Finding a Path to Peace in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region War has devastated Ethiopia’s northernmost region.

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International Crisis Group | Pending comprehensive national dialogue, Addis Ababa should ease Tigray’s immediate predicament, engaging elements of the authorities it unseated to govern the area and ensure that aid reaches the millions in need.

What’s new? After weeks of fighting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, federal troops removed the regional government and declared victory. Yet thousands have died, hundreds of thousands are at risk of starvation and the conflict continues. Addis Ababa has established an interim administration, but ousted Tigrayan politicians say they will fight back.

Why did it happen? Relations between Addis Ababa and Mekelle tanked after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018 and Tigray’s leaders lost federal power. Tensions spiked when Tigray defied central authority by holding regional elections in September, culminating when Tigrayan forces captured the national military command in the region, triggering federal intervention.

Why does it matter? The conflict has poisoned relations between Tigrayan and other Ethiopian elites and inflamed public opinion in Tigray against the federal authorities, who may well struggle to administer a restive region. If Addis Ababa’s energies are drained by enforcing its rule on Tigray, other Ethiopian ethno-nationalist forces may be emboldened.

What should be done? To get Tigray’s public on side, Ababa Ababa should ensure that Eritrean and Amhara regional forces that participated in the intervention withdraw. It also should urgently allow aid to reach all Tigrayans who need it. Ultimately, inclusive dialogue is needed to address federal-Tigray disagreements and wider disputes over regional autonomy. Read more

Ethiopia’s secret war in Tigray region: Ethnic killings, rapes, near-starvation reported

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Fox News | If the fighting doesn’t end soon, an American woman with family in the region said, “we’ll be left without families”

Many women have “conclusively and without a doubt” been raped in the Tigray region, home to Ethiopia’s secretive conflict – which may have left tens of thousands of civilians dead – the country’s minister for women said Thursday in a rare government admission of its fallout.

More than 100 women in the largely remote northern region have reported being raped amid the four-month-long conflict between Ethiopian forces and allied fighters – including Eritrean fighters whose presence is denied – and the fugitive former leaders of Tigray who long dominated Ethiopia’s government.

The rape allegations have come out despite women having few police or health facilities for reporting alleged crimes.

“Hence, there is a possibility that the actual number of cases might be higher and more widespread than the reported cases,” the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a report of the 108 alleged rapes over the last two months.

Both sides in the conflict that started in early November see the other as illegitimate after last year’s national elections were delayed because of the coronavirus and Tigray defiantly held its own.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed once said no civilian had been killed in the conflict, but more recently he admitted it has “caused much distress for me personally.”

Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, attempted to centralize power in the country in September and was reportedly furious over Tigray’s decision to hold its own election after the national elections were postponed.

Hailu Kebede, foreign affairs head for the Salsay Woyane Tigray opposition party, called the conflict the “least-documented” war, estimating along with two others, that more than 52,000 civilians have died over the last few months.

“The world will apologize to the people of Tigray, but it will be too late,” he told The Associated Press.

Journalists have been barred from the region where communications are patchy but accounts from survivors who have escaped paint an unthinkable picture of the atrocities occurring in the region.

Disturbing reports have included claims of people being forced to rape members of their own family under threat of violence and women forced to have sex with soldiers in exchange for basic necessities.

“Many, many severe cases of malnutrition” have been also reported in the region where the vast majority of its 6 million citizens remain unreachable, the Red Cross said Wednesday. The organization said thousands could starve to death.

A woman from Tigray studying in Europe said Ethiopian soldiers had recently come to her village with food but are withholding it from families suspected of having ties to Tigray fighters.

“If you don’t bring your father, your brothers, you don’t get the aid, you’ll starve,” the woman told the Associated Press after somehow speaking to her sister who lives in the Tigray.

She also learned that her uncle and two nephews were killed by Eritrean soldiers during a recent holiday gathering. A local advocacy association, relying on witnesses who have reached cities with phone service, has listed 59 victims overall.

“I’m so ashamed of my government,” the student, speaking on condition of anonymity for her family’s safety, cried. And since it’s nearly impossible to contact people in the region she said she worries if “somebody from my family dies, I will learn about it from Facebook.”

An American nurse who was visiting her family in the border town of Rama estimated looting Eritrean soldiers had left 1,000 dead.

She was able to fly out of the country and return to her home in Colorado.

If the fighting doesn’t end soon, she told the AP, “we’ll be left without families.”

When black lives don’t seem to matter

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The Spectator | A man is filmed dying under a policeman’s knee in Minneapolis. Riots break out, statues are toppled and the Western world erupts with civil unrest. More than 50,000 people are massacred, tortured and raped, leaving orphaned children to forage for food and find their drinking water in puddles. Some of it is caught on camera. Nobody turns a hair.

In this social media age, activists tend to focus with great intensity on a narrow, politically-approved range of issues. Israel-Palestine, food banks, structural racism, unconscious bias, trans rights. You know the list. But fewer people seem to care about people being killed, mutilated and starved in Ethiopia.

In case you missed it, months of brutal fighting in the northern region of Tigray has left tens of thousands dead and many more malnourished, with almost five million people cut off from aid supplies. In recent weeks, videos of brutal executions of civilians in rural communities have emerged. Due to a media blackout by the Ethiopian government, they cannot be verified and must be taken as such. But they do seem to match the facts.

Part of the problem is that NGOs and journalists are largely being barred from the area. There have been some eyewitnesses, however. Ato Abera Tola, the Ethiopian Red Cross president, who recently visited the squalid displacement camps in the northern town of Shire, warned that tens of thousands would perish from starvation within eight weeks. Women and children, he said, were ‘all emaciated…their skin is really on their bones’.

Those who made it to the camps were the lucky ones, he suggested. In rural areas, away from the camps, people are suffering unimaginably. ‘We have to get prepared for the worst, is what I’m saying,’ Abera said. Further east, in an act of ‘systematic aggression to health facilities’ in the regional capital of Mekele, hospitals have been looted, leaving them with no medicines or essential supplies. Basic vaccines have expired, and HIV drugs have run out.

‘I have never seen a place (like it) where a simple antibiotic is not present,’ Francesco Rocca, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said. ‘This is unacceptable. There is a high risk of an outbreak of cholera or other diseases.’

The catastrophe is rooted in Ethiopian political history. The richness of the country stems from its diversity of culture and civilisation (it is home to one of the world’s oldest forms of Christianity). The state is a federation of ten different ethnic and linguistic regions.

Prime minister Abiy Ahmed has tried to enforce a pan-Ethiopian, nationalist agenda, aiming to unify the ethnic factions under a single banner. This has butted against the pride of minorities. In September, under pressure of Covid, there was a disputed election in the fiercely independent Tigray region. Ahmed – who, ironically enough, won a Nobel Peace Prize two years ago – sent federal forces in, sparking conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Eritrean troops weighed in behind him.

‘The fighting made people want retribution for old grievances,’ Ahmed Soliman, an Africa expert at Chatham House, told me. ‘On the Eritrean border in particular, there has been conflict between communities on either side.’

As the unrest spread, local fighters saw themselves as battling to correct historic wrongs. There was looting in the towns. Numerous lives were lost to missiles, rockets and bombs from Chinese-made drones, and there were accounts of mass executions of civilians, some conducted with knives and machetes. After Rwanda, everyone vowed never again. How’s that going?

Where were the petitions? Where were the street protests? Where were the security council resolutions, the outrage, the international solidarity? The African Union sent three former presidents to Addis Ababa in an attempt at mediation. It flopped. The UN and EU struggled to get to grips with the crisis. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, made a half-hearted visit in January. The NGOs were in despair. But overall, the level of urgency does not seem commensurate to the horrors. And that is bound up with public opinion.

The hard fact is that the hellish suffering of millions of Ethiopians has failed to move Western hearts and minds. This may be depressing, but it is not entirely surprising. I remember, for instance, waiting grimly for news outside the morgue in Colombo while covering the horrific Easter bombings in Sri Lanka for the British press a couple of years ago. The question from editors wasn’t about the number of victims. The question was: ‘How many Brits?’.

Some argue that by covering stories the way it does, the media shapes its audience’s priorities, rather than the other way round. There may be some truth in this. More often, however, the reader is master and the hack must jump to his bell.

Human nature is not always a pretty thing. A wealth of psychological research has shown that people instinctively feel empathy and affection for those similar to themselves. That informs what they want to read and watch, which in turn drives the ugly side of our trade, pithily expressed by the late American foreign correspondent Edward Behr: ‘Anyone here been raped and speaks English?’

Making people care about a story is about making it relevant to them. And – as appalling as it is – one man who died at the hands of a cop in Minneapolis holds more emotional currency for many people than piles of corpses surrounded by unbearable tragedy on the other side of the world.

So much for the media. But what about the international community? Last year, the United Nations General Assembly condemned Israel 17 times. By comparison, it issued just six critical resolutions for the rest of the world combined, from China to North Korea to Yemen (not to mention Ethiopia).

Imagine the outrage if the 50,000 dead Ethiopians had actually been Palestinian, and the aggressors Israeli troops. It would never happen, of course. But the street protests, the petitions, the Security Council resolutions, the diplomatic pressure, the social media campaigns would speak for themselves (not to mention the synagogues attacked in France). And Tigray? Tumbleweed.

Human nature may have its ugly side. But I’m an optimist. It is within our gift to care. If man is part angel and part ape, I’m with Disraeli: we can strive to be on the side of the angels, especially when it comes to the desperate people of Tigray. What stands in the way, however, is the noisy, virtue-signalling obsession with things like Israel, or unconscious bias, or misgendering, or mixed-sex lavatories, all given rocket boosters by social media.

And you thought that black lives mattered.

Ethiopia: Concern grows over health of jailed political leaders

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Al Jazeera | Several Ethiopian opposition figures charged with ‘terrorism’ last year began a hunger strike in late January,

Concerns are growing about the health of several imprisoned Ethiopian opposition figures who launched a hunger strike some two weeks ago, with protests erupting in Oromia to demand the release of some of the region’s most prominent political leaders.

Senior Oromo Federal Congress (OFC) members Bekele Gerba and Jawar Mohammed are among some 20 people facing charges ranging from “terrorism” to illegal possession of firearms in connection with the unrest that followed the murder of a popular Oromo musician last year.

Bekele, Jawar and others began the food strike in late January in response to reports of arrests and mistreatment of supporters and family members who attend their courthouse hearings, according to their legal team.

“Four of them have already collapsed and have been taken to hospital,” Ibsa Gemeda, one of the defendants’ lawyers, told Al Jazeera. “The others are unable to have conversations or move around. Some of them have serious underlying health issues and we are worried that this could result in their deaths.”

Jawar himself has been extremely weakened by the strike he launched on January 27 and has since developed unspecified kidney problems, according to his lawyer.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) last week said it had visited the defendants and confirmed they were on hunger strike.

“Very close supervision is required to prevent any grave threat to their health and life,” Daniel Bekele, EHRC chief commissioner, said in a statement, adding that “reasonably justified demands of the prisoners must be addressed”.

A court hearing was cancelled last week due to the defendants being too weak to attend. It came as the youth took to the streets of several cities including Ambo and Dire Dawa to protest against the continued detention of the Oromo leaders, with a number of injuries and at least one death reported.

“We are asking for the releases of our political leaders,” Yeroon Tolassa, a student activist who attended last week’s protests, told Al Jazeera from Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. “Our political leaders and activists are jailed in the thousands.”

It was on the back of popular uprisings that first ignited among the ethnic Oromo, who constitute about a third of Ethiopia’s 112 million people, that Abiy Ahmed ascended to the Ethiopian premiership in April 2018. Promising to rid the state of its repressive nature, Abiy – Ethiopia’s first Oromo prime minister – ordered the release of thousands of political prisoners, promised free and fair elections and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his landmark restoration of ties with neighbouring Eritrea, with whom Ethiopia fought a bloody border war between 1998 and 2000.

But for many Oromos, the initial enthusiasm has all but dissipated. Abiy’s opponents accuse him of growing authoritarian tendencies, while rights groups have expressed serious concerns over the detention of dozens of opposition members and journalists and the shutdown of independent media outlets.

Jawar, a founder of the United States-based Oromia Media Network, was an ally of Abiy and played a key role in coordinating the protests that catapulted him to power, before becoming a public critic of his administration. He and the others on hunger strike are accused of inciting the wave of violence that followed the June 29, 2020 murder of beloved singer-songwriter Hachalu Hundessa and left hundreds dead.

In August, a month before charges were announced, Human Rights Watch said the detentions and investigations were marred “by serious due process violations” while several months and multiple court hearings later, prosecutors have yet to provide evidence linking the defendants to the alleged crimes.

“The charges against them are politically motivated,” said Ibsa. “The case is motivated by the government’s desire to remove Jawar and others from the political realm, and muzzle opposition in the Oromia state.”

Government officials have previously dismissed such claims, while authorities maintain the evidence will be presented in due time.

“Criminal charges won’t be issued without evidence proving involving in a crime,” Awel Sultan, communications head at the Ethiopian attorney general’s office, told Al Jazeera. “Prosecutors aren’t to speak of the evidence while the court entertains the case. When the court begins hearing witnesses, you’ll begin to understand the nature of the evidence implicating them.”

Highly anticipated general elections scheduled for last year have been postponed until June 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The OFC wields considerable influence across Oromia and was expected to provide Abiy’s governing Prosperity Party with its stiffest challenge at the polls.

Free elections were long portrayed as the end goal of a government that had promised structural changes that would widen the political space. After the uprisings of 2015-16 eventually led former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn to resign in February 2018, Abiy sealed the position on an interim basis, promising to oversee the transition to an all-encompassing democracy.

Three years later, there are fears the upcoming polls would mirror those of the past quarter-century, none of which was deemed free and fair by international standards. Over the course of last year, there have been reports of mass arrests of opposition party supporters, while parties have also been prohibited from holding rallies. In addition to key candidates being jailed, analysts say the fact that elections are not expected to be held in the war-hit Tigray region because of security fears, fuels legitimacy doubts.

“The systemic shuttering of the political opposition by arresting candidates, supporters and prohibiting rallies, shows us that the conditions for free and fair democratic elections have not been met,” Awol Allo, lecturer in law at Keele University in the United Kingdom, told Al Jazeera. “The ruling party knows that its ideology doesn’t appeal to the Oromo masses. The only way it could secure victory at the polls would be by eliminating any formidable opposition presence.”

The country’s National Electoral Board has acknowledged the issue of jailed politicians, but the board’s Chairwoman Birtukan Mideksa recently hinted that it would not be able to intervene on behalf of the jailed hunger strikers.

“We are aware that political candidates have been arrested. We’ve been able to succeed in convincing authorities to free some of them,” Birtukan said at a virtual Q&A session with social media users last week. “But we have mandate limitations. We cannot intervene on behalf of candidates accused of murder, inciting violence and whose cases are in the courts.”

With next court appearances scheduled for March 1, barring additional delays, the case has taken a toll on family members of the detainees, including Arfasse Gemeda, wife of Jawar and a human rights advocate.

“It’s been very difficult being physically far away,” she told Al Jazeera from the US, where she resides. “Especially during this hunger strike. As the days go on, I’m afraid of what I’m going to hear when I answer the phone or check Facebook. It’s a constant state of trauma,” she added.

“Although we are not physically in jail, our minds are.”

Ethiopia: Journalist attacked and threatened with death

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International Federation of Journalists | Ethiopian freelance journalist Lucy Kassa was attacked at her home in Addis Ababa on 8 February by three unidentified armed men in plain clothes who threatened to kill her for her reporting. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns the attack and demands the government take urgent steps to ensure her safety.

Lucy Kassa has worked for various international media including Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera and the Norwegian magazine «Bistandsaktuelt» for several years.

Since armed conflict broke out in the Tigray region in November between the Ethiopian government and the local authorities, Kassa has reported extensively on the human rights situation there.

On 8 February, 3 attackers in plain clothes entered Kassa’s home, beat her and threatened to kill her “for writing bad stories about Tigray”. Her computer and some photos were stolen by the attackers.

The attack ocurred at the time the journalist was working on a story for the Los Angeles Times about a woman who was gang-raped by Eritrean soldiers and other women being abducted in a rural village in Tigray. The story was published today.

Kassa claims she was attacked because of her reporting on the war in Tigray. “I was interrogated by the armed men on my relationship with the TPLF junta and I told them that I have nothing to do with the TPLF,” she told Bistandsaktuelt.

She has been criticised for being too critical of both the Abiy Government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger, said: “The attack on Lucy Kassa is a cowardly and deliberate attack on freedom of expression. The only intention of the attackers is to silence Lucy, so that she will not report on the horrendous atrocities that are being committed in Tigray by both government forces and the TPLF. Journalists must be allowed to do their jobs without any form of intimidation and harassment”.

The International Federation of Journalists urges the Abiy government to provide Lucy Kassa with all the safety measures she needs to carry out her duties as a journalist.

Ethiopia Confirms Rapes ‘Without a Doubt’ in Tigray Conflict – AP

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Associated Press | CARA ANNA | A senior Ethiopian official says rape has occurred “conclusively and without a doubt” in the country’s embattled Tigray region.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Rape has occurred “conclusively and without a doubt” in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region, the country’s minister for women said in a rare government acknowledgement of the toll on civilians during 100 day of fighting.

The minister, Filsan Abdullahi Ahmed, issued the statement late Thursday after a task force visited Tigray to investigate accounts of sexual assault in a region of some 6 million people that remains largely cut off from the world.

“We await the investigation of these horrible crimes,” the minister said, adding that a team from the attorney general’s office is processing the information. She did not say how many rape accounts the task force members collected or what parts of the Tigray region they visited.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to questions.

The minister’s statement came hours after the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission in a new report said 108 rapes had been reported to health facilities in the past two months in the Tigray capital, Mekele, and the communities of Adigrat, Wukro and Ayder.

“Local structures such as police and health facilities where victims of sexual violence would normally turn to report such crimes are no longer in place,” the report said. “Hence, there is a possibility that the actual number of cases might be higher and more widespread than the reported cases.”

Several witnesses have told The Associated Press about alleged rapes by Ethiopian soldiers or those from neighboring Eritrea, an enemy of the fugitive Tigray leaders and whose presence Ethiopia’s government denies.

Last month the United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict said “serious allegations of sexual violence” had emerged in Tigray, while women and girls face shortages of rape kits and HIV drugs amid restrictions on humanitarian access.

“There are also disturbing reports of individuals allegedly forced to rape members of their own family, under threats of imminent violence,” Pramila Patten said in the U.N. statement. “Some women have also reportedly been forced by military elements to have sex in exchange for basic commodities, while medical centers have indicated an increase in the demand for emergency contraception and testing for sexually transmitted infections.”

S&P joins Fitch in downgrade of Ethiopia on potential debt restructuring

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(Reuters) – S&P Global Ratings on Friday downgraded Ethiopia’s long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings to ‘B-’ from ‘B’ on potential debt restructuring, announcing the move days after Fitch Ratings downgraded the country.

“Exacerbated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ethiopia’s structurally weak external balance sheet has deteriorated further, in our view”, S&P Global Ratings said.

On Tuesday, Ethiopia’s sovereign dollar bonds dropped nearly 2 cents as Fitch chopped Ethiopia’s credit score by two notches after Addis Ababa signaled it could be the first with an international government bond to use a new G20 ‘Common Framework’ plan.

The scheme, which is open to over 70 of the world’s poorest countries, encourages their governments to defer or negotiate down their external debt as part of a wider debt relief program.

S&P said it estimated Ethiopia’s public debt repayment needs at about $5.5 billion over 2021-2024, including a $1 billion Eurobond due in 2024.

The ratings agency added that the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have slowed Ethiopia’s economic activity in the services and industry sectors, including retail trade, hospitality, transportation, and construction.

S&P described the Tigray conflict in November 2020 that followed increased tensions between the federal and local authorities as “the most significant (conflict) since Prime Minister Abby Ahmed took office in 2018.”

“Another outbreak of armed conflict could spur wider ethnic tensions, weakening Ethiopia’s political and institutional framework and threatening the government’s transformative reform agenda”, it added.

Read more

Fitch Downgrades Ethiopia To ‘CCC’ – Rating Action Commentary

The downgrade reflects the government’s announcement that it is looking to make use of the G20 “Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI)” (G20 CF), which although still an untested mechanism, explicitly raises the risk of a default event.

Ethiopia In Debt Restructuring, Downgrade After Printing Money, Despite Low Deficit

Ethiopia had been downgraded to ‘CCC’ from ‘B’ by Fitch Ratings after it applied for ‘Paris Club’ debt relief having printing money through central bank advances, despite relatively low government debt and a budget deficit of only 2.8 percent of gross domestic product.

Ethiopia Dollar Bonds Drop After Fitch Downgrade

Ethiopia’s sovereign dollar bonds dropped nearly 2 cents after Fitch downgraded the country to CCC, citing the government’s plan to make use of the new G20 common framework to overhaul its debt burden.

Exclusive: Ethiopia To Seek Debt Relief Under G20 Debt Framework – Ministry

Ethiopia plans to seek a restructuring of its sovereign debt under a new G20 common framework and is looking at all the available options, the country’s finance ministry told Reuters on Friday.

Ethiopia Debt Restructuring Plan Faces Hurdles Of Transparency

Ethiopia’s plan to seek debt restructuring under a G20 common framework agreed in November triggered a sell-off in African debt at the end of January on fears of a contagion effect.

All about debt (restructuring)

Ethiopian Journalist Attacked in Her Home, Questioned on Tigray Connections

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VOA | Freelance journalist Lucy Kassa was working on a story at her home in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Monday morning when she heard a knock at the door.

“I opened and there were three men. They knocked me down and they entered the home,” Lucy told VOA. “They didn’t introduce themselves, they didn’t show me any kind of I.D., they didn’t show me any kind of search warrant and they began to search my house.”

Dressed in civilian clothes and armed, the men started to question Lucy, asking if she had a connection with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the regional armed group accused of attacking the federal army in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

“At first I wasn’t sure what they were looking for in my house because they made a big mess,” she said. “They tried to interrogate me if I have some sort of relationship with the ‘TPLF junta.'”

The men didn’t say why they were questioning Lucy, but the journalist thinks it could be related to her recent coverage for international media.

The raid came the same week that she published a piece in the Los Angeles Times newspaper about violent gang rapes allegedly carried out by Eritrean soldiers in Tigray, the northernmost part of Ethiopia that has been the scene of fighting between troops and the TPLF since November.

Lucy says she thinks the article made her a target because she had been collecting evidence that appeared to show Eritrean forces were operating in Tigray.

“They were looking for evidence. I actually submitted the story on Saturday but I was looking for more evidence,” Lucy said. “And in the process, I managed to get pictures of Eritrean soldiers from my source.”

The pictures, she said, were taken in the outskirts of Adigirat and rural places. She had plans to go to those areas to follow up on allegations of human rights abuses and mass killings.

A spokesperson for Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said last month that the ministry was aware of reports that Eritreans had entered the country but did not confirm it. The spokesperson denied that Ethiopia had solicited any outside support.

Climate of fear

The men who raided Lucy’s home took her computer and the pictures, and have left her in fear. “I am traumatized. I am not sure if I am safe because these people might come again and threaten me again,” she said.

International organizations and media groups condemned the attack on Lucy, who also contributes to Al Jazeera and a news website Bistandsaktuelt, a Norwegian publication that focuses on countries receiving aid from Norway.

Gunnar Zachrisen, editor-in-chief of Bistandsaktuelt, said he has worked with Lucy closely and she was doing important work, reporting all sides of the dispute.

“She is a very hardworking, bright, young woman,” he told VOA. “She’s still only 29 years old, but definitely a big journalistic talent, not afraid of criticizing different stakeholders in her home country.”

The raid came alongside other cases of journalists being harassed over coverage of the conflict. Several have been arrested or harassed since November. Others were questioned for their reporting.

In January, Dawit Kebede Araya, a journalist affiliated with the regional outlet Tigray TV, was shot dead. Earlier that month, police had detained Dawit and questioned him about his coverage of the conflict. Media rights groups, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), have called on authorities to investigate the circumstances of his death.

Arnaud Froger, head of the Africa desk at media monitoring group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said the restrictions and intimidation have had a tremendous impact on the ability of journalists to cover the unrest.

“Journalists have been prevented first from accessing the region. The Tigray region has been mostly in total internet shutdown since it all began in November,” he told VOA. “No access to information, no possibility to communicate with your sources on the ground, and RSF has recorded at least seven arbitrary arrests of journalists.

“Some of them were taken behind bars, never officially charged without any access to their lawyer and family, and then released after a few days and sometimes a few weeks without really knowing why they were arrested in the first place,” Froger said. “And the pressure is rising now to a point that we can say may no longer be safe to be a journalist in Ethiopia.”

Ethiopia appears to be on a trajectory where intimidation and arrests of journalists is on the rise, Froger said. The country ranks 99 out of 180 countries, where 1 is the most free, according to RSF’s annual press freedom index.

When asked about Lucy’s case and other incidents involving the media, Fekadu Tsega, director at Ethiopia’ Office of the Attorney General, said he was unable to comment on specific cases. He told VOA in Amharic, “individuals can be questioned based on different issues” and added that being a journalist is not a protection “if a crime is committed.”

The Ethiopia State of Emergency Fact Check, a government initiative set up to counter what officials deem to be disinformation on the conflict, said that “all individuals need to be free from any form of harm” but that RSF was incorrect in describing Lucy as working for foreign outlets because she did not have the necessary press pass.

The statement was condemned as “disgraceful” by the press freedom organization CPJ. “Instead of identifying these attackers and holding them to account, authorities have instead sought to discredit Lucy Kassa by saying she’s not a legally registered journalist, exposing growing hostility to the [press],” CPJ said by social media.

For now, Lucy is in hiding while she recovers from the attack.

“They tried to relate my ethnicity with the pieces that I worked on,” said Lucy, who is Tigrayan. “They asked me if the reason that I am investigating the situation in Tigray is that I belong to the Tigrayan ethnicity and because I support the TPLF junta. I told them I am just a journalist, even if I am ethnic Tigrayan, I was just doing my job.”

She added that the climate for independent journalists in the country has taken a major step backward.

“There were hopes when Abiy Ahmed came to power, there were hopes that there would be freedom of expression,” Lucy said. “But then after years, the government was turning to become repressive. Now, it reached a point where it is even difficult to report.”

How to Stop Ethnic Nationalism From Tearing Ethiopia Apart

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Foreign Policy | The 1994 Ethiopian Constitution celebrated self-determination, but it laid the groundwork for today’s violence. Devolution could offer a way out.

On Nov. 28, 2020, Ethiopia’s military took control of Mekele, the capital of Tigray region, after a monthlong fight with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Before the conflict, the Tigray region under TPLF rule was edging toward de facto independence. After the TPLF lost its hegemonic position in Addis Ababa in 2015—where it had dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for decades—it relocated political and bureaucratic personnel to Mekele. When national elections were postponed due to COVID-19, the TPLF rejected the constitutionality of the decision and went ahead with its own regional election, which it won handily.

Then, it declared that it no longer recognized the federal government as legitimate, and it successfully thwarted the appointment of a new head to the Ethiopian army’s Northern Command, effectively apportioning to itself the most heavily armed section of the National Defense Force. This was followed by a coordinated, preemptive attack on the Ethiopian army’s Northern Command in the early hours of Nov. 4 that enabled the TPLF to take control of the army headquarters in Mekele and several other bases. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed quickly appeared on TV to launch a military operation to dislodge the TPLF from Tigray.

The conflict in Tigray is not merely a political squabble between the TPLF and Abiy’s Prosperity Party, but a struggle for sovereignty between the federal government and a regional state. This is also not the first time the federal government went to war to reclaim control of an intransigent regional state. In August 2018, the federal government undertook an armed operation to dislodge Abdi Mohamoud Omar (also known as Abdi Ilay), the then-president of the Somali regional state—leading to many deaths and the displacement of civilians, especially ethnic minorities.

Ethnic federalism has made Ethiopia a more fragmented, polarized, and conflict-plagued country.

Ethiopia’s constitution, which was ratified in 1994 under the auspices of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, which was dominated by the TPLF, is unique in endowing sovereignty upon the country’s nations and nationalities. Its position is also radical because it allows an unqualified right for self-determination, up to secession, to Ethiopia’s more than 80 ethnic groups. This has raised the stakes in federal-regional disagreements, and potentially increased the risk of conflict by allowing secession to be a bargaining chip in political disputes.

For its supporters, the ethnic-based federal system represents a triumph for the age-old quest of Ethiopia’s disenfranchised ethnic groups for autonomy and self-rule. The federal system is seen as the answer to the “question of nations and nationalities”—a school of political thought that critiqued and rejected sociopolitical domination by Ethiopia’s northern Christian elites, mainly ethnic Amharas and, to a lesser degree, Tigrayans. Ethnic federalism was intended to create a new dispensation that ensured that the political, cultural, and economic rights of all ethnic and religious groups are equally respected.

But the turmoil of the past few years has also exposed the limits of Ethiopia’s experimentation in ethnic federalism. Even its ardent supporters cannot conceivably deny that ethnic federalism has raised as many questions as it has answered, and that it has made Ethiopia a more fragmented, polarized, and conflict-plagued country.

The endorsement of the Marxist-Leninist notion of self-determination in Ethiopia’s constitution was all the more puzzling in light of historical developments at the time of its inception. In the early 1990s, just as Ethiopia’s constitution was being drafted, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia—two federations that had enshrined ethnic self-determination in their respective constitutions—were going through violent episodes of disintegration.

The TPLF and other architects of Ethiopia’s constitution could not have missed the ominous signs on open display; They most likely considered their own country’s eventual breakdown as an acceptable, perhaps even desirable, outcome. The bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia, which was attended by bitter interethnic wars, was also a red flag for what self-determination could entail in a multiethnic mosaic like Ethiopia. It was already clear from the 1984 national census that only 30 of Ethiopia’s 580 woredas (districts) at the time were actually monolingual ethnic islands.

In reality ethnic identities are fluid and overlaid, and ethnic territorial jurisdictions are often overlapping and contested.

The constitution’s endorsement of the right to self-determination is based on the contentious supposition that ethnic groups can be neatly subdivided into mutually exclusive categories, each with a claim to a distinct territorial homeland. In reality ethnic identities are fluid and overlaid, and ethnic territorial jurisdictions are often overlapping and contested.

Even in Tigray, the only regional state that nominally existed before the current constitution, regional boundaries were entirely redrawn upon the creation of new administrative units in 1994. Much of the current West Tigray and North West Tigray zones (Welkait, Humera, Tsegede, and Tselemte) and some parts of South Tigray (Raya Azebo) were apportioned from the former provinces of Gondar and Wollo, which were mainly inhabited by Amharas.

These territories, which roughly make up one-third of present-day Tigray, are vigorously contested by Amhara nationalists as their own—a dispute that contributed to the involvement of the region’s special forces in the recent war in Tigray. Had Tigray under the TPLF proceeded with secession, it would have only been a matter of time before it descended into an intractable border war with the rest of Ethiopia, just as Eritrea did after winning its own de facto independence in 1991, which was formalized through a referendum in 1993.

The 1998-2000 Eritrean-Ethiopian border war, which led to the death of more than 100,000 people from both sides, helped entrench the TPLF’s rule in Ethiopia, but it also severely weakened Eritrea, sowing the seeds of a deep-seated animosity between the TPLF and Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s authoritarian president. At the peak of the Tigray conflict in November 2020, the TPLF fired a series of rockets at the capital of Eritrea, accusing it of sending in its army to Tigray, an allegation that Eritrea denies but is supported by recent independent reports.

One of the most devastating effects of Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism is its utter failure to protect minorities. For instance, the 1994 constitution created a new region called Benishangul-Gumuz as one of Ethiopia’s nine (now 10) administrative regional states, as a homeland to the Benishangul and Gumuz ethnic groups. The region’s constitution affirms that the region “belongs” to five native ethnic groups: the Berta, Gumuz, Shinasha, Mao, and Komo. Other important minorities like Amharas, Oromos, and Agaws, who make up at least 40 percent of the region’s population, are treated as second-class citizens without a right to create their own (ethnic) parties for legitimate political representation.

The failure to safeguard minorities extends to all regional states, leaving minorities in a precarious situation where they live with a constant fear of eviction. A narrative of “natives” versus “outsiders” and a political discourse grounded in ethnic grievances inevitably feeds into cycles of violence. In times of political change and instability, such as the period since 2015, ethnic tensions have boiled over, making minorities victims of brutal killing, eviction, and displacement.

The number of these incidents is despairingly too great to count but includes recent episodes where Amharas were displaced by the thousands in Oromia, Oromos were displaced from Somali region, Tigrayans were violently evicted from Amhara region, as well as a perpetual violence in Benishangul-Gumuz region that has brought death and destruction to hundreds from all ethnic groups. These tragic events have not only traumatized millions but also frayed the tender threads of trust and social capital that have held communities together for centuries.

Moreover, in its fixation on ethnic autonomy, the current constitution has severely impaired, perhaps intentionally, the political power of urban centers—which are ethnic melting pots and thus do not fit the ideological straitjacket of ethnic purity. Since the constitution defines land as a property of ethnic groups, cities without a specific ethnic identity have been left without land, and hence without a right to statehood.

The capital, Addis Ababa—despite being the economic and political hub of the country with far greater population that four of the original nine regional states—is constituted as a federally administered enclave that, according to the constitution, is located “within the State of Oromia.” In a country where ethnic identity has become the most fundamental variable of political and economic organization, multiethnic urban centers like Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa are reduced to being staging grounds of political influence among competing ethnic parties rather than being able to administer themselves.

The experiment in ethnic federalism has led to the formation of powerful, militarized, ethnic regional states that harbor old grievances against one another, along with unresolved border disputes that could ignite conflicts at any time. Unless the power of these regional administrations is checked proactively, there is tangible risk that they could be drawn into devastating conflicts that will wreak havoc not only in Ethiopia, but also in neighboring countries, each of which shares at least one ethnic group with Ethiopia.

Boundary disputes between ethnic regions are hard to resolve, because almost all ethnic boundaries are artificial concoctions that lack historical precedents. Prior to the creation of these boundaries in 1994, Ethiopia’s many dozens of ethnic groups seldom had administrative boundaries entirely based on ethnic affiliation. Administrative boundaries were typically porous as people freely moved across geographies, especially in the lowlands, where people followed a mobile, nomadic lifestyle. None of the regional states of the federation existed in their current form and many, such as Amhara and Oromia regions, ever historically existed as separate, independent entities, within Ethiopia or outside. The top-down manufacturing of ethnic nations, complete with sovereign territorial boundaries, has begotten simmering border disputes that threaten to plunge the country into a civil war.

Even from the perspective of ethnic rights, the current system has not enabled the majority of the country’s ethnic groups to exercise the right to self-rule. An arbitrary nomenclature of ethnic classes has been used to allow certain ethnic groups to be organized as autonomous regional states, while denying the same right to other groups of similar population size.

The current system has not enabled the majority of the country’s ethnic groups to exercise the right to self-rule.

The constitution, for example, lumped together around 20 million people of no less than 50 ethnic groups within a region called Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNP), while allowing the creation of a Harari regional state in Harar City, with a population of less than 300,000. Hararis were accorded statehood despite making up only 9 percent of the population, purportedly in recognition of the unique historical and religious significance of the city of Harar, which is fully encircled by Oromia, a massive region with close to 40 million inhabitants. These size differences create asymmetric power relations among competing administrative polities and the associated political entities that administer them, leading to political, administrative, and economic imbalances.

A highly exclusionary ethnonationalism will create persistent risks of volatility and violence, which could undermine democracy by making authoritarian positions more palatable on the grounds of peace and security. It also creates the risk of major ethnic groups—the Amhara and the Oromo—forming alliances that co-opt smaller ethnic groups, leading to a political settlement that is neither inclusive nor progressive.

It is clear that Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism needs a major overhaul in order to sustain a peaceful electoral democracy. Without a reform, the system remains a risk to itself and the country, as ethnic rivalries could easily descend into cycles of violence that will endlessly repeat the traumatic experience of the past five years.

Fixing Ethiopia’s broken federal system will require a constitutional reform that establishes new checks and balances to mitigate the risk of ethnic politics exploding into downright violence. One potential approach would be a referendum on political devolution that elevates administrative zones to the level of administrative states, thus replacing regions. Zones, which are currently the second-tier administrative units after regions, are typically inhabited by a distinct majority ethnic group.

The elevation of zones to state-level members of the federation can ensure ethnic self-administration, which would be in keeping with the constitutional emphasis on autonomy and self-rule. At the same time, it would significantly reduce the likelihood of major military or political clashes between neighboring regions, and between regions and the federal government. It would also lead to zonal states that are relatively uniform in size, facilitating a more fair and equitable sharing of political and other forms of power across them.

More importantly, having zonal states as main administrative units would be a significant step toward ensuring self-rule among dozens of nations and nationalities. This solution would, for example, automatically resolve the contention in SNNP, where Wolayta Zone and 10 other ethnic zones are demanding the right to statehood. It will also put to rest many territorial disputes including the ones over Welkait, Humera, Tsegede, Tselemte, and Raya, in which the Amhara and Tigray regional states are pitted against each other.

Ethiopia has more than 60 zones, and having so many first-tier administrative units can introduce many administrative challenges. This, however, is a technicality that can be resolved through procedural mechanisms. Kenya, for example, has adopted 47 counties as its major administrative units after a constitutional change that was enacted following the 2007 post-election violence. The devolution of administrative power to county governments has improved governance quality and given more voice and power to citizens. A Council of Governors, comprising the administrative heads of the 47 counties, coordinates collective action over issues that cut across counties.

Political devolution does not have to lead to the dissolution of the current regional states.

This political devolution does not have to lead to the dissolution of the current regional states. The regions, which can be seen as collective associations of major ethnic groups, can be reformed to serve as traditional, cultural entities charged with cultural stewardship and the pursuit of interethnic harmony.

Many African nations have similar traditional structures parallel to formal political structures. For example, Nigeria and Ghana each have dozens of traditional chiefdoms and kingdoms that do not have official political power but wield considerable influence as stewards of traditional ethnic cultures. If supported by proper governance mechanisms, the presence of parallel administrative structures could enrich and promote cultural interaction, reducing the risk of interethnic political conflict. It can also help redefine the meaning of ethnic “territorial homeland” to its cultural rather than political connotation, reducing the risk of border friction between ethnic groups as well as the disenfranchisement of minorities.

The violent end of the TPLF-dominated era has demonstrated the perils of organizing political power along ethnic lines. The episode also presents an opportunity to rethink Ethiopia’s political system and remake it to accommodate competitive politics. Without reform, Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism holds the seeds of endless conflict that will undermine the country’s very existence.

Devolution of political power to zonal states could offer a path out of the current conundrum and reduce the risk of a catastrophic conflict among militarized ethnic regional states. If approved at the ballot box and executed effectively, such a change can help usher in a democratic system in which the rights of individuals and ethnicities are balanced. It could also lead to a more sober, secular, and constructive political discourse that focuses on building communities rather than tearing them apart.

In Sudan Border Town, Desperate Ethiopians Find ‘Second Mother Country’

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New York Times | Abdi Latif Dahir | Tens of thousands of Christian refugees, fleeing the violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, have been given a warm welcome by the residents of a sleepy Sudanese town: “We are brothers.”

HAMDAYET, Sudan — The refugees were hungry and exhausted, their shoes dusty and worn from trudging for four days through the bush and forest of northwestern Ethiopia, hiding from soldiers, as they escaped the conflict in the country’s Tigray region.

Finally, they made it safely to the small Sudanese border town of Hamdayet. But they had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. So they sat in a sandy alley close to the center of town, asking passers-by for food and water.

That’s where Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, who works in a local restaurant, found them. Read more