Ethiopia assembly to probe rising ethnic violence

ADDIS ABABA, March 26 (Reuters) – Ethiopia said on Friday it would launch an independent probe into ethnic unrest that has killed hundreds of people, in an apparent response to growing domestic and overseas concern.

Opposition members of parliament and international rights groups have called for weeks for an investigation into killings in December and January, some of the worst communal violence for years in sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous country.

“The independent body, yet to be formed, will have the responsibility to find out the real causes of the violence and what role the government played to quell it,” said an assembly statement, quoted on Friday by state-run Ethiopian News Agency.

Attackers killed almost 200 people on January 30 in Dima, a town in the remote western Gambella region, government officials said, when mounting ethnic tensions in the area exploded into a day of bloodshed.

On December 13, 60 people were killed, 74 wounded and 410 houses torched in Gambella state’s main town of Gambella, according to the government, which said the armed forces intervened to prevent further devastation.

But opposition groups dispute government death figures, saying the combined death tolls in the Gambella and Dima incidents reached 606.

An Ethiopian Human Rights Council report earlier this year detailed rising incidents of ethnic violence in various parts of Ethiopia, saying government policies of basing administrative units along tribal lines had aggravated tensions.

The government has in the past accused the council of issuing politically motivated fabrications.

United Nations sources familiar with the area have said some of the fighting in December was between the Anuak and Nuer ethnic groups, which have traditionally clashed over land.

The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of parties representing various ethnic groups and regions, dominates the 548-seat parliament and there are only 13 opposition MPs in the current assembly. But concern about the violence was also voiced by members of parties within the EPRDF.