The United States has called on the Ethiopian government to release a high-profile female prisoner and to stop its crackdown on peaceful opposition.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the US ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Samantha Power<\/a> called for the release of Blen Mesfin, a female member of the opposition Blue Party, who was arrested last year.<\/p>\n Power also noted that attempts to stifle opposition voices would backfire on the Ethiopian government.<\/p>\n The Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency<\/a> on October 8 in response to months of widespread anti-government protests. More than 1,000 people<\/a> have been incarcerated in Ethiopia since the state of emergency came into effect, BBC reports.<\/p>\n Blen Mesfin<\/a> is reportedly one of Ethiopia’s most high-profile female political prisoners. She was arrested in April 2015 with two other opposition members at a demonstration against the Islamic State in Libya (ISIL). Mesfin was charged with inciting violence during the protests against the terror group, Human Rights Watch reported.<\/p>\n The call for Mesfin’s release comes as several international organizations including the UN and the Europe Union (EU) have called on Ethiopian authorities to exercise restraint in dealing with protesters.<\/p>\n The protest, which began last year in the Oromia region over a government expansion plan, has since spread to other parts of the country. The demonstrations have turned violent with clashes between protesters and security forces.<\/p>\n Ethiopian authorities say the protest has been high jacked by opposition groups working with foreign governments seeking to destabilize the country.<\/p>\n [Photo by IREX<\/a>\/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The United States has called on the Ethiopian government to release a high-profile female prisoner and to stop its crackdown on peaceful opposition. On Monday, the US ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Samantha Power called for the release of…<\/span> Read more ›<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":10860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[44,2860,1],"tags":[4893,4967,4946,4945,4564],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/US-Demands-the-Release-of-Ethiopian-High-Profile-Female-Prisoner-Blen-Mesfin.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10857"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10861,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10857\/revisions\/10861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}