#AbiyMustGo

 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/30/tigray-forces-say-they-shot-down-ethiopian-plane-retook-axum?fbclid=IwAR1LGKdaASGx6nOr07WqsdMPVVfm9i9OIM1NBWtO1SfgKy7f8U4sysRaLi4

#AbiyMustGo#OromoProtests#Ethiopia

Federal High Court 

Lideta Criminal Bench

Addis Ababa 

Applicant in Case No. 260215 

Defendants:

1st Jawar Siraj Mohammed

2nd Bekele Gerba Dako

Case: Explaining our inability to attend court hearing. 

Given the relative sensitivity around the charges against us, as well as our role in the country's politics, including widespread media propaganda waged on us, we know we are vulnerable to any and all attacks. The distance from Kaliti prison to Lideta Court and the congested road increases our vulnerability. We fear that any minor attempt of attack on our journey, combined with the current political turmoil, could plunge our country into crisis. 

Therefore, we humbly acknowledge that we will not be able to attend the hearing on November 27, 2020 for the sake of general security, despite our desire for an expedited trial. We respectfully request the court to temporarily assign us to attend a court closer to the prison we are held at. 

Best regards,

Jawar Siraj Mohammed

Bekele Gerba Dako

November 26, 2020

Addis Ababa

#AbiyMustGo#Ethiopia

 

Is Ethiopia on the brink of civil war? | UpFront

Ethiopia Crisis: High stakes for Africa

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cszcnw

OMN: Labsii Xumura Garbummaa Qeerroo Oromoo Irraa Kenname !

#AbiyMustGo

 Let me just say. The war on Tigray is just a continuation of the war on Oromia. This is an ideological war. It is a war to determine the future identity of Ethiopia. While Tigray has more muscle power than all the other regions due to their political dominance in the last 3 decades, the natural ideological battleground in Ethiopia is Oromia. All these wars, carnages, assassinations, etc are to get complete control of Oromia.

Oromia is the political and economic center of that empire. Who so ever controls Oromia controls Ethiopia. So naturally, wether you are currently so consumed by your hatred for TPLF(while exonerating their OPDO counterparts if I may add) that you are overlooking the wider implications of this war on Tigray and the gut wrenching humanitarian crises unfolding in that region, its worth noting that the final battle will be fought in Oromia and this regime is merciless. Our families and everything we hold dear, everything we’ve fought and sacrificed for, every minor gain made through sweat, tears, bones, and blood will be undone. The very idea of Oromia that we’ve defiantly nurtured & protected in our psyche will be no more.

I wish the reality weren’t so grim. But it is & we aren’t prepared or preparing on a level commensurate to the existential threat we are faced with. We are not ready to face this regime in this impending showdown & it’s important that we are. As we are witnessing in Tigray, the cost is just too much when facing a genocidal, power drunk, well equipped, & delusional wannabe Monarch who genuinely believes he has Devine mandate to rule and aided and abetted by irredentist forces who will love nothing more than to wipe us off the face of the earth.

The choice is no longer murky. I am not appealing to your conscience or your moral compass. I am appealing to your most basic human trait-the primordial urge for survival- as a people. Even if you don’t care about what’s happening in Tigray, you should at least be aware the same fate awaits us and all those who aspire towards an equitable, just, and democratic political arrangement in which our right to genuine self rule is respected. This is an existential threat. I would like those of you cheering on this regime to pause & reflect. I would like those engaged in belittling, insulting and humiliating one another on social media to pause & evaluate what purpose those actions are serving. I would like all of us to really come to terms with the fact that the only strength we’ve ever had in that empire is our people(numbers) & just strategically speaking, we will not survive as a nation divided. We need to find a way to minimize this ASAP.

The “Ethiopia Tikdem” forces are back with a vengeance, backed by an entire state apparatus, with all the power & connections bestowed upon them. So how ready are we to fight back? Not very!

By Fatuma N. Bedaso

Pace of Ethiopian refugee arrivals in Sudan unseen in the last two decades This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

 

https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2020/11/5fb391214/pace-ethiopian-refugee-arrivals-sudan-unseen-decades.html?fbclid=IwAR1xWielxrGeNmQsNcouvASFCegT50zCPqutoWGHjTNff0CUl5q8eqZ4LEs

 

Abiy Ahmed and the future of Ethiopia

As deadly fighting between federal government troops and regional Tigray forces intensifies, the fate of the country balances on a knife edge.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/15/who-is-ethiopias-pm-abiy-ahmed?fbclid=IwAR1b_yXS-WBcpkoUOL6SSP7obgNcdLTNir4polTp7NezivX2y_kVLVQ-wIs

 

Hundreds killed and 15 million at risk across borders in growing Ethiopian war

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-hundreds-killed-and-15-million-at-risk-across-borders-in-growing/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=Referrer%3A%20Social%20Network%20%2F%20Media&utm_campaign=Shared%20Web%20Article%20Links&fbclid=IwAR3xmF2a-80fi3cZJlP4d9RKxVPUuf7NGUykQTuJ8CDb7IpMprtW4I0xobM

Guyo wariyo interview with Aljazeera:the details will comes

 

Ethiopian police seeking lists of ethnic Tigrayans - U.N. report

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Ethiopian police visited an office of the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) in Amhara region to request a list of ethnic Tigrayan staff, according to an internal U.N. security report seen by Reuters on Friday.

The local police chief informed them of “the order of identifying ethnic Tigrayans from all government agencies and NGOs”, the report said, underlining fears over the ethnic undertones to a federal military push against the leaders of Tigray province in north Ethiopia which borders Amhara.

The United Nations told the police they do not identify staff by ethnicity, according to the report. There was no immediate comment from the Amhara regional police or government.

Ethiopia launched a military offensive in the rebellious Tigray region last week that has killed hundreds and shaken the wider Horn of Africa region.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accuses the leaders of the northern region - the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) - of treason. Concerns are growing that the campaign against them could led to ethnic profiling of Tigrayans throughout the country.

News also came on Friday that the African Union had dismissed its security head, an Ethiopian national, after Abiy’s government accused him of disloyalty. An analyst said the dismissal was part of the Abiy government’s efforts to sideline prominent Tigrayans.

Local forces and militias from Amhara, which has boundary disputes with Tigray, are backing the federal troops’ campaign, further increasing ethnic friction.

Reporting by Nairobi newsroom; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Maggie Fick, Editing by William Maclean

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Ethiopia's new war and how its PM is to blame

 Americans should congratulate themselves. Their election system is definitely better than Ethiopia's. In fact, it works so well that there's unlikely to be another American civil war.

The United States, a federal country with a complex and decrepit voting system, has nevertheless just held a national election despite about a quarter-million Covid-19 deaths. President Donald Trump is finding it hard to process his defeat, but the system itself worked fine despite the pandemic.

Ethiopia, another federal country with one-third of America's population but less than one-hundredth of the US Covid death rate, should have held its scheduled election this autumn too, but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed postponed it "because of Covid". That was a very serious mistake.

The government of the Tigray region of Ethiopia accused Mr Ahmed of needless delay, and when he refused to change his mind they went ahead and held the election in Tigray anyway.

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Mr Ahmed said the newly elected government of Tigray (same as the old government) was illegal because he had postponed the elections, Tigray said the federal government was illegal because it had unilaterally extended its mandate instead of holding the elections, and they went to war. In only a week they've worked their way up from local clashes to air strikes.

This is so stupid and reckless that it makes American politics look positively demure by comparison. To be fair, though, Ethiopia has only recently emerged from 45 years of revolution, white and red terror, renewed tyranny, more revolution, and practically non-stop civil and international war. Ethiopia is a really hard place to govern.

When Mr Ahmed was appointed prime minister two years ago by the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), he was the first Oromo ever to govern the country, even though the Oromo are the largest of Ethiopia's many ethnic groups (a third of the population). They have been unhappy for a long time, so that was a plus.

So was the fact that he was the son of a Christian-Muslim marriage, useful in a country that is two-thirds Christian, one-third Muslim. And Mr Ahmed's intentions were good: he immediately set about to dismantle the stranglehold on power of the various ethnic militias that had fought and won the long war against the Derg, the previous Communist dictatorship.

The most powerful of those militias is the Tigray People's Liberation Front. Tigray, the country's northernmost province, has only 6 million people, a mere 5% of Ethiopia's population, but Tigrayan soldiers and politicians have dominated the EPRDF coalition and government for most of the last 30 years because of their historic role in the war against the Derg.

The Tigrayan political elite's privilege was widely resented, and it was time for it to end. Last year Mr Ahmed tried to do that by merging all the ethnic militia-based parties into a single Prosperity Party, but the TPLF leadership wouldn't play. They had always lived in the castle, and nobody was going to make them go and live with the commoners.

It is, alas, as simple as that, and perhaps a more accomplished civilian politician could have finessed it: cabinet posts, ambassadorships and/or fat lifetime pensions for the more flexible Tigrayan leaders, discreet but massive bribes for the greedier ones, and a couple of fatal "accidents" for the hardest nuts.

Mr Ahmed, despite a background in intelligence work that should have given him good political skills, is inflexible and confrontational. The cascade of threats, counter-threats and ultimatums between him and the TPLF leadership is now culminating in what amounts to a Tigrayan war of secession.

It could be a long war, because Tigrayans are over-represented in the armed forces and much of the army's heavy weapons and equipment, which were based in Tigray because of the border war with Eritrea, has fallen into the TPLF's hands. The TPLF has no air force, but it can match the federal army in everything up to and including mechanised divisions.

Ethiopia is Africa's second-biggest country, very poor but with a fast-growing economy. The very last thing it needs is yet another civil war, which in current circumstances could also lead to other regions trying to secede. Even if the TPLF was trying to provoke a war (which looks quite likely), Mr Ahmed's first duty was to avoid it at all costs.

They gave Mr Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize last year for bringing Ethiopia's 22-year border war with Eritrea to a formal end, but that award has been going downhill ever since Henry Kissinger got one. They even gave one to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who now goes around condoning genocide.

Maybe we also need a Nobel Booby Prize.

GWYNNE DYER

INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. His new book is 'Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work)'.