Ethiopia authorities: More than 8,200 freed after unrest

Nov 15, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopian authorities said they have now freed more than 8,200 people who were seized after days of political unrest that claimed the lives of at least 46 people and rocked the nation.

“The detainees were released as they were not found to be direct actors in the violence,” said a federal police statement broadcast on state television late Monday.

Police have been making statements about releases in recent days, but have yet to announce how many people were rounded up after security forces clashed with demonstrators starting Nov. 1 or how many will face charges.

Monday’s statement said police would try to finalize investigations and “bring the remaining suspects to justice.”

The latest unrest in Ethiopia followed the deaths of at least 42 people in June in similar protests over a May election.

Meanwhile, an independent media watchdog said that two more journalists had been detained in a growing crackdown, bringing the numbers of journalists arrested to eight.

Among those seized were leaders of the main opposition group, members of local civil society organizations and editors of newspapers.

Some are expected to face treason charges for their alleged part in orchestrating the violence, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told foreign news organizations last Wednesday.

“The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged by these ongoing arrests,” Ann Cooper, CPJ executive director, said in a statement. “We call on the Ethiopian authorities to abandon any idea of bringing treason charges against journalists, and to end this blatant attempt to shut down the country’s independent media.”

The European Union and U.S have called for all political detainees to be freed.

Meles, known as one of the continent’s more progressive leaders, has pledged that his government would introduce greater democracy. He has ordered an independent investigation into the unrest.

Many saw the May polls as a test of his commitment to reform. The opposition says his party stole victory.

Ethiopia was an absolute monarchy under Emperor Haile Selassie until the mid-1970s, when a brutal Marxist junta overthrew him.

Civil wars wracked the ethnically fractured country in the 1980s, and famine took as many as 1 million lives.

Meles’s group overthrew the junta in 1991.

(AP/ST)