Dozens killed in anti-Abiy protests, ethnic violence in Ethiopia

Some 67 people were killed in Ethiopia’s Oromia state this week
as protests against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed morphed into ethnic
clashes, police said Friday.

“The total number dead in Oromia is 67,” said Kefyalew Tefera,
the regional police chief. “There are about 55 of them killed by
the conflict between them, between the civilians and the rest are
killed by the security forces.”

Five of the dead were police officers, he added.

On Thursday, authorities and hospital officials had reported
that protests in the capital and other cities resulted in 16 deaths
and dozens of wounded. It was not immediately clear how many of the
16 were included in the tally of 67 reported in Oromiya.

The violence underscored the dilemma facing Abiy, who must
retain support in Ethiopia’s ethnically based, federal system but
not be seen to favour one group.

But kingmakers like prominent activist and media mogul Jawar
Mohammed are flexing their muscles. Like Abiy, Jawar comes from the
Oromo ethnic group, Ethiopia’s largest. His supporters have stopped
believing in Abiy’s promises of reform, he said in an interview
with Reuters Friday, accusing Abiy of centralising power, silencing
dissent and jailing political prisoners – like his
predecessors.

Amnesty International says that, since Abiy took office, there
have been several waves of mass arrests of people in Oromiya
perceived to be opposed to the government. Detainees were not
charged or taken to court, Amnesty’s Ethiopia researcher Fisseha
Tekle said.

“The majority of people believe the transition is off track and
we are backsliding towards an authoritarian system,” Jawar said at
his heavily guarded home-office in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
“The ruling party and its ideology will be challenged seriously not
only in the election but also prior to the elections.”

The prime minister’s spokeswoman did not return calls seeking
comment. Abiy has not commented on this week’s violence.

On Friday afternoon, the defence ministry said the army had been
deployed to seven cities where there had been protests this week.
The forces have been deployed “to calm the situation in
collaboration with elders and regional security officers”, Major
General Mohammed Tessema told a press conference in Addis
Ababa.

Strident parties

The four ethnically based parties in the coalition that has
ruled Ethiopia since 1991 are facing increasing competition from
new, more strident parties demanding greater power and resources
for their own regions.

“For a prime minister whose popular legitimacy relies on his
openness, recent protests in Oromiya could be politically
suicidal,” said Mehari Taddele Maru, an Addis Ababa-based political
analyst. “It signals a significant loss of a populist power base
that propelled him to power.”

If next year’s elections are fair – as Abiy has promised they
will be – they will test whether the young prime minister can hold
together his fractious nation of 100 million people and continue to
open up its state-owned economy, or whether decades of state
repression have driven Ethiopians into the arms of the political
competition.

Jawar said he hadn’t decided who else he would support in next
year’s polls, or whether he would run himself. His Twitter feed had
been teasing the possibility last weekend: “The story about me
running for office is just speculation. I am running to lose
weight.”

His remarks were his strongest criticism yet of Abiy, with whom
he was photographed frequently last year, but the split follows
pointed remarks by Abiy to parliament on Tuesday.

Abiy said, without naming anyone, “Media owners who don’t have
Ethiopian passports are playing both ways … If this is going to
undermine the peace and existence of Ethiopia … we will take
measures.”

The comments were widely seen as a dig at Jawar, who is
Ethiopian-born but has a US passport and returned from exile last
year.

Abiy didn’t create Ethiopia’s ethnic divisions, but he must
address them, said Abel Wabella, a former political prisoner who is
now editor of the Amharic-language newspaper Addis Zeybe.

Jawar is “testing the waters”, he said. “Ethnic federalism
creates monsters … if Abiy fails to dismantle the power groups
based on ethnicity, and to address the structural problems we have
as a nation, we will end up in civil war.”

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)