“The region has been without internet and without a telephone for almost two years, electricity has been cut so that people cannot charge their devices and record or take photographs,” said Laetitia Bader, director of Human Rights Watch in the Horn of Africa.
Ethnolinguistic Federalism
The Federal Republic of Ethiopia is a country with more than 85 ethnic groups and a religious majority of 67% Christians and 31% Muslims, whose political ideal was to create a coalition with the participation of all ethnic groups.
Between 1974 and 1991, in the midst of the Civil War, the country was dominated by the “Tigray” ethnic group, which only represented 7%, faced with the “Oromo” and the “Amhara”, two ethnic groups that add up to 60% of the population.
The attempt at democratization began in 1991 with the creation of the Prosperity Party (Oromo), which joined the Democratic Party (Amhara) and the People’s Movement (Tigray) to give birth, in 1995, to the Multiethnic Federalist Constitution, dividing the country into two autonomous administrations, Addis Ababa (the capital) and Dire Dawa, which include nine ethnolinguistic regional states.
Since then, the government has passed into the hands of the Oromo ethnic group, despite the fact that in June 2019, the Amhara security forces attempted a coup d’état, which resulted in the assassination of the chief of the Ethiopian Army General Staff, the president of the Amhara region and his senior adviser.
The fight in Tigray
After 27 years of combat, grudges are difficult to forget. Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed (Oromo), supported by weapons and technology from the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, has besieged the State of Tigray, north of the country, depriving it of food, medicine and electricity.
The Ethiopian army, the ethnic militias and the Eritrean troops collaborate in this blockade. The 76 years old President of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki does not look favorably on the Tigray ethnic group.
In the last two years, thousands of Tigrayans have been driven from their homes by ethnic Amhara militias as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Nobel Peace Prize 2019
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, only 47 years old, is one of the youngest leaders in Africa. In the first years of his government, he raised great hopes of transforming Ethiopia, freeing the media, initiating economic reforms and achieving peace with Eritrea, which led him to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
But in January 2022, the Norwegian Nobel Committee issued a warning to Abiy Ahmed, for his lack of responsibility in ending the conflict and for not contributing to peace.
Unseen war
At this time, the blockade has created a major humanitarian crisis, where at least ten million people of the Tigray ethnic group urgently need food and health aid, in a multi-ethnic conflict that can spread throughout North Africa and threatens to destabilize the region. .
In Ethiopia today there is a war that nobody cares about, despite the fact that it is a conflict that the United Nations has classified as a Crime Against Humanity.
