“Such a Brutal Crackdown”

Security forces also killed students at schools and other locations when they tried to
prevent future demonstrations. Gameda, a 17-year-old Grade 9 student near Shashemene,
described security forces entering his school compound in mid-December:
We had planned to protest. At 8 a.m., Oromia police came into the school
compound. They arrested four students [from Grades 9-11]. The rest of us
were angry and started chanting against the police. Somebody threw a
stone at the police and they quickly left and came back an hour later with
the federal police. They walked into the compound and shot three students
at point-blank range. They were hit in the face and were dead. They took the
bodies away. They held us in our classrooms for the rest of the morning,
and then at noon they came in and took about 20 of us including me. 43
Some people said they heard single bullets fired at night, including in Waliso town and
Jeldu woreda, raising concerns of extrajudicial executions. In Waliso and Jeldu there were
also credible reports of individuals being killed in unknown circumstances, although
details of death are unknown, making it difficult to ascribe the deaths to the single
gunshots. 44
In addition to killings, dozens of students and other protesters received bullet wounds,
some in the back, and many in the lower body. Many of those injured and killed were
under age 18. This may have been because students were often at the front of the protests
because, as one 28-year-old protester put it, “They are eager and have not been through
this before.” 45
Arbitrary Arrests and Detentions
Ethiopian security forces have arrested tens of thousands of protesters, students, farmers,
OFC members and intellectuals since the protests began in mid-November.
43 Human Rights Watch interview with #5, location withheld, January 2016.
44 A woreda is a unit of local administration in Ethiopia. Each region is divided into zones, with each zone divided into
several woredas. Each woreda, in turn, is divided into kebeles.
45 Human Rights Watch interview with #86, location withheld, April 2016.
“SUCH A BRUTAL CRACKDOWN” 26