Abiy Ahmed presented the Ethiopian New Year prisoner release as a National Dialogue win built on love, forgiveness, and peace. More than 600 federal detainees walked out around 10 September 2026 after what the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission described as months of shuttle talks with the government. Christian Tadelle and Chane Kebede were among the names that filled holiday coverage. The palace story asked readers to treat open cell doors as proof that the Ethiopian government was translating dialogue into practice.
About thirty Amhara politicians, academics, journalists, and rights advocates did not walk out. Martin Plaut published their case on 19 September, drawing on reporting by Mintesinot Melaku that sets out why the holdouts refused what they call a Document of Guilty Plea. They say the price of exit was a written admission of guilt, an apology, and political concessions that criminalize Amhara political demands and soft-pedal what is still happening in the region. Their collective line was blunt. They will not sign that they are criminals, and they will not trade identity for a cell door.
The holdout list reported in that coverage includes politicians such as Yohannes Buayalew, Dr. Wondwossen Assefa, Dr. Sisay Awgichew, and Dr. Tewodros Hailemariam, along with journalists and human rights workers including Michael Melake, Allelenge Mihrtetu, Meskerem Abera, Genet Asmamaw, Gobeze Sisay, Dawit Begashaw, and Abay Zewdu. Borkena and Addis Morning put the wider refusal group at about thirty after exploratory talks tied to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. Those names matter because they turn an abstract “remaining cases” line into people who have spent years moving between courtrooms and maximum-security detention while Abiy Ahmed’s regime sells reconciliation abroad.
That fight is not new. In August, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported the same shape of offer to five journalists held since 2023 on terrorism charges tied to Amhara reporting: Gobeze Sisay, Meskerem Abera, Genet Asmamaw, Dawit Begashaw, and Abay Zewdu. According to their lawyer, Solomon Gezahagn, prison officials pressed them to write apology letters that take responsibility for the crisis, call the struggle extremist, and promise to quit journalism. They refused. CPJ called the tactic blackmail after years of delayed trials, and it named the same legal problem the wider holdout group keeps raising. A pardon under Ethiopian law comes after a conviction and a final sentence. These people are still defendants. If the Ethiopian federal government wants them free before trial ends, it withdraws the charges or grants an amnesty. Collecting a confession in maximum security is not the same thing.
The purported conditions described by the remaining detainees go further than a quiet plea deal. According to the account carried by Martin Plaut, the document reportedly asked them to accept moral and legal responsibility for deaths and property destruction since the Amhara conflict intensified in March 2023, to apologize in writing, to renounce demands about ancestral lands, and to deny ongoing human rights crises in the region, including mass displacement and institutional violence. Supporters of the detainees say those clauses ask people to sign away politics and identity in exchange for release. The Ministry of Justice, in the same reporting, is described as holding the line that people who refuse will stay in custody while their cases continue. That is the fork Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party government keeps offering: kneel on paper, or stay locked up while the National Dialogue is celebrated as finished business.
Legal practitioners quoted in the Plaut write-up draw a brighter line than palace messaging allows. Ermias Tilahun points to Article 229 of the Criminal Code and argues that a pardon needs a defined sentence, which these defendants do not have. Solomon Gezahegn cites prosecutorial authority to withdraw charges in the public interest and says the law does not require ongoing defendants to confess, apologize, or accept political preconditions in order for charges to be dropped. The detainees also allege a double standard, pointing to earlier cases from other regions where collective charges were dropped unconditionally. Whether every comparison holds, the core claim is simple. Selective release that depends on political submission is not the same as equal treatment under the law.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission sits in the middle of this dispute in a way that damages its claimed independence. Chief Commissioner Berhanu Adelo described shuttle negotiation between the government and detainees. The remaining Amhara prisoners accuse him of acting as an executive agent for the ruling party rather than as a rights body. That accusation will keep hanging over every future “facilitated” release unless the commission explains, in public, which conditions it carried and which it refused to carry. Families of the holdouts argue that National Dialogue participants asked for political prisoners to come home, not for forced confessions that were never on the dialogue agenda. When Abiy Ahmed calls the mass release a milestone, the unanswered question is whose release counts as the milestone: the people who signed, or the ones still sitting because they would not.
Readers should keep two ledgers open at once. One ledger is the hundreds who went home around Enkutatash, including figures whose release was widely welcomed. The other is the Amhara journalists and politicians who remain in custody after rejecting a confession-for-freedom trade, while fighting across Amhara zones continues and English-language coverage still underweights the war. Zegabi and the Amhara Association of America have spent recent weeks documenting multi-zone fighting, civilian harm, and drone strikes that do not match a holiday speech about restored peace. A New Year clemency story that ignores the holdouts and ignores the war map asks the public to celebrate incomplete work. Unconditional release, or lawful withdrawal of charges without political scripts, is the test Abiy Ahmed’s regime has not yet passed for the people who refused to kneel.
Sources:
Martin Plaut Committee to Protect Journalists Borkena Zegabi @zegabimedia on X