November 17, 2021 09:11
When citizens of a country define themselves on the basis of their belonging to an ethnic group, it is legitimate to fear the worst. This is what is happening in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, where, according to Amnesty international, “a wave of arrests on an ethnic basis” is underway.
Thousands of inhabitants of the capital from the province of Tigrai have been arrested on charges of helping the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (TPLF), often on the basis of arbitrary charges. According to the Amnesty report, the prisoners were found in six detention centers, deprived of all rights.
This climate of suspicion towards the Tigers, at the center of a war that continues to expand, makes some diplomats fear a “Rwandan” drift, a sinister reference to the 1994 Tutsi genocide, or akin to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the related “Ethnic purification”.
The UN Security Council condemned the “hate speech” in Ethiopia and asked in vain for a ceasefire. The appeal is all the more urgent when we consider that the situation of civilians in Tigray, isolated from the rest of the outside world by a military blockade, continues to worsen.
It all started last year, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, among other things awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, launched a punitive expedition against the leaders of the TPLF, guilty of having challenged the central power. Heralded as a swift operation, the federal army intervention was disastrous and resulted in a war.
Tigray forces, which have hardened over their long years in power, threaten the federal state after forming an alliance with other rebel groups in the country.
The former Ethiopian empire, with a population of over one hundred million inhabitants, thought it had found a way to stem the centrifugal forces in the ethno-federalist constitution. But political rivalries inherited from a turbulent recent past and regional antagonisms threaten to bring down the building, dragging the entire Horn of Africa with it.
The latest mediation was attempted by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who on November 16 began a trip to Africa from Kenya, a neighboring country of Ethiopia. The United States has a long-standing relationship with Ethiopia and hopes it can exert enough influence to defuse the crisis. Mediation joins that attempted by the African Union, the continental organization which has its headquarters in Addis Ababa.
But the gears of the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia are already at an advanced stage, with an ethnonationalism that is easy to ignite but difficult to extinguish. This internal conflict has already produced a series of massacres committed by different parties and considered by the UN as war crimes, including mass rape and various maneuvers to starve the population. The potential for escalation is considerable, with the multiplication of neighborhood militias and the uncontrolled spread of suspects.
It would be terrible if the world, once again, proved unable to stop an announced tragedy.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
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