A report issued by the state-appointed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) initially of the week through which it accused Ethiopian authorities safety forces of committing extrajudicial killings in opposition to dozens of civilians within the Amhara area in October has hit a nerve. In a uncommon expression of dissatisfaction with the Commission, the top of the Government Communication Service (GCS) flat out rejected the Commission’s report, saying it was biased, based mostly on incorrect info and lacked context. He went on to say that the report undermined the credibility of the establishment and urged it to show the independence and impartiality with which it’s mandated to discharge its duties independently. However, he was at pains to level out that the federal government’s criticism of the report was not supposed to muzzle the EHRC. The authorities’s try and pour chilly water on the report, nevertheless, is fraught with flaws that topic it to reputable criticisms.
In the primary place the GCS didn’t go into specifics and selected to refute the report on the whole phrases. The report, as an illustration, documented a number of incidents through which quite a few civilians died and had been injured in drone and heavy artillery assaults. Aside from lambasting the report and casting doubt over the integrity of the EHRC, the Service did not deny that any of the alleged incidents took place or present any counterevidence. This obtrusive omission leaves little room for doubt that the GCS’s rebuttal quantities to little greater than a PR train. As a authorities company tasked with availing the general public full and verifiable info on issues of nationwide significance, the size to which it went to discredit the report is inexcusable.
The GCS’s accusation relating to the veracity of the findings of the report can also be questionable. The methodology EHRC makes use of to assemble proof and examine human rights violations has been acknowledged as being on par with worldwide requirements. The Ethiopian authorities has incessantly argued as a lot in varied worldwide boards. Its passionate protection of the report printed in 2021 by the EHRC and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) following their joint investigation into alleged human rights violations and abuses, and violations of worldwide humanitarian legislation dedicated within the context of the battle in Tigray pays testomony to this reality. Ever since EHRC was reorganized anew underneath the present management, it has been one of many few establishments that has demonstrated independence and issued scathing reviews that the federal government has taken no objection to. There isn’t any logic by which its report is touted when it seemingly vindicates the federal government however is described as being prejudiced and unfounded if it displays badly on it.
Needless to say, EHRC isn’t an establishment that may do no fallacious; nobody expects it to be. However, even when its recent report is alleged to be inaccurate, it will have been infinitely higher if the federal government had endeavored to debunk it level by level on the premise of factual proof, not dismiss it wholesale and make a veiled menace geared toward compelling the Commission into retracting the report’s findings. Vowing to be dedicated to establishing an unbiased establishment however claiming that the work it does isn’t essentially impartial is akin to making an attempt to have one’s cake and eat it too. The acceptable response would have been to acknowledge that the federal government has taken notice of the report and would carry the perpetrators of the acts it detailed to justice following an investigation.
The authorities’s denial of documented atrocities with out providing any proof on the contrary is a troubling growth for it demonstrates an obvious absence of the will and willingness to foster accountability. Accountability is without doubt one of the bedrock ideas of the rule of legislation—an idea that transcends political methods and is key to any simply and steady society. Ethiopians ought to have the ability to believe that the rule of legislation will all the time be upheld. This requires of the federal government to forsake its go-to technique of denialism to duck accountability. It’s solely then that it may be part of the answer and allow the residents it serves to understand their long-sought aspiration for peace, democracy and prosperity.
