ICC Note

The trial of the four teenage girls, three of them minors,  has taken a turn for the worst with a one month prison sentence. Their situation is worsened by the current political situation in Ethiopia.  A State of Emergency was declared  in October after a series of  protests against the  government by youths in Amhara and Oromia regions occurred. The state of emergency allows the government to suspend constitutional rights and detain and question hundreds of young people in the name of national security.  Local Muslim officials are able to take advantage of the current political tension and overall suspicion of young persons to imprison these girls  eventhough they have done no wrong and were  exercising  their constitutional religious rights.

11/16/2016 Ethiopia (World Watch Monitor) – Three teenage Christian girls yesterday (15 Nov.) appeared in court in Babile, some 550km east of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, charged with inciting religious violence.

The girls, whose names were given as Eden, 15, Gifti, 14, and Mihiret, 14 – together with an older girl, named Deborah – were arrested in the mainly Muslim region, following the distribution of a Christian book apparently seeking to counter widely-circulated polemics by a well-known Islamic critic.

In a brief hearing, the judge sentenced all four to one month in prison after asking the prosecutor to present evidence.