The Washington Post published on 24 December 2016 an article titled "A State of Emergency Has Brought Calm to Ethiopia. But Don't Be Fooled" by Paul Schemm.
The article suggests that Ethiopia's current calm imposed by the state of emergency may be misleading. The U.S. State Department's Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, Tom Malinowski, commented following a visit to Ethiopia in mid-December that while the Ethiopian government is suggesting reforms, little has materialized so far. Following Malinowski's visit, the government did release 9,800 of the nearly 25,000 people detained during the state of emergency.