The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) conducted a visit to detainees in the Awash Arba area in the Afar Region on Friday, September 1, the Commission said Saturday.

The EHRC’s visit to over 53 detainees, including notable figures like Christian Tadele, a member of the Ethiopian parliament, Kassa Teshager, an Addis Ababa City Council member, and Yohannes Buyalew, an Amhara Regional Councillor, who were detained by the police following state of emergency decrees in the Amhara region.

The visit made by a team of 5 commissioners, including Daniel Bekele, Chief Commissioner of the EHRC, to Awash Arba, which is also used as an army training facility, was part of an effort to monitor and verify the conditions of detention and ensure the protection of detainees’ rights.

Among the detainees were journalists and members of the opposition party.

The Federal Police justified transferring detainees to the facility far from their location of arrest due to overcrowding in the Federal Police Detention Center in Addis Ababa.

EHRC had spoken to detainees individually, assessed their situations, and contacted relevant security officials, it said. The detainees told EHRC that they were all members of the Amhara ethnic origin and followers of the Orthodox Church, raising potential concerns about discrimination or profiling based on ethnicity and religious affiliation.

The detainees informed EHRC that they experienced ethnic slurs, harassment, rude and abusive language before and during their transfer to Awash Arba, but there were no reports of beatings or physical violence after they were taken into federal police custody, EHRC said.

The police officials on their part asserted that the detainees’ treatment respected their human rights, including facilitating medical treatment and visits by their families.

Despite the assertions from the police officials, EHRC that the detainees expressed their grievances saying that their families did not know their whereabouts when they arrived at the detention center. The detainees described their detention facility as lacking basic amenities and experiencing extreme temperatures.