At least five people were shot dead and more than 28 were wounded on Tuesday when Ethiopian police fired on and beat crowds in the capital amid new tensions over disputed May elections.
Doctors at four Addis Ababa hospitals said five people had been killed by gunfire and another 28 were being treated for bullet wounds along with an unknown number of others who appeared to have been assaulted by the police.
The clashes erupted on the second day of planned opposition-led protests against the May 15 polls in the downtown Mercato area, the centre of deadly election-related violence in June, when at least 37 people were killed.
The government and main opposition party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, blamed each other for the latest unrest, and a CUD laywer said five senior CUD officials had been detained by security forces.
CUD chairperson Hailu Shawel and vice-chairman Berhanu Nega and three others were taken into custody following the clashes, the lawyer told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.
“No reason was given, but the arrests may be connected to the riots that happened today with the police,” he said.
Police were not immediately available to comment, but authorities accuse the CUD of plotting to overthrow the government through its protests, and Information Minister Berhan Hailu accused the group of instigating Tuesday’s violence.
“The CUD has called for these demonstrations,” he said.
“It is not a hidden agenda. It is part of a plan to disrupt the peace and stability of this country. The incident today is a continuation of previous disruptions.”
But CUD spokesperson Geschew Shiferaw claimed the party was not interested in violence or promoting unrest and accused the police of overreacting.
“The measures that police took this morning in the Mercato were excessive. Things were quiet,” he said.
“The street action was totally created by the government. The CUD has only called for peaceful and legal measures, so to blame us for this violence is madness.”
Witnesses said heavily armed riot police had moved against rock-throwing rioters in the Mercato, following the arrest of about 30 taxi drivers who had heeded an oppposition call to honk their horns to protest alleged vote fraud.
However, as was the case with the June violence, some of the injured claimed to have been simply innocent bystanders caught up in the melee.
Hunagnaw Tefery, a 25-year-old tailor who was being treated at Saint Paulos Hospital, said a police officer had broken his right arm with a fierce blow from the butt of a gun as he was heading home from work.
“People were running everywhere, policemen were shooting and hitting us with sticks and the butts of guns,” he said. “I tried to run, but I was hit on the arm by a policeman.”
Police remained in force in the aftermath of the clashes, and broken glass from shattered store windows littered roads around the Mercato, Addis Ababa’s main market, witnesses said.
The violence came after the CUD called at the weekend for a series of protests against the elections, culminating in a five-day general strike to begin later this month.
It urged Ethiopians to boycott the products of government-owned industries, shun state-run media, refuse all contact with security officials starting Monday and for motorists to honk their horns in protest from Tuesday to Thursday.
The government had said the new protest measures are unlawful and vowed to take all steps necessary to preserve the peace.
Official results of the May elections gave the CUD 109 of the 547 seats in Parliament, but the party maintains it won an outright majority and has accused the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) of rigging the polls.
CUD elected lawmakers are boycotting the legislature and last month were stripped of their parliamentary immunity amid EPRDF allegations that CUD leaders were prepaing for the violent overthrow of the government.
Nearly 100 opposition members have been arrested on weapons charges since September, according to official figures, and on Friday the CUD claimed about 20 of its members, including elected lawmakers, had been beaten up by police outside its headquarters here. – AFP