The 28 Ethiopian migrants of Christian faith murdered by the Islamic State (IS) on Apr. 19 in Libya had planned to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of work in Europe.

Commenting on the killings to Fana Broadcasting Corporation (FBC), Ethiopian government spokesperson Redwan Hussien urged potential migrants not to risk their lives by using dangerous exit routes.

Hussein’s call sparked anger among hundreds of Ethiopian youths and relatives of the deceased, who took to the streets in the capital Addis Ababa this week before the demonstration was disbanded by the police, local media reported.

Protestors cited the government’s lukewarm response to the massacre of Orthodox Christians for their outrage, the Addis Standard reported. Later in the week, during a public rally organised by the government in the capital, violence again broke out between security forces and protesters resulting in injuries and the detention of over a hundred protesters, local and international media reported.“Pervasive repression and denial of fundamental freedoms has led to frustration, alienation and disillusionment among most Ethiopian youth” – Yared Hailemariam, former senior researcher for the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (now Human Rights Council)

Almost two-thirds of Ethiopians are Christians, the majority of those Orthodox Copts – who say that they have been in the Horn of Africa nation since the first century AD — as well as large numbers of Protestants.

In the widely-reported incident in Libya, IS militants beheaded 16 Ethiopian migrants in one group on a beach and shot 12 in the head in another group in a desert area. Eyasu Yikunoamilak and Balcha Belete, residents of the impoverished Cherkos neighbourhood in Addis Ababa, were among the victims, it was learnt, along with three other victims from Cherkos.

Seyoum Yikunoamilak, elder brother of Eyasu Yikunoamilak, told FBC that Eyasu and Balcha left their country for Sudan two months ago en route to reach the United Kingdom for work to help themselves and their families, but this was not meant to be.

“I used to talk to them on phone while they were in the Sudan,” Seyoum said in grief. “But I never heard from them since they entered Libya one month ago.” Eyasu had previously been a migrant worker in Qatar and had covered his friend’s expenses with his savings to reach Europe, said Seyoum.

In defiance of the warning of the government spokesperson, Meshesa Mitiku, a long-time friend of Eyasu and Balcha living in Cherkos, told the Associated Press on Apr. 20: “I will try my luck too but not through Libya. Here there is no chance to improve yourself.” Meshesha’s intentions came even after learning about the fate of his friends.

Ethiopian lawmakers declared a three-day national mourning on Apr. 21. The government also expressed its readiness to repatriate all migrants in dangerous foreign countries, the Washington-based VOA Amharic radio reported.

The rally earlier in the week came one month before Ethiopia holds parliamentary elections, the first since the death of long-time leader Meles Zenawi, and current prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn is expected to face little if any opposition challenge.

“We will redouble efforts to fight terrorism,” foreign ministry spokesman Tewolde Mulugeta said in response to demands for action from protesters.

Ethiopia is trying to create jobs so that people do not feel the need to leave to find work, he added. “We’re trying to create opportunities here for our young people. We encourage them to exploit those opportunities at home.”

Nevertheless, disenchantment marked by asserted claims of repression, inequality and unemployment has spurred a series of protests against the regime over the last few years.

These and other issues have prompted the exodus of Ethiopian migrants to Europe, according to several observers. “The idea that the majority of Ethiopian migrants relocate due to economic reasons appears flawed,” contends Tom Rhodes, East Africa Representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists, in an email interview with IPS. Rhodes also maintained that the violation of fundamental freedoms is closely tied with poverty and economic inequality.

In an email interview with IPS, Yared Hailemariam, a former senior researcher for the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, agreed. “Pervasive repression and denial of fundamental freedoms has led to frustration, alienation and disillusionment among most Ethiopian youth.”

“Citizens have the right to peacefully protest,” said Felix Horne, East Africa researcher with Human Rights Watch. “It’s no surprise given the steps government takes to restrict peaceful protests that disenfranchised youth would use the rare opportunity of an officially sanctioned public demonstration to express their frustrations. That’s the inevitable outcome when there are no other means for them to express their opinions.”

The main opposition parties say that the government has failed to create job opportunities, making migration inevitable. The regime, they charge, favours members of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and creates economic inequality.

Recently dubbed an “African tiger”, Ethiopia is one of Africa’s most populous nations with 94 million people (Nigeria has 173.6 million). It has been celebrated for its modest economic growth over the last years. But the average unemployment rate (the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labour force) was stuck at 20.26 percent from 1999 to 2014.

“The regime allocates state resources and job opportunities to members of the ruling party who are organised in small-scale and micro enterprises,” noted Horne. The CPJ representative agreed. “Ethiopian government authorities tend to reward their political supporters and ethnic relations with lucrative political and business positions” at the expense of ingenuity in the business sector.

In its 2015 report, the World Bank shared this discouraging view. Some 37 million Ethiopians – one-third of the country’s population – are still “either poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty”, the World Bank said, adding that the “very poorest in Ethiopia have become even poorer” over the last decade or so.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has estimated that about 29 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line. This explains Ethiopia’s rank at 174 out of 187 countries on the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index.

The Oakland Institute, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation that spotlights land grabs, was recently denounced by Ethiopian officials for its latest report ‘We Say the Land is Not Yours’. According to the government, the institute used “unverified and unverifiable information”.

In a reply to the Ethiopian Embassy in the United Kingdom on Apr. 22, Oakland Institute challenged the government’s claim that ongoing development was improving life standards in the country.

The institute maintained that the government’s development endeavours are “destroying the lives, culture, traditions, and livelihoods” of many indigenous and pastoralist populations, further warning that the strategy was “unsustainable and creating a fertile breeding ground for conflict.”

More than half of Ethiopia’s farmers are cultivating plots so small as to barely provide sustenance. These one hectare or less plots are further affected by drought, an ineffective and inefficient agricultural marketing system and underdeveloped production technologies, says FAO. Several studies indicate that this phenomenon has induced massive rural-urban migration.

According to Yared Hailemariam, state ownership of land has contributed to poverty and inequality. “People don’t have full rights over their properties so that they lack the motivation to invest,” he stressed. The ruling regime insists that land will remain in the hands of the state, and selling and buying land is prohibited in Ethiopia.

Yared also pointed out that the ruling party owns several huge businesses which has created unfair competition in the economy. “The party’s huge conglomerates have weakened other public and private businesses” he told IPS. “Only the ruling party’s political elites and their business cronies are benefitting at the expense of the majority of the people.”

The tragic news of the massacre in Libya came amid news of xenophobic attacks against Ethiopian migrants in South Africa last week including looting and burning of properties. Unknown numbers of Ethiopian economic migrants are also trapped in the Yemeni conflict, according to state media.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

By David Kode
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 24 2015 (IPS)

Pierre Claver Mbonimpa is not permitted to get close to an airport, train station or port without authorisation from a judge.  He cannot travel outside of the capital of his native Burundi, Bujumbura. Whenever called upon, he must present himself before judicial authorities.

These are some of the onerous restrictions underlying the bail conditions of one of Burundi’s most prominent human rights activists since he was provisionally released on medical grounds in September last year, after spending more than four months in prison for his human rights work.

David Kode

Mbonimpa was arrested and detained on May 15, 2014, and charged with endangering state security and inciting public disobedience. The charges stemmed from views he expressed during an interview with an independent radio station, Radio Public Africaine, in which he stated that members of the Imbonerakure, the youth wing of the ruling CNDD-FDD party, were being armed and sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo for military training.

The arrest and detention of Pierre Claver is symptomatic of a pattern of repression and intimidation of human rights defenders, journalists, dissenters and members of the political opposition in Burundi as it heads towards its much anticipated elections in May and June 2015.

The forthcoming polls will be the third democratic elections organised since the end of the brutal civil war in 2005.  The antagonism of the CNDD-FDD government and its crackdown on civil society and members of opposition formations has increased, particularly as the incumbent, President Pierre Nkurunziza, silences critics and opponents in his bid to run for a third term even after the National Assembly rejected his proposals to extend his term in office.“The international community and Burundi’s donors cannot afford to stand by idly and witness a distortion of the decade-long relative peace that Burundi has enjoyed, which represents the most peaceful decade since independence from Belgium in 1962”

Tensions continue to mount ahead of the polls and even though the president has not publicly stated that he will contest the next elections, the actions of his government and the ruling party clearly suggest he will run for another term.  Members of his party argue that he has technically run the country for one term only as he was not “elected” by the people when he took to power in 2005.

Civil society organisations and religious leaders recently pointed out that Constitution and the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement – which brought an end to the civil war – clearly limit presidential terms to two years.

As the 2015 polls draw closer, state repression has increased, some political parties have been suspended and their members arrested and jailed. The Imbonerakure has embarked on campaigns to intimidate, physically assault and threaten members of the opposition with impunity. They have prevented some political gatherings from taking place under the pretext that they are guaranteeing security at the local level.

Civil society organisations and rival political movements have on several occasions been denied the right to hold public meetings and assemblies, while journalists and activists have been arrested and held under fictitious charges in an attempt to silence them and force them to resort to self-censorship.

Legislation has been used to stifle freedom of expression and restrict the activities of journalists and the independent media.  In June 2013, the government passed a new law which forces journalists to reveal their sources.

The law provides wide-ranging powers to the authorities and sets requirements for journalists to attain certain levels of education and professional expertise, limits issues journalists can cover and imposes fines on those who violate this law.  It prohibits the publication of news items on security issues, defence, public safety and the economy.

The law has been used to target media agencies and journalists, including prominent journalist Bob Rugurika, director of Radio Public Africaine.

The government does not see any major difference between opposition political parties and human rights activists and journalists and has often accused civil society and the media of being mouth pieces for the political opposition, describing them as “enemies of the state”.

In the lead-up to the last elections in 2010, most of the opposition parties decided to boycott the elections and the ruling party won almost unopposed. However, the post-elections period was characterised by political violence and conflict.

Ideally, the upcoming elections could present the perfect opportunity to “jump start” Burundi’s democracy.  For this to happen, the media and civil society need to operate without fear or intimidation from state and non-state actors.  On the contrary, state repression is bound to trigger a violent response from some of the opposition parties and ignite violence similar to that which happened in 2010.

The international community and Burundi’s donors cannot afford to stand by idly and witness a distortion of the decade-long relative peace that Burundi has enjoyed, which represents the most peaceful decade since independence from Belgium in 1962.

It is increasingly clear that the people of Burundi need the support of the international community at this critical juncture. The African Union (AU), with its public commitment to democracy and good governance, must act now by putting pressure on the government of Burundi to respect its democratic ideals to prevent more abuses and further restrictions on fundamental freedoms ahead of the elections.

The African Union should demand that the government stops extra-judicial killings and conducts independent investigations into members of the security forces and Imbonerakure who have committed human rights violations and hold them accountable.

Further, Burundi’s close development partners, particularly Belgium, France and the Netherlands, should condemn the attacks on civil liberties and urge the government to instil an enabling environment in which a free and fair political process can take place while journalists and civil society activists can perform their responsibilities without fear.  (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Some 15,000 people took part in the Marcha de la Gorra (March of Hats) on Nov. 20, 2013, in Córdoba, Argentina, protesting police discrimination against poor, dark- skinned young people. Credit: Courtesy of Colectivo de Jóvenes por Nuestros Derechos

By Fabiana Frayssinet
CÓRDOBA, Argentina, Mar 19 2014 (IPS)

Just being young, dark-skinned, poor, and wearing a hood or cap exposes you to arrest as a suspected offender in the Argentine province of Córdoba. Arbitrary police detentions are based on the misdemeanour of “loitering”, meant to prevent crime but in fact a violation of constitutional rights.

José María Luque, known as Bichi, has lost count of the number of times he has been detained by the police for these reasons in Córdoba, the capital of the province of the same name.

Luque is 28 years old and lives in a poor neighbourhood. He was first arrested when he was 13 and on his way home from school with a friend, dressed in school uniform. He was kept in custody for a week.

“They stopped us, asked for our documents and arrested us. Just like that. They made up a criminal charge against me: attempted robbery and possession of a firearm. They let me go when the charges were dismissed,” he told IPS.

Now Luque is a member of the Colectivo de Jóvenes por Nuestros Derechos (Young People’s Collective for Our Rights), which fights police abuse. He says he is lucky because his family paid for a lawyer, and he has no criminal record.

But that is not what happens to many young people arrested under Cordoba’s Código de Faltas (Code of Misdemeanours), which came into force in 1994 and was reformed in 2007.

A study conducted by the National University of Córdoba and the Spanish University of La Rioja found that 95 percent of people detained under the Code of Misdemeanours do not have access to a lawyer.

“If you have a misdemeanour on your police record, you cannot get a certificate of good conduct, which most companies require in order to hire an employee,” Luque said.

The code penalises behaviours that supposedly harm civil coexistence, such as disturbing the peace in a public place, not providing proof of identity, resistance to authority, drunkenness, begging or vagrancy.

The study indicates that nearly 70 percent of offenders are charged with “merodeo” (loitering), a controversial misdemeanour that allows police to pick up suspects who, in an Oxford Dictionary definition, “stand or wait around without apparent purpose” or “stand or wait around with the intention of committing an offence.”

Article 98 of the code establishes fines or up to five days imprisonment for those who hang around vehicles or urban or rural buildings “with a suspicious appearance or without a proper reason, causing disquiet among proprietors, residents, passersby or neighbours.”

“It’s a completely subjective and arbitrary rule. There is no explanation of what to do in order not to arouse suspicion and be arrested,” said Luque, who has worked since he was a teenager and is now a master pizza maker.

Bichi and other young people of similar social extraction tend to wear particular garments that identify them: coloured hats or caps, jogging pants and flashy trainers.

But the police interpret these cultural identifiers as a presumption of guilt.

“Many of those arrested wear hats. Hats are suspect,” said Luque, one of the organisers of La Marcha de la Gorra (March of Hats), which has taken place every November for the past seven years to demand the repeal of the Code of Misdemeanours. In 2013, 15,000 people took part.

“Whatever they say, the loitering rule is used so that the police can arrest darker-skinned people from the shanty towns who are wandering around wearing hats,” lawyer Claudio Orosz, the representative in Córdoba of the human rights organisation Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Centre for Legal and Social Studies), told IPS.

In Orosz’s view, the code is a reflection of a “conservative and timorous” society that has inherited the “repression and genocide” of the 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship.

This prosecution lawyer for crimes against humanity said that the culture is the reason why the poor are subjected to the “Kafkaesque labyrinth” of loitering rules.

According to the university study, people arrested for misdemeanours are mainly underprivileged young people aged 18 to 25. In 2011, 73,000 people were detained in the province, 43,000 of them in the city of Córdoba.

“It’s the usual thing: if you come from a poor area and you are poor, you dress in a certain way, you have certain features and a certain skin colour, then you are automatically considered a danger to society,” said Luque.

One of the most questionable aspects of the code is that powers that should be reserved for judges are handed over to police superintendents.

This is ironic because the Cordoban police “structure and support the major crime problems that cause most damage to society,” such as “human trafficking, drug trafficking, car theft and arms sales,” said Agustín Sposato, another member of the youth collective.

Aggravating circumstances, according to Orosz, are the unreliable systems for fingerprinting and carrying out police record searches in Cordoban police stations.

“Sometimes they take three days to find out if whether the detainee has a record and to release them, which is really illegitimate deprivation of freedom,” he said.

“It’s a system of social control, formalised by the police, that undermines the basic checks and balances of constitutional law,” he said.

In Orosz’s view, “the Code of Misdemeanours gives enormous power of selectivity and social control to the police, without the proper judicial control.”

Luque is well aware of the fact. “The times I was detained, I experienced that sense of illegitimate deprivation of freedom, of being kidnapped, of not knowing when I was going to get out, of not knowing how to let my loved ones know where I was. The impotence was very great, very dark, very ugly,” he said.

The governor of Córdoba, José Manuel De la Sota, on Feb.1 sent a bill to reform the Code of Misdemeanours to the provincial parliament, where it is being debated.

In the view of Sergio Busso, the leader of the parliamentary party for the ruling Unión Por Córdoba, the rule on loitering should be preserved because it is important in the fight against rising public insecurity in the province.

Busso told IPS that the code “is an instrument to regulate and punish illegal behaviours that harm the rights of individuals or of society as a whole, but that do not amount to crimes.”

But he admitted the code needs to be reformed, so that “arrests and fines may be applied only in special situations, and are replaced instead by alternative and secondary penalties, such as community service.”

He also said the enforcing authority should be changed. The new bill provides for specialist prosecutors or judges to decide misdemeanour cases, rather than police, “in order to separate those who judge from those who execute procedures,” and to ensure “an independent view.”

According to Orosz, this has already been tried, and it failed because the justice system collapsed under the avalanche of cases.

Busso said the reform bill requires loitering to be the subject of a complaint by an identified citizen. But Orosz said such a complainant would be “equally subjective.”

In Orosz’s view, the Code of Misdemeanours should be repealed and replaced by a code of coexistence establishing “the desired behaviours, and conflict resolution mechanisms that do not necessarily involve jail time,” like community mediation programmes.

Sposato, for his part, said the proposed reforms “are just window dressing, to ease the climate of social conflict” in the province.

“What is at stake is people’s lives, their rights, and the possibility of equality for all of us in the province,” he concluded.

A banner used by pro-Russian supporters during rallies in Simferopol in Crimea. It reads: ‘Crimea, Against Nazism’. Credit: Alexey Yakushechkin/IPS.

By Pavol Stracansky
KIEV, Mar 14 2014 (IPS)

Crimea is facing a violent wave of human rights abuses, activists warn, with kidnappings of journalists and rights campaigners, harassment of non-Russian minorities and reports of growing persecution of anyone thought to be sympathising with the pro-European Kiev government.

They say the autonomous region, now in de facto control of Russian troops, is spiralling into violence and repression ahead of a planned referendum on its future this Sunday.“Come Sunday the Russians will take control and its army will probably change the entire functioning of Crimea. We can only see more protests and more violence.” -- Marina Tsapok, spokeswoman for the Association of Monitors of Human Rights in Ukraine

Marina Tsapok, spokeswoman for the Association of Monitors of Human Rights in Ukraine, told IPS: “People have been kidnapped and are missing. The situation is getting worse, it is completely illegal and we are expecting even more violence, both before the referendum and after it.”

Human rights groups have feared a crackdown on potential opponents of Crimean secession ever since it was announced that the autonomous region would hold a referendum on its future.

The region’s authorities have made it clear they want Crimea to become part of Russia. Pro-Russian support among the local population – 60 percent of which is ethnic Russian – is strong.

Russian propaganda against the new Ukrainian government – which it has painted as an illegally-formed body led by fascists and neo-Nazis bent on destroying the country – has helped foment not just pro-independence sentiment, but also driven mounting antipathy towards supporters of a unified Ukraine in Crimea.

At rallies last weekend, pro-Ukrainian supporters were savagely beaten and whipped by pro-Russian militiamen. In one incident more than 100 men aggressively forced a group of women to end their peaceful protest against Russian military intervention in front of the Ukrainian Naval headquarters in Crimea’s capital, Simferopol. Many such incidents have gone unnoticed or unpunished by police, fuelling fears that pro-Russian groups are now able to violate human rights with impunity.

There have also been reports in the media of Ukrainians in Crimea afraid to leave their homes for fear they will be attacked by pro-Russian groups.

Pro-Ukrainian locals are not the only ones facing harassment though. Activists and journalists attempting to monitor the situation are being targeted.

The Euromaidan information service, which is chronicling and reporting on alleged rights abuses, says there have been a growing number of kidnaps in recent days. The name Euromaidan derives from pro-EU protests in central Kiev over the last several months.

Tsapok also told IPS that on Wednesday this week five people had been reported missing, believed kidnapped. Four were rights activists and another was a former military officer. This came just hours after five people, including journalists and activists, were found alive following abductions.

Others say they have faced death threats for trying to take photos of troops and masked gunmen outside military and civilian buildings.

Meanwhile, the region’s largest ethnic minority – the Tatars – are also under threat.

The Tatars, Turkic Muslims who lived in the region for centuries, were forcibly repatriated from Crimea in 1944. More than 200,000 were sent to labour camps in central Asia when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin accused them of collaborating with the Nazis. Almost 40,000 of them died during the journeys.

Russians were moved in in their place and Tatars only began returning to the region as the Soviet Union began to disintegrate.

They now account for roughly 14 percent of the Crimean population and, because of their history, many remain distrustful of Russia.

Since the Russian occupation, many say their communities have grown fearful of attacks by armed pro-Russian self-defence groups which they say roam the streets at night. They say that they have woken up to find white crosses daubed on their front doors.

Out of fear of attack they have set up their own self-defence squads controlling areas with Tatar populations while others guard mosques.

Heather McGill, a researcher for Amnesty International, told IPS: “These reports of the markings on the doors of Tatar people, of people’s passports being rounded up and taken away for use in the referendum, as well as the kidnappings and other human rights abuses that we are seeing show how bad things are. And, from what we can see, they are only getting worse.”

With the referendum widely expected to back Crimea joining Russia, the Kremlin will be in firm control of the peninsula. This raises questions over whether the new Crimean authorities will adopt Moscow’s current approach to human rights which has been widely condemned by the international community.

McGill told IPS: “It is very hard to see how things will be [concerning human rights] in Crimea if the vote comes out in support of joining Russia. But I would wager it will be worse than things are currently.”

Meanwhile, in Kiev, where the new Ukrainian government continues to work with Western leaders to find a solution to the Crimea crisis, rights activists fear the worse for their partner groups in Crimea as well as the future prospects for civil liberties and basic rights on the peninsula.

Tsapok told IPS: “Come Sunday the Russians will take control and its army will probably change the entire functioning of Crimea. We can only see more protests and more violence.”

But she also appealed for human rights activists and independent media everywhere to ensure that rights violations in Crimea continue to be reported and monitored.

Last week, international rights monitors were stopped from entering Crimea at gunpoint. A team from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe was turned back by members of local “self-defence” units controlling roads into the region.

Tsapok said: “Crimea today affects everyone. Today’s front line is between legality and lawlessness, between news and propaganda, between civilisation and medieval savagery.

“I say to all friends, please spread information about the situation in the Crimea, about beatings of journalists, kidnapping of civil society activists, the ‘referendum’ at gunpoint. People should not remain indifferent – or tomorrow all these bad things could happen to someone else.”

The police battling protesters in Kiev. Concerns continue about unrest even if the violence dies down. Credit: Natalia Kravchuk/IPS.

By Pavol Stracansky
KIEV, Feb 21 2014 (IPS)

As Ukraine’s capital experiences the worst violence in its post-Soviet history, some protestors are warning that the festering discontent with the regime which led to the current crisis is unlikely to disappear overnight even if a solution to the current impasse is found.

When the anti-government protests began in November they were ostensibly a mass reaction to the decision by President Viktor Yanukovych to turn his back on the first stage of EU accession.“People having had enough of Yanukovych, the corruption and the economic situation have all aroused the anger that has brought people onto the streets." -- Masha Kostishyn, an unemployed economist

But they soon became as much an expression of distaste and frustration with the ruling regime as any single political decision.

“This all started with the abrupt decision not to sign the agreement with the EU, but there was more to it than that. Everyone was completely fed up with Yanukovych’s regime,” Valerii Drotenko, a 45-year-old protestor told IPS.

Since coming to power in 2010, civil liberties have been eroded, political opponents have faced severe repression, and the independence and integrity of law enforcement agencies has all but disappeared, local and international rights groups say.

At the same time the perception of massive corruption, cronyism and nepotism within the regime has grown among the general population. Critics have pointed to Yanukovych concentrating political power in his own office and at the same time building his own family into a wealthy and socially dominant force.

On top of all this, Ukraine’s economy has struggled desperately since the financial crisis in 2008. Its currency is close to collapse, trade and budget deficits have ballooned and the country has been stuck in a recession for the last 18 months.

Masha Kostishyn, 34, an unemployed economist who lives in Kiev, told IPS: “People having had enough of Yanukovych, the corruption and the economic situation have all aroused the anger that has brought people onto the streets. But this would all be more civilised if the economic situation was better. As it is, at the moment it only helps to create chaos and anger.”

Ukraine’s dire economic situation and an accompanying inability to attract foreign investment has pushed it to be more and more reliant on trade with Russia, especially in the east of the country where much of Ukraine’s heavy industry is concentrated.

Already culturally close – one-sixth of the Ukrainian population is ethnic Russian – this has given the Kremlin an extra lever to strengthen its political influence on Kiev.

But, experts say, this has only pushed more of the population away from the government, especially in Western Ukraine which has traditionally been seen as more pro-European.

The sudden U-turn in late November when Yanukovych backed out of the deal and appeared to pledge the country’s future direction to its Eastern neighbour was the breaking point for many who feared Ukraine would become little more than a Kremlin puppet state embracing Russia’s model of state capitalism, and political and social repression.

Violence and killings over the past month, particularly the horrendous bloodshed of the past few days, has only deepened the general resentment towards the regime.

But while the opposition sticks to its calls for Yanukovych to go, even if they succeed in their demands eventually, many protestors say they hold little faith in the potential replacements.

The main opposition party, The Fatherland, is viewed by some as little more than another corrupt part of the political establishment.

Drotenko told IPS: “The authorities are criminal by their nature [but the] opposition is just another side of the same coin.

“They were pretty comfortable in their role as a ‘puppet’ or ‘decorative’ opposition, being paid by the same oligarchs as the ruling party and ignoring the voices of the people in the same way as Yanukovych has.”

He added: “Most of the people out protesting in Kiev are far from zealous backers of the opposition.”

Others have pointed to the radical far-right politics of the Svoboda party which is one of the major opposition movements involved in the protests.

Some protestors have blamed a lack of cohesion and inaction among opposition leaders in the past months for not bringing a swift end to the crisis in the early weeks of the protests.

“Yanukovych is certainly stupid and is to blame because of his criminal actions, but the opposition is also culpable for its not taking action quickly and decisively in the weeks after the protests began,” said Drotenko.

The horrific violence of the last few days has prompted a flurry of diplomatic action from the EU, the U.S. and Russia and early Friday a deal was agreed between the opposition, Yanukovych’s administration and Russian and EU diplomats to bring an end to the crisis. A key element of that deal is an early election.

But there is disappointment among some in Kiev that diplomatic efforts have come only now, and there is continuing unease over the underlying tensions.

Olga Kovalchuk, 37, a teacher in Kiev, told IPS: “Perhaps while this was a purely political conflict, before it escalated into violence, some form of action from the EU or Russia might have worked, but not any more. They missed their chance.”