World News, Africa

Policing Ethiopia: The force vs. service dilemma

Kalkidan Yibeltal

 
On the last Sunday of May 2015, more than 35 million Ethiopians have flocked to cast their votes in an election that eventually proved to accentuate the absolute hegemony of the incumbent, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Front (EPRDF). Two days later the African Union Election Observation Mission (AUEOM), the only international body to observe the election by sending its members to 356 of the 42, 000 polling stations throughout the country, declared that since its arrival a few weeks prior to the election the political environment had been “generally peaceful and calm and has remained so up until the election day.” It went on to say that in all visited stations the presence of security forces was “unobtrusive.”

World News, Africa

An Ethiopian court jailed Muslim leaders, activists to lengthy terms

Mahlet Fasil
The Ethiopian federal high court fourth criminal bench today sentenced eighteen Ethiopian Muslims including four members of Ethiopian Muslim arbitration committee members, one journalist and thirteen others to a lengthy jail term between seven and 22 years. The eighteen Muslims were charged on counts that include attempted terrorism, conspiracy to establish an Islamic state, and public incitement.