Tag: Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s electoral board has postponed the highly anticipated general election by nearly two weeks to 29 August.
Voting day had been set for 16 August, which was met with criticism as it coincided with the height of the rainy season in country where many people live in rural areas.

Announcing the revised timetable, the chair of the electoral board, Birtukan Mideksa – a former judge who was once a political prisoner – said that the end of August generally saw relatively less heavy rain.

Voter registration is due to begin in April and political parties can commence their campaigns late in May.

A swarm of what appeared to be locusts forced a passenger plane off its course in Ethiopia, the flight operator says.

Pilots were preparing to land the Ethiopian Airlines flight from Djibouti to Dire Dawa on Thursday when clouds of insects slammed into the plane’s engines, windshield and nose.

They tried in vain to clean the windscreen with the plane’s wipers.

Read:Somalis fight locust invasion by eating them

Thirty minutes later the plane landed safely but in the capital Addis Ababa instead, according to reports.

East Africa has been hit by its worst locust invasion for 25 years, which has devastated crops across the region.

Swarms can vary from less than 1 sq km (0.38 square miles) to several hundred. Each square kilometre can contain at least 40 million insects, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

One website reported that the insects were grasshoppers. Aeronews Global has posted a photo of the plane’s nose cone smeared with dead insects: The Ethiopian Airlines flight was on an hour-long journey when it flew through a small swarm. It then encountered a bigger swarm which reduced visibility, reports say.

Read:Swarms of locusts threaten food security in Kenya Govt

A spokesman for the airline confirmed that the plane was diverted by the swarm of insects but did not give further details of Thursday’s incident.

East Africa’s larger-than-normal locust populations are thought to have spread from Yemen in August, wreaking havoc on local crops.

In Ethiopia’s northern Amhara state some farmers have lost “nearly 100%” of their crop of the staple grain, teff, the UN says.

Source: www.bbc.com

Five people suspected of burning down four mosques in Ethiopia’s Amhara region have been arrested, a regional spokesman said, as rising inter-communal and ethnic violence threatens political reforms initiated by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

“Five people who are suspected of leading and organising the attacks have now been arrested,” Getnet Yirsaw, the Amhara state spokesman, said in a Facebook post on Saturday.

State-affiliated Fana Broadcasting Corporate reported on Saturday that a number of mosques were attacked and that “other properties were destroyed” in Mota town, more than 350 km (217 miles) north of the capital, Addis Ababa.

“Attempts by extremists to breakdown our rich history of religious tolerance and coexistence have no place in the new prosperity focused Ethiopia,” Abiy, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in a statement posted on his Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Read:Ethiopia arrests inciters of violence in universities

“I condemn such acts of cowardice and call upon all peace loving Ethiopians to draw upon our deep knowledge of coexistence and our reservoir of respect,” the statement added.

Fana also said one church was attacked.

Religious strife
While ethnic violence has been a persistent problem under Abiy, recent unrest appears to have been at least partly motivated by religion.

During several days of violence in the Oromia region in October that killed more than 80 people, attacks on both mosques and Orthodox Christian churches were reported.

Read:Last remains of Ethiopian plane crash victims buried, families say little notice given

Yet analysts caution that conflicts that appear to be rooted in religion are often also shaped by disputes over land use, ethnicity and other issues.

Muslims make up about one-third of Ethiopia’s population of 110 million, second only to Orthodox Christians at 40 percent, according to the last census which was conducted in 2007.

But Muslims are vastly outnumbered in Amhara, the country’s second-most-populous region where Orthodox Christians make up more than 80 percent of the total.

The attacks on the mosques were condemned by the Orthodox Church and the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council, Fana reported.

Read:Ethiopia converts former torture centre to tourist hotspot

Daniel Bekele, head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, said in a statement that Amhara regional officials “should act promptly to investigate and bring perpetrators to justice”.

Source: New Agencies

The Ethiopian authorities say they have detained people suspected of inciting ethnic violence in some universities which has led to death of three students, state-linked Fana news site reports.

Samuel Kifle, State Minister of Science and Higher Education, did not give the number of those arrested but said an operation was continuing to arrest others.

He said two students were killed and others injured after clashes between learners in Woldia University, in northern Ethiopia.

Read:Ethiopia converts former torture centre to tourist hotspot

Metu and Jimma universities in the south-western region, and Medawelabu university in the capital, Addis Ababa, also experienced similar problems, Mr Samuel said.

The BBC has spoken to groups of students who are saying that they have stopped attending classes due to fears around the current wave of violence.

Read:Pope prays for Ethiopia as death toll from protest rises to 86

Security forces have been deployed to several universities in an attempt to control the unrest.

Mr Samuel said that the authorities were consulting students and religious leaders to facilitate the return of those who fled the fighting in the universities.

There has been a rise in inter-ethnic violence in Ethiopia since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came into power in 2018, as different ethnic communities have been expressing more freely their historical differences.

Universities are more prone to violent incidents as members of different communities come into closer contact at campuses.

Source: bbc.com