Ethiopia Interahamwe killings
“Liberation from dictatorships ultimately depends on the people’s ability to liberate themselves”, Gene Sharp
By Getahun Assefa
X- @GetahunAssefa17
Capricious and incompetent leaders (the likes of Abiy Ahmed Ali, henceforth Abiy) are the reasons behind failed states. Such states are characterized by dysfunctional institutions and are known to fuel social exclusion, marginalization, interethnic rivalry, and protracted conflicts. Further features of failed states include their voracious appetite for draconian laws, breaking social contracts, and thriving on ethnic entrepreneurship. Beyond entraining terminal chaos, failed states perpetuate primitive political leadership, institute obsolete regulatory regimes, and propagate divide and conquer. Their actions or inactions facilitate the spread of fear, hopelessness, and abomination in societies.
Abiy pushed Ethiopia off the cliff by orchestrating interethnic conflicts and intentionally bombing citizens. The country is new in the African continent that entered “failed states’ nomenclature” in recent years. Ethiopia, an ancient kingdom and the cradle of mankind is recently known for its malfunctioning institutions built on an anocracy, leadership inadequacy, and ethnic dictatorship. There is incontrovertible evidence, substantiating Ethiopia’s entry into the failed states category. This combined with dictatorship, ethnic apartheid system, and autocratic polity has caused socioeconomic havoc in the country. Currently, homes, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, and farmlands have become killing fields of innocent civilians. Amhara children, youth, women, and the elderly are being indiscriminately killed by the regime’s forces every day in broad daylight. The objective is to permanently subjugate and ethnically cleanse Amharas through the combination of brute force and deliberate incitation of interethnic conflicts by Abiy’s regime. There is a recognition now that the Ethiopian people have seen more than their share of misery, calamities, and catastrophes which are largely manmade under Abiy’s regime.
What is more disconcerting is the inability of Abiy to understand how fast his regime is crumbling like a house of cartons and how deeply Ethiopia is falling behind other nations. At the most recent political gathering, Abiy boasts that the Amhara Resistance Army (Fano) and other rebels fighting his regime will not win in 1000 years. Conversely, he was telling the Ethiopian people that he has the capacity and capability to fight as long as it takes. However, with Interahamwe-style killings of innocent civilians, barbarism, and the policy of ethnic apartheid, Abiy’s regime can’t even last 1000 hours (41 weeks) let alone 1000 years. History shows us that no dictator has ever survived for long by indiscriminately killing, subjugating, starving, and displacing citizens. Neither has any regime ever lasted for more than a few years by committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in the 21st century.
As recently as last week, the most respected international media (Al-Jazira, BBC, New York Times, Reuters, etc) and several rights defenders carried disturbing stories of human rights violations, mass killings, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed against the Amharas and Tigrayan population in Ethiopia. There are unsettling reports by widely respected international media outlets on gruesome killings of the civilian population by heavy artillery, drones, and bomber jets of the regime’s army. The reports also uncover thousands of children, underaged girls, and women gang-raped by the army, many being intentionally infected with HIV/AIDS. Such heartbreaking reports are exposing the usual deafening silences and habitual lukewarm responses of the international community to the untold sufferings of the Amhara people in Ethiopia. It is with such dismal records that Abiy is poised to fight back a popular uprising against his regime.
After the 2022 most devastating war in the Tigray region, Abiy’s regime launched another destructive war in the Amhara region about a year ago. It seems that wars and conflicts are the regime’s political survival strategies and the mainstay of exploitation, rampant corruption, and ethnic entrepreneurship. These are depressingly familial trends of dictatorships, combined with ignorance, incompetence, and ineptitude. However, such ugly and worrisome trends are completely ignored or intentionally sidelined by the international community. Donors that are directly sponsoring dictatorship and megalomaniac elites in Africa have utterly failed to promote the rule of law, protection of human rights and foster democracy. Regional and international organizations as well as multilateral and regional financial institutions are equally responsible for the suffering of innocent civilians in Ethiopia. Will they listen to international media outlets that are currently reporting atrocities, war crimes, and crimes against humanity of Abiy’s regime?
Dysfunctional institutions and crime syndicates
In addition to operational dysfunction, the typology of institutions and regulations that arch-dictators create also defines their characteristics. In Abiy’s regime, loyal family members occupy key government functions. Mr. Gedion Timotheos who had been the mastermind behind draconian laws of the regime, has become minister of foreign affairs. He has no credentials in diplomacy and international inter-state relations. His wife, Ms Hanna Arayaselassie, replaced her husband as the regime’s new minister of justice. The worst feature of Abiy’s ethno-apartheid system is its excessive reliance on blood and family ties for legal cover and protection against atrocious crimes committed by the forces of the regime against the Amhara people.
Besides the ethnocratic familial executive branch, Abiy’s regime has also created a “yes parliament” and ethnic-based militia, security, and armed forces. The objective is to legitimize wars and subjugation while continuing to commit untold atrocities, primarily, against the Amhara civilians. In addition to such overt dysfunctional and warmongering institutions, Abiy has also established an underground (covert) hit squad known as Koree Nageegnya, an Oromo equivalent of the “Secret Security Committee” (for details on this underground hit squad, please read Reuters’ investigative report available at: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ethiopia-violence-committee/).
Koree Nageegnya, which is composed of high-ranking government, security, and army officials- is an institutionalized crime syndicate inciting interethnic conflicts and waging genocide against Amhara civilians. The crime syndicate is the perfect replica of the Hutu ethnic army (Interahamwe) which was the prime culprit of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. The secretive hit squad has been carrying out frequent cross-ethnic killings of civilians in Oromia and Amhara regions. The intention is to foist animosity and ignite interethnic conflicts between the two largest ethnic groups, accounting for more than 75% of Ethiopia’s population. A month ago, two children in the Amhara region were abducted, sexually abused, brutalized, and killed by the regime’s security agents. These gruesome killings which the regime blamed on the Oromo militia, ignited massive popular anger in the Amhara region. Last week, the same forces associated with Koree Nageegnya brutally slaughtered an adolescent, blaming the killing on the Amhara Resistance Movement (Fano). This, too, has mobilized Oromos, including university students, against Amharas.
During the week of 24 November 2024, scores of Amharas were rounded up in the night and massacred on a river- bank in the district of Shirka in Arsi (Oromia region). There was no statement about the killings by the government’s mouthpiece- the Ministry of Information and Communication. Nor was there any news on state-owned media outlets. However, thanks to social media and rights-based institutions, the killings were widely reported. The revelation of the persistent and gruesome killings of innocent Amharas by the regime’s underground security agents was disturbing and shocking. The sense of loss and deprivation is heartbreaking and palpable, to say the least. Such malicious, venomous, and devilish acts are designed, planned, financed, and executed by a megalomaniac leader and his regime. The primary aim of cross-ethnic killings is to pitch the Oromo ethnic group against Amharas for the regime’s political survival, power-mongering, and blindly point-scoring. Sadly, such massive killings and incitation by the regime fell on deaf ears and blind eyes of the international community, including embassies and diplomatic representations based in Addis Ababa. At least such state-sponsored killings of innocent civilians should have been unequivocally condemned and independently investigated. How can Abiy stay in power with such dismal records of atrocities and crimes against humanity in the 21st century?
The Ormo militia and Oromo-led army as well as the police and security forces remain the backbone of the ongoing war of genocide against the Amharas. The ethnocratic regime of Abiy, instead of tackling socio-economic and political barriers among the main ethnic groups of the country, has been busy erecting more barriers and widening inequalities through discriminatory and exclusionary policies. Instead of working hard to avert ethnic cleansing and genocide, the regime has been intentionally fomenting, inciting, and expanding devastating wars along ethnic boundaries. Ego, hate mongering, and excessive love for political power- characteristic features of a megalomaniac-accurately define Abiy’s persona. Ethnic profiling and stratification have become the norms rather than exceptions in the country. Interethnic wars are viewed by the regime as responses to the country’s poverty, unemployment, hunger, and malnutrition and for its completely shuttered legitimacy and political credibility. Such phenomena and behaviors also led to public queries, concerns, and ambivalence about the mental state of Abiy.
Historical parallels between Tutsis and Amharas
As with the 1994 Rwanda genocide against Tutsis, interethnic incitation and mass killings of Amharas were carefully planned, financed, and consciously executed by the forces loyal to Abiy and his regime. These are carried out with close collaboration and coordination between the federal and regional state institutions including the army, ethnic militia, and overt and covert security entities. The main culprits in the Amhara genocide include the Prime Minister, the Chief of the Army, the president of the Oromia state, other ethnocratic political elites, a regime-backed Oromo Media Network (OMN), other state-owned media outlets, and Oromo activists. Ethiopia’s ethnic-based activists and media outlets owned by ethnic entrepreneurs have been playing the exact role of Radio Télévision Libre de Mille Collines (RTLM) of Rwanda before and during the 1994 Rwanda genocide against Tutsis.
As if humanity is condemned to and incapable of learning from recent history, what we have been seeing in Ethiopia is no less than the atrocities witnessed in Rwanda. All the preconditions that prevailed in Rwanda before the genocide are fully met in Ethiopia. As with the pre-1994 Rwanda, the current political elites of Ethiopia and their hate-mongering narratives targeting ethnic Amharas have continued unabated. Government-sponsored Oromo Media Network (OMN) has been airing non-stop diatribes against Amharas, exceeding that of Radio Télévision Libre de Mille Collines (RTLM) in Rwanda. An Oromo ethnic militia in the shape and mindset of Rwanda’s Interahamwe has been orchestrating interethnic conflicts targeting Amharas. As in Rwanda before and during the genocide and ahead of the killings, Amharas were evicted from their ancestral lands and put in concentration camps. Their livestock, grains, and properties were confiscated or burnt to the ground by the ethnic militia and the army. The Oromo ethnic militia with the full backing and protection of the army is then followed by killings. The Oromia regional state and the Amhara lands themselves have become killing fields for Amharas. Oromo mobs including armed forces isolate, intimidate, and seek ransom from Amharas for the alleged “exploitation of their ancestral lands for centuries”. These all are cover ups and tactics to justify mass killings of innocent Amhara civilians including children, youth, women, and the elderly.
Besides targeted killings, Amharas are systematically purged by Abiy’s regime from public services. Their private properties are confiscated, and Amhara entrepreneurs are denied access to capital, land, and business opportunities. Amhara traders and businessmen are obliged to pay exorbitant taxes and huge financial contributions to the war efforts of the government while hugely subsidizing the party apparatus. In Oromia and other ethnically divided states, Amhara ethnic groups are excommunicated and deliberately made to live in constant fear, trepidation, isolation, and permanent grief. Amharas are subjected to gross human rights violations, inhuman treatment, and exploitation, predominantly by state institutions such as the army, ethnic militia, and security services.
Physical infrastructure including education and health facilities have been deliberately destroyed in the Amhara region. A few months ago, the country’s Ministry of Education reported that 70-80 % of the 50,000 schools nationwide are either substandard or dysfunctional. 3,500 schools in the Amhara region alone are partially damaged or destroyed by the ongoing war. Likewise, 11 million school-age children are out of school in Ethiopia today, of which nearly 4 million are in the Amhara Regional state. These devastating acts of the regime are corroborated by the recent UNICEF and UNESCO reports. An estimated 30 million Amharas are asphyxiated and denied access to health facilities, medicine, safe drinking water, or food. The objectives of the regime of Abiy Ahmed Ali are to materially deprive Amharas to make them voiceless, insignificant, powerless, and dependent. Sadly, all these shocking, degrading statements and crimes against humanity are rampantly executed by the regime under the naked eyes of the international community. Particularly, donor countries and aid agencies that are behind financing despotic regimes in Africa turn blind eyes to such degrading treatments of Amharas. In short, all crimes against humanity are rampantly executed by the Ethiopian ethnocratic regime. It becomes apparent that the international community has completely ignored or forgotten lessons from the tragedies of the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Violence against underaged girls and women
All evidence, including by the United Nations and human rights-affiliated international organizations shows that women, young girls, and children are gang-raped before being killed. Women who survived extermination sustained lifetime psychological scars, physical and mental sickness, as well as sterility inflicted upon them by their rapers who inserted objects into their organs and wombs. Many of those who were raped were also found intentionally infected with HIV/AIDS virus. Pregnant women had their wombs slashed with knives to take out and kill infants. Innocent children, unborn babies, women, and the elderly who were killed by a mob of Oromo youth and armed ethnic militia were buried in mass graves with excavators. According to the recent accounts of the United Nations, 70% of the crimes against Amharas (which are crimes against humanity), are committed by government forces. All these crimes perpetrated against Amharas in Ethiopia are perfectly identical to those well-documented in the 1994 Rwanda genocide including written accounts and testimonials of survivors of the genocide and in the reports of the Rwanda National Unity and Reconciliation Commission.
Moreover, as was the case in the apartheid era in South Africa, Amhara movements within and outside of Ethiopia are severely curtailed by the regime. Thousands of Amharas are rounded up in darkness and broad daylight. They are languishing in known and unknown prison cells without charges. Amharas are denied forming their civic associations, political organizations, and even gathering for social functions without the watchful eyes of the government and ethnic agents. Amharas are denied formal education, transportation, and safe drinking water while the sick, pregnant women, and the elderly are left without health posts, health professionals, and medical facilities nearby. Amhara farmers in the region are deprived of not only land but also farm inputs such as fertilizers, and high-yield variety seeds simply because they are Amharas. The objectives of the ethno-apartheid regime of Ethiopia are to materially deprived Amharas to make them voiceless, insignificant, powerless, and dependent. As Abiy’s regime spends billions of dollars (including aid resources) on defense, the army, and financing interethnic wars, the country’s socio economic infrastructure has delipidated to the point of complete collapse. Amaharas are direct victims of genocide, isolation, marginalization, and ethnic apartheid in their own country.
The burden on the consciousness of the international community
Amharas- the largest population linguistically and the second largest demographically- have been silenced nationally and internationally. Their calls for justice, freedom, and protection have been largely ignored and unheeded. The entire population was taken hostage by the political machination of Abiy’s regime, suffocated, and made voiceless. The international community, particularly the United Nations, other international organizations, and regional entities such as the Organization of African Union (now AU) and the European Union are equally responsible. They ignored the plights of Amhara civilians being massacred every day in broad daylight by Abiy Ahmed Ali’s regime. They also forgot how their miserable failures to stop the Rwanda genocide prolonged the suffering and extermination of ordinary citizens in 1994. This left permanent bloodstains in the minds and consciousness of national, regional, and global policymakers and institutions.
The international community knows well that Amharas are robbed of their fundamental human right to live or exist as human beings. The community of nations and international organizations are fully aware that Amharas are subjected to life in permanent isolation, intimidation, harassment, constant fear, trepidation, and endless grief. They know that these phenomena have been further intensified and exacerbated by deliberate policies of the ethno-apartheid and fascist system emerging in Ethiopia. However, they seem to have been enjoying trade-offs between political correctness and the protection of human rights. It is like attempting (in futility) to wake up someone who had intentionally fallen asleep. To make things worse, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) are directly or indirectly financing ethnic cleansing and the Amhara genocide in Ethiopia. Will they heed the calls of the international media outlets and human rights defenders to hold Abiy and his regime accountable and responsible for the crimes against humanity in Ethiopia? Will the usual double standards prevail as was the case in the past, particularly in Africa?
By the sheer force of campaigns, appeals, and constant pleas, internationally recognized independent institutions finally released well-documented reports confirming ethnic cleansing and genocide in Ethiopia. These reports are corroborated by a series of investigative reports from internationally famed news outlets. The reports underlined that in all massacres, the government forces are the predominant perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The scale and magnitude of atrocities and collective punishments endured by innocent Amharas, Tigrayans, and the Afar people are beyond comprehension. Similar trends are emerging in the Oromia region itself, which is the ethnic, political, and military base of Abiy and his cronies. However, to date, there has not been a formal call for action or indictment of the perpetrators of heinous crimes against humanity in Ethiopia. Justice delayed is justice denied. Where is the Security Council of the United Nations? What is the International Criminal Court doing to bring justice to the innocent victims of crimes against humanity? Why do developed countries and their institutions conveniently choose to treat arch-dictator [Abiy Ahmed Ali] with kid gloves in the face of gruesome killings of ethnic Amharas and glaring abuses of authority? Will they listen now to the reports of international media outlets and rights defenders?
Sadly, for Abiy and his regime, mass killings of citizens based on ethnic identity are no longer crimes punishable by law. Instead of bringing perpetrators of ethnic cleansing to the court of law, a rubber stamp parliament and ethnic-based judiciary, army, police, and security institutions gave the killers legal and institutional protection. The parliament consistently suffocated the voices of Amharas from raising any concerns regarding the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide. It refused to hold a one-minute silence in remembrance of the Amhara victims of ethnical cleansing and genocide. It enacted draconian laws such as curfews, anti-demonstration laws, and a state of emergency in the Amhara region, legitimizing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The inordinate and obstinate parliament, in effect, gave legitimacy to the ongoing war of the government in the Amhara regional state with no accountability and responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity that are widely reported nationally, regionally, and internationally. These are glaring, deliberate, institutionalized, and systematic actions designed to exterminate the Amharas as opposed to what many describe as a mere dereliction of civic duties and legal responsibilities. The colossal injustice, impunity, mass arrest, and mass killing (all the crimes against humanity perpetrated against Amharas) – have continued under the naked eyes of the international community. We continue asking: why is the international community turning a blind eye and giving a deafening silence to the atrocities being committed against Amharas? What did Amhara do to deserve lip service and shameful ignoring by the “guardians” of democracy, freedom, liberty, and humanity? While all the evidence points to ethnic cleansing and genocide in Ethiopia, what is the international community waiting for to act and save lives? Is it waiting to see another genocide-another Rwanda?
Conclusions
Amharas are not seeking approval or special recognition from Abiy’s unfair and ethnically biased regime. Nor are they demanding justice, equity, and efficient state services. They are demanding the right to exist in their ancestral lands- not to be killed, ethnically cleansed, or exterminated. Therefore, their war is a war for survival. It is just war in self-defense against ethnic brutality and genocide. In all these, the deafening silence and double standards of the international community are all too evident to camouflage. The community of nations and its impotent institutions have already lost public credibility and trustworthiness not only in Ethiopia but also in Africa at large. Developed countries, financing dictatorships in Africa, have already lowered their standards and negated their moral, ethical, and legal values. They are partners in crimes against humanity by association. They are responsible for perpetuating ethnic cleansing and genocide, particularly in Africa. Their financial aid and technical support are key in helping dictatorship triumph over civility and humanity.
As Gene Sharp rightly wrote “liberation from dictatorships ultimately depends on the people’s ability to liberate themselves”. It is important to note that with or without the attention and support of the international community, Amharas will reverse the tides of hatred, exclusion, marginalization, and genocide imposed upon them by the brute force of ignorance and ethnic dictatorship. However, this may cost lives, causing untold suffering to citizens. Whatever the case may be, one thing is certain: the collapse of Abiy’s dictatorial regime in Ethiopia is inevitable. This is because no dictatorship has ever survived for long through shameful lies, mass killings, and hoodwinking. Neither has any regime ever lasted by intimidating, subjugating, and brutalizing citizens. The end of Abiy’s regime is not far. The time he will stay in power henceforth is much shorter than 1000 hours (41 weeks)!
The writer can reached on X : @GetahunAssefa17
Editor’s note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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