With 11 occurrences apiece, Ethiopia is now one of the two most heavily affected nations in Africa by internet outages.
Facebook, Telegram, and TikTok have been blocked in Ethiopia as from February 9, 2023 as a result of protests over the breakup of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC). This is Ethiopia’s eleventh forced internet outage since 2015, according to Surfshark’s Internet Shutdown Tracker.
In times of upheaval, undemocratic regimes frequently suspend internet access in an effort to head off criticism of their conduct and, ultimately, to quiet the populace. Many Ethiopians won’t be able to connect with one another or plan protests if access to these three major social media platforms is restricted, according to Gabriele Racaityte-Krasauske, a spokeswoman for Surfshark.
Since 2015, Ethiopia has shut down internet access a total of 11 times. Six of these cases involved other forms of political unrest, while five of them involved protests.
Wider anti-government sentiment has been created by protests related to the EOTC split. Even though the government typically doesn’t make the restriction public, Ethiopia has a history of limiting social media during protests.
In 2022, internet outages afflicted 1 in 4 Africans. Internet outages impacted more than 300 million Africans in 2022, according to Surfshark’s annual report on internet censorship.
After Asia, Africa has the second-highest level of internet censorship; in addition to long-term limitations, five African nations filtered the internet 13 times in 2022.
Globally, mass internet filtering had an impact on 4.2 billion people in 2022, according to Surfshark’s internet censorship yearly report. In 2022, Asia accounted for almost half of all new cases, with Africa coming in second. Autocratic countries continue to utilize internet censorship as a popular tactic to cut off its citizens from the outside world.
Facebook is the social media site most despised by despotic countries and was still heavily censored in 2022. In reality, since 2015, a startling 46% of the world’s population has been impacted by by Facebook bans in some form.
In 2017, Burkina Faso’s ban on Facebook was the longest in the world, lasting longer than those in Russia and Azerbaijan. The prohibition was in place until 2023. Following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has continued to cause disruptions on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Access to important international news websites has also been banned by the nation.
TikTok was censored in Azerbaijan in September. Even now, access to the platform is still limited.
By the number of internet disruptions, Asia continues to be ahead of Africa. In 2022, 58 occurrences of new internet outages were imposed by 11 Asian nations. The world’s greatest disruption total (24), followed by Iran (11) and India, in the Jammu & Kashmir area (10).
With five nations adopting 13 limitations in 2022, Africa became the second most disruptive area behind Asia. By the number of disruptions, Sudan leads all of Africa with four, followed by Burkina Faso (3), Zimbabwe (3), Sierra Leone (2), and Somalia (1).
Gov’t internet censorship renders Ethiopia as among top internet axed nations
Church rifts ensue uncertain times
Demonstration called off
Ethiopia’s government and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) have been at odds for the past three weeks, with the church alleging that the government is aiding a group that staged an anti-coup attempt on the sacred Synod.
The conflict started on January 22 when three Orthodox bishops announced the formation of the ostensibly 25-episcopate-strong “Holy Synod of Oromia Nations and Nationalities.” Three days later, the EOTC’s Holy Synod, which represents the majority of the nation’s more than 50 million adherents, formally excommunicated each of them.
The now-excommunicated “illegitimate group” was criticized by the EOTC, led by His Holiness Patriarch Abune Mathias, over remarks made by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Speaking to cabinet members earlier in the week, Abiy urged the adversaries on each side has their “own realities” to which His Holiness in response said, “The government should not meddle in the ecclesiastical and canonical matters of the church.”
The patriarchate has refuted the charges made by the dissident bishops that the Church discriminates against Oromian congregations and practices linguistic and cultural hegemony there.
Following the recent conflict, security authorities recently killed about 30 Ethiopian Orthodox believers in Shashemene, Oromia Region, for defending their church from “the politically-motivated” isolated group. Over the past few weeks, the conflict between the government and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has intensified which has led government to place red beret soldiers and heavily armed federal police on the streets of major cities, including the capital, Addis Ababa.
On February 1, the Synod of the EOTC sent a warning to the government, threatening that if corrective action was not taken to, that is, “To uphold the institutional supremacy of the Church, the rights and interests given to it by law, and by giving appropriate correction to the illegal actions of the breakaway Archbishops,” a worldwide peaceful demonstration would be called for on February 12.
In response to the Church’s call for a demonstration, the government has released comments claiming that certain individuals and groups are attempting to overturn the government violently by using the internal affairs of the EOTC.
The EOTC, on the other hand, asserts that the Government is supporting a group that attempted to overthrow the church.
One of the claims made by the church is that the head of the EOTC was kidnapped at Jimma Airport and that people were killed for attempting to defend their churches from the isolated group. Instead of defending the centuries-old Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the government has been allowing the isolated group to invade and rob its churches.
The EOTC announced that it will proceed with its scheduled demonstrations in Ethiopia peacefully and requested the government to protect the population while obeying the law, indicating that peaceful demonstrations are guaranteed under the Ethiopian Constitution.
The rebel archbishops have also urged their supporters to attend marches on the same day in Addis Ababa and other cities around the nation.
The Joint Security and Intelligence Task Force issued a statement in which it expressed concern that “agitations are being made to use the opportunity to take the lives of citizens and to engage in other conflict-provoking activities,” adding that, “this approach is opening the door for anti-peace forces working to destroy our country by using the incident as a cover.”
The Ethiopian National Defense Forces, the Federal Police Commission, and the Information Network Security Agency, which make up the Joint Security and Intelligence Task Force, further blamed the social media activists for escalating the situation and fomenting violence.
Given that there is no permitted form of demonstration from the relevant body, the joint task force also issued a warning to the entire populace to refrain from “illegal demonstration and conflict-inciting activities.”
Any harm done to the populace and the nation is the responsibility of “any force that acts illegally and those who try to coordinate and participate in the demonstrations.” In an effort to maintain the nation’s peace and security, the joint task force will take the required legal action, according to the statement.
However, the church said on Thursday, February 9 that it would summon the planned peaceful demonstration whether the government allowed it or not, using its legal and international rights, if it didn’t receive all the answers to its inquiries and discovered it had arrested church members within 48 hours. Schools in the nation’s capital were closed on Friday due to the tense mood in the city, and internet connectivity has been poor in many parts of the country in recent hours amid protests over the crisis.
Additionally, the church said on Friday, February 10, 2023, that it had a conversation with the Prime Minister about the issue; to which PM Abiy expressed believes that all of the church’s queries are legitimate and accurate, citing that the issue will be solved in due course. After the discussion the Church called off the demonstration on Saturday February 11. The government has also pledged to address demands from the Church.
In its latest report released on Friday February 10, 2023, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, a panel of independent specialists, cited that at least 13 people died at the hands of “Ethiopian security forces aid workers” who used “disproportionate force” to disperse an attempt to occupy the church of St. Michael the Archangel.
The commission, in its report published this Friday, denounces a campaign of repression against followers of the Tewahedo Orthodox Church who have opposed the creation of this new synod, and who have been victims of “beatings, intimidation, expulsion from churches and extrajudicial arrests”.
Additionally, the EOTC has asked the Federal High Court’s Lideta division’s fundamental rights and freedoms bench to impose a three-month injunction against the three breakaway archbishops and the 25 appointed episcopate until the church is ready to file a formal lawsuit against them. On Friday, the Ethiopian Federal High Court issued an order of injunction in favor of the Church that forbids schismatics from entering any EOTC parish or church. The court has mandated that the Oromia police commission, Oromia regional state, and the ministry of peace federal police to carry out the decision.
Different sister churches of Ethiopia and worldwide including the Roma Catholic Church, Coptic church of Egypt and others have shown their solidarity in supporting the church and opposing the split group.
Krones supports Menschen für Menschen
As part of a long-standing cooperation, Krones Ethiopia donated electro-mechanical tools worth
10,000 euros to support the Menschen für Menschen (MfM) in Ethiopia.
The donated items will assist the effectiveness of the training programs offered at the MfM Agro- Technical Training College (ATTC) in Harar, Ethiopia. Krones anticipates to continue a long-term collaboration with ATTC, initiating discussions to establish an apprenticeship program in Ethiopia based on the well-established apprenticeship program already run by Krones in Kenya.
The official handover of the donation took place on February 2, 2023, in the presence of Reinhold Jung, Head of Africa and the Middle East, Gary Zeller, Managing Director of Krones East Africa, and other from MfM.
During the event Krones said that it will continue to foster the relationship with the MfM and thereby contribute further to the development of the education and training sector.
Menschen für Menschen (MfM) is an international humanitarian and development organization founded by the Late Karlheinz Bohms in 1981. Currently, MfM is running 12 integrated Rural Development projects, two employment generation project, one Agro technical and Technology College (ATTC) and one children home across Ethiopia providing development and humanitarian assistance.
Military and police abuses are a key cause of Africa’s surge of violent extremism, UN study finds
By our staff reporter
Human-rights abuses by military and police forces are one of the key factors that push Africans into violent extremist groups, a United Nations study has concluded after more than 1,000 interviews with former jihadist fighters.
The study by the UN Development Program found that Africa is becoming the “new global epicentre” for violent extremism. While deaths from terrorism have declined globally in the past five years, they have more than doubled in that same period in Africa, where almost half of the world’s terrorism-related deaths are now occurring, the report said.
A separate report this week by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies confirmed the trend. It found that the number of deaths linked to militant Islamist groups in Africa had surged by 48 per cent last year, while the number of violent events by such groups had increased by 22 per cent, reaching a new record.
Yet governments are too often responding to extremist groups with militarized action, which can be self-defeating, the UNDP report said. State security crackdowns, accompanied by a sharp escalation in human-rights abuses, are often the biggest reason why people join violent extremist groups in Africa, it found.
Instead, the study recommended governments should invest in education, social welfare and economic development programs that can prevent the drift into jihadism.
“Security-driven counterterrorism responses are often costly and minimally effective, yet investments in preventive approaches to violent extremism are woefully inadequate,” UNDP administrator Achim Steiner said in a statement accompanying the report.
The study is based on interviews with nearly 2,200 people, including more than 1,000 former members of violent extremist groups, in eight African countries: Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
In total, more than 51,000 Africans have died as a result of extremist violence in the past decade, and the economic cost of terrorism on the continent has been close to US$100-billion annually, the study found.
Another factor was a lack of education. Nearly 60 per cent of the recruits had low levels of education, the study found. Each additional year of schooling tended to reduce the likelihood of voluntary recruitment to jihadist groups by 13 per cent, it found.
In addition to these broad factors, nearly half of those interviewed said there was a specific trigger event that pushed them into the decision to join an extremist group. Of those, 71 per cent said the “tipping point” was a human-rights abuse, often by a state security force.
It quoted a 35-year-old Nigerian woman named Fatima, for example, who said a military jet had attacked her village and killed many people. “I decided to join and followed husband in order to avenge the killing,” she told the researchers.
Such trigger events, linked to anger and fear, were “a significant accelerator of recruitment” for many people, the study said. Those who did not experience a specific trigger or “tipping point” were much less likely to join a jihadist group.
“It illustrates the importance of addressing grievances, revealed as state action and human-rights abuses in this data sample, as a critical bulwark to counter and address vulnerabilities that may lead to violent extremism,” the study said.
