Tensions between Oromia residents and the federal government are not new to Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country. But this outbreak of violence is particularly bad. Demonstrations have erupted in cities and small towns across the region, and security agents stand accused of responding with reckless, often fatal violence.

It all started here in Ginchi last November, when, citizens say, the government sought to clear space for foreign investors by cutting down trees in a nearby forest and taking over a patch of land that children used to play soccer.

When local high school students protested in the streets, L.B. and his classmates said, police officers responded quickly with gunshots, tear gas and arrests. Demonstrations spread quickly to the nearby city of Ambo, and then across the region. They continued in Ginchi, too, where students gathered in December to march in the streets once again.

That time, the young men said, security agents shot indiscriminately into the crowd, hitting three men. One got a bullet to the hip, they said. Another was wounded in the arm. And their classmate Aschalew Warku, 20, was shot in the head.

In the Human Rights Watch report, Mr. Aschalew is No. 75 on a list of 314 fatalities across the region over the last seven months. Dozens of unnamed others have died in the unrest as well, the report estimates.

The government spokesman, Mr. Getachew, countered with numbers from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, which reported this month that 173 people had died during the Oromia protests and concluded that the police had responded proportionally.

Felix Horne, the researcher who wrote the Human Rights Watch report, voiced “serious concerns” about the commission’s impartiality.