Nairobi - Ethiopian federal authorities
temporarily took over security in a region where at least 17
people were killed in clashes between security forces and
activists seeking a new autonomous enclave for the Sidama
community, a broadcaster reported on Tuesday.
On Saturday, a local district official told Reuters that at
least 13 people were killed in a town near Hawassa city, 275 km
(170 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa, while hospital
authorities said on Friday that four protesters had died of
gunshot wounds in the city itself.
State-affiliated Fana Broadcasting said that the Federal
Security Council had decided to put security in the Hawassa city
administration and some districts of the Southern Nations,
Nationalities, and Peoples’ (SNNP) region under a temporary
federal security force-led command post.
It said the SNNP regional state had requested help from the
federal government and the decision would take effect on
Tuesday. Hawassa is the capital of the state but some Sidama -
who make up the largest group in the region - want it as the
capital of their own new entity.
The threat of large-scale violence in Hawassa was largely
averted after a Sidama opposition party agreed last Thursday to
delay declaring their own region and accept a government offer
to hold a referendum in five months.
The Sidama threat to unilaterally declare a new region posed
a direct challenge to the authority of the federal government in
Addis Ababa that oversees nine regions in the Horn of Africa
country of 105 million people.
Regional states in multi-ethnic Ethiopia are able to choose
their official working language and enjoy limited powers over
tax, education, health and land administration.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, appointed by the ruling coalition
last year, has won praise for political reforms in what was once
one of the continent's most repressive nations.
But many Ethiopian activists are now using their greater
freedoms to demand more rights, sometimes for their own ethnic
groups. At least eight other groups beside the Sidama also want
their own regions. The tensions sometimes spark violence.