Ethiopian Anti-Terrorism Law and Human Rights Nexus: an Appraisal
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Date
2014-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The advent of counter-terrorism as a major international objective after 9/11 and subsequent proliferation
of new anti-terrorism laws by states brought a new challenge to human rights, especially civil and
political rights. The analyses of certain countries‟ Anti-Terrorism Laws especially in developing countries
show two major impacts of Anti-Terrorism Law on human rights. The first impact is the post September
11 Anti-Terrorism Laws become broad and give discretionary power to police and security forces which
in turn lead to arbitrary violation of the fundamental rights of suspects of terrorist acts. The second and
most worrying aspect is some developing countries are using Anti-Terrorism Law as a cover to control
political dissent, civil society, media and individual activists critical of government.
The objective of this thesis is to identify and assess the impacts of the 2009 Ethiopian Anti-Terrorism
Law has had on the promotion and protection of human rights. For the purpose of this research qualitative
methodology is used. Both secondary and primary data were collected. As far as secondary sources were
concerned; books, journal articles, newspapers, government enactments, legal instruments, organizational
reports and official documents were used. To substantiate secondary sources with primary sources key
informants interviews were done with 20 persons. For this purpose the research tried to answer the
question whether or how the 2009 Ethiopian Anti-Terrorism Law put challenges to human rights.
As the analysis of data shows, the 2009 Ethiopian Anti-Terrorism Law impairs the promotion and
protection of human rights. The proclamation represents a broad and vaguely defined government power
to investigate, detain and prosecute individuals at the expense of due process, judicial overseeing and
public transparency. It empowers police with absolute power of arrest, search and seizure. It grants the
police to make arrest without warrant, as long as the police reasonably suspects that a person is
committing or has committed terrorist acts. Also the reduction of procedural requirements has led police
to detain first and find evidence later. Moreover, the proclamation gives legal cover for the admissibility
of evidence obtained through torture. Thus, its ambiguous and vague definitions can provide a
government a tool of infringing basic human rights like liberty, privacy, prohibition of torture, prohibition
of arbitrary detention, freedom of expression, association, demonstration and assembly.
Furthermore, the 2009 Ethiopian Anti-Terrorism Law has had far reaching impacts on political pluralism
and promotion and protection of human rights in the country. The proclamation provides the government
with the tools to justify its intimidation of opposition political parties, CSOs, media and individual
activists critical to government. As the analysis shows, the new Anti-Terrorism Law has been used to
silence critics and punish political dissents, HRD and media‟s critical of government. The expanded law
enforcement power‟s allowed incumbent government to apply the label to any groups or individuals. The
vague and ambiguous definitions of terrorist acts in the proclamation led to the criminalization of act of
political dissent such as public demonstrations, non-violent movements and minor acts of violence
committed in the contexts of political activism. The provision which criminalizes „encouragement of
terrorism‟ is also ambiguous and highly affects journalists and their sources including surveillance and it
highly forced to provide selected information. This is evident that, in Ethiopia, most of detainees of suspected and convicted under the 2009 Ethiopian Anti-Terrorism Law were journalists, HRD, opposition political parties‟ members and leaders and CSOs critical of government
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