David Anderson – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Anderson on 2015-12-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will instruct HM Ambassador to Ethiopia to investigate allegations that paramilitary and security forces have killed more than 60 people in the Oromia region of that country following protests about enforced evictions of indigenous people; and if he will make a statement.

James Duddridge

The UK Government takes these allegations extremely seriously. We have raised concerns with the Ethiopian government about the use of force and urged the authorities to exercise restraint. The Department for International Development Parliamentary Under Secretary of State raised this issue with the Ethiopian Deputy Prime minister on 11 December, as did our Chargé d’Affaires with the State Minister for Foreign Affairs on 15 December. Our Embassy in Ethiopia is monitoring closely the situation. We will continue to raise our concerns with the Government of Ethiopia, including on the use of force.