Ethiopia

Human Rights Watch reported that Repressive New Legislation Should Be Amended or Scrapped in Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s government should immediately abandon plans to impose strict government controls and draconian criminal penalties on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said on July 1st. The two groups called on donor governments, whose behind-the-scenes efforts to see the bill reformed appear to have failed, to speak out publicly against the de facto criminalization of most of the human rights, rule of law and peace-building work currently being carried out in Ethiopia. 

Two Ethiopian human rights defenders, Netsanet Demissie and Daniel Bekele, detained since November 2005, due to be sentenced on Thursday, 22 November 2007 have had their hearing adjourned. The reason given was that one of the judges was sick. Daniel Bekele is the head of Policy and Research and Advocacy Department of ActionAid Ethiopia, and Netsanet Demissie is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Organisation for Social Justice (OSJE).