The Reporter
The Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), led by Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, has struggled with protests for nearly a year. The government’s efforts to control the unrest have drawn international criticism because of the methods deployed. True to form, Ethiopia has undergone several periods of upheaval that changed not just the leaders of the country but also the political system and institutions that govern it. Now, the incumbent is faced with the greatest challenge yet, writes Neamin Ashenafi.
This year, unlike many years—especially when looking at the past decade—was very challenging for the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which is a coalition of four parties [Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) and Southern Ethiopian Peoples’ Democratic Movement (SEPDM), that took power in 1991 after the downfall of the Derg regime. The ruling party, which currently controls 100 percent of the seats in the House of Peoples’ Representative together with its affiliates, is faced with the largest and longest demonstrations in recent history. Wide protests were last experienced on the aftermath of the May 2005 General Elections.
True to form, protests began in different parts of Oromia immediately after the Integrated Addis Ababa Oromia Master Plan was announced. Following the announcement, at least nine students were killed in April and May 2014, according to the government. However, eyewitnesses said the total number of causalities was at least 47, while opposition political party leaders and human rights activists stated that the figure is much higher.
The most recent round of protests began in November 2015 and have spread across the entirety of the vast Oromia Regional State.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in January that at least 140 protesters had been killed in demonstrations after heavy-handed crackdowns by security forces.
Following the unrest in the region, Bekele Gerba, deputy chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) and his associates were detained on December 2015 and were later charged under Ethiopia’s terrorism law for allegedly working with the banned Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and organizing the protest in different parts of the region. After looking at the magnitude of the protests and in fear of what might follow, the government dropped plans to expand the boundaries of Addis Ababa on January 2016. However, the decision did not help in stopping the protests in different parts of the region as it still continues to date.
There were also unprecedented reasons for the eruption of protests. For instance, an incident that occurred in February was tragically surreal. A bus filled with a wedding party taking the bride to the groom’s home was stopped at a routine checkpoint on February 12 near the town of Shashamane, which is located some 250km south of Addis Ababa in the Oromia Regional State.
Local police told revelers to turn off Hachalu Hundesa’s nationalistic Oromo music. They refused and the bus drove off. The situation then rapidly escalated and reports indicate at least one person died and three others were injured after police fired shots.
The exact details of the incident were hard to verify, but what was clear was that days of protest followed, including armed local militia clashing with federal police, leaving seven policemen dead, the government said. In addition, the Senkele national park was blazed by the protesters, according to the government.
In January the European Parliament condemned the Ethiopian government’s violent crackdown. It also called for the establishment of a credible, transparent and independent body to investigate the murder and imprisonment of thousands of protesters. Similarly, a group of United Nations human rights experts demanded that Ethiopian authorities stop the violent crackdown.
Though members of the international community, activists and opposition political leaders called on the government to handle the case peacefully things were intensified and many parts of Oromia region.
In the beginning, the protest mainly aimed to have Addis Ababa’s newly proposed master plan scrapped. Protesters say the master plan would push the city’s size about twenty fold and would evict farmers in the surrounding towns of the Oromia region. The latest protests are a follow up of the April/May/June 2014 protests which resulted in the death, injuries and mass arrest for many individuals as well as property damage.
Residents in all 21 zones of the regional state and hundreds of towns and villages joined the protests since it began in November 2015.
Like the previous protests, the protest that erupted in January resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries as well as detention of thousands.
The protests held in April/May/June 2014, were mainly staged by high school and university students who asked for the scrap of the proposed plan saying that it is in violation of the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the Oromia Regional State.
This protest was mainly concentrated in the western parts of the regional state, particularly in West Shawa, West Welega, East Welega and Horo Guduru Zones. However, there were some sporadic protests in the Southeastern areas of the region.
The main feature of this protest is its concentration to educational institutes such as universities, vocational, preparatory, secondary and primary schools.
Instead of entertaining the quest in a peaceful manner, the government deployed government security forces to schools and small towns as a result of which many individuals were killed, injured and detained, according many reports by human right activists.
On the other hand, the Ethiopian government blamed peaceful protestors as violent elements and charged students under the anti-terrorism proclamation. Nonetheless, no single individual or institution was held responsible for the killings, injuries and arbitrary detentions of thousands of civilians.
Though the government, despite blaming some “anti-peace elements” accepted that the question of the protesters are legitimate, according to many commentators and opposition political party leaders, the government failed to respond to the legitimate question of the protesters.
In this regard, many inevitably expected another round of protests and as it was expected another round of protest erupted in November 2015 in a Small town called Ginchi, West Shewa Zone and continued until January 2016 for a consecutive 54 days.
Like the first round of protests, the second round of protests mainly called for the scrapping of the Integrated Addis Ababa Oromia Master Plan. However, unlike its predecessor the second round of protests quickly spread to all of the eighteen zones as well as to the three special zones of the region. The participants were mainly farmers.
This time, the protests were not limited to towns and their outskirts as it also hit rural areas of the region. In that regard, farmers played a very important role in the organization and execution of planned protests.
The current region-wide protests, which started in January 2016, were dubbed by activists as the third round of the protests and have continued since then. However, the reason for the third round of the protest was not limited to the scraping of the master plan.
The third round of the protests mainly focused on the issues of democracy and human rights including compensation for damages which occurred during protests. In addition to that, there are question related to the lack of good governance and other administrative issues.
Different human right groups, activists and opposition political parties were expressing their concerns about the deaths and detentions of citizens. It is because of this that many expected a lot from the report, which was issued by the Ethiopian Human Right Commission (EHRC).
In June 2016 the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission presented the long-awaited report regarding the responses taken by security personnel that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of protesters in different parts of the Oromia Regional State and in North Gondar Zone of the Amhara Regional State.
In a lengthy report read by the Commissioner, Addisu Gebregziabher (PhD) to the House of People’s Representatives, it was revealed that 173 people were killed including 14 security officers with 616 people sustaining injuries in Oromia.
However, the commissioner said the police had used proportional measures. He also said that the situation could have worsened if members of the Federal Police and the National Defense Force, which were deployed upon request by the regional administration, did not contain it.
According to Addisu, if the measures were not taken, it might have led to religious conflicts and ethnic clashes.
The Commission also said that the protests in Oromia were caused by lack of good governance, human rights violations by security forces at zonal and wereda level, and the escalating unfair justice system in the region.
However, the outlawed group, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and anti-peace elements from abroad and at home have hijacked their legitimate questions and protest, the report stated.
In addition, local political parties registered under the country’s law have taken part in violence and protests, Addisu told MPs.
He further indicated that in addition to civilians’ role in the protests in Oromia, various police officers and administrators in various weredas and zones of the region were directly involved in instigating the protest. He, then, urged that these responsible police officers and others at various administrative levels be brought to justice.
In a separate report, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission confirmed that some 87 people including two police officers were killed during protests in Amhara while 87 were injured in Chilga, Lay Armachiho, Metema Yohannes and other weredas of North Gondar.
The protests were sparked after a self-administration request was made by Kimant nationalities residing in the region. Among the dead are children, women and elders including monks.
Unlike Oromia, the Commission held the Amhara Regional State Special Security Force accountable for taking disproportional responses, which eventually led to fighting among residents in various places particularly in Mawura and Ayikel districts. However, the report also indicated that some members of the Kimant community were accountable for instigating clashes and deadly attacks.
He further said that the killings and injuries could have been avoided. The report has also cleared the Amhara region from taking part in the killings.
However, the Commission urged the region to publicly apologize to both the Kimant community as well as the entire people of the region.
He also said that legal actions should be taken on officers and individuals in the region who had refused to cooperate with the Commission during the investigation.
As of July, the protests have been spreading into the Amhara region, home to the second largest ethnic group in the country.
Following the unrest in Amhara region and after the question of the Kimant community, anti-government protests erupted in Amhara in early August, when thousands took to the streets of Gondar and Bahir Dar to protest over the administration of disputed territories.
Members of the Wolkait Tegede community are saying that the Amhara Regional State, instead of the Tigray Regional State, should administer their lands.
The committee that presented the question of identity of Wolkait says that these territories were part of Amhara, until the EPRDF introduced a federal system and restructured the region including the areas into the Tigray region.
Protesters, who identify themselves as ethnic Amhara, Ethiopia’s second largest ethnic group after Oromo, clashed with police during the demonstrations, labeled as the biggest anti-government unrest Ethiopia has witnessed in recent history.
According to reports, police fired tear gas and shot in the air to disperse thousands of people who shouted anti-government slogans. Authorities accused protesters of attacking public properties and said at least seven people died during the unrest, which entered its third day on August 7, 2016.
However, eyewitnesses and Amnesty International claimed that at least 30 people were killed in Bahir Dar.
Focusing mainly on the form, one can see some striking characteristics in the recent political movement in Ethiopia; specifically in the two vast regional states. The protest in Oromia is the older of the protests in the two regions. It started off as the small clash in an elementary school in Ginchi, some 80km from the capital, where students protested the town administration’s decision to give away part of the school compound to a third party.
The political mobilization in the region grew in demand to bigger issues such as the proposed joint master plan integrating the Special Zone of the Oromia Regional State, which surrounds Addis Ababa.
Later on, the government of both Oromia and Addis Ababa decided to abandon the proposed joint master plan. However, before the decision, government security forces responded to protests with force, which, according to Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, was well within proportional limits.
Protestors categorically reject this and they accuse the security forces of extrajudicial killings and arrests.
Hence, the demand of the protestors has managed to evolve to regime change in Ethiopia or an all-out overhaul of the government and the ruling party.
The protest in Amhara, on the other hand, was triggered by the clash between the people of Kimant and regional security apparatus following the decision of the regional government regarding the question of identity of the Kimant people.
Apparently, the decision to grant 42 kebele administrations for the newly recognized Kimant people was not enough and hence the latest violence claimed many lives.
The Kimnat question was followed by another identity question concerning the Welkait area, which is currently under the Tigray Regional State. Meanwhile, in recent months, unity of agenda between protestors in these two regions has started to evolve.
There is no formal connection between the Amhara and Oromia demonstrations but at a recent protest in Gondar, banners were seen expressing solidarity with people from the Oromia region.
Hence, recent protest in Gonder and Bahir Dar paid tribute to imprisoned Oromo politicians like Bekele Gerba and the movement dubbed “Oromo Protest” in general.
According to observers, the widespread protests shook the ruling party, which then led it to conduct reform by evaluating its performance of the last 15 years.
After conducting the evaluation, the EPRDF Council entirely agreed the need to strengthen the reform programs and intensify the fight against corruption.
The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) leaderships for the delay to demarcate the border between North Gondar Zone of the Amhara Regional State, and the neighboring Tigray woreda, the Council urged them to find immediate solution.
In a similar vein, the ruling coalition may have new policy strategies and changes in the bureaucratic arena after the beginning of the new reform that the party says will take place in the coming Ethiopian New Year.
The chairman of the EPRDF, Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, said that in the new reform the party may invite nonparty members in the leadership arena.
“For the sake of the public interest nonparty members that shall lead the government system and policy will be included in the government leadership,” the Prime Minister said.
According to commentators, it will be a new change for the EPRDF culture in the party system that preferred to assign EPRDF and allied ethnic-based party members from the ground to top level of the government bureaucratic positions.