Ethiopia makes 11,000 state of emergency arrests: State TV

Authorities have arrested more than 11,000 people since Ethiopia declared a state of emergency in early October amid violent protests, state TV said on Saturday.

Ethiopia has been in political crisis for around a year with frequent outbreaks of violence as authorities have brutally cracked down on anti-government demonstrators.

“Some 11,607 individuals have so far been detained in six prisons, of which 347 are female, in connection with the state of emergency declared in the country,” State of Emergency Inquiry Board chairperson Taddesse Hordofa said in a statement broadcast by EBC.

This figure is a huge increase on the 2,500 arrests that Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn’s government had announced at the end of October.