Yordanos Bezabih, an Ethiopian women’s rights activist, faced online threats for years, but in 2025 the abuse escalated dramatically. An anonymous Telegram group with 6,000 subscribers tracked her location, shared deepfakes, and filmed her in the streets. After her laptop was stolen and her Telegram account hacked, private photos and messages circulated online. Perpetrators later published her address, calling for her to be found and ‘executed’. In August, she left Ethiopia on a fellowship for human rights defenders and has not returned.
Bezabih is among a small but growing number of feminists who have fled Ethiopia in the past two years as online violence becomes pervasive and uncontrolled. Maya Misikir, sister of activist Lella Misikir who also left the country, said feminism is associated with ‘anti-Ethiopian values’. An anonymous activist explained that women who speak out about gender-based violence are considered ‘against Ethiopian identity, and hence they must be exterminated’.
The war in Tigray, where mass rape and sexual torture were weaponised, has normalised calls for killing feminists. The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) reported in 2024 that technology-facilitated gender-based violence is ‘normalised to the point of invisibility’ and a daily occurrence with severe offline effects, including psychological harm and physical assault.
CIR interviews with 14 Ethiopian women in public roles found they felt silenced and forced to withdraw from social media, with no platform feeling safe. Another CIR study analysed gendered hate speech in Amharic, Afaan Oromo, Tigrinya and English to raise awareness within government institutions.
Activists say the government is failing to protect women or hold perpetrators accountable. Befekadu Hailu, a civil society leader, said online harassment is ‘barely a government agenda’.
