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Ethiopia’s unprecedented nationwide Oromo protests: who, what, why?
Posted on August 6, 2016 by Awol Allo
There are reports of dozens of deaths and thousands of arrests as
protesters took to the streets today in unprecedented numbers and with
unprecedented demands.
Large numbers gather in Holota as part of the Oromo protests. Credit:
abenezer_a.
Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, have staged nationwide
rallies today to protest their continued marginalisation and
persecution by the government. These are a culmination of ongoing
protests by the Oromo people since November 2015 and mark by far the
most significant political development in the country since the death
of the country’s long-time authoritarian leader, Meles Zenawi, in
2012.
At least hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets in
more than 200 towns and cities across Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest
regional state, to demonstrate against widespread and systematic
persecution. According to local media reports, over 50 individuals
have been killed and thousands arrested as police and security forces
opened fire on peaceful protestors, though these details are likely to
change as more information comes in.
What are now widely referred to as the #Oromoprotests began in
November 2015 when the government introduced the Addis Ababa City
Integrated Master Plan, effectively expanding the territorial limits
of capital Addis Ababa into neighboring Oromo towns and villages.
Oromo political leaders and activists argued that the plan, as
designed, would displace millions of Oromo farmers from their
ancestral lands and would threaten to eventually cleanse Oromo culture
and identity from the area.
The protests were triggered by the announcement of the Master Plan and
menacing land-grab policies that have already displaced more than 150,
000 Oromo farmers from the area, but they were also manifestations of
a much deeper crisis of massive ethnic-based inequalities and
discontentment that have been boiling underground, waiting to erupt.
Since the protests have begun, the government has arrested and jailed
many of its vital and outspoken activists and organisers. A recent
report by the Human Rights Watch puts the death toll from the first
seven months of the protest at over 400 while the figure tallied by
activists is significantly higher.
Historic grievances
The Oromo are the largest ethnic group both in Ethiopia and East
Africa, consisting of more than a third of Ethiopia’s 100 million
people. However, the group has been marginalised and discriminated
against by subsequent Ethiopian governments. Oromo culture and
identity have been stigmatised and pushed into the periphery of
country’s national life, while Oromo history has been filtered out of
public memory.
Since assuming state power in 1991, the Tigray Peoples Liberation
Front (TPLF) has sought to exploit historic disagreements between the
Oromos and Amharas, the second largest ethnic group, to sustain the
hegemony of ethnic Tigrayan elites. The TPLF framed longstanding Oromo
demands for equality and justice as the greatest threat to Ethiopia’s
unity and regional stability, and it used historic antagonisms between
Oromo and Amhara as a political instrument to legitimise, justify, and
consolidate its political and economic hegemony. The “Oromo question”
became the quintessential Ethiopian problem.
Within this frame, Oromos are presented as narrow-minded, extremist,
and exclusionary, while the Amharas are presented as chauvinist and
violent. By producing crisis between the two groups, the current
TPLF-led system presented itself both locally and internationally as
the only moderate centrist force that can secure Ethiopia’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity from the secessionist threat of
the Oromos and the perceived far-right extremism of the Amharas.
The Oromo question and the War on Terror
In the decade since 9/11, Ethiopia refashioned itself as an anchor of
stability in an increasingly restless region and began to build a
reputation as a regional policing and intelligence powerhouse. As part
of this West-facing strategy, it announced its 2006 invasion of
Somalia as a war against terrorism, conning the US into sponsoring its
proxy war with Eritrea. As the crisis in Somalia deepened, Ethiopia
cemented its reputation further, emerging as America’s most reliable
partner in the Horn of Africa.
This is not a partnership based on shared values of freedom, liberty,
and commitment to democracy, but one based purely on security
considerations. Ethiopia served as America’s local ally, and America,
in turn, provided enormous financial, technical and diplomatic
support. This brought in much-needed resources for the government to
build the political and security infrastructure that has as its main
aim the policing, control, and surveillance of internal dissent and
opposition.
As the US began to define its foreign and human rights policy through
the lens of fighting terror − entering a period of post-truth and
post-moral politics in which sacrificing people in distant places in
return for security became fair game − this emerged as the
paradigmatic threat upon which the West’s fears and anxieties were
projected. This made its ally Ethiopia completely impervious to
criticism, even as the government used its grotesque anti-terrorism
law to crush dissent, decimate the opposition, muzzle the media, and
shrink civic space to extinction – all the while holding periodic
elections.
Just as terrorism in the West is entangled with religion, terrorism in
Ethiopia is entangled with ethnicity. And Oromos have been the primary
victims of Ethiopia’s cynical appropriation of the cultural referents
and resonances of the War on Terror.
Ethnic domination forms the hidden underside of the terrorism-politics
nexus in the country. And its anti-terrorism law has provided the
government with the most powerful political device to criminalise,
police, and prosecute independent expressions and articulations of the
Oromo question. Through the magic of this law, even the most basic of
demands for human rights or expressions of opposition to government
policy can be twisted into an existential threat.
Ethiopia’s persistent turn to its anti-terrorism law to purge critical
opposition, activists, journalists, and community leaders is an
unqualified disgrace to Ethiopia and its partners on the Global War on
Terror.
The #Oromoprotests are a clear response to these and other forms of
historic discrimination, and today’s nationwide protests mark a clear
break from previous forms of protests in terms of its coordination and
mobilisation. In a letter addressed to the government, protestors
expressed their rejection of “the regime” and specifically asked the
government to stop the violence against the Oromo, to free Oromo and
other political prisoners, and to end military rule in Oromia and
allow genuine self-rule, among others.
The government’s violent response to peaceful demands has led
protestors to demand more radical and systemic change. The
#Oromoprotests are no longer a single-issue movement. This is
unchartered territory for the country and how the government reacts
could go a long way to determining its fate. But today’s protest makes
it clear that there can be no more business as usual for Ethiopia’s
ruling elites.
Awol Allo is a Fellow in Human Rights at the Centre for the Study of
Human Rights, London School of Economics.
Received on Sun Aug 07 2016 - 14:41:22 EDT