{"id":280579,"date":"2019-07-01T11:57:35","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T15:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/?guid=8edf58531dd4be162d3a9c663054b9a5"},"modified":"2026-10-05T11:34:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T15:34:16","slug":"abiy-ahmed-tells-parliament-the-amhara-killings-were-a-coup-attempt-and-warns-plotters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/280579","title":{"rendered":"Abiy Ahmed tells parliament the Amhara killings were a coup attempt and warns plotters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told lawmakers on Monday, 1 July 2019, that the 22 June attack in the Amhara region was an attempted coup, and he warned anyone planning to take power by force. \u201cIt was an act to steal power,\u201d he said, according to the Associated Press. \u201cThe government is now taking measures to protect the constitutional order and arrest those behind the crime. \u2026 Power in Ethiopia will only be by those elected. This should be underlined.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Prime
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa in early 2019 (Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Wikimedia Commons, public domain) [file photo]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On 22 June, attackers shot dead the Amhara regional president and two other officials in Bahir Dar. The same night in Addis Ababa, army chief of staff General Seare Mekonnen and a retired general who was his close friend were killed inside his residence by his bodyguard. The internet had been shut down across the country since the violence.<\/p>\n

Abiy Ahmed used strong language about the country\u2019s security. \u201cIf there\u2019s anyone who threatens Ethiopia\u2019s sovereignty, we will fight them with a Kalashnikov, not with a pen. Ethiopia\u2019s sovereignty is not up for discussion,\u201d he said. He told parliament that more than 1,200 people had been arrested over the previous year on terrorism-related charges and for inciting ethnic attacks, economic sabotage, illegal arms trading, illegal movement of money and human smuggling.<\/p>\n

The address was also the prime minister\u2019s annual report on his first year of reforms. According to New Business Ethiopia, he said more than 100,000 prisoners had been freed since the reforms began, about 45,000 of them under the amnesty law, and that 260 media outlets that had been blocked inside Ethiopia were now allowed to operate. He said the federal supreme court, the intelligence service, the federal police, the Information Network Security Agency and the national electoral board had been restructured, and that laws on charities, terrorism, trade, the media and weapons were being revised.<\/p>\n

He also reported that 799 people had been arrested over ethnic attacks and violence, 48 on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist group, and 34 of 35 suspects in economic crimes. On displacement, he said about 1.1 million people had been forced from their homes in the previous 15 months, bringing the total to 2.3 million, and that 2.1 million had since returned to their home areas, with another 130,000 expected to go back soon.<\/p>\n

Critics saw the arrests differently. Opposition groups accused the government of using the attack to detain opposition figures, mainly in the Amhara region. The government said it had arrested 225 people suspected of involvement in the violence. Journalist Eskinder Nega told the Associated Press that of the hundreds arrested, only five had been brought to court in Addis Ababa, all on terrorism charges, and he accused the ruling party of politicizing the anti-terrorism law.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong> Associated Press<\/a>, The Philadelphia Inquirer (AP)<\/a>, New Business Ethiopia<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethiopia\u2019s leader warns plotters following coup attempt  Washington PostEthiopia’s prime minister has issued a strong warning to anyone who would plot to topple his government, following a coup attempt in the country’s northwestern …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":837261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/abiy-ahmed-au-summit-2019.jpg?fit=1280%2C1026&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1aZt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280579"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837284,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280579\/revisions\/837284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}