Six months after authorities in Ethiopia’s northern region of Amhara told the Ethiopian Fellowship of Evangelical Students it could no longer operate in the town of Debark and ordered them to move 80 km southwest, the police arrested students and a church leader there in early November.
Police pressured students in the group to sign an agreement never to gather in Debark, then released them. Seven church leaders were detained for three days, then released after they had signed a similar agreement.
Debark, a town with a population estimated at about 25,000, is religiously contested territory. The dominant Ethiopian Orthodox Church considers the region to be holy, and pressure on Protestant Christians in the area has been growing for years. Arsonists destroyed a church in 2008, and most Protestants have moved to Gonder, a much larger city of more than 150,000 people.
