Ethiopian parliament today approved a hate speech and disinformation prevention and suppression law.<\/p>\n

The law was approved with a majority vote, 23 against and 2 abstentions.<\/p>\n

The law is aimed at preventing individuals from engaging in speech that incites violence, promote hatred and discrimination against a person or a group.<\/p>\n

It is also aimed at promoting tolerance, civil discourse and dialogue, mutual respect and understanding and strengthening democratic governance.<\/p>\n

It is also intended to control and suppress the dissemination and proliferation of hate speech, disinformation and other related false and misleading information.<\/p>\n

The law prohibits disseminating hate speech by means of broadcasting, print or social media using text, image, audio or video.<\/p>\n

The parliament also approved the revised excise tax law with a majority vote, 4 against and 7 abstentions.<\/p>\n

The parliament approved the law after a revision was made on the initial draft bill.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, the excise tax levied on new vehicles with engines below 1,300cc is reduced to 5% from the initially proposed 30%.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the excise tax on 1-2 year old cars is reduced to 55% from 80%, 2-4 year old cars to 105% from 130%, 4-7 year old cars to 205% from 230% and above seven year to 405% from 430%.<\/p>\n

However, the excise tax on tobacco increased to 8 birr per pack from the initially proposed 5 birr.<\/p>\n

The excise taxes imposed on bottled water is reduced to 10% from the proposed 15%.<\/p>\n

The parliament scrapped the proposed 5% excise tax imposed on telecom services<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethiopian parliament today approved a hate speech and disinformation prevention and suppression law. The law was approved with a majority vote, 23 against and 2 abstentions. The law is aimed at preventing individuals from engaging in speech that incites violence, promote hatred and discrimination against a person or a group. It is also aimed at …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":15174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-embassy-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/law.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15175,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15172\/revisions\/15175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}