests of ethnic Tigrayans.

“Further ethnic profiling can only deteriorate this serious dynamic and can lead to a situation for which we have alarming precedents,” said Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the U.N. special adviser of the secretary-general on the prevention of genocide.

In a press release on Wednesday, Nderitu reiterated her concern over the “deteriorating situation” in Ethiopia and strongly condemned “the intensification of profiling and arbitrary arrests of ethnic Tigrayans, including United Nations staff.”

“The region has experienced the evil of inter-ethnic violence spiraling down to the commission of genocide,” she said. “All possible action must be taken as a matter of utmost urgency to prevent further escalation.”

Police have denied making ethnically motivated arrests, contending they are only detaining backers of the rebel Tigrayan forces fighting the Ethiopian government.

Nderitu voiced her concerns the day before the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, and the African Union’s high representative for the Horn of Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo, returned to Ethiopia with hopes of reviving peace talks and negotiating a cease-fire in the yearlong conflict.

Nderitu warned during an online event earlier this month of the risk of the war spilling across borders and “becoming something completely unmanageable.” She also warned that ethnic-based militias are “so dangerous in this context.”

The war began a year ago when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed deployed troops to the northern regional state of Tigray in response to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s seizure of military bases. The ensuing conflict has killed thousands of people, displaced several million from their homes and left 400,000 residents of Tigray facing famine, according to a July estimate by the U.N.

A joint investigation by the U.N. and the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission published a report in early November concluding that all sides in the conflict have committed human rights violations, including torturing civilians, committing gang rapes and arresting people based on ethnicity.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has said some of those abuses may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Source: Voice of America

KAMPALA, UGANDA — Ugandan authorities have killed at least five people, including a Muslim cleric, accused of having ties to the extremist group responsible for Tuesday’s suicide bombings in the capital, police said Thursday.

Four men were killed in a shootout in a frontier town near the western border with Congo as they tried to cross back into Uganda. A fifth man, a cleric named Muhammad Kirevu, was killed in “a violent confrontation” when security forces raided his home outside Kampala, police spokesman Fred Enanga said.

A second cleric, Suleiman Nsubuga, is the subject of a manhunt, he said, accusing the two clerics of radicalizing young Muslim men and encouraging them to join underground cells to carry out violent attacks.

The police raids came after blasts Tuesday in which at least four civilians were killed when suicide bombers detonated their explosives at two locations in Kampala. One attack happened near the parliamentary building and the second near a busy police station. The attacks sparked chaos and confusion in the city as well as outpourings of concern from the international community.

Twenty-one suspects with alleged links to the perpetrators are in custody, Enanga said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s explosions, saying they were carried out by Ugandans. Ugandan authorities blamed the attacks on the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, an extremist group that has been allied with IS since 2019.

President Yoweri Museveni identified the alleged suicide bombers in a statement in which he warned that security forces were “coming for” alleged members of the ADF.

Fears of crackdown

While Ugandan authorities are under pressure to show they are in control of the situation, the killings of suspects raised fears of a violent crackdown in which innocent people may be victims.

Despite the horror of the bomb attacks, “it remains critical to ensure no terrorist attack translates into a blank check to violate human rights under a pretext of fighting terror,” said Maria Burnett, a rights lawyer with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Across East Africa, terrorism has been a pretext at times to ensnare political opponents, civic actors and even refugees seeking protection,” she said. “Such actions risk radicalizing people in support of nonstate actors and hands those actors an easy propaganda tool.”

Human Rights Watch has previously documented cases in which Ugandan security officials have allegedly tortured ADF suspects and held them without trial for long periods.

The ADF has for years been opposed to the long rule of Museveni, a U.S. security ally who was the first African leader to deploy peacekeepers in Somalia to protect the federal government from the extremist group al-Shabab. In retaliation over Uganda’s deployment of troops to Somalia, that group carried out attacks in 2010 that killed at least 70 people who had assembled in public places in Kampala to watch a World Cup soccer game.

But the ADF, with its local roots, has become a more pressing challenge to Museveni, 77, who has ruled Uganda for 35 years and was reelected to a five-year term in January.

The ADF was established in the early 1990s by some Ugandan Muslims who said they had been sidelined by Museveni’s policies. At the time, the rebel group staged deadly attacks in Ugandan villages as well as in the capital, including a 1998 attack in which 80 students were massacred in a town near the Congo border.

A Ugandan military assault later forced the rebels into eastern Congo, where many rebel groups are able to roam free because the central government has limited control there.

Source: Voice of America