- 24 November 2016
- Africa
Friday, December 16, 2016
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Monday, December 12, 2016
#OromoProtests
Oromo/Ogaden: Authoritarian Government in Ethiopia Risks Triggering Civil War
The following article was published by The Irish Times:
No longer are bands of young men marauding on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, trying to set fire to foreign-owned factories. Nearly two months into Ethiopia’s six-month state of emergency, it appears to be having the desired effect: protests rocking its two most populous regions have subsided.
It remains to be seen, though, whether this is the beginning of a sustained period of calm or a temporary break in the most persistent and widespread protests this country has seen since the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) ruling party came to power following a revolution in 1991.
At that crucial juncture Ethiopia embarked hopefully on a struggle to emerge in the modern world on its own terms. It succeeded in doing so by employing a unique political model that is “an alloy of revolutionary theories, pragmatic neoliberalism and intrinsically Ethiopian customary practices”, says historian and long-term Horn of Africa expert Gérard Prunier.
While that political experiment has brought significant economic growth to the country, many claim it has failed the Ethiopian people, who are now voicing that fact.
“This government came into being with the support of the rural poor,” says Abebe Hailu, a human rights lawyer who was in college during the student movement that precipitated the 1974 downfall of emperor Haile Selassie, and who lived through the ensuing military dictatorship that eventually fell in 1991 to the rebel-founders of the EPRDF. “Now it is the rural poor that is against them – this is the irony,” he says.
When Ethiopian marathon runner Feyisa Lilesa crossed the finishing line in the Rio Olympics in August he crossed his forearms above his head in a widely adopted gesture to protest his government’s violent crackdown on ethnic protests seething since November 2015, leaving upwards of 600 dead, according to rights groups.
Those protests went against the grain of Ethiopia’s hermetic history, which has long seen numerous uprisings dealt with internally, away from prying eyes.
Ethiopia has long been a land of contradictions. On the one hand, the EPRDF has the most impressive economic and development-driven track record of any Ethiopian government in modern history.
But set against that, during the past two decades it has shunned diversity of political opinion, repeatedly cracking down on opposition parties, putting their politicians in jail or forcing them into exile. The 2015 election produced a parliament without a single opposition representative. Freedom of expression in Ethiopia is strictly curtailed, and as a result an independent civil society no longer exists.
At the same time, Ethiopia’s citizenry is increasingly angry at seemingly never-ending government corruption, while a mushrooming youthful population means the number of young unemployed men across the country irrevocably rises. Many sit idly on streets, their thoughts and frustrations turning toward the centre of power that is Addis Ababa.
“The immediate causes for the various groups protesting are different but they have the same demands: deliver the right kind of leadership,” says Yilikal Getenet, chairman of the opposition Blue Party.
Initially months of protests remained largely within the Oromia region, home to Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, constituting about 35 percent of the country’s nearly 100 million population.
But then in August [2016] violence broke out among the Amhara – at 27 per cent, Ethiopia’s second largest ethnic group – in northern Ethiopia’s famed city of Gondar, a popular tourist attraction because of its ancient castles.
Violence even came to the usually serene lakeside Amhara town of Bahir Dar, another popular tourist destination and weekend getaway known for its palm-lined avenues and island monasteries. An initially peaceful anti-government demonstration there on August 7th escalated to violence after a security guard fire into a crowd, leaving at least 30 gunned down by security forces.
At the same time as the Amhara protests, co-ordinated demonstrations occurred in more than nine towns in Oromia, resulting in about 100 deaths, according to Human Rights Watch.
The most recent tragedy came a week before the state-of-emergency declaration on October 9th [2016], when more than 100 people drowned or were crushed to death during a stampede following clashes between police and protesters at a traditional annual Oromo festival at the volcanic lake town of Bishoftu, about 50km southeast of the capital.
Together the Oromo and Amhara represent more than 60 per cent of Ethiopia’s population, hence their resentment of an EPRDF perceived as having been usurped for 25 years by one of its key founding entities, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is drawn from an ethnic group that makes up only 6 per cent of the population, and which in addition to government dominates business and the security services.
“The TPLF has manipulated the multi-ethnic federation to divide and rule forever,” says Birhanu Lenjiso, an Ethiopian research fellow at Radboud University in the Netherlands. “The people are now asking for genuine multi-ethnic federation in the country.”
Addis Ababa, the hub of political power and the engine of Ethiopia’s economy, which exists as an autonomous city state within the federation, is surrounded by Oromia. Overall, the city has remained relatively cocooned from the tumult. But that hasn’t stopped some talking of its iconic Meskal Square in the heart of the city waiting to serve as its Tiananmen Square.
Ethiopia has long been a development darling in the eyes of the international body politic. After the world was shaken by images of Ethiopian famine in 1984, the country turned around its fiscal fortunes and it now has one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Against the abject failure of international assistance in Somalia, Ethiopia is often held up as a heartening example of indigenous government and international partners succeeding in reducing poverty and mortality rates.
But many critics say the statistics that have wowed the international community have hidden the more complex reality in which most Ethiopians, while not as susceptible as in the past to famine and disease, are still utterly stifled in their lives’ endeavours.
“The oppressed stay silent but eventually you reach a critical mass and then it boils over,” Yilikal says. “Hundreds have been killed but they keep protesting. They go to protests knowing the risks. So what does that tell you?”
Ethiopia, famously described by historian Edward Gibbon as the country that slept a thousand years while the world ignored it, has now firmly plugged itself into the global network. Satellite dishes dotted all over residential areas in towns and cities beam in news from around the world – including from Ethiopian diaspora news channels that are potently anti-government – while mobile phone ownership and access to the internet follow a steep upward curve.
“More than 50 per cent of the Ethiopian population was born under this government,” says Robert Wiren, a French journalist writing about the Horn of Africa for the last 15 years. “This young population does not compare the present system with its predecessors but receives news from abroad which contradicts the governmental rhetoric. People in the street know that journalists and opponents are jailed, that the security forces kill demonstrators. There is a real danger of ethnic hatred against the Tigrayans.”
Matters aren’t helped by the fact that wealth from the surging economic numbers has failed to trickle down to the vast majority of Ethiopians, who eke out the daily grind while wages stagnate, and inflation and living costs rise.
All the while, rank corruption results in a select few monopolising lucrative deals in the economy, to be then observed splashing out on oversized shiny pick-up trucks and drinking bottles of Black Label whiskey in the capital’s swanky new hotels, which seem to pop up daily.
“Since Ethiopia’s economic growth is due to a centralised driven process, a lot of non-Tigray people suspect the Tigray elite to be the only beneficiary of the economic boom,” Wiren says.
History always matters, but especially in Ethiopia, where people take the long view. Ethiopians cherish their history – one of the world’s oldest Christian traditions; the only African country that wasn’t colonised – and recall and tell the associated stories spanning the centuries; at the same time they remember the tragedies and atrocities committed among the country’s various ethnic groups, all of which exerts a powerful influence on the present.
“What’s happening [now] is a combination of everything: historical marginalisation and present marginalisation,” says Merera Gudina, chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress Party. “It’s a revolt against minority rule and its policies.”
The EPRDF was preceded by two authoritarian centralised regimes: emperor Haile Selassie and then military dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. Both were viewed as Amhara-centric, and the federal constitution created by the EPRDF in 1991– and held by many, including critics of the government, as an effective fit for Ethiopia’s more than 80 ethnic groups – was meant to mitigate that fact, accommodating Ethiopia’s diversity and competing claims.
But from the start, the EPRDF has been criticised for allowing the TPLF to hog the limelight and power in the new Ethiopia that has existed since 1991.
“The TPLF has trapped itself by ethnicising political life without accepting a real autonomy for every regional state,” Wiren says. “It is an open secret that behind each regional state leader there is a kind of unofficial political supervisor.”
This style of governance has alienated especially the Amhara (who recall when they used to call the shots) and the Oromo (who feel they have always been excluded, first by the Amhara, and then by the Tigrayans).
“They only know how to talk, they never listen,” says one Addis Ababa resident. “You have a group of Tigrayans in government deciding the fate of 100 million people who aren’t allowed to say anything.”
A major problem for the country’s protest movement is the lack of an organising body to guide it and of a central leadership to engage on its behalf with the EPRDF.
The political opposition in Ethiopia is in disarray. It has suffered and been weakened through government harassment, but has also been criticised for not matching its anti-government rhetoric with discussions of effective policy.
“What does the Ethiopian public want? Firstly peace, secondly stability, thirdly prosperity,” says one Addis Ababa-based foreign politico. “In most cases the Ethiopian opposition have conflated opposition with opposite. When asked for details of the programme for achieving those three needs they revert to type and complain about how difficult it is to be in opposition.”
To compound matters, ever since opposition MPs squabbled in the aftermath of Ethiopia’s crucial 2005 election – the country’s first genuine contest – with some choosing not to take their seats due to allegations of vote rigging, the opposition has remained split among myriad parties that appear unable and unwilling to coalesce into a single effective voice for today’s protests.
At the same time all sides, from government to opposition, whether in Ethiopia or acting overseas, appear hobbled by how the vocabulary of Amharic, the lingua franca of Ethiopia, doesn’t lend itself to terms such as negotiation and compromise. The polarisation of US politics pales in comparison to the mire found in Ethiopia: here you are either with the government or against, there can be no middle ground.
Nevertheless, many point out that it is the EPRDF, as the holders of power, who need break the deadlock.
“They must bring all concerned Ethiopian opposition political groups both home and abroad to the negotiation table,” says Endalk Chala, a prominent Ethiopian blogger studying in the US, who is unable to return to Ethiopia following the arrest in Addis Ababa of his fellow Zone 9 bloggers. “That is what I call a reform and all the rest is nonsense.”
Geopolitical considerations mean Ethiopia is held by the likes of the UK and US to be an important peace and security bulwark in the Horn of Africa, a region troubled by failing states.
Ethiopia also provides large numbers of troops to the internationally funded African force battling al-Qaeda-linked militants in Somalia, as well as to peacekeeping forces in South Sudan and Sudan. Then there’s Ethiopia’s crucial economic role in the region.
“Ethiopia is the region’s locomotive,” says Dawit Gebre-Ab, senior director of strategic planning for the neighbouring Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority. “With its expansion in manufacturing, Ethiopia could become the China of Africa.”
Djibouti, another key part of the West’s anti-terrorism apparatus in the region, in addition to guarding one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, relies for a significant proportion of its GDP on business with Ethiopia.
To Djibouti’s south, Somaliland is banking on a €400 million refurbishment of its underused and underdeveloped Berbera port to alleviate its economic woes, with the next-door market of Ethiopia’s continually growing population – Africa’s second largest, and set to reach 130 million by 2025 – forming a key part of its ambitions to keep it safe from the fate of Somalia to its south.
Were Ethiopia’s internal fissures to worsen, its hitherto economic juggernaut might well be impeded – unsettling the region’s hitherto stabilising process of economic integration – or even derailed.
“Ethiopia has been the only reliable country in the Horn of Africa,” says Lidetu Ayele, founder of the opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party. “If Ethiopia is not strong, other countries will suffer. This government has used the threat of regional terrorism to its own advantage, but that threat is very real.”
“People need to be calm and patient,” Abebe says. “And we need acceptance by the government about making real reforms.”
The government conducted a significant cabinet reshuffle at the end of October, bringing in non-party-affiliated technocrats to deliver change, while promising reforms. But for a country with millennia of centralised, autocratic rule, that’s much easier said than done.
Since 1991 western observers and governments have been calling on the Ethiopian government to deepen its commitment to democratic reforms, but it hasn’t previously shown much interest in listening. Hence many aren’t convinced of either the government’s sincerity or ability to make this happen.
“This government has failed the people not once but 1,000 times, and they’ve broken promise after promise,” says Merera, who, like many others, notes the left-wing revolutionary genesis of the EPRDF. The prevailing accusation is that this ideology still guides the party, which as a result remains fundamentally anti-democratic, believing in a Leninist single-party approach, and is thereby unable to countenance reform.
Opinions about where Ethiopia is heading cover a range of scenarios. It is feasible that a renewed uprising could prove successful, or its attendant pressures result in the internal disintegration of the EPRDF. Both appear unlikely, however, certainly in the short-term. Honed by decades of experience fending off rebellions, Ethiopia’s security apparatus is ruthlessly effective – hence the apparent success of the state of emergency. If judged necessary, an even more blistering government crackdown can’t be ruled out.
Ethiopia doesn’t have to fear, according to observers, a military coup: the army is professional, well trained and its higher echelons respect the constitution and harbour no ambitions to rule. But how they might react to some of the worst-case scenarios predicted – Ethiopia descending into civil war or a failed state torn by ethnic strife – is another matter.
Most observers suggest the best way to avoid the worst case scenarios would be to, at a minimum, release all political prisoners, unshackle the media and allow freedom of expression, and begin reforming key institutions that have been found wanting, such as Ethiopia’s judicial system.
When it comes to the EPRDF’s future role in all this, opinions vary. Some say it has lost every shred of legitimacy and must immediate make way for a transitional government. Others say is not feasible nor in Ethiopia’s best interests. Rather, the EPRDF should, in addition to carrying out meaningful reforms, establish a new electoral commission that would guarantee the next local elections in 2018 and national elections in 2020 were freely contested.
“That is the best course of action as it would provide a solution that isn’t orchestrated by the government but which is chosen by the Ethiopian people,” Lidetu says.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Friday, December 2, 2016
#OromoRevolution
Ethiopia: Arrest of Merera sounds ‘alarm bells’ on human rights
In response to the arrest of longtime Oromo leader Merera Gudina, the Amnesty International organization swiftly condemned the decision of Ethiopian authorities on Thursday.
“The arrest of Merera Gudina is an outrageous assault on the right to freedom of expression and should sound alarm bells for anyone with an interest in ending the deadly protests that have rocked Ethiopia over the past year,” said Michelle Kagari, the Amnesty Deputy Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.
“This is a move that will exacerbate, rather than ease, the underlying tensions currently simmering in the country. Instead of resorting to further repression and clamp-downs, the Ethiopian government must urgently and meaningfully address the human rights grievances that are fuelling unrest.”
Merera, head of the Oromo Federalist Congress, was arrested for violating a provision of Ethiopia’s current state of emergency, according to the government. That rule prevents “communication with banned terrorist organizations and anti-peace groups,” a spokesman told Fana Broadcasting in Addis Ababa.
Merera, he said, faces the charge for meeting with Ethiopian opposition leader Berhanu Nega in Brussels during a recent trip to meet with European Union officials. Merera delivered a speech to members of the European Union Parliament and testified on the Ethiopian human rights crisis along with Nega, the Addis Standard reports, and high-profile Oromo Olympic athlete Feyisa Lilessa. A photo of them together was widely circulated.
Family members say Merera is being held at the Ma’ekelawi prison but they are denied access to him.
Image: Oromo Studies Association
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Thursday, November 24, 2016
#Oromo Revolution
Why is the Ethiopian diaspora so influential?
AFP
During a year of anti-government protests throughout Ethiopia, its global diaspora, particularly that in the US, has been deeply involved - and not just vocally, writes Addis Ababa-based journalist James Jeffrey.
Twitter and Facebook have been blocked since a six-month state of emergency was imposed last month as the government tries to restore order across the country's two most populous regions of Oromia and Amhara.
There are also internet blackouts, primarily targeting mobile phone data, which is how most Ethiopians get online - and is for many residents of the capital, Addis Ababa, the most frustrating effect of the security clamp down.
The ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has singled out social media as playing a key role in the latest unrest which broke out in November 2015 and which resulted in millions of dollars' worth of damage across Oromia, the region where the protests began.
But internet restrictions may have less to do with silencing Ethiopians at home than with stymieing influence from abroad where those in the diaspora energetically follow and respond to events.
"The diaspora have the freedom to speak freely, assemble and organise under the constitutions and laws of the countries in which they reside," says Alemante Selassie, emeritus professor at the William and Mary Law School in the US.
"The diaspora can speak truth to power in ways that is not imaginable in their own homeland."
'Filling the void'
Ethiopia's global diaspora is estimated to be two-million strong, with the highest numbers in the US, totalling anything from 250,000 up to about one million.
JAMES JEFFREY
"The protesters are their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, classmates, neighbours and former colleagues," says Hassan Hussein, an Ethiopian academic and writer based in the US state of Minnesota.
"Most activists in the diaspora are people pushed out of the political process and into exile by the current regime in Ethiopia," says Mohammed Ademo, an Ethiopian-born journalist in Washington DC.
"So they see themselves as stakeholders in the efforts to shape the country's future."
Nowadays they are joined by writers, bloggers and journalists who, along with hugely popular satellite television channels broadcast from the US, provide significant coverage about the protests.
"The Oromo has no independent voice at home, all the local media outlets, already too few, are either driven out of the country or state-owned," Mr Hassan says.
"The diaspora is simply filling this huge void."
But diaspora influence goes well beyond media coverage. Huge amounts of money are remitted from the US back to Ethiopia.
JAMES JEFFREY
"With the intensification of protests for the past 12 months, the level has probably increased considerably," says Eloi Ficquet, former director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa.
Opposition groups in Ethiopia gain significant funding from anti-EPRDF diaspora sources because of scant local options.
Consequently, according to some, this financial dependency hinders them from attempting political compromise and engagement with the ruling party, which already makes it hard enough.
"The government suppresses the peaceful political parties in this country and people became very hopeless about peaceful political struggle," says Lidetu Ayele, founder of the local opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party.
"So they start listening to political parties across the Atlantic."
Bogus information
Ethiopia does not just lack effective local opposition.
Local independent media does exist - often written in Amharic, hence not noticed by many labelling Ethiopia one of the world's most-censored countries - but remains severely hampered compared to state media.
"The government hasn't allowed an independent media to develop so people turn to diaspora news," commented an Ethiopian journalist with a local daily newspaper at an October government press conference.
"The government has created this problem for themselves."
And many in Ethiopia, both locals and foreigners, agree it has become a problem because of the volume of inaccurate or bogus information channelled by social media and overseas activists, often with an all too combustible effect on the ground.
More on Ethiopia's unrest:
AFP- Seven things banned under the state of emergency
- Are the protests a game changer?
- What is behind Ethiopia's wave of protest?
- Endurance test for Ethiopia's Feyisa Lilesa
- What does unrest mean for Ethiopian unity?
- Why Ethiopia is making a historic ‘master plan’ U-turn
Violence at the beginning of October was precipitated by overseas activists calling for "five days of rage" in response to a deadly stampede at an Oromo religious festival after police and protestors clashed.
However, others argue the protests have sprung organically from a populace bearing numerous longstanding grievances.
BBC/OCTOBER 2016
"They feel left out of the so-called Ethiopian economic miracle that the Western press touts ad nauseam despite the grinding poverty all around the country, especially the Amhara region," Prof Alemante says.
Among those active on Ethiopia's social media scene, there is also exasperation at the government's blinkered approach to the dynamics of modern communication.
"They could probably debunk about half the disinformation if they used social media to provide basic answers," says Addis Ababa-based blogger Daniel Berhane.
But instead the government relies on its monopoly of television and radio while leaving social media uncontested, or for now blocked.
"If government does respond, usually it's too late and the accusation has been accepted as fact," Mr Daniel says.
AFP
Journalists highlighting such misinformation typically face torrents of abuse on social media from those in the diaspora who accuse them of being in cahoots with the government and failing to see the bigger picture.
"Foreign correspondents mostly cover only protests in Addis Ababa," Mr Mohammed says.
"The diaspora has been instrumental in raising awareness about atrocities taking place [elsewhere] in Ethiopia and reporting on protests," the journalist says.
The state of emergency appears to be having the desired effect of restoring order - for now.
The EPRDF conducted a significant cabinet reshuffle at the end of October, while promising further reforms.
But the general consensus appears that no-one has a clue what may happen next.
"Ethiopia has an enormous and complex set of problems," says Endalk Chala, one of the founders of the Ethiopian Zone 9 blogging collective.
He is currently studying in the US and remains in exile following the arrests in 2014 of several his fellow Zone 9 bloggers, some of whom are still facing trial.
"But the government embarked on prescribing simple solutions such as declaring a state of emergency and electoral reforms," he says.
"They must bring all concerned Ethiopian opposition political groups both home and abroad to the negotiation table."
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Monday, November 21, 2016
#OromoRevolution
he Oromo protests have changed Ethiopia
The struggle of the Oromo people has finally come to the attention of the global public conscience.
![Demonstrators chant slogans while flashing the Oromo protest gesture during Irreecha, the thanksgiving festival of the Oromo people, in Bishoftu town, Oromia region, Ethiopia [Reuters]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uCQjqlumX5ZRP4t0RW4yRMQKPUioTKK-MPvPUtRj3pD6KJzoaR0WF2UKP6DPKvL55ZUHwDa56qUGxsJLFYhWTxdNbZ2luvuk5Mi8lMmKAY6Epv4wMF48seQUPRB7xWKKBShZ2gWSizbM8DxzyO4I7V1R98qdxOHIZFgNcixbyUCIF67Y9a5HeuivcyrlMXHFSU6MFHhLtWC66u2A=s0-d "The Oromo protests have changed Ethiopia")
by
Awol K Allo
Awol K Allo is Lecturer in Law at Keele University, UK.
November 12 marked the first anniversary of the Oromo Protests, a non-institutional and anti-authoritarian movement calling for an end to decades of systemic exclusion and subordination of the Oromo.
Although the protests were sparked by a government plan to expand the territorial and administrative limits of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, into neighbouring Oromo towns and villages, they were manifestations of long-simmering ethnic discontents buried beneath the surface.
The Oromo are the single largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and East Africa, comprising more than 35 percent of Ethiopia's 100 million people. Yet, Oromos have been the object of discriminatory and disproportionate surveillance, policing, prosecution and imprisonment under the guise of security and economic development.
The year-long protests, which brought decades of hidden suffering and abuse to the Ethiopian streets, were held under what Human Rights Watch described as a "near-total closure of political space".
As the protests grew in magnitude and intensity, the government responded with overwhelming and disproportionate force, unleashing what Amnesty international called "a vicious cycle of protests and totally avoidable bloodshed".
The failure of the government to respond to long-standing grievances and the deployment of disproportionate violence which killed hundreds, exacerbated the tension, transforming what was a single-issue protest into a formidable mass anti-authoritarian movement.
The protests reached a turning point on August 6, 2016, when hundreds of thousands of people marched in more than 200 towns and cities to resist the government's draconian and ever-escalating repression.
Another milestone came on October 2, 2016, when security forces fired tear gas and live bullets on a crowd of over two million people gathered to celebrate Irreecha, a cultural festival in which Oromos from all walks of life congregate to celebrate life and nature. While the government acknowledged the deaths of 52 people, local reports have put the number in the hundreds.
State of emergency
On October 9, 2016, the government declared a state of emergency, giving security forces and the army new sweeping powers in one of the most censored countries in the world, where the security apparatus is already extensive and permeates all levels of social structures, including individual households.
The government blocked mobile internet, restricted social media, banned protests, closed down broadcast and print media, including the influential Addis Standard magazine, and imposed draconian restrictions on all political freedoms. In its recent report analysing the effect of the emergency, Human Rights Watch described the measures as the securitisation of legitimate grievances.
Suddenly, the Oromo story moved from the periphery of Ethiopia's political discourse to the centre.
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According to the government's own figures, more than 11,000 people have been arrested since the emergency was imposed.
Under international law, states can impose restrictions on the exercise of rights and freedoms "in times of public emergency threatening the life of the nation". However, a state of emergency does not give the government carte blanche to do as it pleases.
Governments can only take those measures that are necessary and proportionate to the threat. The measures being taken by the Ethiopian state go far beyond what is required by the exigencies of the circumstances.
In the name of economic development and national security, it established a permanent state of emergency to obscure its lack of democratic mandate, making "development" and "security" the ultimate standards of the regime's legitimacy.
Oromo Protests at Rio Olympics
The protests rose to global prominence when Feyisa Lilesa, an ethnic Oromo marathon runner, crossed his wrists above his head in an "X", a gesture that came to define the Oromo protests, as he crossed the finishing line at the Rio Olympics to win the silver medal.
If the Oromo protests are a battle of ideas, a contest between those who seek equal opportunity and those who deny these opportunities to all but a few, a conflict between bullets and freedom songs, it was also a battle for the control of the narrative.
Unequal access to education and the means of narrative production excluded the Oromo from mainstream knowledge frameworks, rendering them invisible and unnoticeable, and condemning their culture and identity to a precarious subterranean existence. The Rio Olympics reconfigured this dynamic.
Lilesa's decisive intervention at one of the world's biggest stages drew overdue attention to the story of oppression that remained largely invisible to mainstream media.
Suddenly, the Oromo story moved from the periphery of Ethiopia's political discourse to the centre. As the news media filtered the Oromo story into the global public conscience via Lilesa's expression of solidarity, it provided a revealing perspective on the fiction underneath the country's reputation as a beacon of stability and an economic success story.
Achievements
This movement has already changed Ethiopia forever. It brought about a change of attitude and discourse in the Ethiopian society, repudiating the ideological proclivities and policies of the state. It enabled the society to see the government, its institutions, its symbols and its western enablers differently.
Topics that used to be considered taboo only a year ago, such as the supremacy of ethnic Tigrean elites, are no longer off limits. In short, it enabled suffering to speak.
A year after the protests erupted, and after hundreds of funerals were held, what remains uppermost in the memory of the protesters is not the dead. It is not even the bereaved. It is the stubborn persistence of the Qabso - struggle - in the face of great sacrifice, and the defiant and unrelenting call for equality and justice.
The government knows that it walked right up to the edge of the precipice. But, if it fails to address the grievances of protesters, if it continues to ignore the social fabric ripped apart by policies of divide and rule, if it does not provide justice to the inconsolable grief of parents whose children were shot by security forces, and the quiet but intensely agitated youth who have become the beating hearts of this defiant generation, it may plunge into it.
Awol Allo is Lecturer in Law at Keele University, UK.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source: Al Jazeera
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