In late September 2018, Amnesty International publicly condemned waves of mass arrests in Ethiopia amid ethnic violence and security crackdowns—warning that arbitrary detention was undermining the year’s reform narrative.
BBC Francophone and rights monitors described large-scale roundups that recalled earlier states of emergency even as political prisoners from the prior era were being released. The contradiction—opening and repressing at once—became a defining feature of the period.
Kept as human-rights reference: mass arrest statistics, due process, and whether “law and order” campaigns again became a substitute for political settlement.
Sources: Amnesty International, BBC Afrique
