OROMO PROTESTS
Ethiopia paints a bleaker picture of effects of recent violence
Authorities revise up arrest and death tolls as residents report looting and rampages by Oromo youths
Addis Ababa — Ethiopian authorities arrested more than 1,200 people after violence erupted in and around the capital in September, a police official said, three times more than earlier estimates. Twenty-eight people died, the head of the capital’s police commission, Degfie Bedi, said, raising the death count from 23. "The majority were beaten to death. Seven were killed by security forces," Bedi said late on Monday. Violence that raged from September 12 to 17 and included attacks on minorities in Ethiopia’s ethnic Oromo heartland outside Addis Ababa, was a blow to efforts by the new reformist prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, at reconciliation. The unrest escalated on the day of a rally marking the return to Ethiopia of leaders of the exiled Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which had waged a four-decade insurgency for self-determination for Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group. In the town of Burayu, north of the capital, residents said shops were looted and people attacked by Oromo youths who st...
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